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Read Ebook: The Sloths of Kruvny by Fearing Vern Sharp Henry Illustrator
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Ebook has 71 lines and 6036 words, and 2 pages
Illustrator: Henry Sharp
Transcriber's Note:
THE SLOTHS
KRUVNY
BY VERN FEARING
Illustrator: Henry Sharp
Bradley Broadshoulders--friends called him "Brad", or "Broad", or "Shoulders"--stood grim-lipped, as is the custom of spacemen, and waited for the Commander to speak fateful words. He was an obese youth, fully five feet tall, without a shred of muscle, but he wore the green tunic of the Galaxy Patrol proudly, and his handsome, bony head boasted a tidy crop of Venusian fungus. His gleaming eyes gleamed.
"Brad, We Are In A Tough Fix!" the Commander said suddenly. His name was Metternich, known also as Foxey Gran'pa; he had spoken in capitals all over Europe and continued the practice since. "We Are Up Against It!" he went on. "The Fate Of The World May Be At Stake!"
"What's wrong, chief?" asked Brad, jauntily.
"Plenty!" roared Metternich. "Nobody's Attacking The Earth--That's What's Wrong! Nobody Is Out To Conquer The Universe! How Come, May I Ask?"
It was an omen....
"I Want To Know Why!" the Commander shouted. "You Have Your Secret Orders! Off With You!"
A really fat omen.
It was an omen....
Two days out, Brad summoned Ugh. "How fast are we going?"
"Oh, say ... 30,000 miles an hour?"
Brad calculated rapidly and put down his abacus. "At this rate it'll take us 14 years just to get out of our own lousy solar system!" he barked. "Faster!"
Ugh said Yes, Sir, and vice versa. Then he upped the speed to 186,000 miles per second and came back and shyly told Brad.
Brad said "Bah! We'll be 70 years reaching the Big Dipper! Faster!"
"To hell with Einstein!" roared Brad. "Is he paying your salary?"
So they went faster.
The ship sped onward--unless it was upward--to fulfill its Mission. Again and again Brad found himself wondering where he was going. The Mission was a real stiff. He knew only that since there was practically no life anywhere in the solar system, except for good, kind, old Earth--Earth had seen to that--anyone attacking Earth--or not doing so--was obviously somewhere in outer space! But here the trail ended.
Courage, he told himself, courage! After all, was he not the grandson of Pierre Fromage, inventor of the rubberband motor? With a start, he realized he was not.
His own heritage, while covered with peculiar glory, was a more tragic one--the spacemen's heritage. The Broadshoulders were brave, but things happened to them. His grandfather, a traffic officer, had chased a comet for speeding, and had, unfortunately, overtaken it. His father had been spared the fire, but one day, aboard his spaceship, someone spilled a glass of water. The gravity was off at the time, and the water just hung there in mid-air until Brad's father walked into it and drowned.
What would be his own end, he wondered? What other way was there to die? Just then, through the bulkhead, he could hear Ugh swinging in his hammock, playing the violin. He wondered if the rats were dancing, like the last time he'd surprised him. Another thought was on the way, something about rats and a new way to die, but Brad was already asleep, mercifully having a nightmare.
Brad woke on the ninth day. The 2-day pill he'd taken on the third day had evidently done its work well. He was rested, he felt optimistic again. When he looked out the porthole, he could see plenty of space for improvement.
There, half obscured in a tumbling, swirling mass of misty gray clouds, he could make out something white! He pressed his nose against the porthole and strained his eyes. It gave him the feeling of peering into a Bendix, as is the custom of spacemen. His mouth went damp-dry. This was it--whatever it was!
"Ugh!" he shouted, all agog. "Ugh! Ugh!"
Ugh dashed in, wheeling a large kaleidoscope. Expertly, they read the directions and trained it on the mysterious formation. The Indicator turned pale.
"This is Sirius!" barked Ugh.
A strange, yet resplendent, civilization, thought Brad, looking out at a sunlit landscape, or gallscape, of molten gold. The houses, stylish igloos and mosques, were sturdily constructed of 3-ply cardboard and driftwood. Before each house, mysteriously, stood a Berber pole of solid peppermint.
Brad and Ugh bounded out of their ship. The two bounders stood there, encased in heat-resistant pyrex pants, expecting the natives to make things hot for them. Dumbfounded at the delay, they waited for the attack to commence. It did not.
"I never!" said Brad, presently. "If we needed proof, we've got it! Such a display of indolence is testimony enough that these people are responsible for not attacking Earth! We shall have to use stratemegy!"
The clever scheme worked beautifully. Soon an old man began circling them on a bicycle, keeping a safe distance. Clearly, he was someone of importance, for his long white beard was carefully braided and coiled in a delivery basket on the handlebars. Furthermore, he wore a glowing circlet on his forehead--so that Brad knew he was able to read their minds--if they had any.
"How about throwing us a couple circlets?" Brad cried.
Instead, the old man, who was hard of hearing, flung them a couple cutlets, which worked even better, and had protein besides.
Thus fortified, they were escorted to the palace.
"I come," he said, "from a far away land--"
"Shad-dap!" cried the Kruv. "Who cares?"
At this, the old man, who was still on his bicycle, whispered to Brad. "They've all got headaches," he nodded, stroking his beard sagebrushly. "It's all part of a great cosmic error--a tragedy played among the spiral nebulae, to the hollow ringing laughter of the gods! You see, we Sloths are only half the population of Kruvny," he went on. "On the other side of our world live the Sidemen, or Sad Sax. Legend has it that eons ago, the Sidemen were mistakenly delivered a cargo of saxophones, from Saks Fifth Avenue." The old man's voice was hushed as he added, "They have been practicing ever since."
"I see," said Brad. "And that accounts for the headaches here?"
"Small wonder," said the old man. "I bless the day I went deaf."
"But why do they do it?" asked Brad.
"Uh-huh." The old man spat Mercurian tobacco juice. "Just like on Earth, where myriad minute oceanic organisms pile their skeletons to form coral islands. Yuh see, the Sidemen eat radishes--love 'em, in fact--but it gives 'em gallstones. They claim this whole world is the collected gallstones of their ancestors." The old man wiped Mercurian tobacco juice from his beard and shoes. "Kind of a hard claim to beat," he opined.
"I see," said Brad. "That explains the misty swirling clouds all around this planet, and why it's seldom visible. You follow me?"
"Yep," said the old man. "It's gas. Them radishes'll turn on you every time!"
Suddenly the High Kruv began to sob. "Now you see, don't you, why we haven't attacked Earth? A body can't keep his mind on anything around here! I asked for a few secret weapons, and what did I get?" He was blubbering now. "Oh, I tried, I tried! Appropriations and all that; you may be sure we lined our pockets--but after years of stalling, they showed up with two weapons they swore were terrible enough to put an end to war. One of them was a water pistol."
"I see," said Brad. "And the other?"
"A ray gun."
Brad's eyes brightened. "A ray gun? May I see how it works?"
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