Short Science Fiction Collection 059 - Various - Science Fiction Books - Daily

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[00:00]
Lady Luck
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[00:30]
Celebration Host
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Lady Luck
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Lady Luck
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Lady Luck
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Narrator/Reader
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[01:33]
Celebration Host
a grave By CCMECAPP this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org there's nothing wrong with dying. It just hasn't ever had the proper sales pitch. It all began when a new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog or blew a transistor or something. It was fantastic that the error 1 of 2 decimal places should enjoy a straight run of oks, human and mechanical, clear down the line. But when the figures clacked out at the last clacking out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred, immutable, and it is doubtful whether the president of the concern or the chairman of the board would have dared question them even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town. As for the advertising manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them. They were the budget for the coming fiscal year into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped dazedly into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly 100 times what he'd been expecting, that is to say, 50 times what he'd put in for. When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home, he tossed clothes into a traveling bag and barged toward the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn't bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plane east, and no nonsense about it. With one thing and another, the economy hadn't exactly been in overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bored them out. Gift buying dribbled along feebly until Thanksgiving. Despite brave speeches by the administration, the holiday passed more in self pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift oriented businesses. Then, on Friday following Thanksgiving, the coffin adds struck. Struck may be too mild a word. People on the streets saw feverishly working crews at holiday rates slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly. A toothy and toothsome young woman leaned over a coffin she'd been unwrapping. She smiled as if she'd just received overtures of matrimony from an 80 year old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she had just gotten out of bed or were ready to get into it. For amorous young men, and some not so young, the message was plain. The motto the gift that will last more than a lifetime seemed hardly to the point. Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that if the young lady's gratitude were really precipitous and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy. Of course, the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man, there was a blow directly between the eyes. Do you want your widow to be half safe? And for the spinster without immediate hopes, I dreamt I was caught dead without my virgin form casket. Newspapers, magazines, and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign for sheer concentration that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy. Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers who had grudgingly and under strong sales pressure made space For a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store now rushed to the telephones like toots. With a direct pronouncement from a horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the actual grocery. Supermarkets put in casket departments. The association of pharmaceutical retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority, Tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers and whatever else could haul a coffin. The stock market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The president got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation short supply. State laws were passed against cremation. Under heavy lobby pressure, a new racket called box jacking blossomed overnight. The advertising manager who had put the thing over had been fighting with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping, but by Wednesday after thanksgiving, they, along with the original one, were on a 24 hour 7 day basis. Still, only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins. It might be supposed that Christmas goods and other caskets would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity and such was the shortage of coffins that nearly everything, with a few exceptions, enjoyed the biggest season on record. On Christmas Eve, the frenzy slumped to a crawl. Though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. Mostly it sat on coffins because there wasn't space in the living rooms for any other furniture. There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn't have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, several boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now or it would literally be a case of dust to dust. Of course, everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our advertising manager, who was by now of course sales manager and first vice president, also wasn't settling for any boom and bust. He'd been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years now, with his teeth in something that he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin payments and move the presents out of the front rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred megatonner. Within a week, everyone saw quite clearly that his Christmas models were now obsolete. The coffin became the new status symbol. The auto industry was, of course, demolished. Even people who had enough money to buy a new car weren't going to trade in the old one and let the new one stand out in the rain. The garages were full of coffins. Petroleum went along with autos. Though there were those who whispered knowingly that the same people merely moved over into the new industry. It was noticeable that the center of it became Detroit. A few trucks and buses were still being built, but that was all. Some of the new caskets were true works of art. Others, well, there was a variety. Compact models appeared in which the occupant's feet were to be doubled up alongside his ears. One manufacturer pushed a circular model, claiming that by all the laws of nature, the fetal position was the only right one. At the other extreme were virtual houses, ornate and lavishly equipped. Possibly the largest of all was the togetherness model. Triangular, with graduated recesses for father, mother, eight children, plus two playmates. And in the far corner, beyond the baby, the cat. The slump was over. Still, economists swore that the new boom couldn't last either, they reckoned, without the advertising manager, whose eyes gleamed brighter all the time. People already had coffins, which they polished and kept on display sometimes in the new coffin ports being added to houses. The advertising manager's reasoning was direct and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins, and now he had all the money to work with that he could use. The new note was woven in so gradually that it's not easy to put a finger on any one ad and say it began here. One of the first was surely the widely printed one, showing a tattooed, smiling young man with his chin thrust out manfully lying in a coffin. He was rugged looking and likable. Not too rugged for the spindly limbed to identify with. And he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at every pore. He was probably the finest looking corpse since Richard the Lion Hearted. Neither must one overlook the singing commercials, possibly the catchiest of these. A really cute little thing was achieved by jazzing up the funeral march. It started gradually and it was all so unviolent that few saw it as suicide. Teenagers began having popping off parties. Some of their elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up too. The tired, the unappreciated, the ill. And the heavy laden lay down in growing numbers and expired. A black market in poisons operated for a little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes were very comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited smiling. The beatniks, who had their own models of coffin, moldy, scroungy and without lids, since the beatniks insisted on being seen, placed their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They dyed with highly intellectual expressions and eventually were washed by the gentle rain. Of course there were voices shouting calamity when aren't there. But in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed not. It isn't hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world, so let us imagine a few. The Communist bloc immediately gave its stamp of disapproval, denouncing the movement as a filthy capitalist imperialist pig plot. Red China, which had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a matter of method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as patent stupidity, saying that if the capitalists wanted to die, warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried out the thing as an answer to excess population and found it good. It also appealed to the well known melancholy facet of Russian nature. Besides, after pondering for several days, the Red bloc decided it could not afford to fall behind in anything. So it started its own program, explaining with much logic how it differed. An elderly British philosopher endorsed the movement on the grounds that a temporary setback in evolution was preferable to facing up to anything. The free block, the red block, the neutral block, and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a block were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time. If in a variety of ways, in less than two years, the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it. Oddly enough, the country where the movement began was the last to succumb completely. Or perhaps it's not so odd. Coffin maker to the world, the American casket industry had by now almost completely automated box making and grave digging, with some interesting assembly lines and packaging arrangements. There still remained the jobs of management and distribution. The president of General Mortuary, an ebullient fellow affectionately called Sarcophagus Sam, put it well. As long as I have a single prospective customer and a single stockholder, he said, mangling a stogie and beetling his brows at the one reporter who'd showed up for the press conference, I'll try to put him in a coffin. So I can pay him a dividend. Finally, though, a man who thought he must be the last living human wandered contentedly around the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an automatic self adjusting cadaver contour, inner spring wear ever plastic covered mattress with a built in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, closed his eyes, and sighed in solid comfort. Soft music played as the lid closed itself. From a building nearby, a turkey buzzard swooped down, cawing in raucous anger. Because it had let its attention wander for a moment, it was too late. It clawed, screaming at the solid cover, hissed in frustration, and finally gave up. It flapped into the air again, still grumbling. It was tired of living on dead small rodents and coyotes. It thought it would take a swing over to Los Angeles, where the pickings were pretty good. As it moved westward over parched hills, it espied two black dots a few miles to its left. It circled over for a closer look, then grunted and went on its way. It had seen them before. The old prospector and his burro had been in the mountains for so long the buzzard had concluded they didn't know how to die. The prospector, whose name was Adams, trudged behind his burrow toward the buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver, he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny pack rats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the unburied coffins. Tarnation, he said to the burro Martians. A half buried piece of newspaper fluttered in the breeze. He walked forward slowly and picked it up. It told him enough so that he understood. They're gone, Evie, he said to the burro. All gone. He put his arm affectionately around her neck. I reckon it's up to me and you again. We got to start all over. He stood back and gazed at her with mild reproach. I sure hope they don't favor your side of the house so much this time. End of and all the Earth A Grave by CC Mac App.
