Ole Doc Methuselah by L Ron Hubbard.pdf

Ole Doc Methuselah

by L.Ron Hubbard

Version 1.0

A #BW Release

Ole Doc Methuselah

Ole Doc Methuselah wasn't thinking what he was doing or

he never would have landed on Spico that tempestuous

afternoon. He had been working out some new formulas

for cellular radiation—in his head as usual, he never could

find his log tables—and the act of also navigating his

rocket ship must have been too much for him. He saw the

asteroid planet, de-translated his speed and landed.

He sat there for some time at the controls, gazing out

into the pleasant meadow and at the brook which wan-

dered so invitingly upon it, and finishing up his tabulations.

When he had written down the answer on his gauntlet

cuff—his filing system was full of torn scraps of cuff—he

felt very pleased with himself. He had mostly forgotten

where he had been going, but he was going to pour the

pile to her when his eye focused upon the brook. Ole Doc

took his finger off the booster switch and grinned.

"That sure is green grass," he said with a pleased sigh.

And then he looked up over the control panels where he

hung his fishing rod.

Who knows what would have happened to Junction City

if Ole Doc hadn't decided to go fishing that day.

Seated on the lower step of the port ladder, Hippoc-

rates patiently watched his god toss flies into the water

with a deft and expert hand. Hippocrates was a sort of

cross between several things. Ole Doc had picked him up

cheap at an auction on Zeno just after the Trans-system

War. At the time he had meant to discover some things

about his purchase such as metabolism and why he dieted

solely on gypsum, but that had been thirty years ago and

Hippocrates had been an easy habit to acquire. Unpig-

mented, four-handed and silent as space itself, Hippocrates

had set himself the scattered task of remembering all the

things Ole Doc always forgot. He sat now, remembering—

particularly that Ole Doc had some of his own medicine

to take at thirty-six o'clock—and he might have sat there

that way for hours and hours, phonograph-record-wise, if a

radiating pellet hadn't come with a sharp zip past his left

antenna to land with a clang on the Morgue's thick hull.

UP! CLANG!

Page forty-nine of "Tales of the Early Space Pioneers"

went smoothly into operation in Hippocrates' gifted uni-

maginative skull, which page translated itself into un-

ruffled action.

He went inside and threw on "Force Field Beta" minus

the Nine Hundred and Sixtieth Degree Arc, that being

where Ole Doc was. Seeing that his worshipped master

went on fishing, either unwitting or uncaring, Hippocrates

then served out blasters and twenty rounds to himself and

went back to sit on the bottom step of the port ladder.

The big spaceship—dented a bit but lovely—simmered

quietly in Procyon's inviting light and the brook rippled

and Ole Doc kept casting for whatever outrageous kind of

fish he might find in that stream. This went on for an hour

and then two things happened. Ole Doc, unaware of the

Force Field, cast into it and got his fly back into his hat

and a young woman came stumbling, panic-stricken,

across the meadow toward the Morgue.

From amongst the stalks of flowers some forty feet high

emerged an Earthman, thick and dark, wearing the re-

mains of a uniform to which had been added civil space

garb. He rushed forward a dozen metres before he paused

in stride at the apparition of the huge golden ship with its

emblazoned crossed ray rods of pharmacy. Then he saw

Ole Doc fishing and the pursuer thrust a helmet up from a

contemptuous grin.

It was nearer to Ole Doc than to the ship and the girl,

exhausted and disarrayed, stumbled toward him. The Earth-

man swept wide and put Ole Doc exactly between him-

self and the ladder before he came in.

Hippocrates turned from page forty-nine to page one

hundred and fifteen. He leaped nimbly up to the top of the

ship in the hope of shooting the Earthman on an angle

which would miss Ole Doc. But he had no more than

arrived and sighted before it became apparent to him that

he would also now shoot the girl. This puzzled him.

Obviously the girl was not an enemy who would harm Ole

Doc. But the Earthman was. Still it was better to blast

girl and Earthman than to see Ole Doc harmed in any

cause. The effort at recalling an exact instance made

Hippocrates tremble and in that tremble Ole Doc also

came into his fire field.

Having no warnings whatever, Ole Doc had just looked

up from disentangling his hook from first his shirt and

then his thumb and beheld two humans cannonading down

upon him.

The adrenalized condition of the woman was due to the

Earthman, that was clear. The Earthman was obviously a

blast-for-hire from some tough astral slum and he had

recently had a fight for two knuckles bled. The girl threw

herself in a collapse at Ole Doc's feet and the Earthman

came within a fatal fifteen feet.

Ole Doc twitched his wrist and put his big-hooked fly

into the upper lip of the Earthman. This disappointed Ole

Doc a little for he had been trying for the nose. The

beggar was less hypo-thyroid than he had first estimated.

Pulling his game-fish bellowing into the stream, Ole Doc

disarmed him and let him have a ray barrel just back of

the medulla oblongata—which took care of the fellow

nicely.

Hippocrates lowered himself with disappointed grunts

down to the ladder. At his master's hand signal he came

forth with two needles, filled, sterilized and awaiting only

a touch to break their seals and become useful.

Into the gluteal muscle—through clothes and all be-

cause of sterilizing radiation of the point—Doc gave the

Earthman the contents of needle one. At the jab the

fellow had squirmed a little and the doctor lifted one eyelid.

"You are a stone!" said Ole Doc. "You can't move."

The Earthman lay motionless, wide-eyed, being a stone.

