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Title: The espadrilles

Author: Margaret St. Clair

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
        Lawrence Sterne Stevens


        
Release date: June 25, 2026 [eBook #78942]

Language: English

Original publication: Kokomo, Indiana: Popular Publications, Inc., 1953

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78942

Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Luminist Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESPADRILLES ***




                            The Espadrilles

                         by Margaret St. Clair




  =Barkeepers have listened to hard-luck tales for centuries (and will
  for centuries more).... But when the scope of a man’s hard luck is
  the starry galaxy, then the trouble can be really bad.=

[Illustration: =I found something that made me realize I had to get
away from there....=]




I was carrying quite a lot of money. When the man in the espadrilles
sat down beside me on the bar bench, I slid away from him. Except the
rope-soled espadrilles on his feet, all he had on was a pair of dirty
light blue pants. He was gaunt, hollow-eyed, and unshaven, with the
exposed parts of his body burned almost black from the penetrating rays
of space. Even in that part of Marsport only a very broadminded bar
would have admitted him.

The barman came and stood in front of him, glowering. The man fished in
his pocket and pulled out a coin. “Zwiff,” he said, holding up the coin
so the barman could see it. Zwiff is that liquor which came in for so
much attention last year because of its effect on the nerves.

The barman brought the drink, still glowering. The man in the
espadrilles swallowed it as if he were trying to make it last. When the
drink was gone he held up his hand and turned it over and over, looking
at it. He looked at it as if he’d never seen a hand before.

I tried not to show I was watching him, but he noticed it. He turned
toward me and said, “It’s a soft, wet kind of life.”

What do you say to a remark like that? I fixed my eyes on my drink and
slid away from him again.

“Please don’t move off,” he said. He sounded so hurt that I felt
ashamed. “I’m not going to make a touch.”

It’s always embarrassing to have your mind read. Partly because I was
ashamed, and partly because I was curious, I said, “What do you mean?
Of course it’s soft and wet. There isn’t any other kind of life.”

“Oh, yes,” he answered. He studied me with his punched-in eyes. “Out
there, out on the edge of the galaxy,”--He gestured toward the rear
wall of the saloon behind which, presumably, lay the edge of the
galaxy--“Among the strange, boiling worlds, the suns millions of times
hotter than our own sun, there might be another kind of life. A hard,
metallic, coruscating life, a life pouring out from those vast furnaces
like a flood of molten metal from a smeltery. Out there....” He fell
silent, studying me once more.

The barman was watching us doubtfully. The man in the espadrilles
motioned to him and held up another coin. “Zwiff,” he said. When the
drink came he sipped at it thoughtfully. He put down the empty glass
and turned to me with an air of decision. “Look, I’ll tell you about
it,” he said. He cleared his throat.

“It’s all my fault. You can blame me as much as you want. Right from
the start I disliked the looks of that planetoid. But I had to make
repairs on the hull of my ship and I hate making repairs in space. You
can’t call that fear of falling pathological, since so many spacemen
have it. The worst of it is that any way you fell would be _up_.

“The planetoid was a pimple of a thing, smaller than our moon, and yet
it had nearly normal earth gee. What could it have been made of, to be
so dense? It even had an atmosphere, though it wasn’t breathable.

“I set my ship down on a hill. Remember that. I set it down on a hill.
As far as I’d been able to see when I was circling the planetoid before
landing, the hill was the highest point on it. The surface of the
planetoid was remarkably level and flat.”

The bartender came and stood in front of us. “What’ll it be, gents?” he
said menacingly.

“Two more of the same,” I said. I paid for the drinks.

“The top of the planetoid--the soil, as it turned out,” the man in the
espadrilles continued, “glittered and sparkled and shone. I tested for
radioactivity before getting out, but it wasn’t that. But during the
day, when the light of the double blue-white sun was on it, the soil
shone so much I had to wear direct-solar type glasses to see anything.
It was like trying to work in a drift of mica flakes.

“Well, I got on with the repairs. I was glad I’d landed, then, because
the type of welding I had to do goes much better in an atmosphere.
There were a lot of repairs, though, more than I’d anticipated, and
I put in ten full hours without making much of a dent in them. I was
getting tired and shaky. I decided to rest by going for a little walk.

“I’d been walking for about half a mile when I saw the trees. They
looked just like the trees kids make with those glitter kits. They were
low, with angled branches, and the branches and the trunks were the
same diameter all the way up. There were neat little conical flanges
where the trunks and branches joined. The trees and the soil were so
much alike that for a moment I thought the trees were just complicated
crystals or something like that. They didn’t look like the things we’re
used to that are alive. And then at the ends of the branches I saw the
hard bright green leaves.

“I took the geologist’s hammer from my belt and tapped on them. They
were hard, as hard as steel. And they made a noise like the ringing of
little glass bells.

“Well, what should I have done? A tree’s a tree, even when it’s as hard
as metal and glitters like aventurine. I turned around and went back
to the ship. I didn’t even try to break off a leaf. I just went back
to the ship. And when I got there I found the ship was resting in a
shallow, glittering depression about a third of a mile across.

“I should have got out right there. The ship would still fly, and I
could have finished the repairs in space. And just to save myself
trouble and unpleasantness... I told myself that I’d been mistaken,
that I hadn’t landed on a hill.

“That night a wind came up, and in the morning the ship was lightly
covered with shining dust. I had to keep wiping it off as I worked. And
still I didn’t realize what was happening.

“I was almost done with the hull repairs when I found the main drive
shaft was cracked. I don’t think the planetoid had anything to do with
it--shaft metal does crystallize. But now I had the prospect of another
week or so on the planetoid while I did metallurgy. I cursed my luck a
good bit, but I set up the furnace and got ready to smelt. And then I
found something that made me realize I _had_ to get out.”

