Gunnison's Bonanza

"That's damned expensive," Gunnison said.

The pilot grinned. "A man wanting to be set down by the Ghanati should expect to pay high." The pilot had a battered old ship, a forged license, a questionable bill of sale. He trafficked only in desperate trips for desperate people and he knew Gunnison would pay the price.

Scowling, Gunnison counted out the highbinding tribute from a leather sack containing the coins of all the planets. Terran gold eagles, Venusian phalada, Mercurian scoz.

The pilot inspected each coin, bagged the total, "When can you have your gear aboard?"

"In twenty minutes."

"We'll leave at sunfall," the pilot said. "Before the moons lift."

Gunnison stowed his equipment. He checked his dehydrates and chemical nutrients carefully. They would constitute his sole food supply for six months. He also inspected the other vital units of his equipment.

Then he went to the port restaurant and stowed away a meal of vast proportions. He ate with gusto, with grim pleasure, savoring the food, making the meal a sort of farewell symbol; a farewell to his eternally evil luck.

He drank heavily, but when he left the restaurant and went back to the ship he walked erect and his hands were rock-steady. Gunnison had one requirement of a true adventurer. He could hold his liquor.

But in another need of the soldier of fortune, he was sadly lacking. He was not a man of good luck. All his life he had pursued wealth across the System and beyond without a single smile from fortune's gods.

Gunnison had certainly done his part. He was shrewd, daring, ruthless, if the need arose. He was clever and tireless, ever seeking out coups and strikes. But his coups never quite came off. And someone always beat him to the strikes. Once on Pluto he arrived at a diamond field well in advance of the pack but the Johnny-come-latelies walked away with fortunes while Gunnison grubbed doggedly on his barren claim.

So now he had spent his years and had but a handful of time left for a last try. A shot at the Ghanati, and no try could have been more desperate than this because failure meant death under the new laws.

Gunnison waited at the ship. The pilot arrived, wiping the last of an evening meal off his mouth with the back of his hand. The pilot grinned.

"Still set on going?"

Gunnison smiled coldly. "If I've changed my mind can I get my money back?"

The pilot returned the grin. "I'm afraid I've already spent it."

Gunnison turned without comment and entered the ship.

They lifted from twilight into the bright sun-flare and Gunnison looked down into the shadows that lay across the dead face of Mars. He saw the canals and creeks meandering over the old sea bottoms like traceries on fine lace. He saw the city, half modern, the rest incredibly ancient; a weird mixture of the old and the new. Then the city and the sea bottom vanished in a haze as the ship reached up toward the apex of its arc. Gunnison remained by the port. The next thing he would see would be the borders of the dread Ghanati.

Sullen resentment welled up in Gunnison. He had read his history and he knew how things had changed. In the old days back on Terra, men were given freedom to seek and find. Why, once they opened half a planet—a whole hemisphere to those with the courage to move in and take it! Men and women and even children in shoddy old wagons pushed across the prairies of his own Mid-America. No fat bureaucrats called the dance in those fine days.

But now the scheme of things was gall in Gunnison's mouth. New laws promulgated under the Interplanetary Charter said only the government men moved in on new territories; so-called specialists with weapons and armor who put one timid foot in front of another until the area was declared safe and open to colonization. And who also—Gunnison bitterly knew—skimmed off the loose loot for themselves.

The situation was an excuse for any thinking man's indignation. Why, even at the moment there were five sections of the red planet awaiting investigation by the interplanetary government; five lush opportunities wrapped so tight in governmental red tape that years would pass before steps were taken.

And men—fearless adventurers like Gunnison—would be executed for trespassing on these forbidden grounds. Gunnison spat in disgust. Then, as the ship tilted downward for the last leg of the jump, he thought of the Ghanati. His eyes narrowed and he was as close to fear as men like Gunnison ever came.

The Ghanati. Probably the only area on Mars where the government's restrictions were really justified. How much was fact and how much was rumor, no one could say, but the Ghanati—tortuous cragland—was inhabited by a race of ugly throwbacks from which viciousness and ferocity could certainly be expected. A retiring people, they had stood unmolested for a thousand years and had never moved beyond their own boundaries.

A bleak, forbidding land, the Ghanati, wrapped in a silence long considered deadly. But a land rumored to be bursting with unmined gold.

