I just loped along as fast as I could go.
I had to get to the bank before Doc had time to stop payment on that check for seven thousand dollars.
Hunger Death
Street & Smith Publications paid Clifford Simak $120 for “Hunger Death.” It appeared in the October 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The story continues several themes of the author’s earliest fiction, including a Mars inhabited by more than one race of intelligent beings, the Earthian newspaper known as the Evening Rocket, its editor, and its sports editor. But those veins were playing out. …
—dww
Old Doc Trowbridge was napping in his office, with his feet on the desk and an empty bocca bottle on the floor beside him. Angus MacDonald, New Chicago’s marshal, shook him gently. Doc opened one eye and stared at Angus in mild reproach.
“Radium City wants to talk to the health officer,” announced Angus. “I guess that’s you.”
Doc pulled his feet off the desk and slowly rose. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the marshal’s dripping raincoat.
“Still raining,” he remarked.
“Hell, it always rains on Venus,” said Angus.
Doc stretched his arms over his head and yawned.
“Better hurry along, Doc,” urged Angus. “Maybe some of the big doctors over at Radium City want to call you into consultation.”
Doc snorted. Once he might have been insulted by so thinly veiled sarcasm. But Doc now was past the possibility of being insulted. Ten years on Venus, a hand-to-mouth existence and rotten liquor had taken their toll.
Doc puffed into his raincoat and followed Angus down the rickety stairs. Rain beat at them as they stepped from the building and sloshed up the red mud slough that was the main street of New Chicago.
At the radio station on the edge of the landing field, the town’s only contact with the outside world, they were greeted by Angus’ son, Sandy.
“I’ll get Radium City for you,” said Sandy. “It sounded as if it might be important.”
“Nothing important ever happens in New Chicago,” Doc grumbled. “Nothing since old Jake Hansler died. And they blamed that on me.”
Sandy was speaking into the transmitter. “New Chicago calling Radium City. Answer please. New Chicago calling Radium City. Answer please.”
Out of the amplifier came the voice of the Radium City operator. “Radium City answering New Chicago. Have you located Dr. Trowbridge?”
“Just a second,” said Sandy.
He switched off the amplifier and handed Doc a set of headphones. Doc clamped them over his ears and lowered his rolypoly body into the operator’s chair. He hiccoughed slightly and spoke into the transmitter.
“This is Dr. Trowbridge,” he said.
“Dr. Trowbridge,” said the voice in Radium City, “my name is Tony Paulson. I am a reporter for the Inter-World Press Service. I’m just checking up on this new disease—the Hunger Disease. Have you any cases in New Chicago?”
“Hunger Disease,” snapped Doc. “What are you talking about? I never heard of such a disease.”
“This is something different,” said the voice. “A new disease. It has broken out all over Venus. Quite a few cases on Earth, too. Patient can’t seem to get enough to eat. That’s why we call it the Hunger Disease.”
“Never heard of it,” declared Doc.
“Are there any other doctors in New Chicago?” asked the reporter.
“No,” said Doc. “I’m the only one and they could get along without me. Practically starving me to death. Never saw a healthier place in all my life.”
“You’re sure there’s nobody sick in New Chicago,” persisted the newspaperman.
“Sure I’m sure,” protested Doc. “Last time anybody was sick here was when Steve Donagan’s kid, Susan, had the measles. And that was three months ago.”
“O.K.,” said the voice. “Thank you, doctor. Any other news out in New Chicago?”
“Not a damn thing ever happens here,” Doc declared.
“O.K.—good-by then, and thanks again.”
“Good-by,” said Doc, slipping the headphones from his ears.
He heaved himself to his feet.
“That’s what comes of being buried in a mud-hole like this,” he announced to Angus and Sandy. “Here I am, not knowing a thing about this new disease. Why, once I was regarded as an authority on diagnosis. That was before I came to New Chicago. Fellow in Radium City says there is a new disease breaking out there. Acute hunger is one symptom. He didn’t tell me anything more about it. Never heard anything like that before.”