“What was it?” I asked.

The man in the espadrilles looked at me owlishly. “Never you mind what
it was,” he said darkly. “I don’t want you drawing away from me. I’ll
tell you later.

“I had to get out, as I was saying. I was afraid to stay on that shiny
little planetoid a day longer. And yet it would take me at least a week
to get the shaft repaired.

“I thought awhile. Then I got out the power saw and went over to the
trees. I measured them with the calipers until I found one whose trunk
was exactly the right diameter. And then I cut a chunk out of it.

“I turned the trunk on the lathe when I got back to the ship, and it
worked beautifully, just like super-beryllium steel. I didn’t have any
trouble with it at all. By noon I was feeding course data into the
computators, and two hours later I was far enough away from that shiny
little planetoid that I could go into space drive.

“I got back to Mars at last. Had nothing but hard luck, but you
wouldn’t be interested in that. And here I am.”

He motioned to the barman. I ordered the drinks. “Is that all?” I said
finally, when the glasses were empty. It didn’t seem like much of a
yarn.

He turned on me. “No, it’s not all,” he said. His sunken eyes were
fierce. “How could it be?” He rubbed his lips. His fingers were
trembling.

       *       *       *       *       *

“After I got back to Mars,” he said, “and before the licensing company
repossessed the ship, I did a little prospecting. I was sick of space.
I used to go into the desert on low drive and set the ship down in a
promising location and work out from there. I never found much, but it
was enough to keep me alive.

“I liked the desert. It was quiet and hopeless and dead, and as I said,
I’d had a lot of hard luck. The desert fitted in with my mood.

“Finally I set up what was pretty near a permanent camp. I didn’t have
enough fuel to cruise around. I was there a week and a week and another
week. And then one morning after breakfast when I was cleaning up and
throwing my slops away, I saw something in the sand....”

“What?” I demanded. For some reason, my heart had begun to beat fast.

“A shiny patch,” he answered, “a glittering sparkling shining patch.
I got sick when I looked at it. And in the middle, something hard and
bright was coming up. It was the top of a tree, one of those trees.

“I turned my hand blaster on it. I used up all the charges. When I got
done the sparkle had gone out of the sand and I thought everything
was dead. But I was back there a month ago. The patch was much, much
bigger. And this time there were three trees.”

“But how--you mean you brought the seeds of the trees back with you?”

“Not just of the trees,” he corrected wearily. “The whole planetoid
was alive. That’s why it sank in around my ship. The trees were just a
particular instance of it.

“As to how it was--it might have been from me, or the spores the wind
blew on my ship, or even from the piece of tree trunk I used for
the main drive shaft. Before I gave the ship back to the company I
destroyed that piece of tree trunk in an atomic blast. Locking the
stable door.... I don’t suppose it matters how that alien life got here
anyway. It’s here.

“And now it’s in the desert, growing away in that dead peaceful Martian
desert. Pretty soon those quiet harmless sands will be crawling with
the hard bright new life.”

“But....” The story was incredible. I boggled at it. “Didn’t you try to
tell anyone about it?” I couldn’t keep my mistrust out of my voice.

“Of course I did.”

“Well, then.”

“They didn’t believe me. Would you believe me? I look like a bum, I
feel like a bum, I _am_ a bum. I got thrown out of the office. Our
only hope is that archaeologists or somebody like that, somebody
respectable, will see those patches out in the desert and report on
them before it’s too late. It may be too late now. We haven’t anything
capable of resisting that hard bright life.”

He looked at me earnestly. “You don’t see the danger? You really don’t
see the danger? It’s a terrible one.”

“If you had some proof,” I murmured.

“Oh, proof. Yes, I’ve got that. What I was telling you about, what
happened on the asteroid. I’ll show you, if you won’t be afraid of it.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, really. I’m sure you can only get it
from the trees. Here.” He bent over and tugged at his right foot. “I’m
a little stiff in the joints. Look.” He tried to raise the foot to the
level of his left knee. The motion overbalanced him and he fell right
on over the back of the bar bench and landed on the floor. He had had
quite a lot of zwiff.

The bartender came out from behind the bar. “This is the last time,
Jack,” he said. He sounded very depressed. “I warned you before. Out
you go.” He grabbed my acquaintance by the belt and the seat of the
pants and began to propel him toward the door.

There was a scuffle. In the course of it, one of my acquaintance’s
espadrilles, the right one, came off. As he was half carried, half
dragged to the bar entrance, I got a good look at the horny brown sole
of his right foot. A green leaf was growing out of it. It was a leaf
of a peculiarly intense and bitter green, shot with greenish sparkles,
and it looked as hard as an emerald. The sole of the foot was elevated
around it slightly, as if from an upward thrust. It must have been a
nuisance to the man in the espadrilles when he tried to walk.

The bartender and the man with the espadrille got to the door. They
stood there a moment, swaying and struggling. Then the bartender heaved
and my acquaintance flew out onto the sidewalk. He landed in a sitting
position. The bartender picked up the espadrille and threw it after him.

Still sitting on the sidewalk, my acquaintance cupped his hands around
his mouth and yelled at me. “... Bigger!” he shouted. “I have to ...
saw it ... off twice a week!”

He yelled something more, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Then he
picked up the espadrille and went staggering down the street. By the
time I had paid my bill and run out after him, he was gone.




Transcriber’s note:


  This etext was produced from Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with
  Fantastic Novels Magazine April 1953 (vol. 14, no. 3). Extensive
  research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
  publication was renewed.

  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.






*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESPADRILLES ***


    

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