Fiction complete, p.5
Fiction Complete, page 5
“Look out for an end run,” warned Iggy as the Thargs went into their huddle.
“You think they will?” asked Dak, who had overheard.
“I’ll take Iggy’s word for it,” said Reilly. “And, by the way, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to drop back on this play.”
The wisdom of that suggestion was made plain a moment later, when Kleek turned the end under full sail. The alert Dak was right there to meet him. Reilly never knew whether the Tharg just did not care or whether Dak’s small stature made him contemptuous. At any rate, the Jovian quarter, instead of trying to avoid the little center, lowered his head and attempted to run him down!
There was a terrific thunk! Dak was sent staggering backward, and Kleek, for all his momentum, was stopped dead in his tracks. Before he could fall. Bull Smeed—remembering, no doubt, the time the Tharg hacks had so effectively squelched him—crashed into the Jovian. Kleek and Bull flew through the air in the general direction of the All-Star’s charge, while the ball was released from the Tharg’s dazed grasp to bounce upward.
“Ball!” shouted Reilly, and dived forward.
Unfortunately, he was not the only one who did so. Players of both teams jumped in to grab. Reilly never saw what hit him. He struck the ground with such force that his headgear bounced off and rolled under the cleated feet of the milling players.
He later learned that Gig had been responsible for recovering the fumble. The rubbery citizen from Mercury had knelt at the edge of the pileup and probed for the ball. Having wrapped his flexible fingers around it, he signaled to Hungry for help. The massive Neptunian seized Gig’s legs and heaved with all his weight and strength until the Mercurian’s elastic muscles reached the limit of their extension. The ball snapped through the tangle of bodies as if on the end of a rubber band.
They brought Reilly to and handed him his helmet. Time was slipping away rapidly and here was their chance to pull up a bit. Therefore Bull was impatient when he saw Jim fumbling fearfully in his head-gear.
“Come on, come on,” he called, “What’s the hold-up?”
Reilly turned a stricken face to him.
“Something wrong?” demanded Dak.
Reilly gulped.
“He’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?”
“Iggy! He must have bounced off.”
“Omigawd!” moaned Bull. “What’ll we do?”
“The little fellow must he out cold,” deduced Rado, “or he’d make himself visible.”
Reilly shivered as he thought of the fopar lying unconscious under those milling cleats.
“He can’t be far,” said Bull. “See if we can find him around here.”
The long-suffering referee clapped hand to brow once more as the entire All-Star team dropped to hands and knees and began to paw the apparently empty ground.
“Lord, give me strength . . .” he whispered.
The turf had been gone over completely before he opened his eyes and summoned the energy to bellow:
“What is this? That’s five yards for too much time! Just one more irregularity will cost you fifteen for impersonating a football team!”
HE PICKED up the ball and paced off the distance as the grinning Thargs followed along. The All-Stars grudgingly retreated.
“It’s no use,” groaned Reilly. “He wouldn’t be back here.”
“Well,” said Dak, “we might as well do what we can.”
“Yes,” agreed Bull. “Suppose we give Reilly the ball. They’ll expect him to plunge again, so he might get away with an end run.”
It seemed as good an idea as any. Reilly took Dak’s pass from center and feinted toward the line. As the Thargs prepared to meet him, he shifted and swung wide around end.
Suddenly he realized there was something unusual about the ball he was carrying. It was speaking to him!
“Here I am, inside the ball,” said Iggy. “I couldn’t let you know before, or the man in the striped shirt might have found out.”
Reilly had run about fifteen yards to his right and gained about two yards forward. The Thargs had recovered and were forcing him toward the sidelines. He saw that he was not going to make it.
“Stop talking and do something!” he muttered to the fopar.
And then he thought he must have taken leave of his senses. For there, directly ahead of him by five yards, ran a man with a football. The ball, like the one Reilly carried, was marked with a white stripe, put on by the referee at the same time he had marked the Thargs’ shirts. The man was uniformed in a worn red jersey with a white number “six”. In fact, it was Reilly’s shirt.
“He’s me!” thought the Earthman.
So did the Thargs.
The nearest one launched himself in a vicious tackle—at the man in front of Reilly! To the crowd in the stands it must have looked as if he had missed, but Reilly saw him pass clear through the “ball-carrier’s” body. The new Reilly ran right through the next tackier as well, leaving the Jovian to sprawl off-balance for-want of opposition.
“I’d better get away from here; it’s not going to be healthy when they see me,” thought the real Reilly, reversing his field.
Nevertheless, his double was still in front of him. No matter which way the harried quarterback turned, the double with the other ball preceded him by five yards at all times. Would be tacklers flew through the air like ten-pins, but they could not seem to grab anything substantial—except for one valiant pair who succeeded in clamping the frantic Kleek squarely between them.
The referee tore at his hair, and finally gave up chasing the flying phantom that in the eyes of everyone in the stadium carried the ball. He sat wearily on the grass and hid his face in his hands.
It was in this position that Bull Smeed found him.
The big fullback hauled him to his feet and showed him the field strewn with glassy-eyed men in the uniform of the Tharg Professional Football Club, champions of the System.
