Astounding British Edition, Vol. 6, No. 8 — page 40: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

38 — | \ = ain’t alive, spill it, for I ain’t with- olding my fire long.” “You better go away!” yelled Hippo- crates in derision. “If my master sees you, he'll cut you open to see the size of your liver or drill holes in your skull to equalize the vacuum. You better go!”’ “Only a hundred and fifteen in this gang,” said a shrunken human being who reached only to Tolliver’s elbow but who served him. as a lieutenant of sorts. “Ac- cording to the radio report, that’s one miss- “Search the ship!” said Big Lem Tolliver. Hippocrates swooped down with his 600 mm. “Stop and go away. This is the U.M.S.S. Morgue and we specialize in dead men named Lem Tolliver.” He thought this was pretty apt. After all, he’d never imagined being able to convert lines from “Tales of the Early Space Pion- eers.” He was a success. It stopped them. “Spacecrap!” said Lem Tolliver in a moment. “That’s no U.M.S. ship! You'd never steal a slave if you were.” “Slaves are U.M.S. business, pardner,” said Hippocrates. ‘““And even if they weren’t, we'd make it our business, son. You going to go along and tell your mama to wipe your nose or am I going to have to wipe it myself—with ’sploders. Now git!” He was certainly converting well today. “Up there, Tinoi. Search it and if they’ve ~ got the missing one, haul her out: And then we'll see about the murder that’s been done here amongst our people.” Tinoi, the shrunken one, hung back. He’d never had a taste for 600 mm. stuff himself. ‘Let them as would be heroes, he valued his daily issue of doi. — Hippocrates saw the hesitation and grew very brave. He spanged a dozen sploders into. the earth before the group and would have shot a thousand more as warning if the Scoutcraft Raider; ordered so, had not replied with a resounding vomit of fire. The Morgue reeled as the screen folded. The top turret caved into tangled smoke. The side port fused and dripped alloy gone molten. And Big Lem Tolliver looked on in some annoyance for there wept his ae of recovering the missing repossessed slave. The men went about collecting the hun- dred and fifteen and forming them into lines. They were bitter because they could not imagine what had burst these perfectly good chains and they had to tie lines through the broken links. “Air!’? moaned the prisoners. “Stow it,” said Big Lem. “We'll teach you to breathe air you didn’t pay for. Form ’em © up boys and get them on their way. That ‘spaceship, or what's left of it, is a shade too hot for me.” “You. ain't goin’ to make me _ escort a a << a ee ae ——T= ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION them,” said Tinoi. “It’s a heck of a walk to Minga. I bought them Persephon-castes to do the walking.”. “If I say walk, you'll walk,” said Big Lem. “And if I say walk straight out into space, you'll walk. And if I say hoof it from here to Galactropolis, you'll walk every condemned light-year of it barefoot. If I can’t have my orders obeyed, who can? And if you can’t obey Big Lem Tolliver, you can’t obey nobody. Who thought up this company? Who makes it work? Who handles all the paper work and hires poli- ticlans and abdicates kings when he chooses? Who keeps the whole confounded planet running and your belly full. Lem Tolliver, that’s who. And what’s Air, Limited, but Lem Tolliver? And what’s Arphon but Lem Tolliver? And that makes me a planet.” This syllogism caused a return of good humor. He expanded, rocked on his heels and looked down at Tinoi. “Yessir. That makes me Arphon, or mighty doggone near. Well, Tinoi, do you walk?” “Guess so, Arphon,” grumped Tinoi and appeared very beaten about it. He knew better than to appear elated. Somebody else would have got the detail if he hadn’t ob- jected and it would be fine to breathe some- thing else besides the ozone stink of the Scoutcraft Raider. Too, he could always sell a slave or two to some farm and turn in a death report. “Guess I'll have to,” mumbled Tinoi, “but PH need two gunners and a marine off the ship, and don’t go making me take Connoly along.” “That’s Connoly and two marines you'll get,’ said Tolliver. “Now line ‘em up and a” , “Wait,” said Tinoi, forgetting his elation about Connoly- who could surely build them litters for the slaves to pack. He stared at the smoking side of the spaceship. “There’s somebody alive.” And indeed it appeared to be the truth. Crawling backwards out of the smoke came a seared being, tugging at the boot of a second. Tinoi was all action. He swooped in, holding his breath against the fumes and snatched up the obviously live one. Coughing and beating out a burning spot on his coat, he let her slide into the grass. “There’s the missing one,” he said. “Now we can get on our way.” Big Lem looked down at her and made a disdaining face. She was very badly singed property,-an enormous burn blotting out almost all of her face and destroying one eye. Wounded and bedraggled, it was plain that she would no longer gladden the eyes of man. Tinoi looked at her tag, the one around her ankle, and then stared at the ear where the repossession tag should have been and was not. He looked at his boss. “This is Dotty Grennan, the one they picked up S (E@) nichboo (E@)