He shook his head dolefully and headed for the door.
“Thanks for calling me,” he said and plunged out into the rain.
The marshal and his son saw him waddle rapidly down the street, heading for the Venus Flower saloon.
“He’ll tell the boys about this new disease,” said Angus, “and they’ll buy him drinks. Before night he’ll be a disgrace to humanity.”
Arthur Hart, editor of the Evening Rocket, tapped his finger against a paragraph in a news story appearing on the front page of the early afternoon edition.
“Something funny here,” he told Bob Jackson.
He shook his head. “Mighty funny,” he mused.
Bob Jackson said nothing. He scented trouble in the air. Whenever the chief took to shaking his head and muttering to himself it meant trouble for someone. Bob had the feeling he was the victim this time.
“Listen to this,” commanded Hart.
He read the paragraph: “The only community on Venus reporting no cases of the Hunger Disease is New Chicago. Dr. Anderson Trowbridge, health officer, told the Inter-World Press Service today there was no sickness of any sort in that city.”
“Healthy place,” said Bob, wondering if he was saying the right thing.
“Too damn healthy,” snapped Hart. “That’s what makes it funny. With this Hunger Disease rampant over the whole face of the planet, why does New Chicago escape? People dying like flies everywhere else and the folks in New Chicago not bothered a bit.”
Hart fixed the reporter with a steely glare.
“That’s where you come in,” he announced.
“Listen,” Bob bristled, “if you think you’re going to pack me off to some God-forsaken trading post on Venus to find out why nobody ever gets sick there, you better start looking for someone to take my place. I was on Venus once and I don’t like it. It gives me the creeps. Rains all the time. Never see the sun. Sticky-hot. Why, the rain is even lukewarm. And bugs—man, there’s millions of them. All shapes and all sizes. I hate the damn things.”
Hart laid down the paper, carefully smoothed it out on his desk.
“Now, Bob,” he said softly, “I’m asking you to do this because you are the one man I can depend on. If there’s anything to be found in New Chicago, you are the man to find it. And I think there is something to find. Something mighty important.
“Right now the Earth is faced by one of the gravest threats it has known in years. The Hunger Disease. You know what it is. Speeds up metabolism. Speeds it up to a point that a man must eat almost continuously to provide the body with fuel to keep going. And all the time the victim ages visibly. His skin wrinkles, his hair turns gray, his teeth fall out. In only a few days he lives the equivalent of years, and in a week or ten days he dies of what amounts to old age.”
Hart’s eyes narrowed and his voice was sharper now.
“Our medical authorities haven’t a single clue. They haven’t been able to isolate the germ or bacteria or whatever it is that causes the disease. They know it is contagious and that just about sums up their knowledge. They don’t know what causes it. They don’t know how to prevent it or cure it. So far, every single person who has contracted the disease has died—or is going to die.”
Hart fixed Jackso
n with a frigid stare.
“I am offering you a chance,” he said, “to do a great service to humanity. There must be some reason New Chicago has not been hit by the disease. If you could find this reason—Don’t you see, Bob, it’s a chance to save the Earth!”
“It’s a chance for the Evening Rocket to pull down a billion bucks of gilt-edge promotion,” snarled Bob. “Big headlines. Rocket Reporter Finds Cure for Hunger Disease.”
Hart sighed.
“There’s only one thing that appeals to your sordid soul,” he said. “There isn’t a fleck of human kindness in you. You have a heart of zero steel. How much does the Rocket have to pay you to get you to go out to Venus?”
Bob pondered.
“I hate that place, Hart,” he said. “I don’t like it at all. There’s too many bugs there. Too damn many bugs. Let’s say a bonus of—well—of about five thousand.”
“All right,” snarled Hart. “Now you get out of my sight before I lose control of myself. You get out to Venus just as soon as a space eater can get you there—and so help me Hannah, if you flunk out on this assignment I’ll put you on the obituary desk and what’s more, by the Lord Harry, I’ll see that you stay there.”
Outside the door, Bob gave himself a mental kicking.
