Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
BRKNK'S BOUNTY
By
JERRY SOHL
Illustrated by KOSSIN
From a feature writer to feature attraction—now there's areal booze-to-riches success story!
never thought I'd like circus life, but a year of it has changed me.It's in my blood now and I suppose I'll never give it up—even ifthey'd let me.
This job is better than anything I could get in the newspaper racket.I work all summer, it's true, but I get the winter off, though some ofthe offers for winter work are mighty tempting. Maybe if I hadn't beenkicked off the paper, I'd be city editor now, knocking my brains out.Who knows? But maybe I'd just be a rewrite man, or in the slot,writing heads, or copyreading. But the thought of newspaper work afterall this appalls me.
Trlk, the Sybillian, should be thanked for the whole thing, I suppose,though it would be a grudging thank-you I'd give him, considering allthe trouble he caused. Still....
I first saw him on a July morning at the beginning of the vacationschedule, when four of us on the local side were trying to do fivepeople's work.
My first inkling anything was wrong came when I returned from thecourthouse beat and stuck a sheet of paper in the typewriter to writethe probate court notes.
I struck the keys. They wouldn't go all the way down. I opened thecover plate, looked in to see what was wrong. I saw nothing, so Itried again. Oscar Phipps, the city editor, was giving me the eye. Ifigured maybe he was pulling a trick on me. But then I knew hehadn't. He wasn't the type.
he back space, tabular, margin release, shift and shift lock workedperfectly. But the keys only went down a short way before theystopped. All except one key. The cap D.
I hit the D. It worked fine the first time, but not the second. Itried all the keys again. This time only the i worked. Now I hadDi. I went ahead testing. Pretty soon I had
Dimly
Then came a space. A few letters more and it was
Dimly drouse the dreary droves
Phipps had one eyebrow raised. I lifted the cover plate again.Quickly.
There I saw a fuzzy thing. It whisked out of sight. I snapped theplate down and held it down. The party I had been on the night beforehadn't been that good and I had had at least three hours' sleep.
I tried typing again. I got nothing until I started a new line. Thenout came
Primly prides the privy prose
I banged up the plate, saw a blur of something slinking down betweenthe type bar levers again. Whatever it was, it managed to squeezeitself out of sight in a most amazing way.
"Hey!" I said. "I know you're down there. What's the big idea?"
Fuzzy squeezed his head up from the levers. The head looked like thatof a mouse, but it had teeth like a chipmunk and bright little blackbeads for eyes. They looked right at me.
"You go r