Title: Space-Can
Author: Leinster, Murray
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Space-Can" ***


                               SPACE-CAN

                          By MURRAY LEINSTER

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


When the _Winship_ landed on Ganymede, it was on one of those
errands that are handed over to destroyer-skippers, commanding the
tin-cans of the space-fleet, because nobody with silver braid wants
to do them. Lieutenant Joe Peabody had been officially directed to
proceed to Ganymede, land in 10° north latitude and 10° west of the
zero longitude echo-beacon, and contact a Ganymedian chief called Yloop.

He was to deliver to that Ganymedian chief one swamp-car, assure him
that Earth Government was very happy to give him the present he had
requested, and then make what efforts seemed wise to promote cordial
relations. Then he was to return to base.

It was just the sort of job that anybody with silver braid would wish
off on somebody of lower rank. The _Winship_ carried two officers,
ten men, and one dog. The dog was Rickey, the official mascot of the
ship and an animal of some reputation. He'd had more and taller tales
told about him by the crew than less imaginative men could invent for
their ship's mascots.

Such as the story that when the _Winship_ was based on Luna, every
time she came back to port there were seven girl-dogs and a Venusian
vroom-cat waiting at the space-yard gate when Rickey sauntered out on
his first liberty.

The _Winship's_ armament consisted of meteor-repellers,
pressure-fused signal-flares, and a pop-gun of no conceivable use out
of atmosphere. In combat--if war did come with Mars--her function would
be to scout ahead of the Earth battlefleet and try to get off a warning
of contact before she was smashed by a guided missile. In peacetime,
she ran errands not desired by anybody else and acted as one of the
guinea-pigs for the technical brass.

At the moment she was still choked up inside with the three-foot
lead-cadmium sheathing--put on in three-inch plates--applied to her
fuel tanks when she was sent on a long and purposeless cruise to test
the efficiency of pre-bombarded and therefore radioactive fuel. The
fuel wasn't efficient at all. Dick Harkness, her second in command,
still swore at that sheathing regularly.

       *       *       *       *       *

He swore again as the little ship settled down through the misty
Ganymedian atmosphere. The ground below, as seen through the
snooperscope, was utterly featureless save for some hundreds
of thousands of identical clumps of gannygrass. That was
Ganymede--gannygrass and swamp.

"Remember the recruiting posters we saw, last time on Earth?" growled
Dick Harkness to Joe. "'Deep Space is calling you! Ride a Comet and see
the Worlds!' There oughta be a law! Look below! Who wants to see this?"

Joe Peabody watched his instruments, scratching Rickey's head absently.
He'd picked out a patch of gannygrass to land on, and the snakeye
corrected course if the little ship swerved by a hairsbreadth. But he
watched, anyway.

"Things could be worse," he said. "They've got to recruit spacemen
somehow. If glamor-posters make 'em join up, why not?"

"Glamor!" said Dick. "Look below! They ought to put a Ganymedian on the
recruiting board. He'd fix those posters! 'Be a Destroyer Spaceman!
Spend your time running errands! Visit Ganymede and See the Swamps!
Learn to Salute!' That's the way a Ganymedian would make the posters
read!"

The _Winship_ swung ever so slightly and settled toward the chosen
grass patch. Joe nodded in satisfaction. Dick Harkness grumbled again.

"Look at the doggone place! Venus is bad enough, with an aerosol for an
atmosphere, and Mercury is worse! But at least the natives are human,
after a fashion! Shut your eyes and listen to a Mercurian trying to
bargain you out of your back teeth and you feel almost chummy. Hold
your nose and watch a Venus-girl dance and you almost get sentimental!
But these Ganymedians, with the way they--"

"Yeah," said Joe. He pushed the landing-cushion button. There was a
tiny impact, and an infinitesimal movement in the gannygrass began
directly below them. The bending spread out like a wave.

"Have to warn the crew again, Dick. Tell 'em to remember all over again
that Ganymedians talk like paymasters figure. Specific. Exact. They
don't understand exaggeration and they don't understand jokes. If you
tell them something that isn't literally true, they think you're crazy."

"They're not human," said Dick gloomily. "They never lie and they make
you mad. Huh! They send word by space-radio to a passing freighter
that this chief Yloop wants a swamp-car. Then they wait for it. We'll
deliver it and they'll look at it and say, 'Yes. This it.' Or else
they'll say, 'This not right.' And that's all! Then they'll go off with
the swamp-car."

