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                             The Protector

                            BY BETSY CURTIS

                      Illustrated by DAVID STONE

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                 Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




            There's a fortune in a boxer who feels no pain.
                This one didn't, except in odd ways....


How come I live here on Gorlin permanent? Well, it's something like
this.

There is nobody real surprised when some scientist writes an article
in the Sunday supplement about the primitive tribes of Anestha dying
out probably. The Anesthon natives is freaks, anyway, and folks just
naturally figure they can't last long in stiff competition. If you
are like them and your body don't feel any pain any time, you need a
nursemaid around to keep you from doing dumb things, like walking in
front of a truck or starving to death.

I am here on Gorlin a couple times and know about 'em. Some folks think
it's comical to watch the space crews think up ways to give an Anesthon
a workout. I see one Anesthon girl--a real looker she is, too--dance
fourteen hours before she gives out, just for a bottle of perfume and
one of them Venusian fur lounge robes. They sure enjoy their pleasures,
even if they never feel no pain. You feeling any? More thiska?

Hey, Noor! Another round of thiska for the boys!

Well, they can feel your feelings, and any thoughts that are about
them, too. I guess all they live for is pleasure and a pat on the
back. One time a little runty Anesthon guy even builds a whole stone
blockhouse for a first looie, when the looie thinks real hard that
the little guy looks like a first-rate hod carrier. Time the house is
built, the Anesthon's hands is all bloody and one ankle broke where a
chunk of rock drops on him. He don't notice it, of course.

Pierre gets all worked up about them Anestha dying out. That's my
boy Pierre, the heavyweight. I name him Pierre so's nobody thinks he
is tough till afterward. He comes from Gorlin. Of course I have to
stable him on Venus long enough for a legal residence, or the Boxing
Commission would have him investigated and maybe banned from the ring
as a telepath. Tough training him, too. He can't see the sense of
fighting, but, man, he can stay in the ring all night. He never does
get real speedy on his feet, but he learns fast and packs a wicked
left. I don't have to lie when I am thinking real hard he is champeen
material.

Anyhow, Pierre gets all worked up over his race getting extinct. He has
a sister who is glenched to some nice boy and his old man is some sort
of a chief. He is all for beating it back by the next via-Venus ship to
see what is getting at the old folks at home. I calm him down though,
give him a couple of shots of thiska and say I better take him around
to see that scientist-dopester and get the inside first. I have to go
everywhere with him to see he doesn't break a leg and forget to tell me
about it.

       *       *       *       *       *

So we hop a TAT in Chi and make for Washington where this science
fellow is with some Smithsonian Institute. He is nice enough about
seeing us, but he can't figure how a Chinaman like Pierre has any
call to be steamed up about the Anestha (you seen these Anestha with
their slick black hair and goldy skin and smooth eyelids like a Earth
Chinaman) so I have to break down and tell him about Pierre being an
Anesthon.

That scientist is pretty peeved with me bringing Pierre into the Earth
system, but when I tell him Pierre wants to go back to help out the
folks, he kind of clams up and says the article is just one of those
Sunday paper things. There don't really seem to be anything wrong on
Gorlin except that all the workers are getting more careless than
usual, falling off walls they are building and getting hit by rocks
during blasting, or walking in front of full cars in the mines.

Pierre gives the man a look. "Workers? Mines? Blasting?" he says. "What
gives? There are no mines on Gorlin," he says, "just a few quarries
and a lot of big farms. We never have to kill ourselves working. What
gives?" he says.

"Oh," the man comes back, "there's a couple big targ mines in full
swing. Some big Earth concern is shipping out the stuff five freighters
a day to Mercury for mass insulation. All native workers. They don't
get paid much--weej cigarettes, bubble bath, some thiska, electro-fur
blankets, stuff like that--but I don't hear yapping. If I do, I report
anything that looks like slavery." Of course he says it with a lot of
grammar and it takes him a half hour, but that is the slant.

