He paused and regarded Travis with woeful sympathy.
“With us, luckily, it was all right. The Mapping Command just happened to hit here on a good day. But you? Trav, old buddy, for once you came just too damn fast—”
“Oh my God,” Travis breathed. “We landed on a bad day.”
“Bad?” Horton sighed. “Man, it’s terrible.”
*
“You see,” Horton said as they drove into the town, “not a soul on the streets. This is not only a bad day, this is one for the books. To-morrow, you see, there is an eclipse. And to these people there is nothing more frightening than an eclipse. During the entire week preceding one they won’t do a darn thing. No business, no weddings, no anything. The height of it will be reached about tomorrow noon. Their moon—which is a tiny little thing not much bigger than our first space station—is called Felda. It is very important in their astrology. And for all practical purposes the eclipse is already in force. I knew you were riding in down the base so I checked it out. It not only applies to you, other things cinch it.”
He pulled a coarse sheet of paper from his pocket and read from it in a wishful voice: “With Huck, planet of necessity, transiting the 12th house of endings and things hidden, squaring Bonken, planet of gain, in the ninth house of travellers and distant places, it is unquestionable that the visit of these—uh—persons bodes ill for Mert. If further proof is needed, one need only examine the position of Diomed, which is conjunct Huck, and closely square to Lyndal, in the third house of commerce, etc, etc. You see what I mean? On top of this yet an eclipse. Trav, you haven’t got a prayer. If only you hadn’t been so close. Two days from now would have been great. Once the eclipse ends—”
“Well, listen,” Travis said desperately, “couldn’t we just see the guy?”
“Take my advice. Don’t. He has expressed alarm at the thought that you might come near him. Also his guards are armed with blunderbusses. They may be a riot to look at, but those boys can shoot, believe me. Give you a contract? Trav, he wouldn’t give you a broom to sweep out his cellar.”
At that moment they drew up before an enormous marble building vaguely reminiscent of a Theban palace. It turned out to be the local hotel. Horton stopped on the threshold and handed them two of the tiny Langkits, the little black memory banks in which the language of Mert had been transcribed for their use by the Mapping Command. Travis slipped his automatically into position behind his ear, but he felt no need to know the language. This one was going to be tough. He glanced at Dahlinger. The kid was wearing a stunned expression, too dulled even to notice the pantalooned customer—first Merts they’d seen—eyeing them fearfully from behind pillars as they passed.
Smell that gold, Travis remembered wistfully. Then, smell those generators. Oh, he thought sinkingly, smell those generators. They went silently on up to the room.
Travis stopped at the door as a thought struck him.
“Listen,” he said cautiously, taking Horton by the arm, “haven’t you thought of this? Why don’t we just take off and start all over, orbit around for a couple of days, pick a good hour, and then come back down. That way we’ll be starting all—”
But Horton was gazing at him reproachfully.
“They have a word for that, Trav,” he said ominously, “they call it vetching. Worst crime a man can commit. Attempt to evade his stars. Equivalent almost to falsifying a horoscope. No siree, boy, for that they burn you very slowly. The first horoscope stands. All your subsequent actions, according to them, date from the original. You’ll just be bearing out the first diagnosis. You’ll be a vetcher.”
“Um,” Travis said. “If they feel that way, why the heck do they even let us stay?”
“Shows you the way the system works. This is a bad day for everything. Coming as well as going. They’d never think of asking you to start a trip on a day like this. No matter who you are.”
Travis collapsed into an old, vaguely Chippendale chair. His position was not that of a man sitting, it was that of a man dropped from a great height.
“Well,” Horton said. “So it goes. And listen, Trav, there was nothing I could do.”
“Sure, Hort.”
“I just want you to know I’m sorry. I know they’ve been kickin’ you around lately, and don’t think I don’t feel I owe you something. After all, if you hadn’t—”
“Easy,” Travis said, glancing at Dahlinger. But the kid’s ears perked.
“Well,” Horton murmured, “just so’s you know. Anyways I still got faith in you. And Unico will be in the same boat. If they get here tonight. So think about it. Let me see the old Pat Travis. Your luck has to change sometime.”
He clenched a fist, then left.
Travis sat for a long while in the chair. Dahlinger muttered something very bitter about luck. Travis thought of telling him that it was not luck that had put them so close to Mert, but a very grim and expensive liaison with a ferociously ugly Mapping Command secretary at Aldebaran. She had told him that there was a ship in this area. But this news was not for Dahlinger’s ears. And neither did he think it wise to explain to Dahlinger the thing he had done for Horton some years ago. Young Dolly was not yet ripe. Travis sighed and looked around for a bed. To his amusement he noted a four poster in the adjoining room. He went in and lay down.
Gradually the dullness began to wear off. There was a resiliency in Travis unequalled, some said, by spring steel. He began to ponder ways and means.
There was always a way. There had to be a way. Somewhere in the customs of this planet there was a key—but he did not have the time. Unico would be in tonight, others would be down before the week was out. And the one to land in two days, on the good day, would get the contract.
He twisted on the bed. Luck, luck, the hell with luck. If you were born with sense you were lucky and if a meteor fell on you, you were unlucky, but most of the rest of it was even from there on out. So if the legend was to continue . . . .
He became gradually aware of the clock in the ceiling.
In the ceiling?
He stared at it. The symbols and the time meant nothing, but the clock was embedded flat in the ceiling above the bed, facing directly down.
He pondered that for a moment. Then he exploded with laughter. By jing, of course. They would have to know what time the baby was conceived. So all over Mert, in thousands of homes, there were clocks in the bedrooms, clocks in the ceilings, and wives peering anxiously upward murmured sweetly in their husbands’ ears: 4:17, darling, 4:17 and a half . . . .
The roar of his mirth brought Dolly floundering in from the other room. Travis sprang from the bed.
“Listen, son,” he bellowed, “luck be damned! You get back to the ship. Get Mapping Command to let you look at its files, find out everything you can about Mert. There’s a key somewhere, boy, there’s an out in there someplace, if we look hard enough. Luck! Hah! Work, boy, work, there’s a key!”
He shooed Dahlinger out of the room. The young man left dazedly, but he had caught some of Travis’ enthusiasm. Travis turned back to the bed feeling unreasonably optimistic. No way out, eh? Well by jingo, old Pat Travis would ride again, he could feel it in his bones.
A few moments later he had another feeling in his bones. This one was much less delightful. He was pacing past a heavy drapery when something very hard and moving very fast struck him on the head.
*
The first thing Travis saw when he