Unto My Manifold Dooms

UNTO MY MANIFOLD DOOMS Harry Harrison

One by one I dismayed them, frightened them sore with my glooms

One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.

from The Law of the Yukon, Robert W. Service

'Twelve, helmet lock,' Robson's voice rattled from the external speaker of his pressure suit.

'Twelve,' Sonny Greer echoed, glancing at the red ar­rows now point-to-point on the helmet and shoulder plate, then banging the closed latch with his fist. 'Aligned and locked.'

'Thirteen, bleed valve,' Robson read from the checklist mounted on the bulkhead.

'Thirteen, closed,' Sonny tapped the other man's suit with his knuckles.

'Fourteen, patch kit.'

'Fourtee . . .'

'What are you doing, Sonny, just what in the hell do you think you are doing?' Captain Hegg broke in, stomp­ing across the airlock chamber towards them.

'Helping the prof with his checklist—I thought that was obvious, Cap'n.'

'Helping to kill him maybe. You are going to have to take this kind of thing more seriously. You didn't check that bleeder valve.'

'I looked at it, the handle is up and down like it always is. Closed—and I've never seen one of them open yet.'

'But you don't know until you have checked it,' Hegg insisted with slow patience. 'The handle might be broken, or turned a half turn.'

'But it's not, see Cap'n.' The tiny handle did not move when he pushed on it. 'So I was right all along.'

'You were not, Sonny. You did not follow checklist rou­tine, that is all that matters.'

'Mea culpa,' Sonny insisted, raising his hands in mock surrender, grinning disarmingly. 'Have patience with my youth, Cap'n, and I promise never to do it again.'

'See that you don't.'

'You don't think I'm out to kill you, do you, Prof?' Sonny asked, looking ruefully away from the retreating back of the captain. 'If you were dead who could I possi­bly win a chess game from once in a while?'

'That's just Hegg's way, you know.' Robson's smile could just be made out through the thick viewplate of his helmet. 'He is really a good type, but terribly hardwork­ing. He means well.'

'But why is it always my neck that gets caught in the bear trap when he is meaning well?'

Robson shrugged. We had better finish running through the checklist. I want to get those sample traps in before dark.'

'Right you are, Prof. We'll pick it up from fourteen.'

Sonny watched through their single-view port as Cap­tain Hegg and Robson, slow and clumsy in their pressure suits, clambered over the nearby ridge and vanished from sight among the strangely earth-like trees. He shook his head, not for the first time, at the unreasonableness of it all.

'How about a grme?' Arkady called from his bunk, holding up his pocket chess set. 'I'll spot you a rook.'

'Why commit suicide? You even won that game when you had no queen.'

'Just your bad luck, Sonny. With a queen ahead you could even win against the great Botvinnik, may his mem­ory be revered, if you would remember to just keep ex­changing.'

'Yeah, but I keep forgetting. Look, Ivan Ivanovitch, look out there at a sunny day on Cassidy-2. Wind in the trees, grass growing, maybe just a teensy tinge of green to the air that isn't quite earthlike. Doesn't it make you want to shuck off your clothes and go out and take a walk?'

'Makes you want to be dead in five seconds,' Arkady answered heavily, setting up a problem on the board. 'The air out there is rich with deadly poisons and a mixture of hydrogen and methane that would burn with a lovely flame in this room. Or in your lungs. Even the stones would burn in our air. Look how wonderfully Reshevsky sank Euwe back in middle ages, 1947.'

'Aw, come on, you know what I'm talking about. I could give you lectures about the nrtural wonders of this world. Remember I'm the mineralogist here and you are just a thick-headed Russky mining engineer. . . .'

'I go back to salt mine in morning.'

'. . . I'm talking about romance, emotion, art. Look out there. A world as close as the thickness of this wall, yet more unattainable than Earth, which happens to be light-years away. Don't you feel it? Don't you want to go out there?'

'I go out there without my suit I'll be dead in five sec­onds.'

'You're an unimaginative clod. If you are the end prod­uct of the Glorious Revolution I say bring back the Czar.*

'Da. It's your turn to cook today.'

'How could I forget? I was awa'ice all night worrying about what to make for dinner. Will caviar go with beef stroganoff? Is the vodka cold enough?'

'Dehydrations and coffee will be fine with me,' Arkady answered imperturbably, concentrating on the chess board. 'You just torture yourself.'