Part 1

Mr. Meek Plays Polo

By CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

Mr. Meek was having his troubles. First, the _educated_ bugs worried him; then the welfare worker tried to stop the Ring Rats' feud by enlisting his aid. And now, he was a drafted space-polo player--a fortune bet on his ability at a game he had never played in his cloistered life.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The sign read:

_Atomic Motors Repaired. Busted Plates Patched Up. Rocket Tubes Relined. Wheeze In, Whiz Out!_

It added, as an afterthought, in shaky, inexpert lettering:

_We Fix Anything._

Mr. Oliver Meek stared owlishly at the sign, which hung from an arm attached to a metal standard sunk in solid rock. A second sign was wired to the standard just below the metal arm, but its legend was faint, almost illegible. Meek blinked at it through thick-lensed spectacles, finally deciphered its scrawl:

ASK ABOUT EDUCATED BUGS

A bit bewildered, but determined not to show it, Meek swung away from the sign-post and gravely regarded the settlement. On the chart it was indicated by a fairly sizeable dot, but that was merely a matter of comparison. Out Saturn-way even the tiniest outpost assumes importance far beyond its size.

The slab of rock was no more than five miles across, perhaps even less. Here in its approximate center, were two buildings, both of almost identical construction, semi-spherical and metal. Out here, Meek realized, shelter was the thing. Architecture merely for architecture's sake was still a long way off.

One of the buildings was the repair shop which the sign advertised. The other, according to the crudely painted legend smeared above its entrance lock, was the _Saturn Inn_.

The rest of the rock was landing field, pure and simple. Blasters had leveled off the humps and irregularities so spaceships could sit down.

Two ships now were on the field, pulled up close against the repair shop. One, Meek noticed, belonged to the Solar Health and Welfare Department, the other to the Galactic Pharmaceutical Corporation. The Galactic ship was a freighter, ponderous and slow. It was here, Meek knew, to take on a cargo of radiation moss. But the other was a puzzler. Meek wrinkled his brow and blinked his eyes, trying to figure out what a welfare ship would be doing in this remote corner of the Solar System.

Slowly and carefully, Meek clumped toward the squat repair shop. Once or twice he stumbled, hoping fervently he wouldn't get the feet of his cumbersome spacesuit all tangled up. The gravity was slight, next to non-existent, and one who wasn't used to it had to take things easy and remember where he was.

Behind him Saturn filled a tenth of the sky, a yellow, lemon-tinged ball, streaked here and there with faint crimson lines and blotched with angry, bright green patches.

To right and left glinted the whirling, twisting, tumbling rocks that made up the Inner Ring, while arcing above the horizon opposed to Saturn were the spangled glistening rainbows of the other rings.

"Like dewdrops in the black of space," Meek mumbled to himself. But he immediately felt ashamed of himself for growing poetic. This sector of space, he knew, was not in the least poetic. It was hard and savage and as he thought about that, he hitched up his gun belt and struck out with a firmer tread that almost upset him. After that, he tried to think of nothing except keeping his two feet under him.

Reaching the repair shop's entrance lock, he braced himself solidly to keep his balance, reached out and pressed a buzzer. Swiftly the lock spun outward and a moment later Meek had passed through the entrance vault and stepped into the office.

A dungareed mechanic sat tilted in a chair against a wall, feet on the desk, a greasy cap pushed back on his head.

Meek stamped his feet gratefully, pleased at feeling Earth gravity under him again. He lifted the hinged helmet of his suit back on his shoulders.

"You are the gentleman who can fix things?" he asked the mechanic.

* * * * *

The mechanic stared. Here was no hell-for-leather freighter pilot, no be-whiskered roamer of the outer orbits. Meek's hair was white and stuck out in uncombed tufts in a dozen directions. His skin was pale. His blue eyes looked watery behind the thick lenses that rode his nose. Even the bulky spacesuit failed to hide his stooped shoulders and slight frame.

The mechanic said nothing.

Meek tried again. "I saw the sign. It said you could fix anything. So I...."

The mechanic shook himself.

"Sure," he agreed, still slightly dazed. "Sure I can fix you up. What you got?"

He swung his feet off the desk.

"I ran into a swarm of pebbles," Meek confessed. "Not much more than dust, really, but the screen couldn't stop it all."

He fumbled his hands self-consciously. "Awkward of me," he said.

"It happens to the best of them," the mechanic consoled. "Saturn sweeps in clouds of the stuff. Thicker than hell when you reach the Rings. Lots of ships pull in with punctures. Won't take no time."

Meek cleared his throat uneasily. "I'm afraid it's more than a puncture. A pebble got into the instruments. Washed out some of them."

The mechanic clucked sympathetically. "You're lucky. Tough job to bring in a ship without all the instruments. Must have a honey of a navigator."

"I haven't got a navigator," Meek said, quietly.

The mechanic stared at him, eyes popping. "You mean you brought it in alone? No one with you?"

Meek gulped and nodded. "Dead reckoning," he said.

The mechanic glowed with sudden admiration. "I don't know who you are, mister," he declared, "but whoever you are, you're the best damn pilot that ever took to space."

