Short Science Fiction Collection 019 - Various

Summary

Classic Science Fiction Books – Short Science Fiction Collection 019 Summary

Host: solgoodmedia.com
Date: July 30, 2026
Episode Theme:
This episode features a collection of classic science fiction short stories, each exploring unique themes such as technology, identity, human evolution, and the boundaries between reality and imagination. Through these tales, listeners are invited to consider not just futuristic wonders, but the eternal questions of what it means to be human in an ever-changing universe.

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Featured Stories

1. All Cats Are Gray (Andre Norton)

Start: [01:27]
Theme: The underestimated outsider, perception versus reality, the power of difference.

Summary & Key Insights:

• Stina, an unassuming, colorless woman, is known for her encyclopedic knowledge and unacknowledged wisdom in spaceport dives. Despite her background presence, her rare advice proves life-changing.
• Her companion is Bat, a huge, discerning gray tomcat, aligning with her gray, invisible world.
• Stina joins the down-on-his-luck Cliff Moran on a voyage to find the legendary derelict ship, the Empress of Mars—a haunted, deadly prize drifting through space.
• Upon boarding, Stina and Bat perceive a lurking, invisible presence—something that had previously doomed all who tried to claim the ship.
• Crucial Insight:
  • Stina's colorblindness enables her to see the invisible being as a shade of gray, while Bat detects it beyond normal senses. Their unique perceptions and calm actions defeat the threat and make reclamation of the derelict possible.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Gray. It must have been gray, or I couldn't have seen it like that. I'm colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray... That is why I saw the thing…” (Stina, [15:03])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Stina’s calm command: “Toss me your blaster,” and her use of a simple garment to reveal and destroy the creature ([13:04]).

Conclusion:
Stina finally finds a sense of belonging and recognition; her differences are her power. The episode ends with an image of quiet happiness—companionship, success, and acceptance.

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2. Beyond Lies the Wub (Philip K. Dick)

Start: [18:36]
Theme: Sentience, empathy, the ethics of consumption, and identity.

Summary & Key Insights:

• On Mars, the crew of a spaceship acquires a beast called a Wub (a giant, pig-like creature) as a food source.
• The Wub, astonishingly, speaks—communicating thoughts through telepathy and discussing subjects from philosophy to mythology, including the Odysseus archetype.
• Despite the Wub's reasonable arguments against being eaten and its display of intelligence, the captain kills it for food.
• Twist Ending:
  • After dinner, the captain begins to speak in the Wub’s voice, continuing the philosophical discourse—implying the Wub’s consciousness has transferred.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Can you look me in the eye and do it? The Wub said. Can you do that?” ([31:27])
  • “Eat me, rather you should discuss questions with me. Philosophy. The arts.” (The Wub, [26:17])
• Memorable Moment:
  • The eerie transference of consciousness as the captain speaks as the Wub ([36:10]).

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3. The Gallery (Roger Phillips Graham)

Start: [36:18]
Theme: Perception, reality, surveillance, and the blurring of art, technology, and existence.

Summary & Key Insights:

• Arthur is drawn into his Aunt Matilda's troubles, only to discover her involvement with lifelike, interactive wall “pictures”—portals that serve as both surveillance and parallel realities.
• As he investigates, he becomes subject to a process that makes him both observer and observed—experiencing being inside the “portrait” as much as outside.
• The mysterious photographer, Lana, explains the technology as a kind of magical/alien process that literally makes people part of her museum collection.
• Notable Quote:
  • “In that perspective, all my portraits, and there are many now, in many worlds... blend into one. That one is the stage of my life. But not a stage, really. A show window.” ([76:42])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Arthur realizing he simultaneously becomes a subject in art and retains his real-world presence, forever watched—and occasionally favored—by Lana.

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4. The Happy Unfortunate (Robert Silverberg)

Start: [77:03]
Theme: Identity, belonging, body modification, social stratification.

Summary & Key Insights:

• Rolf Decker, a physically imposing “spacer,” returns to Earth after years away and is confronted with societal changes: Earth dwellers (“Earthers”) use plastic surgery to assert their individuality or conformity—horns, extra eyes, jewel-studded features—while spacers are marked by strength bred for survival in space.
• Rolf's discomfort with his own identity culminates in a failed attempt to undergo surgery to become an Earther.
• Realization dawns that belonging doesn’t require transformation but acceptance, community, and love; he finds new meaning in his bond with fellow spacers, especially Laney.
• Notable Quote:
  • “You must realize that you are what you are. Your appearance is a social norm, and for acceptance in your social environment, you must continue to appear. Well, perhaps, shall I say Ape?” (Plastic Surgeon, [111:39])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Rolf’s moment of clarity about who he truly is, choosing love over conformity, planning a future on Venus with Laney ([117:39]).

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5. The Man Who Saw the Future (Edmond Hamilton)

Start: [120:10]
Theme: Time travel, human progress, the cost of curiosity.

Summary & Key Insights:

• Henri Lothier, a 15th-century apothecary, is accused of sorcery after being observed vanishing and reappearing at the site of mysterious thunderclaps.
• He relates how he was accidentally pulled 500 years into the future (to 1944) by scientists using a time rotation device.
• The future shocks and amazes Henri: cars, airplanes, glowing cities, instantaneous communication, social progress, and moving pictures.
• On Henri's return to his own time, his story is dismissed as madness, and he is condemned, but he feels fulfillment in having seen—and testified about—what humanity could achieve.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Glad that I have told one at least of this time, of what I saw five centuries in the future…” (Henri, [153:52])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Henri’s awe as he flies above "a mighty city," sees New York, and imagines the future's wonders ([139:51]).

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6. A Matter of Proportion (Anne Walker)

Start: [155:27]
Theme: Human resilience, overcoming limitations, the ingenuity of survival.

Summary & Key Insights:

• A Special Corps commando team carries out a high-risk sabotage mission during a planetary occupation.
• Through a device called ICEG (intercortical encephalograph), teammates experience each other's perceptions, sharing both the danger and the triumphs.
• Exploration of heroism, adaptation (including literal transplants and brain transfer), and the never-ending quest for challenges that keep the spirit alive.
• Notable Quote:
  • “There’s always a way, Willie… Life was always outclassed and always fought back. Proportions didn’t matter, only mood.” ([188:19])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Descriptions of climbing a sheer, icy viaduct highlight the raw willpower and careful adaptation needed to survive and win ([159:00]–[189:00]).

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7. The Sargasso of Space (Edmond Hamilton)

Start: [193:01]
Theme: Survival, leadership, danger in the unknown, betrayal and loyalty.

Summary & Key Insights:

• The freighter Pallas is stranded in the gravitational dead zone known as the Sargasso of Space, a literal graveyard for lost ships.
• After encountering survivors (and a hidden passenger) on another stranded ship, deception and intrigue unfold: murder, infighting, and a desperate search for fuel, with life and freedom hanging in the balance.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Time is the one thing there’s plenty of in this damned place.” (Krell, [200:00])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Marta, the lone female passenger, becomes a hero by risking everything to help the crew escape, leading to a tense space battle and escape from the deadly region ([274:00]–[287:00]).

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8. Something Will Turn Up (David Mason)

Start: [243:19]
Theme: Magic vs. technology, open-mindedness, the limits of rationality.

Summary & Key Insights:

• Mr. Rapp’s TV only displays images upside down, baffling conventional repairmen.
• An unconventional, poet-turned-repairman suggests a magical, poetic solution—and performs a spell, after which the picture is normal (but at the studio somewhere, everything is now upside down).
• Notable Quote:
  • “You got to admit that there are things not dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. You dig?” (Repairman, [248:00])
• Memorable Moment:
  • The whimsical magic spell, blending electronics and incantation, that fixes the set (but at cosmically comic expense) ([249:00]–[251:00]).

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9. Stopover (William Gerken)

Start: [259:58]
Theme: Postwar society, special abilities, acceptance, and the next stage of humanity.

Summary & Key Insights:

• In a world recovering from atomic war, a wanderer with telekinetic abilities arrives at a small town and, after his powers are discovered, becomes the catalyst for transforming society: teaching children how to develop latent “psi” abilities for the betterment of all.
• Exploration of prejudice, fear of the different, and hope for a future society founded on understanding and unity.
• Notable Quote:
  • “If we don’t stop it in our lifetime, we may not be able to stop it at all. As I see it, the best chance we have… is to accept the aid those among us with psi talents are willing to give.” (Tranton, [271:00])
• Memorable Moment:
  • A child projects a “hello” telepathically to a whole town council ([273:00]) and later demonstrates children working together to build a table with their minds ([275:00]).

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10. Toy Shop (Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

Start: [283:23]
Theme: Skepticism and curiosity, science vs. magic, subtle advances in technology.

Summary & Key Insights:

• At a toy demonstration, a “space wave tapper” appears to float in defiance of gravity—a trick exposed as a simple illusion involving black thread.
• Yet, engineers and missile experts who become intrigued discover an unexplained phenomenon: the toy becomes lighter when a small current runs through it, hinting at a real scientific principle underneath the trick.
• The “gimmick” becomes the seed for scientific curiosity and possibly revolutionary technological advancement—set in motion by a simple toy, accidentally distributed to the right hands.
• Notable Quote:
  • “No one wrapped up in massive fuel consumption… is going to have any time to worry about a crackpot… But it will nag at them because they know this effect can’t possibly exist.” ([291:00])
• Memorable Moment:
  • Realizing the toy's unexplained property, the scientists’ imaginations are captivated, setting the stage for transformative breakthroughs ([292:00]–[293:00]).

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Notable Quotes Across Stories

• “It must have been gray, or I couldn’t have seen it like that. I’m colorblind, you see.” (Stina, [15:03])
• “Eat me, rather you should discuss questions with me. Philosophy. The arts.” (The Wub, [26:17])
• “All my portraits, and there are many now, in many worlds... blend into one. That one is the stage of my life. But not a stage, really. A show window.” ([76:42])
• “You must realize that you are what you are. ... For acceptance in your social environment, you must continue to appear. Well, perhaps, shall I say Ape?” (Plastic Surgeon, [111:39])
• “Life was always outclassed and always fought back. Proportions didn’t matter, only mood.” ([188:19])
• “You got to admit that there are things not dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. You dig?” (Repairman, [248:00])
• “If we don’t stop it in our lifetime, we may not be able to stop it at all...” (Tranton, [271:00])

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Episode Highlights & Tone

• Each story is an adventure not just of space and time but of the mind—probing alienness within and without, the challenge of social transformation, and the spark of an idea that may change the world.
• The tone ranges from thoughtful and philosophical to tense and suspenseful to whimsical and gently comedic.
• Listeners are carried through suspenseful derelict ships and dystopian futures, witness the triumph of acceptance over prejudice, and find the universe hiding in something as small as a child’s mind or a toy.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• All Cats Are Gray: [01:27] – [18:36]
• Beyond Lies the Wub: [18:36] – [36:18]
• The Gallery: [36:18] – [77:03]
• The Happy Unfortunate: [77:03] – [120:10]
• The Man Who Saw the Future: [120:10] – [155:27]
• A Matter of Proportion: [155:27] – [193:01]
• The Sargasso of Space: [193:01] – [243:19]
• Something Will Turn Up: [243:19] – [259:58]
• Stopover: [259:58] – [283:23]
• Toy Shop: [283:23] – [293:31]

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For Further Exploration

Whether you enjoy tight plots, deep philosophical musings, explorations of human potential, or just classic sci-fi wonder, this collection has an entry point for every reader. Through each story, the episode invites you to discover what lies beyond the veil of the ordinary—be it in the stars, within a toy, or in your own mind.

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(Advertisements, intros, and outros are not included in this summary. All times are approximate.)

Transcript

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for the ones who get it done. All Cats Are Gray by Andre Norton this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite All Cats Are Gray by Andre Norton under normal conditions, a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one, but out in deep space, the normal may be reversed. For humans, at any rate. Stina of the Spaceways. That sounds just like a corny title for one of the stellar veto spreads. I ought to know. I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Stina was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a lunar plant. Even the hair nettled down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast, and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space awl. Stina was strictly background stuff, and that's where she mostly spent her free hours in the smelly, smoky background corners of any stellar port dive frequented by free spacers if you really looked for her, you could spot her just sitting there, listening to the talk. Listening and remembering. She didn't open her mouth often, but when she did, spacers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words. These will never forget Stina. She drifted from port to port, being an expert operator on the big calculators. She found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master minded machines she tended. Smooth, gray, without much personality of her own. But it was Stina who told Bub Nelson about the Jovan moon rites, and her warning saved Bub's life. Six months later it was Stina who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked Slittite. That started a rush which made 10 fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars. All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scale scales. But she wouldn't take so much as a cup of canal water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat. About a year after the Jovan affair. He walked into the Free Fall one night and dumped Bat down on her table. Bat looked at Stina and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together, the thin gray woman and the big gray tomcat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for vernal juice, drank it neat and quick right out of the glass, and he was always at home on any table where Stina elected to drop him. This is really the story of Stina Bat, Cliff Moran and the Empress of Mars. A story which is already a legend of the spaceways. And it's a damn good story too. I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself. For I was there, right in the Ryle Royal, when it all began. On the night that Clif Moran blew in looking lower than an ant man's belly and twice as nasty. He'd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug snake. And we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Venapoort, lose his ship, and he'd slip back there to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles. However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Stina came out of her corner bat curled around her shoulders, stole wise his favorite mode of travel. She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliff's side. That shook him out of his sulks because Stina never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the man stones on Ganymede had come stumping in, it wouldn't have made more of us look out of the corners of our eyes. She stretched out one long fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered and said only one thing. It's about time for the Empress of Mars to appear again. Cliff scowled and bit his lip. He was tough, tough as jetlining. You have to be granite inside and out to struggle up from Venaport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment. The Empress of Mars was just about the biggest prize a spacer could aim for. But in the 50 years she had been following her queer, derelict orbit through space, many men had tried to bring her in and none had succeeded. A pleasure ship carrying untold wealth, she had been mysteriously abandoned in space by passengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. At intervals thereafter she had been sighted, even boarded. Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation of what they had seen, wanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her in or even strip her clean in space, that man would win the jackpot all right. Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. I'll try even that. Stina looked at him much as she must have looked at bat the day Bub Nelson brought him to her, and nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces. Months later and in another port, half the system away, Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waiting with a writ out that could pull the ship from under him, and it wasn't until he was in space that he discovered his passengers. Stina and Bat. We'll never know what happened then. I'm betting that Stina made no explanation at all. She wouldn't. It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip, and she was there. That was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff. Maybe he just didn't care. Anyway, the three were together when they sighted the Empress riding her dead lights gleaming a ghost ship in night space. She must have been an eerie sight because her other lights were on too. In addition to the red warnings at her nose, she seemed alive, a Flying Dutchman of space. Cliff worked his ship skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later the three of them passed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors, air that bore a faint corrupt taint which set back to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human nostrils.

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Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy at Carvana.com cliff headed straight for the control cabin, but Stina and Bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Stina opened each as she passed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation. I don't know who had been housed there when the Empress left port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo reg cards, but there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowned with crystal and jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female, which drew Stina in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirror, glanced into it and froze. Over her right shoulder she could see the spider silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems. The dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out, as cats will, watching those gems, watching them. And something else. Stina put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it, she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air, and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand played. Bat spat almost noiselessly, but he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided on his course. She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room, and although she approached the bed, she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue. He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mewed loudly twice. Stina followed him and opened the door wider. Bat went straight on down the corridor, as intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Stina strolled behind him, holding her pace to the unhurried gait of an explorer. What sped before them both was invisible to her, but Bat was never baffled by it. They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseen, if the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubt, for Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Stina looked down the length of the instrument panels and officers station seats to where Clif Moran worked on the heavy carpet. Her boots made no sound, and he did not glance up but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to buttons, which had not been pushed in years to humanize. They were alone in the cabin, but Bat still followed a moving something with his gaze, and it was something with which he at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now even he took a step or two forward and spat, his loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Stina saw a flicker, a flicker of vague outline against Cliff's hunched shoulders, as if the invisible one had crossed the space between them. But why had it been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats, or against the panels, the walls of the corridor, or the COVID of the bed where it had reclined and played with its lute? What could Bat see? The storehouse memory that had served Stina so well through the years clicked open a half forgotten door. With one swift motion she tore loose her space awl and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat. Bat was snarling now, emitting the throaty rising cry that was his hunting song. But he was edging back, back toward Stina's feet, shrinking from something he could not fight, but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him past that dangling space, all he had to it was their only chance. What the Cliff had come out of his seat and was staring at them. What he saw must have been weird enough. Stina, bare armed and shouldered her usually stiffly nettled hair falling wildly down her stino, watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon. Toss me your blaster. Stina gave the order calmly, as if they still sat at their table in the Rigel Royal, and as quietly, Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady hand, caught and leveled it. Stay just where you are, she warned back. Bat, bring it back. With a last throat splitting screech of rage and hate, Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed the thumb and forefinger, firing at the space awls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ash, except for certain bits, which still flapped from the scorched seat as if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bats sprang straight up in the air with a scream that tore their ears.

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a 30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. What? Began Cliff again. Stina made a warning motion with her left hand. Wait. She was still tense, still watching. Bat the Cat dashed madly around the cabin, twice running crazily with white ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder. For a long silent moment he sniffed delicately. Stina and Cliff could smell it now too, a thick, oily stench which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster shell. Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he passed Stina, and then he went confidently beyond to sniffto sniff and spit twice at the unburned strips of the space, all. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy, he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Stina sighed once and dropped into the navigator's seat. Maybe now you'll tell me what in the hell's happened. Cliff exploded as he took the blaster out of her hand. Gray, she said dazedly. It must have been gray, or I couldn't have seen it like that. I'm colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray. My whole world is gray like bats. His world is gray, too. All gray. But he's been compensated for. He can see above and below our range of color vibrations, and apparently so can I. Her voice quavered, and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen before, a sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair, but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy net again. That is why I saw the thing when it crossed between us against your space all it was another shade of gray, an outline. So I put out mine and waited for it to show against that. It was our only chance, Cliff. It was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldn't see it, which is why it waited to attack. But when Bat's actions gave it away, it moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the space all and then I let him have it. It's really very simple. Cliff laughed a bit shakily. But what was this gray thing? I don't get it. I think it was what made the Empress a derelict. Something out of space, maybe, or from another world somewhere. She waved her hands. It's invisible because it's a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years. And it kills. It must, when its curiosity is satisfied. Swiftly she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gem pile which had betrayed the creature to her. Cliff did not return his blaster to its holster. Any more of them on board, do you think? He didn't look pleased at the prospect. Stina turned to Bat. He was paying particular attention to the space between two front toes in the process of a complete bath? I don't think so. But Bat will tell us if there are. He can see them clearly, I believe. But there weren't any more. And two weeks later, Cliff, Stina, and Bat brought the Empress into the Lunar Quarantine station, and that is the end of Stina's story. Because, as we have been told, happy marriages need no chronicles, and Stina had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with her. Someone besides Bat. It turned out to be a real love match. The last time I saw her, she was wrapped in a flame red cloak from the looms of Rigel and wore a fortune in Jovan rubies blazing on her wrists. Cliff was flipping a three figure credit bill to a waiter and Bat had a row of vernal juice glasses set up before him. Just a little family party out on the town. End of all cats are gray by andre norton.

[Librivox Narrator]

This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Today's reading by Tom Hackett djhackett.newgrounds.com Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick they had almost finished with the loading. Outside stood the Optus, his arms folded, his face sunk in gloom. Captain Franco walked leisurely down the gangplank, grinning. What's the matter? He said. You're getting paid for all this. The Optus said nothing. He turned away, collecting his robes. The captain put his boot on the hem of the robe. Just a minute. Don't go off. I'm not finished. Oh. The Optist turned with dignity. I am going back to the village. He looked toward the animals and birds being driven up the gangplank into the spaceship. I must organize new hunts. Franco lit a cigarette. Why not? You people can go out into the veldt and track it all down again. But when we run out halfway between Mars and Earth. The Optus went off. Wordless, Franco joined the first mate at the bottom of the gangplank. How's it coming? He said. He looked at his watch. We got a good bargain here.

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The mate glanced at him. Salary. How do you explain that? What's the matter with you we need it more than they do. I'll see you later, Captain. The mate threaded his way up the plank between the long legged Martian Go birds into the ship. Franco watched him disappear. He was just starting up after him, up the plank toward the port, when he saw it. My God. He stood staring, his hands on his hips. Peterson was walking along the path, his face red, leading it by its strength. I'm sorry, Captain, he said, tugging at the string. Franco walked toward him. What is it? The web stood sagging, its great body settling slowly. It was sitting down, its eyes half shut. A few flies buzzed about its flank, and it switched its tail. It sat. There was silence. It's a wub, peterson said. I got it from a native for 50 cents. Said it was a very unusual animal. Very respected this. Franco poked the great sloping side of the wub. It's a pig. A huge dirty pig. Yes, sir, it's a pig. The natives call it a wub. A huge pig. Must weigh 400 pounds. Franco grabbed a tuft of the rough hair. The wub gasped. Its eyes opened, small and moist. Then its great mouth twitched. A tear rolled down the wub's cheek and splashed on the floor. Maybe it's good to eat, peterson said nervously. We'll soon find out, franco said. The wub survived the takeoff sound asleep in the hold of the ship. When they were out in space and everything was running smoothly, Captain Franco bade his men fetch the web upstairs so that he might perceive what manner of beast it was. The wub grunted and wheezed, squeezing up the passageway. Come on, jones grated, pulling at the rope. The wub twisted, rubbing its skin off on the smooth chrome walls. It burst into the anteroom, tumbling down in a heap. The men leaped up. Good Lord, french said. What is it? Peterson says it's a wub, jones said. Belongs to him, and kicked at the wub. The wub stood up unsteadily, panting. What's the matter with it? French came over. Is it going to be sick? They watched. The wub rolled its eyes mournfully. It glanced around at the men. I think it's thirsty, peterson said. He went to get some water. French shook his head. No wonder we had so much trouble taking off. I had to reset all my ballast calculations. Peterson came back with the water. The web began to lap, gratefully, splashing the men. Captain Franco appeared at the door. Let's have a look at it. He advanced, squinting critically. You got this for 50 cents? Yes, sir, Peterson said. It eats almost anything. I fed it on grain and it liked that. Then potatoes and mash and scraps from the table. And milk. It seems to enjoy eating. After it eats, it lies down and goes to sleep. I see, Captain, Franco said now. As do its taste. That's the real question. I doubt if there's much point in fattening it up any more. It seems fat enough to me already. Where's the cook? I want him here. I want to find out. The wub stopped laughing and looked up at the captain. Really, Captain, the web said. I suggest we talk of other matters. The room was silent. What was that? Franco said. Just now? The wub, sir, peterson said. It spoke. They all looked at the wub. What did it say? What did it say? It suggested we talk about other things. Franco walked toward the wub. He went all around it, examining it from every side, and he came back over and stood with the men. I wonder if there's a native inside it, he said thoughtfully. Maybe we should open it up and have a look. Oh goodness. The wub cried. Is that all you people can think of? Killing and cutting? Franco clenched his fist. Come out of there, whoever you are. Come out. Nothing stirred. The men stood together, their faces blank, staring at the wub. The wub swished its tail. It belt suddenly. I beg your pardon, the wub said. I don't think there's anyone in there, jones said in a low voice. They all looked at each other. The cook came in. You wanted me, Captain, he said. What's this thing? This is a wub, franco said. It's to be eaten. Will you measure it and figure out? I think we should have a talk, the wub said. I'd like to discuss this with you, Captain, if I might. I can see that you and I do not agree on some basic issues. The captain took a long time to answer. The lub waited good naturedly, licking the water from its jowls. Come into my office, the captain said at last. He turned and walked out of the room. The lub rose and patted after him. The men watched it go out. They heard it climbing the stairs. I wonder what the outcome will be, the cook said. Well, I'll be in the kitchen. Let me know as soon as you hear. Sure, Joan said. Sure. The wub eased itself down in the corner with a sigh.

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You must forgive me, it said. I'm afraid I'm addicted to various forms of relaxation. When one is as large as I. The captain nodded impatiently. He sat down at his desk and folded his hands. Alright, he said. Let's get started. You're a wub, Is that correct? The wub shrugged. I suppose so. That's what they call us. The natives, I mean. We have our own term. And you speak English. You've been in contact with Earthmen before? No. Then how do you do it? Speak English? Am I speaking English? I'm not conscious of speaking anything in particular. I examined your mind. My mind? I studied the contents, especially the semantic warehouse, as I refer to it. I see, the captain said. Telepathy. Of course. We are a very old race, wupp said. Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate that. Anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life. There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run. Too soft to fight. Too good natured to hunt for game. How do you live? Plants, vegetables. We can eat almost anything. We're very Catholic. Tolerant. Eclectic Catholic. We live and let live. That's how we've gotten along. The wub I, the Captain. And that's why I so violently objected to this business about having me boiled. Could see the image in your mind. Most of me in the frozen food locker, some of me in the kettle. A bit of your pet cat. So you read minds, the captain said. How interesting. Anything else? I mean, what else can you do along those lines? A few odds and ends, the Web said absently, staring around the room. A nice apartment you have here, Captain. You keep it quite neat. I respect life forms that are tidy. Some Martian birds are quite tidy. They throw things out of their nest and sweep them. Indeed. The captain nodded. But to get back to the problem. Quite so. You spoke of dining on me. The taste, I am told, is good. A little fatty, but tender. But how can any lasting contact be established between your people and mine if you resort to such barbaric attitudes? Eat me, rather, you should discuss questions with me. Philosophy. The arts. The captain stood up. Philosophy. It might interest you to know that we will be hard put to find something to eat for the next month. An unfortunate spoilage, I know. The orb nodded. But wouldn't it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from just such infringements. Now, if each of us cast one vote the captain walked to the door. Nuts to you, he said. He opened the door. He opened his mouth. He stood frozen, his mouth wide, his eyes staring, his fingers still on the knob. The wub watched him. Presently it padded out of the room, edging past the captain. It went down the hall, deep in meditation. The room was quiet. So you see, the wub said, we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Ishtar Odysseus. Peterson sat silently, staring at the floor. He shifted in his chair. Go on, he said. Please go on. I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual, aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country, the process of individuation. But Odysseus returns to his home. Peterson looked out the port window at the stars, endless stars burning intently in the empty universe. Finally he goes home. As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period. A brief journey of the soul begins. It ends. The wanderer returns to land and race. The door opened. The web stopped, turning its great head. Captain Franco came into the room, the men behind him. They hesitated at the door. Are you all right? Friends said. Do you mean me? Peterson said, surprised. Why me? Franco lowered his gun. Come over here, he said to Peterson. Get up and come here. There was silence. Go ahead, the web said. It doesn't matter. Peterson stood up. What for? It's an order. Peterson walked to the door. French caught his arm. What's going on? Peterson wrenched loose. What's the matter with you? Captain Franco moved toward the wub. The wub looked up from where it lay in the corner, pressed against the wall. It is interesting, the web said, that you are obsessed with the idea of eating me. I wonder why. Get up, franco said. If you wish. The web rose, grunting. Be patient. It is difficult for me.