He wants to gab some then with Pierre. I see that the boy is getting
jittery and homesick, too, when the guy starts raving about swimming
in the flaff pools and the feeling of katweela petals under your bare
feet, so I says we have to catch a plane and get out of there.

Pierre still wants to head for Gorlin. He says his people must be
unhappy about something or they are more careful. Life on Gorlin is too
much fun to just go and die for no reason.

I try to pep him up on the way back to Chi, talking about his next
fight with Kid Bop, but he says he can't see any reason in fighting,
either, just now. I tell him I think he kind of likes fighting, but he
says what he likes is the nice things I think about him when he wins,
and he is too worried about his family to pay much attention to what I
think just now.

       *       *       *       *       *

Well, we are both pretty flush from one of the best fight seasons I
ever see and a rest won't hurt the boy, so I say okay, we are going by
the first liner off the Flats.

"You don't have to go, Joe," he says. "Keep your dough and train a
couple more kids. I may not be back," he says.

"Look, boy," I says, "you know what the food is like on them liners,"
I says, kind of kidding, "and if there's nobody around to cram it
down you, you don't eat, and if you don't eat, you starve--and if you
starve, you are in no condition to cheer up your sister and your old
man. Besides," I says, "I can afford a vacation and you're the only
fighter I want to work with. You've got a real future," I says, "and
I'm going to bring you back alive."

I guess that makes him feel kind of good, because he grins first time
since he reads that paper and says, "All right, Joe, come on along."

       *       *       *       *       *

We buy a few pretties and neckties in the station and ship out of Chi
for the Flats on the next TAT. Pierre wants to get some perfume for his
sister, but I tell him we can get better on Venus, where all the good
stuff is made.

The trip from Venus Space Base to Gorlin is fast on account of
over-drive, but even so I have no trouble passing Pierre off as a
fighter who has the jitters and is headed for a vacation where he
learns to take it easy the easy way. He is always burning his fingers
or his mouth on a cigarette, and I have to keep an eye on him all the
time. Nerves, I explain to the passengers.

When we land, Pierre is all for hunting up his folks, but I says no,
if there is some trouble, it is smarter to case the joint. We check in
at the swanky tourist hotel. She is new since I am on Gorlin a couple
years ago and what class! She is built around one of the biggest flaff
pools on the whole planet and our room is completely lined with padded
velvety stuff, sort of a deep red color, and the bathroom has a
cloudrift shower that you nearly float away on.

But Pierre just doesn't relax. I keep trying to make him get in the
shower, but it is no use. He says he is just too worried to take any
pleasure in it. I don't think we ought to go scouting till night and
that is thirty some hours yet, but when I see he is settling down to
wear the fuzz right off the floor walking round and round, I give in,
feed him a sandwich I bring from the ship, and we stroll off in the
woods like we are looking for flowers.

There are no signs around the hotel saying which way to the mines, so
we set off to circle the hotel and spaceport clearing to look for the
rail-line that brings the targ to the port. I figure we have gone about
two-thirds of the way around when I nearly fall over a guy sitting on
the ground with his head in his hands. What I think is katweela flowers
is just the red Anesthon kloa he has on. He looks up sort of dull and
then he sees Pierre with me. He lets out a yip and sits back hard on
the ground and moans. Pierre yanks the fellow up on his feet and hugs
him and starts to jabber away so fast I can't tell what he is saying.
Foreigners always talk faster than anybody else. The other guy puts in
a word or two every once in a while and then he scrams off through the
trees.

"That's Noor," Pierre informs me, "the guy my sister Jennel is
glenched to. He's gonna get us a couple of kloas so nobody'll notice
us around the mine. He's feeling mighty low, but I can't figure out
why. He says Jennel and the old man are okay, only he can't ever carry
Jennel to his own house because he ain't man enough. I don't get it. He
can make a good fighter, Joe."