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And it Comes out here By Lester Del Rey 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 Grothman There is one fact no sane man can quarrel with everything has a beginning and an end. But some men aren't sane. Thus it isn't always so. And it comes out here by Lester Del Rey. No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit like him. And it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least you always have. Or do. Or will. I don't know. Verbs get all mixed up. We don't have the right attitude toward tenses in a situation like this. Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did. So you will. Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but. But you'll find out that you aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the machine out there for too long until you get used to it. You'll find it's hard on the eyes trying to follow where the veins go. You'll get used to it, of course, but it will take about 30 years. You're wondering whether to give me a drink as I remember it. Why not? And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for me as you are having. Of course we have the same tastes. We're the same person. I'm you 30 years from now, or you're me. I remember just how you feel. I felt the same way when he. That is, of course I. Or we came back to tell me about it 30 years ago. Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple of more years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date if you still doubt my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter. Right now you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two of the same people. You sense things. So I'll simply go ahead talking for half an hour or so until you get over it. After that, you'll come along with me. You know, I would try to change things around by telling what happened to me. But he. I told me what I was going to do, so I might as well do the same thing. I probably couldn't help telling you the same thing in the same words, even if I tried. And I don't intend to try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this. So let's begin. When you get up in half an hour and come out with me, you'll take a closer look at the machine then. Yes, it's pretty obvious that it must be a time machine. You'll sense that too. You've seen it. Just a small cage with two seats, a luggage compartment and a few buttons on the dash. You'll be puzzling over what I tell you. And you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes atomic power practical. Jerome Bol. Just a plain engineer. The man who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but you'll want to go along. I'll be tired of talking by then and in a hurry to get going. So I'll cut off your questions and get you inside. I snap on a green button and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of foggy nothing that surrounds the cockpit. It is probably the field that prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section isn't protected, though. You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there. In fact, there is no there. You are completely outside of time and space. As best you can guess how things are, you can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out all right. But nothing happens where the screen ends. Your hand just turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt. But when you pull your arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening and you don't try it again. Then it comes to you slowly, that you're actually traveling in time. You turn to me, getting used to the idea. So is this the fourth dimension? You ask. Then you feel silly because you'll remember that I said you'd ask that. Well, I asked it after I was told. And then I came back and told it to you. And I still can't help answering when you speak. Not exactly. I try to explain. Maybe it's no dimension. Or it might be the fifth. If you're going to skip over the so called fourth without traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent the machine and I don't understand it. But I let it go and so do you if you don't. It's a good way of going crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of course, there may have been a start for all this once, there may have been a time when you did invent the machine. The atomic motor first and then the time machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and saving yourself the trouble, it all got tangled up. I figured out once that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine and it's just easier for us to imagine it when you spend 30 years thinking about it, as I did. And you will. You get further and further from the answer anyhow. You sit there watching nothing at all around you and no time. Apparently, though, there is a time effect. Back in the luggage space, you look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either carry a small time field with you or you are catching a small increment of time from the main field. I don't know. And you won't think about that then either. I'm smoking and so are you. And the air in the machine is getting pretty stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss. Where are we getting our air, you ask? Or why don't we lose it? No place for it to go, I explained. There isn't out. There is neither time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel gravity, but I can't explain that either. Maybe the machine has a gravity field built in. Or maybe the time that makes your watch run is responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the idea that time is an effect of gravity. And I sort of agree. Still. Then the machine stops. At least the field around us cuts off. You feel a dankish sort of air. Replace the stale air and you breathe easier, though we're still in complete darkness, except for a weak light in the machine which always burns, and a few feet of rough dry cement floor around. You take another cigarette from me and you get out of the machine just as I do. I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort of simple, short limbed, one piece affair I put on, but it feels comfortable. I'm staying here, I tell you. This is like the things they wear in this century, as near as I can remember it. And I should be able to pass fairly well. I had all my fortune, the one that you made on the atomic generator, invested in such a way I can get it all on using some identification I've got with Me, so I'll do all right. I know they still use some kind of money. You'll see evidence of that. And it's a pretty easy going civilization from what I could see. We'll go up and I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here. So I won't be coming back with you. You nod, remembering I've told you about it. What century is it anyway? I told you that too, but you've forgotten. As nearly as I can guess. It's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an interstellar civilization. You take another cigarette from me and follow me. I've got a small flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish out into a corridor. This is a sub sub sub basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs and there's an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open. What about the time machine? You ask. Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe. We get in the elevator and I say first to gives out a coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's no feeling of acceleration, some kind of false gravity they use in the future. Then the door opens and the elevator says first back at us. It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor with nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. You go that way. Don't worry about getting lost. You never did, so you can't find the museum. Grab the motor and get out and good luck to you. You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream. You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later you see me going by mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward a restaurant or or something like it that is just opening. I am asking questions of a man who points and I turn and move off. You come out of a side corridor and go down a hall away from the restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at them, realizing for the first time that things have changed. Stygja Neri Fauchin Zagrut Dispensary. The signs are very quiet and dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains and the like. What a zurgot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign that announces Tervel Boro first class twrts Mars Vinz and ex Turzn planets Spilj retu owl enzu wikn 60 litzy ears. There is Only a single picture of a dull looking metal sphere with passengers moving up a ramp and the office is closed. You begin to get the hang of the spelling they're using, though now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you. Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard skin suit. You'd figure it was some part of a play and let it go. Well, people don't change much. You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might be newspapers on tapes. Where do I find the Museum of Science? Dun errand tern Laeffe at the Seine Stu Blas, he tells you. Around you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using stuff as garbled as his. The educated and the uneducated. I don't know. You go right until you find a big sign built into a rubbery surface. On the walk. There's an arrow pointing and you turn left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you see a pink building with a faint aqua trim, bigger than most of the others. They are building lower than they used to, apparently. 20 floors up seems about the maximum. You head for it and find the sidewalk is marked with the information that it is a museum. You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You hesitate for a moment, then you begin to think the whole affair is complete nonsense and you should get back to the time machine and go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs in his suit and friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other guard. What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort of drawl with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather pleasant. Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in atoms and axioms. The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice. Thanks. You mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce guards as polite as that. I. I'm told I should investigate your display of atomic generators. He beams at that. Of course the gate is swung to behind you, but obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a lock. Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got the original of the first 13 models. Professor Jonas was using them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could not explain the principle either someone will some day though. Lord the genius of the 20th century inventor. It's quite a hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could read on the period. Oh, congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our old tapes. You get away from him. Finally, after some polite thanks, the building seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly plastic diamond Former and you go up to it. Hanging out at the pool is great, relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10@Spinquest.com Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. As you come near, it goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny toward you. Souvenir, it announces in a well modulated voice. This is a typical gem of the 20th century, properly cut to its 58 facets, known technically as a Jaeger Damon and approximately 20 carats in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during your morning hours for 1/10 credit. If you have more than one child, press the red button for the number of stones you desire. You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of spaceships from the original thing that looks like a V2 and is labeled first lunar rocket to a 10 foot globe complete with miniature mannequins are sailing around in some kind of orbits. Then there is one labeled Weapons filled with everything from a crossbow to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil, marked Final Hand Arm. Beyond is the end of the corridor and a big place that bears the sign Mazel the Atomic Paul Suz. By that time you're almost convinced and you've been doing a lot of thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling you has been sinking in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it. You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order, and the latest one, the mark 2147 rings Dyne Pat is about the size of a desktop Telephone. The early ones are larger, of course, clumsier, but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on the atomic generators, explaining that this is the first invention that leapt full blown into its basic final form. You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor without giving his name. Either they don't know it or they take it for granted that everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on the operation, and full patent application. They state that it has all the major refinements operating on any fuel producing electricity at any desired voltage up to 5 million, any chosen cyclical rate from direct current to 1000 megacycles, and any amperage up to 1000, its maximum power output being 50 kilowatts, limited by the current carrying capacity of the outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being investigated and that only such refinements as better alloys and the addition of magnetic and nucleotric current outputs have been added since the original. So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's a simple square box with a huge plug on either side and a set of veneer controls on the top, plus a little hole marked in old style spelling drop BBS or wire. Here, apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on each side. Nice, the guard said over your shoulder. It finally wore out one of the cathode grids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly like the great inventor made it, and it still operates as well as ever. Like me to tell you about it? Not particularly. You begin, and then realize bad manners might be conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls something out of his pocket and stares at it. Fine, fine. The mayor of Altuscaraba, Centaurian, you know, is arriving and I'll be back in about 10 minutes. He wants to examine some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared with 19th century man. You'll pardon me. You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up to the head of the line, to the rinks, Dynapathu or whatever it translates to. It's small and you can carry it, but the damn thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge it either. You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take an early model if you can get one with built in magnetic current terminals, Erhun shaft or some other principle, and nuclear binding force energy terminals, but they're all held down by the same whatchamacallit effect. And finally you're right back beside the original first model. It's probably bolted down too, but you try it tentatively and you find it moves. There's a little sign under it indicating you shouldn't touch it since the galvostatic plate is being renewed. Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing. You lift it. It only weighs about 50 pounds. Naturally it can be carried. You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact, if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a lot of what I say from now on and have to find out for yourself. But maybe some of it helps. I tried to remember how much I remembered after he told me, but I can't be sure so I'll keep on talking. I probably can't help it anyhow. Preset, you might say. Well, you stagger down the corridor looking out for the guard, but all seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing happens, though. You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays of the world on your back, and still nothing happens ahead of you. The gate is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street. Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past people who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see. There's another yell behind you. Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front of your feet with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out about that either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you dart past. The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along with your arms, seeming to come out of the sockets and the atomic generator getting heavier with each step. Out of nowhere something in a blue uniform about 6ft tall and on the beefy side appears, and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop. You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow, the cop says. There are laws against that without a yellow sticker. Here, let me grab you a taxi. Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake your head and come up for air. I. I left my money at home, you begin. The cop nods. Oh, that explains it. Fine. I won't have to give you an appearance schedule, but you should have come to me. He reaches out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. Sir, an emergency request. Would you help this gentleman? The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. How far? You did notice the name of the building from which you came, and you mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him. Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the street at a trot with a nice clear path while the cop stands beaming at you both. That way it isn't so bad, and you begin to see why I decided I might like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there before you. And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building. As you reach it, the stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once. When you nod at him, not waiting for thanks, the guard comes up holding some dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck. You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications, he said. They go with the generator. We don't like to have them separated. A good thing. I knew the production office of Atoms and Axioms was in this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and we'll pick it up. You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before and take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps you for more information, which you give him at random. It seems to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction and heads back to the museum. You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator. There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there. You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were. Then there's a sort of cough, and something dilates in the wall. It forms a perfect door, and the elevator stands there, waiting. You get in, gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What the deuce would the lowest basement be called? But the elevator has closed and it's moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again, and you're at the original level. You get out and realize you don't have a light. You'll never know what you stumbled over, but somehow you move back in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering here and there and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then a shred of dim light appears. It's the weak light in the time machine. You've located it. You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers down beside it, and climb into the cockpit. Sweating and mumbling, you reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one beside it, and you finally decide on that. Suddenly there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator, and a beam of light strikes against your eyes with a shout, punctuating it. Your finger touches the red button. You'll never know what the shout was about, whether they finally doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around you, and the next button you touch, the one on board that hasn't been used so far, sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of light. You can't hear a thing. You're safe. It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons with some pencil marks over them. Press these to return to yourself. Thirty years, and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. But it doesn't, because there's only one of you this time. Instead, everything flashes off, and you're sitting in the machine in your own backyard. You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub basement, land in your backyard, and then hop back 30 years to pick up yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic generator and taking it inside. It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing. Just some plates of metal, some spiral coils and a few odds and ends. All things that could be made easily enough. All obviously of common metals. But when you put it together about an hour later, you notice something. Everything in it is brand new and there's a set of copper wires missing. It won't work. You put some 12 house wire in exactly like the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings and try again. And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15amperes, you get just that. You don't need the power company anymore. And you feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't insulated from time effects by a field. So the motor has moved backward in time somehow and is back to its original youth, minus the replacement wires the guard mentioned, which probably wore out because of the makeshift job you've just done. But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find the papers are all in your own writing. That your name is down as the inventor and that the date of the patent application is 1951. It will begin to soak in. Then it you pick up an atomic generator in the future and bring it back to the past, your present, so it can be put in a museum with you as the inventor, so you can steal it to be the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to yourself who invented what and who built which. Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one after some of the worst times in history. For a few years, your name eventually becomes as common as Ampere or Faraday or any other spelled without a capital letter. But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer. One day you come across an old poem, something about Some folks call it evolution and others call it God. You go out, make a few provisions for the future. Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10@Spinquest.com SpinQuest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details and come back to climb into the time machine that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be knocking on your own door 30 years back or right now from your view, and telling your younger self all the things I'm telling you. But now, well, the drinks are finished, you're woozy enough to go along with me without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there came looking for you and shouting before the time machine left. Let's go. The End of and It Comes out here By Lester Del Rey.
[48:51]
Narrator/Reader
The Answer by H. Beam Piper this is a Librivax recording. All All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Dan Grzinski the Answer by H. Beam Piper For a moment after the screen door snapped and wakened him, Lee Richardson sat breathless and motionless, his eyes still closed, trying desperately to cling to the dream and print it upon his conscious memory before it faded. Are you there, Lee? He heard Alex Pitov's voice. Yes, I'm here. What time is it? He asked, and then added, I fell asleep. I was dreaming. It was all right. He was going to be able to remember. He could still see the slim women with the graying blond hair playing with the little dachshund among the new fallen leaves on the lawn. He was glad they'd both been in this dream together. These dream glimpses were all he'd had for the last 15 years, and they were too precious to lose. He opened his eyes. The Russian was sitting just outside the light from the open door of the bungalow, lighting a cigarette. For a moment he could see the blocky, high cheeked face now poached and wrinkled, and then the flame went out and there was only the red coal glowing in the darkness. He closed his eyes again and the dream picture came back to him, the woman catching the little dog and raising her head as though to speak to him. Plenty of time yet. Pitov was speaking German instead of Spanish, as they always did between themselves. They're still counting down from minus three hours. I just found the launching site for a Jeep. Eugenio's been there ever since dinner. They say he's running around like a cat looking for a place to have her first litter of kittens. He chuckled. This would be something new for Eugenio Galvez, for which he could be thankful. I hope the generators don't develop any last second bugs, he said. We'll only be a mile and a half away. That'll be too close to 50 kilos of nega matter. If the field collapses. It'll be all right, pituff assured him. The bugs have all been chased out years ago. Not out of those generators in the rocket. They're new. He fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. I never thought I'd run another nuclear bomb test as long as I lived, Lee. Pitov was shocked. You mustn't call it that. It isn't that at all. It's purely a scientific experiment. Wasn't that all any of them were? We made lots of experiments like this back before 1969. The memories of all those other tests, and each ending in an Everest high mushroom column, rose in his mind. And the end result? The United States and the Soviet Union blasted to rubble. A whole hemisphere pushed back into the Dark Ages. A quarter of a billion dead, including a slim woman with graying blond hair and a little red dog. And a girl from Odessa whom Alexis Pitov had been going to marry. Forgive me, Alexis. I just couldn't help remembering. I suppose it's this shot we're going to make tonight. It's so much like the other ones before. He hesitated slightly before the Auburn bomb. There he'd come out and said it. In all the years they'd worked together at the Instituto Argentino de Sciencia Fisiccia that had been unmentioned between them. The families of hanged cutthroats avoid mention of ropes and knives. He thumbed the old fashioned American lighter and held it to his pipe. Across the veranda. In the darkness he knew that Pitov was looking intently at him. You've been thinking about that lately, haven't you? The Russian asked, and then timidly, was that what you were dreaming of? Oh, no, thank heaven. I think about it too, always. I suppose. He seemed relieved now that it had been brought out into the open and could be discussed. You saw it fall, didn't you? That's right. From about 30 miles away. A little closer than will be to this shot tonight. I was in charge of the investigation at Auburn until we had New York and Washington and Detroit and Mobile and San Francisco to worry about. Then what had happened to Auburn wasn't important anymore. We were trying to get evidence to lay before the United Nations. We kept at it for about 12 hours after the United nations had ceased to exist. I could never understand about that, Lee. I don't know what the truth is. I probably never shall. But I know that my government did not launch that missile during the first days after yours began coming in. I talked to people who had been in the Kremlin at the time. One had been in the presence of Klychenko himself when the news of your bombardment arrived. He said that Klychenko was absolutely stunned. We always believed that your government decided upon a preventive surprise attack and picked out a town, Auburn, New York, that had been hit by one of our first retaliation missiles and. And claimed that it had been hit first. He shook his head. Auburn was hit an hour before the first American missile was launched. I know that to be a fact. We could never understand why you launched just that one and no more until after ours began landing on you. Why you threw away the advantage of surprise and priority of attack. Because we didn't do do it, Lee. The Russian's voice trembled with earnestness. You believe me when I tell you that. Yes, I believe you. After all that happened and all that you and I and the people you worked with and the people I worked with and your government and mine have been guilty of, it would be a waste of breath for either of us to try to lie to the other about what happened 15 years ago. He drew slowly on his pipe. But who launched it then? It had to be launched by somebody, don't you think I've been tormenting myself with that question