The Malcolm Jameson Science Fiction MEGAPACK® by Malcolm Jameson

Author:Malcolm Jameson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Dangerous Encounter

That day Winchester was transplanting moss. It was the notorious Martian migratory moss, a creeping, leafy slime that ceaselessly seeks the sun. Winchester had learned its trait the first time he had handled it, and now he turned it to account.

He had swung his boatswain’s chair from a hook high up the crater cliff. To an adjacent hook he had rigged a pulley, by which he hauled the reeking stuff up in a basket from the flatcar two hundred feet below. It was easy to plant acres of the stuff that way. For the spot Winchester chose was just within the shadow made by the crater’s brink. Since from the Moon the Sun moves slowly, he rarely had to change his position.

He plastered half a basket of the slippery plant against the flat granite of the cliff, then waited while it crawled away toward the nearby area. Then he picked up his trowel and dipped it into the basket again. When the basket was empty, he sent it down to the car below.

Presently Winchester felt the tug that told him the basket was full again. By the time the basketful had been spread upon the cliff, the situation behind him had changed. A train had come up and was stopped a short distance away. It consisted of a locomotive and single car, but such a locomotive and car as Winchester could never have imagined.

Both were plated with gold and studded with insets of what must have been massed jewels; for no single stones could have been so large.

Gaily liveried flunkies were unloading from the front compartment what appeared to be wheeled chairs. In a moment Winchester understood that was exactly what they were—super-rickshas, quite as rich and elegant in their way as the train was in its. As soon as the rickshas were ready and ranged beside the coach, the princely party stepped out.

Winchester recognized Prince Lohan by his height and yellow robe. He judged the squat, swarthy man beside him in rich red to be the Martian envoy. Their conveyances rolled off first, leaving the women of the party to follow as they chose.

Winchester turned back to his work. It was not until he had emptied another basketload of moss that he looked again. The party had gone far out into the desert and was circling to the north. Winchester started when he observed a single parked ricksha standing in the brush not a great distance away, between him and the private train.

A daintily dressed woman strolled near it, idly looking over the plants. Evidently she had not cared for the longer trip out into the desert, and had quit the party early. But the thing that alarmed Winchester was that she was but a few hundred yards away from a thick growth of the deadly phygrix!

Without stopping to think of the possible consequences, Winchester slipped out of the boatswain’s chair and sprang onto the moss-basket. He gave a quick series of jerks on the hauling-down line.

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