FOUR-LEGGED HOT FOOT, by Mack Reynolds

Originally published in Fantastic Story Magazine, Winter 1952.

Lieutenant Johnny Norsen threw down his cards in disgust. “That does it,” he snapped, his angular face peevish. “From now on canasta is out as far as I’m concerned. Dick here sits next to me and draws six wild cards to my one. What good is a game that’s nine-tenths luck?”

Dick Roland tossed his own cards to the tiny wardroom table and stifled a yawn. “It’s pretty early in the cruise to begin swearing off games, Johnny.”

Ensign Mart Bakr said listlessly, “Well, we might as well give up canasta. The skipper has already sworn off playing it, and Doc Thorndon wouldn’t start in the first place. How about going back to poker?”

Johnny Norsen grunted, “Poker’s no good without stakes, and the regulations are strict against gambling in space.”

“Craziest regulation in the books,” Bakr snorted. “Hand me the game book off that shelf, Dick. Maybe we can find something new.”

Dick Roland reached up above him and secured the copy of 1000 and 1 Popular Games Down Through the Ages and tossed it to the space-cruiser’s third officer.

Bakr thumbed through it lackadaisically. “Ping-Pong,” he said. “What’s ping pong?”

Johnny Norsen said, “That’s the one where you’ve got to have a table to bat a little ball back and forth. We don’t have the room.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bakr mumbled. “Let’s see, somebody marked gin rummy here. When did we play that?”

“Cruiser before last. Got fed up with it; irritated the skipper so bad he nearly came down with cafard.”

“Ummmmm. High-Low-Jack-and the Game.”

“That’s another one where if you don’t have stakes it’s not interesting.” Mart Bakr kept thumbing through the pages. “They’ve got some of the damnedest games here. Ever hear of hotfoot?”

Nobody was interested enough to reply but he went on. “They played it back during the middle of the Twentieth. The guy who’s playing finds somebody who’s asleep or in some other manner unaware of what’s going on. He puts a match in the side of the unsuspecting one’s shoe and—”

“What’s a match?” Norsen asked disinterestedly.

“An early form of cigarette lighter,” Dick Roland told him. “They had a chemical preparation on the end of a small piece of wood. You rubbed the head against some hard object and it broke into flame.”

The first officer snorted. “Sounds awfully complicated. How many times would one work before it was used up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Listen to this,” Mart Bakr commanded. “This is what they considered a game back in the Twentieth. The player puts the match in the other’s shoe and sets fire to it. When it burns down to the foot, the victim jumps up howling and trying to get his shoe off to ease the pain. It says here: ‘This afforded considerable amusement to all spectators.’”

“Who in kert compiled that book?” Johnny Norsen asked. “Next thing they’ll have a description of the Chinese Water Torture as a game.”

Dick Roland got to his feet and stretched hugely. “The author was really reaching when he included that one,” he said. “Anyway, I’m tired. I think I’ll go in and chew the rag with Doc Thorndon awhile.”

Mart Bakr tossed the book to the table. “Yeah, I’m on watch in half an hour anyway. Maybe I’ll kill that much time reading.”

Johnny Norsen complained bitterly. “Reading what? We’ve all read everything on the New Taos three times over.”

Dick Roland grinned back at them over his shoulder as he worked his way through the tightly packed chairs in the wardroom and made his way to the door. “Why don’t you go up to the skipper’s quarters and give Mike Gurloff a hotfoot? That’d wake things up around here.”

* * * *

Doc Thorndon was lying on the bottom bunk in the ship’s hospital. The room was about the size of a bedroom of a Pullman of the Twentieth Century. It had two bunks, a tiny folding table, a medicine chest built into the titanium alloy wall, a lavatory. The hospital also doubled as the doctor’s quarters; if he had two patients at once, he had to leave his place and bunk with the third officer—but that was seldom.

He looked up from his book as the navigation officer entered. “Hello, Dick,” he said easily. “Draw up a pillow and lie down.” The doctor was a little, cheerful, roly-poly man, his cheeks still pink but his hair thinning and graying. He looked about forty-five—old for the Space Service.

