The Outpost by Mike Resnick Read Free Book Online Page B

held him to three points and picked up only one foul in 40 minutes.”
    “A telling point,” agreed Catastrophe Baker. “That’s sure the way I’d have made it up.”
    “Well, I guess he was the most famous athlete that no one ever heard of,” agreed Max.
    “Yeah,” said Big Red, “I had the privilege of playing against the greatest unknown jockstrapper in the galaxy, and the greatest known one, too.”
    “You played against McPherson?” said Max dubiously.
    “You ever hear of a greater known one?” was Big Red’s answer.
    “Boy, I remember flying all the way to the Pilaster system to see him!” said Nicodemus Mayflower with a nostalgic smile on his face.
    “Even I heard of him,” chimed in Catastrophe Baker, “and I’ve been too busy with Pirate Queens and Temple Virgins and the like to pay much attention to children’s games.” He paused. “Old Iron-Arm. They say he was something else.” He turned to Big Red. “Whatever became of him, anyway?”
    “Well, that’s really Einstein’s story to tell,” answered Big Red. “But since he can’t communicate in any language that isn’t full of numbers and strange symbols, I suppose I’d better tell it for him.”
    And so he did.

    When Iron-Arm McPherson Took the Mound
    I still remember him when he was just a kid (said Big Red), making a name for himself out in the Quinellus Cluster. They said he was the fastest thing on two feet, and that he’d break every base-stealing record in the books.
    I took that kind of personally, since I’m pretty fast myself—or at least I used to be, before I blew out my left knee and broke my right thigh and ankle during my next-to-last season of murderball. (I’ll bet you didn’t know it, but I took my name from two of the greatest racehorses ever, Man o’ War and Secretariat. The press gave each of them the nickname of Big Red.) Anyway, I made it my business to head out that way and see if this McPherson kid was as good as his press clippings.
    First time up, the kid bunted and beat the throw, then stole second, third, and home, and he was still looking for more bases to steal when the roar of the crowd finally died down. Did the same thing the second time he was up. Bunted his way onto first base a third time—and then it happened. There was a pickoff play that got him leaning the wrong way, and suddenly he fell to the ground and grabbed his knee, and I knew his base-stealing days were over.
    I didn’t think much about him for the next couple of years, and then I heard he’d come back, that he was hitting home runs farther than anyone had ever hit ‘em, was averaging more than one a game, so I went out to take a look. Sure enough, the kid drilled the first pitch he saw completely out of the ballpark, and did the same with the next couple.
    Then they called in Squint-Eye Malone from the bullpen. Old Squint-Eye took it as a personal insult any time someone poked a long one off one of his teammates, so he wound up and threw a high hard one up around the kid’s chin. The kid was a really cool customer; he never flinched, never moved a muscle. Malone squinted even more and aimed the next one at the kid’s head. The kid ducked a little too late, and everyone in the park could hear the crunching sound as the ball shattered his eye socket, and I figured with that even with the artificial eyes they make these days, it would have to affect his timing or his depth perception or something, and it was a damned shame, because this was a truly talented kid who’d been done in not once but twice by bad luck and physical injuries.
    And that was it. I never gave him another thought. Then, about four years later, word began trickling out that there was a pitcher out in the boonies who could throw smoke like no one had ever seen. The stories kept coming back about this Iron-Arm McPherson, who supposedly threw the ball so hard that batters never saw it coming, and I vaguely wondered if he was any relation to the McPherson kid