Heart by Henry Slesar (top novels .txt) 📗

would take to buy a few small creature comforts around this place—and the right to live my own life."

"You can't buy your way out of working, mister—"

"Don't give me that! You'll sing a different tune when I tell you how much is in this bag. All you have to do is quote a figure—and it's yours!"

"Sorry, Mr. Monk," said the captain tersely.

"What do you mean by sorry?"

"I'm on a lifetime assignment here, and so are practically all the members of the Colony. It's a job that can barely be completed in a lifetime. And the economy we operate under doesn't call for money. Your dollars are so much excess baggage on Mars."

"What are you talking about?" Monk rasped. "I'm offering you a fortune. Money is money, you fool!"

"You can paper the walls of your quarters with it," said the officer sharply. "See if it helps keep out the Martian cold. That's about all the usefulness it has up here."

Wildly, Fletcher Monk unlocked the bag and dipped inside. His hand came out with a fistfull of green bills. "Look!" he cried. "I'm not joking about this! Look at it! Doesn't the sight of it mean anything to you?"

"It brings back some memories," said the captain smiling. "That's about all. Now you better go back to the desk and get your quarantine instructions."

He saluted the industrialist casually, and turned away.

"Okay, Mr. Moneybags," said the young official as the captain left. "Let's get acquainted."

A year later, Captain Harlan Moore presided at the dedication of the first fully-equipped hospital erected on the planet Mars. It was an impressive affair, despite the fact that it took place in a small, crowded chamber, and that the attending assemblage were still begrimed by their day's work.

When the ceremonies were completed, Captain Moore made an inspection of the new medical center, and one of his first stops was the bed-side of Fletcher Monk.

"We knew he wasn't a well man," said the young physician who stood by the bed, taking Monk's pulse. He watched as the captain picked up the chart hooked to the edge of the bed.

"Yes," said Moore. "He was a very sick man when he first came to the Colony. In more ways than one," he added.

The doctor looked perplexed. "But this illness still surprises me," he said. "I've examined him almost monthly for the past year, and frankly, I would have bet on his survival. He began to improve rapidly—physically, anyway. It might have been the lesser gravity, or the healthier life." He looked at the captain curiously. "Yet he wasn't assigned to any over-strenuous duties?"

"You know he wasn't," said the captain. "We don't want anybody to undertake work they can't handle. His labor was hardly physical. He worked in the geological and botanical groups, but not in the field. He did classifying and clerical work."

"Then that wouldn't account for the trouble—"

"Perhaps it does, in a way," The captain bent over the puffy, chalk-white face of the industrialist, listening to his shallow breathing. "He was never happy doing it. He had different ideas about himself than we did. He never understood what we were doing or why."

"It's the greatest mystery of them all," said the physician, shaking his head.

"What is?"

"The human body. It's incredible how much we've learned about the physical world, and even the physical features of our own construction. But there's still a mystery we haven't penetrated—"

The captain smiled. "That doesn't sound like you."

"I know," the young physician answered. "But when I see a case like this—a man breathing his life away for a reason I really can't understand—" The doctor rubbed the back of his head. "I know it's crazy, and old-fashioned, and doesn't make the least bit of sense in these scientific times, Captain. But if anyone were to ask me—off the record, and completely unofficially—I could only give them one honest diagnosis of this case. I think this man is dying of a broken heart."

THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart, by Henry Slesar