Dick Roland hoisted himself into the top bunk, sprawled on his back and tucked his hands under his head and stared up at the ceiling.

“Game over?” the doctor asked casually.

“Uh huh.”

“Who won?”

“I don’t know. Forgot.”

The doctor went back to his book but there was a trace of frown on his good-natured face.

After some minutes of silence, Dick Roland said, “You know, Doc, we’re the two most worthless members of this crew.”

Thorndon tucked a finger in the book to mark his place and considered that. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody does much on a space-cruiser; not the way they did in the days of surface vessels back on Earth. You take the cook. Once they were mighty important—good cooks—but now what do they do? Ninety-nine percent of their work is automatic. And take the signalmen. We have two aboard; but here we are on a patrol that will last a year, and there’s hardly a possibility that we’ll use any of our various methods of signaling until we get back to the solar system and the trip’s practically over. The same thing applies to everyone else. Even Commander Gurloff hasn’t enough to keep him busy an average of more than a half hour a day. Everything’s automatic—everything.”

“Uhhhhh,” Dick Roland said, “but if and when we need them we need them bad, any of them. Suppose something went wrong with the automatic chef? The cook would have to take over.”

Doc Thorndon shuddered.

“No, seriously, Doc. You and I are the least necessary members of the crew. As long as I’ve been on the New Taos I’ve only had to do any navigating once, and—nothing personal, of course—actually, what in the world good is a ship’s doctor any more? What do you do except maybe give one of the men a peni-aspirin shot ever so often to keep him from having headaches for the next six months?”

“Each one of us has a use,” the doctor protested, “and when we’re needed, we’re needed bad. Take, for instance the time the Kadauto-pilot was knocked out in that fight with the Kraden cruiser and you had to figure out a course back to the solar system.”

“Yeah,” Dick Roland snorted, “once in fifty years something like that might happen. What is it you do once every fifty years, Doc?”

Doc Thorndon scratched the end of his nose reflectively. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s pretty important to keep space cafard from hitting a ship, and the way boredom’s growing, it looks as though it might become a problem. We should never have been ordered out on this patrol so soon after the last. The men didn’t have time to rest.”

It was Dick Roland’s time to shudder.

* * * *

An enlisted man stuck his head in the door. “Doc,” he asked, “you haven’t seen the skipper around have you?”

“Not for more than an hour. Isn’t he on the bridge?”

“No, sir. You didn’t see him, did you Lieutenant?”

Dick Roland shook his head. “Not recently, what did you want him for, Spillane?”

“Wanted to report a funny looking animal aboard, Lieutenant. Saw him up forward a little while ago.”

Both the doctor and the navigator came to their elbows. “A what?” Thorndon asked.

The mess-man demonstrated. “A little brown animal, about this long and maybe this high, Doc. Half a dozen of us spotted him up in the crew’s galley. Nobody’d ever seen one before, not even in a zoo.”

Dick Roland swung around in the bunk and let his knees hang over the side. “What’d it look like, Spillane? Earth-type, Martian, Venusian—”

“It looked like an Earth animal, sir. Four legs, a head, eyes, nose, mouth. Yeah, it was an Earth-type all right. Kind of blinked at us when it saw us watching, and scampered off real quick.”

Doctor Thorndon was scowling. He came to his feet. “Come along with me, Spillane. We’ll see if we can locate it in the encyclopedia.” He started for the corridor.

“Hey, wait for me, Doc,” Roland called. “Imagine an animal being on board!”

On the way they passed a burly non-com gunner who was listlessly touching up a spotless space-rifle. “Hey, mess-man,” he called, “what’s this about some of you guys in the galley seeing an animal?”

“That’s right,” Spillane said, proud of the attention he was drawing, “we’re going to check up on it now.”

The noncom chuckled. “Animals he’s seeing. Brother, let me tell you, you’re coming down with the cafard, but bad.”

Spillane looked anxiously at the doctor after they’d passed out of earshot of the gunner. “You don’t think that’s it, do you, Doc?”

