Galaxy Magazine (September 1953) by Galaxy

Author:Galaxy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1953-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

it had come they were enjoying every minute of it.

UR investigation was pretty

rough going. The fireflies

overhead all circled in one direction, which made you dizzy every time you looked up, and besides that the Quack had remembered that he was a prisoner in an alien environment and was at the mercy of any outlandish disease that might creep past his permanent immunization. He muttered and grumbled to himself about the risk, and his grousing got on our nerves even worse than usual. I moved over to shut him up, and blinked when I saw him pop something into his mouth. My

first guess was that he had managed to sneak some food concen-trate out of the ship somehow, and the thought made me realize how hungry I was.

"What've you got there, Quack?" I demanded. "Come on, give—what are you hiding out?"

"Antibiotics and stuff," he an-swered, and pulled a little flat

plastic case out of a pocket.

It was his portable medicine chest, which he carried the way superstitious people used to carry rabbits' feet, and it was largely responsible for our calling him the Quack. It was full of patent

capsule remedies that he had gleaned out of his home medical book—a cut thumb, a surprise

PROBLEM ON BALAK

headache, or a siege of gas on the stomach would never catch the Quack unprepared!

"Jerk," I said, and went back to Gibbons and Corelli, who were arguing a new approach to our problem.

"It's worth a try," Gibbons said. He turned on the two Has-lops, who were bristling like a pair of strange dogs. "This question is for the real Haslop: Have you ever been put through a Rorschach, thematic apperception or free association test?"

The real Haslop hadn't. Either of them.

"Then we'll try free association," Gibbons said, and explained what he wanted of them.

"Water" Gibbons said, popping it out quick and sharp.

"Spigot," the Haslops said together. Which is exactly what any spaceman would say, since the only water important to him comes out of a ship's tank. "Lake" and "river" and "spring," to him, are only words in books.

Gibbons chewed his lip and tried again, but the result was the same every time. When he said "payday" they both came back "binge," and when he said "man" they answered "woman!" with the same gleam in their eyes.

"I could have told you it wouldn't work," one Haslop said when Gibbons threw up his hands and quit. "I've lived so long with

that phony that he even knows what I'm going to say next."

"I was -going to say the same thing," the other one growled. "After twenty-two years of drinking and arguing with him, we've begun—God help me!—to think alike."

I tried my own hand just once, "Gaffa says that they are exactly identical so far as outside appearance goes," I said. "But he may be wrong, or lying. Maybe we'd better check for our^ selves."

r

npHE Haslops raised a howl, of

-*■ course, but it did them no

good. Gibbons and Corelli and I ganged them one at a time—the Quack refused to help for fear of being contaminated — and examined them carefully.

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