It wasn't fair—a smart but luckless man
like Mooney had to scrounge, while Harse
always made out just because he had a....
Survival Kit
By FREDERIK POHL
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Mooney looked out of his window, and the sky was white.
It was a sudden, bright, cold flare and it was gone again. It had nomore features than a fog, at least not through the window that wasshowered with snow and patterned with spray from the windy sea.
Mooney blew on his hands and frowned at the window.
"Son of a gun," he said, and thought for a moment about phoning theCoast Guard station. Of course, that meant going a quarter of a mile inthe storm to reach the only other house nearby that was occupied; theHansons had a phone that worked, but a quarter of a mile was a long wayin the face of a December gale. And it was all dark out there now. Lessthan twenty miles across the bay was New York, but this Jersey shorecoast was harsh as the face of the Moon.
Mooney decided it was none of his business.
He shook the kettle, holding it with an old dish towel because it wassizzling hot. It was nearly empty, so he filled it again and put itback on the stove. He had all four top burners and the oven going,which made the kitchen tolerably warm—as long as he wore the scarf andthe heavy quilted jacket and kept his hands in his pockets. And therewas plenty of tea.
Uncle Lester had left that much behind him—plenty of tea, nearly adozen boxes of assorted cookies and a few odds and ends of cannedgoods. And God's own quantity of sugar.
It wasn't exactly a balanced diet, but Mooney had lived on it for threeweeks now—smoked turkey sausages for breakfast, and oatmeal cookiesfor lunch, and canned black olives for dinner. And always plenty of tea.
The wind screamed at him as he poured the dregs of his last cup of teainto the sink and spooned sugar into the cup for the next one. It was,he calculated, close to midnight. If the damn wind hadn't blown downthe TV antenna, he could be watching the late movies now. It helped topass the time; the last movie was off the air at two or three o'clock,and then he could go to bed and, with any luck, sleep till past noon.
And Uncle Lester had left a couple of decks of sticky, child-handledcards behind him, too, when the family went back to the city at the endof the summer. So what with four kinds of solitaire, and solo bridge,and television, and a few more naps, Mooney could get through to thenext two or three A.M. again. If only the wind hadn't blown down theantenna!
But as it was, all he could get on the cheap little set his uncle hadleft behind was a faint gray herringbone pattern—
He straightened up with the kettle in his hand, listening.
It was almost as though somebody was knocking at the door.
"That's crazy," Mooney said out loud after a moment. He poured thewater over the tea bag, tearing a little corner off the paper tag onthe end of the string to mark the fact that this was the second cup hehad made with the bag. He had found he could get three cups out of asingle bag, but even loaded with sugar, the fourth cup was no l