       *       *       *       *       *

Before you can count three, Noor is back again with the kloas and
Pierre strips and gets into his. I ain't too keen to show my shapelies,
but Pierre starts grabbing my shirt and I have to put the kloa on or
else. The boys head south at a good clip and I tag along trying to
catch up and find out the score. When Pierre sees I am making like
winded, he slows down and tells me we are going to the mine owner's
fancy dump about two miles down the drag. Pierre says Noor tells him
the mine owner doesn't like him and he has to leave us when we get in
sight of the house.

After about a mile, Noor begins to drag along. Then he just sits down
under another tree and says that is the end of the line for him. He
points through the trees and says go on, maybe he is still there when
we come back, maybe not. While Pierre is jawing with him, I look up the
trail and see a Anesthon babe about a hundred feet away. You can tell
it is a babe from one of them blue and green mollos draped around her
over the kloa.

Noor sees her, too, and takes off like a bat back the way we come.
Pierre jogs ahead and when I get up with him, there he is hugging and
jabbering again.

"My sister Jennel," he says, and, "Jennel, this is Joe, my manager."

She is a cute trick with lots of yumph showing through the mollo. She
stands kind of slumped, though, and a few of the flowers in her shiny
black hair are pretty mashed.

"'Smatter, Jennel?" I says. "You look kind of dragged out for a dame
whose brother comes home practically a champeen. Katweela flowers go on
strike?" I says, just trying to make talk.

She slumps a little more and says the boss don't like her and how it's
too bad her brother has to come home and find her still alive and
cluttering up the woods.

I tell Pierre she better take us to this boss that don't like a babe
like her, but she just shakes her head and says go that way and we
come to the house. Then she says the boss makes the natives use the
employees' entrance on the other side of the house and she offers to
take and show us the way. She kind of twitches when she says "natives."

She don't even says yes or no all the way to the gate till, just before
we get there, I trip on a root and bang my knee on a rock on the way
down. Well, I howl and cuss some and she comes up close and asks me
what seems to be the matter. I tell her the blamed rock hurts my knee
and I think real hard about how her knee would feel if a rock hits it
and she busts right out crying.

"Oh, you poor man, you poor man, you," she sobs. "That rock don't like
you at all."

"It don't hate me, either," I says. "It's only a rock."

"But it makes a hurt to you. It don't love you and now you are not
happy where there's any rocks because they don't love you," she says,
and she helps me up and starts dragging me along, still crying like
crazy.

       *       *       *       *       *

I don't make nothing out of that, but pretty soon we come to a little
gate in a thick row of bushes. Jennel lets go of me then and says she
hopes Pierre is a strong man and a good worker and that the boss likes
him. And then she gives a big sigh and says if the boss don't like him,
we can find her over there where the men are cutting down a bunch of
trees, because if one of the trees likes her, it will maybe fall on her
pretty soon.

Pierre tells her to wait right there by the gate because he is coming
back. He isn't looking for work so the boss won't care if he is strong
or not. She just sighs again and sits down on the grass and whimpers.

Pierre tries once more to get her to tell him what is the matter, but
all she says is that their father and some other fellow named Frith
are up at the big house. They are being talked to by the boss about
not getting out enough targ on the shifts where they are foremen, and
she says how sad it is about Pierre coming home.

It is just beginning to filter through my thick skull that the boss is
connected with all this dying out of the Anestha, as the Sunday paper
puts it, and I grab Pierre away from Jennel and hustle him through the
gate.

"Look, Pierre," I says, "we'll go around and listen by them long
windows and see what cooks. I'll bet that boss is up to something dirty
in there. If he is the one who messed up Jennel," I says, "we better
just mess him up some."

There is nobody in sight on the lawn and we just march up to the window
easy as pie. There is this big booming voice giving somebody what for.

"You poor miserable idiots," yells this voice, "you can't keep the
workers off the tracks and you get out less than twenty tons of targ
since last night, and then you waste a whole charge of nitro by not
telling the watchman he's not supposed to smoke in the enclosure. All
those people are dead and it's your fault."

I hear a sniffle behind me and when I turn around, there is Jennel. She
has sneaked up behind us to see what we are going to do.