The _Winship_ hung low, now, barely above the thirty-foot stalks
of gannygrass. A Ganymedian peered up, bracing himself against the
landing-cushion field, which transferred the weight of the ship to the
ground below and very neatly contracted as the little ship descended.

"True enough," admitted Joe, "but brass says we must cultivate cordial
relations. Tip off the hands, Dick. We'll touch, now."

Gannygrass stems sprang up alongside the ship's ports as the
landing-cushion field contracted and stayed pointed straight down.
The descending motion ceased without a jar. The _Winship_ rested
on the yielding, matted roots which were the soil of Ganymede where it
wasn't swamp. Joe flicked switches and the ship was grounded.

"We won't be here long," he observed. "They'll come for the swamp-car
and they don't go in for the amenities, so we'll be off again pretty
soon. You tip the hands about how to talk while I remember not to smile
when I try to act pleasant. To them, a smile is an expression of rage
just before it turns to murder."

He put on a light atmosphere-suit and went out the lock.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were a good many Ganymedians on hand. From overhead, the
innumerable clumps of grass had seemed without life. Gannygrass grew
thirty feet high in semi-floating islands that were roughly two hundred
feet across. In between the clumps was swamp. The Ganymedians lived in
what amounted to burrows in their floating islands, and progressed from
one grass patch to another in queer, skittering hops startlingly like
the running steps of a heavy bird just about to take off upwind.

They had a civilization of sorts, but nobody could gather more than
minor information about it. Questioned, they either answered exactly
and literally, or else ignored the questioner. They had no manners at
all by earth standards, and their morals were not matters of interest
to anybody who had ever seen a Ganymedian female.

Ordinarily there would be one family group to a grass-clump, and one
grass-clump to a family group. Here, though, there were very many on
hand as Joe went out the lock. Their numbers increased momently. From
overhead they had been nearly invisible, but they must have begun to
move toward the _Winship's_ landing-place as soon as it could be
identified. Joe saw at least a dozen wearing the belts of swamp-bear
claws which were signs of chiefhood.

He remembered not to smile politely.

"Yloop?" he asked.

One of the bloated figures moved. The others, as always, either stared
with opaque blank eyes or paid no attention whatever to ship or
skipper, even though they'd come to see it.

"Yloop, me," said the bloated figure.

"Your swamp-car," Joe told him, unsmiling, "is in the ship. We will
get it out very soon. It is fueled for--" He paused, calculated, and
said carefully, "--it is fueled for half a year of Ganymede."

Yloop listened. He made no reply. He offered no expression of gratitude
nor committed any of the small hypocricies which make human contacts
endurable. Joe found himself frowning irritably. Ganymedians got under
a human's skin.

Another bloated figure stirred.

"Me Ychan," said the lipless mouth.

"I suppose," said Joe ironically, "you want a swamp-car too?"

"No," said Ychan tonelessly. By the double belt of swamp-bear claws
about his middle, he was high chief. "Yloop want swamp-car. Not Ychan.
Ychan want talk."

Joe's eyebrows lifted. Almost he was tempted to be sarcastic. Talk was
a novelty. But--

"Talk," he said flatly.

Behind him, the lock opened again. Dick Harkness and two of the crew
came out in atmosphere-suits. With them came Rickey, the ship's mascot,
in the tiny, canine space-suit which was the result of infinite labor
in the crew's quarters during long hours of standby duty.

"Just for the heck of it, Joe," said Dick, grinning, "the hands decided
to send Rickey to see what he'll do when he sees a gannygrass stalk
that he'll take for a tree. The trick is he's in his space-suit and
can't sniff at it."

"Wipe off that grin!" snapped Joe. "Take the dog back! I told you no
jokes!"

Dick Harkness' face went blank. "I forgot! Sorry, Joe!"

He herded the crewmen back into the lock. But they still grinned. Ychan
stared at them with expressionless eyes.

"Men mad," he said. "Why?"

Joe wanted to deny it, but a smile or a grin was to Ganymedians an
expression of the ultimate in fury,--and if you said something they
did not believe, they thought you lunatic. A very literal-minded folk,
these people of Ganymede.

"Oh--dog bad," said Joe curtly. "Kill four men. You talk."

He waited. Ychan stared as blankly as before.

"I talk," he said without expression. "You think you leave Ganymede.
Martians say no. I say maybe."

Joe Peabody blinked. Then he stiffened.

"Sit," he said shortly.