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It stood gasping, its tongue lolling foolishly. Shoot it now, french said. For God's sake. Peterson exclaimed. Jones turned to him quickly, his eyes gray with fear. You didn't see him like a statue standing there, his mouth open. If we hadn't come down, he'd still be there. Who? The captain. Peterson stared around. But he's all right now. I looked at the wub standing in the middle of the room, its great chest rising and falling. Come on, franco said, out of the way, and then pulled aside toward the door. You are quite afraid, aren't you? The wub said. Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being, like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you, I suggested to the native. The gun jerked. See? Franco said. I thought so. The webb settled down, panting. It put its paw out, pulling its tail around it. It is very warm, the web said. I understand that we are close to the jets atomic power. You have done many wonderful things with it. Technically. Apparently your scientific hierarchy is not equipped to all moral ethical. Franco turned to the men crowding behind him, wide eyed, silent. I'll do it. You can watch. French nodded. Try to hit the brain. It's no good for eating. Don't hit the chest. If the rib cage shatters, we'll have to pick bones out. Listen, peterson said, licking his lips. Has it done anything? What harm has it done? I'm asking you. And anyhow, it's still mine. You have no right to shoot it. It doesn't belong to you. Franco raised his gun. I'm going out, jones said, his face white and sick. I don't want to see it. Me too, french said, and then straggled out, murmuring. Peterson lingered at the door. Was talking to me about Miss. He said it wouldn't hurt anyone. He went outside. Franco walked toward the wub. The wub looked up slowly. It swallowed. A very foolish thing, it said. I am sorry that you want to do it. There was a parable that your savior related. It stopped staring at the gun. Can you look me in the eye and do it? Warb said. Can you do that? The captain gazed down. I can look you in the eye, he said. Back on the farm we had hogs. Dirty razorback hogs. I can do it. Staring down at the wub into the gleaming, moist eyes. He pressed the trigger. The taste was excellent. They sat glumly around the table, some of them hardly eating at all. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Captain Franco. More, he said, looking around. More. And some wine, perhaps? Not me, friend said. I think I'll go back to the chart room. Me too. Jones stood up, pushing his chart back. I'll see you later. The captain watched them go. Some of the others excused themselves. What do you suppose the matter is? Captain said. He turned to Peterson. Peterson sat staring down at its plate, at the potatoes, the green peas, and at the thick slab of tender, warm meat. He opened his mouth. No sound came. The captain put his hand on Peterson's shoulder. It is only organic matter now, he said. The life essence is gone. He ate, spooning up the gravy with some bread. I myself love to eat. It is one of the great things that a living creature can enjoy eating, resting, meditation, discussing things. Peterson nodded. Two more men got up and went out. The captain drank some water inside. Well, he said, I must say that this was a very enjoyable meal. All the reports I had heard were quite true. The taste of wub very fine. But I was prevented from enjoying this pleasure in times past. He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. Peterson stared dejectedly at the table. The captain watched him intently. He leaned over. Come, come, he said. Cheer up. Let's discuss things. He smiled. As I was saying before I was interrupted, the role of Odysseus in the mess. Peterson jerked up, staring to go on. The captain said, odysseus as I understand him. End of Beyond Lies the Wub by Philip K. Dick Recorded by Tom Hackett DJ Hackett D.

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This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Ted Ryan the Gallery by Raj Phillips. Aunt Matilda needed him desperately, but when he arrived she did not want him, and neither did anyone else in his home town. I was in the midst of the fourth draft of my doctorate thesis when Aunt Matilda's telegram came. It could not have come at a worse time. The deadline for my thesis was four days away, and there was a minimum of five days of hard work work to do on it. Yet I was working around the clock. If it had been a telegram informing me of her death, I could not have taken time out to attend the funeral. If it had been a telegram saying she was at death's door, I'm very much afraid I would have had to call the hospital and order them to keep her alive a few days longer. Instead, it was a tersely worded appeal. Arthur, stop. Come at once.

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Am in terrible trouble. Stop. Do not phone. Stop. Aunt Matilda. So there was nothing else for me to do. I laid the telegram aside and kept one working on my thesis. That is not as heartless as it might seem. I simply could not imagine Aunt Matilda in terrible trouble. The end of the world I could imagine. But not Aunt Matilda in trouble. She was the classic flat chested, ageless spinster living alone in the midst of her dustless bric, a brac and spode in a frame house of the same vintage as herself at the edge of the classic small town of Sumac, near the southwest corner of Wisconsin. I had visited her for two days over a year ago, and she looked exactly the same as she had when I stayed with her when I was six. Six all summer, there was no question. But she would someday attend my funeral when I died of old age, and she would still look the same as always. There was no conceivable trouble of terrestrial origin that could touch her, or would want to. As it turned out, I was right in that respect. I was right in another respect too. By finishing my thesis, I became a PhD on schedule. And if I had abandoned all that and rushed to Sumach the moment I received the telegram, it could not have materially altered the outcome of things. And Aunt Matilda, hanging on the wall of my study, knitting things for the Red Cross, will attest to that. You, of course, might argue about her being there. You might even insist that I am hanging on her wall instead. And I would have to agree with you, since it all depends on the point of view. And as I sit here typing, I can look up and see myself hanging on her wall. But perhaps I had better begin at the beginning, when, with my thesis behind me, I arrived on the 4:15 milk run, as they call the train that stops on its way past Sumac. I was in a very disturbed state of mind, as anyone who ever turned in a doctorate thesis can well imagine. Question for the life of me, I couldn't be sure whether I had used symbol or token on line seven, sheet 23 of my thesis, and it was a bad habit of mine to unconsciously interchange them unpredictably, and I knew that Dr. Walters could very well vote against acceptance of my thesis on that ground alone. Also, I had thought of a much better opening sentence to my thesis and was having to use willpower to keep from rushing back to the university to ask permission to change it. I had practically no sleep during the 14 hour run, and what sleep I did have had been interrupted by violent starts of awaking with a conviction that this or that error in the initial draft of my thesis had not been corrected by the final draft. And then, of course, I would have to think the thing through and recall when I had made made the correction before I could go back to sleep. So I was a wreck mentally, if not physically, when I stepped off the train onto the wooden depot platform that had certainly been built in the Pleistocene era with my Oxblood 2 suitor firmly clutched in my left hand. With snorts of steam and the loud clanking of loose drives, the train got underway, its whistle wailing more influence as the last empty coach car sped past me and retreated into the distance. As I stood there, my brain tingling with weariness, and listened to the absolute silence of the town triumph over the last distant wail of the train whistle, I became aware that something about Sumac was different. What it was, I didn't know. I stood where I was and was moment longer trying to analyze it in some indefinable way. Everything looked unreal. That was as close as I could come to it, and of course, having pinned it down that far, I at once dismissed it as a trick of the mind produced by tiredness. I began walking. The planks of the platform were certainly real enough. I circled the depot without going in and and started walking in the direction of Aunt Matilda's, which was only a short eight blocks from the depot. As I had known Since I was 6, the feeling of the unreality of my surroundings persisted, and with it came another feeling of an invisible pressure against me, almost a resentment not only from the people, but from the houses and even the trees. Slowly I began to realize that it couldn't be entirely my imagination. Most of the dozen or so people I passed knew me, and I remembered suddenly that every other time I had come to Aunt Matilda's they had stopped to talk to me and had had to make some excuse to escape them. Now they were behaving differently. They would look at me absently, as they might at any stranger walk walking from the direction of the depot. Then their eyes would light up with recognition and they would open their lips to greet me with hearty welcome. Then, as though they just thought of something, they would change, and they would just say, hello, Arthur, and continue on past me. It didn't take me long to conclude that this strange behavior was probably caused by Something in connection with Aunt Matilda? Had she perhaps been named as correspondent in the divorce of the local minister? Had she, of all people, had a child out of wedlock? Things in a small town can be deadly serious, so by the time her familiar frame house came into view down the street, I was ready to keep a straight face no matter what, and reserve my chuckles for the privacy of her guest room. It would be a new experience to find Aunt Matilda guilty of any humiliating human frailty. It was slightly impossible, but I had prepared myself for it, and that first day her behavior convinced me I was right in my conclusion. She appeared in the doorway as I came up the front walk. She was breathing hard and as though she had been running, and there was a dust streak on the side of her thin face. Hello, Arthur, she said when I came up on the porch. She shook my hand as limply as always and gave me a reluctant duty peck on the cheek and then backed into the house to give me room to enter. I glanced around the familiar surroundings, waiting for her to blurt out the cause of her telegram and feeling a little guilty about not having come at once. I felt the loneliness inside her more than I ever had before. There was a terror way back in her eyes. You look tired, Arthur, she said. Yes, I said, glad of the opportunity she had given me to explain. I had to finish my thesis, and I had to get it in by last night. Two solid years of hard work and it had to be done or the whole thing was for nothing. That's why I couldn't come four days ago, and you seemed quite insistent that I shouldn't call. I smiled to let her know that I remembered about party lines and a certain small town. It's just as well, she said. And while I was trying to decide what the antecedent of her remark was, she said, you can go back on the morning train. You mean the trouble is over? I said, relieved. Yes, she said, but she had hesitated. It was the first time I had ever seen her tell a lie. You must be hungry, she rushed on. Put your suitcase in the kitchen. Wash up. She turned her back to me and hurried into the kitchen. I was hungry. The memory of her homey cooking did it. I glanced around the front room. Nothing had changed, I thought. Then I noticed the framed portrait of my father and his three brothers hanging where the large print of a basket of fruit used to hang. The basket of fruit picture was where the portrait should have been, and it was entirely too big a picture for that spot. I would never have thought Aunt Matilda could tolerate anything out of proportion, and the darker area of the wallpaper where the fruit picture had prevented fading stood out like a sore thumb. I looked around the room for other changes. The boat picture that had hung to the right of the front door was not there on the floor under where it should have been. I caught the flash of light from a shard of glass next to it. The door drape framing of the window was not hanging right. On impulse, I went over and peeked behind the drape. There, leaning against the wall, was the boat picture with fragments of splintered glass still in it. From the evidence it appeared that Aunt Matilda had either been trying to hang the picture where it belonged or taking it down, and it had slipped out of her hands and fallen, and she had hidden it behind the drape and hastily swept up the broken glass. But why? Even granting that Aunt Matilda might behave in such an erratic fashion, which was obvious from the evidence, I couldn't imagine a sensible reason. It occurred to me facetiously that she might have gone in for pictures of muscle men and seeing me coming up the street, she had rushed them into hiding and brought out the old pictures that could account for the evidence. Except for one thing. I hadn't dallied. She could not possibly have seen me earlier than 60 seconds before I came up the front walk. Still, the telegrapher at the depot could have called her and told her I was here. When he saw me get off the train. I shrugged the matter off and went to the guest room. It too was the same as always, except for one thing, a picture. It was a color photograph of the church taken from the street. The picture was in a frame but without glass hanging over it and was about 18 inches wide and 30 high. It was a very good picture, very, very, very lifelike. There was a car parked at the curb in front of the church and someone inside the car smoking a cigarette, and it was so real I would have sworn I could see the streamer of smoke rising from the cigarette moving. The odor of good food came from the kitchen, reminding me to get busy. I opened my two suiter and took out my toilet kit and went to the bathroom. I shaved, brushed my teeth, combed my hair. Afterwards, I popped into my room, just for a second to put my toilet kit on the dresser and hurried to the dining room. Something nagged at the back of my mind all the time I was eating. After dinner, Aunt Matilda suggested I'd better get some sleep. I couldn't argue. I was already asleep on my feet. Her fried chicken and creamed gravy and mashed potatoes had been an opiate. I didn't even bother to hang up my clothes. I slipped into the heaven of comfort of the bed and closed my eyes. And the next minute it was morning. Getting out of bed, I stopped in mid motion. The picture of the church was no longer on the wall, and as I stared at the blank spot where it had been, the thing that nagged me during dinner last night finally leaped into consciousness. When I had dashed into the room and out again last night on the way to the dining room, I had glanced briefly at the picture and something had been different about it. Now I knew what had been different. The car had no longer been in front of the church. I lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. I thought about that picture and simply could not bring myself to my believe the accuracy of that fleeting impression. Aunt Matilda had slipped into my room and removed the picture while I slept. That was obvious. Why had she done that? The fleeting impression that I couldn't be positive about would give her a sensible reason. I studied my memory of that picture as I had closely studied had been a remarkable picture. The more I recalled its details, the more remarkable it became. I couldn't remember any surface gloss or graining to it, but of course I had not been looking for such things. Only an expert photographer would notice or recognize such technical details. My thoughts turned in the direction of Aunt Matilda and her telegram. Her source of income, I knew, was her part of the estate of my grandfather and a man, amounted to something like $30,000. I knew that she was terrified of touching $0.01 of the capital and lived well within the income from good sound stocks. I took her telegram out of the pocket of my coat, which was hanging over the back of a chair. Come at once. Stop. Am in terrible trouble. The only kind of terrible trouble Matilda could be in was if some swindler talked around of some of her capital. And that definitely would not be easy to do. I grinned to myself at the recollection of her worrying herself sick over what would happen to her if there was a revolution and the new government refused to honor the old government bonds. Things began to make sense. Her telegram. Then those pictures moved around in the front room and the one she had forgotten to hide in the guest room. If the other pictures were anything like it, I could see how Aunt Matilda might cash in on part of her securities to invest in what she thought was a sure thing. But sure things are only as good as the people in control of them. Many a sure thing has been lost to the original investors by stupid decisions leading to bankruptcy. And many a seemingly sure thing has fleeced a lot of innocent victims. Slowly, as I thought it out, I became sure that that was what had happened. Then why Aunt Matilda's about face, hiding the pictures and telling me to go back to Chicago? Had she threatened whoever was behind this and gotten her money back? Or had she become convinced that her financial venture was sound? In either case, why was she trying to keep me from knowing about the picture? I made up my mind. Whether Aunt Matilda liked it or not, I was going to stay until I got to the bottom of things. What Aunt Matilda evidently didn't realize was that no inventor who really had something would waste time trying to find backing in a place like Sumac. Getting dressed, I decided that first on the agenda would be to find where Aunt Matilda had hidden those pictures and to get a good look at them. That was simpler than I expected it to be. When I came out of my room, I stuck my head in the kitchen doorway and said good morning to her, and she leaped to her feet to get some breakfast ready for me. It was obvious that she was anxious to get me fed and out of the house. Then I simply took the two steps past the bathroom door to the door to her bedroom and went in. The pictures were stacked against the side of her dresser. The one of the church was the first one. It was on its side. With a silent whistle of amazement, I bent down to watch it. The car was not parked at the curb in it, but there were several children walking along, obviously on their way to school, and they were walking, moving. I picked up the picture. It was as heavy as it should be, but not more. A faint whisper of sound seemed to come from it. I put my ear closer and heard the children's voices. I explored with my ear close to the surface and found that the voices were loudest when my ear was closest to the one talking, as though the voices came out of the picture directly from the images. All it needed to be perfect was a volume control somewhere. I searched and found it behind the upper right corner of the picture. I twisted it very slowly and the voices became louder. I turned it back to the position it had been in. The next picture was of the railroad depot. The telegrapher and baggage clerk were going around the side of the depot towards the tracks. A freight train was rushing through the picture. Even as I watched it in the picture, I heard the wail of a train wheel whistle in the distance, and it was coming from outside across town. That freight train was going through town right now. I put the pictures back the way they had been and stole softly from Aunt Matilda's bedroom to the bathroom and closed the door. No wonder Aunt Matilda invested in this thing, I said to my image in the mirror as I shaved. Picture TV would make all other TV TV receivers obsolete. Color TV at that. And some new principle in stereophonic sound. What about the fact that neither picture had been plugged into an outlet? Probably run by batteries. What about the lack of weight? Obviously a new TV principle was involved. Maybe it required fewer circuits and less power. What about the broadcasting and the cameras permanently set up? What about the broadcast channels? There had been 10 or 12 pictures. I had only looked at two was each a different scene. 12 different broadcasting stations in Sumac. It had me dizzy. Probably the new TV principle was so simple that all that could be taken care of without millions of dollars worth of equipment. A new respect for Aunt Matilda grew in me. She had latched onto a money maker. It didn't hurt to know that I was her favorite nephew, either. With my PhD in physics and my aunt as one of the stockholders, I could probably land a good job with the company. What a deal. By the time I finished shaving, I was whistling. I was still whistling when I went into the kitchen for breakfast. You'll have to hurry, Arthur, aunt Matilda said. Your train leaves in 45 minutes. I'm not leaving, I said cheerfully. I went over to the bright breakfast nook and sat down and took a cautious sip of coffee. I grunted my approval of it and looked around toward Aunt Matilda, smiling. She was staring at me with wide eyes. She looked as haggard as though she had just heard she had a week to live. But you must go, she croaked, as though not going were unthinkable. Nonsense, you old fox, I said. I know a good thing as well as you do. I want to get a job. With that outfit? She came toward me with a wild expression on her face. Get out. She screamed. Get out of my house. I won't have it. You catch that train and get out of town, do you hear? But Aunt Matilda, I protested. In the end I had to get out or she would have had a stroke. She was shaking like a leaf, her skin mottled, her eyes wild. As I went down the front steps with my bag. You get that train, do you hear? Was the last thing she screamed at me as I hurried toward Main Street. However, I had no intention of leaving town with Aunt Matilda upset that way. I'd let her have time to cool off and then come back. Meanwhile, I'd try to get to the bottom of things. A thing as big as wall TV in full color and stereophonic sound must be the talk of the town. I'd find out where they had their office and go talk to them. A career with something like that would be the best thing I could ever hope to find. And getting in on the ground floor. It surprised me that Aunt Matilda could be so insanely greedy. I shook my head in wonder. It didn't figure. I had breakfast at the hotel cafe and made a point of telling the waitress who was knew me that it was my second breakfast and that I had intended to catch the morning train back to Chicago, but maybe I wouldn't. After I finished eating, I asked if it would be okay to leave my suitcase behind the counter while I looked around a bit. She showed me where to put it so it would be out of the way when I paid for my breakfast. I half turned away and then turned back casually. Oh, by the way, I said, where's this wall TV place? This what? She said. You know, I said. Colored tv. Like a picture you hang on the wall. All the color faded from her face. Her eyes went past me, staring. I turned in the direction she was staring, and on the wall above the plate glass front of the cafe was a picture. That is, there was a picture frame and a pair of dark glasses that took up most of the picture, with the lower part of a forehead and the upper part of a nose. I had noticed it once while I was eating and had assumed it was a display ad for sunglasses. Now I looked at it more closely but could not detect movement in still looked like an ad for sunglasses. I don't know what you're talking about, I heard the waitress say, her voice edged with fear. Huh? I said, turning my head back to look at her. Oh, well, never mind. I left the cafe with every outward appearance of casual innocence, but inside I was beginning to realize for the first time the possibilities and the danger that could lie in the use of this new TV development. That had been a Big Brother is watching you set up back there in the cafe, except that it had been a girl instead of a man, judging from the style of the sunglasses and the smoothness of the nose and the forehead. I had wondered about the broadcasting end of things. Now I knew that had been the TV I and somewhere there was a framed picture hanging on the wall, bringing in everything that took place in the Game cafe, including everything that was said. Everything I had said too. It was an ominous feeling. Aunt Matilda almost had a stroke trying to get me out of town. Now I knew why she was caught in this thing and wanted to save me. Four days ago, she had probably not fully realized the potentiality for evil of the invention, but by the time I showed up, she knew it. Well, she was right. This was not something for me to tackle. I would keep up my appearance of not suspecting anything and catch that train Aunt Matilda wanted me to catch. From way out in the country came the whistle of the approaching milk run, the train that would take me back to Chicago. In Chicago, I would go to the FBI and I would tell them the whole thing. They wouldn't believe me, of course, but they would investigate. If the thing hadn't spread any further than Sumac, it would be a simple matter to stop it. I'd hurry back to the cafe and get my suitcase and tell the waitress I decided to catch the train after all. I turned around. Only I didn't turn around. That's as nearly as I could describe it. I did turn around. I know I did. But the town turned around with me, and the sun and the clouds, the countryside. So maybe I only thought I turned around. When I tried to stop walking, it was different. I simply could not stop walking. Nothing was in control of my mind. It was more like stepping on the brakes and the brakes not responding. I gave up trying, more curious about what was happening than a little alarmed. I walked two blocks along Main Street. Ahead of me, I saw a sign. It was the only new sign I had seen in Sumac. In ornate neon script it said, portraits by Lana. I don't know whether my feet took me inside independently of my mind or not, because I was sure that this was the place and I wanted to go anyway. Not much had been done to modernize the interior of the shop. I remembered the last time I had been here. It had been a stamp collector headquarters run by Mr. Mason and his wife. The counter was still there, but instead of stamp displays, it held a variety of standard portraits, such as you can see in any portrait studio. None of the TV portraits were on display here. The same bell that used to tinkle when I came into the stamp store tinkled in back of the partition. When I came in a moment later, the curtain in the doorway of the partition parted and a girl came out. How can I describe her? In appearance, she was anyone of a thousand smartly dressed brunettes that wait on you in quality photograph studios. And yet she wasn't. She was as much above that in cut as in the average smartly dressed girl. Is above a female alcoholic after a 10 day drunk. She was perfect. Too perfect. She was the type of girl a man would dream of meeting someday, but if he ever did, he would run like hell because he'd never hoped to live up to any such perfection. You have come to have your portrait taken? She asked. I am Lana. I thought you already had my portrait, I said. Didn't you get it from that eye in the hotel cafe? It's not the same thing, Lana said. Through an eye you remain a variable in the Mantram complex. It takes the camera to fix you so that you are an iconic and variant in the Mantram. She smiled and half turned toward the curtain she had come through. Would you step this way, please? She invited. How much will it cost? I said, not moving. Nothing, of course, she said. Terrestrial money is of no use to me since you have nothing I would care to buy. And don't be alarmed. No harm will come to you or anyone else. A fleeting expression of concern came over her face. I realize that many of the people of Sumac are quite alarmed, but that is to be expected of people uneducated enough to still be superstitious. I went past her through the curtain behind the partition. I expected to see, out of this world, scientific equipment stacked to the ceiling. Instead there was only a portrait camera on a tripod. It had a long bellows and would take a plate the same size as that picture of the church I had seen. You see, Lana said. It's just a camera. She smiled disarmingly. I went toward it casually and suddenly. Suddenly I stopped, as though another mind controlled my actions. When I gave up the idea I had had of a smashing, of smashing the camera, the control vanished. There was no lens in the lens frame. Where's the lens? I said. It doesn't use a glass lens, lana said. When I take the picture, a lens forms just long enough to focus the elements of your body into a man tram fixed. She touched my shoulder. Would you sit down over there, please? What do you mean a man tram fix? I asked her. She paused by the camera and smiled at me. I use your language, she said. In some of your legends you have the notion of a man tram, or what you consider magical spell. In one aspect the notion is of magical words that can manipulate natural forces directly. The notion of a devil doll is a little closer, only instead of actual substance from the subject hair, fingernail, and so on, the Mantram matrix takes the detailed force pattern of the subject through the lens when it forms. So in your concepts, what results is an iconic mantram, but it operates both ways. You'll see what I mean by that. With another placating smile, she stepped behind the camera and without warning, light seemed to explode from the very air around me, without any source. For a brief second I seemed to see not a glittering lens but a black bottomless hole form in the metal circle at the front of the camera. In an experience I am familiar with now, it seemed to rush into the bottomless darkness of that hole and back again at the rate of thousands of times a second, arriving at some formless destination, and each time feeling it take on more of form. There. That wasn't so bad, was it? Lana said. I felt strangely detached, as though I were in two places at the same time, and I told her so. You'll get used to it, she assured me. In fact, you will get to enjoy it. I do. Especially when I've made several prints. Why are you doing this?

[Librivox Narrator]

I asked.

