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Title: Short Snorter

Author: Charles Einstein

Release Date: October 19, 2019 [EBook #60521]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT SNORTER ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Three paths led through the woods away from the resort hotel, and of the three two were clearly marked: one with a sign that said it led to the lake, the other pointing toward the golf links. The third pathway was unmarked, and this was the one that inevitably the lovers and the honeymooners took—the path that Alice and Fred Daniels followed today.

The sun was unusually warm for this time of year, but only a few yards along the pathway Fred and Alice were swallowed up by the great and near-great trees of the forest. The sunlight was, except for an occasional patch of light here and there, warded away by the foliage above. The forest was very quiet. The pathway bridged a silent brook, and then, perhaps a third of a mile into the woods, turned abruptly to the left and the woods became even more dense, the pathway narrow.

Through the trees to the right at this point was a clearing, an unusual grassy circle perhaps sixty yards in diameter. It was not the clearing itself, however, but, instead, the glint of color in the sunlight that caused Fred and Alice to stop and look.

Alice said, "Fred, what is that?"

"Don't know," he said. "Something red. Let's look."

The two of them turned off the path and made their way through a dismal barrage of thicket to the clearing that lay beyond. When they got there, they saw the circular object—vehicle might be a better word. It was possibly fifteen yards in diameter. It seemed to be made of three rings, smaller ones bottom and top and the larger one ribbing the center, and to be constructed of some kind of plastic. Between the central and upper rings were set a series of small windows. The entire thing was painted a gaudy red.

"What do you think it is?" Fred said.

"A flying saucer," Alice said promptly. She laughed a little, but clutched at her husband's arm. "Isn't it?"

"I don't know."

"But what else would it be?"

"I don't know," Fred said again. "Let's look inside."

"Fred," Alice said, "You'd better not—"

"Don't be silly," he said, and walked resolutely up to the object and, standing on tiptoe, peered through one of the windows.

"What is it?" Alice called from the edge of the clearing. "What do you see?"

"It's empty," he called back.

"What's inside?"

Fred shook his head. "You won't believe it."

"What?"

"It's got a steering wheel," he called out hollowly. "And some dials."

"My goodness," Alice said. "Is it a real one?"

"How do I know?" he said, and rejoined her, casting a series of glances uncertainly over his shoulder at the bright red saucer behind him. "What do you suppose we ought to do?"

"Tell somebody," Alice said. "I suppose."

"Who do we tell?"

"I don't know. There must be somebody—"

They looked almost guiltily at each other. "Nobody'll believe us," Fred said.

"Why not?" Alice said. "It's here, isn't it?"

Fred stopped and thought. "Who knows how long it'll stay?"

They looked at each other again. Then Alice said slowly, "If we went back and got the camera—"

Swiftly, they made their way back toward the hotel through the quiet forest. When they got there, they found Mr. Mason, the manager of the hotel, adjusting the badminton net in front of the main porch. Mr. Mason loosed a ready smile. "How's everything?" he said. "Find enough to do?"

"Yes, thank you," Fred said to him. "We were just walking through the woods. We came back for our camera. Then we're off again."

Mr. Mason nodded. "Find the saucer?"

Fred looked at him. "You mean the flying saucer?"

The manager nodded again. "I see you did find it. Good. Take a picture of it, by all means. I've already taken a whole batch myself."

"You have?" Fred said, frowning. "What's it all about?"

"It's a flying saucer," Mr. Mason said. "From Venus. Mr. Steariot, who piloted it, is a guest here. I can introduce you to him if you like. He speaks excellent English."

Fred Daniels said, "Wait a minute. You—"

"Oh, there's no point in it," Mr. Mason said in a weary tone of voice. "No point in it at all. I took pictures. I tried to get the Army up here. I wrote letters." He shrugged expressively. "It's a cynical age we live in, I guess. Everybody's very polite, but they make it clear they think it's just a gimmick I worked up to get the hotel publicity." He nodded seriously. "The whole trouble's with Mr. Steariot. If he had a light bulb for a head, or seven legs, or talked funny, why, it'd be a different thing entirely. But he looks and acts just like you or I. Here I've got a legitimate flying saucer sitting on my property and you might as well try to tell them it's a—well, a flying saucer! For all they'll believe me. Now you two have seen it with your own eyes and you don't believe it either."

Fred swallowed and looked at Alice for a moment. Then he said, "What did you say his name was?"

"Mr. Steariot," Mr. Mason said. "Actually, he's just as happy nobody believes he's from Venus. If they believed it, they'd probably lock him up in jail somewhere or impound his saucer. As it is, he says this is the first vacation he's had in years." Mr. Mason looked unhappily about him. "He's probably in the lounge now. Want to meet him?"

Fred said dazedly, "I—"

"Ah, come on," Mr. Mason said. "He won't bite you." He led the way up the steps of the porch and into the lounge and over to where a small, mustachioed man, wearing eyeglasses and appearing to be in his late forties, was working a crossword puzzle in the morning paper.

"Mr. Steariot," Mr. Mason said, "I should like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Daniels, also guests here. They have just seen your saucer."

"Charmed," Mr. Steariot said, and got to his feet. He shook hands with Fred Daniels. "Are you here for a long stay, Mr. Daniels?"

