ONE WOMAN FOR VENUS by WINSTON MARKS - Part 1
Genre 1957: Pulp Short Story / Sci-Fi Romance
illustration by KELLY FREAS
ONE WOMAN FOR VENUS by WINSTON MARKS
Part 1
The governor of Venus must be celibate. Fuller had been conditioned by experts against all women. But things can happen in space that upset conditioning
THE Governors of the Territory of Venus got younger and younger each five-year term. Ruling the sand-blasted empire of bubble-huts and unbreathable air, the Earth Council discovered, was not a job for age. It did require dignity, poise, and self-control which one normally associates with experience, but, regrettably, experience brought gray hairs and a fragility of body and mind that cracked under the mental, moral and physical buffeting that Earth's outpost gave its nominal rulers.
And so it was that at 26, Governor-Elect Raymond Fuller, fresh out of diplomatic school, found himself aboard the freighter Sullivan II, outward bound as an emergency replacement for 34-year-old Thomas Cottinghouse, the latest gubernatorial casualty to fail to complete his term. Cottinghouse had returned via the last passenger flight, eschewing the $50,000 bonus for finishing his fifth year of Tenure.
Fuller was wrestler-built, narrow-hipped, cold-blooded and confident. To fortify his high I.Q. and emotional stability, the "psychers" had rushed him through a special fortnight of mental and physical conditioning. So confident were they after the final tests, Fuller noted that they didn't even demur when it was found that he must share the limited passenger accommodations with one Ramona Waverly, a female exile of considerable demoralizing potential.
Fuller, himself, gave her scarcely a thought until well after blast-off. The heavy acceleration had diminished to the essential-to-well-being one gee that pushed gently from the deck in perfect simulation of Earth's gravity, and his inner ear mechanism and stomach responded quickly to normality. He arose from his couch in the cramped stateroom, pleased to find that his resiliency had overcome in minutes the blast-off effects that so often left passengers exhausted and nauseated for hours after departure.
Sliding his stateroom door panel back he stepped into the low-ceilinged box of a ward room upon which his quarters opened directly. A cloud of faintly perfumed tobacco smoke assailed him, and his stomach stirred uneasily.
He addressed the only other occupant, "I believe smoking is forbidden aboard." He was firm and authoritative, and there was notice of response in his voice to the rather startling sight that met his eyes.
Ramona Waverly lounged supine on one of the two padded couches, a knee carelessly bent up throwing her single, translucent garment into a provocative dishabille. She was what? Nineteen? Twenty-nine? They had told Fuller, but it hadn't seemed important enough to remember, and certainly the smooth narrow lines of her face and neck gave no hint.
Her wide eyes, black as the tightly swept-back hair, moved leisurely over him. She dropped the offending knee and sat up drawing the filmy garment down to her ankles with an exaggerated, prim gesture. "So you don't even smoke!" The words and tone of voice told Fuller that she knew all about him, knew that he was a graduate cum laude of the school of iron will, clean living and let's-not-be-messing around. The tone was a soft contralto to match her olive skin, and it was metropolitan and bored, inviting and contemptful, passionate and gelid, admiring and scornful. There was a trace of French accent.
Fuller examined her with academic interest. On Venus she would be only one more female constituent of his pioneer colony, cooking, minding and solacing one of the 80,000 hard-bitten males who had ventured into space to wrest a mineral fortune from the inhospitable planet. But at the moment she represented the product of the odd method of recruiting found necessary to provide the Venusian immigrants with wives.
Fuller seated himself opposite her, fanning a wisp of perfumed smoke away from his nostrils. "You were conditioned out of the nicotine habit. Why did you smuggle cigarettes aboard? On Venus there is enough to corrupt the lungs."
She shrugged a bare shoulder. "It was a habit I cherished. Like all my—vices. No, it does not give me satisfaction now, but only the pleasure of a last defiance."
Typical, Fuller thought. "And which of your cherished vices got you exiled?"
"Oooooh," she puckered her dark eyebrows, "hardly a vice. I fed my ol' husband bismuth for his ulcers."
"But bismuth is a common remedy for stomach trouble."
"Radio-active bismuth?" she replied with a grimace. "He died tres painfully and expensively."
Fuller remembered now, a self-made widow. And the vast fortune she had inherited before the insurance company gained an indictment had corrupted two judges and six juries. A conviction had been secured against her only after her money ran out.
"Why did you kill him?" Fuller asked curiously.
"He was a sadist. Would you like to see my scars?"
"Thanks, no. Why did you marry him in the first place?"
"He was handsome—like you. And wealthy. Ah, mon cherie, so wealthy he was! But those lawyers I If they had gotten me a stay of execution of a single month more I would have been free. Such publicity! Such grande responde from my public!"
That was what had troubled the court, she explained. Too much sympathy from the public. The judge had offered her the choice of exile or execution and when she had chosen Venus, they had packed her off on this freighter before her ardent worshipers among the tabloid readers completed their fund campaign to finance and demand yet another appeal.
She changed the subject abruptly. "What kept you to your stateroom for so long? I 'ave been perishing with loneliness."
A faint pique arose in Fuller, that she had recovered from blast-off even more quickly than he. Also, the roving look with which her eyes took possession of him made him wish vaguely that approved masculine space-ship attire consisted of something more substantial than breech-clout and the sweat-kerchief knotted loosely around his neck. No wonder the crew and even the officers were denied the wardroom for this particular trip. If Fuller had enjoyed a whitless faith in his rigorous moral conditioning, he should have been awash with misgivings.
As it was he arose with a slight grunt and moved to the stingy port to stare through his pale reflection into the black void just inches from his nose. The prickle of body hairs coming unstuck from his moist skin gave him the weird sensation that Ramona was still sweeping him with her gaze. Then the hard brilliance of the stars struck through to his consciousness, and the immense importance and dignity of his mission came back to him.
He was Raymond Thurston Fuller, youngest man ever to be appointed Governor of Venus. Calm. Incorruptible. A mountain of strength, physical and moral. Soon enough this poor girl would learn the rigors of her banishment to Venus. No point in worrying over her obvious designs on his emotions. So she had snared herself a millionaire with her sinuous body and pouting lips! Fuller was no spoiled darling looking for diversion. He was secure behind the thickest armor that quiet political ambition plus psychological conditioning could give him. He was a rock, a cold, intellectual entity trained to deal with the personnel problems of a tempestuous colony. No mere woman could penetrate that armor.
He decided it, and the stars glittered back non-commitally. Turning, Fuller said, "Please remember, you are still under arrest. I have a full schedule of studying to complete before we arrive, so I'll have to request that you comport yourself with restraint or remain in your stateroom."
Ramona looked from his eyes to the door of her stateroom. The resolve in Fuller's eyes was unmistakable. She said subduedly, "Oui! With restraint. I would not like to be confined in that coffin. With restraint at all times, mon cherie." And she sounded as if she meant it.
