Read Ebook: Tubemonkey by Bixby Jerome Vestal Herman B Illustrator

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Ebook has 119 lines and 7451 words, and 3 pages

TUBEMONKEY

Radiations had shorted his brilliant pilot's brain, left him an aimless, childish hulk. Yet Rhiannon had his moments--when he needed them.

Echoed by the sloping, sun-drenched concrete walls, booming above the high, bony clatter of monorail cranes, shaming the entire fuming, metallic hubbub of Boat Bed 52, the sound might have been the cavernous indignation of some giant beast being dragged zoo-ward from a Bio-Institute boat. It was, however, a voice, singing:

Oh-h-h, the boats come in An' the boats go out An' we clean 'em an' screen 'em an' preen 'em. We fix their fins An' we polish their snouts With a five second breather between 'em.

I-i-if she comes in smash From a steerocket lash Do we wait 'til they've counted the dead? Oh never, tut tut-- We just plate up her butt An' fix up the rest in the--the--

Mountainous Rhiannon couldn't remember the last word. The clouded crystal, that was Rhiannon. He killed his buffing-ray and aimed a bellow that not only shivered the eardrums of its target but woke up Sergeant Atoms a hundred feet below, bringing him to his feet with an adoring bark.

"Hey, Stevie, what'sa last word?"

Steve Podalski swung his legs into view and slid carelessly down the dull metal roundness of tube fourteen, like a boy on a barrel. His magnetic boots thunked onto tube thirteen and took hold. He gave Rhiannon a look compounded of acid and pity. "Go to hell with your noise."

Off at the other end of Bed 52 a gong sounded its invitation to cease work and relax for a while. The twelve Navy spaceboats in 52, lined hip to hip like reclining madames on their slanting cradles, seemed suddenly to begin to shed their skins as a solid parasitica of out-ship workers melted in streams toward the upthrust frameworks of the lifts.

"I comin gout." A small cabbagelike Asteroidal came out of the smudgy darkness of the tube, a scraping-ray in each flat tentacle. "I knockin goff." Without a break in its fluid motion it climbed onto Rhiannon's arm and couched itself in the angle of his elbow.

"Yeah, me too. Coming, Stevie?"

Podalski shook his head.

He stood and watched Rhiannon and Tweety--Tieu-tuiey was its given name, but to pronounce it correctly always sounded a little gay--make their way toward the lift. He shook his head again. Once a pilot, he thought, not necessarily always a pilot. Space did rotten things to men who got careless with their radiation screens. It blotched their minds, tossed up fences around memory and intelligence.

A most brilliant crystal--that's what Rhiannon had once been.

Sixty feet away and four stories above the concrete floor of Bed 52, a man stood by the curving window of Karrin's office and watched Rhiannon descend in the lift. He was a small, padded man with the sly look of the lower Mars suburbs about him.

"Tubemonkey," he said, curling his lips over the word.

Karrin raised his sober, business-man's eyes from their inspection of the briefcase on the desk before him. "He'll do perfectly, Lin. He's just idiot enough to get us there and back and then forget all about it. He got a dose of cosmics--sometimes he can't even remember his own name."

"Yes?" Lin Janus' cold gaze followed Rhiannon as the big man went through the distant playground gate. Rhiannon was carrying Tweety on his shoulder and bouncing every other step into the air, and Tweety had wrapped indignant tentacles around his steed's head. A mud-colored puppy went scooting after them, yanked by jealousy from the quilted lay his master had prepared for him beneath Cradle Nine.

"Can he still handle a boat?"

"Not for combat." Karrin leaned far back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head with a dignity that made the awkward position seem very right. "He can still hit space, though."

Janus turned away from the window.

"You'd better make certain that he forgets," he said.

Karrin shrugged; another killing wouldn't matter much. "Why do we need a pilot in the first place?"

"You took me out last time," Janus said flatly, "and I damned near died of fright." He tapped the briefcase. "You're sure this is the right stuff? I can't tell from looking, you know--hyper-atomics are out of my line."

Karrin smiled slightly and brought his body forward in the chair. "You're getting what you're paying me for." He took his time about lighting a cigarette and then laid it on the edge of the desk as he stood up. He took a leather folder from the briefcase, opened it to reveal a dozen closely printed and diagrammed sheets.

"These," he said, "are Llarn's defenses. Take my word for it."

