Mr. Meek Plays Polo - (2)

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.
    IV
    Saturn Inn bulged. Every room was crowded, with half a dozen to the cubicle, sleeping in relays. Those who couldn't find anywhere else to sleep spread blankets in the narrow corridors or dozed off in chairs or slept on the barroom floor. A few of them got stepped on.
    Titan City's Junior Chamber of Commerce had done what it could to help the situation out, but the notice had been short. A half-dozen nearby rocks which had been hastily leveled off for parking space, now were jammed with hundreds of space vehicles, ranging from the nifty two man job owned by Billy Jones, sports editor of the Daily Rocket, to the huge excursion liners sent out by the three big transport companies. A few hastily-erected shelters helped out to some extent, but none of these shelters had a bar and were mostly untenanted.
    Moe, the bartender at the Inn, harried with too many customers, droopy with lack of sleep, saw Oliver Meek bobbing around in the crowd that surged against the bar, much after the manner of a cork caught in a raging whirlpool. He reached out a hand and dragged Meek against the bar.
    "Can't you do something to stop it?"
    Meek blinked at him. "Stop what?"
    "This game," said Moe. "It's awful, Mr. Meek. Honestly. The crowd has got the fellers so worked up, it's apt to be mass murder."
    "I know it," Meek agreed, "but you can't stop it now. The Junior Chamber of Commerce would take the hide off anyone who even said he would like to see it stopped. It's more publicity than Saturn has gotten since the first expeditions were lost here."
    "I don't like it," declared Moe, stolidly.
    "I don't like it either," Meek confessed. "Gus and those other fellows on his team think I'm an expert. I told them what I knew about space polo, but it wasn't much. Trouble is they think it's everything there is to know. They figure they're a cinch to win and they got their shirts bet on the game. If they lose, they'll more than likely space-walk me."
    Fingers tapped Meek's shoulders and he twisted around. A red face loomed above him, a cigarette drooping from the corner of its lips.
    "Hear you say you was coaching the Twenty-three bunch?"
    Meek gulped.
    "Billy Jones, that's me," said the lips with the cigarette. "Best damn sports writer ever pounded keys. Been trying to find out who you was. Nobody else knows. Treat you right."
    "You must be wrong," said Meek.
    "Never wrong," insisted Jones. "Nose for news. Smell it out. Like this. Sniff. Sniff."
    His nose crinkled in imitation of a bloodhound, but his face didn't change otherwise. The cigarette still dangled, pouring smoke into a watery left eye.
    "Heard the guy call you Meek," said Jones. "Name sounds familiar. Something about Juno, wasn't it? Rounded up a bunch of crooks. Found a space monster of some sort."
    Another hand gripped Meek by the shoulder and literally jerked him around.
    "So you're the guy!" yelped the owner of the hand. "I been looking for you. I've a good notion to smack you in the puss."
    "Now, Bud," yelled Moe, in mounting fear, "you leave him alone. He ain't done a thing."
    Meek gaped at the angry face of the hulking man, who still had his shoulder in the grip of a monstrous paw.
    Bud Craney! The ring-rat that had stolen Gus' injector! The captain of the Thirty-seven team.
    "If there was room," Craney grated, "I'd wipe up the floor with you. But since there ain't, I'm just plain going to hammer you down about halfway into it."
    "But he ain't done nothing!" shrilled Moe.
    "He's an outsider, ain't he?" demanded Craney. "What business he got coming in here and messing around with things?"
    "I'm not messing around with things, Mr. Craney," Meek declared, trying to be dignified about it. But it was hard to be dignified with someone lifting one by the shoulder so one's toes just barely touched the floor.
    "All that's the matter with you," insisted the dangling Meek, "is that you know Gus and his men will give you a whipping. They'd done it, anyhow. I haven't helped them much. I haven't helped them hardly at all."
    Craney howled in rage. "Why ... you ... you...."
    And then Oliver Meek did one of those things no one ever expected him to do, least of all himself.
    "I'll bet you my spaceship," he said, "against anything you got."
    Astonished, Craney opened his hand and let him down on the floor.
