The Hoofer Read online

shovel, a sand-pile,heaps of fresh-turned earth, and a concrete mixer--well, it added up.

  He gripped his ankles and pulled, but his feet wouldn't budge. In suddenterror, he tried to stand up, but his ankles were clutched by theconcrete too, and he fell back in the sand with a low moan. He lay stillfor several minutes, considering carefully.

  He pulled at his left foot. It was locked in a vise. He tugged even moredesperately at his right foot. It was equally immovable.

  He sat up with a whimper and clawed at the rough concrete until hisnails tore and his fingertips bled. The surface still felt damp, but ithad hardened while he slept.

  He sat there stunned until Hooky began licking at his scuffed fingers.He shouldered the dog away, and dug his hands into the sand-pile to stopthe bleeding. Hooky licked at his face, panting love.

  "Get away!" he croaked savagely.

  The dog whined softly, trotted a short distance away, circled, and cameback to crouch down in the sand directly before Hogey, inching forwardexperimentally.

  Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry sand and cursed between his teeth,while his eyes wandered over the sky. They came to rest on the sliver oflight--the space station--rising in the west, floating out in BigBottomless where the gang was--Nichols and Guerrera and Lavrenti andFats. And he wasn't forgetting Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced him.

  Keesey would have a rough time for a while--rough as a cob. The pit wasno playground. The first time you went out of the station in a suit, thepit got you. Everything was falling, and you fell, with it. Everything.The skeletons of steel, the tire-shaped station, the spheres and docksand nightmare shapes--all tied together by umbilical cables and flexibletubes. Like some crazy sea-thing they seemed, floating in a black oceanwith its tentacles bound together by drifting strands in the dark tidethat bore it.

  * * * * *

  Everything was pain-bright or dead black, and it wheeled around you, andyou went nuts trying to figure which way was down. In fact, it took youmonths to teach your body that _all_ ways were down and that the pit wasbottomless.

  He became conscious of a plaintive sound in the wind, and froze tolisten.

  It was a baby crying.

  It was nearly a minute before he got the significance of it. It hit himwhere he lived, and he began jerking frantically at his encased feet andsobbing low in his throat. They'd hear him if he kept that up. Hestopped and covered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. Alight went on in the house, and when it went off again, the infant's cryhad ceased.

  Another rocket went up from the station, and he cursed it. Space was adisease, and he had it.

  "Help!" he cried out suddenly. "I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"

  He knew he was yelling hysterically at the sky and fighting therelentless concrete that clutched his feet, and after a moment hestopped.

  The light was on in the house again, and he heard faint sounds. Thestirring-about woke the baby again, and once more the infant's wail cameon the breeze.

  _Make the kid shut up, make the kid shut up ..._

  But that was no good. It wasn't the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie'sfault. No fathers allowed in space, they said, but it wasn't their faulteither. They were right, and he had only himself to blame. The kid wasan accident, but that didn't change anything. Not a thing in the world.It remained a tragedy.

  A tumbler had no business with a family, but what was a man going to do?Take a skinning knife, boy, and make yourself a eunuch. But that was nogood either. They needed bulls out there in the pit, not steers. Andwhen a man came down from a year's hitch, what was he going to do? Livein a lonely shack and read books for kicks? Because you were a man, yousought out a woman. And because she was a woman, she got a kid, and thatwas the end of it. It was nobody's fault, nobody's at all.

  He stared at the red eye of Mars low in the southwest. They were runningout there now, and next year he would have been on the long long run ...

  But there was no use thinking about it. Next year and the years afterbelonged to _little_ Hogey.

  He sat there with his feet locked in the solid concrete of the footing,staring out into Big Bottomless while his son's cry came from the houseand the Hauptman menfolk came wading through the tall grass in search ofsomeone who had cried out. His feet were stuck tight, and he wouldn'tever get them out. He was sobbing softly when they found him.

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ September 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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