Ole Doc Methuselah Part 1

Ole Doc Methuselah.

by L.Ron Hubbard.

Ole Doc Methuselah wasn't thinking what he was doing or he never would have landed on Spico that tempestuous afternoon. He had been working out some new formulas for cellular radiation-in his head as usual, he never could find his log tables-and the act of also navigating his rocket s.h.i.+p must have been too much for him. He saw the asteroid planet, de-translated his speed and landed.

He sat there for some time at the controls, gazing out into the pleasant meadow and at the brook which wan- dered so invitingly upon it, and finis.h.i.+ng up his tabulations.

When he had written down the answer on his gauntlet cuff-his filing system was full of torn sc.r.a.ps of cuff-he felt very pleased with himself. He had mostly forgotten where he had been going, but he was going to pour the pile to her when his eye focused upon the brook. Ole Doc took his finger off the booster switch and grinned.

"That sure is green gra.s.s," he said with a pleased sigh.

And then he looked up over the control panels where he hung his fis.h.i.+ng rod.

Who knows what would have happened to Junction City if Ole Doc hadn't decided to go fis.h.i.+ng that day.

Seated on the lower step of the port ladder, Hippoc- rates patiently watched his G.o.d toss flies into the water with a deft and expert hand. Hippocrates was a sort of cross between several things. Ole Doc had picked him up cheap at an auction on Zeno just after the Trans-system War. At the time he had meant to discover some things about his purchase such as metabolism and why he dieted solely on gypsum, but that had been thirty years ago and Hippocrates had been an easy habit to acquire. Unpig- mented, four-handed and silent as s.p.a.ce itself, Hippocrates had set himself the scattered task of remembering all the things Ole Doc always forgot. He sat now, remembering- particularly that Ole Doc had some of his own medicine

to take at thirty-six o'clock-and he might have sat there that way for hours and hours, phonograph-record-wise, if a radiating pellet hadn't come with a sharp zip past his left antenna to land with a clang on the Morgue's thick hull.

UP! CLANG!.

Page forty-nine of "Tales of the Early s.p.a.ce Pioneers"

went smoothly into operation in Hippocrates' gifted uni- maginative skull, which page translated itself into un- ruffled action.

He went inside and threw on "Force Field Beta" minus the Nine Hundred and Sixtieth Degree Arc, that being where Ole Doc was. Seeing that his wors.h.i.+pped master went on fis.h.i.+ng, either unwitting or uncaring, Hippocrates then served out blasters and twenty rounds to himself and went back to sit on the bottom step of the port ladder.

The big s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p-dented a bit but lovely-simmered quietly in Procyon's inviting light and the brook rippled and Ole Doc kept casting for whatever outrageous kind of fish he might find in that stream. This went on for an hour and then two things happened. Ole Doc, unaware of the Force Field, cast into it and got his fly back into his hat and a young woman came stumbling, panic-stricken, across the meadow toward the Morgue.

From amongst the stalks of flowers some forty feet high emerged an Earthman, thick and dark, wearing the re- mains of a uniform to which had been added civil s.p.a.ce garb. He rushed forward a dozen metres before he paused in stride at the apparition of the huge golden s.h.i.+p with its emblazoned crossed ray rods of pharmacy. Then he saw Ole Doc fis.h.i.+ng and the pursuer thrust a helmet up from a contemptuous grin.

It was nearer to Ole Doc than to the s.h.i.+p and the girl, exhausted and disarrayed, stumbled toward him. The Earth- man swept wide and put Ole Doc exactly between him- self and the ladder before he came in.

Hippocrates turned from page forty-nine to page one hundred and fifteen. He leaped nimbly up to the top of the s.h.i.+p in the hope of shooting the Earthman on an angle which would miss Ole Doc. But he had no more than arrived and sighted before it became apparent to him that he would also now shoot the girl. This puzzled him.

Obviously the girl was not an enemy who would harm Ole Doc. But the Earthman was. Still it was better to blast girl and Earthman than to see Ole Doc harmed in any

cause. The effort at recalling an exact instance made Hippocrates tremble and in that tremble Ole Doc also came into his fire field.

Having no warnings whatever, Ole Doc had just looked up from disentangling his hook from first his s.h.i.+rt and then his thumb and beheld two humans cannonading down upon him.

The adrenalized condition of the woman was due to the Earthman, that was clear. The Earthman was obviously a blast-for-hire from some tough astral slum and he had recently had a fight for two knuckles bled. The girl threw herself in a collapse at Ole Doc's feet and the Earthman came within a fatal fifteen feet.

Ole Doc twitched his wrist and put his big-hooked fly into the upper lip of the Earthman. This disappointed Ole Doc a little for he had been trying for the nose. The beggar was less hypo-thyroid than he had first estimated.

