Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 30: what you’re looking at

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

28 ' ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION A smirk passed over his bilious com- plexion, and he went on, “I.took a walk to the noisy end and found that a couple of those stern-gang punks have beaten us all to it. They’re outside playing duck-on-the- rock.” “Playing what?” I yelped. ““Duck-on-the-rock,” he repeated, enjoying himself. I beat it to stern, Brennand following with a wide grin. Sure enough, two of those dirty mechanics who polish the tail had pulled a fast one. They must have crawled out through a main driver not yet cool. Stand- ing ankle-deep in the green growths, the pair of them were ribbing each other and shying pebbles at a small rock poised on top of a boulder. You’d have thought this was a Sunday-school picnic. “Does the skipper know about this?” ““You bet he doesn’t! Think he’d pick that pair of unshaven bums for first out?” One of the couple turned, saw us staring at him through the port. He smiled toothily, shouted something we could not hear, jumped nine feet into the air, smacked his chest with a grimy hand. I gathered that the gravity was low, the oxygen high, and that he was feeling top notch. Brennand’s face suggested that he was sorely tempted to crawl through a tube and join in the fun. “McNulty’ll skin those hoodlum,” I said. “Can’t blame them. The artificial gravity’s still on, the ship’s full of fog and we’ve come a long, long way. It'll be great to get out. I could do some sand-castling myself.” “There isn’t any sand.” The pair outside became tired of the rock, got themselves a supply of pebbles from somewhere down .among the growths, ad- vanced toward a big bush growing fifty yards from the Marathon’s stern. The farther out they went, the more they were likely to be spotted from the skipper’s lair, but they didn’t care a hoot. They knew McNulty couldn’t do much more than lec- ture them. This bush stood between ten and twelve feet high, had a very thick mass of bright green foliage at the top of a thin, willowy trunk. One of the approaching pair got a couple of yards ahead of the other, slung a pebble at the bush, struck it fair and square in the middle of the foliage. What happened then was so swift that we’d the utmost difficulty in following it. The pebble crashed into the foliage, ‘the entire bush whipped over as if its trunk was -a steel spring. A trio of tiny creatures fell - out of its leaves, dropped from sight in the herbage below. The bush stood as before, undisturbed except for a minute quivering in its topmost branches. But the guy who’d flung the missile lay flat on his face. His following companion had stopped and was gaping like one petrified by the unexpected. “Hey,” squawked Brennand, “what hap- pened there?” : Outside, the one who’d fallen flat, stirred, rolled over, sat up and started picking at himself. The other one got to him, helped him pick. No sound came into the ship, so we couldn’t hear what they might have been talking about or the oaths they were cer- tainly using. The picking finished, the smit- ten one came unsteadily erect. His balance was lousy, and his companion supported him as they started back to the ship. Behind them, the bush stood as imperturbably as ever, even its vague quivers having died out. Halfway to the Marathon the pebble- thrower teetered, went white. Then he licked his lips and keeled over. The other one looked anxiously back toward the bush as if he wouldn’t have been surprised to find it charging them. Bending down, he got the body in a fireman’s hitch, struggled with it toward the midway air lock. Jay Score met him before he’d heaved his load ten steps. Jay strode powerfully and _ confidently through the carpet of green, took the limp form from the other’s arms, carried it like it was nothing. We raced toward bow to find out what had happened. Jay brushed past us, carried his burden into our tiny surgery where Wally Simcox, Sam’s side-kick, started working on the patient. The other guy hung around outside the door and looked sick. He looked even sicker when Captain M‘Nulty came along and stabbed him with a stare before he went inside. After half a minute, the skipper shoved out a red, irate face and bellowed, “Go tell Steve to order that boat back at once. - He’s to warn Sam he’s urgently needed.” Pelting to the radio room, I passed the message on. Steve’s eyebrows circumnavi- gated his face as he flicked a switch and cuddled the microphone to his chest. He rattled: off the message, listened to the reply. ~ “They’re returning at once.” Going back, I said to the uneasy duck- on-the-rock enthusiast, “What happened, Stupid?” He flinched. ““That bush made a target of comiclooks (©