Public-domain ebook
The Pluto Lamp
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In: Science-Fiction & Fantasy·Adventure·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #63676.
The opening · free to read
By CHAS. A. STEARNS
It was the most outrageous kind of irony that fate, and the Commission of Galactic Astrography, should select such a prime misfit as Knucklebone Smith to light the lamp of Pluto.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
This is really two stories. The first is solar history; the second, the mostly true legend of a misfit called Knucklebone Smith.
Knucklebone, so far as anyone could ever determine, was his real name--the sin of prankish, or perhaps disillusioned parents. He was exactly six feet eight inches tall from the insulated soles of his engineering boots to the top of his planeteer's helmet. He never in his life weighed more than one hundred sixty-five pounds. His face was angular and horse-like, and it had never, within the memory of anyone who knew him, contained the slightest vestige of a smile.
He was not nature's first error, nor her last, but he differed from the unexceptional many in that he believed in Destiny ... with a capital 'L.' Throughout a lifetime of unfortunate ventures he remained firm in the conviction that sooner or later he would find his own metier and become famous. At last he did, and that is the story of Knucklebone Smith.
The Pluto Lamp, a relic of the pioneering days of interstellar flight, is harder to explain, but easier to believe. It was once as well known to spacemen as Rafferty Shoals to the ancient China clippers.
The gulf between the stars was vast and uncharted in those days; still a thing of superstitious dread for the planet-bound. But it was no more unknown than the solitary planet which tails all the others in its dark, millennial path about our own sun. The planetary freighters went as far as Uranus and no farther. For the black little planet whose very namesake is Hell had nothing to attract them that could not be gotten at more conveniently.
The starships passed it by warily, giving it a wide berth, for it had an evil reputation. The old scanners were unreliable at best, what with the confusing debris that fills space, and more than one ship, through miscalculation, swerved from its course, brushing through the magnetic field of the unillumined wasteland, and crashed on the hard frozen surface of Pluto.
It was inevitable that someone would give birth to the idea of the Lamp. It was to be a permanent, unmanned beacon, strategically placed on the Dead Planet to warn ships that should have passed in the night, but didn't always make it.
A magnificent idea, everyone thought. Everyone, that is, excepting Knucklebone Smith.
The very idea of Pluto made him ill. He had set his number twelve size feet on all the inner planets at one time or another in the disillusioning search for fortune. He had starved and thirsted, baked and bled for his dream. But he had always hated and avoided cold. He had, in fact, the look of a man born cold, and never entirely warmed.
It was the most outrageous kind of irony, therefore, that fate, and the Commission of Galactic Astrography, should select him to light the Lamp.
The latter, at least, was innocent of paradoxical motive. They needed a man like Smith. A man planet-wise enough to do the job, and not intelligent enough to decline it. There would be another man along, of course, to direct, but he presented no problem, for he was Professor Salvor-Jones, who had invented the Light, and insisted upon being along when it was installed. He was a dedicated man.
Knucklebone Smith, however, was dedicated to something else, and it was only his pressing need for money that prodded him into acceptance of the offer. He didn't care a fig for the safety of starships. This would be a dangerous job at best, decidedly unpleasant at worst. Smith didn't mind the danger; he had seen much of it in his wanderings; but of unpleasantness he had experienced even more, and being a sybarite by nature, in spite of his hard life, he preferred real (but painless) peril. He was sure that he would be cold on Pluto. He was right.
The lamp was not really a light, of course, nor did it faintly resemble one. What it did, in fact, resemble, was a sleek space cruiser. This was wholly misleading, for though it was designed for interplanetary travel, it was to be a one-way voyage. Once in the orbit of Pluto it would nose down, smash a few feet into the crystalline surface of frozen ammonia, and remain there forever, standing on end like a lighthouse. It was at this point that it would cease to be a spaceship and become a beacon.
At least that was what Professor Salvor-Jones said.
The beacon was three hundred feet long, white in color, for some mysterious reason, and had cost the government of Earth something less than seventeen million dollars. It was packed with expensive robotic equipment, and was designed to be completely self-sustaining, once its controls were properly set. It did everything for passing starships that could possibly be expected of a well-reared beacon. It cheered them on the outward passage, making them feel less lonely. It greeted them, like a remote, cold Statue of Liberty upon their return, warned them of lurking meteorite storms within the vicinity of their course, and advised them of their position with relation to their destination when they contacted its sensitive radio. But most important, it warned them to steer clear of Pluto.
It very nearly failed before it had begun all this show of monkish wayside hospitality, however. It would have failed if it hadn't been for Knucklebone Smith.
They cut the beaconship loose from its convoy five hundred miles out, which was sufficient for it to spiral in on the minimum of power it carried and land safely.
Salvor-Jones and Smith had only to lie in their safety hammocks in the cramped temporary passenger cubicle. The ship would land by itself. Their duties began once it had established itself firmly on the bleak expanse of dark planet below them. They were to adjust the automatic controls, make tests, and generally see that the thing was as it should be for the lonely vigil that lay ahead.
Three weeks, Salvor-Jones indicated, should be plenty of time for all this. When it was finished, they could send a patrol cruiser from Ganymede to pick them up.
That was what he said but he was a very zealous man, and doted on thoroughness.
The fact was that they were finished with the tests in seven and a half hours, and there was nothing to do, unhappily, for the remaining twenty days except to entertain themselves as best they could, and wait. It might be said that things went too smoothly.
Professor Salvor-Jones was a smallish man with a square mustache of regulation black, and a lock of jet hair that hung at times over his left eye. He had a perpetual motion machine built into him, and a profound contempt for the normal pace of life.
But worst of all, in view of his predicament, he had Knucklebone Smith.
Salvor-Jones finished his checking at 1800 star time and came into the living compartment from the chill outer ship, or beacon, as it had now become. He blew on his hands, put away his check-sheet board, and stood uncertainly, gnawing his thumb and gazing at the spectacle of Smith hunkered silently in front of a portable radiant heater. Knucklebone was, as usual, the picture of contemplative suicide.
"Well, well," said Salvor-Jones briskly.
Smith made no answer. He swallowed thoughtfully, his Adam's apple convulsing, and continued to stare into the glowing sun of the heater.
"We've not much to do from now on, I'm afraid," Salvor-Jones said, "until a starship passes within range. Then we'll be able to see how well it works."
Smith nodded glumly. He was sulking. He had been assigned to assist, but this little man insisted on doing everything himself. Didn't trust a damn soul but himself. Pick up a tool and like as not he'd snatch it from your hand and leave you standing there watching him. Smith hated people like that.
"Play chess?" Salvor-Jones asked.
"I never played chess," Knucklebone Smith said.
"Quite an assortment of games on board," Salvor-Jones said. "Checkers. Maybe you'd rather play checkers."
"Never tried it."
"Poker?"
"No."
Salvor-Jones sighed. He got out the animated slide pictures, set up the screen, and amused himself at length. The slides were mostly those of lightly clad females in warm climates, doing pleasantly idle things.
After the second slide, Knucklebone switched his chair around so that his back was to the screen. The girls made him feel too sentimental. The blue skies and golden beaches made him homesick.
On the fifth day Knucklebone Smith was fiddling with a power switch and blew out a safety fuse. It required some three hours for Professor Salvor-Jones to repair it, but he was glad for the diversion.
On the eighth day Smith was pottering in the pile room with an electric torch, making himself a wire bookrack. A lubrication reservoir caught on fire and a minor generator was ruined.
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