"Really I'm not," said Meek. "I haven't done much piloting, you see. Up until just a while ago, I never had left Earth. Bookkeeper for Lunar Exports."

"Bookkeeper!" yelped the mechanic. "How come a bookkeeper can handle a ship like that?"

"I learned it," said Meek.

"You learned it?"

"Sure, from a book. I saved my money and I studied. I always wanted to see the Solar System and here I am."

Dazedly, the mechanic took off his greasy cap, laid it carefully on the desk, reached out for a spacesuit that hung from a wall hook.

"Afraid this job might take a while," he said. "Especially if we have to wait for parts. Have to get them in from Titan City. Why don't you go over to the _Inn_. Tell Moe I sent you. They'll treat you right."

"Thank you," said Meek, "but there's something else I'm wondering about. There was another sign out there. Something about educated bugs."

"Oh, them," said the mechanic. "They belong to Gus Hamilton. Maybe belong ain't the right word because they were on the rock before Gus took over. Anyhow, Gus is mighty proud of them, although at times they sure run him ragged. First year they almost drove him loopy trying to figure out what kind of game they were playing."

"Game?" asked Meek, wondering if he was being hoaxed.

"Sure, game. Like checkers. Only it ain't. Not chess, neither. Even worse than that. Bugs dig themselves a batch of holes, then choose up sides and play for hours. About the time Gus would think he had it figured out, they'd change the rules and throw him off again."

"That doesn't make sense," protested Meek.

"Stranger," declared the mechanic, solemnly, "there ain't nothing about them bugs that make sense. Gus' rock is the only one they're on. Gus thinks maybe the rock don't even belong to the Solar system. Thinks maybe it's a hunk of stone from some other solar system. Figures maybe it crossed space somehow and was captured by Saturn, sucked into the Ring. That would explain why it's the only one that has the bugs. They come along with it, see."

"This Gus Hamilton," said Meek. "I'd like to see him. Where could I find him?"

"Go over to the _Inn_ and wait around," advised the mechanic. "He'll come in sooner or later. Drops around regular, except when his rheumatism bothers him, to pick up a bundle of papers. Subscribes to a daily paper, he does. Only man out here that does any reading. But all he reads is the sports section. Nuts about sports, Gus is."

II

Moe, bartender at Saturn Inn, leaned his elbow on the bar and braced his chin in an outspread palm. His face wore a melancholy, hang-dog look. Moe liked things fairly peaceable, but now he saw trouble coming in big batches.

"Lady," he declared mournfully, "you sure picked yourself a job. The boys around here don't take to being uplifted and improved. They ain't worth it, either. Just ring-rats, that's all they are."

Henrietta Perkins, representative for the public health and welfare department of the Solar government, shuddered at his suggestion of anything so low it didn't yearn for betterment.

"But those terrible feuds," she protested. "Fighting just because they live in different parts of the Ring. It's natural they might feel some rivalry, but all this killing! Surely they don't enjoy getting killed."

"Sure they enjoy it," declared Moe. "Not being killed, maybe ... although they're willing to take a chance on that. Not many of them get killed, in fact. Just a few that get sort of careless. But even if some of them are killed, you can't go messing around with that feud of theirs. If them boys out in sectors Twenty-Three and Thirty-Seven didn't have their feud they'd plain die of boredom. They just got to have somebody to fight with. They been fighting, off and on, for years."

"But they could fight with something besides guns," said the welfare lady, a-smirk with righteousness. "That's why I'm here. To try to get them to turn their natural feelings of rivalry into less deadly and disturbing channels. Direct their energies into other activities."

"Like what?" asked Moe, fearing the worst.

"Athletic events," said Miss Perkins.

"Tin shinny, maybe," suggested Moe, trying to be sarcastic.

She missed the sarcasm. "Or spelling contests," she said.

"Them fellow can't spell," insisted Moe.

"Games of some sort, then. Competitive games."

"Now you're talking," Moe enthused. "They take to games. Seven-toed Pete with the deuces wild."

The inner door of the entrance lock grated open and a spacesuited figure limped into the room. The spacesuit visor snapped up and a brush of grey whiskers spouted into view.

It was Gus Hamilton.

He glared at Moe. "What in tarnation is all this foolishness?" he demanded. "Got your message, I did, and here I am. But it better be important."

He hobbled to the bar. Moe reached for a bottle and shoved it toward him, keeping out of reach.

"Have some trouble?" he asked, trying to be casual.

"Trouble! Hell, yes!" blustered Gus. "But I ain't the only one that's going to have trouble. Somebody sneaked over and stole the injector out of my space crate. Had to borrow Hank's to get over here. But I know who it was. There ain't but one other ring-rat got a rocket my injector will fit."

"Bud Craney," said Moe. It was no secret. Every man in the two sectors of the Ring knew just exactly what kind of spacecraft the other had.

"That's right," said Gus, "and I'm fixing to go over into Thirty-seven and yank Bud up by the roots."

He took a jolt of liquor. "Yes, sir, I sure aim to crucify him."

