THE HOOFER Walter M. Miller, Jr. THEY ALL KNEW he was a spacer because of the white goggle marks on his sun-scorche face, and so they toler-ated him and helped him. They even made allowances for him when staggered and fell in the aisle of the bus while pursuing the harassed little housewife from seat seat and cajoling her to sit and talk with him. Having fallen, he decided to sleep in the aisle. Two men helped him to the back of the bu dumped him on the rear seat, and tucked his gin bottle safely out of sight. After all, he had n seen Earth for nine months, and judging by the crusted matter about his eyelids, he couldn't ha seen it too well now, even if he had been sober. Glare-blindness, gravity-legs, and agoraphob were excuses for a lot of things, when a man was just back from Big Bottomless. And who cou blame a man for acting strangely? Minutes later, he was back up the aisle and swaying giddily over the little housewife. "How!" said. "Me Chief Broken Wing. You wanta Indian wrestle?" The girl, who sat nervously staring at him, smiled wanly, and shook her head. "Quiet li'l pigeon, aren'tcha?" he burbled affectionately, crashing into the seat beside her. Two men slid out of their seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder. "Come on, Broken Win let's go back to bed." "My name's Hogey," he said. "Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding about being a Indian." "Yeah. Come on, let's go have a drink." They got him on his feet, and led him stumbling ba down the aisle. "My ma was half Cherokee, see? That's how come I said it. You wanta hear a w whoop? Real stuff." "Never mind." He cupped his hands to his mouth and favored them with a blood-curdling proof of h ancestry, while the fe-male passengers stirred restlessly and hunched in their seats. The driv stopped the bus and went back to warn him against any further display. The driver flashed deputy's badge and threatened to turn him over to a constable. "I gotta get home," Big Hogey told him. "I got me a son now, that's why. You know? A lit baby pigeon of a son. Haven't seen him yet." "Will you just sit still and be quiet then, eh?" Big Hogey nodded emphatically. "Shorry, officer, I didn't mean to make any trouble." When the bus started again, he fell on his side and lay still. He made retching sounds for a tim then rested, snor-ing softly. The bus driver woke him again at Caine's junc-tion, retrieved his g bottle from behind the seat, and helped him down the aisle and out of the bus. Big Hogey stumbled about for a moment, then sat down hard in the gravel at the shoulder of t road. The driver paused with one foot on the step, looking around. There was not even a store the road junction, but only a freight building next to the railroad track, a couple of farmhouses the edge of a side-road, and, just across the way, a deserted filling station with a sagging roof. T land was Great Plains country, treeless, barren, and roll-ing. Big Hogey got up and staggered around in front of the bus, clutching at it for support, losin his duffle bag. "Hey, watch the traffic!" The driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome compassion he trott around after his troublesome passenger, taking his arm as he sagged again. "You crossing?" "Yeah," Hogey muttered. "Lemme alone, I'm okay." The driver started across the highway with him. The traffic was sparse, but fast and dangero in the central ninety-mile lane. "I'm okay," Hogey kept protesting. "I'm a tumbler, ya know? Gravity's got me. Damn gravit I'm not used to gravity, ya know? I used to be a tumbler—huk!—only now I gotta be a hoofe 'Count of li'l Hogey. You know about li'1 Hogey?" "Yeah. Your son. Come on." "Say, you gotta son? I bet you gotta son." "Two kids," said the driver, catching Hogey's bag as it slipped from his shoulder. "Both girls. "Say, you oughta be home with them kids. Man oughta stick with his family. You oughta g another job." Hogey eyed him owlishly, wagged a moralistic finger, skidded on the gravel as th stepped onto the opposite shoulder, and sprawled again. The driver blew a weary breath, looked down at him, and shook his head. Maybe it'd be kind to find a constable after all. This guy could get himself killed, wander-ing around loose. "Somebody supposed to meet you?" he asked, squinting around at the dusty hills. "Huk!—who, me?" Hogey giggled, belched, and shook his head. "Nope. Nobody knows I coming. S'prise. I'm supposed to be here a week ago." He looked up at the driver with a pain expression. "Week late, ya know? Marie's gonna be sore—woo-hoo!—is she gonna be sore!" H waggled his head severely at the ground. "Which way are you going?" the driver grunted impa-tiently. Hogey pointed down the side-road that led back into the hills. "Marie's pop's place. You kno where? 'Bout three miles from here. Gotta walk, I guess." "Don't," the driver warned. "You sit there by the cul-vert till you get a ride. Okay?" Hogey nodded forlornly. "Now stay out of the road," the driver warned, then hurried back across the highway. Momen later, the atomic battery-driven motors droned mournfully, and the bus pulled away. Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing the back of his neck. "Nice people," he said. "Nice bunc people. All hoofers." With a grunt and a lurch, he got to his feet, but his legs wouldn't work right. With his tumble reflexes, he fought to right himself with frantic arm motions, but gravity claimed him, and he we stumbling into the ditch. "Damn legs, damn crazy legs!" he cried. The bottom of the ditch was wet, and he crawled up the embankment with mud-soaked knee and sat on the shoulder again. The gin bottle was still intact. He had himself a long fiery drink, an it warmed him deep down. He blinked around at the gaunt and treeless land. The sun was almost down, forge-red on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked sky faded in sulphurous yellow toward the zenith, and the very air that hung over the land seemed full of yello smoke, the omnipresent dust of the plains. A farm truck turned onto the side-road and moaned away, its driver hardly glancing at the da young man who sat swaying on his dufflebag near the culvert. Hogey scarcely noticed the vehic He just kept staring at the crazy sun. He shook his head. It wasn't really the sun. The sun, the real sun, was a hateful eye-sizzlin horror in the dead black pit. It painted everything with pure white pain, and you saw things by t reflected painlight. The fat red sun was strictly a phoney, and it didn't fool him any. He hated it f what he knew it was behind the gory mask, and for what it had done to his eyes. With a grunt, he got to his feet, managed to shoulder the duffle bag, and started off down t middle of the farm road, lurching from side to side, and keeping his eyes on the rolling distance Another car turned onto the side-road, honking angrily. Hogey tried to turn around to look at it, but he forgot to shift his footing. He staggered an went down on the pavement. The car's tires screeched on the hot asphalt. Hogey lay there for moment, groaning. That one had hurt his hip. A car door slammed and a big man with a flor face got out and stalked toward him, looking angry. "What the hell's the matter with you, fella?" he drawled. "You soused? Man, you've really got load." Hogey got up doggedly, shaking his head to clear it. "Space legs," he prevaricated. "Got spa legs. Can't stand the gravity." The burly farmer retrieved his gin bottle for him, still miraculously unbroken. "Here's yo gravity," he grunted. "Listen, fella, you better get home pronto." "Pronto? Hey, I'm no Mex. Honest, I'm just space burned. You know?" "Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway? Do you live around here?" It was obvious that the big man had taken him for a hobo or a tramp. Hogey pulled himse together. "Goin' to the Hauptman's place. Marie. You know Marie?" The farmer's eyebrows went up. "Marie Hauptman? Sure I know her. Only she's Marie Park now. Has been, nigh on six years. Say—" He paused, then gaped. "You ain't her husband by an chance?" "Hogey, that's me. Big Hogey Parker." "Well, I'll be—! Get in the ear. I'm going right past John Hauptman's place. Boy, you're in n shape to walk it." He grinned wryly, waggled his head, and helped Hogey and his bag into the back seat. woman with a sun-wrin-kled neck sat rigidly beside the farmer in the front, and she neither greet the passenger nor looked around. "They don't make cars like this anymore," the farmer called over the growl of the ancie gasoline engine and the grind of gears. "You can have them new atomics with their loads of h isotopes under the seat. Ain't safe, I say—eh, Martha?" The woman with the sun-baked neck quivered her head slightly. "A car like this was goo enough for Pa, an' I reckon it's good enough for us," she drawled mournfully. Five minutes later the car drew in to the side of the road. "Reckon you can walk it from here the farmer said. "That's Hauptman's road just up ahead." He helped Hogey out of the car and drove away without looking back to see if Hogey stay on his feet. The woman with the sun-baked neck was suddenly talking garrulously in his direction It was twilight. The sun had set, and the yellow sky was turning gray. Hogey was too tired to g on, and his legs would no longer hold him. He blinked around at the land, got his eyes focuse and found what looked like Hauptman's place on a distant hillside. It was a big frame hou surrounded by a wheatfield, and a few scrawny trees. Hav-ing located it, he stretched out in t tall grass beyond the ditch to take a little rest. Somewhere dogs were barking, and a cricket sang creak-ing monotony in the grass. Once the was the distant thunder of a rocket blast from the launching station six miles to the west, but faded quickly. An A-motored con-vertible whined past on the road, but Hogey went unseen. When he awoke, it was night, and he was shivering. His stomach was screeching, and h nerves dancing with high voltages. He sat up and groped for his watch, then remem-bered he h pawned it after the poker game. Remember-ing the game and the results of the game made hi wince and bite his lip and grope for the bottle again. He sat breathing heavily for a moment after the stiff drink. Equating time to position h become second na-ture with him, but he had to think for a moment because his defective visio prevented him from seeing the Earth-crescent. Vega was almost straight above him in the late August sky, so he knew it wasn't much aft sundown—probably about eight o'clock. He braced himself with another