       *       *       *       *       *

A great curved plate in the ship's side opened. The crew of the
_Winship_ was opening the destroyer's store-hatch to roll out the
swamp-car. Ychan squatted on the ground, where he looked like a wetly
glistening anthill. Other Ganymedians moved to watch the swamp-car roll
out.

They would watch Yloop climb into it and finger its controls and
then--amazingly, the Ganymedians had a knack for the machinery
their minds found logical but some literal quality kept them from
making--begin its operation with practically the skill of a human who
had been carefully instructed in its use.

Joe also squatted, for formal conversation. He frowned, which was
courtesy here, insofar as there was any courtesy at all. It was at
least a sign of attention which they recognized.

"Talk," said Joe.

The Ganymedian spoke deliberately and without emotion. Like his
fellows, he was cold-blooded in all his ways. He had very few words. He
used those in their baldest sense. But he knew what he wanted to say.
In five minutes Joe had the complete picture. He felt a little cold
chill running down his backbone.

The swamp-car came out of the ship, with its huge, inflated tires that
were wheels and floats in one. There was a seat modified for non-human
use. A truck body and a tiny motor which would drive the unwieldy thing
at twenty miles an hour through swamp and thirty or better on solid
ground.

Yloop got into it. He tried it. He drove it experimentally on the
relatively hard grass-root soil, drove it into the swamp, and made a
single circuit of the gannygrass clump.

Then he stopped and beckoned. His mate waddled to the edge of the
island and skittered out to it over the mud. Three of the incredible
Ganymedian young skittered after her. They climbed aboard. Yloop
started the swamp-car again and drove away. He had asked for it. He had
gotten it. He went off with it. That was that.

Then Joe stood up. "I hear," he said ungraciously. "I think. I talk
later."

He turned his back on Ychan and walked into the reopened airlock. His
expression was one concentrated scowl. He knew it, but he knew that to
Ychan that expression meant simply tranquil and untroubled meditation.
For Joe to have conveyed his actual emotions to the Ganymedian, he
would have had to grin until his throat split.

He was pacing up and down the control-room of the _Winship_,
deliberately coddling his fury to combat the cold chills that wanted
to play tag up and down his spine, when Dick Harkness came in again.
Rickey followed him sedately, at a sort of regulation distance.

The crew, of course, swore that Rickey knew Fleet regulations as well
as an admiral, and that when he'd been caught with a lady Pomeranian
visiting him on board, he'd confined himself to quarters for six weeks
to the day. Now he looked warily at Joe.

"I'm sorry, Joe," said Dick Harkness contritely. "I went and warned
the hands about grinning where Ganymedians could see them. But they
were making bets on what Rickey'd do in a space-suit and unable to
sniff, when he saw what he'd take for trees. It was too good a joke to
resist. How'd you explain the grins? And shall I report our landing and
delivery of the swamp-car?"

"I said," Joe told him bitterly, "that we were mad because Rickey'd
killed four men. And you do not use the space-radio unless you want to
commit suicide!"

Dick Harkness stared. "What--"

"Ganymedians," said Joe bitterly, "don't lie. They don't understand
lying. Ychan just told me we'll be blown to bits if we use our
space-phone or try to leave Ganymede."

"What's that? Who's going to try to stop us?"

"Martians," said Joe with exquisite bitterness. "Did you ever hear
that there is some slight friction between the Martian government and
that of Earth? Did you ever hear that if the Martians thought they
had one percent edge over fifty of wiping us out and taking over the
solar system they'd try it? Did you ever hear that only the technical
superiority of Earth science has held off a war this far?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Rickey moved up beside Dick and sat down. His tongue lolled out
happily. The _Winship's_ crew insisted that he'd had Venusian
lockjaw once, and now always kept his mouth open to keep it from coming
back.

"Sure I've heard that!" Dick Harkness said. "That's why there's so much
research going on all the time--why we've still got three feet of lead
plating around our tanks, too."

"The Martians," said Joe savagely, "also research. They have made a
gadget. They think it might be decisive. They think it might win a war
for them. But they're cagey. They want to try it out first. On us!"

Dick Harkness looked blank. "But--blast it! We can't fight back to
count! We'd be a sitting duck for a battle cruiser! We'd better get in
our report."

"There's a Martian scout-cruiser overhead," Joe told him. "It took
off as we landed. The gadget is on the ground here somewhere, trained
on us. If the scout-cruiser picks up the beginning of a space-radio
message--and it's listening with all four ears--the scout flashes word
down and we go pouf!"

"But that's nonsense!"

