Diseases -- Fiction; Epidemics -- Fiction; Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction
"Might as well admit it," said Sandra. "These birds look upon me
as they might view one of those platter-lipped Ubangis. I'm not
interesting nor disgustingly repulsive. Here I am, and I'd have been
washing floors for a living if it hadn't been for the fact that I do
have some experience and knowledge in gravitics. At least, I know where
to find the answer."
"Well, take it easy, Sandra, and we'll be back. Look, I'm dropping a
message-carrier with a radio spotter in it. It'll carry all of our
spare cigarettes. Can't do much about clothing. None of us wear lace
undies."
"I'll bear up," answered Sandra with a laugh. "Thanks."
"O.K., then, see you later."
"Right," said Sandra. "So long!" the set died, but before it went
completely off, they heard her say to someone in the background: "You
can turn the lights on again."
"What did she mean by that?" asked Hammond.
"I'll bet a cooky that they had the entire output of some city diverted
into her communications set. After all, what with Soaky's absorption
plus the normal power-gravitic communication, they'd do a lot of
running on a waterfall plant, or a coal burning plant to make up for
what we accomplish with a single machine in Sol. Our power took a
beating, as far as we are from it, and we know what kind of power it
takes to do anything with the gravitics on Telfu. Well, let's get
going. This seems to be the beginning of Our Busy Week."
At Hellsport, on Pluto, twenty-four huge ships were grouped. They
looked like the Devil's spawn; their upright ovoid shapes set in the
glimmering background of the light that danced from the open-hearth
furnaces of Mephisto. In the sky, the reflection glowed, and it was
known for hundreds of miles as The Eternal Fire.
But the men that were arriving were too busy to notice the picture it
presented. They were too close to that scene, although they had seen
the photographs in the _News From Hell_ and _Sharon's Post_, where
almost identical pictures filled a whole page in the roto-gravure
sections.
They kept arriving, these men who were going to Sirius to set up
another Lens. They came from resorts on the Sulphur Sea near Hell and
they all asked the reason. They came from Sharon, which lies across the
River Styx from Hell, and they asked the same question. The hurried
call sought men from their play-spots in the Devil's Mountains and from
the vacation wonderlands of the Nergal Canyon. The Great Cave of Loki
in the Æsir Plains lost a dozen or so, and Fafnir's Abyss no longer
rang to the click of camera shutters as the group left for Hellsport.
Vulcan, the frustrated volcano, felt the downward-moving footsteps of
the seven who were studying the embryonic crater that was beginning to
show signs of life under the heat of Pluto's synthetic sun; the men
left eagerly to be on their way to Sirius, but they all prayed that
the cold of Pluto's interior would remain cold until they returned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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