“You damn fool,” he told himself, “you should have made it ten thousand. He’d have paid it just as quick.”
II
Zeke Brown sat disconsolately on the chopping block in front of his weather-beaten cabin and watched his neighbor, Luther Bidwell, come down the road.
Luther was a nondescript figure. Clad in blue denim overalls, he bore an unshaven and unwashed look. His ragged hat sagged over a shock of disordered hair, hanging halfway to his shoulders. His gait was a half slouch, half gallop, as if he might be in a hurry, but didn’t want anyone to think he was.
Zeke hailed him from a distance.
“Howdy, Luther.”
“Howdy, Zeke,” Luther called back.
Zeke waited, smoking his pipe, his eyes sweeping the pitiful failure and delusion of his Venusian farm. The fields covered by huge patches of polka-dot weeds, the encroaching jungle, the rusting machinery, the steaming pools of water drowning out the last of his stand of corn. From the jungle came the high-pitched chirping of the dingbats, insects which in their own proper time would come forth to devour whatever might be left in the fields.
Something rustled in a clump of polka-dot weeds near the wood pile and Zeke, turning swiftly, saw a pair of pointed ears and two gleaming eyes staring at him. With a swift motion he whipped out the gun which dangled from the belt at his hip. But before he could clear the weapon the evil face had disappeared.
“Dang you,” said Zeke without emphasis, “just stick your head out again. I’ll get you.”
But the skink was gone. Zeke grumbled and holstered his gun.
Turning his eyes back to the road, he watched Luther continue down the trail, raising little spurts of mud as his feet clopped on the ground. Luther turned in at the sagging gate and took a seat beside Zeke.
“Just saw you pull your gun,” he commented. “See something?”
“A skink,” said Zeke. “Dang things overrunning the place. Just about cleaned out the chickens. Just a few old hens left now.”
“They cleaned me out the other night,” Luther said. “Killed every hen on the place and then got into the hog pen. Tackled the hogs, I guess, but them porkers was too much for them. Must of been quite a herd of them at that, for they chawed some of them pigs up right handsome. The hogs killed a couple of them and I ain’t been able to go into that hog house since then. They sure carry a powerful scent, them fellers. Worse than the polecats back in Iowa. Hogs don’t mind, seems. They ate ‘em.”
“They give me the creeps,” said Zeke. “Almost like human beings running around on all four legs. Naked, not a single hair on them and meaner than poison. If you get them mad, they’ll go around stinking up a place just out of pure orneriness, like they was trying to get even. But I cleared quite a few of them out of this neck of the woods lately.”
He patted the gun at his side.
“But you know what I’d like best of all, Luther?” Zeke asked.
“Nope,” said Luther.
“I’d like to catch up with that slick land agent. I would sure burn his hide full of fancy holes. He’s the feller I’d really like to get in front of this gun. But he’s still back on Earth. He knew dang well that after he got us out here on Venus we couldn’t ever get back to Earth.
“Remember the things he told us? He talked slick as all get out when he came to our little place back in Iowa. Told us about all the advantages there were on Venus for a progressive farmer. He sure painted a pretty picture. He said there wasn’t no winter here and that a feller could grow four or five crops a year. He said there was always plenty of rainfall. He was plumb full of talk about the virgin soil of Venus, how it had never been plowed and was just waiting to grow bumper crops and make us all rich. And how there’d always be a big market for everything we grew because the farms were right on the edge of New Chicago. Remember how he told us New Chicago was going to be a big city and the folks there would be willing to pay high prices for the stuff we grew?”
“Sure I remember it,” said Luther. “He told me the same thing. So me and Ma talked it over and we decided to come out here. After all, we figured Venus had been colonized for over 300 years and was getting pretty civilized. Sounded pretty good to me, I admit. Matter of fact, soil was getting mighty puny back on Earth. Even good old Iowa soil. Just about all the good drained out of it and all cut up by ditches. You can’t farm the same land for over five thousand years without taking proper care of it and still expect the crops to grow the way they ought to.”