Pulling his game-fish bellowing into the stream, Ole Doc disarmed him and let him have a ray barrel just back of the medulla oblongata-which took care of the fellow nicely.

Hippocrates lowered himself with disappointed grunts down to the ladder. At his master's hand signal he came forth with two needles, filled, sterilized and awaiting only a touch to break their seals and become useful.

Into the gluteal muscle-through clothes and all be- cause of sterilizing radiation of the point-Doc gave the Earthman the contents of needle one. At the jab the fellow had squirmed a little and the doctor lifted one eyelid.

"You are a stone!" said Ole Doc. "You can't move."

The Earthman lay motionless, wide-eyed, being a stone.

Hippocrates carefully noted the time with the fact in order to remind his master to let the fellow stop being a stone some time. But in noting the time, Hippocrates found that it was six minutes to thirty-six o'clock and therefore time for a much more important thing-Ole Doc's own medicine.

Brusquely, Hippocrates grabbed up the unconscious girl and waded back across the stream with her. The girl could wait. Thirty-six o'clock was thirty-six o'clock.

"Hold up!" said Ole Doc, needle poised.

Hippocrates grunted and kept on walking. He went directly into the main operating room of the Morgue and there amidst the cleverly jammed hodge-podge of trays and ray tubes, drawers, masks, retorts and reflectors, he

unceremoniously dropped the girl. Mono-minded now, for this concerned his master-and where the rest of the world could go if it interfered with his master was a thing best expressed in silence-Hippocrates laid out the serum and the proper rays.

Humbly enough the master bared his arm and then exposed himself-as a man does before a fireplace on a cold day-to the pouring out of life from the fixed tubes.

It took only five minutes. It had to be done every five days.

Satisfied now, Hippocrates boosted the girl into a prop- er position for medication on the centre table and adjusted a lamp or two fussily, meanwhile admiring his master's touch with the needle.

Ole Doc was smiling, smiling with a strange poignancy.

She was a very pretty girl, neatly made, small waisted, high breasted. Her tumbling crown of hair was like an avalanche of fire in the operating lights. Her lips were very soft, likely to be yielding to-

"Father!" she screamed in sudden consciousness. "Fa- ther!"

Ole Doc looked perplexed, offended. But then he saw that she did not know where she was. Her wild glare speared both master and thing.

"Where is my father?"

"We don't rightly know, ma'am," said Ole Doc. "You just--"

"He's out there. They shot our s.h.i.+p down. He's dying or dead! Help him!"

Hippocrates looked at master and master nodded. And when the servant left the s.h.i.+p it was with a bound so swift that it rocked the Morgue a little. He was only a metre tall, was Hippocrates, but he weighed nearly five hundred kilos.

Behind him came Ole Doc, but their speeds were so much at variance that before the physician could reach the tall flowers, Hippocrates was back through them car- rying a man stretched out on a compartment door wrenched from its strong hinges for the purpose. That was page eight of "First Aid in s.p.a.ce", not to wrestle people around but to put them on flat things. Man and door weighed nearly as much as Hippocrates but he wanted no help.

" 'Lung burns,' said Hippocrates, 'are very difficult to heal and most usually result in death. When the heart is

also damaged, particular care should be taken to move the patient as little as possible since exertion-' "

Ole Doc listened to, without heeding, the high, squeaky singsong. Walking beside the girl's father, Ole Doc was not so sure.

He felt a twinge of pity for the old man. He was proud of face, her father, grey of hair and very high and n.o.ble of brow. He was a big man, the kind of a man who would think big thoughts and fight and die for ideals.

The doctor beheld the seared stains, the charred fabric, the blasted flesh which now composed the all of the man's chest. The b.l.o.o.d.y and gruesome scene was not a thing for a young girl's eyes, even under disinterested circ.u.m- stances-and a hypo would only do so much.

He stepped to the port and waved a hand back to the main salon. There was a professional imperiousness about it which thrust her along with invisible force. Out of her sight now, Ole Doc allowed Hippocrates to place the body on the multi-trayed operating table.

Under the gruesome flicker of ultra-violet, the wounded man looked even nearer death. The meters on the wall counted respiration and pulse and haemoglobin and all needles hovered in red while the big dial, with exaggerated and inexorable calm, swept solemnly down toward black.

"He'll be dead in ten minutes," said Ole Doc. He looked at the face, the high forehead, the brave contours. "He'll be dead and Adam's breed is gone enough to seed."

At the panel, the doctor threw six switches and a great arc began to glow and snap like a hungry beast amid the batteries of tubes. A dynamo whined to a muted scream and then another began to growl. Ozone and brimstone bit the nostrils. The table was pooled in smoky light.