Adventure stories; Science fiction; Sex role -- Fiction
Hoo, bang, away over the hills with the moonscape blurring in speed.
Wind shrieked thinly about Dyann's helmet. She bounced off her seat
and came down again, a landslide rumbled behind her. The dragon zoomed
up the ridge, leaped from a bluff, and started across the cratered
plain beyond. Dyann dragged at the horn, turning its head, fighting
the monster into a circular stampede. "Ha, Ormun!" she yelled. "Ha,
Kathantuma!"
In an hour or so the dragon stopped and stood gasping. Dyann slid
stiffly to the ground, whirled her sword over her head, and
decapitated the monster. Then she skipped home, laughing.
"Dyann!" cried Ray as she came through the airlock. "Dyann, we thought
you were dead--"
"Oh, it vas fun," she grinned. "Fix me a sandvich." She sat down, got
up rather quickly, and opened her arms to Ray. He retreated nervously
toward the lab. Urushkidan snickered and slammed the door in his face.
V
The eighty-six hour day of Ganymede drew to a close. Jupiter was at the
half now, a banded amber giant in a sky of thronging wintry stars. Ray
wiped his grimy hands and sighed.
"Done," he said, looking fondly at the haywired mess filling half
the lab and reaching back toward the engines. "We've done it--we've
conquered the stars."
"My little Earthlin is so clever," simpered Dyann.
"I am horribly afraid," said Urushkidan, "tat tis minor achievement
of mine will eclipse my true accomplishments in te popular mind. Oh,
well." He shrugged. "I can always use te money."
"Umm, yeah, I never thought of that," said Ray. "I'm safe enough
from Vanbrugh now--you don't arrest the man who's given Earth the
Galaxy--but by gosh, there's a fortune in this little gadget too."
"For me, of course, when I have patented it," said Urushkidan.
"What?" yelped Ray. "You--"
"Certainly. I inbented it, didn't I? I shall patent it too. Tell me,
should I charge an exorbitant royalty or would tere be more money in
mass sales at small price?"
"Look here," snarled Ray, "I happen to know how this thing is put
together too."
"Do you?" grinned Urushkidan nastily.
"Uh--" Ray looked at the jungle of apparatus and gulped. He had only a
few fragmentary drawings. By Einstein, he had no idea how the damned
thing worked.
"But we helped you," he protested feebly.
"When you pay your mules and cows, I may consider gibing you a small
percentage," said Urushkidan loftily.
"You've already got more money than you know what to do with, you
bloated capitalist. I happen to know you invested your Nobel Prize in
mortgages and then foreclosed."
"And why not? When te royalties on tis engine start coming in, and I
get my second Nobel Prise, maybe ten I can afford an occasional cigar.
You Earthlings neber reward genius. All tese years I'be had to smoke
tat foul pipe--And tat reminds me, we habe to test tis machine. Where
is te nearest tobaco store?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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