"I'm not sure," Fred said, a little unhappily. "Mr. Mason told us you were from Venus."

"I told them about you, Mr. Steariot," Mr. Mason said. "Naturally, they don't believe it any more than anybody else."

"No reason why they should," Mr. Steariot said amiably. "No reason in the world, if I may coin a phrase. Dr. Phelps at the Institute didn't believe it either."

Mr. Mason said, "Mr. Steariot here had a long interview with Dr. Phelps of the Geophysical Institute at Princeton when he first arrived here on Earth with us."

"Oh," Fred said. He gazed uncomfortably at Mr. Steariot. "We didn't mean to interrupt you."

"I was only doing the crossword puzzle," Mr. Steariot said. "Do you know a two-letter word for sun-god?"

Alice said, "Is this your first trip here?"

"You mean here to the hotel," Mr. Steariot said, "or to Earth?"

"Earth," Fred said, dismally.

"My second," Mr. Steariot said. "First trip I wound up near Leningrad. Terrible time. I thought they'd talk English, but they don't, and they thought I was an American, and two of their officials got into the saucer with me, and the only way I could save myself was to take off with them. They're on Venus now."

"This accounts," Mr. Mason broke in, "for the way those two high Russian officials suddenly disappeared from sight three years ago. You remember? Everybody thought they'd been liquidated."

Fred Daniels looked around the room. A hollow, frightening feeling had come upon him. There were hundreds of questions he could have asked, and yet he wanted nothing so much as to be away from there.

His wife Alice, though, was constrained to learn more about Mr. Steariot. She said, "Mr. Steariot, may I ask you something?"

"By all means," Mr. Steariot said, and blinked owlishly at her.

"Do you," Alice said to him, "carry any money?"

It was, Fred Daniels realized, a marvelous question. If there were sham here, this would be the quickest way to—

"Why, of course." Mr. Steariot said, and reached for his wallet. "Let's see—health insurance—saucer driver's license—here, my dear. A five-djino bill." He extracted a yellow banknote and handed it to Alice. The banknote, slightly larger than an American dollar bill, was remarkably similar in other particulars. It had upon it a picture of a flying saucer, the figure 5, and, spelled out, "FIVE DJINOS".

"Let me sign it for you," Mr. Steariot said, taking out a pen. "You can have it for a souvenier."

"Like the short snorters in the war," Mr. Mason, the hotel manager, said. "You remember them, Mr. Daniels? Where people got famous signatures on five and ten and twenty-dollar bills and exchanged them and what not, and they called them short snorters?"

"I remember," Fred Daniels said. "Something like that."

"Five djinos on Venus," Mr. Steariot said, signing his name with a flourish, "is worth about twenty dollars here on Earth. No official rate of exchange, of course, but from what I've seen, that's about what I'd judge. Here you go." He handed the bill over.

"Well, wait, then," Fred Daniels said. "I ought to sign one of our bills for you."

"Ah, no need for that," Mr. Steariot said. "No doubt you need twenty dollars worse than I need five djinos."

"Don't be ridiculous," Fred said, a little stiffly; and, by now committed, he went into his wallet and came out with a twenty dollar bill. He signed his name to it, using Mr. Steariot's fountain pen.

"Wonderful," Mr. Steariot said. "How nice to have met you both."

"I feel very badly about this," Mr. Mason, the hotel manager, said to Fred and Alice. The three of them were on the porch outside. "This short snorter business always seems to happen whenever I introduce Mr. Steariot to anyone. Dr. Phelps at the Institute gave him fifty dollars. Can you imagine that?"

"It's interesting in its way," Fred said. "It just occurred to me: Mr. Steariot can spend Earth money here, but we can't spend Venus money."

"That's true," Mr. Mason said. "On the other hand, Mr. Steariot has never once, to my knowledge, been the one to bring up the subject. I think it's quite painful to him, really. But the same thing inevitably occurs to everybody he meets. You know, let's see the color of your money. I guess people are pretty much the same everywhere—that is, everywhere on Earth. They judge everything in terms of money, including whether you've even been born on Earth! 'Let's see your money,' they say to Mr. Steariot, and out he comes with one of those damn five-djino bills, and we're off."

"You know," Alice Daniels said thoughtfully, "in a way it's a lesson. Isn't it, Fred? I mean, everybody is money conscious. Maybe too much so. I'm not sorry it cost us twenty dollars to meet Mr. Steariot."

"You may be right," Fred said to her. "You may be right. Who knows, some day this five-djino bill may be a very valuable—"

"There you go again," Alice cut in. "Always putting it in terms of money."

"But you're the one," Fred said, "who thought to ask him about it in the first place."

"Don't quarrel," Mr. Mason, the hotel manager, said to them. "After all, for you it's just a vacation. For me, I've got this man sitting in my lounge day in and day out doing crossword puzzles and trading short snorters with my guests. Nobody really believes he's from Venus—nobody important, anyway. It's a little frightening, when you're trying to run a happy hotel. Sometimes I wish he'd go back to wherever he came from."

"Well," Fred said, "he's bound to leave one of these days."

"Maybe," Mr. Mason said doubtfully. "Offhand, though, I'd say the way he's taking it in, he can't afford to."

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