Fredric Brown

“ Blake Powers asked Charlie, when things had quieted down again. Blake was skipper for the voyages, but now that we were anchored down on our asteroid, he was just one of the boys, until we took off again.
"In with the slum for trading," Charlie said. "When you're going to any place in the system that might be inhabited and you don't know by what kind of critters, you take a little of almost everything. You never know what's going to strike the fancy of any civilized or semi-civilized race you might hit. ”

“ So Dick was skipper and Art and I were flunkies and gunmen. Our main job was to go along with the specialists whenever they left the ship and stand guard over them against whatever dangers might pop up."
"And did anything pop?" Charlie demanded.
"I'm coming to that," I told him. "We found Ganymede not so bad, as places go. Gravity low, of course, but you could get around easily and keep your balance once you got used to it. And the air was breathable for a couple of hours; after that you found yourself panting like a dog. ”

“ Space on the little tugs that you go in and return in, and live in while you're there, is at such a premium that there isn't room for a book or a magazine nor equipment for games. And you're out of radio range except for the usual once-a-terrestrial-day, system-wide newscasts. ”

“ Blake said, "Let me guess. You saw a Martian traag-hound standing on his tail, singing Annie Laurie."
"Worse than that," I said "I saw one of those Ganymede natives get his legs bit off. And it annoyed him."
"It would annoy anyone," said Blake. "Even me, and I'm a pretty mild-tempered guy. What bit them off?"
"I never found out," I told him. "It was something under water. There was a stream there, going by the village, and there must have been something like crocodiles in it. Two natives came out of the village and started to wade across the stream. ”

“ But now they had us—I mean, they had Lecky and Haynes and Hilda and Art and Dick—and they had our space-ship, and they were going to Earth, because they knew all about it and about conditions there from our minds. They planned, simply, to take over Earth and—uh—run it. ”

“ This was Lecky's first trip off Earth, so that was natural enough.
"Inside the ship, as soon as Lecky got his breath back—the last hundred yards pretty well winded us—he started in to tell Haynes and Hilda Race about the Ganymedeans. Most of it was too technical for me, but I got that they had some strange contradictions in them. As far as their way of life was concerned, they were more primitive than Australian bushmen. But they had brains and a philosophy and a knowledge of mathematics and pure science. They'd told him some things about atomic structure that excited hell out of him. ”

“ So talking is the only indoor sport you can go in for. Talking and listening. You've plenty of time for both because a work-day, in space-suits, is only four hours and that with four fifteen-minute back-to-the-ship rest periods, so you actually work only three hours and spend half that time getting in and out the airlock. ”

“ But those are union rules, and no asteroid mining outfit tries to chisel on them.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that talk is cheap on one of those work crews. With most of the day to do nothing else, you listen to some real whoppers, stories that would make the old-time Liars Clubs back on earth seem like Sunday-school meetings. And if your mind runs that way, you've got plenty of time to think up some yourself.
Charlie Dean was on our crew, and Charlie could tell some dillies. ”

“ Running him. Didn't matter whether he was alive or dead, either, as long as his body wasn't in too bad shape. Like Haynes—they'd had to kill him to put an earring on him. He was dead, in that if that ring was removed, he'd have fallen flat and never got up again, unless it was put back.
"Like the native whose legs had been cut off. The entity running him had decided the body was no longer practicable for use, so he handed himself back to the other native, see? And they'd find another body in better shape for him to use. ”

“ And Lecky was chosen because he was pretty much of a linguist. He had a flair for languages and could talk them almost as soon as he heard them.
"They'd heard us land and a bunch of them—about forty, I guess—met us half-way between the ship and the village. And they were friendly. Funny people. Quiet and dignified and acting not at all like you'd expect savages to act toward people landing out of the sky. You know how most primitives react—either they practically worship you or else they try to kill you. ”

“ Damn it, the only way you can stop a body animated by one of those rings is to make it fix it so it can't move, like cutting off the legs or something. A bullet in the heart doesn't worry it.
"But I'd backed to the door and got out of it—out into the Ganymedean night, without even a coat on. It was colder than hell, too. And after I got out there, there just wasn't any place to go. Except back in the ship, and I wasn't going there. ”

“ Not the really top-flight specialists, though, because the trip was too risky to send them. That was the third ship to try for Ganymede and the other two had cracked up on outer Jovian satellites that the observatories hadn't spotted from Earth because they are too small to show up in the scopes at that distance.
"When you get there you find there's practically an asteroid belt around Jupiter, most of them so black they don't reflect light to speak of and you can't see them till they hit you or you hit them. ”

“ And when I came out of the shower, drying myself, even Charlie was grinning. Blake said, "And I thought that yarn Charlie just told was a dilly. This trip is backwards; we'll end up having to tell each other the truth."
There was a sharp rapping on the hull beside the airlock, and Charlie Dean went to open it. He growled, "If you tell Zeb and Ray what chumps you made out of us, I'll beat your damn ears in. You and your earring gods...."
Portion of telepathic report of No. 67843, on Asteroid J-864A to No. ”