The skink stuck its head out of the clump of weeds beside the wood pile again and Zeke swore sulphurously as it disappeared before he could clear his gun.
“Dang you, I’ll get you yet,” he shouted, waving the gun. From the wood pile came the sneering chittering of the animal.
Zeke holstered his gun and stuffed his pipe with a fresh load of Venusian tobacco.
“But there was a lot of things that feller didn’t tell us, Luther,” he said. “He didn’t tell us that this planet was full of all sorts of wild animals and birds and that it had reptiles ten times as poisonous as rattlers. And that it had a billion different kinds of bugs, all ornery as hell. He said there was plenty of rainfall—but he didn’t tell us there was so much that it would drown out our crops. He didn’t say a dang thing about the dingbats that eat up every green thing in sight when the hunger comes on them and he plumb forgot to mention the elephant-lizards that can tramp down a field of corn quicker than you can blink your eye. He didn’t tell us it was so damp all our machinery would rust and not make even good scrap iron.”
Luther spat disgustedly and added his words to the indictment.
“And not a word did that slicker tell us of what kind of a city New Chicago was. He told us it was a growing city, which was stretching the truth a dang sight farther than the law allows. A stinking little trading post with just a few stores and saloons and a couple of hell-joints for the hunters and prospectors and traders who come to town once or twice a year. He said there’d be a market for our stuff. Of course, that doesn’t matter much, because we ain’t had nothing to sell. We been here five years and ain’t had a thing to sell all that time. We’re lucky if we have eating for ourselves.”
“Been eating on wild game and jungle fruit and greens ourselves for the past month,” said Zeke.
“We got a little flour and some sugar over at our house,” offered Luther. “Not much, but be glad to divvy up with you.”
Zeke shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You keep it. You got young ones and they need it. There’s just the old woman and me. We’ll get along. We been a pack of fools, Luther, a
nd I lay awake nights trying to figure out what to do about it. But there don’t seem no way. We couldn’t raise money enough among the whole fifty families of us to buy even one ticket back to Earth. If we could do that, one of us might go back and see if somebody couldn’t help us. But I guess we just been a bunch of suckers, that’s all.”
Luther sighed.
“Wish I was back in Iowa,” he said.
III
“Nope,” rumbled Doc, “I can’t tell you a thing about it. Don’t even know what this Hunger Disease is, except for what you told me just now. First I ever heard of it was when that newspaperman from Radium City called me up about it.”
Doc tilted a bottle of bocca and drank. He waved the bottle at Bob.
“Want a snort?” he invited.
Bob shook his head. “Too early in the morning to start drinking,” he explained.
“Listen,” said Doc, “any time of the day or night is the proper time to drink in New Chicago. Hell, drink is the only excitement we have around this dump. Only fun I ever had since I been here was when old Jake Hansler died. Interesting case. Something he caught on Mars. Bug bit him or something. Wish he had lived longer so I could have studied it better. People blamed me for him dying. Said I was drunk. Wouldn’t have made any difference, though, because it was a funny disease.”
He helped himself to another long one.
“Jake Hansler,” said Bob. “That name sounds familiar. I’ve heard it somewhere before.”
“Sure you have,” said Doc. “Dr. Jacob Hansler, the great botanist.”
“That’s it,” said Bob. “I remember that he died on Venus.”
“He came here to do some experimental work and to study some of our plant life,” Doc rumbled. “Queer old fellow. Folks here didn’t like him any too well, because he wouldn’t pay much attention to them. But he talked to me. Got to be good friends. He told me a lot about what he was doing, but I can’t remember much about it now. He brought a bunch of seeds here that he found on Mars. Found them in the ruins of an old laboratory dating back to the Genzik dynasty. The seeds were all dried up and most of them wouldn’t grow, but some of them did and he nursed them along. Claimed those seeds were thousands of years old. He brought them here, because he figured the soil and climate on Venus were just right for plant life. Said if a plant wouldn’t grow on Venus it wouldn’t grow anywhere.”