And the Gods Laughed
By FREDRIC BROWN
Hank was spinning quite a space lie—something
about earrings wearing their owners. The crew got
a boot out of the yarn—until they got to thinking.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You know how it is when you're with a work crew on one of theasteroids. You're there, stuck for the month you signed up for, withfour other guys and nothing to do but talk. Space on the little tugsthat you go in and return in, and live in while you're there, is atsuch a premium that there isn't room for a book or a magazine norequipment for games. And you're out of radio range except for the usualonce-a-terrestrial-day, system-wide newscasts.
So talking is the only indoor sport you can go in for. Talking andlistening. You've plenty of time for both because a work-day, inspace-suits, is only four hours and that with four fifteen-minuteback-to-the-ship rest periods, so you actually work only three hoursand spend half that time getting in and out the airlock. But those areunion rules, and no asteroid mining outfit tries to chisel on them.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that talk is cheap on one of thosework crews. With most of the day to do nothing else, you listen to somereal whoppers, stories that would make the old-time Liars Clubs back onearth seem like Sunday-school meetings. And if your mind runs that way,you've got plenty of time to think up some yourself.
Charlie Dean was on our crew, and Charlie could tell some dillies. He'dbeen on Mars back in the old days when there was still trouble withthe bolies, and when living on Mars was a lot like living on Earthback in the days of Indian fighting. The bolies thought and fought alot like Amerinds, even though they were quadrupeds that looked likealligators on stilts—if you can picture an alligator on stilts—andused blow-guns instead of bows and arrows. Or was it crossbows that theAmerinds used against the colonists?
Anyway, Charlie's just finished a whopper that was really too goodfor the first tryout of the trip. We'd just landed, you see, and wereresting up from doing nothing en route, and usually the yarns startoff easy and believable and don't work up to real depth-of-space lyinguntil along about the fourth week when everybody's bored stiff.
"So we took this head bolie," Charlie was ending up, "and you knowwhat kind of flappy little ears they've got, and we put a couple ofzircon-studded earrings in its ears and let it go, and back it went tothe others, and then darned if—" Well, I won't go on with Charlie'syarn, because it hasn't got anything to do with this story except thatit brought earrings into the conversation.
When Charlie'd finished, Zeb Werrah stood up and sniffed.
"Air's getting kind of bad in here," he said. "Reckon I'll go out andget my first shift over with. Anybody want to come?"
Ray went with him—our tug had equipment for only two men to workoutside at a time—and the rest of us helped them into suits andout the lock, and then settled down for some more talk, there beingnothing else to do. Zeb's remark about the air had been just a crack atCharlie's story, of course.
"How'd you happen to have zircon earrings along?" Blake Powers askedCharlie, when things had quieted down again. Blake was skipper for thevoyages, but now that we were anchored down on our asteroid, he wasjust one of the boys, until we took off again.
"In with the slum for trading," Charlie said. "When you're going toany place in the system that might be inhabited and you don't knowby what kind of critters, you take a little of a