WHERE THE PHPH PEBBLES GO
By MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow April 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a strange world and a deadly
one, the incredible alien planet—
Gral and Hodnuth were playing phph. In case you are not a phph fan, andhaven't ever seen Bliten's classic Ways of Improving Your Phph Game,its essence consists in lobbing pebbles at a target as near the horizonas your skill permits. After each throw, you fly over to see how faryou went.
It sounds like a simple game, but it has complicated restrictions andrules, and a good phph player can command any amount of heavy servicefrom the spectators. Since a lot of the Ground Dwellers are also phphaddicts (they could never become players, of course, being far toosmall and light to handle the phph pebbles), this means that a realchampion never has to do any kind of work again, being fed, clothed,housed and entertained by his admirers, and can devote all his time tothe game.
Gral and Hodnuth, having alternated as champions for many a longganath, had it pretty easy. But neither of them was given to lyingback on his laurels and growing soft. This meant that when a matchwas announced, Ground Dwellers as well as we Real People came by thehanthoids from zygils around to watch through viewing-tubes—andwhichever of the two won piled up a lot of bilibs of voluntary service.(Voluntary service, as most economists admit, is true wealth, sincethe pledge is incumbent on the offerer's heirs until it is fullysatisfied, and can likewise be willed by the recipient to his heirs).
Naturally, no phph player is absolutely perfect; if he were, therewould be no contest and nobody would bother to attend a game. Pebblesfall short, they go awry, and sometimes they are thrown so hard thatthey escape altogether from our light gravity and fly into outer space.At the end of the game period the referee (usually a superannuatedformer champion) tots up the score and announces how many times eachplayer missed the target and by which of these errors he missed it. Bya rather confusing arithmetical computation he then determines which ofthem won, and the winner collects his pledges—and the fans collect theside bets they have been making all through the game.
In this particular game Hodnuth won. But then he won about half thetime, so that wasn't what gave it its importance. The Ground Dwellers,as everyone knows, are an excitable and volatile race (which is why weconquered them so easily, with the added advantage of our command oflevitation and our immensely greater size and strength), so just anordinary phph game often looks like a riot. When anything out of theway occurs, such as the appearance of a new young contender to take onone of the champions, the Ground Dwellers simply go wild. And this timethey practically exploded. I confess that even we Real People wereamazed.
One of the Thinkers was discovered attending the game.
Now, when we first arrived here, and cleaned up on the Ground Dwellersand established them in their proper subservient position, the Thinkerswere our leaders. It was they who had figured out the whole invasion,had headed the Sixty Hastgunt Flight, and had worked out the tacticsand logistics of the Great Conquest. But once we were settled andthings were going smoothly, they called a last General Meeting andtold us that their part was finished