Ole Doc Methuselah by L. Ron Hubbard Page A

road of his rival’s son, who, of course, is far
from proof against the virulence of the lovely lady.
    Although
the yarn had lain quietly amongst his books—which library Hippocrates steadily
devoured—Ole Doc had not heard of it for two or three hundred years. He thought
now of all the advantages he had over that ancient Italian writer. Why, he knew
of a thousand ways, at least, to make a being sudden death to any other being.
    Maybe,
he mused over dessert, it was just as well that people didn’t dig into
literature anymore but contented themselves on sparadio thrillers and washboard weepers . From
all the vengeance, provincialism, wars and governments he had seen of late,
such devices could well depopulate the galaxies.
    But
his thoughts paused at the speaker announcement.
    â€œWe
are safely landed at Dorab-Mizar, capital Nanty, main space field, conditions
good but subarctic cold.” That was the Morgue talking. Ole Doc could
not quite get used to his trusty old space can having a dulcet voice now.
    Hippocrates
got him into a lead-fiber suit and put a helmet on his head and armed him with
kit and blasters and then stood back to admire him and, at the same time, check
him out. Hippocrates was small, four-armed and awful to behold, but where Ole
Doc was concerned, the little creature was life itself.
    Ole
Doc stepped through the space port and stopped.
    In
six hundred years of batting about space, Ole Doc had seldom seen a gloomier
vista.
    The
world of Dorab had an irregular orbit caused by the proximity of two stars. It
went between them and as they moved in relation to each other, so it moved, now
one, now the other, taking it. A dangerous situation at best, it did things to
the climate. The temperatures varied between two hundred above and ninety-one
below zero and its seasons were impossible to predict with accuracy. The
vegetation had adapted itself through the eons and had a ropy, heavily
insulated quality which gave it a forbidding air. And every plant had developed
protection in the form of thorns or poisons. Inhibited by cold, every period of
warmth was attended by furious growing. The ice would turn into vast swamps,
the huge, almost sentient trees would grow new limbs and send them intertwining
until all the so-called temperate zone was a canopied mass.
    But
now, with a winter almost done, the trees were thick black stumps standing on
an unlimited vista of blue ice. It was much too cold to snow. The sky was
blackish about Mizar’s distant glare. No tomb was ever more bleak nor more
promising of death. For the trees seemed dead, the rivers were dead, the sky
was dead and all was killed with cold.
    Ole
Doc boosted his heater up, wrapped his golden cloak about him and bowing his
head to a roaring blast, forged toward a small black hut which alone marked
this as a field.
    He
assumed instantly that life lived below this surface and he was not wrong. He
passed from the field into a tunnel and it was very deep into this that he
encountered his first man.
    The
wild-eyed youngster leaped up and said, all in a breath, “You are a Soldier of
Light. I have been posted here for five days awaiting your arrival. We are
dying. Dying, all of us! Come quickly!” And he sped away, impatiently pausing
at each bend to see that Ole Doc was certainly following.
    They
came into the deserted thoroughfares where shop faces were closed with heavy
timbers and where only a few lights gleamed feebly. They passed body after body
lying in the gutters, unburied, rotting and spoiling the already foul air of
the town. They skirted empty warehouses and broken villas and came at last to a
high, wide castle chiseled from the native basalt.
    Ole
Doc followed the youth up the ebon steps and into a scattered guardroom.
Beyond, offices were abandoned and papers lay like snow. Outside a door marked George
Jasper Arlington the youth stopped, afraid to go any farther. Ole Doc went by him and found his
man.
    He
had eyes like a