[Bluff]

Who are you? What are you? I'm a photographer, lana said. I'm connected with the Natural History Museum of the planet I live on. I go to various places and take pictures, and they go into exhibits for the people to watch. She pulled the curtain aside for me to leave. You're going to let me leave just like that? I said. Of course. She smiled again. You're free to go wherever you wish, to your aunt's or back to Chicago. I was glad to get your portrait. In return, I'll send you one of the prints. And would you like one of your aunts? Actually, when she came in to have her picture taken, it was for the purpose of sending it to you. She was my first customer. I've taken a special liking to her and given her several pictures. Yes, I said. I would like one of Aunt Matilda. When I emerged from the shop, I discovered to my surprise that the train was just pulling into the depot. An urge to get far away from Sumac possessed me. I trotted to the cafe to get my bag, and when the train pulled out, I was on it. There's little more to tell in Chicago. Once again I spent a most exasperating two days trying to inform the FBI, the police, or anyone who would listen to me. My fingers couldn't dial the correct phone number, and at the crucial moment each time I grew tongue tied. My last attempt was a letter to the FBI, which I couldn't remember to mail, and when I finally did remember, I couldn't find it. Then the express package from Sumac came. With fingers that visibly trembled, I took out the two framed Pictures. One of Aunt Matilda in the process of dusting the front room. All of her pictures that she had hidden from me were back in their places on the walls. While I watched her move about, she went into the sewing room. And there I saw a picture on the wall that looked familiar. It was of me, an opened express package at my feet, a framed picture held in my hands, and I was staring at it intently. In the picture I was holding, Aunt Matilda looked in my direction and waved, smiling in the prim way she smiles when she is contented. I understood she had me with her now. I laid the picture down carefully and took the second one out of the box. It was not a picture at all. It was a mirror. It couldn't be anything except a mirror. And yet, suddenly I realized it wasn't. The uncanny feeling came over me that I had transposed into the mirror and was looking out at myself. Even as I got that feeling, I shifted and was outside the mirror, looking at my image. I found that I could be in either place by a sort of mental shift, something like staring at one of the geometrical optical illusions you can find in any psychology textbook in the chapter on illusions and seeing it become something else. It was strange at first. Then it became fun. And now, as I write this, it is a normal thing. My portrait is where it should be, on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom where the mirror used to be. But I can transpose to any of the copies of my portrait anywhere. To Aunt Matilda's sewing room, or to the museum, or to Lana's private collection. The only thing is, it's almost impossible to tell when I shift or where I shift to. It just seems to happen. The reason for that is that my surroundings, no matter in what direction I look, are exactly identical with my real surroundings. My physical surroundings are duplicated exactly in all of my portraits, just as Aunt Matilda's are the portrait of her that hangs on my study wall. She is the invariant of each of her iconic man trams, and her surroundings are the variables that enter and leave the screen. I am the invariant in my own portraits, wherever they are. So, except for the slight twist in my mind that takes place when I shift that I have learned to recognize from practice in front of my mirror each morning when I shave. And except for the portrait of Aunt Matilda, I would never be able to suspect what happens. If Lana had taken my picture without my knowing it, and I had never seen one of her collection of portraits, nor even heard of an iconic man tram, I would have absolutely nothing to go on to Suspect the truth that I know, except for one thing. I don't quite know how to explain it, except that I must actually transfer to one of my portraits. And transferring I am more real than. What shall I call it? The photographic reproduction of my real surroundings. Then sometimes the photographic reproduction, the iconic illusion that is my environment when I am in one of my portraits on me, fades just enough so that I can look out into the reality where my portrait hangs and see and even hear the watchers as ghosts in my solid reality. Quite often I can only hear them. And then they are voices out of nowhere. Sometimes addressing me directly, just as often talking to one another and ignoring my presence. But when I can see them too, they appear as ghostly but sharp, clear visions that seem to be present in my solid looking environment. There, but somewhat transparent. I have often seen and talked to Lana in this manner. In her far off world where I am part of her private collection. In fact, I can almost always tell when I shift to my portrait in her gallery. Because I am suddenly exhilarated and remain so until I shift back or to some other portrait. This is so even when she is not there, but out on one of her many photographic expeditions. When she is there and she is watching me and my thoughts are quiet and my mind receptive, she becomes visible a ghost in my study or the lab where I work. Or if I am asleep in my dreams, like an angel or a goddess. And we talk back in the physical reality, of course, no one else can hear her voice. My real body is going through its routine work almost automatically. But my mind, my consciousness, is focused into my portrait in Lana's gallery. And we are talking. And of course, in the real world I am talking too. But my associates can't see who I'm talking to. And it would be useless to try to explain things them. So I'm getting quite a reputation as a nut. You can imagine that. But why should I mind? My reality has a much broader and more complex scope than the limited reality of my associates. I might be fired or even sent to a state hospital, except for the fact that Lana foresees such problems and teaches me enough things in my field that are unknown to Earth so that my employers consider me too valuable to lose. If this story were fiction, the ending would have to be that I am in love with Lana and she with me. And there would be a nice conclusive ending where she comes back to earth to marry me and carry me back to her world where we would live happily ever after. But the truth of the matter is that I'm not in love with Lana, nor is she with me. Sometimes I think I am her favorite portrait, but nothing more. But really, everything is so interesting. Lana's gallery, where I hang, the museum where there are new faces each time I look out, and new voices when I can't see out. Aunt Matilda's sewing room, where she is at the moment and all sumac as she goes about her normal pattern of living. It is a rich, full life that I live, shifting here and there in consciousness while my physical body goes about its necessary tasks as often unguided as not. What a reputation I'm getting for absentmindedness, too. And out of it all has come a perspective that, when I feel it strongly, makes me feel almost like a God. In that perspective, all my portraits, and there are many now in many worlds and in many places on this world, blend into one. That one is the stage of my life. But not a stage really. A show window. Yes, that's it. A show window where the watchers pass. I live in a show window that opens out in many worlds and many places that are hidden from me by a veil that sometimes grows thin so I can see through it. And from the other side of that veil, even when I cannot see through it, come the voices of the watchers as they pass by or pause to look at me. And I am not the only one. There are others, more and more of them, as Lana comes back on her photographic expeditions for the museum. None that I have met understand what it is about as fully as I do. Some have an insight into the true state of things, but very, very few. But that's understandable. Lana can't give the same time to them that she gives to me. There aren't that many hours in a day. And you see, I am her favorite. If I were not, she would never have permitted me to tell you all of this. So I must be her favorite. Doesn't that make sense? I am her favorite. The end of the gallery by raj phillips recording by ted ryan for librivox foreign. 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For American players, Spin Quest is a free to play social casino Boyd where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. The Happy Unfortunate by Robert Silverberg this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite the Happy Unfortunate by Robert Silverberg Decker, back from space, found great physical changes in the people of Earth, changes that would have horrified him five years before. But now he wanted to be like the rest, even if he had to lose an eye and both ears to do it. Rolf Decker stared incredulously at this slim, handsome young Earther who was approaching the steps of Rolf's tumbledown spacertown shack. He's got no ears, Rolf noted in unbelief. After five years in space, Rolf had come home to a strangely altered world, and he found it hard to accept. Another Earther appeared. This one was about the same size and gave the same impression of fragility. This one had ears, all right, and a pair of gleaming two inch horns on his forehead as well. I'll be eternally roasted, Rolf thought. Now I've seen everything. Both Earthers were dressed in neat colour gold inlaid green tunics, costumes which looked terribly out of place amid the filth of spacertown, and their hair was dyed a light green to match. He had been scrutinizing them for several moments before they became aware of him. They both spotted him at once, and the one with no ears turned to his companion and whispered something. Rolf leaned forward, strained to hear. Beautiful, isn't he? That's the biggest one I've seen. Come over here, won't you? The horned one called in a soft, gentle voice, which contrasted oddly with the raucous bellowing Rolf had been accustomed to hearing in space. We'd like to talk to you. Just then Canada emerged from the door of the shack and limped down to the staircase. Hey, Rolf, he called. Leave those things alone. Let me find out what they want first. Huh? Can't be any good, whatever it is, canaday growled. Tell them to get out of here before I throw them back to wherever they came from. And make it fast. The two Earthers looked at each other uneasily. Rolf walked toward them. He doesn't like Earthers, that's all, rolf explained. But he won't do anything but yell. Canada spat in disgust, turned, and limped back inside the shack. I didn't know you were wearing horns, rolf said. The Earther flushed. New style, he said. Very expensive. Oh, rolf said. I'm new here. I just got back five years in space. When I left you people looked all alike now you wear horns. It's the new trend, said the Earless one. We're individs. When you left, the Conforms were in power style wise. But the new surgeons can do almost anything, you see. The shadow of a frown crossed Rolf's face. Anything? Almost. They can't transform an Earther into a spacer, and they don't think they ever will. Or vice versa? Rolf asked. They sniggered. What spacer would want to become an Earther? Who would give up that life out in the stars? Rolf said nothing. He kicked at the heap of litter in the filthy street. What spacer indeed, he thought. He suddenly realized that the two little Earthers were staring up at him as if he were some sort of beast. He probably weighed as much as both of them, he knew, and at six' four he was better than a foot taller. They looked like children next to him, like toys. The savage blast of acceleration would snap their flimsy bodies like toothpicks. What places have you been to? The Earless One asked. Two years on Mars, one on Venus, one in the Belt, one on Neptune, rolf recited. I didn't like Neptune. It was best in the Belt. Just our one ship prospecting. We made a pile on Circe's, enough to buy out. I shot half of it on Neptune. Still have plenty left, but I don't know what I can do with it. He didn't add that he had come home puzzled, wondering why he was a spacer instead of an Earther condemned to live in filthy spacertown when Yawk was just across the river. They were looking at his shabby clothes at his dirty brownstone hovel. He lived in an antique of a house four or five centuries old. You. You mean you're rich? The Earther said. Sure, rolf said. Every spacer is. So what? What can I spend it on? My money's banked on Mars and Venus. Thanks to the law. I can't legally get it to Earth, so I live in Spacertown. Have you ever seen an Earther city? The Earless One asked, looking around at the quiet streets of Spacertown, with big powerful men sitting idly in front of every house.

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casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I used to live in York, ralph said. My grandmother was an Earther. She brought me up there. I haven't been back there since I left for space. They forced me out of Yawk, he thought. I'm not part of their species. Not one of them. The two Earthers exchanged glances. Can we interest you in a suggestion? They drew in their breath as if they expected to be knocked sprawling. Kanaday appeared at the door of the shack again. Rolf. Hey, you turning into an Earther? Get rid of them two cuties before there's trouble. Rolf turned and saw a little knot of spacers standing on the other side of the street, watching him with curiosity. He glared at them. I'll do whatever I damn well please, he shouted across. He turned back to the two Earthers. Now what is it you want? I'm giving a party next week, the earless one said. I'd like you to come. We'd like to get the spacer slant on life. Party, Rolf repeatedly. You mean dancing and games and stuff like that? You'll enjoy it, the Earther said coaxingly. And we'd all love to have a real spacer there. When is it? A week? I have 10 days left of my leave. All right, he said. I'll come. He accepted the Earthers card, looked at it mechanically, saw the name Cal Quinton, and pocketed it. Sure, he said. I'll be there. The Earthers moved toward their little jet car, smiling gratefully as Rolf crossed the street. The other spacers greeted him with cold, puzzled stares. Kanaday was almost as tall as Rolf, and even uglier. Rolf's eyebrows were bold and heavy, Canada's thick, contorted, bushy clumps of hair. Canada's nose had been broken long before in some barroom brawl. His cheekbones bulged, his face was strong and hard. More important, his left foot was twisted and gnarled beyond hope of redemption by the most skilful surgeon. He had been crippled in a jet explosion three years before and was of no use to the space lines any more. They had pensioned him off. Part of the deal was the dilapidated old house in Spacertown, which he operated as a boarding house for transient spacers. What do you want to do that for? Canada asked. Haven't those Earthers pushed you around enough so you have to go and dance at one of their wild parties? Leave me alone, rolf muttered. You like this filth? You live in Spacertown is just a ghetto, that's all. The Earthers have pushed you right into the muck. You're not even a human being to them, just some sort of trained ape. And now you're going to go and entertain them. I thought you had brains. Rolf. Shut up. He dashed his glass against the table. It bounced off and dropped to the floor, where it shattered. Kanaday's girl, Lainey, entered the room at the sound of the crash. She was tall and powerful looking, with straight black hair and the strong cheekbones that characterized the spacers. Immediately she stooped and began shoveling up the broken glass. That wasn't smart, Rolf, she said. That'll cost you half a credit. Wasn't worth it, was it? Rolf laid the coin on the edge of the table. Tell your pal to shut up, then. If he doesn't stop icing me, I'll fix his other foot for him and you can buy him a dolly. She looked from one to the other. What's bothering you two now? A couple of Earthers were here this morning, kanaday said. Slumming. They took a fancy to our young friend here and invited him to one of their parties. He accepted. He what? Don't go, Rolf. You're crazy to go. Why am I crazy? He tried to control his voice. Why should we keep ourselves apart from the Earthers? Why shouldn't the two races get together? She put down her tray and sat next to him. There are more than two races, she said patiently. Earther and spacer are two different species, Rolf carefully. Genetically separated. They're small and weak. We're big and powerful. You've been bred for going to space. They're the castoffs, the ones who were too weak to go. The line between the two groups is too strong to break, and they treat us like dirt, like animals, canada said. But they're the dirt. They were the ones who couldn't make it. Don't go to the party, laney said. They just want to make fun of you. Look at the big ape, they'll say. Rolf stood up. You don't understand. Neither of you does. I'm part Earther, Rolf said. My grandmother on my mother's side, she raised me as an Earther. She wanted me to be an Earther, but I kept getting bigger and uglier all the time. She took me to the plastic surgeon once, figuring he could make me look like an Earther. He was a little man. I don't know what he looked like to start with, but some other surgeon had made him clean cut and straight nosed and thin, thin lipped like all the other Earthers. I was bigger than he was, twice as big, and I was only 15. He looked at me and felt my bones and measured me. Healthy little ape. Those were the words he used. He told my grandmother I'd get bigger and bigger, that no amount of surgery could make me small and handsome, that I was fit only for space and didn't belong in Yawk. So I left for space the next morning.

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Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I see, laney said quietly. I didn't say goodbye. I just left. There was no place for me in Yawk. I couldn't pass myself off as an Earther any more. But I'd like to go back and see what the old life was like now that I know what it's like to be on the other side for a while. It'll hurt when you find out, Rolf. I'll take that chance. But I want to go. Maybe my grandmother'll be there. The surgeon's made her young and pretty again every few years. She looked like my sister when I left. Laney nodded her head. There's no point arguing with him. Canada. He has to go back there and find out. So let him alone. Rolf smiled. Thanks for understanding. He took out Quintin's card and turned it over and over in his hand. Rolf went to Yawk on foot, dressed in his best clothes, with his face as clean as it had been in some years. Spacertown was just across the river from Yawk, and the bridges spanning the river were bright and gleaming in the mid afternoon sun.

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The bombs had landed on Yawk during the long forgotten war, but somehow they had spared the sprawling barrow across the river, and so Yawk had been completely rebuilt once the radioactivity had been purged from the land, while what was now Spacertown consisted mostly of buildings that dated back to the 20th century. York had been the world's greatest seaport. Now it was the world's greatest spaceport. The sky was thick with incoming and outgoing liners. The passengers on the ship usually stayed at Yawk, which had become an even greater metropolis than it had been before the bomb. The crew crossed the river to Spacertown, where they could find their own kind. Yawk and Spacertown were like two separate planets. There were three bridges spanning the river, but most of the time they went unused, except by spacemen going back home or by spacemen going to the spaceport for embarkation. There was no regular transportation between the two cities. To get from Spacertown to Yawk, you could borrow a jet car, or you could walk. Rolf walked. He enjoyed the trip. I'm going back home, he thought. As he paced along the gleaming arc of the bridge, dressed in his Sunday best, he remembered the days of his childhood, his parentless childhood. His earliest memory was of a fight. At the age of six or so. He had stood off what seemed like half the neighborhood, ending the battle by picking up an older bully, much feared by everyone, and heaving him over a fence. When he told his grandmother about the way he had won the fight, she cried for an hour and never told him why. But they had never picked on him again, though he knew the other boys had jeered at him behind his back as he grew bigger and bigger over the years. Ape, they called him. Ape, but never to his face. He approached the Yawk end of the bridge. A guard was waiting there. An Earther guard, small and frail but with a sturdy looking blaster at his hip. Going back, Spacer? Rolf started. How did the guard know? And then he realized that all the guard meant was, are you going back to your ship? No, no. I'm going to a party at Cal Quentin's house. Tell me another spacer. The guard's voice was light and derisive. A swift poke in the ribs would break him in half. Rolf thought, I'm serious. Quinton invited me. Here's his card. If this is a joke, it'll mean trouble, but go ahead. I'll take your word for it. Rolf marched on past the guard, almost nonchalantly. He looked at the address on the card. 12406 Kenman Road. He rooted around in his fading memory of Yawk, but he found the details had blurred under the impact of five years of Mars and Venus and a belt and Neptune. He did not know where Kenman Road was. The glowing street signs were not much help either. One said 278th street and the other said 72nd Avenue. Kenman Road might be anywhere he walked on a block or two. The streets were antiseptically clean, and he had the feeling that his boots, which had lately trod in spacertown were leaving dirt marks along the street. He did not look back to see. He looked at his wrist cron. It was getting late and Kenman Road might be anywhere. He turned into a busy thoroughfare, conscious that he was attracting attention. The streets here were crowded with little people who barely reached his chest. They were all about the same height and most of them looked alike. A few had had radical surgical alterations, and every one of these was different. One had a unicorn like horn, another an extra eye which cunningly resembled his real ones. The Earthers were looking at him furtively as they would at a tiger or an elephant strolling down a main street. Where are you going, Spacer? Said a voice from the middle of the street. Rolf's first impulse was to snarl out a curse and keep moving, but he realized that the question was a good one and one whose answer he was trying to find out for himself. He turned. Another policeman stood on the edge of the walkway. Are you lost? The policeman was short and delicate looking. Rolf produced his card. The policeman studied it. What business do you have with Quinton? Just tell me how to get there, rolf said. I'm in a hurry. The policeman backed up a step. All right, take it easy. He pointed to a kiosk. Take the sub car here. There's a stop at Kenman Road. You can find your way from there. I'd rather walk it, rolf said. He did not want to have to stand the strain of riding in a subcar with a bunch of curious, staring Earthers. Fine with me, the policeman said. It's about 200 blocks to the north. Got a good pair of legs? Never mind, ralph said. I'll take the subcar. Kenman Road was a quiet little street in an expensive looking end of York.

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Today Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. 12406 was a towering building which completely overshadowed everything else on the street. As Rolf entered the door, a perfumed little Earther with a flashing diamond where his left eye should have been and a skin stained bright purple appeared from nowhere. We've been waiting for you Come on. Cal will be delighted that you're here. The elevator zoomed up so quickly that Rolf thought for a moment that he was back in space. But it stopped Suddenly at the 62nd floor, and as the door swung open, the sounds of wild revelry drifted down the hall wall. Rolf had a brief moment of doubt when he pictured Laney and Kanaday at this very moment playing cards in their moldering hovel while he walked down this Plastoline corridor back into a world he had left behind. Quinton came out into the hall to greet him. Rolf recognized him by the missing ears. His skin was now a subdued blue to go with his orange robe. I'm so glad you came, the little Earther bubbled. Come on in and I'll introduce you to everyone. The door opened photoelectrically as they approached. Quinton seized him by the hand and dragged him in. There was the sound of laughter and of shouting as he entered. It all stopped suddenly, as if it had been shut off. Rolf stared at them quizzically from under his lowering brows, and they looked at him with ill concealed curiosity. They seemed divided into two groups. Clustered at one end of the long hall was a group of Earthers who seemed completely identical, all with the same features, looking like so many dolls in a row. These were the Earthers he remembered, the ones whom the plastic surgeons had hacked at and hewn until they all conformed to the prevailing concept of beauty. Then at the other end was a different group. They were all different. Some had glittering jewels set in their foreheads. Others had no lips, no hair, extra eyes, three nostrils. They were a weird and frightening group, highest product of the plastic surgeon's art. Both groups were staring silently at Rolf. Friends, this is Rolf. Rolf Decker, Rolf said after a pause. He had almost forgotten his own last name. Rolf Decker, just back from outer space. I've invited him to join us tonight. I think you'll enjoy meeting him. The stony silence slowly dissolved into murmurs of polite conversation as the partygoers adjusted to the presence of the newcomer. They seemed to be discussing the matter earnestly among themselves, as if Quinton had done something unheard of by bringing a spacer into an Earther party. A tall girl with blond hair drifted up to him. Ah, Jonee, Quinton said. He turned to Rolf. This is Jonee. She asked to be your companion at the party. She's very interested in space and things connected with it. Things connected with it? Rolf thought. Meaning me. He looked at her. She was as tall an Earther as he had yet seen and probably suffered for it when there were no spacers around. Furthermore, he suspected her height was accentuated for the evening by special shoes. She was not of the indevid persuasion because her face was well shaped with smooth, even features, with no, no individualist distortion. Her skin was unstained. She wore a clinging off the breast tunic. Quite a dish, Rolf decided. He began to see that he might enjoy this party. The other guests began to approach timidly now that the initial shock of his presence had worn off. They asked silly little questions about space, questions which showed that they had only a superficial interest in him and were treating him as a sort of talking dog. He answered as many as he could, looking down at their little painted faces with concealed contempt. They think as little of me as I do of them. The thought hit him suddenly, and his broad face creased in a smile at the irony. Then the music started. The knot of Arthur slowly broke up and drifted away to dance. He looked at Jonee, who had stood patiently at his side through all this. I don't dance, he said. I never learned how. He watched the other couples moving gracefully around the floor, looking for all the world like an assemblage of puppets. He stared in the dim light, watching the couples clinging to each other as they rocked through the motions of the dance. He stood against the wall, wearing his ugliness like a shield. He saw the great gulf which separated him from the Earthers spreading before him as he watched the dancers and the gay chatter and the empty badinage and the furtive hand holding and every everything else from which he was cut off. The bizarre invids were dancing together. He noticed one man putting an extra arm to full advantage, and the almost identical conforms had formed their own group again. Rolf wondered how they told each other apart when they all looked alike. Come on, jonee said. I'll show you how to dance. He turned to look at her. With her glossy blond hair and even features, she smiled prettily, revealing white teeth probably newly purchased. Rolf wondered. Actually, I do know how to dance, rolf said, but I do it so badly. That doesn't matter, she said gaily. Come on.

