Nine Rarities Read Online Free Page B

and instructed, interspersing that with vituperative barks. Then he hopped up the rungs to the galley for something to eat.
     
    Belloc and Larian stayed below. "First now, Belloc, you checked the life-boats?"
     
    "I did. Number Three boat's ready. I fixed it an hour ago."
     
    "Good. Now...."
     
    The Slop put out a bowl of soup for Captain Lamb. Lamb pursed his lips to a spoon of it, and smacked them in appreciation. "Slop?"
     
    "Yes, sir?" Slop wiped greasy hands on a large towel.
     
    "Did you invent the gravity soup-bowl and gravity spoon?"
     
    Slop looked at his feet. "I did, sir."
     
    "An admirable invention, Slop. I recall the day when all rocket liquids were swilled by suction from a nippled bottle. Made me feel like a god-damned baby doing it."
     
    Slop chuckled deep, as he returned to cleaning the mess-plates. "Ship gravity wasn't strong enough to hold soup down, so I thunk up the gravity spoon in my spare time. It helped."
     
    The captain ate in silence. After a moment he said, "I must be getting old, Slop. I think I'm sick."
     
    "Captain!"
     
    Lamb waved his spoon, irritated. "Oh, nothing as bad as all that. I mean I'm getting soft-headed. Today, I feel—how should I put it? Dammit to hell, it's hard finding words. Why did you come along on this war-rocket, Slop?"
     
    Slop twisted his towel tight. "I had a little job to do with some Martians who killed my parents three years ago."
     
    "Yes," said the captain.
     
    Belloc and Larian were down below.
     
    Slop looked at his chief. At the tight little brown face that could have been thirty-five as easily as forty or fifty.
     
    Lamb glared up at him, quick. Slop gulped. ''Pardon me."
     
    "Uh?"
     
    "I was just wondering. . .?
     
    "About. . . ?"
     
    Belloc. Larian. Belloc down below. Larian climbing rungs, on his way to get the time-bombs. Mars looming ahead. Time getting shorter, shorter.
     
    In a dozen parts of my body things were going on at an oblivious, unsuspecting norm. Computators, gunners, engineers, pilots performed their duties as Lamb and Slop talked casual talk in the galley. While Larian muscled it up the rungs toward his secreted time-explosives.
     
    Slop said, "About why you became captain on a war-rocket, yourself, sir?"
     
    "Me?" Lamb snorted, filled his mouth half a dozen times before answering very slowly. "Five years ago I was in a Blue Canal liquor dive on Mars. I met a Martian girl there. . ."
     
    "Oh, yes. . ."
     
    "Yes, nothing , you biscuit-burner! Damn but she was sweet. With a temper like a very fine cat-animal, and morals to match. Hair like glossy black spider-silk, eyes like that deep cold blue canal water. I wanted to bring her back to Earth with me. The war came, I was recalled and—"
     
    "And someday," finished Slop, "when you've helped get the war over, you'll go looking for her. And being at Deimos-Phobos Base, maybe you can sneak down and kidnap her sometime."
     
    Lamb ate awhile, making motions. "Pretty childish, isn't it?"
     
    "No, I guess it's all right if she's still waiting."
     
    "She is—if I know Yrela, she is." Ayres in Computation.
     
    Mars off in space, blood-red and growing.
     
    Lamb in the galley.
     
    Hillary and Conrad in control room One!
     
    And down below, where all of my power grew and expanded and burst out into space, I felt the vibration of Belloc. And coming up the ladder to the supply room—Larian.
     
    Larian passed through the galley. "Sir."
     
    Lamb nodded without looking up from his meal.
     
    Larian proceeded up to Computation, passed through Computation, whistling, and lingered in Supply AC.
     
    Space vibrated with my message.
     
     
     
    MY  GUNS were being trimmed, oiled and ready. Ammunition passed up long powered tracks from Locker Five to Blister Fourteen. Scarlet ammunition. Men sweated and showed their teeth and swore. Belloc waited down below, his face twitching its nerves, in the engine room. The captain ate his meal. I drove through space, Ayres computated.