Read Ebook: Jupiter's Joke by Haley A L Freas Kelly Illustrator

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Ebook has 150 lines and 11455 words, and 3 pages

JUPITER'S JOKE

Those methane and ammonia planets, take it from me, they're the dead-end of creation, and why the Old Man ever thought them up I'll never know. I never thought I'd mess around any of them, but things can sure happen. A man can get himself backed into a corner in this little old solar system. It just ain't big enough for a gent of scope and talent; and the day the Solar System Customs caught me red-handed smuggling Kooleen crystals in from Mars, I knew I was in that corner, and sewed up tight.

Sure, the crystals are deadly, but I was smuggling them legitimately, in a manner of speaking, for this doctor to experiment with. He wasn't going to sell them for dope. But--and this was the 'but' that was likely to deprive the System of my activities--even experimenting with them was illegal even if it needed to be done; also, I had promised not to rat on him before taking the job.

Well, Casey Ritter may be a lot of things we won't mention, but he doesn't rat on his clients. So there I was, closeted with the ten members of the S.S. Customs Court, getting set to hear the gavel fall and the head man intone the sentence that would take me out of circulation for a long, long time. And instead, blast me, if they didn't foul me with this trip to good old Jupiter.

I didn't get it at first. I'd argued with 'em, but inside I'd been all set for the sentence, and even sort of reconciled to it. I could even hear the words in my mind. But they didn't match what the judge was saying. I stood there gaping like a beached fish while I sorted it out. Then I croaked, "Jupiter! What for? Are you running outa space in stir? Want to choke me to death in chlorine instead?" Being civil to the court didn't seem important just then. Jupiter was worse than the pen, a lot worse. Jupiter was a death sentence.

The senior judge rapped sharply with his gavel. He frowned me down and then nodded at the judge on his right. This bird, a little old hank of dried-up straw, joined his fingertips carefully, cleared his scrawny throat, and told me what for.

"You've no doubt heard tales of the strange population of Jupiter," he said. "Every spaceman has, I am sure. Insect-like creatures who manifestly migrated there from some other system and who inhabit the Red Spot of the planet, floating in some kind of artificial anti-gravity field in the gaseous portion of the atmosphere--"

I snorted. "Aw, hell, judge, that's just one of those screwy fairy tales! How could any--"

The senior judge rapped ferociously, and I skidded to a halt. Our little story teller patiently cleared his skinny throat again. "I assure you it is no fairy tale. We possess well-authenticated photographs of these inhabitants, and if you are prepared to visit them and in some way worm from them the secret of their anti-gravity field, the government stands ready to issue you a full pardon as well as a substantial monetary reward. Your talents, Mr. Ritter, seem, shall we say, eminently suited to the task."

He beamed at me. I looked around. They were all beaming. At me! Suddenly I smelled a rat as big as an elephant. That whole Kooleen caper: Had it been just a trap to lead me straight to this? I hadn't been able to figure how they'd cracked my setup....

At the thought my larynx froze up tight. This was worse than I'd thought. Government men trapping me and then beaming at me. And a full pardon. And a reward. Oh, no! I told myself, it wasn't possible. Not when I already had more counts against me than a cur has fleas. Not unless it was a straight suicide mission!

I feebly massaged my throat. "Pictures?" I whispered. "Show me 'em." Crude, but it was all I could squeeze out.

I squeezed out more when I saw those pictures, though. Those inhabitants were charming, just charming if you like scorpions. Well, a cross between a scorpion and a grasshopper, to be accurate. Floating among that red stuff, they showed up a kind of sickly purple turning to gangrene around the edges.

The bleat of anguish that accompanied my first view of those beauties had taken my voice again. "How big?" I whispered.

He shrugged, trying for nonchalance. "About the size of a man, I believe."

I raised my shrinking head. "Take me to jail!" I said firmly, and collapsed onto my chair.

A crafty-eyed buzzard across the table leaned toward me. "So this is the great Casey Ritter, daredevil of the Solar System!" he sneered. "Never loses a bet, never turns down a dare!"

I shuddered. "You're telling that one! And besides, a man's got to draw the line somewhere. And I'm drawing it right here. Take me to jail!"

