Crashlander

I've been in bigger homes than Elephant's. Much bigger. I grew up in one. But I've never seen a room that soothed the eye as Elephant's living room did. It was more than a living room; it was an optical illusion, the opposite of those jittering black-and-white images they show in lectures on how we see. These clinical children of op art give the illusion of motion, but Elephant's living room gave the illusion of stillness. A physicist would have loved the soundproofing. Some interior decorator had become famous for his work here, if he hadn't been famous already, in which case he had become rich. How could tall, thin Beowulf Shaeffer fit into a chair designed to the measure of short, wide Elephant? Yet I was bonelessly limp, blissfully relaxed, using only the muscles that held a double-walled glass of an odd-tasting, strangely refreshing soft drink called Tzlotz Beer.

A glass which would not empty. Somewhere in the crystal was a tiny transfer motor connected to the bar, but the bent light in the crystal hid it. Another optical illusion, and one that must have tricked good men into acute alcoholism. I'd have to watch that.

Elephant returned. He walked as if he massed tons, as if any kzinti foolish enough to stand in his path would have a short, wide hole in him. «All done,» he said. «Don Cramer'll find the nearest Outsider ship and make my pitch for me. We should hear in a couple of days.»

«Okay,» said I, and asked him about the cliff. It turned out that we were in the Rocky Mountains and that he owned every square inch of the nearly vertical cliff face. Why? I remembered Earth's eighteen billion and wondered if they'd otherwise have surrounded him up, down, and sideways.

Suddenly Elephant remembered that someone named Dianna must be home by now. I followed him into the transfer booth, watched him dial eleven digits, and waited in a much smaller vestibule while Elephant used the more conventional intercom. Dianna seemed dubious about letting him in until he roared that he had a guest and she should stop fooling around.

Dianna was a small, pretty woman with skin the deep, uniform red of a Martian sky and hair like flowing quicksilver. Her irises had the same polished-silver luster. She hadn't wanted to let us in because we were both wearing our own skins, but she never mentioned it again once we were inside.

Elephant introduced me to Dianna and instantly told her he'd acted to contact the Outsiders.

«What's an Outsider?» she asked.

Elephant gestured with both hands, looked confused, turned helplessly toward me.

«They're hard to describe,» I said. «Think of a cat-o'-nine-tails with a big thick handle.»

«They live on cold worlds,» said Elephant.

«Small, cold, airless worlds like Nereid. They pay rent to use Nereid as a base, don't they, Elephant? And they travel over most of the galaxy in big unpressurized ships with fusion drives and no hyperdrives.»

«They sell information. They can tell me about the world I want to find, the most unusual planet in known space.»

«They spend most of their time tracking starseeds.»

Dianna broke in. «Why?»

Elephant looked at me. I looked at Elephant.

«Say!» Elephant exclaimed. «Why don't we get a fourth for bridge?»

Dianna looked thoughtful. Then she focused her silver eyes on me, examined me from head to foot, and nodded gently to herself. «Sharrol Janss. I'll call her.»

While she was phoning, Elephant told me, «That's a good thought. Sharrol's got a tendency toward hero worship. She's a computer analyst at Donovan's Brains Inc. You'll like her.»

«Good,» I said, wondering if we were still talking about a bridge game. It struck me that I was building up a debt to Elephant. «Elephant, when you contact the Outsiders, I'd like to come along.»

«Oh? Why?»

«You'll need a pilot. And I've dealt with Outsiders before.»

«Okay, it's a deal.»

The intercom rang from the vestibule. Dianna went to the door and came back with our fourth for bridge. «Sharrol, you know Elephant. This is Beowulf Shaeffer, from We Made It. Bey, this is —»

«You!» I said.

«You!» she said.

It was the pickpocket.

* * *

My vacation lasted just four days.

I hadn't known how long it would last, though I did know how it would end. Consequently I threw myself into it body and soul. If there was a dull moment anywhere in those four days, I slept through it, and at that I didn't get enough sleep. Elephant seemed to feel the same way. He was living life to the hilt; he must have suspected, as I did, that the Outsiders would not consider danger a factor in choosing his planet. By their own ethics they were bound not to. The days of Elephant's life might be running short.

Buried in those four days were incidents that made me wonder why Elephant was looking for a weird world. Surely Earth was the weirdest of all.