Public-domain ebook
Derelicts of Uranus
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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #64875.
The opening · free to read
By J. HARVEY HAGGARD
Here is Adventure and Danger. Mud-fishers, and a girl,--and a quasi-human looking for trouble.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Comet May 41. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lonny Higgens, once of the earthly planet, stretched out in the conning-tower of his mud-submarine, an aquatic monstrosity of globular reinforced steel that was at home either above or below the surface of the squirming mud seas of Uranus, and sighed lazily.
"Blast it!" he moaned sleepily and almost regretfully. "There's something about this planet that makes you have spring fever the year round, and it gets worse and worse! Lonny Higgens, you're a lazy, nogood fool!--and you'll never get around to the things you used to dream about."
The circular hatch was open over his head, showing a patch of black swirling mists through which dark midges maneuvered in tiny swarms. Just as he was dozing comfortably, forgetful of the humming insects on the outside and the occasional flopping sounds made by things that squirmed in the muddy ocean, something dropped from the mist, falling plunk on his forehead. He jerked sidewise, just as another pellet of balled mud struck him on the end of his nose. He glimpsed a tiny visage, half insect and quasi-human, peering over the hatch rim for an instant.
"Baron Munchy!" exclaimed Lonny irritably, recognizing this curious specimen of Uranusian life. "Cut that out, or I'll wring your little neck. I haven't got time for any of your monkey-shines."
A winged thing soared down from the mists, landing on the chair beside his couch, and "Baron Munchy", like a dragon-fly come to mysterious humanlike life, folded his transparent wings back like a cloak and paced back and forth.
"Me mad! Me plent' mad," rasped Baron Munchy, who produced his tones by a vibration of his wings.
"Ah, beat it," snorted Lonny, turning his head away. The small being had brought with him the dank, stagnant aroma of the outer swamps, and that reminded him of untended netlines hanging in the mud. He was bored with Baron Munchy and his endless lying and conniving. When he had first come to Uranus, two years before, the little rascal had showed up on the landing deck, more dead than alive from a terrific beating at the hands of several of his fellows. Baron Munchy was a born fighter. He survived under the ministrations of the lonely terrestrial and had become attached to the mud-submarine. But he dearly loved to stir up trouble, and nothing pleased the little demon more than to shout insults at mud-monkeys until they fought among themselves. "Go way. I'm tired of listening to your silly chatter."
"Me mad as heck!" cried Baron Munchy, sitting down on the edge of the chair like a tiny mannikin and doubling his tiny fists beneath his chitinous chin. "That man say the Boss no good. He say the Boss one big blonde devil. He say--"
"Shut up," protested Lonny. "Raeburn's all right. He's just a mud-fisher like me, and has got to get along. It's natural that he doesn't like a rival, and I'm not a bit riled by your chatter."
He was presently snoring and Baron Munchy looked across the space through squinting, calculating eyes. For a moment the mischievous glitter in his faceted eyes became dulled, and then he soared across the bed and sat astride Lonny's neck, using the adam's apple for a saddle. Lonny roused with a start and gulped. The small insectlike visage was thrust grimly down to the end of his nose, and a tiny finger was raised emphatically.
"He say he knock the holy feather from you, Boss," he chirped grimly. "He say you fish for pearls in mud that belong him. He say that girl make him one fine cook, and--"
"Huh!" demanded Lonny Higgens. "What girl! Oh, he probably means Lana. Blast it, Munchy, can't you let a guy sleep? If she wants to fall for a flat tire like Raeburn, it's no business of mine."
Grunting reluctantly, Lonny got up and stretched, cursing in a fervent undertone, at which Baron Munchy looked hopeful.
"Good Lord, Munchy," he growled. "Why I ever put up with you and your stirring up trouble is more than I know." Yet he knew that the little creature's chatter had helped to break the deadly monotony of the long winter hours in which he had managed to teach pidgin English to the Uranusian.
He climbed up the ladder, through the hatch, just as a rocking movement was apparent in the hull of the mud-submarine. Down past the oblong landing he saw great circular movements in the mud, where his nets had been a few moments before. Tiny midges were falling into the mud and being drawn into the gyrating vortices.
Now thoroughly awake, he leaped down and across the landing. In a few seconds he stood cursing at the broken strands of the anchor-lines where his nets had been ripped away.
"Damn you Whirl-Rays," he cursed, shaking his fist in the direction of the whirlpools that surged in and out like living things, which of course they were, under their coating of slimy mud. The Whirl-Rays had a way of forcing a stream of mud in a downward spout and creating a resultant whirlpool which sucked everything into its voracious clutches. "That's my tenth set of nets you've got that way."