The pilot set his ship down expertly in a hundred-yard square of level land surrounded by angry rock. Off to the north, the crags greatened and roughened, marking the boundary of the mysterious stronghold of monsters.

The pilot helped Gunnison unload his gear and spoke with a mixture of amusement and admiration. "How did you know about this spot?" When Gunnison didn't answer, he went on. "But it's the only setdown on the whole border where you could get past the patrols."

Gunnison was packed and ready. He strapped on his antigrav belt and spoke amiably. "I'll be here this day and time six months from now." The pilot smiled. Gunnison smiled back, adding, "And you'd better be here, because if you don't show, the universe won't be big enough for you to hide in."

The pilot appeared to be calculating the odds as Gunnison turned and moved away in long, clumsy steps.

Soon the going got worse. The crags and razor-sharp rocks reared higher to form a scowling protectorate around—around what? Gunnison wondered. He kept his hand gun ready at all times but no living thing did he see.

The going would have been impossible without the antigrav belt but the unit was a problem in itself. Set to lift him clear, it would have dangled him helpless and kicking in space. Set at half power it forced him to move warily lest it tip him off balance and swing him into the knife-crags by his own momentum.

The day progressed. Gunnison labored grimly forward watching for signs of surface veins. But these were not the formations where nature hid the yellow metal. Gunnison drank sparingly on chance that his finding water would be delayed. He refreshed himself with oxygen at intervals and pressed on.

Until, late in the day, he made the find.

The barrier lands had given him their worst and then tilted gently downward with crag-points and edges less sharp. He made better progress and soon the geological substances and formations changed. Gunnison's face grew less grim. He pushed on, bone weary. To come to the place of a rushing rivulet, of shaggy bush growth. Of gold.

He smiled as he shucked off his pack, enjoying even, the feeling of exhaustion. He'd made it! He had arrived for a last joust with fortune and the arena was all to his favor. He could not miss. The last little handful of time would pay off.

After taking nourishment he selected a rocky pocket overhung and buttressed on three sides and stowed his gear. As the sun lowered, he lifted himself to the highest knoll and looked over what country he could see. It was monotonously similar to the area on which he stood. Rough, basically level country rising very gently to a ridge in the distance. Beyond, there was probably a drop-off.

Gunnison returned to his pocket and settled in for the night. Perhaps this section was inhabited, although he doubted it. He checked his hand gun and closed his eyes for a night of hair-trigger sleep.

He awoke at dawn, unmolested and refreshed. He fed on dehydrates and drank deeply of the water and soon the sun poked its way up over the forbidden land. He took up his pan and rushed to a likely looking spot on the creek.

It was there—glittering yellow in the gray sand. Gunnison, oblivious of his surroundings, went to his knees and began panning. The results were good. With a set smile on his face, he worked another panful. After an hour he became conscious of the pain in his knees. He began to straighten slowly. He was halfway up when he heard the whistling sound.

He jerked around, clawing up the gun in the safe motion and faced the direction of the whistle just in time to hurl himself from the path of a whizzing missile. The whistle became a shrill screech as the object hurtled past.

Gunnison rolled over and studied the thing as it arced upward. His muscles loosened in relief.

A bird. A black vicious-beaked hawk of some sort. Its size was about that of Gunnison's two fists and its angry shrilling told of indignation against the two-legged intruder.

As Gunnison watched it keeled over in midair and went into another power dive. Its courage far outweighed its size as it rocketed down again—straight at his head. It came in screaming and Gunnison swiped at it sharply with his pan. He hit one outstretched wing and the scream of pain was more grating than the previous whistle of rage.

The bird caromed off drunkenly and missed the ground by inches. Gunnison watched as it limped frantically back up the air current and disappeared over a low ridge. Then he went back to his work.

He stopped for neither food nor drink. Only when the sun left did he give up his panning and return to camp. Weary and stiff, he munched his dehydrates moodily, his exhaustion dimming the earlier elation and allowing him to consider things in true perspective. And force him to admit with some bitterness that again the gods of fortune had withheld the munificence his courage and privations merited.

Not that he had made no strike. He had sought gold and had found it but not as gold had been found by others—in chunks and nuggets. Not the luck he felt he was entitled to for the effort expended and the danger involved. His gold lay in sand to be taken gradually in ounces of dust and in direct ratio to further effort over the days ahead.

Thus Gunnison faced a decision. Panned out to the end, this strike would, in six months, give him enough to live comfortably for the rest of his life. He would acquire but a fraction of what he could carry but it would be immeasurably better than complete failure.