Unlike most wars, this one had started formally and in good military taste. From their headquarters on Llarn's moon the Rebels had made their request for political autonomy, and denial had come promptly, through Llarn's Council, from the far off Earth Federation. The Rebels had announced their intent to revolt in force and the first engagement had occurred that very day--a space battle, fought competently by both sides, and a draw. Llarn, Earth's first extra-Solar pioneer world, threw up hyper-atomic shields--Llarn's moon did likewise--and the matter rested there in a checkmate of technological perfection.

Subsequent space battles had been fought, but these mattered very little. It had boiled down to a secret service war; a deadlock to be broken by the first side skillful enough to spy out the plans of the enemy's defense set-up. Sabotage could then finish the job.

Surrounded by pained chuckles, Rhiannon looked unhappily at the dangling plastic ruin and allowed himself to be shoved aside by the bitter attendant. Then, when the damage was repaired, he drew back his huge right arm again. The attendant grabbed it.

"Hold on, Rhiannon, there's a rocket game over here, fella. Come on and I'll show it to you!" He pulled the reluctant giant over to a facsimile control board set against the wall; watched for, and saw, the huge smile break out. Every day was a new life for Rhiannon, and the presence of this mock control board--installed to keep him out of trouble--came always as a wonderful surprise.

"Sit down, Rhiannon. Tubes set?"

A tense nod.

Rhiannon zoomed his boat into outer space and began to chase a comet. It got away from him. After a while he thought it would be nice if he could blast the whole Rebel navy out of the void--and they appeared, tier upon tier of them, in gleaming battle shields.

"Sergeant Atoms!" he rumbled. "Make ready to fire."

Atoms rose up on his hind legs, compelled and controlled by the strange and inexplicable telepathic aftermath of Rhiannon's misfortune. The former pilot's "cosmic braincut"--and the "braincuts" of the other few similar radiation cases--had resulted in this sour blessing: had stepped up their mental broadcasting apparatus, and left them very little to broadcast. Humans could often pick up random thoughts from these men, while animals reacted easily to their will.

Thus it was that "Sergeant" Atoms placed his paws on the dummy firing button; a temporarily selfless extension of Rhiannon's physical and psychical form.

Together, they wiped out the Rebel fleet in a matter of seconds.

Rhiannon was exploring Polaris when a hand fell lightly upon his shoulder. He whirled up and around snarling. A Rebel spy on his boat: he'd kill the son--

Karrin ducked, his face seeming to sag pallid from the front of his skull. "Whoa, now, Rhiannon, it's Karrin--it's Karrin!"

"Rebel spy!" Rhiannon had Karrin dangling off the floor at the end of his arm. He drew back his other fist--all the way to Polaris--for the blow that would end the war. Then reality registered behind those glazed, distant-seeing pupils.

"Mr. Karrin! I'm sorry sir." He set his employer's sandals back on the floor and began to shuffle uncomfortably.

Karrin looked about him, his fury artfully concealed beneath a rigid, we-must-be-patient smirk. The other workers in the ground, some of them poised in mid-step after having started to the rescue, were looking embarrassed and quickly turned to resume their games. The sounds of bowling and fencing and tennis and swimming drove away the silence, and the odd patois of multi-specied mechanics and technicians swelled up like jungle chatter.

Karrin put his hand on Rhiannon's sleeve and walked the big man into the vast quiet of Bed 52. Atoms came after them, wagging almost everything but his head which arrowed straight and true after the giant figure.

When he was paid no attention, however, he sulked over to his box and lay down and was immediately asleep. "Sergeant" Atoms would have been a poor choice to stand guard duty--he had been known to sleep the clock around, silent and unmoving. Great boats had been lifted from the cradles above him and others put into their place, and Atoms had dreamed on and on. And on.

Rhiannon started to apologize again.

"That's perfectly all right, soldier," Karrin said smoothly. "Commendable attitude!" He led the way past the cradles toward the rear of the Bed. "You want to help win the war, don't you?"

"Yes, yes," Rhiannon groaned.

Karrin beamed his approval. "Well, now, you may be able to do just that, my boy! How would you like to be--"

"I was exploring Polaris, sir." Rhiannon's tones were suddenly vacant. "The people there got three hea--" and the latter part of the word remained unspoken, forgotten.

Karrin's smile wavered. They had halted by a freight entrance opening onto the green-carpeted rear grounds. He drew the big man closer to him and snapped his words like a whip.

That tore through Rhiannon's fog and he reacted. He straightened his seventy nine inches into the position of attention. "I'd like nothing better, sir," he said.

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