Mr. Meek Plays Polo

III

THE BUGS had dug a new set of holes, much after the manner of a Chinese checker board, and now were settling down into their respective places preparatory to the start of another game.

For a mile or more across the flat surface of the rock that was Gus Hamilton’s moss garden, ran a string of such game-boards, each one different, each one having served as the scene of a now-completed game.

Oliver Meek cautiously wedged his stilts into two pitted pockets of rock, eased himself slowly and warily against the face of a knob of stone that jutted from the surface.

Even in his youth, Meek remembered, he never had been any great shakes on stilts. Here, on this bucking, weaving rock, with slick surfaces and practically no gravity, a man had to be an expert to handle them. Meek knew now he was no expert. A half-dozen dents in his space armor was ample proof of that.

Comfortably braced against the upjutting of stone, Meek dug into the pouch of his space gear, brought out a notebook and stylus. Flipping the pages, he stared, frowning, at the diagrams that covered them.

None of the diagrams made sense. They showed the patterns of three other boards and the moves that had been made by the bugs in playing out the game. Apparently, in each case, the game had been finished. Which, Meek knew, should have meant that some solution had been reached, some point won, some advantage gained.

But so far as Meek could see from study of the diagrams there was not even a purpose or a problem, let alone a solution or a point.

The whole thing was squirrely. But, Meek told himself, it fitted in. The whole Saturnian system was wacky. The rings, for example. Debris of a moon smashed up by Saturn’s pull? Sweepings of space? No one knew.

Saturn itself, for that matter. A planet that kept Man at bay with deadly radiations. But radiations that, while they kept Man at a distance, at the same time served Man. For here, on the Inner Ring, where they had become so diluted that ordinary space armor filtered them out, they made possible the medical magic of the famous radiation moss.

One of the few forms of plant life found in the cold of space, the moss was nurtured by those mysterious radiations. Planted elsewhere, on kindlier worlds, it wilted and refused to grow. The radiations had been analyzed, Meek knew, and reproduced under laboratory conditions, but there still was something missing, some vital, elusive factor that could not be analyzed. Under the artificial radiation, the moss still wilted and died.

And because Earth needed the moss to cure a dozen maladies and because it would grow nowhere else but here on th Inner Ring, men squatted on the crazy swirl of spacial boulders that made up the ring. Men like Hamilton, living on rocks that bucked and heaved along their orbits like chips riding the crest of a raging flood. Men who endured loneliness, dared death when crunching orbits intersected or, when rickety spacecraft flared, who went mad with nothing to do, with the mockery of space before them.

Meek shrugged his shoulders, almost upsetting himself.

THE BUGS had started the game and Meek craned forward cautiously, watching eagerly, stylus poised above the notebook.

Crawling clumsily, the tiny insect-like creatures moved about, solemnly popping in and out of holes.

If there were opposing sides… and if it were a game, there’d have to be… they didn’t seem to alternate the moves. Although, Meek admitted, certain rules and conditions which he had failed to note or recognize, might determine the number and order of moves allowed each side.

Suddenly there was confusion on the board. For a moment a half-dozen of the bugs raced madly about, as if seeking the proper hole to occupy. Then, as suddenly, all movement had ceased. And in another moment, they were on the move again, orderly again, but retracing their movements, going back several plays beyond the point of confusion.

Just as one would do when one made a mistake working a mathematical problem… going back to the point of error and going on again from there.

“Well, I’ll be…” Mr. Meek said.

Meek stiffened and the stylus floated out of his hand, settled softly on the rock below.

A mathematical problem!

His breath gurgled in his throat.

He knew it now! He should have known it all the time. But the mechanic had talked about the bugs playing games and so had Hamilton. That had thrown him off.

Games! Those bugs weren’t playing any game. They were solving mathematical equations!

Meek leaned forward to watch, forgetting where he was. One of the stilts slipped out of position and Meek felt himself start to fall. He dropped the notebook and frantically clawed at empty space.

The other stilt went, then, and Meek found himself floating slowly downward, gravity weak but inexorable. His struggle to retain his balance had flung him forward, away from the face of the rock and he was falling directly over the board on which the bugs were arrayed.

He pawed and kicked at space, but still floated down, course unchanged. He struck and bounced, struck and bounced again.

On the fourth bounce he managed to hook his fingers around a tiny projection of the surface. Fighting desperately, he regained his feet.

Something scurried across the face of his helmet and he lifted his hand before him. It was covered with the bugs.

Fumbling desperately, he snapped on the rocket motor of his suit, shot out into space, heading for the rock where the lights from the ports of Hamilton’s shack blinked with the weaving of the rock.

Oliver Meek shut his eyes and groaned.

“Gus will give me hell for this,” he told himself.

GUS shook the small wooden box thoughtfully, listening to the frantic scurrying within it.

“By rights,” he declared, judiciously, “I should take this over and dump it in Bud’s ship. Get even with him for swiping my injector.”

“But you got the injector back,” Meek pointed out.

“Oh, sure, I got it back,” admitted Gus. “But it wasn’t orthodox, it wasn’t. Just getting your property back ain’t getting even. I never did have a chance to smack Bud in the snoot the way I should of smacked him. Moe talked me into it. He was the one that had the idea the welfare lady should go over and talk to Bud. She must of laid it on thick, too, about how we should settle down and behave ourselves and all that. Otherwise Bud never would have given her that injector.”

He shook his head dolefully. “This here Ring ain’t ever going to be the same again. If we don’t watch out, we’ll find ourselves being polite to one another.”

“That would be awful,” agreed Meek.

“Wouldn’t it, though,” declared Gus.