    "You'll what?" he roared.
    "I'll bet you my spaceship," said Meek, the madness still upon him, "that Twenty-three will beat you."
    He rubbed it in. "I'll even give you odds."
    Craney gasped and sputtered. "I don't want any odds," he yelped. "I'll take it even. My moss patch against your ship."
    Someone was calling Meek's name in the crowd.
    "Mr. Meek! Mr. Meek!"
    "Here," said Meek.
    "What about that story?" demanded Billy Jones, but Meek didn't hear him.
    A man was tearing his way through the crowd. It was one of the men from Twenty-three.
    "Mr. Meek," he panted, "you got to come right away. It's Gus. He's all tangled up with rheumatiz!"
    *       *       *       *       *
    Gus stared up with anguished eyes at Meek.
    "It sneaked up on me while I slept," he squeaked. "Laid off of me for years until just now. Limped once in a while, of course, and got a few twinges now and then, but that was all. Never had me tied up like this since I left Earth. One of the reasons I never did go back to Earth. Space is good climate for rheumatiz. Cold but dry. No moisture to get into your bones."
    Meek looked around at the huddled men, saw the worry that was etched upon their faces.
    "Get a hot water bottle," he told one of them.
    "Hell," said Russ Jensen, a hulking framed spaceman, "there ain't no such a thing as a hot water bottle nearer than Titan City."
    "An electric pad, then."
    Jensen shook his head. "No pads, neither. Only thing we can do is pour whiskey down him and if we pour enough down him to cure the rheumatiz, we'll get him drunk and he won't be no more able to play in that game than he is right now."
    Meek's weak eyes blinked behind his glasses, staring at Gus.
    "We'll lose sure if Gus can't play," said Jensen, "and me with everything I got bet on our team."
    Another man spoke up. "Meek could play in Gus' place."
    "Nope, he couldn't," declared Jensen. "The rats from Thirty-seven wouldn't stand for it."
    "They couldn't do a thing about it," declared the other man. "Meek's been here six weeks today. That makes him a resident. Six Earth weeks, the law says. And all that time he's been in sector Twenty-three. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on. They might squawk but they couldn't make it stick."
    "You're certain of that?" demanded Jensen.
    "Dead certain," said the other.
    Meek saw them looking at him, felt a queasy feeling steal into his stomach.
    "I couldn't," he told them. "I couldn't do it. I ... I...."
    "You go right ahead, Oliver," said Gus. "I wanted to play, of course. Sort of set my heart on that cup. Had the mantel piece all dusted off for it. But if I can't play, there ain't another soul I'd rather have play in my place than you."
    "But I don't know a thing about polo," protested Meek.
    "You taught it to us, didn't you?" bellowed Jensen. "You pretended like you knew everything there was to know."
    "But I don't," insisted Meek. "You wouldn't let me explain. You kept telling me all the time what a swell coach I was and when I tried to argue with you and tell you that I wasn't you yelled me down. I never saw more than one game in all my life and the only reason I saw it then was because I found the ticket. It was on the sidewalk and I picked it up. Somebody had dropped it."
    "So you been stringing us along," yelped Jensen. "You been making fools of us! How do we know but you showed us wrong. You been giving us the wrong dope."
    He advanced on Meek and Meek backed against the wall.
    Jensen lifted his fist, held it in front of him as if he were weighing it.
    "I ought to bop you one," he decided. "All of us had ought to bop you one. Every danged man in this here room has got his shirt bet on the game because we figured we couldn't lose with a coach like you."
    "So have I," said Meek. But it wasn't until he said it that he really realized he did have his shirt bet on Twenty-three. His spaceship. It wasn't all he had, of course, but it was the thing that was nearest to his heart ... the thing he had slaved for thirty years to buy.
    He suddenly remembered those years now. Years of bending over account books in the dingy office back on Earth, watching other men go out in space, longing to go himself. Counting pennies so that he could go. Spending only a dime for lunch and eating crackers and cheese instead of going out for dinner in the evening. Piling up the dollars, slowly through the years ... dollars to buy the ship that now stood out on the field, all damage repaired. Sitting, poised for space.