for the last 15 years? Pitov demanded. You know, there were people inside the Soviet Union. Not many, and they kept themselves well hidden, who were dedicated to the overthrow of the Soviet regime. They, or some of them, might have thought that the devastation of both their countries and the obliteration of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere would be a cheap price to pay for ending the rule of the Communist Party. Could they have built an ICBM with a thermonuclear warhead in secret? He asked. There were also fanatical nationalist groups in Europe, both sides of the Iron Curtain, who might have thought our mutual destruction would be worth the risks involved. There was China and India. If your country and mine wiped each other out, they could go back to the old ways and the old traditions. Or Japan or the Moslem states. In the end, they all went down along with us. But what criminal ever expects to fail? We have too many suspects and the trail's too cold, Alexis. That rocket wouldn't have had to have been launched anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. For instance, our friends here in the Argentine have been doing very well by themselves since El Colosso del Norte went down. And there were the Australians picking themselves up bargains in real estate. In the East Indies at gunpoint. And there were the Boers, trekking north again in tanks instead of ox wagons. And Brazil, with a not too implausible pretender to the Braganza throne, calling itself the Portuguese Empire and looking eastward. And to complete the picture, here were Professor Dr. Lee Richardson and Comrade Professor Alexis Petrovich Pitov, getting ready to test a missile with a matter annihilation. Warhead. No, this thing just wasn't a weapon. A jeep came around the corner, lighting the dark roadway between the bungalows, its radio on and counting down 22 minutes, 21, 59, 58, 57. It came to a stop in front of their Bungalow at exactly -2 hours 21 minutes 54 seconds. The driver called out in Dr. Richardson, Dr. Pitov, are you ready? Yes, Ready. We're coming. They both got to their feet, Richardson pulling himself up reluctantly. The older you get, the harder it is to leave a comfortable chair. He settled himself beside his colleague and former enemy, and the jeep started again, rolling between the buildings of the living quarters area and out onto the long straight road across the pampas toward the distant blaze of electric lights. He wondered why he had been thinking so much lately about the Auburn bomb. He questioned at times indignantly, of course, whether Russia had launched it, but it wasn't until tonight, until he had heard what Pitov had had to say, that he seriously doubted it. Pitov wouldn't lie about it, and Pitov would have been in a position to have known the truth if the missile had been launched from Russia. Then he stopped, thinking about what was water or blood a long time over the dam. The special policeman at the entrance to the launching site reminded them that they were both smoking, and when they extinguished, respectively, their cigarette and pipe, he waved the jeep on and went back to his argument with a carload of tourists who wanted to get a good view of the launching. There now, Lee, do you need anything else to convince you that this isn't a weapon project? Pitov asked. No, now that you mention it, I don't. You know, I don't believe I've had to show an identity card the whole time I've been here. I don't believe I have an identity card, pitov said. Think of that. The lights blazed everywhere around them, but mostly about the rocket that towered above everything else, so thick that it seemed squat. The gantry cranes had been hauled away now, and it stood alone, but it was still wreathed in thick electric cables. They were pouring enough current into that thing to light half the streetlights in Buenos Aires. When the cables were blown free by separation charges at the blastoff, the generators powered by the rocket engines had better be able to take over, because if the magnetic field collapsed and that 50 kilo chunk of negative proton matter came in contact with natural positive proton matter, an old fashioned H bomb would be a firecracker to what would happen. Just 100 kilos of pure 200 proof mc2. The driver took them around the rocket, dodging assorted trucks and mobile machinery that were being hurried out of the way. The countdown was just beyond 2 hours, 5 minutes. The Jeep stopped at the edge of a crowd around three more trucks, and Dr. Eugenio Galvez, the director of the Institute, left the crowd and approached at an awkward half run as they got down. Is everything checked, gentlemen? He wanted to know. It was this afternoon at 17:30, Pitov told him, and nobody's been burning my telephone to report anything different. Are the balloons and the drone planes ready? The Air Force just finished checking. They're ready. Captain Urquoya flew one of the planes over the course and made a guidance tape. That's been duplicated and all the planes are equipped with copies. How's the wind? Richardson asked. Still steady. We won't have any troubles about fallout or with the balloons. Then we better go back to the bunker and make sure everybody there is on the job. The loudspeaker was counting down to two hours, one minute. Could you spare a few minutes to talk to the press, Eugenio Galvez asked, and perhaps say a few words for telecast? This last is most important. We can't explain too many times the purpose of this experiment. There is still much hostility arising from fear that we are testing a nuclear weapon. The press and telecast services were well represented. There were close to a hundred correspondents from all over South America, from South Africa and Australia, even one from Ceylon. They had three trucks with mobile telecast pickups, and when they saw who was approaching, they released the two rocketry experts they had been quizzing and pounced on the new victims. Was there any possibility that negative proton matter might be used as a weapon? Anything can be used as a weapon. You could stab a man to death with that lead pencil you're using, Pitov replied. But I doubt if nega matter will ever be so used. We're certainly not working on weapons design here. We started six years ago with the ability to produce negative protons, reverse spin, neutrons and positrons, and the theoretical possibility of assembling them into nega matter. We have just gotten a 50 kilogram mass of nega iron assembled in those six years, we had to invent all our techniques and design all our equipment. If we'd been insane enough to want to build a nuclear weapon after what we went through up north, we could have done so from memory and designed a better, which is to say a worse one from memory in a few days. Yes, and building a negamatter bomb for military purposes would be like digging a 50 foot ship shaft to get a rock to bash somebody's head in when you could do the job better with the shovel you're digging with. Richardson added.
[63:26]
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[63:57]
Narrator/Reader
The time, money, energy and work we put in on this thing would be ample to construct 20 thermonuclear bombs. And that's only a small part of it. He went on to tell them about the magnetic bottle and inside the rocket's warhead, mentioning how much electric current was needed to keep up the magnetic field that insulated the negamatter from contact with posimatter. Then what was the purpose of this experiment, Dr. Richardson? Oh, we were just trying to find out a few basic facts about natural structure. Long ago it was realized that the nucleonic particles, protons, neutrons, mesons and so on must have a structure of their own. Since we started constructing negative proton matter, we've found out a few things about nucleonic structure. Some rather odd things, including fractions of Planck's constant. A couple of the correspondents, a man from La Prenza and an Australian, whistled softly. The others looked blank. Pitov took over. You see, gentlemen, most of what we learned, we learned from putting negamatter atoms together. We annihilated a few of them. Over there in that little concrete building, we have one of the most massive steel vaults in the world where we do that. But we assembled millions of them for every one we annihilated. And that chunk of neg iron inside the magnetic bottle kept growing. And when you have a piece of nega matter you don't want, you. You can't just throw it out on the scrap pile. We might have rocketed it into escape velocity and let it blow up in space, away from the moon or any of the artificial satellites. But why waste it? So we're going to have the rocket eject it, and when it falls, we can see by our telemetered instruments just what happens. Well, won't it be annihilated by contact with atmosphere? Somebody asked. That's one of the things we want to find out, pitov said. We estimate about 20% loss from contact with atmosphere, but the mass that actually lands on the target area should be about 40 kilos. It should be something of a spectacle coming down. You say you had to assemble it after creating the negative protons and neutrons in the positrons. Doesn't any of this sort of matter exist in nature? The man who asked that knew better himself. He just wanted the answer on the record. Oh no, not on this planet, and probably not in the galaxy. There may be whole galaxies composed of nothing but negamatter. There may even be isolated stars and planetary systems inside our galaxy composed of negamatter, though I think that very improbable. But when negamatter and posimatter come into contact with one another, the result is immediate mutual annihilation. They managed to get away from the press and returned as far as the bunkers, a mile and a half away. Before they went inside, Richardson glanced up at the sky, fixing the location of a few of the more conspicuous stars in his mind. There were almost a hundred men and women inside each at his or her instruments, view screens, radar indicators, detection instruments of a dozen kinds. The reporters and telecast people arrived shortly afterward, and Eugenio Galvez took them in tow while Richardson and Pitov were making their last minute rounds. The countdown progressed past minus one hour, and at minus 20 minutes all the overhead lights went off and the small instrument operator's lights came on. Pitov turned on a couple of view screens, one from a pickup on the roof of the bunker and another from the launching pad. They sat down side by side and waited. Richardson got his pipe out and began loading it. The loudspeaker was saying, minus 2 minutes, 1, 59, 58, 57. He let his mind drift away from the test, back to the world that had been smashed around his ears, and in the autumn of 1969 he was doing that so often now, when he should be thinking about 2 seconds, 1 second firing. It was a second later that his eyes focused on the left hand view screen. Red and yellow flames were gushing out of the bottom of the rocket and it was beginning to tremble Then the upper jets, the ones that furnished power for the generators, began firing. He. He looked anxiously at the meters. The generators were building up power. Finally, when he was sure that the rocket would be blasting off anyhow, the separator charges fired and the heavy cables fell away. An instant later, the big missile started inching upward, gaining speed by the second, first slowly and jerkily, and then more rapidly until it passed out of the field of the pickup. He watched the rising spout of fire from the other screen until it passed from sight. By that time, Pitov had twisted a dial and gotten another view on the left hand screen, this time from close to the target. That camera was radar controlled. It had fastened onto the approaching missile, which was still invisible. The stars swung slowly across the screen until Richardson recognized the ones he had spotted at the zenith. In a moment now the rocket a hundred miles overhead would be nosing down, and then the warhead would open and the magnetic field inside would alter and the mass of nega matter would be ejected. The stars were blotted out by a sudden glow of light. Even at a hundred miles, there was enough atmospheric density to produce considerable energy release. Pitov, beside him, was muttering, partly in German and partly in Russian. Most of what Richardson caught was figures trying to calculate how much of the mass of unnatural iron would get down for the ground blast. Then the right hand screen broke into a wriggling orgy of color, and at the same time every scrap of radio transmitted apparatus either went out or began reporting erratically. The left hand screen, connected by wiring to the pickup on the roof, was still functioning. For a moment Richardson wondered what was going on. Then shocked recognition drove that from his mind as he stared at the ever brightening glare in the sky. It was the Auburn bomb again. He was back in memory to the night on the shore of Lake Ontario, the party breaking up in the early hours of the morning. He and Janet and the people with whom they had been spending a vacation week, standing on the lawn as the guests were getting into their cars. And then the sudden light in the sky. The cries of surprise and then of alarm as it seemed to be rushing straight down upon them. He and Janet clutching each other and staring up in terror at the falling blaze from which there seemed no escape. Then relief as it curved away from them and fell to the south. And then the explosion lighting the whole southern sky. There was a similar explosion in the screen when the mass of nega iron landed. A sheet of pure white light so bright and so quick as to almost pass above the limit of visibility. And then a moment's darkness that was in the stunned eyes more than in the screen, and then the rising glow of updates drawn incandescent dust. Before the sound waves had reached them, he had been legging it into the house. The television had been on, and it had been acting as insanely as the screen on his right now. He had called the state police, the telephone had been working all right, and told them who he was, and they had told him to stay put and they'd send a car for him. They did within minutes. Janet and his host and hostess had waited with him on the lawn until it came, and after he had gotten into it he had turned around and looked back through the rear window and seen Janet standing under the front light holding the little dog in her arms, flopping one of its silly little paws up and down with her hand to wave goodbye to him. He had seen