“He’s over the line,” suggested Bull gently, handing the referee his whistle.
Reilly was across the goal.
“Sorry I had to include you,” Iggy was saying from within the ball, “but when I had to produce at such short notice the mass illusion of a man running five yards ahead of himself, I can’t—”
“So that was it,” exclaimed Reilly.
“That,” replied the fopar, “was it. I can’t pull much more, though. I’m getting tired.”
“There are only a few minutes to go,” said Reilly. “You’d better stay where you are.
“Alright,” agreed Iggy, “but I have an awful headache.”
Rado kicked the point after touchdown, making the score 28 to 27 in favor of the fading Thargs. The All-Stars had the crowd with them now, for there is something inspiring about seeing a hopelessly outclassed team battle up to even terms. But it was too late. As Bull kicked off, there was only a minute and a half left to the game.
IT WAS to the Thargs’ advantage to stall, but, enraged at being made to look bad, they began a crashing offensive. On the third play the tired amateur line collapsed and a Tharg back was loose. Reilly and his crew gave pursuit, but they did not catch up until the Tharg had reached their twenty yard line. There they snowed him under. The first Thargs to arrive piled on with might and main.
The harassed referee untangled the bodies and sought for the football. In the confusion no one saw the ball sneakily crawl away and climb into Hungry’s lap as he sat where he had been dumped on the ten. Men from both teams were beginning to gather menacingly when someone discovered Hungry staring apprehensively at the pigskin he held.
The Tharg fullback was the first to recover the power of speech.
“Say!” he exploded, “How did—”
“That’s the way, Hungry,” shouted Reilly quickly. “That’s covering those fumbles all right, ol’ boy!”
Bork paused indecisively, which was fatal. By the time he had looked to Kleek for support the All-Stars were already lining up.
“How much time?” Reilly asked the timekeeper.
“Twenty seconds.”
“Time out,” demanded Reilly like an echo.
In the huddle he addressed Iggy, who remained inside the ball.
“Can you do that again?”
“What?” asked Iggy’s tired voice. “Guide the ball anywhere you want.”
“I think so,” replied the fopar, “but my head aches terribly.”
“If you can hold out,” announced Reilly firmly, “we are going to kick a field goal.”
“But you can’t!” protested Bull. “Don’t you realize we’re on our own ten yard line?”
“We have to,” said Reilly. “We only have twenty seconds.”
“Oh, well,” sighed Bull, disclaiming all responsibility by his tone.
“Alright,” said Reilly. “I’ll do it myself.”
The teams lined up on the ten, forcing Bull to kneel on his own goal line while waiting for the ball to be snapped.
Dak centered the ball. Bull touched it down, closed his eyes, and waited. Reilly put his heart into it, and the ball rose over the heads of the inrushing linemen. Silence descended over the crowd as the gun went off. The ball rose higher and higher, a tremendous boot.
“It’ll never make it,” breathed Bull.
Reilly made no answer. Like everyone else in the stadium, he had his eyes glued on the ball. It seemed as if it would land about twenty yards short of the goal.
But what was this?
The ball was curving upward! In spite of the wind blowing against it, it climbed higher. It was going to be close . . . close. . . .
The crowd released its collective breath as the ball struck the cross-bar and bounded upward to be borne back by the wind. Then that breath was caught again as the ball, defying nature, halted in its retreat. It wobbled uncertainly for a moment. Then it descended, moving over the goal for three points, thereby winning the game for the All-stars by a score of 30 to 28.
Simultaneously there was a blinding flash of light around the pigskin. Like a shot bird, it slumped deadly to the ground.
“Iggy blew a fuse,” gasped Bull.
“Come on,” said Reilly.
To a man, the All-Stars followed him down the field. The first wave of spectators was already pouring out of the stands as he scooped up the ball. The team surrounded him and they ploughed their way to the locker room, where Reilly proceeded to let the air out of the ball.
“That was close,” Bull said as Jim fumbled with the lacing.
The quarterback had just found his knife in his locker and cut Iggy out of his leather prison, when he realized that all was quiet. He whirled about, as Renling raised his little tube. . . .
REILLY awoke to find himself tackling his pillow and falling out of bed in his Martian hotel. He sat up and shook his head.
“Oh, boy!” he said to himself. “I almost thought that dream was real. Ouch!”
This last as he banged his leg against the bed in getting up. He had not, come to think of it, had that bruise last night.
“Holy Smoke!” said Reilly.
He looked wildly about the room. Yes, there was Iggy on the bed.
“Mars to play this afternoon,” chortled Reilly. “Wait till I get him in that game. . . .”
DAILY TELEMIRROR, JAN. 1, 2018—
Six o’clock news headline: Earth, 105; Mars, 0.
THE END
1947
Sinecure 6
The lookouts didn’t really expect to see anyone coming in from outer space; it was, after centuries of watching, just a political job. Which meant utter incompetents on whom the future of the race depended.
His security, Nurald Quil, stood at the entrance of the transport’s air tube. A few obsequious junior officers had gathered to help him watch his numerous belongings being transferred to the security station.