"Did you ever hear of catalysis?" asked Joe ironically. "Did you
ever hear of ultra-violet radiation acting as a catalyst to turn
carbon dioxide into sugar? Chlorophyl has to be present, but so has
ultra-violet. The Martians have found a wave-form or frequency that
acts like ultra-violet on drive-fuel. It synthesizes drive-fuel into
energy. If they turn it on us, our fuel will blow."

"Either the Martians would use it and brush off their hands, or they'd
never let us know."

"There's a Ganymedian at the trigger of the gadget. There's a
Ganymedian listening to the space-radio. A Ganymedian has to give the
fire-at-will signal, and a Ganymedian has to pull the trigger. But when
that happens, we fly apart into little pieces. Ganymedians don't lie."

Dick Harkness sat down on the settee at the back of the control-room.
He didn't look scared. He looked incredulous.

"But--why? They haven't any grudge against us! They've nothing to gain."

"They're cold-blooded fish," Joe said furiously, "and they can be on
the winning side! The Martians offer them incredible bribes! Don't you
see? It's like that Spanish civil war the history books tell of, when
the Germans tested out their weapons by helping one side in the civil
war, without risking having another first-class nation fight back!

"The Martian government won't risk a war it isn't sure it will win.
But it sees a chance to make sure! If the Ganymedians will keep their
mouths shut, the Martians can make a base here. With this new gadget
they can snipe our ships, one by one. If anything goes wrong, the
Martian government will say it was a little group of earth-haters and
they're so sorry! But if everything goes right, they'll have half our
fleet before we know what's what!"

Dick Harkness' mouth opened and shut.

"If we don't get back," raged Joe, "Headquarters will query by
space-radio. The Ganymedians will simply not answer. They do that sort
of thing. Headquarters will send a ship here. It will disappear too,
when its fuel blows. They'll send another and another. When they start
sending squadrons, either the whole Martian Navy--armed with these
gadgets--will jump them, or there'll be a sneak attack on all our
bases, all our fuel-dumps will go--and what good's a fleet without fuel
reserves and bases?"

"Then why warn us?" demanded Dick Harkness.

"The Ganymedians! Don't you see that either? The Martians can't do a
thing without their help. They've got to keep their mouths shut! And
they've said they will keep their mouths shut if the Martians will
prove they're going to win! So the Martians are going to prove it--on
us!"

Dick Harkness, his features slack and bewildered, shook his head.

"But--"

"The Ganymedians are cold-blooded. They won't risk anything. They say
that something might go wrong. A ship might get away and warn our
fleet. But if the Martians can win even after we know what they've got,
why, then they'll play. So they've told us what the Martians have got.
They won't let us use space-radio, or they let go.

"But if we prove we can lick the Martians after we've been warned,
they'll consider we'll win, and they'll play with us. But if the
Martians blow us up--" Then he added, gritting his teeth, "They're
still around because they can jam our space-radio. If we try to send
a report, or try to lift, they'll duck and use the Martian gadget.
They're playing it safe all around!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Dick Harkness looked dazed. "But--but--" Then he shook his head as if
to clear it. "Logical people, aren't they? No manners, no morals, no
weak spots at all. Not even pets! It sounds crazy, but they've never
been tricky."

Rickey pricked up his ears. That sounded like his name. Joe paced up
and down.

"They're too darned literal to be tricky!"

Rickey was sure he heard his name. He stood up, his tail wagging. He
pawed at Joe's foot. Joe stopped short. He stared down at the ship's
mascot, then spoke feverishly.

"But they won't expect us to be tricky either! Look, Dick! They saw
you grinning at Rickey and I told 'em he'd killed four men. With no
sense of humor they aren't capable of understanding. They simply can't
conceive of anything but coldbloodedness. They haven't any weaknesses,
and that's one terrible weakness! Now listen!"

It was very, very simple. Less than an hour after Ychan told him of
his situation, Joe Peabody went out of the airlock again onto the
yielding, intermatted roots which were the solid ground of Ganymede.
Inside the ship, Dick Harkness painstakingly finished the fitting of a
pressure-fuse into a small smoke-bomb made in the shape of a padlock.
And that was all.

Joe scowled, outside the airlock, which to the Ganymedians meant
tranquil and untroubled meditation. A Ganymedian looked at him blankly.

"Tell Ychan I talk," said Joe curtly.

He squatted down. Only minutes later Ychan waddled up and plumped down
in a heap that looked like a glistening anthill. Joe spoke without
preliminaries.