So—would he work out the time here—sure of the modest payoff—or gamble his time in hunting a really big strike? He weighed the problem at length and decided on the sure thing. Take what fate grudgingly offered because as sure as destiny, the big take would be withheld in the end. There was no reason to believe that good luck—a stranger during all his years—would smile at this late hour. Having made his decision, he went to sleep, not even bothering to check his gun.

He arose the next day and worked again, doggedly piling up the yellow dust. Early in the day the birds—a pair this time—came to repeat the previous day's attack. They swept down viciously and Gunnison fended them off and chased them away with equally vicious swipes of his pan. When they flew off, he went feverishly back to work.

And at high noon the natives came.

From whence, Gunnison did not know so intent was he upon his gray sand. A shadow tilted across his pan, he whirled, and there they were.

His first reaction was a curse because his gun lay twenty feet away. He crouched where he was, staring. They stood by the rushing water, staring back. Two long minutes passed.

Time enough for Gunnison to feel revulsion at the hideousness of the creatures. They were three in number and he got the impression two were males and one a female although their appearance gave little indication either way.

They were bipeds towering some seven feet into the thin Martian atmosphere. Their bodies were misshapen from any standard Gunnison was familiar with. Legs far too long for their incredibly wide torsos. They wore a combination of natural hair and badly tanned leather skirts and it was hard to tell where one left off and the other began. Their arms were like snapped-off tree trunks—at complete variance with other physical proportions. Their faces were probably the most disgusting aspect of all. Only the beginnings of faces really with mouths, noses, and eye sockets mere holes punched into the flattened sides of round heads.

Even as he crouched there with only the hope of a quick death, Gunnison could not help marveling. What manner of pitiful throwbacks were these. Monsters spawned by the century-old atomic bombardment that smashed the last of the Martian resistance? Caricatures created by nature in a vindictive mood?

The natives stared. Gunnison stared back. And began breathing again as moments passed and the frightful trio did not rush in to annihilate him or take him for torture.

Then his fears were overshadowed by interest in these strange people. The three faces had been plastered with identical grimaces of amazing hideousness. Gunnison had interpreted it as an expression of cunning and cruelty. Now he changed his mind. Coupled with the embarrassed twistings and posturings of the ungainly bodies, the expressions dawned on Gunnison in truth.

The natives were grinning. Also, they were glancing continuously into the sky and Gunnison knew they were fearful. But fearful of what? Had they experienced the arrival of alien ships at one time or another? He did not think so.

Now the one he had tentatively classified as female went to her knees and brought a hand from behind her back. The hand held forth a dish of colorless material that Gunnison thought to be food. The creature went prone and pushed the dish forward on the ground in a veritable agony of shy embarrassment.

Without thinking, Gunnison extended his own hand and laid it on the hideous head. The result was amazing. The monster increased her senseless writhings twofold and a shade of attractive lavender diffused her face.

She was blushing. Gunnison thought: They're entirely harmless, these creatures. More than that, they're a people shy to the point of pain. Good lord, what a switch!

Now the two males went suddenly crazy with fear. They looked into the sky and went into gibbering gymnastics as they sought to prevail on Gunnison without touching him. Obviously they wanted him to leave this terrible place. Why?

Evidently because of the black bird that circled over head. Gunnison looked up. The natives babbled inarticulate entreaty as they gestured toward Gunnison's camp. Then, as the bird gave forth an angry whistle and went into its dive, they broke and bolted madly for the nearby crags.

Gunnison, his eye on the bird, did not see where they went. The bird arced down and Gunnison clipped it square on the beak, with his pan. The bird did a somersault, gained its wings, and headed drunkenly for the ridge, screaming in rage.

Gunnison turned his eyes on the crags. The natives were nowhere in sight. He pondered the situation for a few moments and then went back to work. The natives, he told himself with great satisfaction, were not a menace.

The passing days not only strengthened this belief but augmented it. They were not merely harmless. Their eagerness to be helpful was almost pathetic. They came regularly to sit and watch Gunnison at his labors. At times as many as two dozen crowded about to regard him with obvious awe.

Gunnison's identification of male and female was strengthened when two of the men hauled a woman to the edge of his camp and threw her forward almost into his gear pile. The woman seemed overcome both by fear and honor at the same time. The effect was ludicrous and Gunnison risked displeasure by signifying definitely that he did not want a mate. They took no offense. The female walked away sadly, her ugly head hanging.