Thorndon shook his head kindly. “Not if several of you saw it. Don’t let it worry you. Hallucinations don’t appear in space cafard until the final stages. You haven’t shown the early symptoms as yet.”

They made their way into the wardroom, Spillane remaining near the door, uncomfortable at being in officers’ country.

Johnny Norsen looked up from the chess problem he was trying halfheartedly to solve. “What’s up?” he asked, little interest in his voice.

Dick Roland motioned with his head at the enlisted man. “Spillane, here, and two or three others claim to have seen some small animal in the ship’s galley.”

“No kidding?”

“I’ll be a makron,” Mart Bakr put in. “What kind of animal?”

Doctor Thorndon had taken one volume from a long shelf that held similar ones. “None of them could identify it,” he said, thumbing through the pages. “Ah, here.” He took the book over to Spillane.

“Is this what you saw?” He indicated an illustration.

“Yeah, yeah,” Spillane said happily. “That’s it. What is it, Doc?”

Doctor Thorndon rubbed his nose with a forefinger and scowled. “It’s a rat,” he said. “You can go now, Spillane. Uh…just a moment. Tell the crew that I offer fifty credits reward for anyone who’ll bring it to me alive.”

“Fifty credits?” The mess-man was impressed. He scurried out of the room breathlessly.

“A rat?” Johnny Norsen muttered. “What in the world’s a rat and what would it be doing on a ship?”

“Here it is,” the doctor said. He read: “‘Rat. Original habitat Earth. A large rodent belonging to the genus Mus. Commonly brown or black, sometimes with a grayish tinge, they vary in length from about seven to ten inches. Very prolific mammals, they produce from twenty to fifty young a year’—well, that isn’t important in this case, unless they’re two or more of them. Let’s see—‘Supposedly originating in China, they spread through Europe in the Middle Ages and still later to America by way of ship. Highly destructive of grains, foods, and soiled clothing, they are occasionally vicious enough to attack human beings. Their greatest menace is as disease carriers, the bubonic plague of the tropics being spread by them.’ Well, that was in the old days,” Thorndon mused. “Let’s see, here we are: ‘Now extinct except for a few laboratory specimens, on Earth, a small number still exists in the wild state on Venus where it is believed they were taken inadvertently in the early space freighters.’”

“Hey, that’s probably where we picked it up,” Mart Bakr said. “Just before we took off.”

“This is interesting, Doc,” Johnny Norsen said, “but why’d you tell Spillane you’d give fifty credits for him?”

Doc Thorndon closed his book and looked up at the first officer. “He’s worth it,” he said. “The things are priceless back on Earth. In the early Twenty-second Century, in their zeal for exterminating the pest, people practically eliminated the species, which was unfortunate in a way because they’re invaluable as laboratory animals. They’re exceedingly like man, you know.”

“Are you kidding?” Norsen asked.

“What’s like a man,” a new voice growled.

They looked up at the entrance of burly Commander Mike Gurloff. “And what’s this I hear about a rat being on the ship, and what’s a rat anyway?” Doc Thorndon went over the matter briefly for the skipper.

“I’ll lay you two to one, we picked him up on Venus, all right,” Gurloff growled. “Doesn’t make any difference, give the men something to do. What was this about it being like a man? I thought you said it was only ten inches long.”

“They’re omnivorous, like man,” Thorndon explained, “and very adaptable. They can eat anything and live in any climate that men can. An example is the fact that they were even able to adapt themselves to Venus.”

“Unnnn?” Gurloff said. He’d lost interest already. “Well, probably one of the crew’ll pick him up for you in short order.” He walked over to the viewer and peered into it with ennui. “I’m getting to the point where I wouldn’t mind if we ran into a Kraden ship; anything to break this monotony. I’d bet my left arm we’ll all be down with cafard before the cruise is half over.”

Mart Bakr said suddenly, “You know, I think I’ll take a crack at catching that rat myself. What’d I bait a trap with if I made one, Doc?”

The doctor shrugged. “I think they’re supposed to like cheese in particular,” he said.

