“Well,” Underhill murmured, “they fed us-for a month.”
“Not now. There’s an embargo. What do they have against us, anyhow?”
Munn thrust back his stool with sudden decision. “That’s something we’ll have to figure out. Things can’t go on like this. We simply haven’t enough food to last us a year. And we can’t live off the land—”
He stopped as someone unzipped the valve screen and entered, a squat man with high cheekbones and a beak of a nose in a red-bronze face.
“Find anything, Redskin?” Underhill asked.
Mike Soaring Eagle tossed a plastisac on the table. “Six mushrooms. No wonder the Venusians use hydroponics. They have to. Only fungi will grow in this sponge of a world, and most of that’s poisonous. No use, skipper.”
Munn’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. Where’s Bronson?”
“Panhandling. But he won’t get a fal.” The Navaho-nodded towards the port. “Here he comes now.”
After a moment the others heard Bronson’s slow footsteps. The engineer came in, his face red as his hair. “Don’t ask me,” he murmured. “Don’t say a word, anybody. Me, a Kerry man, trying to bum a lousy fal from a shagreen-skinned so-and-so with an iron ring in his nose like a Ubangi savage. Think of it! The shame will stay with me forever.”
“My sympathy,” Thirkell said. “But did you get any fais?”
Bronson glared at him. “Would I have taken his dirty coins if he’d offered them?” the engineer yelled, his eyes bloodshot. “I’d have flung them in his slimy face, and you can take my word for it. I touch their rotten money? Give me some beans.” He seized a plate and morosely began to eat.
Thirkell exchanged glances with Underhill. “He didn’t get any money,” the latter said.
Bronson started back with a snort. “He asked me if I belonged to the Beggars’ Guild! Even tramps have to join a union on this planet!”
Captain Munn scowled thoughtfully. “No, it isn’t a union, Bronson, or even much like the medieval guilds. The tarkoinars are a lot more powerful and a lot less principled. Unions grew out of a definite social and economic background, and they fill a purpose-a check-and-balance system that keeps building. I’m not talking about unions; on Earth some of ’em are good-like the Air Transport-and some are graft-ridden, like Undersea Dredgers. The tarkoinars are different. They don’t fulfill any productive purpose. They just keep the Venusian system in its backwater.”
“Yes,” Thirkell said, “and unless we’re members, we aren’t allowed to work-at anything. And we can’t be members till we pay the initiation fee-a thousand sofals.”
“Easy on those beans,” Underhill cautioned. “We’ve only ten more cans.”
There was silence. Presently Munn passed cigarettes.
“We’ve got to do something, that’s certain,” he said. “We can’t get food except from the Venusians, and they Won’t give it to us. One thing in our favor: the laws are so arbitrary that they can’t refuse to sell us grub-it’s illegal to refuse legal tender.”
Mike Soaring Eagle glumly sorted his six mushrooms. “Yeah. If we can get our hands on legal tender. We’re broke-broke on Venus-and we’ll soon be starving to death. If anybody can figure out an answer to that one—”
This was in 1964, three years after the first successful flight to Mars, five years since Dooley and Hastings had brought their ship down in Mare Imbrium. The Moon, of course, was uninhabited, save by active but unintelligent algae. The big-chested, alert Martians, with their high metabolism and their brilliant, erratic minds, had been friendly, and it was certain that the cultures of Mars and Earth would not clash. As for Venus, till now, no ship had landed there.
The Goodwill was the ambassador. It was an experiment, like the earlier Martian voyage, for no one knew whether or not there was intelligent life on Venus. Supplies for more than a year were stowed aboard, dehydrates, plastibulbs, concentrates and vitamin foods, but every man of the crew had a sneaking hunch that food would be found in plenty on Venus.
There was food-yes. The Venusians grew it, in their hydroponic tanks under the cities. But on the surface of the planet grew nothing edible at all. There was little animal or bird life, so hunting was impossible, even had the Earthmen been allowed to retain their weapons. And in the beginning it had seemed like a gala holiday after the arduous space trip-a year-long fete and carnival in an alien, fascinating civilization.
It was alien, all right. The Venusians were conservative. What was good enough for their remote ancestors was quite good enough for them. They didn’t want changes, it seemed. Their current set-up had worked O.K. for centuries; why alter it now?
The Earthmen meant change-that was obvious.
Result:
a boycott of the Earthmen.
It was all quite passive. The first month had brought no trouble; Captain Munn had been presented with the keys of the capital city, Vyring, on the outskirts of which the Goodwill now rested, and the Venusians brought food in plenty-odd but tasty dishes from the hydroponic gardens. In return, the Earthmen were lavish with their own stores, depleting them dangerously.
And the Venusian food spoiled quickly. There was no need to preserve it, for the hydroponic tanks turned out a steady, unfailing supply. In the end the Earthmen were left with a few weeks’ stock of the food they had brought with them, and a vast pile of garbage that had been lusciously appetizing a few days before.
Then the Venusians stopped bringing their quick-spoiling fruits, vegetables and meat-mushrooms and clamped down. The party was over. They had no intention of harming the Earthmen; they remained carefully friendly. But from now on it was Pay as You’re Served-and no checks cashed. A big meat-mushroom, enough for four hungry men, cost ten fals.
Since the Earthmen had no fals, they got no meat-mushrooms-nor anything else.
In the beginning it hadn’t seemed important. Not until they got down to cases and began to wonder exactly how they could get food.
There was no way.
So they sat in the Goodwill eating cold beans and looking like five of the Seven Dwarfs, a quintet of stocky, short, husky men, big-boned and muscular, especially chosen for their physiques to stand the rigors of space flight-and their brains, also specially chosen, couldn’t help them now.
It was a simple problem-simple and primitive. They, the representatives of Earth’s mightiest culture, were hungry. They would soon be hungrier.
And they didn’t have a fai-nothing but worthless gold, silver and paper currency. There was metal in the ship, but none of the pure metal they needed, except in alloys that couldn’t be broken down.
Venus was on the iron standard.
“-there’s got to be an answer,” Munn said stubbornly, his hard-bitten, harsh face somber. He pushed back his plate with an angry gesture. “I’m going to see the Council again.”
“What good will that do?” Thirkell wanted to know. “We’re on the spot, there’s no getting around it.
Money talks.”
“Just the same, I’m going to talk to Jorust,” the captain growled. “She’s no fool.”
“Exactly,” Thirkell said cryptically.
Munn stared at him, beckoned to Mike Soaring Eagle and turned towards the valve. Underhill jumped up eagerly.
“May I go?”
Bronson gloomily toyed with his beans. “Why do you want to go? You couldn’t even play a slot machine in Vyring’s skid row-if they had slot machines. Maybe you think if you tell ’em your old man’s a Tycoon of Amalgamated Ores, they’ll break down and hand out meal tickets-eh?”
But his tone was friendly enough, and Underhill merely grinned. Captain Munn said, “Come along, if you want, but hurry up.” The three men went out into the steaming mists, their feet sloshing through sticky mud.
It wasn’t uncomfortably hot; the high winds of Venus provided for quick evaporation, a natural air conditioning that kept the men from feeling the humidity. Munn referred to his compass. The outskirts of Vyring were half a mile away, but the fog was, as usual, like pea soup.