her and the dog like that every day of his life for the last 15 years. What kind of radiation are you getting? He could hear Alexis Pitov asking into a phone. What? Nothing else? Oh, yes, of course, but mostly cosmic. That shouldn't last long. He turned from the phone. A devil's own dose of cosmic and some gamma. It was the cosmic radiation that put the radios and the telescreens out. That's why I insisted that the drone planes be independent of radio control. They always got cosmic radiation from the microannihilations in the test vault. Well, now they had an idea of what produced natural cosmic rays. There must be quite a bit of nega matter and posimatter going into mutual annihilation and total energy release through the universe. Of course, there were no detectors set up in advance around Auburn, he said. We didn't really begin to find anything out for for half an hour. By that time the cosmic radiation was over and we weren't getting anything but gamma. What. What has Auburn to do? The Russian stopped short. You think this was the same thing? He gave it a moment's consideration. Lee, you're crazy. There wasn't an atom of artificial nega matter in the world in 1969. Nobody had made any before us. We gave each other some scientific surprises then, but nobody surprised both of us. You and I, between us, knew everything that was going on in nuclear physics in the world. And you know as well as I do a voice came out over the public address speaker. Some of the radio equipment around the target area that wasn't knocked out by the blast is beginning to function again. There is an increasingly heavy gamma radiation, but no more Cosmic rays. They were all prompt radiation from the annihilation. The gamma is secondary effect. Wait a moment. Captain Urquoya of the Air Force says that the first drone plane is about to take off. It had been two hours after the blast that the first drones had gone over what had been Auburn, New York. He was trying to remember as exactly as possible what had been learned from them. Gamma radiation. A great deal of gamma. But it didn't last long. It had been down almost to a safe level by the time the investigation had been called off, and two months after, there had been no more missiles and no way of producing more, and no targets to send them against if they'd had them. Rather, he had been back at Auburn on his hopeless quest, and there had been almost no trace of radiation. Nothing but a wide, shallow crater almost 200ft in diameter and only 15 at its deepest, already full of water, and a circle of flattened and scattered rubble for a mile and a half all around it. He was willing to bet anything that that was what they'd find where the chunk of nega iron had landed 50 miles away on the pamphlet. Well, the first drone ought to be over the target area before long, and at least one of the balloons they had sent up was reporting its course by radio. The radios and the others were silent, and the recording counters had probably jammed in all of them. There'd be something of interest when the first drone came back. He dragged his mind back to the present and went to work with Alexis Pitov. They were at it all night, checking, evaluating, making sure that the masses of data that were coming in were being promptly processed for programming the computers. At each of the increasingly frequent coffee breaks he noticed Pitov looking curiously. He said nothing, however, until long after dawn. They stood outside the bunker, waiting for the jeep that would take them back to their bungalow and watching the line of trucks, Argentine army engineers, locally hired laborers, load after load of prefab Hudson equipment going down toward the target area where they would be working for the next week. Lee, were you serious? Pitov asked. I mean, about this being like the one at Auburn? It was exactly like Auburn. Even that blazing light that came rushing down out of the sky. I wondered about that at the time. What kind of missile would produce an effect like that? Now I know we just launched one like it. But that's impossible. I told you. Between us, we know everything that was happening in nuclear physics then. Nobody in the world knew how to assemble atoms of negamatter and build them into masses. Nobody and nothing on this planet built that mass of Nega matter. I doubt if it even came from this galaxy, but we didn't know that then. When that Negamatter meteor fell, the only thing anybody could think of was that it had been a Soviet missile. If it had hit around Leningrad or Moscow or Kharkov, who would you have blamed it on? End of the Answer by H. Beam Pip.
[78:02]
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Birds of a Feather 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 recording by Dale Grothman Getting specimens for an interstellar zoo was no problem. They battled for the honor, but now I had to fight like a wildcat to keep a display from making a monkey of me. Birds of a Feather by Robert Silverberg it was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien life forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back of my rented office. As I came down the block from my hotel, I could hear and see and smell them with ease. My three staff men, Auchinlecht, Stephens, and Ludlow, walked shieldwise in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures, and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The galaxy is full of bizarre beings, but there is barely a species anywhere that can resist the old exhibitionist. Urgent. Send the men one at a time, I told Stebbins. I ducked into the office, took my place back of the desk, and waited for the procession to begin. The name of the planet is McTavish4 if you went by the official Terran listing, or Gurn if you called it what the people were accustomed to calling it. I thought of it privately as MacTavish4 and referred to it publicly as Gurn. I believe in keeping the locals happy wherever I go. Through the front window of the office I could see our big gay tritium scion plastered to a facing wall. Wanted extraterrestrials. We had saturated mactavish4 with our promotional poop for a month preceding arrival. Stuff like Want to visit Earth? See the galaxy's most glittering and exclusive world? Want to draw good pay and work short hours? Experience the thrill of show business on romantic Terra? If you're a non terrestrial, there may be a place for you in Corrigan's Institute for Morphological Science. No freaks Wanted normal beings only. J.F. corrigan will hold interviews in person on Gurn from 3rd day to 5th day of 10th month, his last visit to the Caledonian Cluster until 2937, so don't miss your chance. Hurry. A life of wonder and riches can be yours. Broadsides like this, distributed wholesale in half a thousand languages, always bring em running. And the Corrigan Institute really packs in a crowd back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind, and the only really decent place where an Earthman can get a gander at the other species of the universe. The office buzzer sounded. Auchinlech said, the first applicant is ready to see you, sir. Send him her or it in. The door opened and a timid looking life form advanced toward me on nervous little legs. He was a globular creature, about the size of a big basketball, yellowish green, with two spindly double kneed legs and five double elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body. There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones, one above each arm, plus a big gaping toothless mouth. His voice was a surprisingly resounding Basso. Are you Mr. Corrigan? That's right. I reach for a data blank. Before we begin I need certain information about I am a being of Regulus too, gave the grave booming reply even before I could pick up the blank. I need no special care and I am not a fugitive from the law of any world. Your name? Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick cough. Let me have that again, please. Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The R stands for Raymond, of course. That's not the name you were born with. The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360 degree rotation, remaining in place on his world. That gesture is the equivalent to an apologetic smile. My regular name no longer matters. I am now and shall forevermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a teraphile, you see. The little regulan was as good as hired, only the formalities remained. You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald? I will be placed on exhibit at your institute on Earth. You will pay for my services, transportation, and expenses. I'll be required to remain on exhibit no more than one third of each Terran sidereal day, and the Pay will be 50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and transportation. The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping on one side, two on the other. Wonderful. I will see Earth at last. I accept the terms. I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into the other office to sign him up. I Grinned, pleased with myself. We need a green Regulan for our show. The last one had quit four years ago, but just because we needed him didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A terrifying alien who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran moniker would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get to Earth. My conscience won't let me really exploit a being, but I don't believe in throwing money away either. The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran9. Our outfit has all the ursinoids it needs, or is likely to need in the next few decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was followed by a roly poly blue skinned humanoid from Donovan's planet. Four feet high and 500 pounds heavy. We already had a couple of his species in the show, but but they make good crowd pleasers. Being so plump and cheerful, I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign for anything short of top right. Next came a bedraggled Syrian spider who was more interested in a handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real oversupply of, it's those silver colored spiders. But this seedy specimen gave it a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute and he didn't even get the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging. The flora of applicants was steady. Gurn is the heart of the Caledonian cluster where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here, and we were right. It was the isolation of the late 29th century that turned me into the successful professor proprietor of Corrigan's Institute. After some years as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system, back in 2903, the World Congress declared Terra off bounds for non terrestrial beings as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement. Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down, a non terrestrial could only get to SOL3 as a specimen in a scientific collection. In short, as an exhibit in a zoo. That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is, of course, a zoo. We don't go out and hunt for our specimens. We advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it. We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had six hundred and ninety specimens before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life forms. My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up. If it can. After an hour of steady work that morning we had signed 11 new specimens. the same time we had turned away a dozen ursinoids, 50 of the reptilian natives of Gern, seven Syrian spiders, and no less than 19 chlorine breather procyanates wearing gas masks. It was my sad duty to nix a vegan who was negotiating through a Gerian agent. A Vegan would have been a top flight attraction, being some 400ft long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I don't see how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day. And not just any old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the vegan. One more specimen before lunch. I told Stebbins to make it an even dozen. He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long close look at the life form when it came in, and after that I took another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earth man. He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty blond hair, and though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look about him. He said in level Terran accents, I'm looking for a job with your outfit, Corrigan. There's been a mistake. We're interested in non terrestrials only. I'm a non terrestrial. My name is Ildar Gorp of the planet Wazinaz 13. I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line at being built myself. Look, friend, I'm busy and I'm not known for my sense of humor or my generosity. I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job. Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as Earthborn as I am. I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth, he said smoothly. I happen to be the representative of the only Earth like race that exists anywhere in the galaxy but on earth itself. Wasinaz 13 is a small and little known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary fluke my race is identical with yours. Now do you want me in Your circus? No. And it's not a circus, it's a scientific institute. I stand corrected. There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on his ear without another word. Instead, I played along. If you're from such a distant place, how come you speak English so well? I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath. Not the kind that reads minds, just the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate back into colloquial speech. Very clever, Mr. Gorb. I grinned at him and shook my head. You spin a good yarn. But for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith from Earth. Stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to Earth? No deal. The demand for beings from Wozenov's 13 is pretty low these days. Zero, in fact. Goodbye, Mr. Gorb. He pointed his finger squarely at me and said, you're making a big mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a hitherto unknown race, identical to humanity in every respect. Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely. Like human teeth. And I pulled away from his yawning mouth. Good bye, Mr. Gorb, I repeated. All I ask is the contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big attraction. I'll Good bye, Mr. Gorb. He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to the door. I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you another chance. He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile. This was the best Khan switch yet. An Earthman posing as an alien to get a job. But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness intellectually, there's no such place as Wazanaz 13, and there's only one human race in the galaxy. On Earth I was going to need some really good reason before I gave a down and out grifter a free ticket home. I didn't know it then, but before the day was out I would have that reason and with it, plenty of trouble on my hands. The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a the Collarian was the sixth applicant of that afternoon. I had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable famousian, and said no to a scaly pseudo armadillo from one of the Delta worlds. Hardly had the Dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office than the Collarian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him. Officially, he was big even for his kind, in the neighborhood of 9ft high and getting on towards a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three stocky feet, extending his massive arms in a Collarian greeting gesture, and growled, I am Valo herral Freeman of Kalar 5. You will sign me immediately to a contract. Sit down, Freeman Haral. I like to make my own decisions, thanks. You will grant me a contract. Will you please sit down? He said sulkily. I will remain standing as you prefer. My desk has a few concealed features which are sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed life forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger just in case of trouble. The Collarian stood motionless before me. They are hairy creatures, and this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket of fur. He was wearing the kilt girdle and ceremonial blaster of his warlike race. I said, you'll have to understand, Freeman Harral, that it's not our policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our institute, and we're not currently in need of any Collarian males because you will hire me or trouble I will make. I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already carrying four Kalarians, and that was more than plenty. The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spinquests, and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10, all the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms p-I n q u
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to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Yes, you have four representatives of the Clan Verdroth, none of the Clan Gerstran. For three years I have waited for the chance to avenge this insult to the noble Clan Gerstrand at the keyword avenge. I readied myself to Ensnar the Kalerian in a spume of tangle mesh the instant he went for his blaster. But he didn't move. He bellowed, I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to Earth. Enroll a Gerstran or the consequences will be terrible. I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double dealers, and one of the most important of those principles is I never let myself be bullied by anyone. I deeply regret having unintentionally insulted your clan, Freeman Harral. Will you accept my apologies? He glared at me in silence. I went on. Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another Collarian now, but I'll give the preference to the clan Gerstran as soon as a vacancy. No. You will hire me now. It can't be done, Freeman. Hurrau. We have a budget and we stick to it. You will rue. I will take drastic measures. Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Harral, I give you my word. I'll get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another Collarian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting. You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor, and there's always a chance that by picking a given member of a race will insult all the others. I nudged the trouble button on the side of my desk and Alconcek and Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at the right and left. They surrounded the towering Collarian and Sweet Talkingly led him away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw, but he kept up the growling flow of invective and threats until he was out in the hall. I mopped the sweat off my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next applicant. But before my fingers touched the button, the door popped open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins. Come here, you Stebbins, I said gently. I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment and he came running in. Please, please. Squeaked the little alien pitifully. I must see you. Honoured, sir. It isn't his turn in lines, Stebbins protested. There are at least 50 ahead of him. All right, I said tiredly. As long as he's in here already, I might as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins. Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out. The alien was a pathetic sight, a Stortulian, a squirrel like creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been lustrous black, was a dull gray and his eyes were wet and sad. His tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at full volume. Begging your most honoured pardon, most humble, important sir, I am a being of Storetool 8 and have sold my last few possessions to travel to Gurn for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with yourself. I said, I better tell you right at the onset that we're already carrying our full complement of Stratulians. We have both a male and a female now, and this is known to me. The female is her name, perchance? Tiress. I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian entry. Yes, that's her name. The little being immediately emitted a soul shaking gasp. It is she. It is she. I am afraid we don't have room for any more. You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female she is was my own fire spent spouse, my comfort, my warmth, my life, my love. Funny, I said when we signed her three years ago. She said she was single. That's right. Here on the chart. She lied. She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs, never to remarry, languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You must take me to Earth. But I must see her. Her and this disgrace bringing lover of hers. I must reason with her, Earthman. Can't you see? I must appeal to her inner flame. I must bring her back. My face was expressionless. You don't really intend to join our organization at all. You just want free passage to Earth. Yes, yes, wailed the Snortolian. Find some other member of my race, if you must. Let me have my wife again, Earthman. Is your heart a dead lump of stone? It isn't. But another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel happy, not to mention footing the transportation. I said, I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in coming isn't scientific, I can't in all good conscience lie for you, can I? Well, of course not. I took advantage of his pathetic upset to stream right along. Now, if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up, I might conceivably have done it. But no, you had to go unburden your heart to me. I thought the truth would move you. It did. But in effect, you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to me, I said piously. Then you will refuse me. My heart melts to nothing for you, but I can't take you to Earth. Perhaps you will send my wife to be here. There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of scientific interest, and the world government will deport the undesirable alien back to its home world. But I couldn't pull such a low trick like this on our female Stortulian. I said, I'll ask her about coming home, but I won't ship her back against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is. The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed halfway to mask his tears. He turned and scrambled slowly to the door, walking like a living dishrag. In a bleak voice he said, there is no hope. Then all is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman. He spoke in a drab monotone that almost but not quite, had me weeping. I watched him shuffle out. I do have some conscience, and I had the uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to commit suicide on my account. About 50 more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life started to get complicated again. Nine of the 50 were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul of the day so far was close to two dozen new life forms under contract. I had just about begun to forget about the incidents with the Collarian's outraged prize and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened and the Earthman who called himself ilduar Gorb of Wazanaz 13 stepped in. How did you get in here? I demanded. Your man happened to be looking the wrong way, he said cheerily. Changed your mind about me yet? Get out of here before I have you thrown out. Gorb shrugged. I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazenov's 13, suppose I tell you I am Earthborn and that I'm looking for a job on your staff. I don't care what your story is. Get out or you'll have me thrown out. Ok, ok, just give me half a second. Corrigan, you're no fool and neither am I, but that fellow of yours outside is he doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many times today has a life form come in here unexpectedly? I scowled at him. Too damn many. You see, he's incompetent. Suppose you fire him and take me on instead. I've been living in the outworlds half my life. I've known all there is to know about alien life forms. You can use me, Corrigan. I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of the office before I spoke. Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is, I've had a hard day. There's been a Killerian in here who just about threatened murder, and there's been a Strutulian in here who's about to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling me. But get this, I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up, and go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me. I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to claiming you're an Unknown Life form from Wazanaz13, the answer is that I'm not looking for any of those either. Now will you scram or the office door crashed open at that point, and Haral the Kalarian came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering metal foil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster he wielded a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinlot came dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt. Sorry, Chief, Stebbins gasped. I tried to keep him out, but Horell, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out with a roar. Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gerstrand. Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to let him have it. At the first sign of actual violence, Harel boomed, you are responsible for what is to happen now. I have notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the death of a life form. Suffer, Earth born ape. Suffer. Watch it, Chief Evans yelled. He he's going to an instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the mesh gun trigger, Harel swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the sword projecting a couple of feet out his back. A few driplets of bluish purple blood spread out from beneath him. Before I could react to the big life arm's hara kiri. The office door flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me. You are J.F. corrigan? The leader asked. Yes. We have received word of a complaint against you, said complaint being that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the untimely death of an intelligent life form, filled in the second of the Guerinian police. The evidence lies before us, intoned the leader in the cadaver of the unfortunate Carillon, who filed the complaint with us several minutes ago. And therefore, said the third lizard, it is our duty to arrest you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than 100,000 Galactic or two years in prison. Hold on, I stormed. You mean that any being from anywhere in the universe could come in here and gut himself on my carpet and I'm responsible? It is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to this late life form's request lies at the root of his sad demise? Well, no. But failure to deny is an admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman. Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred grand fine, but it was going to put an awful dent in this year's take, and I shuddered when I remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stertorian was likely to come bursting in here and kill himself too. Was it a fine of a hundred thousand per suicide? At that rate I would be out of business by nightfall. I was spared further such moribund thoughts by yet another unannounced arrival. The small figure of the Stertorian trudged through the open doorway and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Guerinian police and my three assistants forgot the dead kalerian for a moment and turned to eye the newcomer. I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Garin. I resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again, or, if I did come to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against crackpots. In heart rending tones, the storylian declared, life is no longer worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me to do. I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers going down the drain. Stop him, somebody. He's going to kill himself. He's Then somebody sprinted toward me hit me amidships and knocked me flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the mesh gun. My head walloped the floor and for five or six seconds I guess, I wasn't fully aware of what was going on. Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole in the wall behind my desk. A smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I saw three Guerinian policemen sitting on a raving Stratulian. The man who called himself Ilduar Gorp was was getting to his feet and dusting himself off. He helped me up. Sorry to have to tackle you, Corrigan, but that Sterilian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get you. I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the struggling little alien in an unbreakable tangle.