Baron Munchy fluttered out from below and landed on the railing, preening his wings. There was an I-told-you-so expression on his insectivorian countenance ... when he saw the angry expression on the terrestrial's face and heard the flow of vitriolic words, he hopped up and down with impish ecstacy.
"My goodness, Boss," he chirruped. "You heap mad! Maybe somethin' goin' happen now, huh? Maybe you whip tar out of Raeburn, huh?"
Lonny swatted at Baron Munchy with his open palm, but the blow never landed. Out of the mists, coming soddenly from somewhere across the squirming quagmire, came the sounds of a human being crying in desperation.
"Help! Help!" sounded the voice, and the thing that so startled Lonny Higgens was that the words were unmistakably feminine.
"Good Lord!" he exploded. "Do you suppose Raeburn really has got Lana in his mud-submarine! Damn it, Baron Munchy, why didn't you say so before you spoke?"
Contrary to the general belief earlier than 2070, when the explorer Ramundsen first dipped down through the screening vapors of Uranus, the temperature never approached the freezing point, and lurked instead nearer to the boiling mark of water. The boiling point on Uranus varied greatly, however, due to unbelievable fluctuations of the atmospheric pressure.
Lonny made poor time, slogging along on the mud-shoes fashioned with tough vines over a framework of metal. There was a limit to the speed you could make on such contraptions. Baron Munchy, bordering on a nervous frenzy at the promise of activity, had darted ahead, his filmy wings dissolving quickly in the swirling mist.
He had a good general idea as to the whereabouts of Raeburn's mud-submarine. Likewise, he had a fairly good estimate of the mud-fisher's capabilities and did not think that Lana Hilton would suffer much if Raeburn had not gone completely wacky.
At times the going was pretty good, where the mud was entwined with thick layers of lightning-kelp--so called because tiny sparkles of static electricity darted from it at each step of his clogged mud-shoes.
Mud, mud, mud! All Uranus was one vast ball of squirming mud! Thirty-two thousand miles through of squashy mud. Stuff that would run through his fingers, and through the webs of his shoes, and which would suck greedily at his body if he so much as lost his footing. Mud that would never solidify due to the varying turmoil of barometric pressure. Mud that could never dry completely due to the quasi-soluble consistency of Uranusian silt.
Two years he'd been here now, fishing for the precious mollusks whose pearls might win him the security and prosperity he had never been able to wrest from the over-populated earth. Two years it had been--or nine days as time was reckoned on Uranus. Nine times he had gone around the muddy world, keeping up with daylight--such as it was--and now--blast it--the world was getting him--absorbing him mentally as well as physically--or so it seemed.
Only four days before (Uranusian, a bit less than a year) the feminine aridity of the planet had been shattered by the coming of that headstrong, unreasoning female, Lana Hilton. Prior to that, there had been company of a sort on Uranus--Link Raeburn's mud-submarine had often drifted near enough for an occasional chat.
But Lana's coming had made a crowd on Uranus, if three can be called a crowd, and Lonny was beginning to wish for the unbroken isolation of other planets with no form of life whatsoever. There was only one method of obtaining Uranusian pearls.
That method was relatively simple. You had to invest every cent of your savings or heritage, as he had done two years before, and you had to pay towing charges to some space schooner that was coming near Uranus. Sea food came cheaply on Uranus but clothing was a different problem, and you had to have a goodly stock of that.
Then, when you did find enough pearls to warrant the voyage home, you had to send out an S. O. S. to a nearby space vessel, and the captain, fearing the loss of his command if he disobeyed interplanetary law, would have to come several million miles extra to pick you up, sans submarine, of course, which by that time would be a rusted chunk of worthless metal anyway.
He was wet to the skin when he heard voices through the mist. To his nose came the suffocating down draft of the fishing vessel, mingled with the faint aroma of ammonia.
"Sock 'im! Smack 'im down!" he heard Baron Munchy shouting at the top of his tiny voice. "Plaster 'er another! Lead with right, dadblamee!"
Fearing the worst, Lonny tried to hurry, with the result that he became tangled in his mud-shoes and had to flounder the rest of the way. On the landing he shook off as much of the mud as was possible, kicked off his mud-shoes and staggered toward the shaft of light boring up from the hatchway.
In the center of the control room Baron Munchy was stalking back and forth, yelling like a referee. Link Raeburn's angular body was sprawled back disgustedly on a low bench, while Lana Hilton was flopped down in a chair at a table, her dejected face propped up by both hands.
"Whyn't you wallop in kisser?" demanded Baron Munchy, hopping up to the table beside her and trying to lift an arm. "Smash him over place, Lana!"
"Damn that mosquito!" snapped Link Raeburn wearily. "Can't you swat him? Why doesn't that fool Lonny keep him home where he belongs?"
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