The Early Asimov. Volume 2

There was no laughter, strangled or otherwise, after that. If there were more than one thought among the entire group, it didn't show itself. Olaf expressed that thought:

'But what about the quota?'

'Well, what about it?' snarled Pelham. 'Do I have to draw pictures for you? Ganymedan Products has to get one hundred tons of wolframite, eighty tons of karen leaves and fifty tons of oxite every year, or it loses its franchise. I suppose there isn't anyone here who doesn't know that. It so happens that the current year ends in two Ganymedan revolutions, and we're five per cent behind schedule as it is.'

There was pure, horrified silence.

'And now the Ossies won't work unless they get Santa Claus. No work, no quota, no franchise - no jobs! Get that, you low-grade morons. When the company loses its franchise, we lose the best-paying jobs in the System. Kiss them good-bye, men, unless -'

He paused, glared steadily at Olaf, and added:

'Unless, by next revolution, we have a flying sleigh, eight reindeer and a Santa Claus. And by every cosmic speck in the rings of Saturn, we're going to have just that, especially a Santa!'

The faces turned ghastly pale.

'Got someone in mind, Commander?' asked someone in a voice that was three-quarters croak.

'Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.'

He sprawled back in his chair. Olaf Johnson broke into a sudden sweat as he found himself staring at the end of a pointing forefinger.

'Aw, Commander!' he quavered.

The pointing finger never moved.

Pelham tramped into the foreroom, removed-his oxygen nosepiece and the cold cylinders attached to it. One by one he cast off thick woolen outer garments and, with a final, weary sigh, jerked off a pair of heavy knee-high space boots.

Sim Pierce paused in his careful inspection of the latest batch of karen leaves and cast a hopeful glance over his spectacles.

'Well?' he asked.

Pelham shrugged. 'I promised them Santa. What else could I do? I also doubled sugar rations, so they're back on the job - for the moment.'

'You mean till the Santa we promised doesn't show up.' Pierce straightened and waved a long karen leaf at the commander's face for emphasis. 'This is the silliest thing I ever heard of. It can't be done. There ain't no Santa Claus!'

Try telling that to the Ossies.' Pelham slumped into a chair and his expression became stonily bleak. 'What's Benson doing?'

'You mean that flying sleigh he says he can rig up?' Pierce held a leaf up to the light and peered at it critically. 'He's a crackpot, if you ask me. The old buzzard went down to the sub-level this morning and he's been there ever since. All I know is that he's taken the spare lectro-dissociator apart. If anything happens to the regular, it just means that we're without oxygen.'

'Well,' Pelham rose heavily, 'for my part I hope we do choke. It would be an easy way out of this whole mess. I'm going down below.'

He stumped out and slammed the door behind him.

In the sub-level he gazed about in bewilderment, for the room was littered with gleaming chrome-steel machine parts. It took him some time to recognize the mess as the remains of what had been a compact, snugly built lectro-dissociator the day before. In the center, in anachronistic contrast, stood a dusty wooden sleigh atop rust-red ru

'Hey, Benson!' called Pelham.

A grimy, sweat-streaked face pushed out from underneath the sleigh, and a stream of tobacco juice shot toward Benson's ever-present cuspidor.

'What are you shouting like that for?' he complained. 'This is delicate work.'

'What the devil is that weird contraption?' demanded Pel-ham.

'Flying sleigh. My own idea, too.' The light of enthusiasm shone in Benson's watery eyes, and the quid in his mouth shifted from cheek to cheek as he spoke. 'The sleigh was brought here in the old days, when they thought Ganymede was covered with snow like the other Jovian moons. All I have to do is fix a few gravo-repulsors from the dissociator to the bottom and that'll make it weightless when the current's on. Compressed air-jets will do the rest.'

The commander chewed his lower lip dubiously.

'Will it work?'

'Sure it will. Lots of people have thought of using repulsors in air travel, but they're inefficient, especially in heavy gravity fields. Here on Ganymede, with a field of one-third gravity and a thin atmosphere, a child could run it. Even Johnson could run it, though I wouldn't mourn if he fell off and broke his blasted neck.'

'All right, then, look here. We've got lots of this native purple-wood. Get Charlie Fi

Benson spat and scowled through the stringy hair over his eyes.

'What's the idea, Commander?'

Pelham's laughter came in short, harsh barks.

'Those Ossies are expecting reindeer, and reindeer they're going to have. Those animals will have to stand on something, won't they?'

'Sure… But wait, hold on! There aren't any reindeer on Ganymede.'

Commander Pelham paused on his way out. His eyes narrowed unpleasantly as they always did when he thought of Olaf Johnson.

'Olaf is out rounding up eight spiny backs for us. They've got four feet, a head on one end and a tail on the other. That's close enough for the Ossies.'

The old engineer chewed this information and chuckled nastily.

'Good! I wish the fool joy of his job.'

'So do I,' gritted Pelham.

He stalked out as Benson, still leering, slid underneath the sleigh.

The commander's description of a spinyback was concise and accurate, but it left out several interesting details. For one thing, a spinyback has a long, mobile snout, two large ears that wave back and forth gently and two emotional purple eyes. The males have pliable spines of a deep crimson color along the backbone that seem to delight the female of the species.

Combine these with a scaly, muscular tail and a brain by no means mediocre, and you have a spinyback - or at least you have one if you can catch one.

It was just such a thought that occurred to Olaf Johnson as he sneaked down from the rocky eminence toward the herd of twenty-five spinybacks grazing on the sparse, gritty undergrowth. The nearest spinies looked up as Olaf, bundled in fur and grotesque with attached oxygen nosepiece, approached. However, spinies have no natural enemies, so they merely gazed at the figure with languidly disapproving eyes and returned to their crunchy but nourishing fare.

Olaf's notions on bagging big game were sketchy. He fumbled in his pocket for a lump of sugar, held it out and said:

'Here, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy! '

The ears of the nearest spinie twitched in a

'Come, bossy! Come, bossy!'

The spinie caught sight of the sugar and rolled his eyes at it. His snout twitched as he spat out his last mouthful of vegetation and ambled over. With neck stretched out, he sniffed. Then, using a rapid, expert motion, he struck at the outheld palm and flipped the lump into his mouth. Olaf's other hand whistled down upon nothingness.

With a hurt expression, Olaf held out another piece.

'Here, Prince! Here, Fido!'

The spinie made a low, tremulous sound deep in his throat. It was a sound of pleasure. Evidently this strange monstrosity before him, having gone insane, intended to feed him these bits of concentrated succulence forever. He snatched and was back as quickly as the first time. But, since Olaf had held on firmly this time, the spinie almost bagged half a finger as well.

Olaf's yell lacked a bit of the nonchalance necessary at such times. Nevertheless, a bite that can be felt through thick gloves is a bite!