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Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stratilian psychology, Gorrigan, gorb said lightly. Suicide is completely abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who's causing their trouble. In this case, you. I begin to chuckle, more a tension relieving snicker than a full bodied laugh. Funny, I said. What is? Asked the self styled Woznazian. These aliens, big blustery harel, came in with murder in his eyes and killed himself. And the pint sized Tortullean who looked so meek and pathetic damn near blew my head off. I shuddered. Thanks for the tackle job. Don't mention it, corp said. I glared at the Guerinian police. Well, what are you waiting for? Take that murderous little beast out of here. Or isn't murder against the local laws? The Stortullian will be duly punished, replied the leader of the Guerinian cops calmly. But there is a matter of the dead Corellian and the fine of $100,000. I know, I groaned and turned to Stebbins. Get the Terran consul on the phone, Stebbins. Have them send down a legal advisor. Find out if there's any way we can get out of this mess with our skins intact. Right, Chief. Stebbins moved toward the Visiphone. Gorb stepped forward and put his hand on his chest. Hold it, the Waznerian said crisply. The consul can't help you. I can. You, I said. I can get you out of this cheap. How cheap? Gorp grinned. Rakishly 5,000 in cash, plus a contract as a specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it? I eyed Gorp uncertainly. The Terran consulate people probably wouldn't be much help. They tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they were really serious. And I knew from past experience that no officials ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand, giving this slicer a contract might be a risky proposition. Tell you what, I said finally. You've got yourself a deal. But on a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and a contract. Otherwise, nothing. Gorb shrugged. What have I got to lose? Before the police could interfere, Gorb trotted over to the hulking corpse of the Kalerian and fetched it a mighty kick. Wake up, you faker. Stop playing possum and stand up. You aren't fooling anyone. The Guerinians got off the huddled little assassin and tried to stop Gorb. Your pardon, but the dead require your respect, began one of the lizards mildly. Gorb whirled angrily. Maybe the dead do, but this character isn't dead. He knelt and said loudly in the k' larion's dish like ear, you might as well quit it, Haral. Listen to this, you shamming mountain of meat. Your mother knits d' Oilies for the clan Verdroth. The supposedly dead Kalerian emitted a 20 cycle rumble that shook the floor and clambered to his feet, pulling the sword out of his body and waving it in the air. Gorb leapt back nimbly, snatching up the Sartorian's fallen blaster and training it neatly on the big alien's throat before he could do any damage. The Kalerian grumbled and lowered his sword. I felt groggy. I thought I knew plenty about non terrestrial life forms, but I was learning a few things today. I don't understand how the police were blue with chagrin. A thousand pardons, Earthman. There seems to have been some error. There seems to have been a cute little con game, gorb remarked quietly. I recovered my balance. Try to milk me for a hundred grand when there's been no crime, I snapped. I'll say there's been an error. If I wasn't a forgiving man, I'd clap the bunch of you in jail for attempting to defraud an Earthman. Get out of here and take that would be murderer with you. They got and they got fast burbling apologies as they went. They had tried to fox an Earthman, and that's a dangerous sport. They dragged the cocooned form of the Snortorlian with them. The air seemed to clear and peace was restored. I signaled to Auchinleck and he slammed the door. All right. I looked at Gorb and jerked a thumb at the Calarian. That's a nice trick. How does it work? Gorb smiled pleasantly. He was enjoying this, I could see. Kallarians of the Clan Gerstran specialize in a kind of mental discipline, Corrigan. It isn't too widely known in this area of the galaxy, but the men of the clan have unusual mental control over their bodies. They can cut off circulation and nervous system response in large chunks of their body for hours at a stretch. An absolutely perfect imitation of death. And of course, when Harrell put the sword through himself, it was a simple matter to avoid hitting any vital organs en route. The Collarian, still at gunpoint, hung his head in shame. I turned on him. So, try to swindle me, eh? You cooked this whole fake suicide up in collusion with those cops. He looked quite a sight with that gaping slash running clear through his body, but the wound had begun to heal already. I regret the incident, Earthman. I am mortified. Be good enough to destroy this unworthy person. It was a tempting idea, but a notion was forming in my showman's mind. No, I won't destroy you. Tell me, how often can you do that trick? The tissues will regenerate in a few hours. Would you mind having to kill yourself? Every day, Haral, and twice on Sundays. Haral looked doubtful. Well, for the honor of my clan, perhaps. Stebbins. Boss, you mean. Shut up, Haral. You're hired. 75 a week plus expenses. Stebbins, get me a contract form and type in a clause requiring Haral to perform his suicide stunt. At least five, but no more than eight times a week. I felt a satisfied glow. There's nothing more pleasing than to turn a swindle into a sure fire crowd puller. Aren't you forgetting something, Corrigan? Asked Ilduar Gorb in a quite menacing voice. We had a little agreement, you know. Oh, yes. I moistened my lips and glanced swiftly around the office. There had been too many witnesses. I couldn't back down. I had no choice but to write out a check for five grand and give Gorb a standard alien specimen contract. Unless. Just a second, I said. To enter Earth as an alien exhibit, you need proof of alien origin. He grinned, pulling out a batch of documents. Nothing to it. Everything stamped and in order. And anybody who wants to prove these papers are fraudulent will have to find Wasinaz 13 first. We signed and I filed the contracts away, but only then did it occur to me that the events of the past hour might have been even more complicated than they looked. Suppose, I wondered, Gorb had conspired with Harel to stage the fake suicide and rung in the cops as well, with contracts for both of them. The price of my getting off the hook, it could very well be, and if it was, it meant I had been taken as neatly as any chump I'd ever conned. Carefully keeping a poker face, I did a silent burn. Gorb, or whatever his real name was, was going to find himself living up to a contract he'd signed every damn word and letter of it. We left Gurn later that week, having interviewed some 1100 life forms and having hired 52. It brought the register of our zoo, pardon me, the Institute, to a nice, pleasant 742 specimens representing 326 intelligent life forms. Ildoir Gorb, the Wazinarian who admitted that his real name was Mike Higgins of St. Louis, turned out to be a tower of strength. On the return voyage it developed that he really did know all there was to know about alien life forms. When he found out I had turned down a 400 foot long vegan because the upkeep would be too big, Gorb Higgins rushed off to the vegan's agent and concluded a deal whereby we acquired a fertilized vegan ovum weighing hardly more than an ounce. Transporting that was a lot cheaper than lugging a full grown adult vegan. Besides which, he assured me that the infant beast could be adapted to a diet of vegetables without any difficulty. He made life a lot easier for me. During the six week four voyage to Earth in our specially constructed ship with 52 alien life forms aboard, all sorts of dietary problems arose, not to mention the headaches that popped up over pride of place and the like. The Killarian simply refused to be quartered anywhere but on the left hand side of the ship, for example. But that was the side we had reserved for low gravity creatures, and there was no room for him there. We will be traveling in hyperspace all the way to Earth, Gorb Higgins assured the stubborn Collarian. Our cosmostatic polarity will be reversed, you see. Huh? Asked Karel in confusion. The cosmostatic polarity. If you take a bunk on the left hand side of the ship, you'll be traveling on the right hand side, all the way there. Oh, said the big. I didn't know that. Thank you for explaining. He gratefully took a stateroom we assigned him. Higgins really had a way with creatures, all right. He made us look like fumbling amateurs, and I have been operating this business for more than 15 years. Somehow Higgins managed to be on the spot whenever trouble broke out. A highly strung Norvineth started a feud with a pair of Venithians over an alleged moral impropriety. Nor Venithi can be very stuffy sometimes, but Gorb convinced the outraged being that what the Venovians were doing in the washroom was perfectly proper. Well, it was, but I'd never have thought of using that particular analogy. I could list half a dozen other incidents in which Gorb Higgins special knowledge of outworld beings saved us from annoying hassles on the trip back. It was the first time I had ever had another man with brains in the organization, and I was getting worried. When I first set up the Institute