Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 2 Part 129

Hugh waved at the view port. "We're there." He was too tired to make much of it, too tired and too emotionally exhausted. His weeks of fighting a fight he understood but poorly, hunger, and lately thirst, years of feeding on a consuming ambition, these left him with little ability to enjoy his goal when it arrived.

But they had landed, they had finished Jordan's Trip. He was not unhappy, at peace rather, and very tired. Ertz stared out. "Jordan!" he muttered. Then, "Let's go out."

"All right."

Alan came forward, as they were opening the air-lock, and the women pressed after him. "Are we there, Captain?"

"Shut up," said Hugh.

The women crowded up to the deserted view port; Alan explained to them, importantly and incorrectly, the scene outside. Ertz got the last door open.

They sniffed at the air. "It's cold," said Ertz. In fact the temperature was perhaps five degrees less than the steady monotony of the s.h.i.+p's temperature, but Ertz was experiencing weather for the first time.

"Nonsense," said Hugh, faintly annoyed that any fault should be found with _his_ planet. "It's just your imagination."

"Maybe," Ertz conceded. He paused uneasily. "Going out?" he added.

"Of course." Mastering his own reluctance, Hugh pushed him aside and dropped five feet to the ground "Come on; it's fine."

Ertz joined him, and stood close to him. Both of them remained close to the s.h.i.+p. "It's big, isn't it?" Ertz said in a hushed voice.

"Well, we knew it would be," Hugh snapped, annoyed with himself for having the same lost feeling.

"Hi!" Alan peered cautiously out of the door. "Can I comedown? Is it alright?"

"Come ahead."

Alan eased himself gingerly over the edge and joined them. He looked around and whistled. "Gos.h.!.+"

Their first sortie took them all of fifty feet from the s.h.i.+p. They huddled close together for silent comfort, and watched their feet to keep from stumbling on this strange uneven deck. They made it without incident until Alan looked up from the ground and found himself for the first time in his life with nothing close to him. He was. .h.i.t by vertigo and acute agoraphobia; he moaned, closed his eyes and fell.

"What in the s.h.i.+p?" demanded Ertz, looking around. Then it hit him.

Hugh fought against it. It pulled him to his knees, but be fought it, steadying himself with one hand on the ground. However, he had the advantage of having stared out through the view port for endless time; neither Alan nor Ertz were cowards.

"Alan!" his wife shrilled from the open door. "Alan! Come back here!" Alan opened one eye, managed to get it focused on the s.h.i.+p, and started inching back on his belly.

"Man!" commanded Hugh. "Stop that! Situp."

Alan did so, with the air of a man pushed too far. "Open your eyes!" Alan obeyed cautiously, reclosed them hastily.

"Just sit still and you'll be all right," Hugh added. "I'm all right already." To prove it he stood up. He was still dizzy, but he made it. Ertz sat up.

The sun had crossed a sizable piece of the sky, enough time had pa.s.sed for a well-fed man to become hungry, and they were not well fed. Even the women were outside; that had been accomplished by the simple expedient of going back in and pus.h.i.+ng them out. They had not ventured away from the side of the s.h.i.+p, but sat huddled against it. But their menfolk had even learned to walk singly, even in open s.p.a.ces. Alan thought nothing of strutting a full fifty yards away from the shadow of the s.h.i.+p, and did so more than once, in full sight of the women.

It was on one such journey that a small animal native to the planet let his curiosity exceed his caution. Alan's knife knocked him over and left him kicking. Alan scurried to the spot, grabbed his fat prize by one leg, and bore it proudly back to Hugh. "Look, Hugh, look! Good eating!"

Hugh looked with approval. His first strange fright of the place had pa.s.sed and had been replaced with a deep warm feeling, a feeling that he had come at last to his long home. This seemed a good omen.

"Yes," he agreed. "Good eating. From now on, Alan, always Good Eating."

LOST LEGACY.

CHAPTER ONE.

"Ye Have Eyes to See With!"

"HI-YAH, BUTCHER!" Doctor Philip Huxley put down the dice cup he had been fiddling with as he spoke, and shoved out a chair with his foot. "Sit down."

The man addressed ostentatiously ignored the salutation while handing a yellow slicker and soggy felt hat to the Faculty Clubroom attendant, but accepted the chair. His first words were to the negro attendant.

"Did you hear that, Pete? A witch doctor, pa.s.sing himself off as a psychologist, has the effrontery to refer to me—to me, a licensed physician and surgeon, as a butcher." His voice was filled with gentle reproach.

"Don't let him kid you, Pete. If Doctor Coburn ever got you into an operating theatre, he'd open up your head just to see what makes you tick. He'd use your skull to make an ashtray."

The man grinned as he wiped the table, but said nothing.

Cob.u.m clucked and shook his head. "That from a witch doctor. Still looking for the Little Man Who Wasn't There, Phil?"

"If you mean parapsychology, yes."

"How's the racket coming?"

"Pretty good. I've got one less lecture this semester, which is just as well—I get awfully tired of explaining to the wide-eyed innocents how little we really know about what goes on inside their think-tanks. I'd rather do research."

"Who wouldn't? Struck any pay dirt lately?"

"Some. I'm having a lot of fan with a law student just now, chap named Valdez."

Coburn lifted his brows. "So? E.S.P.?"

"Kinda. He's sort of a clairvoyant; if he can see one side of an object, he can see the other side, too."

"Nuts!"

" 'If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?' I've tried him out under carefully controlled conditions, and he can do it—see around comers."

"Hmmmm—well, as my Grandfather Stonebender used to say, 'G.o.d has more aces up his sleeve than were ever dealt in the game.' He would be a menace at stud poker."

"Matter of fact, he made his stake for law school as a professional gambler."

"Found out how he does it?"

"No, d.a.m.n it." Huxley drummed on the table top, a worried look on his face. "If

I just had a little money for research I might get enough data to make this sort of thing significant. Look at what Rhine accomplished at Duke."