They were really stumped. They hadn't expected me to take this attitude at all. No doubt they had it figured that I'd gratefully throw myself into a sea of ammonia among man-size scorpions just for the hell of it. Nuts! After all, in the pen a man can eat and breathe, and a guard won't reach in and nip off an arm or leg while he's got his back turned. How stupid could they get?

When I finally wore them down and got to my little cell, I looked around it with a feeling of real coziness. I even patted the walls chummily and snapped a salute at the guard. It makes me grind my molars now to think of it. The way that bunch of stuffed shirts in the S.S.C. made a gold-barred chimpanzee out of me has broken my spirit and turned me into an honest trader. Me, Casey Ritter, slickest slicker in the Solar System, led like a precious infant right where I'd flatly refused to go! In plain English, I underestimated the enemy. Feeling safe and secure in the grip of the good old Iron College, I relaxed.

At this strategic point, the enemy planted a stoolie on me. Not in my cell block. They were too smart for that. But we met at recreation, and his mug seemed familiar, like a wisp of smoke where no smoke has got a right to be; and after awhile I braced him.

I was right. I'd met the shrimp before when I was wound up in an asteroid real estate racket. Pard Hoskins was his alias, and he had the tag of being a real slick operator. We swapped yarns for about a week when we met, and then I asked him what's his rap this trip.

"Oh, a pretty good jolt if they can keep hold of me," he says. "I just made a pass at the Killicut Emeralds, that's all, and got nabbed."

"Oh, no!" I moaned. "What were you trying to do, start a feud between us and Mars?"

He shrugged, but his little black-currant eyes began to sparkle with real passion, the high voltage kind that only a woman in a million, or a million in a bank, can kindle in a guy. "Buddy," he said reverently, "I'd start more than that just to get me mitts on them stones again! Why, you ain't never seen jools till you've seen them! Big as hen's eggs, an even dozen of 'em; and flawless, I'm a-shoutin', not a flaw!" His eyes watered at the memory, yearning like a hound-dog's over a fresh scent.

I couldn't believe it. Those emeralds were in the inner shrine of the super-sacred, super-secret temple of the cavern-dwelling tribe of Killicuts on Mars--the real aborigines. Bleachies, we call them, sort of contemptuously; but those Bleachies are a rough lot when they're mad, and if Pard had really got near those emeralds, he should be nothing but a heap of cleaned bones by now. Either he was the world's champion liar or its bravest son, and either way I took my hat off to him.

"How'd you make the getaway?" I asked, taking him at his word.

He looked loftily past me. "Sorry. Gotta keep that a secret. Likewise where I cached 'em."

"Cached what?"

"The rocks, stupe."

I hardly heard the cut. "You mean you really did get away with them?" My jaw must've been hanging down a foot, because I'd just been playing along with him, not really believing him, and now all of a sudden I somehow knew that he'd really lifted those emeralds. But how? It was impossible. I'd investigated once myself.

He nodded and then moved casually away. I looked up and saw a guard coming.

That night I turned on my hard prison cot until my bones were so much jelly, trying to figure that steal. The next morning I got up burning with this fever for information, only to find that Pard had got himself put in solitary for mugging a guard, and that really put the heat on me. I chewed my fingernails down to the quick by the time he got out a week later.

"Jupiter!" I goggled at him. "Akroida! Who's she?"

He looked at me as if I hadn't yet got out from under the rock where he was sure I'd been born. "Don't you know nothin', butterhead?"

From him I took it. I even waited patiently till the master spoke again. The memory still makes me fry.

"Akroida," he explained in his own sweet time, "is the queen-scorp of them idiotic scorpions that lives on Jupiter. I sold her the Halcyon Diamond that disappeared from the World Museum five years ago, remember?" He winked broadly. "It come from Mars in the first place, you know. Mars! What a place fer jools! Damn desert's lousy with 'em, if it wasn't so much trouble to dig 'em out--" He went off into a dream about the rocks on Mars but I jerked him back.

"You mean those scorpions have really got brains?"