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He could dimly make out the lights of Spacertown across the river, and he thought again of Laney and Kanaday and wished Canaday could see him now, with this beautiful Earther next to him. You must get lonely in space, she said after a while. I do, he said, trying to keep his voice gentle. But it's where I belong. I'm bred for it. She nodded. Yes, and any of those so called men Inside would give 10 years of his life to be able to go to space. But yet you say it's lonely. Those long rides through the night, he said. They get you down. You want to be back among people, so you come back. You come back. And what do you come back to? I know, she said softly. I've seen Spacertown. Why must it be that way? He demanded. Why are spacers so lucky and so wretched all at once? Let's not talk about it now, she said. I'd like to kiss her, he thought, but my face is rough and I'm rough and ugly, and she'd push me away. I remember the pretty little Earther girls who ran laughing away from me when I was 13 and 14, before I went into space. You don't have to be lonely, she said. One of her perfect eyebrows lifted just a little. Maybe someday you'll find someone who cares, Rolf. Someday, maybe, yeah, he said. Someday maybe. But he knew it was all wrong. Could he bring this girl to Spacertown with him? No. She must be merely playing a game, looking for an evening's diversion, something new. Make Love to a spacer. They fell silent and he watched her again, and she watched him. He heard her breath rising and falling evenly, not at all like his own thick gasps. After a while he stepped close to her, put his arm around her, tilted her head into the crook of his elbow, bent and kissed her. As he did it, he saw he was botching it, just like everything else. He had come too close and his heavy boot was pressing on the tip of her shoe and he had not quite landed square on her lips, but still he was close to her. He was reluctant to break it up, but he felt she was only half responding, not giving anything of herself while he had given all. He drew back a step. She did not have time to hide the expression of distaste that involuntarily crossed her face. He watched the expression on her face as she realized the kiss was over. He watched her silently. Someday, maybe, he said. She stared at him, not hiding the fear that was starting to grow on her face. He felt a cold chill deep in his stomach, and it grew until it passed through his throat and into his head. Yeah, he said. Someday, maybe. But not you. Not anyone who's just playing games. That's all. You want something to tell your friends about. That's why you volunteered for tonight's assignment. It's all you can do to keep from laughing at me, but you're sticking to it. I don't want any of it. Hear me? Get away. She stepped back a pace. You ugly, clumsy clown. You ape. Tears began to spoil the flawless mask of her face. Blinded with anger, he grabbed roughly for her arm, but she broke away and dashed back inside. She was trying to collect me, he thought. Her hobby. Interesting dates. She wanted to add me to her collection. An experience. Calmly, he walked to the end of the veranda and stared off into the night, choking his rage. He watched the moon making its dead ride across the sky and stared at the sprinkling of stars. The night was empty and cold, he thought finally, but not more so than I. He turned and looked back through the half opened window. He saw a girl who looked almost like her but was not tall enough and wore a different dress. Then he spotted her. She was dancing with one of the conforms, a frail looking man, a few inches shorter than she, with regular handsome features. She laughed at some sly joke and he laughed with her. Rolf watched the moon for a moment more, thinking of Laney's warning. They just want to make fun of you. Look at the big ape, they'll say. 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Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. He went inside. Cal Quinton came rushing up to him. I'm going, rolf said. What? You don't mean that, the little man said. Why? The party's scarcely gotten underway and there are dozens of people who want to meet you, and you'll miss the big show if you don't stay. I've already seen the big show, rolf told him. I want out now. You can't leave now, quinton said. Rolf thought he saw tears in the corners of the little man's eyes. Please don't leave. I've told everyone you'd be here. You'll disgrace me. What do I care? Let me out of here. Rolf started to move toward the door. Quintin attempted to push him back. Just a minute, Rolf, please. I have to get out, he said. He knocked Quinton out of his way with a backhand swipe of his arm and dashed down the hall, frantically looking for the elevator. Laney and Canaday were sitting up, waiting for him when he got back early in the morning. He slung himself into a pneumo chair and unsealed his boots, releasing his cramped, tired feet. Well? Laney asked. How was the party? You have fun among the Earthers, Rolf? He said nothing. It couldn't have been that bad, laney said. Roff looked up at her. I'm leaving space. I'm going to go to a surgeon and have him turn me into an Earther. I hate this filthy life. He's drunk, canada said. No, I'm not drunk, rolf retorted. I don't want to be an ape any more. Is that what you are if you're an ape? What are they to you? Monkeys? Canada laughed harshly. Are they really so wonderful? Laney asked. Does the life appeal to you so much that you'd give up space? For it. Do you admire the Earthers so much? She's got me, Rolf thought. I hate Spacertown, but will I like Yawk any better? Do I really want to become one of those little puppets? But there's nothing left in space for me. At least the Earthers are happy. I wish she wouldn't look at me that way. Leave me alone, he snarled. I'll do whatever I want to do. Laney was staring at him, trying to poke behind his mask of anger. He looked at her wide shoulders, her muscular frame, her unbeautiful hair and rugged face, and compared it with Jonee's clinging grace, her flowing gold hair. He picked up his boots and stumped up to bed. The surgeon's name was Goldring, and he was a wiry, intense man who had prevailed on one of his colleagues to give him a tiny slit of a mouth. He sat behind a shining plastoline desk, waiting patiently until Rolf finished talking. It can't be done, he said at last. Plastic surgeons can do almost anything. But I can't turn you into an Earther. It's not just a matter of chopping eight or ten inches out of your legs. I'd have to alter your entire bone structure or you'd be a hideous, misproportioned monstrosity. And it can't be done. I can't build you a whole new body from scratch. And if I could could do it, you wouldn't be able to afford it. Rolf stamped his foot impatiently. You're the third surgeon who's given me the same line. What is this, a conspiracy? I see what you can do. If you can graft a third arm onto somebody, you can turn me into an Earther. Please, Mr. Decker. I've told you I can't. But I don't understand why you want such a change. Hardly a week goes by without some Yawk boy coming to me and asking to be turned into a spacer, and I have to refuse him for the same reasons I'm refusing you. That's the usual course of events. The romantic Earther boy wanting to go to space and not being able to an idea hit Rolf was one of them. Cal quinton. I'm sorry, Mr. Decker. I just can't divulge any such information. Rolf shot his arm across the desk and grasped the surgeon by the throat. Answer me. Yes, the surgeon gasped. Quentin asked me for such an operation. Almost everyone wants one. And you can't do it? Rolf asked. Of course not. I've told you the amount of work needed to turn Erther into spacer or spacer into Earther is inconceivable. It'll never be done. I guess that's definite then, Rolf said, slumping a little in disappointment. But there's nothing to prevent you from giving me a new face. From taking away this face and replacing it with something people can look at without shuddering. I. I don't understand you, Mr. Decker, the surgeon said. I know that. Can't you see it? I'm ugly. Why? Why should I look this way? Please calm down, Mr. Decker. You don't seem to realize that you're a perfectly normal looking spacer. You were bred to look this way. It's your genetic heritage. Space is not a thing for everyone. Only men with extraordinary bone structure can withstand acceleration. The first men were keen, carefully selected and bred. You see the result of five centuries of this sort of breeding. The sturdy, heavy boned spacers. You, Mr. Decker, and your friends are the only ones who are fit to travel in space. The others, the weaklings like myself, the little people, resort to plastic surgery to compensate for their deficiency. For a while the trend was to have everyone conform to a certain standard of beauty. If we couldn't be strong, we could at least be handsome. Lately a new theory of individualism has sprung up and now we strive for original forms in our bodies. This is all because size and strength has been bred out of us and given to you.

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Your appearance is a social norm, and for acceptance in your social environment, you must continue to appear. Well, perhaps, shall I say ape? Like it was as bad a word as the surgeon could have chosen. Ape. Ape, am I? I'll show you who's an ape. Rolf yelled, all the accumulated frustration of the last two days. Suddenly bursting loose, he leaped up and overturned the desk. Dr. Goldring hastily jumped backwards as the heavy desk crashed to the floor. A startled nurse dashed into the office, saw the situation and immediately ran out. Give me your instruments. I'll operate on myself. He knocked Goldring against the wall, pulled down a costly slidograph from the wall and kicked it at him, and crashed through into the operating room, where he began overturning tables and heaving chairs through glass shelves. I'll show you, he said. He cracked an instrument case and took out a delicate knife with a near microscopic edge. He bent it in half and threw the crumpled wreckage away. Wildly he destroyed everything he could, ranging from one end of the room to the other, ripping down furnishings, smashing, destroying, while Dr. Goldring stood at the door and yelled for help. It was not long in coming. An army of Earther policemen erupted into the room and confronted him as he stood panting amid the wreckage. They were all short men, but there must have been 20 of them. Don't shoot him. Someone called, and then they advanced in a body. He picked up the operating table and hurled it at them. Three policemen crumpled under it, but the rest kept coming. He battled them away like insects, but they surrounded him and piled on. For a few moments he struggled under the load of 50, 13 small men, punching and kicking and yelling. He burst loose for an instant, but two of them were clinging to his legs and he hit the floor with a crash. They were on him immediately, and he stopped struggling after a while. The next thing he knew he was lying sprawled on the floor of his room in spacertown, breathing dust out of the tattered carpet. He was quite a mass of cuts and bruises, and he knew that they must have given him quite a going over. He was sore from head to foot. So they hadn't arrested him? No, of course not. No more than they would arrest any wild animal who went berserk. They had just dumped him back in the jungle. He tried to get up but couldn't make it. Quite a going over. It must have Been. Nothing seemed broken, but everything was slightly bent. Satisfied now? Said a voice from somewhere. It was a pleasant sound to hear a voice, and he let the mere noise of it soak into his mind. Now that you've proved to everyone that you really are just an ape. He twisted his neck around slowly because his neck was stiff and sore. Laney was sitting on the edge of his bed with two suitcases next to her. It really wasn't necessary to run wild there, she said. The Earthers all knew you were just an animal anyway. You didn't have to prove it so violently. Okay, Laney, quit it if you want me to. I just wanted to make sure you knew what had happened. A gang of Earther cops brought you back a while ago and dumped you here. They told me the story. Leave me alone. You've been telling everyone that all along, Rolf. Look where it got you. A royal beating at the hands of a bunch of Earthers. Now that they've thrown you out for the last time, has it filtered into your mind that this is where you belong? In spacertown only between trips? You belong in space, Rolf. No surgeon can make you an Earther. The Earthers are dead, but they just don't know it yet. All their parties, their fancy clothes, their extra arms and missing ears. That means they're decadent. They're finished. You're the one who's alive. The whole universe is waiting for you to go out and step on its neck and instead you want to turn yourself into a green skinned little monkey. Why? He pulled himself to a sitting position. I. I don't know, he said. I've been all mixed up. I think he felt his powerful arm. I'm a spacer. Suddenly he glanced at her. What are the suitcases for? He said. I'm moving in, laney said. I need a place to sleep. What's the matter with Canada? Did he get tired of listening to you preaching? He's my friend, Laney. I'm not going to do him dirt. He's dead, Rolf. When the Earther cops came here to bring you back, and he saw what they did to you, his hatred overflowed. He always hated Earthers, and he hated them even more for the way you were being tricked into thinking that they were worth anything. He got hold of one of those cops and just about twisted him into pieces. They blasted him.

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Go to spinquest.com right now. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Rolf was silent. He let his head sink down on his knees. So I moved down here. It's lonely upstairs now. Come on, I'll help you get up. She walked toward him, hooked her hand under his arm, and half dragged, half pushed him to his feet. Her touch was firm and there was no denying the strength behind her. I have to get fixed up, he said abruptly. My leave's up in two days. I have to get out of here. We're shipping for Pluto. He rocked unsteadily on his feet. It'll really get lonely here. Then, he said. Are you really going to go, or are you going to find some jack surgeon who will make your face pretty for a few dirty credits? Stop it. I mean it. I'm going. I'll be gone a year on this sign up. By then I'll have enough cash piled up on various planets to be a rich man. I'll get it all together and get a mansion on Venus and have greenie slaves. It was getting toward noon. The sun, high in the sky, burst through the shutters and lit up the dingy room. I'll stay here, laney said. You're going to Pluto? He nodded. Canadae was supposed to be going to Pluto. He was heading there when that explosion finished his foot. He never got there after that. Poor old Kanaday, rolfs said. I'll miss him, too. I guess I'll have to run the boarding house now for a while. Will you come back here when your year's up? I suppose so, rolf said without looking up. This town is no worse than any of the other spacer towns. No better, but no worse. He slowly lifted his head and looked at her as she stood there facing him. I hope you come back, she said. The sun was coming in from behind her now and lighting her up. She was rugged, all right, and strong, a good hard worker, and she was well built. Suddenly his aches became less painful and he looked at her and realized that she was infinitely more beautiful than the slick, glossy looking girl he had kissed on the veranda, who had bought her teeth at a store and had gotten her figure from a surgeon. Laney, at least, was real. You know, he said at last, I think I have an idea. You wait here and I'll come to get you when my year's up. I'll have enough to pay passage to Venus for two. We can get a slightly smaller mansion than I planned on getting, but we can get it. Some parts of Venus are beautiful, and the closest those monkeys from Yawk can get to it is to look at it in the night sky. You think it's a good idea? I think it's a great idea, she said, moving toward him. Her head was nearly as high as his own. I'll go back to space. I have to, to keep my rating. But you'll wait for me, won't you? I'll wait. And as he drew her close, he knew she meant it. The happy unfortunate by robert silverberry.

[Narrator]

The man who Saw the Future this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Xander Phillips the Man who Saw the Future by Edmond Hamilton Jean de Marseille, Inquisitor Extraordinary of the King of France, raised his head from the parchments that littered the crude desk at which he sat. His glance shifted along the long stone walled torchlight room to the file of mail clad soldiers who stood like steel statues by its door. A word from him and two of them sprang forward. You may bring in the prisoner, he said. The two disappeared through the door and the entered. In moments there came a clang of opening bolts and grating of heavy hinges from somewhere in the building, then the clang of the returning soldiers, and they entered the room with another man between them whose hands were fettered. He was a straight figure and was dressed in drab tunic and hose. His dark hair was long and straight, and his face held a dreaming strength altogether different from the battered visages of the soldiers or the changeless mask of the inquisitor. The latter regarded the prisoner for a moment and then lifted one of the parchments from before him and read from it in a smooth, clear voice. Henry Lothier, apothecary's assistant to Paris, he read, is charged in this year of our Lord 14:44 with offending against God and the King by committing the crime of sorcery. The prisoner spoke for the first time, his voice low but steady. I am no sorcerer, Sire, jean de Marseille read calmly on from the parchment. It is stated by many witnesses that for long that part of Paris called Nanley by some has been troubled by works of the devil. Ever and anon great claps of thunder have been heard issuing from an open field there without visible cause. They were evidently caused by a sorcerer of power, since even exorcist could not halt them. It is attested by many that the accused Henri Lothier did, in spite of the known diabolical nature of the thing, spend much time at the field in question. It is also attested that the said Henry Lothier did state that in his opinion the thunderclaps were not of a diabolical origin, and that if they were studied, their cause might be discovered. It being suspected from this that Henry Lothier was himself the sorcerer causing the thunderclaps. He was watched, and on the third day of June was seen to go in the early morning to the unholy spot with certain instruments. There he was observed going through strange and diabolical conjurations, when there came suddenly another thunderclap, and the said Henry Lothia did vanish entirely from view in that moment. This fact is attested beyond all doubt. The news spreading. Many hundreds watched around the field during that day. Upon that night before midnight, another thunderclap was heard, and the said Henri Lothier was seen by these high hundreds to appear at the field center. As swiftly and as strangely as he had vanished, the fear stricken hundreds around the field heard him tell them how by diabolical power he had gone for hundreds of years into the future, a thing surely possible only to the devil and his minions, and heard him tell other blasphemies before they seized him and brought him to the inquisitor of the king, praying that he be burned in his work of sorcery thus halted.

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[Narrator]

Therefore, Henri Lothier, since you were seen to vanish and reappear as only the servants of an evil one might do, and were heard by many to utter the blasphemies mentioned, I must adjudge you, a sorcerer, with the penalty of death by fire, if anything there be that you can advance in palation of your black offense. However you may now so before the final sentence is passed upon you. Jean de Marseille laid down the parchment and raised his eyes to the prisoner. The latter looked round him quickly for a moment, A half glimpsed panic for an instant in his eyes, then seemed to study. Sire, I cannot change the sentence you will pass upon me, he said quietly. Yet do I wish well to relate once what happened to me and what I saw Is it permitted me to tell that from first to last. The inquisitor's head bent, and Henri Lothier spoke, his voice gaining in strength and fever as he continued. Sire, I, Henri Lothier, am no sorcerer, but a simple apothecary's assistant. It was always my nature, from earliest youth, to desire to delve into matters unknown to men, the secrets of the earth and sea and sky, the knowledge hidden from us. I knew well that this was wicked, that the church teaches all we need to know, and that heaven frowns when we pry into its mysteries. But so strong was my desire to know that many times I concerned myself with matters forbidden. I had sought to know the nature of the lightning and the manner of the flight of birds, and the way in which fishes are able to live beneath the waters, and the mystery of the stars. So when these thunderclaps began to be heard in that part of Paris in which I lived, I did not fear them so much as my neighbors. I was eager to learn only what was causing them, for it seemed to me that their cause might be learned. So I began to go down to that field from which they issued to study them. I waited in it, and twice I heard the great thunderclaps myself. I thought they came from near the field center, and I studied that place, but I could see nothing there that was causing them. I dug in the ground, I looked for hours into the sky, but there was nothing. And still, at intervals, the thunderclap sounded. I still kept going to the field, though I knew that many of my neighbors whispered that I was engaged in sorcery. Upon that morning of the third day of June, it had occurred to me to take certain instruments, such as loadstones, to the field to see whether anything might be learned from them. I went a few seconds, superstitious ones following me at a distance. I reached the field center and started the examinations I had planned. Then came suddenly another thunderclap, and with it I passed from the sight of those who had followed and were watching vanished from view. Sire, I cannot well describe what happened in that moment. I heard the thunderclap come as though from all the air around me, stunning my ears with its terrible burst of sound, and at the same moment that I heard It I was buffeted as though by awful winds, and seemed falling downward through terrific depths. Then, through the hellish uproar, I felt myself bumping upon a hard surface, and the sounds quickly ceased from about me. I had involuntarily closed my eyes at the great thunderclap, but now, slowly, I opened them. I looked around me, first in stupefaction and then in growing amazement, for I was not in that familiar field at all, sire, that I had been in a moment before. I was in a room lying upon its floor, and it was such a room as I had never seen before. Its walls were smooth and white and gleaming. There were windows in the walls, and they were closed with sheets of glass so smooth and clear that one seemed looking through a clear opening rather than through glass. The floor was of stone, smooth and seamless, as though carven from one great rock, yet seeming not in some way to be stone at all. There was a great circle of smooth metal inset in it, and it was on it that I was lying. All around the room were many great things the like of which I had never seen. Some seemed of black metal, seemed contrivances or machines of some sort. Black corps, cords of wire connected them to each other, and from part of them came a humming sound that did not stop. Others had glass tubes fixed on the front of them, and there were square black plates on which were many shining little handles and buttons. There was a sound of voices, and I turned to find that two men were bending over me. They were men like myself, yet they were at the same time like no men I had ever met. One was white bearded, and the other plump and bare of face. Neither of them wore cloak or tunic or hose. Instead they wore loose and straight hanging garments of cloth. They were both greatly excited, it seemed, and were talking to each other. As they bent over me. I caught a word or two of their speech in a moment and found it was French they were talking, but it was not the French I knew, being so strange and with so many new words as to be almost a different language. I could understand the drift, though, of what they were saying. We have succeeded. The plump one was shouting excitedly. We've brought someone through at last. They will never believe it, the other replied. They'll say it was faked. Nonsense. Cried the first. We can do it again, Raston. We can show them before their own eyes. They bent toward me, seeing me staring at them. Where are you from? Shouted the plump faced one. What time? What year? What century? He doesn't understand, Thrycourt muttered the white bearded one. What year is this now, my friend? He asked me. I found voice to answer. Surely, sirs, whoever you be, you know that this is the year 1444, I said. That set them off again into a babble of excited talk of which I could make out only a word here and there. They lifted me up, seeing how sick and weak I felt, and seated me in a strange but very comfortable chair. I felt dazed. The two were still talking excitedly, but finally the white bearded one, Raston, turned to me. He spoke to me very slowly so that I understood him clearly, and he asked me my name. I told him, Henri Lothier. He repeated. Well, Henri, you must try to understand. You are not now in the year 1444. You are 500 years in the future. Or what would seem to you? The future. This is the year 1944, and Raston and I have jerked you out of your own time across five solid centuries, said the other, grinning. I looked from one to the other. Messius, I pleaded, and Raston shook his head. He does not believe, he said to the other, then to me. Where were you just before you found yourself here, Henri? He asked. In a field at the outskirts of Paris, I said. Well, look from that window and see if you still believe yourself in 15th century Paris. I went to the window. I looked out. Mother of God, what a sight I saw before my eyes the familiar gray little houses, the open fields behind them, the saunterers and the the dirt streets. All these were gone and it was a new and terrible city that lay about me. Its broad streets were of stone and great buildings of many levels rose on either side of them. Great numbers of people dressed like the two beside me moved in streets and also strange vehicles or carriages undrawn by horse or ox that rushed to and fro at undreamed of speed. I staggered back into the chair. You believe me now, Henri? Asked the Whitebeard Rastan kindly enough, and I nodded weakly. My brain was whirling.

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He pointed to the circle of metal on the floor and the machines around the room. Those are what we used to jerk you from your own time to this one, he said. But how? How, sirs?

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

I asked.

[Narrator]

For the love of God, how is it that you can take me from one time to another? Have you become gods or devils? Neither the one nor the other, Henri, he answered. We are simply scientists, physicists, men who want to know as much as man can know and who spend our lives seeking knowledge. I felt my confidence returning. These were men such as I had dreamed might someday be. But what can you do with time? I asked. Is not time a thing? Unalterable? Unchanging? Both shook their heads. No, Henri, it is not. But lately our men of science have found that out. They went on to tell me of things that I could not understand. It seemed they were telling that their men of knowledge had found time to be a mere measurement or dimension, such as length or breadth or thickness. They mentioned names with reverence that I had never heard of Einstein and de Sitter and Lorentz. I was in amaze at their words. They said that just as men use force to move or rotate matter from one point along the three known measurements to another, so might matter be rotated from one point in time, the fourth measurement, to another, if the right force were used. They said that their machines produced that force and applied it to the metal circle from 500 years before to this time of theirs. They had tried it many times, they said, but nothing had been on the spot at that time, and they had rotated nothing but the air above it from one time to the other and the reverse. I told them of the thunderclaps that had been heard at the spot in the field, and that had made me curious. They said that they had been caused by the changing of the air above the spot from one time to another in their trials. I could not understand these things. They said then that I had happened to be on the spot when they had again turned on their force, and so had been rotated out of my own time into theirs. They said that they had always hoped to get someone living from a distant time in that way, since such a man would be a proof to all the other men of knowledge. Of what they had been able to do I could not comprehend, and they saw and told me not to fear. I was not fearful but excited at the things that I saw around me. I asked of those things, and Rastan and Thrycourt laughed and explained some of them to me as best they could. Much they said, that I did not understand, but my eyes saw marvels in that room of which I had never dreamed. They showed me a thing like a small glass bottle with wires inside and then told me to touch a button beneath it. I did so, and the bottle shone with a brilliant light exceeding that of scores of candles. I shrank back, but they laughed, and when Raston touched the button again, the light in the glass thing vanished. I saw that there were many of these things in the ceiling. They showed me also a ra. A rounded black object of metal with a wheel at the end. A belt ran around the wheel and around smaller wheels connected to many machines. They touched a lever on this object and a sound of humming came from it. And the wheel turned very fast, turning all the machines with the belt. It turned faster than any man could ever have turned it. Yet when they touched the lever again, its turning ceased. They said that it was the power of the lightning in the skies that they used to make the light and to turn that wheel. My brain reeled at the wonders that they showed. One took an instrument from the table that he had held to his face, saying that he would summon the other scientists or men of knowledge to see their experiment that night. He spoke into the instrument as though to different men and let me hear voices from it answering him. They said that the men who answered were leagues separated from him. I could not believe, and yet somehow I did believe. I was half dazed with wonder and yet excited too. The white bearded man, Rastan saw that and encouraged me. Then they brought a small box with an opening and placed a black disk on the box and set it turning in some way. A woman's voice came from the opening of the box, singing. I shuddered when they told me that the woman was one who had died years before. Could the dead speak thus? How can I describe what I saw there? Another box or cabinet there was with an opening also. I thought it was like that from from which I had heard the dead woman singing. But they said that it was different. They touched buttons on it and a voice came from it, speaking in a tongue I knew not. They said that the man was speaking thousands of leagues from us in a strange land across the uncrossed western ocean.

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Yet he seemed speaking by my side. They saw how dazed I was by these things and gave me wine. At that I took heart, for wine at least, was as it had always been. You will want to see Paris, the Paris of our time? Henri asked Rastan. But it is different. Terrible, I said. We'll take you, Thrichourt said. But first your clothes. He got a long light coat that they had me put on that covered my tunic and hose, and a hat of grotesque round shape that they put on my head. They led me then out of the building and into the street. I gazed astoundedly along that street. It had a raised walk at either side, on which many hundreds of people moved to and fro, all dressed in as strange a fashion. Many, like Raston and Thricourt, seemed of gentle blood. Yet in in spite of this they did not wear a sword or even a dagger. There were no knights or squires or priests or peasants. All seemed dressed much the same. Small lads ran to and fro, selling what seemed sheets of very thin white parchment, many times folded and covered with lettering. Rastan said that these had written in them all things that had happened through all the world but even hours before. I said that to write even one of these sheets would take a clerk many days. But they said that the writing was done in some way very quickly, by machines. In the broad stone street between the two raised walks were rushing back and forth the strange vehicles I had seen from the window. There was no animal pulling or pushing any one of them, yet they never halted their swift rush and carried many people at unthinkable speed.

