Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

16 the slope of the truncated roof was such as to be normal to the midsummer rays. It was twenty-one degrees from the hori- zontal. He deducted that value from the observed maximum altitude of the sun, sixty-seven. The answer was forty-six. That wasn’t what the figures on the map showed, but the Venusian scheme was different. Latitude according to their convention ran from pole to pole, not from equator both ways. Travis did some fast subtracting and converting from the tiny Venusian degrees to the fat terrestrial ones. The answer was cheering. It came out to forty-six. “It’s in the bag now,” chuckled Travis. “Now it all clears up. These golden double sunbursts denote the happy land—the Twice- Blest, so to speak. They get sun in the zenith twice a year inside the tropics, so the priests could have twice as many bloody parties. My money says that the temples there will be flat-topped, too. Way up here they had to tilt the top to let the sun in on the one day a year it did come, and the angle gets worse the closer you get to the poles. Up above the arctic circles there are days they don’t have sun at all, so the temples are few and far between. But now that we have the key, what are we waiting for? Let’s get going.” “Where to? The ship?” “Not yet. We’ll stop by at the next town and do a little double-check.” Without the map it would have been easy to have missed the place altogether. It lay in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION a shallow valley and all that showed above the reedy mud was a sloping piece of flat rock that might easily have passed for an outcrop- ping of bedrock. They unplugged the solar hole of its muck and dropped a suction hose into the sacrificial chamber of the buried pyramid. The crawler’s :pump was set to work and soon the dark water was gushing out. The boys ate their lunch, and then went to work with crowbars to enlarge the hole. It was unnecessary to blast their way to the great hall far down in the base. The upper . room was also adorned with the temple’s designating characters. They scraped the slime off them and compared them with the map. They tallied. When they were up in the crawler again and sheltered from the rain that had now grown from a steady, miserable drizzle to a roaring torrent, they sat through another spine-wrenching earthquake. They had time to think and appraise the magnitude of the fortune that had befallen them. “This means that we own this who!e dog- goned planet?” asked Hartley, a litt!: awe- struck. Travis nodded. ““Hands down.” “But what are we going to do with it? I wouldn’t live here if they gave it to me.” “I dunno. Kick Driscoll out and give it to the poor, I guess.” He grinned. “IT wouldn’t live here either.” THE IRON STANDARD—Continued from page 64 black with impotent rage. “All right,” he capitulated, spitting the words between his teeth. “I won’t forget this, Jorust.” “But I must administer the laws,’ the woman said. “Why, Malsi! The rule of the tarkomars has always been unswerving honesty.” Malsi didn’t answer. He scribbled a credit check for fifty thousand sofals, validated it, and gave the tag to Munn. After that he sent a parting glare around the cabin and stamped out. “Well!’? Bronson said. Tonight we eat!” “May you be worthy of your fathers’ names,” Jorust murmured. At the valve she turned. “I’m afraid you’ve upset Malsi.”’ “Too bad,” Munn said hypocritically. “Fifty grand! Jorust moved her shoulders slightly. “Yes. You’ve upset Malsi. And Malsi represents the tarkomars—” “What can he do about it?” Underhill asked. “Nothing. The laws won’t let him. But— it’s nice to know the tarkomars aren’t in- fallible. I think the word will get around.” Jorust winked gravely at Munn and de- parted, looking as innocent as a cat, and as potentially dangerous. “Well!” Munn said. “What does that mean? The end of the tarkomars’ rule, maybe?” ‘*“Maybe,” Bronson said. “I don’t give a damn. I’m hungry and I want a beefsteak- mushroom. Where can we cash a check for fifty grand?” comiclbooks (©