I went back to my cot that night, and this time instead of biting my nails, I bit myself. So I faced it. Casey Ritter lost his nerve, and along with it, the chance of a lifetime. A better man than me had already penetrated the Great Red Spot of old Jupiter and come out alive. That thought ate me to the quick, and I began to wonder if it was too late, after all. I could hardly wait for morning to come, so that I could pry more information out of Pard Hoskins.

For three more days I worked down my knuckles, my nails being gone, while I sat around all hunched up, wondering feverishly if Pard would make a deal about those emeralds. Then I broke down and sent out a letter to the S.S.C.

The Big Sneer of the conference table promptly dropped in on me, friendly as a bottle of strychnine. But for a lad headed for Jupiter that was good training, so I sneered right back at him, explained the caper, and we both paid a visit to Pard. In two days the deal was made and the caper set up. There were a few bits of info that Pard had to shell out, like where the emeralds were, and how to communicate with those scorpions, and how he'd made Akroida mad.

"I put on a yeller slicker," he confessed sadly. "That there ammonia mist was eatin' into the finish on my spacesuit, so I draped this here slicker around me to sorta fancy up the rig before goin' in to an audience with the old rip." He shook his head slowly. "The kid that took me in was colorblind, so I didn't have no warning at all. I found out that them scorpions can't stand yeller. It just plain drives them nuts! Thought they'd chaw me up and spit me out into the chlorine before I could get outa the damn thing. If my colorblind pal hadn't helped me, they'd of done it, too. And Akroida claimed I done it a-purpose to upset her."

Then he winked at me. "But then I got off in a corner and cooked up some perfume that drives them nuts the other way; sorta frantic with ecstasy, like the book says. Didn't have a chance to try it on Akroida, though. She wouldn't give me another audience. It's in the stuff they cleaned outa me room: a poiple bottle with a bright green stopper."

He ruminated a few minutes. "Tell you what, chump. Make them shell out with a green an' poiple spacesuit--them's the real Jupiter colors--an' put just a touch o' that there perfume on the outside of it. Akroida'll do anything fer you if she just gets a whiff. Just anything! But remember, don't use but a drop. It's real powerful."

Real powerful, said the man. What an understatement! But the day I was set adrift in that sea of frozen ammonia clouds mixed with nice cozy methane gas I sure prayed for it to be powerful, and I clutched that tiny bottle like that boy Aladdin clutching his little old lamp.

I'd had a lot of cooperation getting that far. An Earth patrol had slipped down onto the Red Desert of Mars and picked up the Killicut Emeralds from where Pard Hoskins had cached them; and safe out in space again, we had pored over that string of green headlights practically slobbering. But the Big Sneer of the S.S.C., the fellow that had got me into this caper, was right there to take the joy out of it all and to remind me that this was public service, strictly.

"These--" he had proclaimed with a disdainful flourish, like a placer miner pointing to a batch of fool's gold--"These jewels are as nothing, Ritter, compared with the value of the secret you are to buy with them. And be assured that if you're man enough to effect the trade--" He paused, his long nose twitching cynically--"IF you succeed, your reward will be triple what you could get for them in any market. Added to which, IF you succeed, you will be a free man."

That twitch of the nose riled me no little. "I ain't failed yet!" I snarled at him. "Just you wait till I do, feller!" I slipped the string of emeralds back into its little safe. "Instead of sniping at me, why don't you get that brain busy and set our rendezvous?"

With that we got down to business and fixed a meeting point out on Jupiter's farthest moon; then they took me in to the edge of Jupiter's ice-cloud and turned me loose in a peanut of a space boat with old Jupe looming ahead bigger than all outdoors and the Red Spot dead ahead. I patted my pretty enameled suit, which was a study in paris green and passionate purple.

I patted the three hundred pounds of arsenic crystals for Akroida and anyone else I might have to bribe. I anxiously examined my suit's air and water containers and the heating unit that would keep them in their proper state. I had already gone over the space boat. Yeah, I was as nervous as a cat with new kittens. Feeling again for my little bottle of horrid stench, I breathed a prayer to the god of idiots and spacemen, and headed in. The big ship was long gone, and I felt like a mighty small and naked microbe diving into the Pacific Ocean.

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