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Sometimes those who walked stepped before the rushing vehicles, and then from them came terrible warning snarls or moans that made the walkers draw back. One of the vehicles stood at the walk's edge before us, and we entered it and sat side by side on a soft leather seat. Thrykor sat behind a wheel on a post with levers beside him. He touched these, and a humming sound came from somewhere in the vehicle, and then it too began to rush forward, faster and faster along the street it went, yet neither of them seemed afraid. Many thousands of these vehicles were moving swiftly through the streets about us. We passed on between great buildings and along wider streets, my eyes and ears numbed by what I saw about me. Then the buildings grew smaller after we had gone for miles through them and we were passing through the the city's outskirts. I could not believe hardly that it was Paris in Which I was. We came to a great flat and open field outside the city, and there Thricor stopped and we got out of the vehicle. There were big buildings at the field's end and I saw other vehicles rolling out of them across the field, ones different from any I had yet seen, with flat wing like projections on either side. They rolled out over the field very fast. And then I cried out as I saw them rising from the ground into the air. Mother of God, they were flying. The men in them were flying. Rastan and Thricor took me forward to the great buildings. They spoke to men there, and one brought forward one of the winged cars. Rastan told me to get in, and though I was terribly afraid, there was two terrible a fascination that drew me in. Thrichor and Raston entered after me and we sat in seats with the other man. He had before him levers and buttons, while at the car's front there was a great thing like a double oar or paddle. A loud roaring came and that double paddle began to whirl so swiftly that I could not see it. Then the car rolled swiftly forward, bumping on the ground, and then ceased to bump. I looked down, then shuddered. The ground was already far beneath. I too was flying in the air. We swept upward at terrible speed that increased steadily. The thunder of the car was terrific, and as the man at the levers changed their position, we curved around and over, downward and upward, as though birds. Reston tried to explain to me how the car flew, but it was all too wonderful and I could not understand. I only knew that a wild, thrilling excitement helped me and that it were worth life and death to fly thus. If but for once, as I had always dreamed that men might some day do, higher and higher we went. The earth lay far beneath, and I saw now that Paris was. Was indeed a mighty city, its vast mass of buildings stretching away almost to the horizons below us. A mighty city of the future that it had been given my eyes to look on. There were other winged cars darting to and fro in the air about us, and they said that many of these were starting or finishing journeys of hundreds of leagues in the air. Then I cried out as I said, I saw a great shape coming nearer us in the air. It was many rods in length, tapering to a point at both ends, a vast ship sailing through the air. They were great cabins on its lower part, and in them we glimpsed people gazing out, coming and going inside, dancing even. They told me that vast ships of the air like this sailed to and fro for thousands of leagues, with hundreds inside them. The huge vessel of the air passed us, and then our winged car began to descend. It circled smoothly down to the field like a swooping bird, and when we landed there, Rastan and Thricourt led me back to the ground vehicle. It was late afternoon by then, the sun sinking westward and darkness had descended by the time we rolled back into the great city. But in that city was not darkness. Lights were everywhere in it, flashing brilliant lights that shone from its mighty buildings, that blinked and burned and ran like water in great symbols upon the buildings above the streets. Their glare was like that of day. We stopped before a great building into which Rastan and Thricor led me. It was vast inside, and in it were many people in rows on rows of seats. I thought it a cathedral at first. First, but saw soon that it was not. The wall at one end of it, toward which all in it were gazing, had on it pictures of people great in size. And those pictures were moving as though themselves alive. And they were talking one to another too, as though with living voices. I trembled. What magic. With Braston and Thricourt in seats beside me, I watched the picture, structures enthralled. It was like looking through a great window into strange worlds. I saw the sea seemingly tossing and roaring there before me, and then saw on it a ship, a vast ship of incredible size, without sails or oars, holding thousands of people. I seemed on that ship as I watched, seemed moving forward with it. They told me it was sailing over the western ocean that never men had crossed, I feared. Then another scene. Land appearing from the ship, a great statue upholding a torch. And we on the ship seemed passing beneath it. They said that the ship was approaching a city, the city of New York. But mists hid all before us. Then suddenly the mists before the ship cleared, and there before me seemed the city. Mother of God, what a city. Climbing range on range of great mountain, like buildings that aspired up as though to scale heaven itself far beneath. Narrow streets pierced through them, and in the picture we seemed to land from the ship, to go through those streets of the city. It was an incredible city of madness. The streets and ways were mere chasms between sky toppling buildings. People, people, people. Millions on millions of them rushed through the endless streets. Countless ground vehicles rushed to and fro also, and other different ones that roared above the streets and still others below them. Winged flying cars and great airships were sailing to and fro over the titanic city and in the waters around it cross great ships of the sea. And smaller ships were coming, as man never dreamed of, surely that reached out from the mighty city on all sides. And when the coming of darkness, the city blazed with living light. The pictures changed, showed other mighty cities, though none so terrible as that one. It showed great mechanisms that appalled me, great metal things that scooped in an instant from the earth as much as a man might dig in days, vast things that poured molten metal from them like water, Others that lifted loads that hundreds of men and oxen could not have stirred. They showed men of knowledge, like Rastan and Thricorp beside me. Some were healers, working miraculous cures in ways that I could not understand. Others were gazing through giant tubes at time the same stars. And the pictures showed what they saw, showed that all the stars were great suns like our sun, and that our sun was greater than the earth, and that earth moved around it instead of the reverse. How could such things be? I wondered. Yet they said it was so, that earth was round like an apple, and that with other earths like it, the planets moved around the sun. I heard, but could scarce understand. At last Raston and Thrycourt led me out of that place of living pictures and to their ground vehicle. We went again through the streets to their building, where first I had found myself. As we went, I saw that none challenged my right to go, nor asked who was my lord. And Rastan said that none now had lords, but that all were lord, king, and priest, and noble, having no more power than any in the land. Each man was his own master. It was what I had hardly dared to hope for in my own time, and this, I thought, was greatest of all the marvels that they had shown me. We entered again their building, but Rastan and Thricor took me first to another room than the one in which I had found myself.

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

Myself.

[Narrator]

They said that their men of knowledge were gathered there to hear of their feet and to have it proved to them. You would not be afraid to return to your own time? Henri asked Rasten, and I shook my head. I want to return to it, I told them. I want to tell my people there what I have seen, what the future is that they must strive for. But if they should not believe you? Thricor asked. Still, I must go. Must tell them, I said. Raston grasped my hand. You are a man, Henri, he said. Then, throwing aside the cloak and hat I had worn outside, they went with me down to the big white walled room where first I had found myself. It was lit brightly now by many of the shining glass things on the ceiling and walls, and in it were many men. They all stared strangely at me and at my clothes and talked excitedly so fast that I could not understand. Raston began to address them. He seemed explaining how he had brought me from my own time to his. He used many terms and words that I could not understand, incomprehensible references and phrases, and I could understand but little. I heard again the names of Einstein and De Sitter that I had heard before, repeated frequently by these men as they disputed with Rasten and Thracort. They seemed disputing about me. One big man was saying, impossible, I tell you, Raston, you have faked this fellow. Rasten smiled. You don't believe that Thrycore and I brought him here from his own time across five centuries. A chorus of excited negatives answered him. He had me stand up and speak to them. They asked me many questions, part of which I could not understand. I told them of my life and of the city of my own time, and of king and priest and noble, and of many simple things that they seemed quite ignorant of. Some appeared to believe me, but others did not, and again their dispute broke out. There is a way to settle the argument, gentlemen, said Raston finally. How all cried. Thricor and I brought Henri across five centuries by rotating the time dimensions at this spot. He said, suppose we reverse that rotation and send him back before your eyes. Would that be proof? They all said it would. Raston turned to me. Stand on the metal circle, Henri, he said. I did so. All were watching very closely. Thrikor did something quickly with the levers and buttons of the mechanisms in the room. They began to hum, and blue light came from the glass tubes on some. All were quiet, watching me. As I stood there on the circle of metal. I met Rastan's eyes, and something in me made me call goodbye to him. He waved his hand and smiled. Thrykor pressed more buttons, and the hum of the mechanisms grew louder. Then he reached toward another lever. All in the room were tense, and I was tense. Then I saw Thrycore's arm move as he turned one of the many levers. A terrific clap of thunder seemed to break around me, and as I closed my eyes before its shock, I felt myself whirling around and falling at the same time, as though into a maelstrom, just as I had done before. The awful falling sensation ceased, ceased in a moment, and the sound subsided. I opened my eyes. I was on the ground at the center of the familiar field from which I had vanished hours before upon the morning of that day. It was night now, though for that day I had spent 500 years in the future. There were many people gathered around the field, fearful, and they screamed and some fled. When I appeared in the thunderclap, I went toward those who remained. My mind was full of things I had seen, and I wanted to tell them of these things. I wanted to tell them how they must work ever toward that future time of wonder. But they did not listen. Before I had spoken minutes to them, they cried out on me as a sorcerer and a blasphemer and seized me and brought me here to the Inquisitor. To you, Sire, and to you, Sire, I have taken told the truth in all things. I know that in doing so I have set the seal of my own fate, and that only a sorcerer would ever tell such a tale. Yet despite that, I am glad.

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[Narrator]

Glad that I have told one at least of this time, of what I saw five centuries in the future. Glad that I saw Glad that I saw the things that someday, sometime must come to be. It was a week later that they burned. Henri Lothier, Jean de Marseille, lifting his gaze from his endless parchment, accusation and examines on that afternoon, looked out through the window at a thick curl of black smoke going up from the distant square. Strange that one, he mused. A sorcerer, of course, but such a one as I've never heard before. I wonder, he half whispered, was there any truth in that wild tale of his? The future? Who can say what men might do? There was silence in the room as he brooded for a moment, and then he shook himself as one, ridding himself of an absurd, absurd speculation. But tush, enough of these crazy fancies. They will have me for a sorcerer if I yield to these wild fancies and visions of the future. And bidding again with his pen to the parchment before him, he went gravely on with his work. The End End of the man who Saw the Future By Edmund Hamilton Recording by Xander Phillips.

[Lady Luck]

A Matter of Proportion by Ann Walker this is a Librivox recording All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Dale in order to make a man stop, you must convince him that it's impossible to go on. Some people, though, just can't be convinced. In the dark, our glider chutes zeroed neatly on target. Only Art Benjamin missed the edge of the gorge. When we were sure Invader hadn't heard heard the crashing of bushes, I climbed down after him. The climb and what I found left me shaken. A Special Corps squad leader is not expendable. By order, Clyde Estabrook, my second and ICEG mate, would have to mine the viaduct while my nerve and glycogen stabilized. We timed the patrols climbing. Clyde said, have to wait till a train's coming. No time otherwise, well, it was his show. When the next pair of burly coated men came over at a trot, he breathed now and ghosted out almost before they were clear. I switched on the ICEG intercortical encephalograph planted in my temporal bone. My own senses could hear young Ferd breathing, feel and smell the mat of pine needles under me. Through Clyde's, I could hear the blind whuffle of wind in the girders, feel the crude wood of ties and the iron cold molding of rails in the stardark. I could feel, too, an odd, lilting elation in his mind, as if this savage universe were a good thing to take on spray guns. Cold and all, we wanted to set the mine so the wreckage would would clobber a trail below, one like they'd built in Burma and Japan, where you wouldn't think a monkey could go. But it probably carried more supplies than the viaduct itself. So Clyde made adjustments precisely just as we'd figured it with the model back at base, it was a tricky, slow job in the bitter dark. I began to figure if he armed it for this train and ran, she'd go off while we were on location and we'd be drenched in searchlights and spray guns already. Through his fingers I felt the hum in the rails that every tank town reared kid knows. I turned up my iceg. All right, Clyde, get back. Arm it when she's gone past for the next one. I felt him grin, felt his lips form words. I'll do better than that, Willie. Look, Daddy O no hands. He slid over the edge and rested elbows and ribs on the raw tie ends. We're all acrobats in the Corps. But I didn't like this act one little bit, even if he could hang by his hands. The heavy train would jolt him off, but I swallowed my thoughts. He groped with his foot, contacted a sloping beam, and brought his other foot in. I felt a dull scrap scraping slither under his moccasin soles. Frost, he thought, calmly rubbed a clear patch with the edge of his foot, put his weight on it, and transferred his hands to the beam. With a twist we hadn't learned in corps school, my heart did a double take. One slip and he'd be off into the gorge, and the frost stung, melting under his bare fingers. He lay in the trough of the massive H beam, slid down about 20ft to where it made an angle with an upright and wedged himself there. It took all of 20 seconds, really, but I let out a breath as if I'd been holding it for minutes. As he settled, searchlights began skimming the bridge. If he'd been running, he'd have been shot to a sieve. As it was, they'd never see him in the mingled glare and black. His heart hadn't even speeded up beyond what was required by exertion. The train roared around a shoulder and onto the viaduct, shaking it like an angry hand. But as the box cars thunder clattered above his head, he was peering into the gulf at a string of feeble lights threading the bottom. There's the flywalk, Willie. They know their stuff, but we'll get it. Then, as the caboose careened over and the searchlights cut off. Well, that gives us 10 minutes before the patrol comes back. He levered onto his side a joint at a time, and began to climb the beam. Never again for me. Even by proxy. You just couldn't climb that thing nohow. The slope was too steep, the beam was too massive to shinny, yet too narrow to lie inside and elbow up. The metal was too smooth and scummed with frost. His fingers were beginning to numb and he was climbing in each fin of the beam. Every foot or so was a round hole. He'd get one finger into a hole and pull, inching his body against the beam. He timed himself into to some striding music I didn't know. Not fast, but no waste. Motion, even the pauses rhythmic. I tell you, I was sweating under my leathers. Maybe I should have switched the iceg off for my own sake, if not to avoid distracting Clyde. But I was hypnotized climbing. In the old days, when you were risking your neck, you were supposed to think great solemn thoughts. Recently, you're supposed to think about something silly like a Singing commercial. Clyde's mind was neither posturing in front of his mental mirror nor running in some feverish little circle. He faced terror as big as the darkness from gorge bottom to stars. And he was just simply as big as it was sheer life exulting in, defying the dark, the frost and wind with the zombie grip of invisible Vader. I envied him. Then his rhythm checked. Five feet from the top, he reached confidently for a finger hole. No hole. He had already reached as high as he could without shifting his purchase and risking a skid. And even his wrestler's muscles wouldn't make the climb again. My stomach quaked. Never see sunlight in the trees anymore. Just cling till dawn picked you out like a crow's nest in a dead tree. Or drop. Not Clyde. His flame of life crouched in anger. Not only the malice of nature and the rage of enemies, but human shiftlessness against him. Too good. He'd take it on shoulder, thigh, knee, foot scraped off frost. He jammed his tongue, jaw against the wet iron. His right hand never let go, but it crawled up the fin of the strut like a blind animal while the load on his points of purchase mounted watchmaker coordination where you'd normally think in boilermaker terms. The flame sank to a spark as he focused, but it never blinked out. This was not the anticipated warded danger, but the trick punch from nowhere. This was it. A sneak squall buffeted him. I cursed thinly, but he sensed an extra purchase from its pressure and reached the last 4 inches with a swift glide. The next hole was there. He weighed five heartbeats and pulled. He began at the muscular disadvantage of aligned joints. He had to make it the first time. If you can't do it with a dollar, you won't do it with the change. But as elbow and shoulder bent, the flame soared again. Score one more for life. A minute later he hooked his arm over the butt of a tie, his chin, his other arm and hung a moment. He didn't throw a knee up, just rolled and lay between the rails. Even as he relaxed, he glanced at his watch. Three minutes to spare. Leisurely, he armed the mine and jogged back to me. Inferred as I broke iceg contact. His flame had sunk to an ember glow of anticipation. We had almost reached the cave pricked on our map when we heard the slam of the mine. Wee and far off, we were lying doggo, looking out at the snow peaks, incandescent in dawn when the first invader patrols trailed by below. Our equipment was a miracle of hot food and Basic medication. Not pastimes, though. And by the second day of hiding, I was thinking too much. There was Clyde, an Inca chief with a thread of black mustache and incongruous hazel eyes. My friend. And Iceg mate. What made him tick? Where did he get his delight in the bright eyes of danger? How did he gear his daredevil valor not to the icy iron and obligatory killing, but to the big music and stars over the gorge? But in the Corps we don't ask questions. And above all, never eavesdrop on Iceg. Young Ferd wasn't so inhibited. Benjamin's death had shaken him. Losing your Iceg mate is like losing an eye. He began fly fishing. Clyde. How had Clyde learned that stunt in the dark, with the few minutes he'd had? There's always a way, Ferd, if you're fighting for what you really want. Well, I want to throw out Invader, all right, but that's the start, of course. But beyond that. He changed the subject. Perhaps only I knew of his dream about a stronghold for rebels far in these mountains. He smiled. I guess you get used to calculated risks. Risks? Except for imagination. You're as safe walking a ledge 20 stories up as down on the sidewalk. Not if you trip. That's the calculated risk. If you climb it, you get used to it. Well, how did you get used to it? Were you a mountaineer or an acrobat? In a way, both. Clyde smiled again, a trifle bitterly, and switched the topic. Anyway, I've been in action for the duration. Except for some time in hospital. Ferd was onto that boner like an infielder. To get into SC you have to be not only championship fit, but have no history of injury that could crop up to haywire you in a pinch. So hospital, you sure don't show it now. Clyde was certainly below par. To cover his slip, he backed into a bigger, if less obvious one. Oh, I was in that operation Armada at Golden Gate had to be patched up. He must have figured. Ferd had been a kid then, and I hadn't been too old. Odds were we'd recall the episode and no more. Unfortunately. I'd been a ham operator. And I'd been in the corps that beamed those fire ships onto the invader supply fleet. In the dense fog, the whole episode was burned into my brain. It had been kamikaze stuff, though there'd been a theoretical chance of the 30 men escaping to justify sending them out. Actually, one escape boat did get back with three men. I'd learned about those men out of Morbid conscience scalded curiosity. Their leader was Edwin Scott, a medical student. At the very start he'd been shot through the lower spine. So his companions put him in the escape boat while they clinched their prey. But as the escape boat sheered off, the blast of enemy fire killed three and disabled two. Scott must have been some boy. He'd already doctored himself with hemostatics and local anesthetics, but from the hips down he was dead as salt pork and his visceral reflexes must have been reacting like a worm cut with a hoe. Yet somehow he doctored the two others and got that boat home. The other two had died, but Scott lived as sole survivor of Operation Armada. And he hadn't been a big bronze Latin Indian with incongruous hazel eyes, but a snub nosed redhead. And he'd been wheelchaired for life. They'd patched him up, decorated him, sent him to a base hospital in Wisconsin where he could live in whatever comfort was available. So he dropped out of sight. And now this. Clyde was lying, of course. He'd picked the episode at random. Except that so much else about him didn't square, including his name compared to his physique. Now, I thought about it. I tabled it during our odyssey home. But during post mission leave, it kept bothering me. I checked and came up with what I'd already Scott had been sole survivor and the others were certified dead. But about Scott, I got a run around. He'd apparently vanished. Oh, they'd check for me, but that could take years. Which didn't lull my curiosity any into Clyde's past. I was sworn not to pry. We were training for our next assignment when word came through of the surrender at Kelowna. It was a flare of sunlight through a black sky. The end was suddenly close. Clyde and I were in Victoria, British Columbia, not subscribing to the folk way that prescribes seasick intoxication. As an expression of joy, we did the town with discrimination. At midnight we found ourselves strolling along the waterfront in that fine Vancouver island mist with just enough drink taken to be moving through a dream. At one point we leaned on a rail to watch the mainland lights twinkling dimly like the hope of a new world blackout being lifted. Suddenly Clyde said, what's fraying you recently, Will? When we were taking our iceg reconditioning, it came through strong as garlic, though you wouldn't notice it normally. Why be coy about an opening like that, Clyde? What do you know about Edwin Scott that let him spin any yarn he chose, if he chose. He did the cigarette lighting routine and said, well, I was Edwin Scott Will. Then, as I waited, yes, really me. The real me talking to you. This he held out a powerful coppery hand. Once belonged to a man called Marco da Sanho. You've heard of transplanting limbs? I had. But this man was no transplant job. And if a spinal cord is cut, transplanting legs from Ipolovsky, the Primo Ballerino is worthless. I said, what about it? I was the first successful brain transplant in man. For a moment it queered me, but only a moment. Hell, you read in fairy tales and fantasy magazines about one man's mind and another man's body, and it's marvelous. Not horrible. But by curiosity I know a bit about such things. Things. A big surgery journal back in the 40s had published a visionary article on grafting a whole limb with colored plates, as if for a real procedure. Footnote Hall Whole upper extremity Transplant for Human Beings. Annals of surgery 1944, 120, paragraph 12. Then they developed techniques for acclimating a graph to the host's serum so it would not react as a foreign body. First they'd transplanted hunks of ear and such, then in the 60s, fingers, feet, and whole arms in fact. But a brain is another story. A cut nerve can grow together. Every fiber has an insulating sheath which survives the cut and guides growing stumps back to their stations in the brain and spinal spinal cord. No sheaths. Growing fibers have about the chance of restoring contact that you'd have of traversing the Amazon jungle on foot without a map, I said. So I know, he said. I learned all I could, and as near as I can put it, it's like this. When you cut your finger, it can heal in two ways. Usually it bleeds scabs and skin grows under the scab, taking a week or so. But if you align the edges exactly at once, they may join almost immediately, healing by first intent. Likewise in the brain, if they line up cut nerve fibers before the cutoff bit degenerates, it'll join up with the stump. So take a serum conditioned brain and fit it to the stem of another brain so that the big fiber bundles are properly fitted together fast enough and you can get better than 90% recovery. Sure, I said, parading my own knowledge. But what about injury to the masses of nerve cells? And you'd have to shear off the nerves growing out of the brain. There's always a way, Willie. There's a place in the brain Stem called the isthmus. No cell masses, just bundles of fiber running up and down. Almost all the nerves come off below that point. And the few that don't can be spliced together. Except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Ever notice I can't smell, Willie? And they transplanted my eyes with the brain. Biggest trick of the whole job, it figured. But I'd still hate to go through with it. What could I lose? Some paraplegics seemed to live a fuller life than ever. Me, I was going mad. And I'd seen the dogs. This research team at my hospital was working on old dogs. Brains in whelps. Bodies spry as natural. Then came the chance. Dosanjo was a Brazilian wrestler stranded here by the war. Not his war, he said. But he did have the decency to volunteer as medical orderly. But he got conscripted by a bomb that took off a corner of the hospital and won off his head. They got him into chemical stasis quicker than it had ever been done before. But he was dead as a human being. No brain worth salvaging above the isthmus. So the big guns at the hospital saw a chance to try their game on human material. Superb body and lower nervous system in ideal condition. Waiting for a brain only whose naturally some big shots near the end of his rope and willing to gamble. But I decided it would be a forgotten little shot name of Edwin Scott. I already knew the surgeons from being a guinea pig on Iceg. Of course, when I sounded them out, they gave me a kindly brush off. The matter was out of their hands. However, I knew whose hands it was in. And I waited for my chance. A big job that needed somebody expendable. Then I'd make a deal writing my own ticket because they'd figure I'd never collect. Did you hear about Operation Seed Corn? That was the underground railway that ran thousands of farmers out of occupied territory. Story manpower was what finally broke invader. Improbable as it seems, epidemics, desertions, overextended lines thinned that overwhelming combat strength. And every farmer spirited out of their hands equaled 10 casualties. I nodded. Well, I planned that with myself as director and sold it to Philipson. I contemplated him, just a big man in a trench coat and droop brimmed hat. Hat silhouetted against the lamplit mist. I said, you directed seed corn out of a wheelchair in enemy territory and came back to get transplanted into another body. Man, you didn't tell Ferd a word of a lie when you said you were used to walking up to death. But there was more besides that Dower Scott's fortitude. Where did he come by that high hearted valor? He shrugged. You do what you can with what you've got. Those weren't the big adventures I was thinking about when I said that I had a team behind me in those I could only Josh. I'd sure like to hear the Caparoo then. He towed out his cigarette. You're the only person who's equipped for it. Maybe you'd get it, Willie. How do you mean? I kept an ICEG record. Not that I knew it was going to happen. Just wanted proof. If they gave me a deal and I pulled it off, Philipson wouldn't renege. But generals were expendable. No one knew I had that transmitter in my temporal bone and I rigged it to get a tape on my home receiver. Like to hear it? I said what anyone would and steered him back to quarters before. Before he'd think better of it. This would be something. On the way, he filled in the background. Scott had been living out of hospital in a small apartment, enjoying as much liberty as he could manage. He had equipment so he could stump around and an antique car, special equipped. He wasn't complimentary about them. Orthopedic products had to be unreliable, hard to service, unsightly, intricate and uncomfortable. If they also squeaked and cut your clothes, fine. Having to plan every move with an eye on weather and a dozen other factors, he developed an uncanny foresight. Yet he had to improvise at a moment's notice. With life a continuous high wire act, he trained every surviving fiber to precision, dexterity, and tenacity. Finally, he avoided help. Not pride. Self preservation. The compulsively helpful have rarely the wit to ask before rushing in to knock you on your face. So he learned to bide his time till the horizon was clear of beaming simpletons. Also, he found an interest in how far he could go. These qualities and the time he had for thinking begot seed corn. When he had it convincing, he applied to see General Phillipson, head of Regional Intelligence, a man with both insight and authority, to make the deal, but also as tough as his post demanded, Scott got an appointment two weeks ahead. That put it early in April, which decreased the weather hazard, a major consideration in even a trip to the supermarket. What was Scott's grim consternation then, when he woke on D day to find his windows plastered with snow under a driving wind not mentioned in last night's forecast? Of course he could concoct a plausible excuse for postponement which Philipson was just the man to see through or call help to get him to HQ and have Phillipson bark. Man, you can't even make it across town on your own power because of a little snow. No, come hell or blizzard, he he'd have to go solo. Besides, when he faced the inevitable unexpected behind invader lines, he couldn't afford a precedent of having flinched. Now he dressed and breakfasted with all the petty foresights that can mean the shaving of clearance in a tight squeeze and got off with all the margin of time he could muster in the apartment court he had a parking space by the basement. Exit it, and for a wonder no freewheeling nincompoop had done him out of it last night. Even so, getting to the car door illustrated the ordeal ahead. The snow was the damp, heavy stuff that packs and glares. The streets were nasty. But he had the advantage of having learned restraint and foresight. HQ had been the post office, a ponderous Redstone building filling a whole block. He had scouted it thoroughly in advance, outside and in, and scheduled his route to the general's office, allowing for minor hazards. Now he had half an hour extra for the unscheduled major hazard. But on arriving he could hardly believe his luck. No car was yet parked in front of the building and the walk was scraped clean and salted to kill the still falling flakes. No problems. He parked and began to unload himself quickly to forestall the elderly MP who hurried towards him. But as Scott prepared to thank him off, the man said sorry Mac, no one can park here this morning. Scott felt the chill of nemesis. Knowing it was useless, he protested his identity and mission but sorry Major, but you'll have to park around back. They're bringing in the big computer general himself can't park here. Them's orders. He could ask the sergeant to park the car but the man couldn't leave his post would make a to do calling someone. And that was Philipson's suite overlooking the scene. No dice. Go see what might be possible. But side and back parking were jammed with refugees from the computer and so was the other side side and he came around to the front again. Five minutes wasted, he thought searchingly. He could drive to a taxi lot, park there and be driven back by taxi, disembark on the clean walk and there you were. Of course he could hear Philipson's thought you drove your own car, huh? And his own damaging excuses. But even out yonder you'd cut corners in emergency. It was all such a comfortable out he relaxed and relaxing, saw his alternative. He was driving around the block again and noted the back entrance. This was not ground level because of the slope of ground. It faced a broad landing reached by a double flight of steps. These began on each side at right angles to the building and then turned up to the landing along the the face of the wall. Normally they were negotiable, but now even had he found parking near them, he hadn't the chance of the celluloid cat in hell, of even crossing the 10ft of unclean sidewalk. You might as well climb an 80 degree, 50 foot wall of rotten ice. But there was always a way, and he saw it. The unpassable walk itself was an avenue of perfect approach. He swung his car onto it at the corner and drove along it to the steps to park in the angle between steps and wall and discovered a new shutout. He'd expected the steps to be a mean job in the raw wind that favored this face of the building. But a wartime janitor had swept them sketchily only down the middle, far from the balustrades he must use. By the balustrades, early feet had packed a slight semi ice far more treacherous than the untouched snow. And the two bottom steps curved out beyond the balustrade. So a sufficiently reckless alpinist might assay a cliff in a sleet storm and a gale. But he couldn't even try it if it began with an overhang. Still time for the taxi. And so again Scott saw the way that was always there. Set the car so he could use its hood to heft up those first steps. Suddenly his thinking metamorphosed. He faced not a miserable, unwarranted, forlorn hope, but the universe as it was. Titanic pressure suit against the hurricanes of Jupiter and against a gutter freshet. Life was always outclassed and always fought back. Proportions didn't matter, only mood. He switched on his iceg to record what might happen. I auditioned it, but I can't disentangle it from what he told me. For example in his multiplied distances by 5, heights by 10 and slickness by 20. And in the playback, 30 chin high ledges loaded with soft lard and only finger holds and toe holds. And you did it on stilts that began not at your heels, at your hips. Add the hazard of helpful Hosea. Here, lemme give yuh a hand, Mac. Grabbing a key arm and crashing down the precipice on top of you. Switching on the iceg took his mind back to the snug apartment where its receiver stood the armchair, books, desk of diverting work. It looked awful good, but life fought back and always it found a way. He shucked his windbreaker because it would be more encumbrance than help in the showdown. He checked shoelaces and strapped on the cleats he had made for what they were worth. He vetoed the bag of sand and salt he kept for minor difficulties. Far too slow. He got out of the car. This could be the last job he'd have to do incognito. Seed corn he'd get credit for. Therefore he cherished it. Triumph for its own sake. Alternatively, he'd end at the bottom in a burlesque clutter of chrome alum splints and sticks, with maybe a broken bone to clinch the decision. For some men, death is literally more tolerable than defeat and humiliation. 18 shallow steps to the turn, 12 to the top. Once he'd have cleared it in three heartbeats. Now he had to make it to a 20 minute deadline without rope or alpenstock. A moon man adapted to a fraction of earth gravity with the help of the car hood. The first two pitches were easy for the next four or five. Wind had swept the top of the balustrade, providing damp, gritty handhold. Before the going got tougher, he developed a technica rhythm and system of thrusts proportioned to heights and widths, a way of scraping holds where ice was not malignantly welded to stone. An appreciation of snow texture and depth, an economy of effort. He was enjoying a premature elation when on the 12th step, a cleat strap gave. Luckily he was able to take his lurch with a firm grip on the balustrade. But he felt depth yawning behind him. Dourly. He took 30 seconds to retrieve the cleat. Stitching had been sawed through by a metal edge, just as he'd told the cocksure workman it would be. Oh, to have a world where imbecility wasn't entrenched. Well, he was fighting here and now for the resources to found one. He resumed the escalade. His rhythm knocked cockeyed things even out. Years back, an invader bomber had scored a near miss on the building and minor damage to stonework was unrepaired. Crevices gave finger hold chipped out. Hollows gave barely perceptible purchase to the heel of his hand, salutes to the random effects of unlikely causes. He reached the turn considered swiftly. His fresh strength was blunted. His muscles, especially in his thumbs, were stiffening with chill. Now he could continue up the left side by the building, which was tougher and hazardous with frozen drippings. Or by the outside right hand rail, which was easier but meant crossing the open half swept wide step and recrossing the landing up top.