Hippocrates carefully noted the time with the fact in

order to remind his master to let the fellow stop being a

stone some time. But in noting the time, Hippocrates

found that it was six minutes to thirty-six o'clock and

therefore time for a much more important thing—Ole

Doc's own medicine.

Brusquely, Hippocrates grabbed up the unconscious girl

and waded back across the stream with her. The girl could

wait. Thirty-six o'clock was thirty-six o'clock.

"Hold up!" said Ole Doc, needle poised.

Hippocrates grunted and kept on walking. He went

directly into the main operating room of the Morgue and

there amidst the cleverly jammed hodge-podge of trays

and ray tubes, drawers, masks, retorts and reflectors, he

unceremoniously dropped the girl. Mono-minded now, for

this concerned his master—and where the rest of the

world could go if it interfered with his master was a thing

best expressed in silence—Hippocrates laid out the serum

and the proper rays.

Humbly enough the master bared his arm and then

exposed himself—as a man does before a fireplace on a

cold day—to the pouring out of life from the fixed tubes.

It took only five minutes. It had to be done every five

days.

Satisfied now, Hippocrates boosted the girl into a prop-

er position for medication on the centre table and adjusted

a lamp or two fussily, meanwhile admiring his master's

touch with the needle.

Ole Doc was smiling, smiling with a strange poignancy.

She was a very pretty girl, neatly made, small waisted, high

breasted. Her tumbling crown of hair was like an avalanche

of fire in the operating lights. Her lips were very soft,

likely to be yielding to—

"Father!" she screamed in sudden consciousness. "Fa-

ther!"

Ole Doc looked perplexed, offended. But then he saw

that she did not know where she was. Her wild glare

speared both master and thing.

"Where is my father?"

"We don't rightly know, ma'am," said Ole Doc. "You

just-—"

"He's out there. They shot our ship down. He's dying or

dead! Help him!"

Hippocrates looked at master and master nodded. And

when the servant left the ship it was with a bound so swift

that it rocked the Morgue a little. He was only a metre

tall, was Hippocrates, but he weighed nearly five hundred

kilos.

Behind him came Ole Doc, but their speeds were so

much at variance that before the physician could reach

the tall flowers, Hippocrates was back through them car-

rying a man stretched out on a compartment door

wrenched from its strong hinges for the purpose. That was

page eight of "First Aid in Space", not to wrestle people

around but to put them on flat things. Man and door

weighed nearly as much as Hippocrates but he wanted no

help.

" 'Lung burns,' said Hippocrates, 'are very difficult to

heal and most usually result in death. When the heart is

also damaged, particular care should be taken to move the

patient as little as possible since exertion—' "

Ole Doc listened to, without heeding, the high, squeaky

singsong. Walking beside the girl's father, Ole Doc was

not so sure.

He felt a twinge of pity for the old man. He was proud

of face, her father, grey of hair and very high and noble

of brow. He was a big man, the kind of a man who would

think big thoughts and fight and die for ideals.

The doctor beheld the seared stains, the charred fabric,

the blasted flesh which now composed the all of the man's

chest. The bloody and gruesome scene was not a thing for

a young girl's eyes, even under disinterested circum-

stances—and a hypo would only do so much.

He stepped to the port and waved a hand back to the

main salon. There was a professional imperiousness about

it which thrust her along with invisible force. Out of her

sight now, Ole Doc allowed Hippocrates to place the body

on the multi-trayed operating table.

Under the gruesome flicker of ultra-violet, the wounded

man looked even nearer death. The meters on the wall

counted respiration and pulse and haemoglobin and all

needles hovered in red while the big dial, with exaggerated

and inexorable calm, swept solemnly down toward black.

"He'll be dead in ten minutes," said Ole Doc. He looked

at the face, the high forehead, the brave contours. "He'll

be dead and Adam's breed is gone enough to seed."

At the panel, the doctor threw six switches and a great

arc began to glow and snap like a hungry beast amid the

batteries of tubes. A dynamo whined to a muted scream

and then another began to growl. Ozone and brimstone bit

the nostrils. The table was pooled in smoky light.

The injured man's clothing vanished and with small

tinks bits of metal dropped against the floor—coins, buck-

les, shoe nails.

Doc tripped another line of switches and a third motor

commenced to yell. The light about the table graduated

from blue up to unseen black. The great hole in the charred

chest began to glow whitely. The beating heart which had

been laid bare by the original weapon slowed, slowed,

slowed.

With a final twitch of his wrist, Doc cut out the first

stages and made his gesture to Hippocrates. That one

lifted off the top tray which bore the man and, holding it

balanced with one hand, opened a gravelike vault. There

were long, green tubes glowing in the vault and the feel of

swirling gases. Hippocrates slid the tray along the grooves

and clanged the door upon it.

Doc stood at the board for a little while, leaning a little

against the force field which protected him from stray or

glancing rays, and then sighing a weary sigh, evened the

glittering line. Normal light and air came back into the

operating room and the salon door slid automatically

open.

The girl stood there, tense question in her every line,

fear digging nails into palms.

Doc put on a professional smile. "There is a very fair

chance that we may save him, Miss—"

"Elston."

"A very fair chance. Fifty-fifty."

"But what are you doing now?" she demanded.

Doc would ordinarily have given a rough time to any-

one else who had dared to ask him that. But he felt

somehow summery as he gazed at her.

"All I can, Miss Elston."

"Then he'll soon be well?"

"Why ... ah ... that depends. You see, well—" how

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