swal-low of gin, pick himself up and got back to the road, feel-ing a little sobered after the nap. He limped on up the pavement and turned left at the narrow drive that led between barbed-wi fences toward the Hauptman farmhouse, five hundred yards or so from the farm road. The fiel on his left belonged to Marie's father, he knew. He was getting close—close to home and wom and child. He dropped the bag suddenly and leaned against a fence post, rolling his head on his forearm and choking in spasms of air. He was shaking all over, and his belly writhed. He wanted to tu and run. He wanted to crawl out in the grass and hide. What were they going to say? And Marie, Marie most of all. How was he going to tell her abo the money? Six hitches in space, and every time the promise had been the same: One more tour, baby, an we'll have enough dough, and then I'll quit for good. One more time, and we'll have o stake—enough to open a little business, or buy a house with a mortgage and get a job. And she had waited, but the money had never been quite enough until this time. This time t tour had lasted nine months, and he had signed on for every run from station to moon-base pick up the bonuses. And this time he'd made it. Two weeks ago, there had been forty-eig hundred in the bank. And now .. . "Why?" he groaned, striking his forehead against his forearms. His arm slipped, and his head h the top of the fencepost, and the pain blinded him for a moment. He stag-gered back into the roa with a low roar, wiped blood from his forehead, and savagely kicked his bag. It rolled a couple of yards up the road. He leaped after it and kicked it again. When he h finished with it, he stood panting and angry, but feeling better. He shouldered the bag and hik on toward the farmhouse. They're hoofers, that's all—just an Earth-chained bunch of hoofers, even Marie. And I'm tumbler. A born tum-bler. Know what that means? It means—God, what does it mean? It mea out in Big Bottomless, where Earth's like a fat moon with fuzzy mold growing on it. Mold, tha all you are, just mold. A dog barked, and he wondered if he had been mutter-ing aloud. He came to a fence-gap an paused in the dark-ness. The road wound around and came up the hill in front of the hous Maybe they were sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd already heard him coming. Maybe .. . He was trembling again. He fished the fifth of gin out of his coat pocket and sloshed it. St over half a pint. He decided to kill it. It wouldn't do to go home with a bottle sticking out of h pocket. He stood there in the night wind, sipping at it, and watching the reddish moon come up the east. The moon looked as phoney as the setting sun. He straightened in sudden determination. It had to be sometime. Get it over with, get it ov with now. He opened the fence-gap, slipped through, and closed it firmly behind him. He retriev his bag, and waded quietly through the tall grass until he reached the hedge which di-vided an ar of sickly peach trees from the field. He got over the hedge somehow, and started through the tre toward the house. He stumbled over some old boards, and they clattered. "Shhh!" he hissed, and moved on. The dogs were barking angrily, and he heard a screen door slam. He stopped. "Ho there!" a male voice called experimentally from the house. One of Marie's brothers. Hogey stood frozen in the shadow of a peach tree, waiting. "Anybody out there?" the man called again. Hogey waited, then heard the man muttering, "Sic 'im, boy, sic 'im." The hound's bark became eager. The animal came chas-ing down the slope, and stopped t feet away to crouch and bark frantically at the shadow in the gloom. He knew the dog. "Hookey!" he whispered. "Hookey boy —here!" The dog stopped barking, sniffed, trotted closer, andwent "RrroofJ!" Then he started sniffin suspiciously again. "Easy, Hookey, here boy!" he whispered. The dog came forward silently, sniffed his hand, and whined in recognition. Then he trott around Hogey, panting doggy affection and dancing an invitation to romp. The man whistled fro the porch. The dog froze, then trotted quickly back up the slope. "Nothing, eh, Hookey?" the man on the porch said. "Chasin' armadillos again, eh?" The screen door slammed again, and the porch light went out. Hogey stood there starin unable to think. Somewhere beyond the window lights were—his woman, his son. What the hell was a tumbler doing with a woman and a son? After perhaps a minute, he stepped forward again. He tripped over a shovel, and his fo plunged into something that went squelch and swallowed the foot past the ankle. He fell forwa into a heap of sand, and his foot went deeper into the sloppy wetness. He lay there with his stinging forehead on his arms, cursing softly and crying. Finally he roll over, pulled his foot out of the mess, and took off his shoes. They were full of mud—stick sandy mud. The dark world was reeling about him, and the wind was dragging at his breath. He fell ba against the sand pile and let his feet sink in the mud hole and wriggled his toes. He was laughi soundlessly, and his face was wet in the wind. He couldn't think. He couldn't remember where was and why, and he stopped caring, and after awhile he felt better. The stars were swimming over him, dancing crazily, and