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[Lady Luck]

Damn. Why hadn't he foreseen that? Oh, you can't think of everything. Get going. Left side. The wall of the building was rough, hewn and ornamented with surplus carvings. Cheers. For the 1890s architect qualified. Cheers. The first three lifts were easy, with handholds and a frieze of lotus. For the next he had to heft with his side jaw against a boss of stone. A window ledge made the next three facile. The final five stared an open gap without recourse. He made two. By grace of the janitor's. Having swabbed his broom a little closer to the wall, his muscles began to wobble and waver in his proportions. He'd made 200ft of almost vertical ascent. But climbing a real icefall, you, you'd unleash the last convulsive effort because you had to. Here, when you came down to it, you could always sit and bump yourself down to the car, which was in that context a mere safe 40ft away. So he went on because he had to. He got the rubber tip off one stick. The bare metal tube would bore into the snowpack. It might hold if he bore down just right and swung his weight just, just so and got just the right sliding purchase on the wall. And the snow didn't give under foot or under cane. And if it didn't work, it didn't work. Beyond the landing westwards, the sky had broken into April blue. Far away over Iowa and Kansas, over Operation Seed Corn, over the refuge for rebels that lay at the end of all his roads. He got set and lifted a thousand miles nearer the refuge, got set and lifted, balanced over plunging gulfs. His reach found a round pilaster at the top, a perfect grip for a hand. He drew himself up and this time his cleated foot cut through snow to stone and slipped. But his hold was too good. And there he was. No salutes, no cheers. Only one more victory for life. Even in victory, unlife gave you no respite. The doorstep was three feet wide, hollowed by 80 years of traffic and filled with frozen drippings from its pseudo Norman arch. He had to tilt across it and catch the brass knob like snatching a ring in a high dive. No danger now except sitting down in a growing palace puddle till some one came along to hoist him under the armpits. And then, arriving at the General's late with his seat black wet, you unhorse your foeman, curve it up to the royal box to receive the victor's chaplet, swing from your saddle and fall flat on your face. But he cogitated on the bench inside, getting his other cleat off and the tip back on his stick. Things do even out. No hearty helper had intervened. No snot nosed, gaping child had twitched his attention. Nobody's secretary pretty, of course, had scurried to helpfully knock him down with the door. They were all out front. Superintending arrival of the computer, the general said, only if oh yes, Major, come in. You're late, aren't you? It's still icy, said Edson. Scott had to drive carefully, you know. In fact, he had lost minutes that way, enough to have saved his exact deadline. And that excuse, being in proportion to Philipson's standard dimension, was fair game. I wondered what dimension Clyde would go on to, now that the challenge of war was past to his rebel's refuge at last. Maybe. Does it matter? Whatever it is, life will be outclassed and Scott Estabrook's brand of life will fight back. The End End of A Matter of Proportion By Ann Walker Recorded by dale in Tucson, Arizona, June 2009.

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a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. The Sargasso of Space by Edmund Hamilton this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite the Sargasso of Space by Edmund Hamilton Helpless, Doomed into the graveyard of space floats the wrecked freighter Pallas. Captain Crane faced his crew calmly. We may as well face the facts, men, he said. The ship's fuel tanks are empty and we are drifting through space toward the dead area. The 20 odd officers and men gathered on the middle deck of the freighter palace made no answer, and Crane continued. We left Jupiter with full tanks, more than enough fuel to take us to Neptune. But the leaks in the starboard tanks lost us half our supply, and we had used the other half before discovering that since the ship's rocket tubes cannot operate without fuel, we are simply drifting. We would drift onto Neptune if the attraction of Uranus were not pulling us to the right. That attraction alters our course so that in three ship days we shall drift into the dead area. Rance Kent, first officer of the palace, asked a question. Couldn't we raise Neptune with the radio, sir, and have them send out a fuel ship in time to reach us? It's impossible, Mr. Kent, Crane answered. Our main radio is dead without fuel to run its dynamotors, and our auxiliary set hasn't the power to reach Neptune. Why not abandon ship in the space suits? Asked Liggett, the second officer, and trust to the chance of some ship picking us up. The captain shook his head. It would be quite useless, for we'd simply drift on through space with the ship into the dead area. The score of members of the crew, bronzed space sailors out of every port in the solar system, had listened mutely. Now one of them, a tall tube man, stepped forward a little. Just what is the dead area, sir? He asked. I've heard of it, but as this is my first outer planet voyage, I know nothing about it. I'll admit I know little more, said Liggett, save that a good many disabled ships have drifted into it and have never come out. The dead area, Crane told them, is a region of space 90,000 miles across within Neptune's orbit, in which the ordinary gravitational attractions of the solar system are dead. This is because in that region the pulls of the sun and the outer planets exist exactly balance each other. Because of that, anything in the dead area will stay in there until time ends, unless it has power of its own. Many wrecked spaceships have drifted into it at one time or another, none ever emerging, and it's believed that there is a great mass of wrecks somewhere in the area, drawn and held together by mutual attraction. And we're drifting in to join them, kent said. Some prospect. Then there's really no chance for us? Asked Ligget keenly. Captain Crane thought, as I see it. Very little, he admitted. If our auxiliary radio can reach some nearby ship before the palace enters the dead area, we'll have a chance, but it seems a remote one. He addressed himself to the men. I have laid the situation frankly before you because I consider you entitled to the truth. You must remember, however, that while there is life, there is hope. There will be no change in ship routine, and the customary watches will be kept. Half rations of Food and water will be the rule from now on, though. That is all. As the men moved silently off, the captain looked after them with something of pride. They're taking it like men, he told Kent and Liggett. It's a pity there's no way out for them and us. If the palace does enter the dead area and join the wreck pack, Liggett said, how long will we be able to live? Probably for some months on our present condensed air and food supplies, crane answered. I would prefer myself a quicker end. So would I, said Kent. Well, there's nothing left but to pray for some kind of ship to cross our path in the next day or two. Kent's prayers were not answered in the next ship day, nor in the next, for though one of the palace's radio operators was constantly at the instruments under Captain Crane's order, the weak calls of the auxiliary set raised no response. Had they been on the Venus or Mars run, Kent told himself there would be some chance. But out here, in the vast spaces between the outer planets, ships were fewer and farther between. The big cigar shaped freighter drifted helplessly on in a broad curve toward the dreaded area, the green light speck of Neptune swinging to their left. On the third ship Day, Kent and Captain Crane stood in the pilothouse behind Liggett, who sat at the now useless rocket tube controls. Their eyes were on the big glass screen of the gravograph. The black dot on it that represented their ship was crawling steadily toward the bright red circle that stood for the dead area. They watched silently until the dot had crawled over the circle's red line, heading toward its center. Well, we're in at last, kent commented. There seems to be no change in anything either. Crane pointed to the instrument panel. Look at the gravitometers, Kent did. All dead. No gravitational pull from any direction. No. That one shows a slight attraction from ahead. Then gravitational attraction of some sort does exist in the dead area, after all. Liggett exclaimed. You don't understand, said Crane. That attraction from ahead is the pull of the wreck pack at the dead area's center. And it's pulling the palace toward it. Kent exclaimed. Crane nodded. We'll probably reach the wreck pack in two more ship days. The next two ship days seemed to Kent drawn out endlessly. A moody silence had grown up upon the officers and men of the ship. All seemed oppressed by the strange forces of fate that had seized the ship and were carrying it smoothly and soundlessly into this region of irrevocable doom. The radio operator's vain calls had ceased. The palace drifted on into the dreaded area like some dumb ship laden with damned souls. It drifted on, Kent told himself, as many a wrecked and disabled ship had done before it, with the ordinary activities and life of the solar system forever behind it, and mystery and death ahead. It was toward the end of the second of those two ship days that Liggett's voice came down from the pilothouse. Wreck pack in sight ahead. We've arrived anyway. Kent cried as he and Crane hastened up into the pilothouse. The crew was running to the deck windows. Right ahead there, about 15 degrees left, Ligget told Kent and Crane, pointing. Do you see it? Kent stared, nodded. The wreck pack was a distant disk like mass against the star flecked heavens, a mass that glinted here and there in the feeble sunlight of space. It did not seem large, but as they drifted steadily closer in the next hours, they saw that in reality the wreck pack was tremendous, measuring at least 50 miles across. Its huge mass was a heterogeneous heap composed mostly of countless cigar like space ships in all stages of wreckage. Some appeared smashed almost out of all recognizable shape, while others were to all appearances unharmed. They floated together in this dense mass in space, crowded against one another by their mutual attraction. There seemed to be among them every type of ship known in the solar system, from small swift mailboats to big freighters. And as they drifted nearer, the three in the pilot house could see that around and between the ships of the wreck pack floated much other matter, fragments of wreckage, meteors small and large, and space debris of every sort. The palace was drifting not straight toward the wreck pack, but in a course that promised to take the ship past it. We're not heading into the wreck pack. Liggett exclaimed. Maybe we'll drift past it and on out the dead area's other side. Captain Crane smiled mirthlessly. You're forgetting your space mechanics, Ligget. We will drift along the wreck pack's edge and then we will curve in and go around it in a closing spiral until we reach reach its edge. Lord, who'd have thought there were so many wrecks here? Kent marveled. There must be thousands of them. They've been collecting here ever since the first interplanetary rocket ships went forth, Crane reminded him. Not only meteor wrecked ships, but ships whose mechanisms went wrong or that ran out of fuel like ours, or that were captured and sacked and then set adrift by space pirates. The palace by then was drifting along the wreck pack's rim at a half mile distance, and Kent's eyes were running over the mass. Some of those ships look entirely undamaged. Why couldn't we find one that has fuel in its tanks, transfer it to our own tanks, and get away? He asked. Crane's eyes lit. Kent, that's a real chance. There must be some ships in that pack with fuel in them, and we can use the spacesuits to explore for them. Look, we're beginning to curve in around the pack now. Liggett. Exclaimed the palace. As though loath to pass, the wreck pack was curving inward to follow its rim. In the next hours it continued to sail slowly around the great pack, approaching closer and closer to its edge. In those hours, Kent and Crane and all in the ship watched with a fascinated interest that even knowledge of their own peril could not kill. They could see swift line passenger ships of the Pluto and Neptune runs shouldering against small space yachts with the insignia of Mars or Venus on their bows. Wrecked freighters from Saturn or Earth floated beside rotund grain boats from Jupiter. The debris among the Pax wrecks was just as varied, holding fragments of metal, dark meteors of differing size, and many human bodies. Among these were some clad in the insulated spacesuits with their transparent glassite helmets. Kent wondered what wreck they had abandoned hastily in those suits, only to be swept with it into the dead area to die in the their suits. By the end of that ship day, the palace, having floated almost completely around the wreck pack, finally struck the wrecks at its edge with a jarring shock, then bobbled for a while and lay still. From pilothouse and deck windows the men looked eagerly forth. Their ship floated at the wreck pack's edge. Directly to its right floated a sleek, shining Uranus Jupiter passenger ship whose bows had been smashed in by a meteor. On their left bobbed an unmarked freighter of the old type with projecting rocket tubes apparently intact. Beyond them in the wreck pack lay another Uranus craft, a freighter, and beyond it stretched the countless other wrecks. Captain Crane summoned the crew together again on the middle deck. Men, we've reached the wreck pack at the dead area's center, and here we'll stay until the end of time, unless we get out under our own power. Mr. Kent has suggested a possible way of doing so, which I consider highly feasible. He has suggested that in some of the ships in the wreck pack may be found enough fuel to enable us to escape from the dead area once it is transferred to this ship. I am going to permit him to explore the wreck pack with a party in space suits, and I am asking for volunteers for this service. The entire crew stepped quickly forward. Crane smiled. Twelve of you will be enough, he told them. The eight tube men and four of the cargo men will go therefore, with Mr. Kent and Mr. Liggett as leaders. Mr. Kent, you may address the men if you wish. Get down to the lower airlock and into your spacesuits at once. Then Kent told them, Mr. Liggett, will you supervise that? As Ligget and the men trooped down to the airlock, Kent turned back towards his superior. There's a very real chance of your becoming lost in this huge wreck pack, Kent, crane told him. So be very careful to keep your bearings at all times. I know I can depend on you. I'll do my best, kent was saying when Ligget's excited face reappeared suddenly at the stair. There are men coming toward the palace along the wreck pack's edge, he reported. A half dozen men in space suits. You must be mistaken. Leggett. Exclaimed Crane. They must be some of the bodies in spacesuits we saw in the pack. No, they're living men. Ligget cried. They're coming straight toward us. Come down and see. Crane and Kent followed Ligget quickly down to the airlock room, where the men who had started donning their spacesuits were now peering excitedly from the windows. Crane and Kent looked where Ligget pointed along the wreck pack's edge. To the ship's right, six floating shapes, men in spacesuits, were approaching along the Pax border. They floated smoothly through space, reaching the wrecked passenger ship beside the palace. They braced their feet against its side and propelled themselves on through the void like swimmers underwater toward the palace. They must be survivors from some wreck that drifted in here as we did. Kent exclaimed. Maybe they've lived here for months. It's evident that they saw the palace drift into the pack and have come to investigate, Crane estimated. Open the airlock for them, men. They'll want to come inside. Two of the men spun the wheels that slid aside the airlock's outer door. In a moment, the half dozen men outside had reached the ship's side and had pulled themselves down inside the airlock. When all were in, the outer door was closed and air hissed in to fill the lock. The airlock's inner door then slid open and the newcomers stepped into the ship's interior, unscrewing their transparent helmets as they did so. For a few moments, the visitors silently surveyed their new surroundings. Their leader was a swarthy individual with sardonic black eyes who, on noticing Crane's captain insignia came toward him with outstretched hand. His followers seemed to be cargo men or deckmen, looking hardly intelligent enough to Kansais to be tube men. Welcome to our city. Their leader exclaimed as he shook Crane's hand. We saw your ship drift in, but hardly expected to find anyone living in it. I'll confess that we're surprised ourselves to find any life here, crane told him. You're living on one of the wrecks? The other nodded. Yes, on the Martian Queen, a quarter mile along the pack's edge. It was a Saturn Neptune passenger ship, and about a month ago we were at this cursed dead area's edge when half of our rocket tubes exploded. Eighteen of us escaped the explosion, the ship's wall still being tight, and we drifted into the pack here and have been living here ever since. My name's Krell, he added, and I was a tubeman on the ship. I and another of the tube men named Jandron were the highest in rank, left all the officers and other tube men having been killed, so we took charge and have been keeping order. What about your passengers? Liggett asked. All killed but one, krell answered. When the tubes let go, they smashed up the whole lower two decks. Crane briefly explained to him the palace's predicament. Mr. Kent and Mr. Liggett were on the point of starting a search of the wreck pack for fuel when you arrived, he said. With enough fuel we can get clear of the dead area. Krell's eyes lit up. That would mean a getaway for all of us. It surely ought to be possible. Do you know whether there are any ships in the pack with fuel in their tanks? Kent asked. Krell shook his head. We've searched through the wreck pack a good bit, but never bothered about fuel. It being no good to us, but there ought to be some. At least there's enough wrecks in this cursed place to make it possible to find almost anything. You'd better not start exploring, though, he added, without some of us along as guides. For I'm here to tell you that you can lose yourself in this wrong wreck pack without knowing it. If you wait until tomorrow, I'll come over myself and go with you. I think that would be wise, crane said to Kent. There's plenty of time. Time is the one thing there's plenty of in this damned place, krell agreed. We'll be getting back to the Martian Queen now and give the good news to Jandron and the rest. Wouldn't mind if Ligget and I came along, would you? Kent asked. I'D like to see how your ship's fixed. That is, if it's all right with you, sir, he added to his superior. Crane nodded. It's all right if you don't stay long, he said, but to Kent's surprise, Krell seemed reluctant to endorse his proposal. I guess it'll be all right, he said slowly. There's. There's nothing much on the Martian Queen to see. Krell and his followers replaced their helmets and returned into the airlock. Liggett followed them, and as Kent struggled hastily into a spacesuit, he found Captain Crane at his feet side. Kent, look sharp when you get over on that ship, crane told him. I don't like the look of this Krell, and his story about all the officers being killed in the explosion sounds fishy to me. To me too, kent agreed. But Liggett and I will have the suit phones in our space suits and can call you from there in case of need. Crane nodded, and Kent, with the spacesuit on and transparent helmet screwed tight, stepped into the airlock with the rest. The airlock's inner door closed, the outer one opened, and as the air puffed out into space, Kent and Krell and Ligget leapt out into the void, the others following. It was no novelty to Kent to float in a spacesuit in the empty void. He and the others now floated as smoothly as though under water toward a wrecked liner at the palace's right. They reached it, pulled themselves around it, and with feet braced against its side, propelled themselves themselves on through space. Along the border of the wreck pack they passed a half dozen wrecks thus before coming to the Martian Queen. It was a silvery, glistening ship whose stern and lower walls were bulging and strained but not cracked. Kent told himself that Krell had spoken truth about the exploding rocket tubes, at least. They struck the Martian Queen's side and entered the upper airlock open for them. Once through the airlock they found themselves on the ship's upper deck, and when Kent and Ligget removed their helmets with the others, they found a full dozen men confronting them, a brutal faced group who exhibited some surprise at the sight of them. Foremost among them stood a tall, heavy individual who regarded Kent and Ligget with the cold, suspicious eyes of an animal. My comrade and fellow ruler here, Wall Jandron, said Krell to Jandron. He explained rapidly, the whole crew of the palace is alive, and they say if they can find fuel in the rack pack, their ship can get out of here. Good, grunted Jandron. The sooner they can do it, the better it will be for us. Kent saw Ligget flush angrily, but he ignored Jandron and spoke to Krell. You said one of your passengers had escaped the explosion. To Kent's amazement, a girl stepped from behind the group of men, a slim girl with pale face and steady dark eyes. I'm the passenger, she told him. My name is Marta Mallon. Kent and Ligget stared, astounded. Good Lord. Kent exclaimed. A girl like you on this ship? Ms. Mallon happened to be on the upper deck at the time of the explosion and so escaped when the other passengers were killed, Krell explained smoothly. Isn't that so, Miss Malin? The girl's eyes had not left Kent's, but at Crell's words she nodded. Yes, that is so, she said mechanically. Kent collected his whirling thoughts. But wouldn't you rather go back to the palace with us? He asked. I'm sure you'd be more comfortable there. She doesn't go, grunted Jandron. Kent turned in quick wrath toward him, but Krell intervened. Jandron only means that Ms. Malyn is much more comfortable on this passenger ship than she'd be in your freighter. He shot a glance at the girl as he spoke spoke, and Kent saw her wince. I'm afraid that's so, she said. But I thank you for the offer, Mr. Kent. Kent could have sworn that there was an appeal in her eyes, and he stood for a moment, indecisive Jandron stare upon him. After a moment's thought, he turned to Krell. You were going to show me the damage the exploding tubes did, he said, and Krell nodded quickly. Of course you can see from the head of the stair. Back in the after deck he led the way along a corridor, Jandron and the girl and two of the men coming with them. Kent's thoughts were still chaotic as he walked between Krell and Ligget. What was this girl doing amid the men of the Martian Queen? What had her eyes tried to tell him? Ligget nudged his side in the dim corridor and Kent, looking down, saw dark splotches on its metal floor. Blood stains. His suspicions strengthened. They might be from the bleeding of those wounded in the tube explosions, but were they? They reached the afterdeck, whose stairs head gave a view of the wrecked tube. Rooms beneath the lower decks had been smashed by terrific forces. Kent's practiced eyes ran rapidly over the shattered rocket tubes. They've back blasted from being fired too fast, he said. Who was controlling the ship when this happened? Galling, our second officer, answered Krell. He had found us rooted too close to the dead area's edge and was trying to get away from it in a hurry when he used the tubes too fast and half of them back blasted. If Galling was at the controls in the pilot house, how did the explosion kill him? Asked Litt skeptically. Krell turned quickly. The shock threw him against the pilot house wall and fractured his skull. He died in an hour, he said. Ligget was silent. Well, this ship will never move again, kent said. It's too bad that the explosion blew out your tanks, but we ought to find fuel somewhere in the wreck pack for the palace. And now we best get back. As they returned up the dim corridor, Kent managed to walk beside Marta Mallon and without being seen, he contrived to detach his suit phone, the compact little radiophone case inside his spacesuit's neck, and slip it into the girl's grasp. He dared utter no word of explanation, but apparently she understood, for she had concealed the suit phone. By the time they reached the upper deck, Kent and Ligget prepared to don their space helmets, and before entering the airlock, Kent turned to Krell. We'll expect you at the palace first hour to morrow and we'll start searching the wreck pack with a dozen of our men, he said. He then extended his hand to the girl. Goodbye, Ms. Mallon. I hope we can have a talk soon. He had said the words with double meaning and saw understanding in her eyes. I hope we can too, she said. Kent's nod to Jandron went unanswered, and he and Liggett adjusted their helmets and entered the airlock. Once out of it, they kicked rapidly away from the Martian Queen floating along the wreck pack's huge mass to their right and only the star flecked emptiness of infinity to their left. In a few minutes they reached the the airlock of the palace. They found Captain Crane awaiting them anxiously, briefly, Kent reported everything. I'm certain there has been foul play aboard the Martian Queen, he said. Krell, you saw for yourself. Jandron is pure brute and their men seem capable of anything. I gave the suit phone to the girl, however, and if she can call us with it, we can get the truth from her. She dared not tell me anything there in the presence of Krell and Jandron. Crane nodded, his face grave. We'll see whether or not she calls, he said. Kent took a suitphone from one of their space suits and rapidly tuned it to match the one he had left with Marta Malin. Almost at once they heard her voice from it, and Kent answered rapidly. I'm so glad I got you. She exclaimed. Mr. Kent, I dared not tell you the truth about this ship when you were here, or Krell and the rest would have killed you at once. I thought that was it. That's why I left the suit phone for you, Kent said. Just what is the truth? Krell and Jandron and these men of theirs are the ones who killed the officers and passengers of the Martian Queen. What they told you about the explosion was true enough, for the explosion did happen that way, and because of it the ship drifted into the dead area. But the only ones killed by it were some of the tube men and three passengers. Then, while the ship was drifting into the dead area, Krell told the men that the few were aboard the longer they could live on the ship's food and air. Krell and Jandron led the men in a surprise attack and killed all the officers and passengers and threw their bodies out into space. I was the only passenger they spared because both Krell and Jandron want me. There was a silence, and Kent felt a red anger rising in him. Have they dared harm you? He asked after a moment. No, for Krell and Janron are too jealous of each other to permit the other to touch me. But it's been terrible living with them in this awful place. Ask her if she knows what their plans are in regard to us, crane told Kent. Marta had apparently overheard the question. I don't know that, for they shut me in my cabin as soon as you left, she said. I've heard them talking and arguing excitedly, though I know that if you do find fuel, they'll try to kill you all and escape from here in your ship. Pleasant prospect, Kent commented. Do you think they plan an attack on us now? No, I think that they'll wait until you've refueled your ship, if you are able to do that, and then try treachery. Well, they'll find us ready. Ms. Malin, you have the suit phone. Keep it hidden in your cabin and I'll call you first thing tomorrow. We're going to get you out of there, but we don't want to break with Krell until we're ready. Will you be all right until then? Of course I will, she answered. There's another thing, though. My name isn't Ms. Mallon, it's Marta. Mine's Rance, said Kent, smiling. Good bye. Until tomorrow then, Marta. Goodbye, Rance. Kent rose from the instrument with the smile still in his eyes but with his lips compressed. Damn it, there's the bravest and finest girl in the Solar system. He exclaimed. Over there with those brutes. We'll have her out, never fear, crane reassured him. The main thing is to determine our course toward Krell and Jandron, Kent thought. As I see it, Krell can help us immeasurably in our search through the wreck pack for fuel, he said. I think it would be best to keep on good terms with him until we've found fuel and have it in our tanks. Then we can turn the tables on them before they can do anything. Crane nodded thoughtfully. I think you're right. Then you and Liggett and Krell can head our search party tomorrow. Crane established watches on a new schedule, and Canton, Liggett, and the dozen men chosen for the exploring party of the next day ate a scanty meal and turned in for some sleep. When Kent awoke and glimpsed the masked wrecks through the window, he was for the moment amazed but rapidly remembered. He and Ligget were finishing their morning ration when Crane pointed to a window. There comes Krell now, he said, indicating the single spacesuit had figure approaching along the wreck pack's edge. I'll call Marta before he gets here, said Kent hastily. The girl answered on the suit phone immediately, and it occurred to Kent that she must have spent the night without sleeping. Krell left a few minutes ago, she said. Yes, he's coming now. You heard nothing of their plans? No, they've kept me shut in my cabin. However, I did hear Krell giving Jandron in the rest directions. I'm sure they're plotting something. Something we're prepared for them, kent assured her. If all goes well, before you realize it, you'll be sailing out of here with us in the palace. I hope so, she said. Rance, be careful with Krell in the wreck pack. He's dangerous. I'll be watching him, he promised. Goodbye, Marta. Kent reached the lower deck just as Krell entered from the airlock, his swarthy face smiling as he removed his helmet. He carried a pointed steel steel bar. Ligget and the others were donning their suits. All ready to go, Kent? Krell asked. Kent nodded. All ready, he said shortly. Since hearing Marta's story, he found it hard to dissimulate with Krell. You'll want bars like mine, krell continued, for they're damned handy when you get jammed between wreckage masses. Exploring this wreck pack is no soft job, I can tell you from experience. Ligget and the rest had their suits adjusted and, with bars in their grasp, followed Krell into the airlock. Kent hung back for a Last word with Crane, who with his half dozen remaining men was watching. Marta just told me that Krell and Jandron have been plotting something, he told the captain so I'd keep a close watch outside. Don't worry Kent. We'll let no one inside the palace until you and Liggett and the men get back. In a few minutes they were out of the ship with Krell and Kent and Liggett leading and the 12 members of the palace crew following closely. The three leaders climbed up on the Uranus Jupiter passenger ship that lay beside the palace the others moving on and exploring the neighboring wrecks in parties of two and three. From the top of the passenger ship when they gained it Kent and his two companions could look far out over the wreck pack. It was an extraordinary spectacle, this stupendous mass of dead ships floating motionless in the depths of space with the burning stars above and below them. His companions and the other men clamoring over the neighboring wreck seemed weird figures in their bulky suits and transparent helmets. Kent looked back at the palace and then along the wreck pack's edge to where he could glimpse the silvery side of the Martian Queen. But now Krell and Ligget were descending into the ship's interior through the great opening smashed in its bows and Kent followed. They found themselves in the liner's upper navigation rooms. Officers and men lay about frozen to death at the instant the meteor struck. The vessel's air had rushed out and the cold of space had entered. Krell led the way on down into the ship's lower decks where they found the bodies of the crew and passengers lying in the same silent death. The salons held beautifully dressed women, distinguished looking men lying about as the medium shock had hurled them. One group lay around a card table, their game interrupted. A woman still held a small child, both seemingly asleep. Kent tried to shake off the oppression he felt as he and Krell and Ligget continued down to the tank rooms. They found their quest there useless for the tanks had been strained by the meteor's shock and were empty. Kent felt Ligget grasp his hand and heard him speak. The sound vibrations coming through their contacting stick suits. Nothing here and we'll find it much the same through all these wrecks. If I'm not wrong, tanks always give at a shock.

