The BEACHCOMBER
By Damon Knight
Alice saw the Beachcomber as a glorious
hunk of man; Maxwell saw him as a super being
from the future. Tragically, he was both!...
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
December 1952
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Maxwell and the girl started their weekend on Thursday, in Venice.Friday they went to Paris, Saturday to Nice, and on Sunday they werebored. Alice pouted at him across the breakfast table. "Vernon, let'sgo someplace else," she said.
"Sure," said Maxwell, not too graciously. "Don't you want your bugeggs?"
Alice pushed them away. "If I ever did, I don't now. Why do you have tobe so unpleasant in the morning?"
The eggs were insect eggs, all right, but they were on the menu asoeufs Procyon Thibault, and three of the half-inch brown spherescost about one thousand times their value in calories. Maxwell waswell paid as a script-writer for the North American Unit Ministry ofInformation—he bossed a gang of six gagmen on the Cosmic Cocktailshow—but he was beginning to hate to think about what these five dayswere costing him.
"Where do you want to go?" asked Maxwell. Their coffee came out of theconveyer, steaming and fragrant, and he sipped his moodily. "Want torun over to Algiers? Or up to Stockholm?"
"No," said Alice. She leaned forward across the table and put up onelong white hand to keep her honey-colored hair out of her eyes. "Youdon't know what I mean. I mean, let's go to some other planet."
Maxwell choked slightly and spilled coffee on the tabletop. "Europe isall right," Alice was saying with disdain, "but it's all getting to bejust like Chicago. Let's go someplace different for once."
"And be back by tomorrow noon?" Maxwell demanded. "It's ten hours evento Proxima; we'd have just time to turn around and get back on theliner."
Alice dropped her long lashes, contriving to look inviting andsullen at the same time. Not bad at that, Maxwell thought, for teno'clock in the morning. "You couldn't get Monday off, I suppose,"she said, giving him her A-number-One smile. "We could have so muchfun—together...."
They took the liner to Gamma Tauri IV, the clearing point for thesystem, then transferred to the interplanet shuttle for Three. Threewas an almost undeveloped planet; there were perhaps a hundred citiesnear the equator, and some mines and plantations in the temperatezones—the rest was nothing but scenery. Maxwell had heard about itfrom people at the Ministry; he'd been warned to go within a year orso if he went at all—after that it would be as full of tourists asProxima II.
The scenery was worth the trip. Sitting comfortably on their rentedairscooters, stripped to shorts and singlets, with the polarizedsunscreens moderating the blazing heat of Gamma Tauri, Maxwell and thegirl could look in any horizontal direction and see a thousand squaremiles of exuberant blue-green foliage.
Two hundred feet below, the tops of gigantic tree-ferns wavedspasmodically in the breeze. They were following a chain of lowmountains that bisected this continent; the tree-tops sloped awayabruptly on either side, showing an occasional glimpse of reddish-brownundergrowth, and merged into a sea of blue-green that became bluerand mistier toward the horizon. A flying thing moved lazily across theclear, cumulus-dotted sky, perhaps half a mile away. Maxwell trainedhis binoculars on it: it was an absurd lozenge with six pairs ofwings—an insect, perhaps; he couldn't tell. He heard a raucous crydown below, not far away, and glanced do