Because of the utterly literal minds of Ganymedians, and their
scorn for indirection of any sort, it was necessary to phrase
things especially for their comprehension. Scowling, Joe talked in
the monotonous tone and idiom used for the strictly business-like
conversation of Ychan's kind.

Earthmen, said Joe, were prepared against the Martian weapon. He had
passed his time inside the ship simply in setting up detectors for
the detonation-beam in case the Martians were fools enough to try it.
If they did, with Ganymedian assistance, Joe and the _Winship_
would prove to them how completely foolish it was. If the Martians were
fools enough to make war on Earth, they would be wiped out. And their
friends. _And_ their friends!

Joe paused to let that sink in. Ychan had listened without emotion. Now
he said tonelessly.

"How?"

Joe said shortly that if the Martians tried to destroy the
_Winship_ that he, Ychan, would have personal experience of the
method. But he would explain. The Earthmen had a weapon the Martians
knew nothing about. It destroyed all living things. It killed them
by turning them to vapor. Turned upon a space-ship, the Earth-weapon
turned its crew to smoke and vapor, and left the space-ship unharmed.
Turned upon a planet, the Earth-weapon would make all its vegetation
explode, and all its people, and even the fish in its swamps.

Ychan listened. "How?" he asked stolidly.

Joe answered scornfully that he would demonstrate it--so that the
Ganymedians would not make fools of themselves and be wiped out. But
he would have to take precautions to avoid undue destruction. If he
pointed the weapon at the horizon, all living things to the horizon
would flash into clouds of vapor.

If he pointed it down to the ground, not only all life immediately
below it would burst into steam, but life on the other side of Ganymede
would cease to exist over a large area. The Earth-ray would penetrate a
planet and destroy life on both sides simultaneously.

Ychan listened with no trace of emotional reaction.

"You show," he insisted.

Joe scowled more deeply still and observed that for his forbearance
in not destroying all life for, say, a hundred miles all around him,
there would be a price. A small price. But when he had proved the
Earth-weapon he would make a demand.

"What?" asked Ychan flatly.

Joe said negligently that he would ask for the useless Martian gadget.
Earthmen, he said untruthfully, had earlier models and had been amused
by it. But just in case there had been improvements, he would trade a
local demonstration instead of a general one for the device. Just the
device. He did not care about the Martians.

Then he waited, scowling as deeply as possible to show complete
indifference. Ychan made his decision.

"Yes," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a bargain and a treaty, because Ganymedians did not lie. They
used words as mathematicians use figures. For results.

"All right," said Joe shortly, over his shoulder. "Get going. And you
can grin."

The outside microphone picked up his voice. The airlock opened. It was
full of the lead-cadmium plates that had been put around the fuel-tanks
when radioactive fuel had been tried on an experimental cruise. There
was barely room for the two crew-members, in atmosphere-suits, who
began to unload it.

"We make shield," said Joe curtly. "Stop weapon here."

The men began to lay the slightly curved leaden plates to cover a
fairly large space. Ychan waddled over and felt one. It was solid
metal, three inches thick and two feet by four feet in size.

The men laid a floor twenty feet square. They laid a second layer.
Then they began to build a platform in the center, seemingly solid, of
plates stacked up for thickness.

They made a platform eight by twelve feet and six feet high, using
antigrav handlers to lift the unwieldy pieces of metal. The airlock was
filled again with the stuff for them to use. They used all that had
been in the ship.

Ganymedians arrived by scores and hundreds. They watched with
expressionless eyes until they understood what the men were doing.
Then they lost interest. But they came back to attentiveness when
the airlock opened a third time and two grinning men came out with
atmosphere-suits on themselves, but a tiny canine space-suit on Rickey.
The dog's suit was of hand-formed glassite and he was plainly visible
inside it.

The grinning of the men, to the Ganymedians, meant rage at the murder
point. And Rickey was hopelessly uncomfortable in his space-suit. He
loathed it. He looked imploringly up at the men and licked out his
tongue, and grinned sheepishly, dog-fashion--which meant rage on his
part too, to Ychan and his fellows. Rickey's space-suit had been made
with infinite care, but he did not like it.

"This," said Joe, scowling, "is dog. Dog is bad. Killed four men. He
dies."

The humorless, factual men of the small planet could not possibly
imagine anyone having a pet animal. And they saw no reason to doubt the
deadliness of a small animal. Their own swamp-bears were even smaller
than Rickey, but they were deadly.