Johnny Norsen scratched the back of his head. “If you tuned a stun gun all the way down you could probably knock him over without killing him. I wonder where he’s hanging out? Maybe in the galley stores in the Number Eight compartment.”

“Listen,” Gurloff growled at his first officer. “I’ll bet every man in the crew who isn’t on watch is down in the Number Eight compartment, trying to catch that rat. Don’t you go down there with a stun gun. I’d lay you two to one you’d wind up blasting some enlisted man.”

Norsen was disappointed, but he grinned amiably. “Okay, Skipper,” he complied. “But fifty credits is fifty credits.”

* * * *

During the next two or three months the rat was spotted half a dozen times, but no one claimed the fifty credits. A score of methods were devised to root the rodent out, but none of them was successful. Stun guns, traps, knock-out drops in food that should have been considered delectable by a rat—none of them worked.

It was Ensign Mart Bakr who christened him Arthur; and it was Taylor—a jet-man second class, who played a guitar and was considered the ship’s wit—who began the composition of “The Saga of Arthur, the Space Rat.” He left the last stanza free, explaining that it was reserved for Arthur’s fate.

It was suggested once or twice that Arthur be made ship’s mascot if and when captured. But to have a rat for the ship’s mascot you first have to catch the rat, and Arthur wasn’t having any. In the third month after Arthur had first been spotted, enthusiasm about his presence on the New Taos had died considerably. Except for a few diehards who continued to dream up new plans for his capture, the crew decided that the elusive rat had found some hiding place which was practically foolproof. They gave up, fifty credits or no fifty credits.

The next chapter in the career of Arthur began in the officers’ mess during the fourth month after his discovery.

They were at dessert when Mart Bakr asked listlessly, “Doc, how does it feel to have a case of cafard, a real bang up case?”

The doctor finished chewing his last bite before answering, but his eyes had narrowed imperceptibly. “Never had it, so I wouldn’t know. Not so good, though.”

Bakr said, “Sometimes I think I’d like to get a case, just to have something different to do.”

Johnny Norsen said, “That reminds me of the guy in the weather station on Phobos. It was so monotonous and drab, and so irritatingly quiet that one day he reached down and broke his arm, just to hear it snap.”

“All right, knock it off,” Gurloff growled. “It’s getting to the point on this ship where the only topic of conversation is space cafard, space cafard, space cafard. You’d think the ship was riddled with it. Actually we haven’t had a case for…for the past six cruises. Since Doc Thorndon came aboard, as a matter of fact.”

“Ummmm,” the doc said, reaching for a toothpick. “I’ve been lucky.”

“I still wonder how it’d feel,” Bakr said morosely. “Anything’d be better than this—”

“Don’t be so sure,” the doctor said softly. “For one thing, you’d never want to hit space again. You’d never be able to drag yourself onto a spacecraft, never be able to stand free fall, never—”

“You mean that’s bad?” Johnny Norsen grinned.

There was a knock at the door and the head of a crew member cautiously made itself evident.

“Well, Spillane?” Mike Gurloff growled.

“Wanted to see the doctor, sir,” Spillane explained. “About the rat,” he added.

“What about the rat?” Doc Thorndon asked, not showing much interest. “Somebody spot Arthur again? Where? What was he doing?”

“He was running down the corridor, Doc. Not running, exactly…kind of dancing.”

Doc Thorndon came to his feet suddenly, spilling his cup of coffee. “What!”

“He was dancing, like, Doc,” the mess-man said in surprise. “Real funny. Taylor and me almost caught the little makron.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Thorndon said tightly. He dropped his napkin to the table and brushed his way hurriedly from the room, and headed for the ship’s library.

“What’s wrong with the doc?” Bakr asked. “He looks like he’s seen a ghost.”

Gurloff grunted. “Acts like he’s got cafard himself.”

Dick Roland ran his tongue over suddenly dry lips. “Bubonic plague,” he said.

They all looked at him.

“What was that?” Norsen asked, a scowl on his homely face.