The transport captain, out of deference to the new station chief’s official position, was giving his personal supervision to the loading. Through the long, flexible tube rigged between the ship’s air lock and an entrance port of the spherical space station, crew members were floating innumerable crates and bulky bundles.
The captain, a dark, austere man, looked up from checking the stenciling on a few of the boxes.
“Your security, I see, has been supplied with all the latest instruments.”
Quil smiled faintly, and glanced at his three, companions. Stolid Weksho did not change expression, but the black-haired, mercurial Sarli snickered delightedly.
Jac Rugay, slouching against the bulkhead, coughed and regarded the captain with calm amusement.
“One should not always believe what is in print, captain, especially in tins modem world of 2376,” he remarked.
The captain, turning his head, was forced to tilt it considerably to meet Rugay’s sardonic, gray-eyed stare. He was not certain that the too-pale features under the sandy hair were sneering.
“You see, captain,” said Quil suavely, “the station is supposed to be equipped with all the communication and detection devices perfected in the last two hundred years, plus all logical variations. It seemed superfluous to bring the latest unlikely developments.”
“So,” explained Rugay, “we brought a five-year supply of certain luxuries not ordinarily included in the annual ration cargo.”
The captain swallowed hard.
“I seem to remember,” Quil mused, “that the captain, as transport commander, signed for the equipment. What did it come to, Jac?”
“About a million creds,” answered Rugay unconcernedly.
“I am sure the captain will be able to think of a suitable explanation. He has, after all, the whole voyage of five billion miles back to Earth to consider it.” Quil smoothed the velvety material of his slightly protruding jacket front. “Of course, commanding a first-class spaceship, he undoubtedly has many influential friends.”
Not a million creds’ worth, the captain thought; but he felt it would be useless to mention it. He remembered some of the rumors he had heard of this Quil about Venusian transport licenses. If even Expediter Bascomb could not melt him down, he was too smart to neglect disposing of this equipment.
Quil turned to his companions.
“I don’t believe I’ll wait to meet the old chief. Let me know when he and his rabble have transferred.”
“I’ll call you,” said Sarli.
A few hours later, Quil and his supporters had completed a cursory inspection of Security Station 6. They had tramped seemingly endless corridors, hesitated over intricate control panels, gaped at unbelievably complicated instruments, and even fiddled with the artificial gravity.
At last, they gathered in the routine communications room, where a few marvelous mechanisms maintained constant contact with distant Earth. The screen of the automatically Earth-directed scanner showed a bright, flickering point of light near the center of the view—the transport’s stern rockets.
Quil chose the least uncomfortable chair and thrust his bad right leg out in front of him. The eager Sarli was peeking into various cabinets and drawers, while Zury Weksho just as typically stared into the screen. Jac Rugay had dug into some filing cabinets and seemed interested in their contents.
“What are you learning, Jac?” called Quil.
The tall man looked up from a report he was scanning.
“After the year 2254,” he quoted, half sarcastically, “during which over two hundred meteorites were reported, it was decided to eliminate recording any object smaller than one hundred tons.”
“I don’t intend to report any at all,” said Quil dryly.
Sarli nearly doubled with laughter, and even Weksho grinned.
Rugay continued, unperturbed.
“Thirty-eight years after operations were begun, a technician, through carelessness, missed reporting a meteorite which showed on the automatic recording. Public opinion being what is was then, the man was executed.”
He stopped and pulled out his handkerchief for a short fit of coughing.
“Sol’s Crown!” exclaimed Sarli impatiently. “Let’s not bother with fairy tales.”
“Well, apparently, the idea was—it might have been a spaceship. They had just finished setting out the security stations after absorbing the effects of the Collision.”
“And they knew enough,” agreed Quil, “to worry about the Murser fleet coming back. It left the solar system in 2180 and they expected it to return. You see—I learned a lot of history during the election campaign.”
“What else do you know?” asked Sarli.
“It took only ten years for them to set out the four orbital stations. Then another ten years to build number five and put it south of the plane of the ecliptic. This was the last, except for replacing one of the orbital stations that was blown up during the Expediters’ Reorganization. My public should be proud of my knowledge.”
“You owed it to the public,” laughed Sarli. “Little enough to pay for a soft berth, with legal immunity from the Expediters’ annoyance.”
“I trust that, as my campaign manager, you put it differently?”
“Five-year trust, never-ending vigilance, Earth’s outpost, crushing responsibility, humanity’s future,” recited Sarli.
“By the way, your—vigilance,” inquired Jac Rugay, “just what would you do if the radeteks recorded a foreign body of over a hundred tons?”
Quil grinned and rubbed a lump on his jaw.
“Report all three of you to Earth Central. Undoubtedly, you’d all be executed.”
“Not with what we know about you,” smiled Rugay.
“I know you don’t have any future,” replied Quil, “but Sarli needn’t think that just because he’s the cousin of the Expediter of Venus, old Bascomb would let him out of that transport license affair, lie thought that was his own graft.”
“I can always pass the health exam and go to Venus.”
“Good for you,” said Rugay with something of a sneer. “I don’t think I could even pass for Earth residence now. Say, did you know that in 2283 the station was struck by a planetary body the size of Pluto?”