"That's how he talks to me, too," she lets us know in a whisper, "only
he says I am not fit to even wash dishes, let alone ever have a house
of my own ... when I drop one of his plates a little while ago. He says
I am looking in a mirror instead of where I am going and he hopes I see
what an ugly pan I have, because I ought to know it and keep out of
people's way so they won't have to look at me." Her tears splash right
down on the grass.

"And that's not all," the yelling inside goes on. "Not only do you
kill off all my workers, but at this rate I'm losing money paying you
four packs of cigarettes a day. If I have to blast off and start from
scratch in some other part of this blamed universe, you stupid,
gutless ... why, you aren't even men. You worms don't even run when you
see a car coming at you. Too blamed dumb to come in out of the rain."

I stick my head around the corner and look in, and there is the back of
a big guy in a Mercury-made suit and with a bald head that is red all
the way round to the back of his neck. On the other side of the room I
see a couple of the sorriest-looking Anestha God ever makes, shuffling
their feet and looking like kicked dogs.

I turn to Pierre. "Go in there swinging," I says, like at a fight, and
pull the window open.

"He won't like me," Pierre says, hanging back. "He says Anestha are
dumb cowards. Maybe he knows. Maybe I won't dare hit him."

"You get in there and poke him, boy," I says and give him a push.
"I like you and I see you fight and the Anestha got more guts than
anybody!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The big guy hears us and turns around. "Get out of here, you mangy
natives," he bellows. "You good for nothing, shivering, sniveling,
cowardly boobs. I'm not ready for you yet." He is shaking a
whippy-looking cane at me and Pierre, and I think he has turned purple.

"We're ready for you, though," I yell back. I climb into the room
pulling Pierre in after me. "Pierre's no sniveling coward and you can
quit talking to his brave, heroic, self-sacrificing father like that.
Put 'em up and defend yourself, you howling ape," I yell, "because
Pierre is going to give you the beating of your howling life!"

I see Pierre's old man and the other fellow spruce up some.

The big guy sits down in a chair real quick, and, sucking in a big
breath, he starts going all fatherly at Pierre, telling him that he
doesn't want to have to hit him back, because Pierre will not feel
it when he kills him, which he doesn't want to have to do because
Pierre is just a poor weak Anesthon who don't know from nothing, and
he doesn't want to injure any of his workers and he is just telling
Pierre's old man a few things to protect the Anestha.

Pierre looks at me kind of doubtful.

"Go on, hit the fat bully," I says, real icy. "He has it coming. You
owe it to your old man and Noor and Jennel here. Go ahead and show him
what kind of champeens the Anestha can turn out. It's just for his own
good," I says, "so hit him now. Then you can tell your dad what a great
guy you are."

Pierre's left obediently swings into the lug's jaw with a crack like a
rifle. He don't even watch the big guy sag down on the floor. He begins
hugging his father and the other fellow and grinning and jabbering away
like blue blazes.

The big guy is still breathing, but out cold, so I go to look for a
tele-viz. I figure the authorities better hear my story before the big
guy wakes up.

After I make my spiel, the port chief says to come in and bring Pierre
and his father and Frith and Jennel and Noor, too, if we can find him,
and make an official recorded report. He is sending a doctor out by
'copter.

We beat it for the port, leaving the fat boss sleeping on the floor.

We all stay in protective custody at the hotel, swimming in flaff
and lounging around the thiska bar for a couple of weeks, until the
commission headed by that scientist from the Smithsonian Institute
comes out and takes the boss back to Earth. He has to see a judge about
why he should not go into stir for a while for psychological coercion
or something like that.

Before they leave, the commission hands me an official charge at a
hundred thou a year to stay as Protector of Morale to the Anestha. That
is better than the fight racket, but the protectorship is a laugh. I
can't even go out for a walk without a couple dozen Anestha tagging
along, to keep me from stubbing my toe on some unfriendly pebble, or
socking my eye on some unloving devil of a doorknob.