“I was reading up on rats the other day. They carry bubonic plague. When they have it themselves, they act queer, sometimes they dance.”

Commander Gurloff came to his feet suddenly and made his way down the corridor after Thorndon, the rest followed him.

Thorndon was flipping through the pages of a volume of the “Encyclopedia Galactica”; he found his page and hurriedly traced a finger down a column. He didn’t hear the others come in behind him until Gurloff growled, “Well, what is it, Doctor?”

Doc Thorndon didn’t look up, but he read aloud. “‘Bubonic Plague, also called the Black Death from the dark buboes or swelling which accompany it. In the past the disease cost the deaths of millions particularly in the Middle Ages. Caused by the Bacillus pestis which is transmitted by the rat-fly, its symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, hemorrhages, swelling of joints and discoloration of the skin. The disease lasts from one to thirty days and is usually fatal. It has been completely unknown on Earth since the disappearance of the rat in the Twenty-second Century but cases have been reported periodically on Venus in the past few centuries. The vaccine is always effective.’”

Gurloff growled, “What in kert does it mean, Thorndon? Is there any chance—”

Doc Thorndon’s face was wan. “If that elusive rat has bubonic plague, Commander, I—I—”

Gurloff snapped. “What if he has? We’ll just have to give the whole crew shots for—”

A muscle twitched in the doctor’s face. “Captain, there hasn’t been bubonic plague on Earth since the Twenty-second Century. I haven’t any vaccine.”

There was a long pregnant silence. Finally Mike Gurloff said softly, “What will we have to do, Doc?”

Doc Thorndon ran his eyes from one to the other of them, to Johnny Norsen, to Mark Bakr, to Dick Roland, finally back to the Captain. “We’ve got to destroy that animal.” He came to his feet. “How much longer is the cruise to last, skipper?”

Mike Gurloff ran a weary hand over his bullet head. “About four months; we’re on our way home now.”

Doc Thorndon said, “If you ever expect to see it again, find Arthur. We may all be dead before the New Taos gets back to Terra; but even if we aren’t we’d never see home until that rat is dead.”

Gurloff growled, “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that there hasn’t been any bubonic plague on earth for centuries, and the New Taos most certainly wouldn’t be allowed to land until—”

“Holy Jumping Wodo,” Mart Bakr blurted, “this gets serious!”

Gurloff shot his eyes around at his three officers. “Roland,” he snapped, “I have considerable confidence in you. You’re in charge of Operation Arthur. Requisition any equipment or men you need. Get that rat!”

“Yes, sir!”

* * * *

Operating with considerable assistance from Doctor Thorndon, Lieutenant Dick Roland went about Operation Arthur with desperate thoroughness.

Every man in the crew was armed with a stun gun. Orders were to shoot on sight. Arthur was no longer wanted for the laboratories on earth, or for a ship’s mascot. Arthur was Public Enemy Number One and he was wanted dead.

All crew members were issued clothing which could be tied tightly about the cuffs and even at the collar—protection, it was hoped, against the rat fly and its deadly bacillus. Disinfectant was spread about the ship with abandon.

The search of the New Taos was taken over by a carefully selected crew of twenty—half the ship’s complement. Every square inch was explored. Roland and his men progressed from one compartment to another, searching each room with a care that would have made impossible the hiding of a cockroach.

After each compartment was searched, its space-tight doors were locked, nor were they allowed open again until there were several other safe compartments between it and the balance of the unsearched ship.

Operation Arthur went on slowly, ruthlessly, carefully. It began in the nose of the ship, on the bridge, and combed back toward the stern.

The work went on with the full cooperation and sympathy of the entire ship’s company. Gambling was taboo in space but it was known that there was a pool among the men on just when Arthur would bite the dust. The ship’s clerk even mimeographed a bulletin on the progress of the search. Interest reached a peak.

Finally, one day, Dick Roland, attired in the uniform of the search, cuffs tied tight, stun gun at his belt, entered the wardroom and snapped Commander Mike Gurloff a salute.