the mud cooled his feet, and the san was soft behind him. He saw a rocket go up on a tail of flame from the station, and waited for t sound of its blast, but he was already asleep when it came. . It was far past midnight when he became conscious of the dog licking wetly at his ear an cheek. He pushed the animal away with a low curse and mopped at the side of his face. He stirre and groaned. His feet were burning up! He tried to pull them toward him, but they wouldn't budg There was something wrong with his legs. For an instant he stared wildly around in the night. Then he remembered where he was, close his eyes and shuddered. When he opened them again, the moon had emerged from behind cloud, and he could see clearly the cruel trap into which he had accidentally stumbled. A pile old boards, a careful stack of new lumber, a pick and shovel, a sand-pile, heaps of fresh-turn earth, and a concrete mixer—well, it added up. He gripped his ankles and pulled, but his feet wouldn't budge. In sudden terror, he tried stand up, but his an-kles were clutched by the concrete too, and he fell back in the sand with low moan. He lay still for several minutes, considering carefully. He pulled at his left foot. It was locked in a vise. He tugged even more desperately at his rig foot. It was equally immovable. He sat up with a whimper and clawed at the rough con-crete until his nails tore and his fingerti bled. The sur-face still felt damp, but it had hardened while he slept. He sat there stunned until Hookey began licking at his scuffed fingers. He shouldered the do away, and dug his hands into the sand-pile to stop the bleeding. Hookey licked at his face, pantin love. "Get away!" he croaked savagely. The dog whined softly, trotted a short distance away, circled, and came back to crouch dow in the sand directly before Hogey, inching forward experimentally. Hogey gripped fistfuls of the dry sand and cursed be-tween his teeth, while his eyes wander over the sky. They came to rest on the sliver of light—the space station—rising in the we floating out in Big Bottomless where the gang was—Nichols and Guerrera and Lavrenti and Fa And he wasn't forgetting Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced him. Keesey would have a rough time for a while—rough as a cob. The pit was no playground. T first time you went out of the station in a suit, the pit got you. Everything was falling, and you f with it. Everything. The skeletons of steel, the tire-shaped station, the spheres and docks an nightmare shapes—all tied together by umbilical cables and flexible tubes. Like some cra sea-thing they seemed, floating in a black ocean with its tentacles bound together by driftin strands in the dark tide that bore it. Everything was pain-bright or dead black, and it wheeled around you, and you went nuts tryin to figure which way was down. In fact, it took you months to teach your body that all ways we down and that the pit was bottomless. He became conscious of a plaintive sound in the wind, and froze to listen. It was a baby crying. It was nearly a minute before he got the significance of it. It hit him where he lived, and began jerking franti-cally at his encased feet and sobbing low in his throat. They'd hear him if kept that up. He stopped and cov-ered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. A light we on in the house, and when it went off again, the in-fant's cry had ceased. Another rocket went up from the station, and he cursed it. Space was a disease, and he had it. "Help!" he cried out suddenly. "I'm stuck! Help me, help me!" He knew he was yelling hysterically at the sky and fight-ing the relentless concrete that clutch his feet, and after a moment he stopped. The light was on in the house again, and he heard faint sounds. The stirring-about woke t baby again, and once more the infant's wail came on the breeze. Make the kid shut up, make the kid shut up ... But that was no good. It wasn't the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's fault. No fathers allowed space, they said, but it wasn't their fault either. They were right, and he had only himself to blam The kid was an accident, but that didn't change anything. Not a thing in the world. It re-mained tragedy. A tumbler had no business with a family, but what was a man going to do? Take a skinnin knife, boy, and make yourself a eunuch. But that was no good either. They needed bulls out the in the pit, not steers. And when a man came down from a year's hitch, what was he going to do Live in a lonely shack and read books for kicks? Because you were a man, you sought out woman. And because she was a woman, she got a kid, and that was the end of it. It was nobody fault, nobody's at all. He stared at the red eye of Mars low in the southwest. They were running out there now, an next year he would have been on the long long run ... But there was no use thinking about it. Next year and the years after belonged to little Hogey. He sat there with his feet locked in the solid concrete of the footing, staring out into B Bottomless while his son's cry came from the house and the Hauptman men-folk came wadin through the tall grass in search of someone who had cried out. His feet were stuck tight, and wouldn't ever get them out. He was sobbing softly when they found him.