PROSPECTOR'S SPECIAL
By ROBERT SHECKLEY
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction December 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Lost in the vast Scorpion Desert of Venus,
he needed all the courage a man could own—and
every bit of credit he could raise!
The sandcar moved smoothly over the rolling dunes, its six fat wheelsrising and falling like the ponderous rumps of tandem elephants. Thehidden sun beat down from a dead-white sky, pouring heat into thecanvas top, reflecting heat back from the parched sand.
"Stay awake," Morrison told himself, pulling the sandcar back to itscompass course.
It was his twenty-first day on Venus's Scorpion Desert, histwenty-first day of fighting sleep while the sandcar rocked across thedunes, forging over humpbacked little waves. Night travel would havebeen easier, but there were too many steep ravines to avoid, too manyhouse-sized boulders to dodge. Now he knew why men went into the desertin teams; one man drove while the other kept shaking him awake.
"But it's better alone," Morrison reminded himself. "Half the suppliesand no accidental murders."
His head was beginning to droop; he snapped himself erect. In frontof him, the landscape shimmered and danced through the polaroidwindshield. The sandcar lurched and rocked with treacherous gentleness.Morrison rubbed his eyes and turned on the radio.
He was a big, sunburned, rangy young man with close-cropped black hairand gray eyes. He had come to Venus with a grubstake of twenty thousanddollars, to find his fortune in the Scorpion Desert as others had donebefore him. He had outfitted in Presto, the last town on the edgeof the wilderness, and spent all but ten dollars on the sandcar andequipment.
In Presto, ten dollars just covered the cost of a drink in the town'sonly saloon. So Morrison ordered rye and water, drank with the minersand prospectors, and laughed at the oldtimers' yarns about the sandwolfpacks and the squadrons of voracious birds that inhabited the interiordesert. He knew all about sunblindness, heat-stroke and telephonebreakdown. He was sure none of it would happen to him.
But now, after twenty-one days and eighteen hundred miles, he hadlearned respect for this waterless waste of sand and stone three timesthe area of the Sahara. You really could die here!
But you could also get rich, and that was what Morrison planned to do.
His radio hummed. At full volume, he could hear the faintest murmur ofdance music from Venusborg. Then it faded and only the hum was left.
He turned off the radio and gripped the steering wheel tightly in bothhands. He unclenched one hand and looked at his watch. Nine-fifteenin the morning. At ten-thirty he would stop and take a nap. A man hadto have rest in this heat. But only a half-hour nap. Treasure laysomewhere ahead of him, and he wanted to find it before his suppliesgot much lower.
The precious outcroppings of goldenstone had to be up ahead! He'dbeen following traces for two days now. Maybe he would hit a realbonanza, as Kirk did in '89, or Edmonson and Arsler in '93. If so, hewould do just what they did. He'd order up a Prospector's Special, andto hell with the cost.
The sandcar rolled along at an even thirty miles an hour, and Morrisontried to concentrate on the heat-blasted yellow-brown landscape. Thatsandstone patc