“Eh?” the Commander grunted. “Got him, huh? Where was he, Dick? Bet you two to one it was in some food storage—”

Dick Roland moistened his lips. “Sir, we searched every compartment in the ship—”

“I know you did, son. Fantastic, the thoroughness of it all. Unnecessary to go into detail. Where in kert was the little makron?”

“We didn’t find him, sir.” Commander Mike Gurloff came to his feet like an enraged bull. “What!”

Dick Roland said hurriedly. “Sir, I have one last plan that can’t fail.”

The skipper’s face was a dark red. He snapped, “Very well, lieutenant. This is taking ridiculously long—get on with it.”

Roland hesitated. Then, “Sir. My plan was to saturate the ship with chlorine gas.”

“What!”

“Yes, sir. The whole ship, every compartment, every room, every nook and cranny, with chlorine gas.”

Mart Bakr snorted. “It isn’t bad enough that we’re threatened with first space cafard and then bubonic plague, Dick wants to gas us.”

The navigator pushed his point hurriedly. “Sir, the whole crew can be put into spacesuits and remain in them for three hours. In that time we can fill the ship with gas. Wodo knows where Arthur has managed to hide himself, but wherever it is, the gas will get him. After three hours, we can blow the ship clean with the ventilating system and be safe to discard the spacesuits.”

Mike Gurloff stared at him for a long moment.

Doctor Thorndon spoke up. “It sounds like a reasonable plan to me, Captain.”

“All right,” Gurloff growled finally. “But when we get back to Earth I don’t want this to get out, understand. We’d be the laughing stock of the fleet if it was known to what extent we went to kill an animal no bigger than—than—”

“Arthur,” Johnny Norsen supplied. “The last rat to ever travel aboard a ship, and his ancestors are probably proud of him.”

Commander Mike Gurloff glared at his first officer.

* * * *

So they donned their spacesuits, those men of the intrepid Solar System Space Service, and they deluged their ship with the deadly green gas. They permeated it. They let it soak into every corner and crevice for three full hours. Then they blew it clear.

When they climbed from their suits, officers and men, they looked sheepishly at each other. It had been a long fight, and they had won, but somehow they weren’t proud of their victory. They knew that somewhere in his remote hiding place, Arthur was dead, but they found little satisfaction in the fact. It was as though a respected adversary had been conquered, and conquered by superior weight of numbers, by trickery, by double-dealing, not by honest warfare.

A toast was drunk to Arthur’s death in the officers’ wardroom. And in the crew’s quarters, a tractorpedo was tapped for some grain alcohol and a mess of jungle juice was brewed. All listened respectfully when Taylor sang the last stanza of “The Saga of Arthur the Space Rat.”

Which should be the end of this story—but it isn’t.

With the passing of Arthur, the ship drifted back into its routine and in a week’s time, except for occasional nostalgic conversations about Operation Arthur, the space rat was forgotten. Lethargy was again the word and the monotony of space travel flung its drab cloak once again over the New Taos.

Over the mess table one night (night in that it was the third meal of a twenty-four-hour period, and the clock registered 1800 hours) Gurloff rapped suddenly, “What shape’s the crew in, Doctor?”

Thorndon looked up from his food and appeared thoughtful. “A couple more of the men were in today with early symptoms of cafard, Captain.”

Mike Gurloff grunted. “We’ve only a month to go. You’d think the prospect of getting home would hold them.”

The doctor said earnestly, “Captain, when we do get back I think your report should contain a particularly strong comment upon the advisability of sending men out on patrols without a substantial rest period between. Perhaps I should have said, when and if we get home.”

“What do you mean by that?” Gurloff growled.

“Cafard is a mental sickness, not a disease. This monotony, this boredom, has affected us all. I’m afraid that in such a state it might be contagious. If one man goes berserk, the whole ship’s company might follow.”

The commander snorted in disgust. “You’re overstating it. Perhaps half a dozen of the men are on the verge of—”

The doctor raised a plump hand and interrupted softly, “That tic in your eye, Commander, is a symptom. You’d better drop into the hospital for a few minutes after your next watch. There isn’t too much we can do to stave off space cafard, but you’d better take what treatment the ship affords.”

