Fantastic Stories Present the Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #1. Edgar Pangborn

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СКАЧАТЬ drove a right cross into his jaw, and felt the jar all the way up to my shoulder.

      He melted back down onto the pallet.

      “Good work, Johnny,” Ellik said, stooping and starting his work.

      Right away, Mhaw started to lose that Indigo color and get real light—lighter than the Azures, in fact. None of the blue of the race was actually in the pigmentation, Mike found out. Even the Azures suffered some degree of improper aeration of the blood.

      “You going to call Lee Chon now?” I asked Mike. “You going to show him the tape we had running during the operation and all?”

      “Not quite yet, Johnny,” he said. “First I want to educate Mhaw a bit, up to the Azure level or better. That should convince Lee.”

      Mhaw learned fast, probably faster than the Azures, even. Almost the first thing he wanted was for us to stop calling him Mhaw and start using an Azure name, Aedo.

      Once a day, Ellik left our hut to take some exercise—a walk along the alien esplanade, he called it. I used to stay with the doctored alien, now Aedo, but we finally learned we could trust him to follow our orders—which were to stay inside, away from the others, since we didn’t know how they would take him. So I got to walking along with Ellik.

      As dusk lengthened, we could see the spark that was our ship in its orbit along the retreating horizon.

      Ellik twisted back his head and the side of his mouth. “Look at him up there—look!”

      The spark burned brighter and danced in another direction.

      “He’s gone! He left us!” Ellik said.

      “It’s okay. He’s still there. Just corrected the orbit a little, I guess.”

      “No, no, no,” Ellik said. “He started to make another try. But he got afraid to try to go into hyperspace alone.”

      “He was just correcting for orbital decay.”

      “You don’t understand, Johnny. He’s a coward. That makes him dangerous. He’s getting desperate. That desperation will burst the dam of his own weakness and wash away our hope, our lives.”

      His voice hushed. He stood staring starkly ahead, his palms outstretched at his sides.

      “Maybe he isn’t that cowardly,” I said hopefully.

      *

      “Finished,” Ellik announced. He meant he had finished editing the tape showing the operation on the alien and his recovery from his blue disease, from being an Indigo to better than an Azure.

      “The transmitter is finished too,” I said.

      Ellik had suggested a way of switching the tape camera to a video converter for one of the audio communicators, and I had been able to do it easy. It took parts from both our communicators and translators too.

      Ellik fitted the coiled snake of tape into place. “This will be a great day for your people, Aedo. After our friend from heaven lands, we will be able to teach you a way to cure all of your sick, to make all the Indigos like you.”

      “Like me? Make like me?” Aedo said in the pidgin terrestrial that Mike Ellik had taught him.

      “Yes. We’ll show them how we cured you and how all can be cured.”

      “You make show fellow like me? Make tell make that fellow like fellow like me?”

      “Everything’s ready, Mike,” I called.

      “That’s right, Aedo,” Mike said. “You’ll show your people the way to equality.”

      “Make all fellow like this fellow?” Aedo asked.

      “Shall I call in Lee?” I asked Mike.

      “Yes, that’s right, Aedo. Just right.”

      “No,” Aedo said.

      The alien stomped the tape camera and the communicator to bits before I could get a hammerlock on him.

      Ellik just stared at the complete wreck of our only means of communication with the spaceship.

      “I be much man now. I much smart. Much smart than Azure hicks and Indigo slobs. I much smart all. I much man! Not to be all same now. No.” The snarl hung on in Aedo’s throat.

      Ellik lifted his head and sort of smiled. But not quite.

      “Well,” he said slowly and sadly, “what could you expect in the way of gratitude from a dirty alien?”

      *

      The Azures did accept Aedo all right. They seem to think he must have come from some other tribe. They don’t associate him with the Indigo that disappeared. No Indigo ever became an Azure before.

      Of course, Azures sometimes become Indigos, we found out.

      It seems there’s a virus of what Ellik called pseudo-cyanosis in the air. The Azures have become a pretty resistant breed to it, while the Indigos are all easy victims. But once in a while an Azure will come down with it and turn Indigo.

      Mike Ellik caught it too.

      It happened pretty fast. By the time we realized what it was, he was already too stupid to finish the operation he started on himself. I had to sew him up, not very neatly.

      Ellik is treated pretty much like the rest of the Indigos. So am I. He takes it all pretty calm. He can still talk a little Earth. Whenever anybody kicks him, Ellik just mutters something about, “What can fellow expect bunch lousy creeps like those fellow?”

      I guess I’ll get it too. I think I am getting it.

      It won’t be so bad for me. Just like maybe going around drunk all the time, not being able to think or coordinate very well.

      It will be kind of bad being a member of an inferior race, but the thing I’ll hate about it the most isn’t that, or even leaving old Lee up there, circling around and waiting for our call forever.

      No, the thing I hate is having it happen now, just when I’m beginning to learn something.

      I’m not dead sure I know just exactly what I learned, but I think maybe I do:

      You get just what you damned well expected all along from a bunch of blue-blooded mongrels!

      Bad Memory

      By Patrick Fahy

       Channing wanted a planet. Had they sold him a pup?

      *

      Ex-vector Commander Jim Channing strode purposefully to the reception desk of Planet Enterprises, Inc.

      “I want,” СКАЧАТЬ