Color Blind

For that elusive green-white glamour, go to Venus, the ads urged vain women. But that was only half the story--just ask olive-skinned Sukey Jones.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Her name was Sukey Kireina Jones, and the blood of South Asia was in her veins. Mix that with the Celtic, brother, and you've got something special. Her eyes were dark, and mostly a little sad; her hair was black as the Rim, and she stood barely five feet in heels, unless you count the curves, which, if Nature had been fool enough to straighten them out, would have added quite a lot--and taken away a lot too.

We called her Sukey, and kidded her some, and what made her so beautiful was, she didn't know it.

I had found her hanging around the Surface Transit offices, broke and alone, and got her the job as counter girl in the Company hash house on the edge of the space-port. That was where she met my friend, Harry Thurbley.

Harry, was a licensed senior space pilot, but he would never let any of us call him Captain Thurbley. He said the title sounded pompous, and who the hell was he, anyway. The squarest guy I ever met, but you would have thought that he was ashamed of that blue uniform. Me, Chuck Morris, I am only an engineer--a space going mechanic--and I would have given my share in the cosmic hereafter to wear it. I would have strutted some.

But uniform or no uniform, I wouldn't have stood a chance with Sukey Jones. From the moment those two set eyes on one another, she had been Harry's girl. I used to wonder how it would have been with her and me if I had never introduced them. Just wondering.

In those days there had got to be a heavy Venus passenger traffic. It had become fashionable for Earth women to bleach their skin to match their hair, and the coveted greenish-white paleness they wanted could only be accomplished, it seemed, by spending several months under the sunless Venusian overcast, with its odd radiations.

Caterers to this fad left in scores for Venus. Tourist lodgings and recreational facilities sprang up on the frontier planet. Beauty got to be big business overnight.

This was only available to women with considerable money, of course. A round trip ticket cost just under twelve thousand dollars, and high living, on Venus, came high indeed.

Their poor sisters had recourse only to special lamps and lotions to simulate the pallor of the movie stars and the debutantes. It was not the same. Not in their own minds. It was the dream of every woman to make the pilgrimage, and not a few spent their life savings, embezzled, stowed away, or even sold themselves to Venusian white slavers for the chance of that elusive glamour.

Sukey's skin was of a wonderful, delicate olive shade, and she hated it. Whenever one of the female travelers would come in to eat, looking ghostly pale and opulent in their Martian lizard-skin coats, Sukey Jones would sigh. I could tell that in her small body there was a man-sized inferiority complex building up, but I didn't mention it to Harry. He would only have worried about her.

He was thoughtful of Sukey, and many a time when we got in, and he had business with Customs or the Port Authority, he would say to me, "Chuck, go and see Sukey for me, and tell her I'll be along."

And as for Sukey Jones, she may not have been overly bright, but that kind of treatment had been a rare thing in her twenty-three years of hard knocks. She worshipped Harry Thurbley.

That night in March we had set the Altair down on the field just after dusk. Harry had business at the Office, and I was to drop in and see Sukey first and let her know that he'd be in later. I didn't mind. I was always glad to do it.

I went into the restaurant, and the place was crowded with passengers for the 2200 Marsflight. I couldn't find Sukey. There was a strange girl behind the cash register. I asked her about it, and she said she didn't know anything; she had just been hired.

So I finally got Linda, one of the waitresses, aside, and got the story from her.

Seemed there had been a couple of women--society dames in from Venus on the Saturday run--and Sukey had heard one of them make a remark about her complexion. It was nothing much, just a whispered knife of criticism, but Sukey had flared up. Then the woman got really insulting, and Sukey had reached over the cash register and pulled out a big handful of her platinum locks.

That grab had cost her her job.