Mike Gurloff stared at him, first angrily, but his belligerence melted. He got up from the table slowly, like a tired old man, and left the room.

Mart Bakr twisted a bread roll to crumbs nervously. “This is piling up,” he complained.

A sudden road emanated from the depths of the ship, and those remaining in the mess hall scrambled to their feet.

“What in kert goes on?” Johnny Norsen snapped. “What’re the makrons shouting?” He make his way hurriedly toward the door followed by Bakr and Roland.

They could make it out finally, “Arthur. Arthur!”

“Holy Wodo, they’ve gone batty,” Bakr snapped, his eyes wide. “What’re they—”

Spillane trampled up the corridor, his face flushed with excitement. “It’s Arthur. They saw Arthur again down in the jetroom. He’s still alive! Arthur’s still alive!”

* * * *

It was all-out warfare then. Before, the campaign against Arthur had been pursued coldly, carefully and passionlessly. The rat was a potential danger, a threat to the whole ship, and he was ruthlessly to be destroyed. If anything, there was considerable sympathy for the rodent.

Now it was different. An emotional crisis seemed to seize upon every man aboard. Everyone’s time, from captain to mess-man, everyone’s interest, was settled on the killing of Arthur. Groups, pairs, solitary hunters, roamed the ship at all hours, armed to the teeth and seeking, red-eyed, the elusive rat.

It was beyond humor now. They were nearing Earth and they needed desperately to land, to escape the confinement in the tiny spaces of the space-cruiser. They needed to see wives, sweethearts, families; to get drunk, to gamble, to see the sky above them, to swim in water, to hike over the countryside. The very thought of being confined indefinitely under quarantine against bubonic plague, drove them to frenzy.

Arthur was spotted thrice in the first week, and escaped desperately each time, the roars of the men behind him.

He fell the second week of the wild hunt for him. Knocked down by a half dozen stun guns when he ventured into an ambush in compartment eight, he was quickly dashed to the ship’s incinerator. The men who had approached and handled him were rushed in turn to the hospital and all efforts made to disinfect them.

Somehow, it didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem possible that Arthur could be dead. Like his legendary enemy, the cat, his lives had seemed endless.

They put into New Albuquerque not long afterward.

* * * *

Doc Thorndon was lying in the bottom bunk in the ship’s hospital just as they were coming in for the landing.

He looked up from his book as Dick Roland entered.

“Hello, Dick,” he said easily. “Draw up a pillow and lie down.”

The navigator hoisted himself into the top bunk, sprawled out on his back and tucked his hands under his head.

“I figured out where Arthur was hidden,” he said casually.

“Oh? I thought you might. How?”

“Various things, mostly by remembering some of the things that’ve been said during this cruise.”

There was interest in the doctor’s voice now. “Such as?”

“Well, for one thing, the skipper saying there hadn’t been a case of space cafard on board this ship since you were appointed ship’s doctor. Then I remembered all the information you had about rats and bubonic plague; you’d come up with things like the fact that they liked cheese—but that information wasn’t in the Encyclopedia Galactica. That seemed a bit strange. Another thing seemed off, too. I studied up on bubonic plague and quite a few things were different than they should have been.”

“So then I remembered another conversation. It was Mart Bakr telling us about a game they used to play in the Twentieth Century. It was called a hotfoot. It came to me, Doc, that that’s what this ship’s got, a mental hotfoot. We were shocked out of our potential space cafard by the threat of bubonic plague.”

There was a long silence between them. Finally Roland said, “You must have got a kick out of those acts you put on.… Where’d you have him hid, Doc?”

“In the bottom drawer of the medicine kit mostly. In my coat pocket during the gassing.” Thorndon added wistfully, “I had Arthur pretty well trained. You should have seen him dance, Dick. I found him myself there on Venus; hated to sacrifice him.”

He sighed deeply. “I wonder how in kert I’m going to keep this damn crew from getting cafard next time.”