His eyes lighted on Miss Henrietta Perkins.

"Visitor?" he asked.

"She's from the government," said Moe.

"Revenuer?"

"Nope. From the welfare outfit. Aims to help you fellows out. Says there ain't no sense in you boys in Twenty-three all the time fighting with the gang from Thirty-seven."

Gus stared in disbelief.

Moe tried to be helpful. "She wants you to play games."

Gus strangled on his drink, clawed for air, wiped his eyes.

"So that's why you asked me over here. Another of your danged peace parleys. Come and talk things over, you said. So I came."

"There's something in what she says," defended Moe. "You ring-rats been ripping up space for a long time now. Time you growed up and settled down. You're aiming on going over right now and pulverizing Bud. It won't do you any good."

"I'll get a heap of satisfaction out of it," insisted Gus. "And, besides, I'll get my injector back. Might even take a few things off Bud's ship. Some of the parts on mine are wearing kind of thin."

Gus took another drink, glowering at Miss Perkins.

"So the government sent you out to make us respectable," he said.

"Merely to help you, Mr. Hamilton," she declared. "To turn your hatreds into healthy competition."

"Games, eh?" said Gus. "Maybe you got something, after all. Maybe we could fix up some kind of game...."

"Forget it, Gus," warned Moe. "If you're thinking of energy guns at fifty paces, it's out. Miss Perkins won't stand for anything like that."

* * * * *

Gus wiped his whiskers and looked hurt. "Nothing of the sort," he denied. "Dang it, you must think I ain't got no sportsmanship at all. I was thinking of a real sport. A game they play back on Earth and Mars. Read about it in my papers. Follow the teams, I do. Always wanted to see a game, but never did."

Miss Perkins beamed. "What game is it, Mr. Hamilton?"

"Space polo," said Gus.

"Why, how wonderful," simpered Miss Perkins. "And you boys have the spaceships to play it with."

Moe looked alarmed. "Miss Perkins," he warned, "don't let him talk you into it."

"You shut your trap," snapped Gus. "She wants us to play games, don't she. Well, polo is a game. A nice, respectable game. Played in the best society."

"It wouldn't be no nice, respectable game the way you fellows would play it," predicted Moe. "It would turn into mass murder. Wouldn't be one of you who wouldn't be planning on getting even with someone else, once you got him in the open."

Miss Perkins gasped. "Why, I'm sure they wouldn't!"

"Of course we wouldn't," declared Gus, solemn as an owl.

"And that ain't all," said Moe, warming to the subject. "Those crates you guys got wouldn't last out the first chukker. Most of them would just naturally fall apart the first sharp turn they made. You can't play polo in ships tied up with haywire. Those broomsticks you ring-rats ride around on are so used to second rate fuel they'd split wide open first squirt of high test stuff you gave them."

The inner locks grated open and a man stepped through into the room.

"You're prejudiced," Gus told Moe. "You just don't like space polo, that is all. You ain't got no blueblood in you. We'll leave it up to this man here. We'll ask his opinion of it."

The man flipped back his helmet, revealing a head thatched by white hair and dominated by a pair of outsize spectacles.

"My opinion, sir," said Oliver Meek, "seldom amounts to much."

"All we want to know," Gus told him, "is what you think of space polo."

"Space polo," declared Meek, "is a noble game. It requires expert piloting, a fine sense of timing and...."

"There, you see!" whooped Gus, triumphantly.

"I saw a game once," Meek volunteered.

"Swell," bellowed Gus. "We'll have you coach our team."

"But," protested Meek, "but ... but."

"Oh, Mr. Hamilton," exulted Miss Perkins, "you are so wonderful. You think of everything."

"Hamilton!" squeaked Meek.

"Sure," said Gus. "Old Gus Hamilton. Grow the finest dog-gone radiation moss you ever clapped your eyes on."

"Then you're the gentleman who has bugs," said Meek.

"Now, look here," warned Gus, "you watch what you say or I'll hang one on you."

"He means your rock bugs," Moe explained, hastily.

"Oh, them," said Gus.

"Yes," said Meek, "I'm interested in them. I'd like to see them."

"See them," said Gus. "Mister, you can have them if you want them. Drove me out of house and home, they did. They're dippy over metal. Any kind of metal, but alloys especially. Eat the stuff. They'll tromp you to death heading for a spaceship. Got so I had to move over to another rock to live. Tried to fight it out with them, but they whipped me pure and simple. Moved out and let them have the place after they started to eat my shack right out from underneath my feet."

Meek looked crestfallen.

"Can't get near them, then," he said.

"Sure you can," said Gus. "Why not?"

"Well, a spacesuit's metal and...."

"Got that all fixed up," said Gus. "You come back with me and I'll let you have a pair of stilts."

"Stilts?"

"Yeah. Wooden stilts. Them danged fool bugs don't know what wood is. Seem to be scared of it, sort of. You can walk right among them if you want to, long as you're walking on the stilts."

Meek gulped. He could imagine what stilt walking would be like in a place where gravity was no more than the faintest whisper.

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 the 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.