Short Fiction Robert Sheckley (best romantic books to read TXT) 📖

But he was still in trouble.

The Plugger poured merrily through the blasted lock, into the room. Hellman tried a practice shot on it, but the Plugger was evidently impervious⁠ ⁠… as, he realized, a good plugger should be.

It was showing no signs of fatigue.

Hellman hurried to the far wall. The door was locked, as the others had been, so he burned out the lock and went through.

How far could the glob expand? How much was two cubic vims? Two cubic miles, perhaps? For all he knew, the Plugger was used to repair faults in the crusts of planets.

In the next room, Hellman stopped to catch his breath. He remembered that the building was circular. He would burn his way through the remaining doors and join Casker. They would burn their way outside and⁠ ⁠…

Casker didn’t have a burner!

Hellman turned white with shock. Casker had made it into the room on the right, because they had burned it open earlier. The Plugger was undoubtedly oozing into that room, through the shattered lock⁠ ⁠… and Casker couldn’t get out! The Plugger was on his left, a locked door on his right!

Rallying his remaining strength, Hellman began to run. Boxes seemed to get in his way purposefully, tripping him, slowing him down. He blasted the next door and hurried on to the next. And the next. And the next.

The Plugger couldn’t expand completely into Casker’s room!

Or could it?

The wedge-shaped rooms, each a segment of a circle, seemed to stretch before him forever, a jumbled montage of locked doors, alien goods, more doors, more goods. Hellman fell over a crate, got to his feet and fell again. He had reached the limit of his strength, and passed it. But Casker was his friend.

Besides, without a pilot, he’d never get off the place.

Hellman struggled through two more rooms on trembling legs and then collapsed in front of a third.

“Is that you, Hellman?” he heard Casker ask, from the other side of the door.

“You all right?” Hellman managed to gasp.

“Haven’t much room in here,” Casker said, “but the Plugger’s stopped growing. Hellman, get me out of here!”

Hellman lay on the floor panting. “Moment,” he said.

“Moment, hell!” Casker shouted. “Get me out. I’ve found water!”

“What? How?”

“Get me out of here!”

Hellman tried to stand up, but his legs weren’t cooperating. “What happened?” he asked.

“When I saw that glob filling the room, I figured I’d try to start up the Super Custom Transport. Thought maybe it could knock down the door and get me out. So I pumped it full of high-gain Integor fuel.”

“Yes?” Hellman said, still trying to get his legs under control.

“That Super Custom Transport is an animal, Hellman! And the Integor fuel is water! Now get me out!”

Hellman lay back with a contented sigh. If he had had a little more time, he would have worked out the whole thing himself, by pure logic. But it was all very apparent now. The most efficient machine to go over those vertical, razor-sharp mountains would be an animal, probably with retractable suckers. It was kept in hibernation between trips; and if it drank water, the other products designed for it would be palatable, too. Of course they still didn’t know much about the late inhabitants, but undoubtedly⁠ ⁠…

“Burn down that door!” Casker shrieked, his voice breaking.

Hellman was pondering the irony of it all. If one man’s meat⁠—and his poison⁠—are your poison, then try eating something else. So simple, really.

But there was one thing that still bothered him.

“How did you know it was an Earth-type animal?” he asked.

“Its breath, stupid! It inhales and exhales and smells as if it’s eaten onions!” There was a sound of cans falling and bottles shattering. “Now hurry!”

“What’s wrong?” Hellman asked, finally getting to his feet and poising the burner.

“The Custom Super Transport. It’s got me cornered behind a pile of cases. Hellman, it seems to think that I’m its meat!”

Broiled with the burner⁠—well done for Hellman, medium rare for Casker⁠—it was their meat, with enough left over for the trip back to Calao.

The space freighter Queen Dierdre was a great, squat, pockmarked vessel of the Earth-Mars run and she never gave anyone a bit of trouble. That should have been sufficient warning to Mr. Watkins, her engineer. Watkins was fond of saying that there are two kinds of equipment⁠—the kind that fails bit by bit, and the kind that fails all at once.

Watkins was short and red-faced, magnificently mustached, and always a little out of breath. With a cigar in his hand, over a glass of beer, he talked most cynically about his ship, in the immemorial fashion of engineers. But in reality, Watkins was foolishly infatuated with Dierdre, idealized her, humanized her, and couldn’t conceive of anything serious ever happening.

On this particular run, Dierdre soared away from Terra at the proper speed; Mr. Watkins signaled that fuel was being consumed at the proper rate; and Captain Somers cut the engines at the proper moment indicated by Mr. Rajcik, the navigator.

As soon as Point Able had been reached and the engines stopped, Somers frowned and studied his complex control board. He was a thin and meticulous man, and he operated his ship with mechanical perfection. He was well liked in the front offices of Mikkelsen Space Lines, where Old Man Mikkelsen pointed to Captain Somers’ reports as models of neatness and efficiency. On Mars, he stayed at the Officers’ Club, eschewing the stews and dives of Marsport. On Earth, he lived in a little Vermont cottage and enjoyed the quiet companionship of two cats, a Japanese houseboy, and a wife.

His instructions read true. And yet he sensed something wrong. Somers knew every creak, rattle and groan that Dierdre was capable of making. During blastoff, he had heard something different. In space, something different had to be wrong.

“Mr. Rajcik,” he said, turning to his navigator, “would you check the cargo? I believe something may have shifted.”

“You bet,”