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The Floating Press - Jim Harmon

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20 pages

English

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This witty science-fiction tale from Jim Harmon follows the misadventures of Charlie Baxter -- a representative of the unlucky category of Earthlings known as Accident Prones. Baxter has been blessed -- or is "cursed" the better term? -- with the uncanny ability to identify the dangers of newly discovered planets by immediately falling prey to them himself, often with painful results. Can he overcome his doomed fate and flourish?

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Science fiction

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 octobre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776672134
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0064€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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BREAK A LEG
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JIM HARMON

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Break a Leg First published in 1957 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-213-4 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-214-1 © 2016 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
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The man worth while couldn't be allowed to smile ... if he ever laughed at himself, the entire ship and crew were as good as dead!
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If there is anything I am afraid of, and there probably is, it ishaving a rookie Accident Prone, half-starved from the unemploymentlines, aboard my spaceship. They are always so anxious to please. Theyremember what it is like to live in a rathole behind an apartmenthouse furnace eating day-old bread and wilted vegetables, which doesn'tcompare favorably to the Admiralty-style staterooms and steak andcaviar they draw down in the Exploration Service.
You may wonder why anybody should make things so pleasant for a grownupwho can't walk a city block without tripping over his own feet and whohas a very low life expectancy on Earth due to the automobiles they areconstantly stepping in front of and the live wires they are fond ofpicking up so the street won't be littered.
The Admiralty, however, is a very thorough group of men. Before theyopen a planet to colonization or even fraternization, they insist onknowing just what they are up against.
Accident Prones can find out what is wrong with a planet as easilyas falling off a log, which they will if there is one lonely tree onthe whole world. A single pit of quicksand on a veritable Eden of aplanet and a Prone will be knee-deep in it within an hour of blastdown.If an alien race will smile patronizingly on your heroic attempts atgenocide, but be offended into a murderous religious frenzy if you blowyour nose, you can take the long end of the odds that the Prone willalmost immediately catch a cold.
All of this is properly recorded for the next expedition in theAdmiralty files, and if it's any consolation, high officials and screenstars often visit you in the hospital.
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Charlie Baxter was like all of the other Prones, only worse. Moran IIIwas sort of an unofficial test for him and he wanted to make good. Wehad blasted down in the black of night and were waiting for daylight tobegin our re-survey of the planet. It was Charlie's first assignment,so we had an easy one—just seeing if anything new had developed in thelast fifty years.
Baxter's guard was doubled as soon as we set down, of course, andthat made him fidgety. He had heard all the stories about how highthe casualty rate was with Prones aboard spaceships and now he wasbeginning to get nervous.
Actually Charlie was safer in space than he would be back on Earthwith all those cars and people. We could have told him how the Servicepractically never lost a Prone—they were too valuable and rare tolose—but we did not want him to stop worrying. The precautions wetook to safeguard him, the armed men who went with him everywhere, theAccident Prone First Aid Kit with spare parts for him, blood, eyes,bone, nerves, arms, legs, and so forth, only emphasized to him thedanger, not the rigidly secured safety.
We like it that way.
No one knows what causes an accident prone. The big insurancecompanies on Earth discovered them when they found out in the last partof the nineteenth century that ninety per cent of the accidents werehappening to a few per cent of the people. They soon found out thatthese people were not malingering or trying to defraud anybody; theysimply had accidents.
I suppose everything from psychology to extra-sensory perception hasbeen used to explain or explain away prones. I have my own ideas. Ithink an accident prone is simply a super-genius with a super-doubt ofhimself.
I believe accident prones have a better system of calculation than acybernetic machine. They can take everything into consideration—thehumidity, their blood sugar, the expression on the other guy'sface—and somewhere in the corners and attic of their brain they infallibly make the right choice in any given situation. Then,because they are incapable of trusting themselves, they do exactly theopposite.
I felt a little sorry for Charlie Baxter, but I was Captai