AMATEUR IN CHANCERY
By GEORGE O. SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The creature from Venus didn't know right from
left—and life and death hung in the balance!
Paul Wallach came into my office. He looked distraught. By some trickof selection, Paul Wallach, the director of Project Tunnel, was oneof the two men in the place who did not have a string of doctor's andscholar's degrees to tack behind their names. The other was I.
"Trouble, Paul?" I asked.
He nodded, saying, "The tunnel car is working."
"It should. It's been tested enough."
"Holly Carter drew the short straw."
"Er—" I started and then stopped short as the implication becameclear. "She's—she's—not—?"
"Holly made it to Venus all right," he said. "Trouble is we can't gether back."
"Can't get her back?"
He nodded again. "You know, we've never really known very much aboutthe atmosphere of Venus."
"Yes."
"Well, from what little came through just before Holly blacked out, itseems that there must be one of the cyanogens in the atmosphere in aconcentration high enough to effect nervous paralysis."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning," said Paul Wallach in a flat tone, "that Holly Carter stoppedbreathing shortly after she cracked the airlock. And her heart stoppedbeating a minute or so later."
"Holly—dead?"
"Not yet, Tom," he said. "If we can get her back in the next fifteen ortwenty minutes, modern medicine can bring her back."
"But there'll be brain damage!"
"Oh, there may be some temporary impairment. Nothing that retrainingcan't restore. The big problem is to bring her back."
"We should have built two tunnel cars."
"We should have done all sorts of things. But when the terminal rocketlanded on Venus, everybody in the place was too anxious to try it out.Lord knows, I tried to proceed at a less headlong pace. But issuingorders to you people is a waste of time and paper."
I looked at him. "Doc," I asked, giving him the honorary title out ofhabit, "Venus is umpty-million miles from here. We haven't anothertunnel car, and no rocket could make it in time to do any good. So howcan we hope to rescue Holly?"
"That's the point," said Wallach. "Venus, it appears, is inhabited."
"Oh?"
"That's what got Holly caught in the first place. She landed, then sawthis creature approaching. Believing that no life could exist in anatmosphere dangerous to life, she opened the airlock and discoveredotherwise."
"So?"
"So now all we have to do is to devise some way of explaining to aVenusian the difference between left and right. I thought you mighthelp."
"But I'm just a computer programmer."
"That's the point. We all figured that you have developed a form ofcommunication to that machine of yours. The rest of the crew, as youknow, have a bit of difficulty in communicating among themselves intheir own jargon, let alone getting through to normal civilians. Whenit comes to a Venusian, they're licked."
I said, "I'll try."
Project Tunnel is the hardware phase of a program started a number ofyears ago when somebody took a joke serious