Meek squinted his eyes and pounced on the floor, scrabbling on hands and knees after a scurrying thing that twinkled in the lamplight.

“Got him,” yelped Meek, scooping the shining mote up in his hand.

Gus inched the lid of the wooden box open. Meek rose and popped the bug inside.

“That makes twenty-eight of them,” said Meek.

“I told you,” Gus accused him, “that we hadn’t got them all. You better take another good look at your suit. The danged things burrow right into solid metal and pull the hole in after them, seems like. Sneakiest cusses in the whole dang system. Just like chiggers back on Earth.”

“Chiggers,” Meek told him, “burrow into a person to lay eggs.”

“Maybe these things do, too,” Gus contended.

The radio on the mantel blared a warning signal, automatically tuning in on one of the regular newscasts from Titan City out on Saturn’s biggest moon.

The syrupy, chamber of commerce voice of the announcer was shaky with excitement and pride.

“Next week,” he said, “the annual Martian-Earth football game will be played at Greater New York on Earth. But in the Earth’s newspapers tonight another story has pushed even that famous classic of the sporting world down into secondary place.”

He paused and took a deep breath and his voice practically yodeled with delight.

“The sporting event, ladies and gentlemen, that is being talked up and down the streets of Earth tonight, is one that will be played here in our own Saturnian system. A space polo game. To be played by two unknown, pick-up, amateur teams down in the Inner Ring. Most of the men have never played polo before. Few if any of them have even seen a game. There may have been some of them who didn’t, at first, know what it was.

“But they’re going to play it. The men who ride those bucking rocks that make up the Inner Ring will go out into space in their rickety ships and fight it out. And ladies and gentlemen, when I say fight it out, I really mean fight it out. For the game, it seems, will be a sort of tournament, the final battle in a feud that has been going on in the Ring for years. No one knows what started the feud. It has gotten so it really doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that when men from sector Twenty-three meet those from sector Thirty-seven, the feud is taken up again. But that is at an end now. In a few days the feud will be played out to its bitter end when the ships from the Inner Ring go out into space to play that most dangerous of all sports, space polo. For the outcome of that game will decide, forever, the supremacy of one of the two sectors.”

MEEK rose from his chair, opened his mouth as if to speak, but sank back again when Gus hissed at him and held a finger to his lips for silence.

“The teams are now in training,” went on the newscaster, the happy lilt in his voice still undimmed, “and it is understood that sector Twenty-three has the advantage, at the start at least, of having a polo expert as its coach. Just who this expert is no one can say. Several names have been mentioned, but…”

“No, no,” yelped Meek, struggling to his feet, but Gus shushed him, poking a finger toward him and grinning like a bearded imp.

“…Bets are mounting high throughout the entire Saturnian system,” the announcer was saying, “but since little is known about the teams, the odds still are even. It is likely, however, that odds will be demanded on the sector of Thirty-seven team on the basis of the story about the expert coach.

“The very audacity of such a game has attracted solar-wide attention and special fleets of ships will leave both Earth and Mars within the next few days to bring spectators to the game. Newsmen from the inner worlds, among them some of the system’s most famous sports writers, are already on their way.

“Originally intended to be no more than a recreation project under the supervision of the department of health and welfare, the game has suddenly become a solar attraction. The Daily Rocket back on Earth is offering a gigantic loving cup for the winning team, while the Morning Spaceways has provided another loving cup, only slightly smaller, to be presented the player adjudged the most valuable to his team. We may have more to tell you about the game before the newscast is over, but in the meantime we shall go on to other news of Solar int…”

Meek leaped up. “He meant me,” he whooped. “That was me he meant when he was talking about a famous coach!”

“Sure,” said Gus. “He couldn’t have meant anyone else but you.”

“But I’m not a famous coach,” protested Meek. “I’m not even a coach at all. I never saw but one space polo game in all my life. I hardly know how it’s played. I just know you go up there in space and bat a ball around. I’m going to…”

“You ain’t going to do a blessed thing,” said Gus. “You ain’t skipping out on us. You’re staying right here and give us all the fine pointers of the game. Maybe you ain’t as hot as the newscaster made out, but you’re a dang sight better than anyone else around here. At least you seen a game once and that’s more than any of the rest of us have.”

“But I…”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” declared Gus. “You’re just pretending you don’t know anything about polo, that’s all. Maybe you’re a fugitive from justice. Maybe that’s why you’re so anxious to make a getaway. Only reason you stopped at all was because your ship got stoved up.”

“I’m no fugitive,” declared Meek, drawing himself up. “I’m just a bookkeeper out to see the system.”

“Forget it,” said Gus. “Forget it. Nobody around here’s going to give you away. If they even so much as peep, I’ll plain paralyze them. So you’re a bookkeeper. That’s good enough for me. Just let anyone say you ain’t a bookkeeper and see what happens to him.”

Meek opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. What was the use? Here he was, stuck again. Just like back on Juno when that preacher had thought he was a gunman and talked him into taking over the job of cleaning up the town. Only this time it was a space polo game and he knew even less about space polo than he did about being a lawman.

Gus rose and limped slowly across the room. Ponderously, he hauled a red bandanna out of his back pocket and carefully dusted off the one uncrowded space on the mantel shelf, between the alarm clock and the tarnished silver model of a rocket ship.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “she’ll look right pretty there.”

He backed away and stared at the place on the shelf.

“I can almost see her now,” he said. “Glinting in the lamplight. Something to keep me company. Something to look at when I get lonesome.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Meek.

“That there cup the radio was talking about,” said Gus. “The one for the most valuable team member.”

Meek stammered. “But… but…”

“I’m going to win her,” Gus declared.