Free No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) by Clifford D. Simak Page A

with mobsters—for a while.
    —dww
    Old Eli was plastered when I found him in the Sun Spot, one of the many disreputable dives situated against the walls of the domed city of New Chicago on the Twilight Belt of Mercury.
    I had been afraid of that. As soon as I had heard the old Sunwarder was in town, I had set out to track him down by checking all the joints. The Sun Spot was the thirty-third.
    Eli always was good for a story—the kind of a story the Solar Press ate up. No one in New Chicago believed a word he said, especially that yarn about being a couple of hundred years old. Some of the stuff he told about the Sunward side might be true, for few men ventured there, but the story about his age was just too much to swallow.
    Most of his tales were alcoholic. He had to have a bit of glow to do much talking. But this time I saw he was pretty far gone.
    He regarded me across the table with bleary eyes.
    “I was a-comin’ to see you, son,” he cackled. “Kept thinkin’ all the time, ‘I gotta go see Sherm.’ “ He shoved the bottle at me. “Grab yourself a snort, son.”
    I shook my head. “Can’t. Doctor’s orders. Got a lousy stomach.”
    He guffawed in minor key and pounded the table in drunken mirth.
    “I remember now. Doggone if I don’t. Always taking pills or something, ain’t you?”
    “Capsules,” I said, icily. I can’t appreciate jokes about my stomach.
    “Don’t need water nor nothin’ to wash them down,” he went on. “Just pop them into your mouth and swallow. Funniest danged thing I ever see. Me, I never took a pill without a heap of gaggin’.”
    He hoisted the bottle and let it gurgle.
    “What did you do this trip?” I asked.
    “Not much of nothin’,” said Eli. “Couldn’t find a thing. This danged planet is getting’ too crowded. Too many prospectors runnin’ around. Bumped into a feller out there, I did. First time that has ever happened. Don’t like it. Have to go out to Pluto where a man’s got elbow room.”
    He wrestled the bottle again and wiped his whiskers.
    “Wouldn’t have come in at all ‘cept I had to bring Doc some of them salts of his.”
    “What salts are those?” I asked.
    “What! Ain’t I ever told you about them salts. Doc buys them off of me. Danged if I know why. Don’t seem to be good for nothin’.”
    He reached into a bulging coat pocket, pulled forth a canvas bag and slung it on the table.
    “Take a look,” he urged. “Maybe you can tell me what it is. Doc pays me good for it. Takes good care of me, too. Caught the fever out on Venus, long time ago. He gives me injections to fight it off.”
    Eli stumbled a little over ‘injections’ but finally made it.
    “Who is this Doc?” I asked quietly, afraid I’d scare him into silence. “One of the doctors here in town?”
    “Nope. The big doc. The feller out at the sanitarium.”
    “Dr. Vincent?”
    “That’s the one,” said Eli. “Used to sell them to Dr. Anderson and Dr. Brown, too.”
    I let that pass. It was just another one of old Eli’s tales. Both Anderson and Brown had been dead these many years, Anderson before Eli was born.
    I opened the bag and poured part of its contents into one hand. Tiny, shining crystals winked, reflecting the lights above the bar.
    “Took some to a chemist once,” said Eli, “but he said it wasn’t nothin’. Not valuable at least. Some peculiar combin … combi—”
    “Combination.”
    “That’s it. I didn’t tell him about Doc. Didn’t tell him nothin’. Thought maybe I’d made a find and could cash in on it. Thought maybe Doc was takin’ me for a ride. But the chemist said it wasn’t worth a thing. Offered to sell him some but he didn’t want any. Out of his line, he said.”
    “Maybe you’d let me have some. Just a sample,” I suggested, still afraid of scaring him off. For I sensed, even then, that he was telling me something he shouldn’t tell.
    He waved a generous hand.
    “Take some. Take a lot. Take all you want.”
    I