It was twilight. The Industrialist had entirely missed the evening meal and remained unaware of the fact.
He said, “Do you really think the ship will fly?”
“If they say so,” said the Astronomer, “I’m sure it will. They’ll be back, I hope, before too long.”
“And when they do,” said the Industrialist, energetically, “I will keep my part of the agreement. What is more I will move sky and earth to have the world accept them. I was entirely wrong, Doctor. Creatures that would refuse to harm children, under such provocation as they received, are admirable. But you know—I almost hate to say this—”
“Say what?”
“The kids. Yours and mine. I’m almost proud of them. Imagine seizing these creatures, feeding them or trying to, and keeping them hidden. The amazing gall of it. Red told me it was his idea to get a job in a circus on the strength of them. Imagine!”
The Astronomer said, “Youth!”
XIII
The Merchant said, “Will we be taking off soon?”
“Half an hour,” said the Explorer.
It was going to be a lonely trip back. All the remaining seventeen of the crew were dead and their ashes were to be left on a strange planet. Back they would go with a limping ship and the burden of the controls entirely on himself.
The Merchant said, “It was a good business stroke, not harming the young ones. We will get very good terms; very good terms.”
The Explorer thought: Business!
The Merchant then said, “They’ve lined up to see us off. All of them. You don’t think they’re too close, do you? It would be bad to burn any of them with the rocket blast at this stage of the game.”
“They’re safe.”
“Horrible-looking things, aren’t they?”
“Pleasant enough, inside. Their thoughts are perfectly friendly.”
“You wouldn’t believe it of them. That immature one, the one that first picked us up—”
“They call him Red,” provided the Explorer.
“That’s a queer name for a monster. Makes me laugh. He actually feels bad that we’re leaving. Only I can’t make out exactly why. The nearest I can come to it is something about a lost opportunity with some organization or other that I can’t quite interpret.”
“A circus,” said the Explorer, briefly.
“What? Why, the impertinent monstrosity.”
“Why not? What would you have done if you had found him wandering on your native world; found him sleeping on a field on Earth, red tentacles, six legs, pseudopods and all?”
XIV
Red watched the ship leave. His red tentacles, which gave him his nickname, quivered their regret at lost opportunity to the very last, and the eyes at their tips filled with drifting yellowish crystals that were the equivalent of Earthly tears.
DIGGER DON'T TAKE NO REQUESTS
by John Teehan
Four years, 8 months, 23 days
So I’m flatpicking up a bit of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” enjoying the hell out of it, and finish with a trademark Doc Watson run. Got lots of people gathered around me by the observation deck; touries, techies, goonies and moonies on their way back and forth between here and the Concourse. Good crowd, and there be a couple of touriefems giving me a friendly eye. It’s while I’m considering the possibilities that I click on this one nervous little moonunit in a sloppy jumpsuit hanging around the edge of the crowd. I can spell the trouble with this unit.
S-p-a-z-n-i-k.
I do a little patter about the Old Man on the Moon and how I met him my first week Up Here and how he taught me this next song which is nothing more than an old whaling song with some of the words changed. One grinning tourie recognizes the tune and whispers something to his ladyfriend. I send them a wink before the end of the song to let them in on the joke and figure the guy’ll drop an extra dollie or two in the tin for making him look clever in front of his lady.
Never hurts to let the paying public feel good about themselves. Hell, it’s the very soul of busking. Okay, the money is the heart of it, and the fun is in playing, but the soul is in the way people gather around and just gig.
I pick through and finish up another song to a scatter of applause, little kids jumping high over their parents heads to see me—enjoying the hell out of the lighter gravity—when I catch a cough from a uniformed loonie goon by the passageway entrance. They don’t mind me playing, but the crowd’s getting kind of dense and it’s time to move along.
I give a little bow to thank and amuse whilst passing the tin around. Not bad. Some loonie dollies and some meal tickets, and a button. Ha! I love kids. Where’d they find a button Up Here?
The crowd disperses (as do the touriefems, alas) and up comes my nervous little spaznik in the sloppy suit.
“You Digger?” he asks. He looks something Asian. About a meter and a half tall and stick thin. He blinks at me through a tangled mass of black hair and seems a little unsteady.
I count up my takings and divide it among many pockets. “Be me. Who you?”
Like some newbie, he sticks his hand out, “Kimochi Stan.”
Shaking hands is a Down There thing to do. It’s nothing personal—you touch friends, even some acquaintances of good reputation, but you never know when some newbie with the sniffles slips by the Quarrines. Still, the kid looks like he could use a friend so I take his hand and pump it all gregarious like.
“Cool sobriquet,” I tell him, “something like ‘feels good’ in Jappongo, right?”
He looks embarrassed. Most of us who end up bumming around the Concourse pick up these little nicknames. Sometimes they’re given, like Ice Cream Lou’s or Amazing Gracie’s or we make them up ourselves. Instant notoriety. No crime. Kimochi must be American or Canadian born though. Japan doesn’t fool around with travel visas to the moon; and my new pal Stan doesn’t seem to be weighed down with an accent.
I tune up the guitar by touch, muffling the homemade strings with my fingers. “So what’s up, ‘Feel Good’?”
“I want to go home,” he says like his heart is about to freeze up and shatter. Poor kid shivers before me. Lunar fidgets we call it. Like homesickness, but a hundred times worse. Maybe the good feelings he came up here with pffted out into vacuum. Hope he don’t bawl on me. Tears ain’t good for business not unless you’re playing real skinned