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Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. There must be some ships with fuel still in them among all these, kent answered. They climbed back up to the ship's top and leapt off it toward a Jupiter freighter lying a little farther inside the pack. As they floated toward it, Kent soon saw their men moving on with them from ship to ship, progressing inward into the pack. Both Kent and Ligget kept Krell always ahead of them, knowing that a blow from his bar shattering their glassite helmets meant instant death. But Krell seemed quite intent on the search for fuel. The big Jupiter freighter seemed intact from above, but when they penetrated into it, they found its whole underside blown away, apparently by an explosion of its tanks. They moved on to the next ship, a private space yacht, small in size but luxurious in fittings. It had been abandoned in space. Its rocket tubes burst and tanks strained. They went on working deeper into the wreck pack. Kent almost forgot the paramount importance of their search. In the fascination of it, they explored almost every known type of ship freighters, liners, cold storage boats and grain boats. Once, Kent's hopes ran high at sight of a fuel ship, but it proved to be in ballast, its cargo tanks empty, its own tanks and tubes apparently blown simultaneously. Kent's muscles ached from the arduous work of climbing over and exploring the wrecks. He and Liggett had become accustomed to the sight of frozen, motionless bodies. As they worked deeper into the pack, they noticed that the ships were of increasingly older types, and at last Krell signalled a halt. We're almost a mile in, he told them, gripping their hands. We'd better work back out, taking a different section of the pack as we do. Kent nodded. It may change our luck, he said. It did, for when they had gone not more than half a mile back, they glimpsed one of their men waving excitedly from the top of a Pluto liner. They hastened at once towards him, the other men gathering also, and when Kent grasped the man's hands, he heard his excitement excited voice. Fuel tanks here are more than half full, sir. They descended quickly into the liner, finding that though its whole stern had been sheared away by a meteor, its tanks had remained miraculously unstrained. Enough fuel to take the palace to Neptune. Kent exclaimed. How will you get it over to your ship? Krell asked. Kent pointed to the great reels of flexible metal tubing hanging near the tanks. We'll pump it over. The palace has tubing like this ship's for taking on fuel in space. And by joining its tubing to this, we'll have a tube line between the two ships. It's hardly more than a quarter mile. Let's get back and let them know about it, Ligget urged, and they climbed back out of the liner. They worked their way out of the wreck pack with much greater speed than that which they had entered, needing only an occasional brace against a ship's side to send them floating over the wrecks. They came to the wreck pack's edge at a little distance from the palace and hastened to and towards it. They found the outer door of the palace's airlock open and entered, Krell remaining with them. As the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock, Kent and the rest removed their helmets. The inner door slid open as they were doing this and from inside almost a score of men leapt upon them. Kent, stunned for a moment, saw Jandron among their attackers bellowing orders to them, and even as he struck out furiously, he comprehended. Jandron and the men of the Martian Queen had somehow captured the palace from Crane and had been awaiting their return. The struggle was almost instantly over, for outnumbered and hampered as they were by their heavy space suits, Kent and Ligget and their followers had no chance. Their hands still in the suits, were bound quickly behind them at Jandron's orders. Kent heard an exclamation and saw Marta starting toward him from behind Jandron's men. But a sweep of Jandron's army arm brushed her rudely back. Kent strained madly at his bonds. Krell's face had a triumphant look. Did it all work as I told you it would, Jandron? He asked. It worked, Jandron answered impassively. When they saw 15 of us coming from the wreck pack in spacesuits, they opened right up to us. Kent understood and cursed Krell's cunning. Crane, seeing the 15 figures approaching from the wreck pack, had naturally thought they were Kent's party and had let them enter to overwhelm his half dozen men. We put Crane and his men over in the Martian Queen, Jandron continued, and took all their helmets so they can't escape the girl we brought over here. Did you find a wreck with fuel? Krell nodded. A Pluto liner a quarter mile back. And we can pump the fuel over here by connecting tube lines. What the devil. Jandron had made a signal at which three of his men had leapt forward, forward on Krell, securing his hands like those of the others. Have you gone crazy? Jandron? Cried Krell, his face red with anger and surprise. No, chandron replied impassively. But the men are as tired as I am of your bossing ways and have chosen me as their sole leader. You dirty double crosser. Krell raged. Are you men going to let him get away with this? The men paid no attention and Jandron motioned to the airlock. Take them over to the Martian Queen too, he ordered, and make sure there's no space helmet left there. Then get back at once, for we've got to get the fuel into this ship and make a getaway. The helmets of Kent and Krell and the other helpless prisoners were put upon them, and with hands still bound, they were herded into the airlock by eight of Jandron's men attired in space suits also. The prisoners were then joined one to another by a strand of metal cable. Kent, glancing back into the ship as the airlocks in her door closed, saw Jandron giving rapid orders to his followers and noticed Marta held back from the airlock by one of them. Krell's eyes glittered venomously through his helmet. The outer door opened and their guards jerked them forth into space by the connecting cable. They were towed helplessly along the wreck pack's rim toward the Martian Queen. Once inside the airlock, Jandron's men removed the prisoners space helmets and then used the duplicate control inside the airlock itself. Open the inner door. Through this opening they thrust the captives, those inside the ship not daring to enter the airlock. Jandron's men then closed the inner door, reopened the outer one, and started back toward the palace with the helmets of Kent and his companions. Kent and the others soon found Crane and his half dozen men, who rapidly undid their bonds. Crane's men still wore their spacesuits, but, like Kent's companions, were without space helmets. Kent, I was afraid they'd get you and your men too. Crane exclaimed. It's all my fault for when I saw Jandron and his men coming from the wreck pack. I never doubted but that it was you. It's no one's fault, kent told him. It's just something that we couldn't foresee. Crane's eyes fell on Krell. But what's he doing here? He exclaimed. Kent briefly explained Jandron's treachery towards Krell, and Crane's brows drew ominously together. So Jandron put you here with us, Krell, I am a commissioned captain of A spaceship, and as such can legally try you and sentence you to death here without further formalities. Krell did not answer, but Kent intervened. There's hardly time for that now, sir, he said. I'm as anxious to settle with Krell as anyone, but right now our main enemy is Jandron, and Krell hates Jandron worse than we do, if I'm not mistaken. You're not, said Krell grimly. All I want right now is to get within reach of Jandron. There's small chance of any of us doing that, crane told them. There's not a single space helmet on the Martian Queen. You've searched? Liggett asked. Every cubic inch of the ship, crane told him. No. Jandron's men made sure there were no helmets left here, and without helmets this ship is an inescapable prison. Damn it. There must be some way out. Kent exclaimed. Why, Chandron and his men must be starting to pump the fuel into the palace by now. They'll be sailing off as soon as they do it. Crane's face was sad. I'm afraid this is the end, Kent. Without helmets, the space between the Martian Queen and the palace is a greater barrier to us than a mile thick wall of steel in this ship. We'll stay until the air and food give out and death releases us. Damn it. I'm not thinking of myself. Kent cried. I'm thinking of Marta. The palace will sail out of here with her in Jandron's power. The girl. Legget exclaimed. If she could bring us over space helmets from the palace, we could get out of here. Kent was thoughtful. If we could talk to her. She must still have that suitphone I gave her. Where's another? Crane quickly detached the compact suitphone from inside the neck the of his own spacesuit, and Kent rapidly tuned it to the one he had given Marta Mollen. His heart leapt as her voice came instantly from it. Rance. Rance. Kent. Marta, this is Rance. He cried. He heard a sob of relief. I've been calling you for minutes. I was hoping that you'd remember to listen. Jandron and 10 of the others have gone to that wreck in which you found the fuel, she added swiftly. They unreeled a tube line behind them as they went, and I can hear them pumping in the fuel now. Are the others guarding you? Kent asked quickly. They're down in the lower deck at the tanks and airlocks. They won't allow me on that deck. I'm up here in the middle deck, absolutely alone. Jandron told me that we'd Start out of here as soon as the fuel was in, she added, and he and the men were laughing about Krell. Marta, could you in any way get space helmets and get out to bring them over here to us? Kent asked eagerly. There's a lot of spacesuits and helmets here, she answered. But I couldn't get out with them, Rance. I couldn't get to the airlocks with Jandron's seven or eight men down there guarding them. Kent felt despair then, as an idea suddenly flamed in him, he almost shouted into the instrument, marta, unless you can get over here with helmets for us, we're all lost. I want you to put on a spacesuit and helmet at once. There was a short silence, and then her voice came a little muffled. I've got the suit and helmet on, Rance. I'm wearing the suitphone inside it. Good. Now can you get up to the pilothouse? There's no one guarding it or the upper deck. Hurry up there, then. At once Crane and the rest were staring at Kent. Kent, what are you going to have her do? Crane exclaimed. It'll do no good for her to start the palace. Those guards will be up there in a minute. I'm not going to have her start the palace, said Kent grimly. Marta, you're in the pilot house. Do you see the heavy little steel door in the wall beside the instrument panel? I'm at it, but it's locked with a combination lock, she said. The combination is 6, 34, 77, 81, Kent told her Swiftly. Open it as quickly as you can. Good God, Kent cried. Crane, you're going to have her get out of there the only way she can, Kent finished fiercely. You have the door open, Marta? Yes. There are six or seven control wheels inside. Those wheels control the palace's exhaust valves, Kent told her. Each wheel opens the valves of one of the ship's decks or compartments and allows its air to escape into space. They're used for testing leaks in the different deck and compartment divisions. Marta, you must turn all those wheels as far as you can to the right, but all the ship's air will rush out. The guards below have no suits on, and they'll be. She was exclaiming. Kent interrupted. It's the only chance for you, for all of us. Turn them. There was a moment of silence, and Kent was going to repeat the order. When her voice came lower in tone a little strange. I understand, Rance. I'm going to turn them. There was silence again, and Kent and the men grouped around him were tense. All were envisioning the same thing, the air rushing out of the palace's valves and the unsuspecting guards in its lower deck smitten suddenly by instantaneous death. Then Marta's voice, almost a sob, I turned them, Rance. The air puffed out all around me. Your spacesuit is working all right? Perfectly, she said. Then go down and tie together as many space helmets as you can manage, get out of the airlock and try to get over to the Martian Queen with them. Do you think it's you can do that, Marta? I'm going to try, she said steadily. But I'll have to pass those men in the lower deck I just killed. Don't be anxious if I don't talk for a little yet. Her voice came again almost immediately. Rance, the pumping has stopped. They must have pumped all the fuel into the palace. Then Jandron and the rest will be coming back to the palace at once. Kent cried. Hurry, Marta. The suit phone was silent and Kent and the rest, their faces closely pressed against the the deck windows, peered intently along the wreck pack's edge. The palace was hidden from their view by the wrecks between, and there was no sign as yet of the girl. Kent felt his heart beating rapidly. Crane and Ligget pressed beside him, the men around them. Krell's face was a mask as he too gazed. Kent was rapidly becoming convinced that some mischance had overtaken the girl. When an exclamation came from Ligget, he pointed excitedly. She was in sight, unrecognizable in spacesuit and helmet, floating along the wreck pack's edge towards them. A mass of the glassite space helmets tied together was in her grasp. She climbed bravely over the stern of a projecting wreck and shot on towards the Martian Queen. The airlock's door was open for her and when she was inside it the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock. In a moment she was in among them, still clinging to the helmets. Kent grasped her swaying figure and removed the her helmet. Marta, you're all right. He cried. She nodded a little weakly. I'm all right. It was just that I had to go over those guards that were all frozen terrible. Get these helmets on. Crane was crying. There's a dozen of them and 12 of us can stop Jandron's men if we get back in time. Kent and Liggett and the nearer of their men were swiftly donning the helmets. Krell grasped one and Crane sought to snatch it. Let that go. We'll not have you with us when we haven't enough helmets for our own men. You'll have me or kill me here. Krell cried, his eyes hate mad. I've got my own account to settle with Jandron. Let him have it. Liggett cried. We've no time now to argue. Kent reached towards the girl. Marta, give one of the men your helmet, he ordered, but she shook her head. I'm going with you. Before Kent could dispute, she had the helmet on again and Crane was pushing them into the airlock. The nine or ten left inside without helmets hastily thrust steel bars into the men's hands before the inner doors closed, the outer one opened and they leapt forth into space, floating smoothly along the wreck pack's border with bars in their grasp. 13 strong, Kent found the slowness with which they floated forward, torturing. He glimpsed Crane and Ligget ahead, Marta beside him, Krell floating behind him to the left. They reached the projecting freighters, climbed over and around them, braced against them, and shot on. They sighted the palace ahead. Now. Suddenly they discerned another group of 11 figures in spacesuits approaching it from the wreck pack's interior, rolling up the tube line that led from the palace. As they did so, Jandron's party, Jandron and his men had seen them and were suddenly making greater efforts to reach the palace. Kent and his companions, propelling themselves frenziedly on from another wreck, reached the ship's side at the same time as Jandron's men. The two groups mixed and mingled, twisted and turned in a mad space combat. Kent had been grasped by one of Jandron's men and raised his bar to crack the other's glassite helmet. His opponent caught the bar and they struggled, twisting and turning over and over. Far up in space, amid a half score similar struggles, Kent wrenched his bar free at last from the other's grasp and brought it down on his helmet. The glassite cracked and he caught a glimpse of the man's hate, distorted face frozen instantly in death. Kent released him and propelled himself toward a struggling trio nearby. As he floated toward them, he saw Jandron beyond them making wild gestures of command, and saw Krell approaching Jandron with upraised bar. Kent, on reaching the three combatants, found them to be two of Jandron's men overcoming Crane. He shot, shattered one's helmet as he reached them, but saw the other's bar go up for a blow. Kent twisted frantically, uselessly to escape it, but before the blow could descend, a bar shattered his opponent's helmet from behind. As the man froze in instant death, Kent saw that it was Marta who had struck him from behind. He jerked her to his side. The struggles in space around them seemed to be ending. Six of Jandron's party had been slain and three of Kent's companions, Jandron's four other followers, were giving up the combat, floating off into the wreck pack in clumsy, hasty flight. Someone grasped Kent's arm and he turned to find it was Ligget. They're beaten. Liggett's voice came to him. They're all killed but those four. What about Jandron himself? Kent cried. Liggett pointed to two spacesuited bodies twisting together in space with bars still in their lifeless grasp. Kent saw through their shattered helmets the stiffened faces of Jandron and Krell, their helmets having apparently been broken by each other's simultaneous blows. Crane had gripped Kent's arm also. Kent, it's over. He was exclaiming. Liggett and I will close the palace exhaust valves and release new air in it. You take over helmets for the rest of our men in the Martian Queen. In several minutes Kent was back with the men from the Martian Queen. The palace was ready, with Liggett in its pilot house, the men taking their stations, and Crane and Marta away awaiting Kent. We've enough fuel to take us out of the dead area and to Neptune without trouble, crane declared. But what about those four of Jandron's men that got away? The best we can do is leave them here, kent told him. Best for them, too, for at Neptune they'd be executed while they can live indefinitely in the wreck pack. I've seen so many men killed on the Martian Queen and here, pleaded Marta. Please don't take them to Neptune. All right, we'll leave them, crane agreed, though the scoundrels ought to meet justice. He hastened up to the pilot house after Ligget. In a moment came the familiar blast of the rocket tubes, and the Pallas shot out cleanly from the wreck pack's edge. A scattered cheer came from the crew. With gathering speed the ship arrowed out, its rocket tubes blasting now in steady succession. Kent, with his arm across Marta's shoulders, watched the wreck pack grow smaller. Behind it lay, as when he first had seen it, a strange great mass floating forever motionless among the brilliant stars. He felt the girl beside him shiver and swung her quickly around. Let's not look back or remember now, Marta, he said. Let's look ahead. She nestled closer inside his arm. Yes, Rance, let's look ahead. End of the sargasso of space by edmund hamilton.

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

Something Will Turn Up By David Mason. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox Reading by Bologna Times. Something Will Turn Up By David Mason. You, Mr. Rapp? Stanley Rapp blinked, considering the matter. He always thought over everything very carefully. Of course. Some questions were easier to answer than others. This one, for instance. He had very few dots about his name. Uh, Stanley, Rapp said. Yes, yes. He stared at the bearded young man. Living in the Village. Even on the better side of it, one saw beards every day, all shapes and sizes of beard. This one was not a psychoanalyst's beard or a folk singer beard, not even an actor beard. This was the the scraggly variety, almost certainly a poet beard. Mr. Rapp, while holding no particular prejudice against poets, had not sent for one. He was sure of that. Then he noticed the tool case in the bearded young man's hand. Lettered large Lightning Service tv. Hi Fi. Oh, stanley said, nodding. You're the man to fix the TV set. You know it, dad, the young man said, coming in. He shut the door behind him and stared around the apartment. What a wild pad. Wear the idiot box, hey. The pleasantly furnished, neat little apartment was not what Mr. Rapp had ever thought of as a wild pad. But the Village had odd style standards, Mr. Rapp knew. Check on et sangot, he had said on moving into the apartment 10 years ago. Not allowed, of course, because he had only taken one year of French and would have never trusted his accent. But chezon, eh, sangot. Anyway, the television set, Mr. Rapp said, translating. Oh, yes. He went to the closet door and opened it. Reaching inside, he brought out an imposingly large TV set mounted on a wheeled table. The bearded repairman whistled. In the closet, the repairman said admiringly. Crazy. You go in there to watch it or you let it talk to itself. Oh, well, I don't exactly watch it at all, Mr. Rapp said, a little sadly. I mean, I can't. That's why I called you. Lightning's here. Have no fear, the bearded one said, approaching the set with a professional air. Like in the closet.

[Bluff]

Hey.