The bloated figures regarded Rickey as he was dragged to the
elaborately constructed platform of lead-cadmium plates. It was lucky
that they had heard only one imaginative tale about him. If anybody had
told them about the time when he allegedly barked in space-code to warn
the skipper when sneak-thieves from another ship were stealing beer
from the _Winship_--!

The two members of the crew took Rickey--their mascot--to the center
of the leaden platform. They fastened him there while he squirmed and
tried to lick their hands through his glassite helmet. They padlocked
him in place. But the chain which held him was rather queer.

"Ship go up," said Joe briefly. "Use weapon. Then come back for Martian
thing. Or--"

He permitted himself a faint flicker of a smile. Then he turned to Dick
Harkness.

"Take her up to a thousand feet and let 'er go," he commanded. "Be sure
to hit it squarely. A miss would be bad! I wait here."

For him to stay on the ground was wisdom, but he felt horribly lonely
as his little ship lifted and left him behind. If he stayed on the
ground, the Ganymedians would stay and witness the demonstration of the
Earth-weapon. If he didn't stay, they might slip away--and miss what
they ought to see.

It was very simple and very effective. The _Winship_ rose to a
thousand feet or more and hovered over the cadmium-lead platform.
Suddenly there was a faint, bluish glow beneath it. Instantly there was
a billowing, expanding cloud of smoke where Rickey had been.

It cleared. Rickey was gone. Even his chain had vanished. He was living
matter, in a space-suit. The Earth-weapon had been trained upon him,
after an elaborate shield had been made to keep it from destroying all
life in a huge area on the far side of the planet.

[Illustration: Rickey, the mascot, had certainly exploded.]

He had, unquestionably, exploded. Joe saw it. He grinned. And Ychan
turned those milky-gray opaque eyes of his on Joe, and saw the
expression which to him meant the ultimate of satisfied rage as
regarded the animal which had killed four men. A ripple went over
Ychan's glistening hide.

"Earthmen," said Ychan with finality, "would win war. You wait. We
bring Martian thing."

       *       *       *       *       *

When the _Winship_ took off from Ganymede, the lead-cadmium plates
were stored again. Joe would have abandoned them for speed, but there
was a reason for retrieving them. Speed was called for, because he had
a Martian gadget on board--made with that finicky, uselessly detailed
artistry of all Martian objects--and it was desirable to get it to
base, fast, for examination so counter-measures could be worked out.

But there was a reason for retrieving the lead, too. After all, it
would not have been wise to abandon it and let the Ganymedians take the
platform apart. If they found that in its building a neat cavity had
been left in its center--that it had been covered by a slab doctored to
remain in place even under Rickey's weight, but to tilt decidedly when
a meteor-repeller beam came on it--!

They might not work it out, but they might. The meteor-repeller beam,
of course, had set off the pressure-fuse which made so impressive a
mass of smoke, hiding Rickey completely as he slid squirming into the
crypt in the platform when the beam came on.

It hadn't been difficult to smuggle Rickey back on board, though. The
Ganymedians drifted away. Joe suspected that they intended to go over
and watch whatever happened to the Martians with the fuel-exploding
device.

They would probably fight, and the Ganymedians would probably be very
firm, because they would not want the Earth-weapon used against them.

Dick Harkness came into the control-room, Rickey frisking about his
feet.

"Cussed dog!" said Dick fondly, looking down at him. "He hates that
space-suit of his, though it protected him perfectly when that smoke
bomb went off."

"Mmmm," said Joe.

"Do you think that Martian scout-ship will try for us?" asked Dick
hopefully.

"No chance," said Joe. "They want to get back with news of our new
weapon. Martian technical brass will go crazy trying to figure it out."

"Huh!" said Dick gloomily. "Nothing ever happens on a space-can!
Headquarters will hush-hush the story, too. What a life! And those
recruiting posters say 'Deep Space is Calling! Ride a Comet and See the
Worlds!' It's a lie! There ought to be a law!"

Rickey sat down, his tongue lolling out. He looked alertly up at Dick.

"Say!" said Dick. "The hands have got their story worked out. They're
going to swear that Rickey subdued Ganymede and stopped an alliance
with Mars. The high spot in the story is where Rickey saw a tree and in
his space-suit he couldn't sniff at it, and he got so mad that steam
came out of his ears and the Ganymedians thought he was a dog-god and
bowed down to him instead of helping the Martians!"

The _Winship_ drove on through space on the way back to base.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Space-Can" ***


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