Gunnison's camp became a depository for weird and useless gifts. These consisted of old bones, scraps of hide, various evil-smelling concoctions of food. Animal teeth strung in necklaces and laid proudly at his feet.

Gunnison was careful to show no annoyance at this expanding pile of debris. Not that he feared antagonizing them. He was convinced this could not be done. But out of compassion because they were so childlike, so innocent of evil save in their appearance.

He tried to turn them to his advantage. He spent a whole morning attempting to teach one of the males to use a pan. The results were nil. The creature was incapable of understanding the difference between the gray sand and the yellow dust. To him, both were equally useless—or equally valuable. The only result was the native's despondency at being unable to please Gunnison.

But Gunnison was philosophical about it. Even if he had channeled the native to his purpose the monster would have been of little help because at sight of the black birds all of them always ran screaming into the rocks to stay hidden for hours.

So Gunnison was philosophical. But also bitter, because even so extraordinary a situation as this still brought him no profit. He had a tribe of abject slaves at his command. Child-men willing to give him anything they owned even to the hair off their own hides. But what did they own? Nothing but old bones and teeth and nauseating concoctions they used for food.

Gunnison had explored the area roundabout and had discovered what was probably the ruins of an ancient city. If so, the place flourished before the dawn of history because the buildings were only vague heaps of rubble. The natives lived in these and, Gunnison suspected, in caves among the rocks.

Evidently this race was older than he had first suspected. They squatted here on the ruins of some long-dead civilization. Perhaps their ancestors conquered the city's founders and these pitiful creatures were the last remnants of a retrograding race.

So Gunnison cursed them in his wearier moments and patronized them the rest of the time. They in turn drooped visibly at the sharpness in his voice and wriggled in dog-like delight at his kind words. Obviously yearning to do something for him—to serve this new master. As the months went by he began thinking of them as the people who feared birds and pretty much ignored them. He panned tirelessly, increasing his horde, counting the days and weeks and months.

And as the fifth month passed, his dust pile was small for the bitter work expended but a larger stake than he had ever before acquired. It would keep him in comfort if not in luxury.

During the first week of the sixth month he learned painfully that the native's fear of the birds had some foundation. The birds had never ceased their attacks and he had learned to fend them off pretty much as a man swats flies. But upon this morning his attention was riveted to a particularly large reward of yellow dust from his last panning and one of the black raiders got through. It drove its bill into his neck with a squawk of triumph and got up and away before his swinging fist could smash it down.

He slapped his hand over the puncture and swore at the bird. Damned nuisances! He looked at his hand and saw blood.

He forgot the incident for ten minutes. Then a dull ache brought his hand again to his neck. He found a lump the size of an egg. First, he was merely annoyed, then mildly frightened as the dull ache turned into a sharp pain.

There were some drugs among his gear. He put down his pan and moved toward camp. Perhaps the wound should be lanced and disinfected. He had taken but ten steps when the lump seemed to bulge under his fingers. The sharp pain shot downward through his neck and into his shoulders.

Another step and agony such as he had never known took possession of his body. He tried to scream but his throat was paralyzed. A condition past all panic seized his mind as the agony became too great to bear.

In those last few seconds he lost his mind, asking for death with his last conscious thought.

And within fifteen minutes of the bird's attack, Gunnison lay dead in the bleak fastnesses of the Ghanati.

The natives found him and went into protestations of violent grief. They groveled and demonstrated their adoration by rubbing their faces brutally upon the ground.

But like the children they were, they soon became joyful in the knowledge that they could serve Gunnison in death far better than in life.

They lifted his body and formed a procession as they bore it to the center of their ruined city. Once there, they went deep into one of the caves and brought forth those things their heritage taught them were valuable only to the dead. Things they and their ancestors and the great race that preceded them gave only to the dead.

A casket requiring ten carriers for the lifting. A burial robe for the corpse. Casks and urns and numerous articles to be used by Gunnison in the next world.

They buried him reverently as it was given them to understand reverence. There was singing, dancing, and much joy.

So Gunnison came thus to his end. A grave deep in the Ghanati and there is nothing of importance left to tell. Nothing of importance, but one note of possible interest.

The casket and the robe and all the farewell gifts were exquisitely fashioned.

From purest gold.