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

He bent over the set appraisingly. I thought you were a square, Pops, but I can see you're. Hey, this is like too much man. I don't want to pry, but why is this box upside down? I wish I knew, Mr. Rapp said. He sat down and leaned back, sighing. This was going to be difficult, he knew he had already had to explain it to the last three repairmen, and he was getting tired of explaining, although he thought somehow that this young man might understand it a little more quickly than the others had. I've had a couple of other repairmen look it over, Mr. Rapp told the bearded one. They. Well, they gave up dilettantes, commented the beard. Oh no, Mr. Rapp said. One of them was from the company that made it, but they couldn't do anything. Let's try it, the repairman said, plugging the cord into a wall socket. He returned to the set and switched it on without changing its upside down position. The big screen lit almost at once a pained face appeared with a large silhouetted hammer, striking the image's forehead in a rhythmic beat. Immediate relief from headache, a bland voice said as the pictured face broke into a broad smile. The repairman shuddered and turned down the sound, staring at the image with widened eyes as he did so. Dad, I don't want to bug you, the repairman said, his eyes still on the screen. Only look, the set is upside down, right? Right, said Mr. Rapp. Only the picture. The repairman paused, trying to find the right phrase. I mean, the picture's flipped like it's wrong side up, too. Only right side up now. Exactly, said Mr. Rapp. You see, that's the trouble. I put the set upside down because of that. Cool, the repairman said, watching the picture, I mean. So why worry? You got a picture, right? You want me to turn the picture around? I can do that with a little fiddling around inside the set. Oh, dad, something's happening. The repairman bent closer, staring at the picture. It was now showing a bust a young woman singer. Her mouth opened but silent since the sound was turned down. She was slowly rotating as Rapp and the bearded repairman watched, turning until her face, still mouthing silent song, hung upside down on the screen. It always does that, rapp said. No matter which way I put the set, the picture's always upside down. No, man, the repairman said pleadingly. Look, I took a course. I mean the best school, you dig? It don't work that way. It just can't. It does, though, rapp pointed out. And that's what the other repair people said, too. They took it out and brought it back, and it still did it. Not when they had it in their shops. But the minute it came back here, the picture went upside down again. Wow, the repairman said, backing slowly away from the set but watching it with the tense gaze of a man who expected trouble. After a minute he moved toward it again and took hold of the cabinet sides lifting. I don't want to put you down, Pops, he said, grunting. Only I got to see this. Over she goes. He set it down again, right side up, the picture. Still, the singer's face remained in a relatively upright position for another moment and then slowly rolled over upside down again. You see, Mr. Rapp said, shrugging, I guess I'll have to buy another set. Except I'd hate to have it happen again. And this one did cost quite a lot. You couldn't trade it in either, the repairman agreed. Not to me, anyway. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. Hey, now sideways. You mean on its side, Just for kicks. The repairman gripped the set again on the side. He set the cabinet down on one side and stepped back to regard the picture again. Slowly the picture turned once more, and once again, relative to the usual directions of up and down, the picture was stubbornly, completely inverted. It's onto that, too, the repairman said gloomily. He sat down on the floor and assumed a kind of yoga posture, peering between his legs. You could try it this way, Pops. I'm pretty stiff, Mr. Rapp told him, shaking his head. Yeah, the repairman said, reinverting himself. For a long while he sat pulling his beard thoughtfully, a look of deep thought on his face. The reverse singer faded out to give place to an earnestly grinning announcer who pointed emphatically to a large upside down sign bearing the name of a product. Watching it this way could get to be a fad, the repairman said at last, almost inaudibly. He fell silent again, and Mr. Rapp sadly began to realize that even this bearded and confident young man had apparently been stopped like the others. The way I look at it, like there's a place where science hangs up, the bearded one spoke finally. Like I don't want to put down my old guru at the Second Avenue School of Electronics, he said solemnly. But you got to admit that there are things not dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio. You dig? My name isn't Horatio, Mr. Rapp objected. I was quotin', the repairman told him. I mean, this is a thing like outside material means supernatural, sort of. Did you cross up any witches lately, pops? Oh dear, Mr. Rapp said sadly. He shook his head. No, I haven't, er, offended any witches. Not that I know of. He regarded the inverted picture for a moment. Then, as the repairman's words began to sink in, Mr. Rapp looked at him apprehensively. Witches? Mr. Rapper asked. But I mean, that's all superstition, isn't it? And Anyway, well, television sets. They used to drive cows, but who keeps cows? The bearded one said ominously. Why not television sets like I happen to be personally acquainted with several witches, and like that the village is full of them. However, he rose and stalked toward the set, his eyes glittering in a peculiar way. You're a lucky one, Daddy. O back in my square days I did some reading up on the hookups between poetry and magic. Now I'm a poet, therefore, and to wit, I am also a magician. On this hang up, I'm going to try magic. Electronics won't work, that's for sure, but Mr. Rapp was not quite sure why he disapproved, but he did. On the other hand, the repairman appeared to be very definitely sure of what he was doing as he peered into the back of the television set. Have you ever tried this method before? Never ran into any hexed TV sets before, the repairman said, straightening up. Don't worry, though. I got the touch. Like with poetry. Same thing. In fact, all magic spells rhyme, you see. Well, I used to rhyme back before I really started swinging. Anybody can rhyme, and the rest is just instinct. He had been scribbling something in a notepad as he spoke. Now he bent down to take another look at the back of the set and nodded with an air of assurance. The tube layout, the repairman told Mr. Rapp, exhibiting his notebook. That and Alm's law and a couple of hindoo bits I picked up. Listening to the UN on the radio makes a first class spell. Mr. Rapp backed away nervously. Look, if it's all the same to you, don't flip. The repairman consulted his notebook and moved to stand in front of the screen. The picture showed a smiling newscaster pointing to a map which indicated something ominous. Cool man, the repairman said. Said, here we go. He lifted his hands in an ecclesiastical gesture and his voice became a deep boom. Sucks us in. 7, 6, AC, 5, 6 and 7 millivolts are running down the line. E equals R times A. That's the way it goes. Go round the other way. Supa Sandra Bose Afterward, Mr. Rapp was never quite sure exactly what happened. He had an impression of a flash of light and an odd, indefinite sound, rather like the dropping of a cosmic garbage can lid. But possibly neither the light nor the sound actually happened. At any rate, there were no complaints from the neighbors later on, however. This lighted screen was certainly doing something crazy, the repairman said in odd tones. Mr. Rapp, his view partly blocked by the repairman, could not see exactly what was happening on the screen, however, he caught a brief glimpse of the newscaster's face. It was right side up, but no longer smiling. Instead, the pictured face wore a look of profound alarm, and the newsman was apparently leaning far forward, his face almost out of focus because of its nearness to the lens. Just For a moment, Mr. Rapp could have sworn he saw a chair floating up past the agonized expression on the screen. Then the screen went gray and a panel of lettering appeared, shaking slightly. Our picture has been temporarily interrupted. Normal service will be restored as soon as possible. Please stand by. I was going to give you a bill, the repairman said. Or maybe we better just charge it up to Customer Relations. The letters remained steady on the screen, and Mr. Rapp studied them. They were right side up. You fixed it, Mr. Rapp said, a little uncertainly. I mean, it's working. I ought to pay a goofed, the repairman said. He picked up his tools and moved toward the door. Lack of I won't mention it to anybody if you won't. But I goofed all right. Didn't you see the picture? But whatever you did, it worked, Mr. Rapp said. The picture's right side up. I know, the repairman said. Only somewhere there's a studio that's upside down. I just goofed, Pops, that's all.

[Bluff]

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[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

He closed the door behind him, leaving Mr. Rapp still staring at the immobile right side up message on the glowing screen. End of something will turn up by david mason. Stopover by William Gerken this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading by Bologna Times Stopover by William Gerken what will the world be like the day after tomorrow for the lonely one ones who will have talents that others will have fear half envy William Gherkin describes a strange world in which young and old will have to find new values and pursue new dreams as they search for the answer. When he opened the door to the shed that day and saw the axe suspended in midair. He understood what was wrong. He had been living with us for a week before I found out he was a lifter. Even the discovery was an accident. I had started for the store but then remembered a chore I wanted him to do. I heard the sounds of wood chopping coming from the shed, so I went behind the house to the small wooden structure. I must have gasped or something thing because he turned around to look at me, dropping the axe. He had poised over a block of wood as he turned, only he hadn't been holding the axe. It had been hanging in mid air without support. The first time I saw him was when he knocked on my door. I don't think I'll ever forget how he looked. Tall and thin, old clothes and older shoes, an unruly mop of blond hair. It was only when I looked at his face that I realized that he was more than a mere boy of 18 or 19. The tired lines around his mouth, the sad, mature look in his eyes, the stoop already evident in his young shoulders. He had been forced to mature too early and seemed to have knowledge a boy his age had no right to be burdened with. I I was wondering if I might get a bite to eat, sir, he said. I grinned. No matter how he looked, he was no different from anyone else his age where food was concerned. Sure, come on in and rest a spell, I told him. Marty, can you fix a plate or something? We got a guest. Marty. My wife glanced through the kitchen doorway. After a cursory look at the boy, she smiled at him and went back to work. Sit down, son. You look pretty done in come for today? He nodded. Guess it shows, huh? He said, brushing the road dust from his trousers. Uh huh.

[Spin Quest Announcer]

Where.

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

Where you from? Not round here, I know. Far back as I can remember, Oregon has been home. It wasn't hard to guess why he was almost a thousand miles from home. During the war, over 10 million American families had been separated, their way of life destroyed by the hell of atomic bombings. Ever since its end, people had been seeking their loved ones, many only to find them dead or dying. Sometimes the searches stretched across continents or oceans. In that respect, the boy sitting opposite me was no different from hundreds of others I've seen in the past 10 years. The only difference was in his face. Looking for your first family? I said, making it a statement. Yes, sir. He smiled as though the sentence had a double meaning. After he had eaten, he went down to the town store to look through its records. They all do they turned the pages of the big stopover book, hoping a relative or friend had passed through the same town. Then they signed the book, put down the date and where they're headed, and set out once more. Almost all towns have stopover books nowadays, and a good thing, too. They helped me find Marty back in 63 when the truce was finally signed. In fact, I found her right here in this town. We got married, settled down, and haven't been more than a hundred miles away since. Martha called me into the kitchen almost as soon as he was gone. He's a nice boy. That he is, I agreed. You know, I've been thinking. We could use a young fellow around here to help with the work if he'll stay. There was something in his eyes, a sort of longing for someone very close to him. That kind usually takes off after a nice rest, I know. Guess I'll drop by the store, see if I can talk him into staying. By the time I reached the store, school was out and a group of kids were gathered around him, listening to his description of the Rocky Mountains, which he had crossed during the summer. The kids weren't the only ones listening. Even the adults were standing around in the store, remembering the places they had once seen themselves and getting such bits of news as he dropped about the other towns he had passed through. The searchers are next to the town radio stations, the only source of information we have now, so it's no wonder they're so warmly greeted wherever they stop. Soon as he'd finished telling about the Rockies, I said we'd appreciate it if he would stay for supper. He said he would, and later, while he and Tommy, my 8 year old son, and I were walking home, I asked him if he'd stay with us for a while. For a moment he looked wistful, as if wishing he could stay here and forget whoever he was trying to find. Then he smiled and said thanks. He would stay for a week or so. He was real helpful too, cutting stove and fireplace wood for the coming winter, running errands, hunting for game animals, and teaching at the school. Almost all searchers teach when they can be persuaded to stay in town for a spell. Since there are no more colleges to produce teachers, anyone who knows something useful takes a turn at teaching for the war. I was a mathematics major in college, so twice a week I teach all kinds of math at school, from numbers through calculus. Mostly searchers teach about what the places they had passed through are like. Then, when I opened the door to the shed that day and saw the axe suspended in mid air. I suddenly realized realized why he had that sad, tired look about him all the time. He picked up the axe from where it had fallen and stood it against the wall. Reaching for his jacket, he said, I I guess I'd better be moving along. Mr. Tranton, I'm really sorry if I've caused you any trouble. He started past me for the door. Hold on, son. I grabbed his arm. Why the rush? I don't want to cause you any trouble now that you know what I am. He gritted the words out bitterly. The word will get around. I wouldn't want the others in town to be angry with you because of me. You and Mrs. Tranton have been swelling me thanks for everything. He tried to pull his arm loose, but I held fast. Let's go inside and have a couple cup of coffee, I suggested. I don't know about the other towns you've been through, but here we don't hate a person because he might happen to have powers we don't. Yesterday I was down at the store and heard one of the men sounding off about us. He said he didn't sound like he cared much for us. Must have been John Atherson. He never could understand esp and he blames the war on it. We just let him talk. Can't change a person like that. We went up the back steps and through the door into the kitchen. Go on, show Marty, I said, taking off my jacket. He looked at me to make sure I meant it. Then he raised the coffee pot from the stove and watched it move across the room under its own power to the table where I was sitting, leaving the pot in midair. He made the cupboard open and still standing in the middle of the room, floated three cups and saucers to the table. Then he got the cream, sugar, and three spoons, put them on the table, and poured the coffee. Marty watched the coffee pot move back to the stove, her mouth open in amazement. I heard of it, but I don't think I'd have believed it if I hadn't seen it. I nodded and she smiled at him. Now that I know, she said, I'm even gladder you chose to stay here for a while. He grinned. Thanks. He sat down with us at the table and stirred some sugar into his coffee. It must be hard on you, marty said quietly in a note going way. Are you really looking for your family or for others with esp? My father was killed during the bombings. After that mom and I were alone. She only had a little talent. Dad and I were the ones who were really adept. Anyway, we stayed on the small farm we owned until last spring. Then mom married again and I was free to leave. I think her new husband was sorry to see me go because it meant a lot of manual work for him that I had been doing an easier way. I decided to see if I couldn't find others like myself. So I left and started across the country. Do you have any other powers or can you just control things? Marty asked. He grinned. If you mean am I an all around Superman, no. Dad wasn't either. I do have a scattering of other psi talents though, but nothing as well developed as my telekinesis. I'm still working on them. Tommy came in from school just then. Could you teach him how to use his mind that way? Or do you have to be born with it? I said. He smiled again. No, you don't have to be be born with it. Everyone could do it if they started training themselves young enough to use their minds to the fullest extent. All through history, certain people have had strange powers. The trouble was they were thought to be freaks instead of the better developed humans they actually were. Even now we're only on the threshold of learning the full power of the mind. He turned to Tommy. Would you like to learn how to do things, Tommy? Sure. Like what? He glanced at Marty and me. Like making the world a better place to live. Two weeks later, at a meeting of the town council, I wasn't too worried about getting the proposal accepted. We might have some trouble with Atherson, but I figured between the two of us we could handle him. When the new business came up, I stood up and led Tommy to the front of the hall. There were a few whispers as we went, as children under 15 aren't allowed in the hall during a council meeting. Tommy has something to say to you which I think will interest everyone here. Go on, son. Seconds afterwards, we all heard a clean, clear hello, but not with our ears. The word came from inside our heads. Someone said, the kid's a telepath, and the silence was broken. Everybody was talking at the same time. I suppose you think it's an honor to have one of them damn things for your son. Atherson yelled. I'm glad you're the one who got stuck and not me. Tommy was not born a telepath, John, I told him. He has been deliberately trained to make use of the latent power in his brain. And I don't think I'm stuck either. We all know we've been slowly slipping into retrogression ever since 63. None of us like it, but there isn't anything we can do to hold it yet. We don't want our children or their children to keep slipping backwards. If we don't stop it in our lifetime, we may not be able to stop it at all. As I see it, the best chance we have to at least achieve a status quo is to accept the aid those among us with psi talents are willing to give. After all, it's their world too. With their help, we may be able to build a better civilization, one without the socio political diseases that led to the war. The young man who has been staying at my house for the past three weeks taught Tommy to do what he just did. He says he thinks he can do it with any child under 10 years old and is even willing to try it with some teenagers. Of course, Tommy's training has just begun. He will keep keep on learning for years. Here's my idea. If some of the children get a grounding in how to develop their dormant brain power by the time they're 20, they'll be able to mold a new society, one geared to the present culture instead of the past traditions. How about it? I waited for a minute. There was silence. Finally, one of the older men stood up. Is he sure he can do it? All we know is it worked with Tommy, I replied.

[Narrator]

I don't like it.

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

It's unnatural, atherson said. No one asks you to like it, someone said. Another called, do you think three world wars in 50 years is natural? Let's take a vote. A vote was taken and it was decided to add an extra class for those children whose parents wanted them to attend. After a month, the council would expect a report on what progress, or lack of it had been made. A few weeks later, when my math class was over, I hung around to watch the new class. It was divided into small groups, each training on a different, different psi talent. One group was lifting pencils and gently returning them to desks by telekinesis. Another was sitting quietly once in a while, breaking into shouts of laughter. Probably telepathy. There were other groups, but I didn't know enough about the talents to identify their work. During the time he was teaching, he met a girl. They spent quite a bit of time together and she joined the special class. By the time the report to the council came due, it wasn't hard to tell they were in love. Just about everyone in town turned out for that meeting. The boys and girls who were taking the class were seated at the front of the hall. The report was first on the agenda second so the kids could go home to bed. When we started, he said, I asked those children who weren't interested or who were unsuited to the work to leave. Then we ran through a general training exercise, and after a week I split the class up into groups. Each group was to concentrate on one talent, but general sessions for the entire class. Class give everyone practice in all talents. I think we've made fairly good progress. Some of the older teenagers have shown an interest in the talents. He glanced at his girl, and although progress has not been as rapid as with the younger children, they are sufficiently developed to help instruct. Now your children are going to demonstrate what they have learned. For the next half hour, we watched Tommy and 14 other boys and girls work. Tommy and the others, who had concentrated on telepathy, read silently to us from books and talked to each other, projecting their thoughts so we could also listen in. The telekinesis group all worked together to build a small table. All the necessary materials were stacked at the front of the room. The the kids sat in a half circle, their brows furrowed in concentration as lumber, nails, and hammers moved under the guidance of their minds. When they had finished, the table was complete, even to the sanding in a coat of varnish. Finally, the one with precognition, a girl about 6 years old with long blond hair, gave the weather forecast for the next two weeks. Copies of her prediction were passed out to us so we could check her accuracy. Once the kids were gone, he stood up again. I hope you are all convinced as to what can be accomplished through the use of psi. The talents can and should be used for the betterment of society, not for carnival sideshows. Of course, there are more than those just demonstrated. Unfortunately, I couldn't find them present in this group and was hoping for either a healer or a sensitive, but no one had the necessary ability. If you want the class continued, the decision is yours. Thanks for having open minds and for giving me a chance. He picked up his jacket and walked out. Atherson didn't bother to come to the meeting, so the vote to continue the class was unanimous. He stayed on teaching part time, helping out with the work at my place and seeing his girl. Then one afternoon, two weeks after the council meeting, she came to see me. You've got to stop him, Mr. Tranton, she said. He's going to leave. He told me he was going right after he finished the class today. He's probably. Probably down at the store right now buying things to take with him. You've got to make him stay. Why? I asked quietly, watching the tears well up in her eyes. She hadn't lost her composure yet, but she felt so strongly about him she was on the verge of breaking down. Because I love him and he loves me, she retorted. That's why. Won't you talk to to him? At least get him to take me with him? Please? You said you love him. Would you rather he stayed here and was never fully happy or left to continue searching? Maybe to return someday, ready to settle down? If you really love him, there's no question. Couldn't he take me with him? I shook my head. I don't think you should even ask him to take you. You'd be a burden. That would slow him down. He'd worry about you have to get your food and find shelter for you. He might let you go with him, but don't ask him to. He's too young to be tied down now. Go on and wish him good luck and kiss him goodbye. He's coming up the road now. She glanced out the open window, jumped up, and ran out into the sunlight to wait at the side of the road. I picked up the book I had been reading, but the window was too close to the road for me to concentrate on the pages. She didn't say anything until he was standing before her. I'll be waiting, she said. Take good care of yourself. He nodded. I have to go, he told her. Partly because it was Dad's last wish. Partly because I need others of my own kind. Alone we can't help the world much. Together there's a good chance for results. I left a letter for the council saying you were going to take over the class because you have the ability to carry on, watch Kathy and help her all you can. She's got it. Her weather forecast prove that much. You've got to drum that into her. Never let her forget it. Maybe I'll be back. I hope so. But first I have to find others. I need them and they might need me. We're still not completely self sufficient. Give the kids my love and keep them at it. Just don't forget they are kids. Give them a chance to grow up as normally as possible. That's a chance I didn't have.

[Lady Luck]

Have.

[Mr. Rapp / Repairman]

He kissed her tenderly, then started off down the road. When he reached the crest of the hill, he turned and waved. Marty joined me at the doorway and we waved too. Outlined against the bright blue afternoon sky, he stood immobile for a moment. To many he would have been just another young man with a tired out face, but to me the symbol of a better life for Tommy and his children, a life unmarred by the threat of instant death as punishment for something he had little control over. He's gone now, but the work will go on and the athersons of the world will come to realize he is giving us another chance. A chance we don't really deserve. Somehow he reminds me of another man. A man who said, suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. End of Stopover.

[Narrator]

Toy Shop this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Xander Phillips Toy Shop By Henry Maxwell Dempsey the gadget was strictly beyond any question a toy. Not a real workable device except for the way it could work under a man's mental skin. Because there were few adults in the crowd and Colonel Biff Haughton stood over 6ft feet tall, he could see every detail of the demonstration. The children and most of the parents gaped in wide eyed wonder. Bill Haughton was too sophisticated to be awed. He stayed on because he wanted to find out what the trick was that made the gadget work. It's all explained right here in your instruction book, the demonstrator said, holding up a garishly printed booklet open to a four color diagram. You all know how magnets pick up things, and I bet you even know that the Earth itself is one great big magnet. That's why compasses always point north. Well, the Atomic Wonder Space Wave Tapper hangs onto those space waves invisibly. All around us and even going right through us are the magnetic waves of the Earth. The Atomic Wonder rides these waves just the way a ship rides on the waves of the ocean. Now watch. Every eye was on him as he put the gaudy model rocket ship on the table and stepped back. It was made of stamped metal and seemed as incapable of flying as a can of ham, which it very much resembled. Neither wings, propellers, nor jets broke through the painted surface. It rested on three rubber wheels and coming out through the bottom was a double strand of thin insulated wire. This white wire ran across the top of the black table and terminated in a control box in the demonstrator's hand. An indicator light, a switch and a knob appeared to be the only controls. I turn on the power switch, sending a surge of current to the wave receptors, he said. The switch clicked and the light blinked on and off with a Steady pulse. Then the man began to slowly turn the knob. A careful touch on the wave generator is necessary as we are dealing with the powers of the whole world here. It concerted, ah, swept through the crowd as the space wave tapper shifted a bit, then rose slowly into the air. The demonstrator stepped back and the toy rose higher and higher, bobbing gently on the invisible waves of magnetic force that supported it. Ever so slowly the power was reduced and it settled back to the table. Only $17.95, the young man said, putting a large price sign on the table for the complete set of the Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper, control box, battery, and instruction book. At the appearance of the price card, the crowd broke up noisily and the children rushed away toward the operating model trains. The demonstrator's words were lost in their noisy passage, and after a moment he sank into a gloomy silence. He put the control box down, yawned, and sat on the edge of the table. Colonel Haughton was the only one left after the crowd had moved on. Could you tell me how this thing works? The colonel asked, coming forward. The demonstrator brightened up and picked up one of the toys. Well, if you'll look here, sir, he opened the hinged top. You'll see the space wave coils at each end of the ship. With a pencil he pointed out the odd shaped plastic forms about an inch in diameter that had been wound, apparently at random, with a few turns of copper wire. Except for these coils, the interior of the model was empty. The coils were wired together, and other wires ran out through the hole in the bottom of the control box. Bill Haughton turned a very quizzical eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator, who completely ignored this sign of disbelief. Inside the control box is the battery, the young man said, snapping it open and pointing to an ordinary flashlight battery. The current goes through the power switch and the power light to the wave generator. What you mean to say, biff broke in, is that the juice from this 15 cent battery goes through this cheap rheostat to those meetings coils in the model and absolutely nothing happens. Now tell me what really flies this thing. If I'm going to drop 18 bucks for 6 bits worth of 10, I want to know what I'm getting. The demonstrator flushed. I'm sorry, sir, he stammered. I wasn't trying to hide anything. Like any magic trick, this one can't really be demonstrated until it has been purchased. He leaned forward and whispered confidentially, I'll tell you What I'll do, though, this thing is way overpriced and hasn't been moving at all. The manager said I could let him go for $3 if I could find any takers. If you want to buy it for that price. Sold, my boy, the colonel said, slamming three bills down on the table. I'll give that much for it. No matter how it works. The boys in the shop will get a kick out of it. He tapped the winged rocket on his chest. Now really, what holds it up? The demonstrator looked around carefully, then pointed strings, he said. Or rather, a black thread. It runs from the top of the model through a tiny loop in the ceiling and then back down to my hand tied to this ring on my finger. When I back up, the model rises. It's simple as that. All good illusions are simple. The colonel grunted, tracing the black thread with his eye. As long as there's plenty of flim flam to distract the viewer. If you don't have a black table, a black cloth will do, the young man said. And the arch of a doorway is a good sight. Just see that the room in back is dark. Wrap it up, my boy. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm an old hand at this kind of thing. Bill Haughton sprang it at the next Thursday night poker party. The gang were all missile men, and they cheered and jeered as he hammed up the introduction. Let me copy the diagram, Biff. I could use some of those magnetic waves in the new bird. Those flashlight batteries are cheaper than locks. This is the thing of the future. Only Ted Kaner caught wise as the flight began. He was an amateur magician and spotted the gimmick at once. He kept silent with professional courtesy and smiled ironically as the rest of the bunch grew silent one by one. The colonel was a good showman, and he had set the scene well. He almost had them believing in this bass wave tapper before he was through, when the model had landed and he had spoken, switched it off. He couldn't stop them from crowding around the table. A thread. One of the engineers shouted, almost with relief, and they all laughed along with him. Too bad, the head project physicist said. I was hoping that little space wave tapping could help us out. Let me try a flight with it. Teddy Gainer first, Bill announced. He spotted it while you were all watching the flashing lights. Only he didn't say anything. Kaner slipped the ring with the black thread over his finger and and started to step back. You have to turn the switch on first, biff said. I know, Kaner smiled. But that's part of illusion, the spiel in the misdirection. I'm going to try this cold first so I can get it moving up and down smoothly, then go through it with the whole works. He moved his hand back smoothly in a professional manner that drew no attention to it. The model lifted from the table, then crashed back down. The thread broke, keener said. You jerked it instead of pulling. Pulling it smoothly, biff said, and nodded. The broken thread. Here, let me show you how to do it. The thread broke again when Biff tried it, which got a good laugh that made his collar a little warm. Someone mentioned the poker game. This was the only time that poker was mentioned, or even remembered that night, because very soon after this they found that the thread would lift the model only when the switch was on and two and a half volts flowing through the joke coil. With the current turned off, the model was too heavy to lift. The thread broke every time. I still think it's a screwy idea, the young man said. One week getting fallen arches, demonstrating these toy ships for every brat within a thousand miles, then selling the things for three bucks when they must have cost at least a hundred dollars apiece to make. But you did sell the ten of them to the people who would be interested? The older man asked. I think so. I caught a few Air Force officers and a colonel in missiles one day. Then there was one official I remembered from the Bureau of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize me. Then. Those two professors you spotted from the university. Then the problem is out of our hands and into theirs. All we have to do now is sit back and wait for the results. What results? These people weren't interested when we were hammering on their doors with the proof we've patented the coils and can prove to anyone that there's a reduction in weight around them when they're operating. But a small reduction and we don't know what's causing it. No one could be interested in a thing like that. A fractional weight decrease in a clumsy model? Certainly not enough to lift the weight of the generator. No one wrapped up in massive fuel consumption, tons of lift and such, is going to have any time to worry about a crackpot who thinks he found a minor slip in Newton's laws. You think they will now? The young man asked, cracking his knuckles impatiently. I know they will. The tensile strength of that thread is correctly adjusted to the weight of the model. The thread will break if you try to lift the model with it. Yet you can lift the model after a small increment of its weight has been removed by the coils. This is going to bug these men. Nobody's going to ask them to solve the problem or concern themselves with it. But it will nag at them because they know this effect can't possibly exist. They'll see at once that the magnet wave theory is nonsense, or perhaps true, we don't know. But they will all be thinking about it and worrying about it. Someone's going to experiment in his basement, just as a hobby, of course, to find the cause of the error. And he or someone else is going to find out what makes those coils work, or maybe a way to improve them. And we have the patents, correct? They will be doing the research that will take them out of the massive lift propulsion business and into the field of pure space flight. And in doing so, they will be making us rich whenever the time comes to manufacture, the young man said cynically. We'll all be rich, son, the older man said, patting him on the shoulder. Believe me, you're not going to recognize this old world ten years from now.

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[Narrator]

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