back In the early 2920s, it was with my own capital scraped together while running a comparative biology show on Betelgeuse 9. I saw to it that I was the sole owner, and I took care to hire competent but unspectacular men as my staff. Men like Stebbins, Auchinleck, and Ludlow. Only now I had a viper in my bosom in the person of Ildoir Gorb. Mike Higgins. He could think for himself. He knew a good racket when he saw one. We were birds of a feather, Higgins and I. I doubted if there was room for both of us in this outfit. I sent for him just before we were about to make earthfall, offering him a few slugs of brandy before I got to the point. Mike, I've watched the way you handle the exhibits on the way back here. The other exhibits, he pointed out. I'm one of them, not a staff man. Your Waznozian status is just a fiction cooked up to get you past the immigration authorities, Mike, And I've got a proposition for you. Propose away. I'm getting a little too old for this starcombing routine, I said. Up to now I've been doing my own recruiting, but only because I couldn't trust anyone else to do the job. I think you could handle it, though. I stubbed up my cigarette and lit another one. Tell you what, Mike. I'll rip up your contract as an exhibit, and I'll give you another one as a staff man paying twice as much. Your job will be to roam the planets finding new material for us. How about it? I had a new contract all drawn up. I pushed it toward him, but he put his hands down over mine and smiled amiably as he said, no go. No. Not even for twice the pay. I've done my own share of roaming, he said. Don't offer me more money. I just want to settle down on Earth, Jim. I don't care about the cash. Honest. It was very touching. Also very phony. But there was nothing I could do.
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But the unquestioned number one attraction here is confidence man Mike Higgins. He's billed as the only absolutely human life form from an extraterrestrial planet. And though we've had our share of debunkings, it has only increased business. Funny that the biggest draw at a zoo like ours should should be a homegrown Earthman, but that's show business. A couple of weeks after we got back, Mike added a new wrinkle to the act. He turned up with a blonde showgirl named Marie. And now we have a woman from Wazanaz, too. It's much more fun for Mike that way. And downright clever. He's too clever. In fact, like I said, I appreciate a good confidence man the way some people appreciate fine wine. But I wish I had left Ildoir Gorb back on Gurn. Instead of signing him up with us yesterday, he stopped by at my office, after we had closed down for the day. He was wearing that pleasant smile he always wears when he's up to something. He accepted a drink as usual, and then he Jim, I was talking to Lawrence R. Fitzgerald yesterday. The little regulant. The green basketball? That's the one. He tells me he's only getting $50 a week. And a lot of the other boys here are drawing pretty low pay too. My stomach gave me a warning twinge. Mike, if you're looking for a raise, I've told you time and again you're worth it to me. How about 20 a week? He held up one hand. I'm not angling for a raise for me, Jim. What then? He smiled beatifically. The boys and I held a little meeting yesterday evening and we formed a union with me as leader. I'd like to discuss the idea of a general wage increase for every one of the exhibits here. Higgins, you're a blackmailer. How can I afford. Easy, he said. You'd hate to lose a few weeks gross, wouldn't you? You mean you'd call a strike? He shrugged. If you leave me no choice, how else can I protect my members interests? After about half an hour of haggling, he sweated me into an across the board increase for the entire mob. With a distinct hint of further raises to come. But he also casually let me know the price he asked for calling off the hounds. He wants a partnership in the Institute, a share in the receipts. If he gets that, it makes him a member of management and he'll have to quit as union leader. That way I won't have him to contend with as a negotiator. But I will have him firmly embedded in the organization. And once he gets his foot in the door, he won't be satisfied until he's on top. Which means when I am out. But I'm not licked yet. Not after a lifetime of conniving and swindling. I've been over and over the angles, and there's one thing you can count on. A trickster will always outsmart himself if you give him a chance. I did it with Higgins. Now he's done it with me. He'll be back here in half an hour to find out whether he gets his partnership or not. Well, he'll get his answer. I'm going to affirm, as per the escape clause in the standard exhibit contract he signed, that he is no longer of scientific value and the feds will pick him up and deport him to his home world. Which leaves him two Equally nasty choices. Those fake documents of his were good enough to get him admitted to Earth as a legitimate alien. How the World police get him back there is their headache and his. If he admits the papers were phony, the only way he'll get out of prison will be when it collapses of old age. So I'll give him a third choice. He can sign an undated confession, which I will keep in my safe as a guarantee against future finagling. I don't expect to be around forever. You see, though, with that little secret I picked up on Rimbaugh 2, it'll be a good long time, not even barring accidents. And I've been wondering whom to leave the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Studies to. Higgins will make a fine successor. Oh, one more thing. He will have to sign. It remains the Corrigan Institute as long as the place is in business. Try to out con me, Willie. End of Birds of a Feather by Robert Silverberg. The Eel by Miriam Allen Deford 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 Grothman the punishment had to fit more than just the crime. It had to suit every world in the galaxy. The Eel by Miriam Allen Deford he was intimately and unfavorably known everywhere in the galaxy, but with special virulence. On eight planets in three different solar systems. He was eagerly sought on each. They all wanted to try him and punish him in each case by their own laws and customs. This had been going on for 26 terrestrial years, which means from minus 10 to plus 280 in some of the others. The only place that didn't want him was Earth, his native planet, where he was too smart to operate. But of course the Galactic Police were looking for him there, too, to deliver him to the authorities of the other planets in accordance with the Interplanetary constitution. For all those years, the Eel, which was his Earth moniker elsewhere he was known by names indicating equally squirmy and slimy life forms, had been gaily going his way, known under a dozen different aliases, turning up suddenly here, there and everywhere, committing his gigantic deceptions and disappearing as quickly and silently when his latest enterprise had succeeded. He specialized in enormous, unprecedented thefts. It was said that he despised stealing anything under the value of a hundred million terrestrial units, and most of his thefts were much larger than that. He had no recognizable modus operandi, changing his methods with each new crime. He never left a clue but in bravado, he signed his name to every job. His moniker flattered him, and after each malefaction, the victim, usually a government agency, a giant corporation, or one of the clan enterprises of the smaller planets, would receive a message consisting merely of an impudent depiction of a large wiggly eel. They got him at last. Of course, the Galactic Police, like the prehistoric Royal Canadian Mounted, have the reputation for always catching their man. Sometimes they don't catch him till he's dead, but they caught him. It took them 26 years, and it was a hard job for the for the Eel always worked alone and never talked afterwards. They did it by the Herculean effort of investigating the source of the fortune of every inhabitant of Earth. Since all that was known was that the Eel was terrestrial, every computer in the Federation worked overtime. Analyzing the data fed into wasn't entirely a thankless task, for as a byproduct, a lot of embezzlers, tax evaders and lesser robbers were turned up. In the end, it narrowed down to one man who owned more than he could account for having. Even so, they almost lost him, for his takings were cashed away under so many pseudonyms that it took several months to establish that they all belonged to the same person. When it was settled, the police swooped, the Eel surrendered quietly. The one thing he had been surest of was never being apprehended, and he was so dumbfounded he was unable to put up any resistance. And then came a still greater question. Which of the planets was to have him? Zikstal said it had first right, because his theft there had been the largest, a sum so huge it could be expressed only by an algebraic index. Arthur's argument was that his first recorded crime had been on that planet. Medorus wanted him because its only penalty for any felony was an immediate and rather horrible death, and that would guarantee getting rid of the eel forever. Ceres had a claim on the grounds that it was the only planet or moon in the solar system in which he had operated, and since he was a terrestrial, it was a matter for local jurisdiction. EB pleaded that it was the newest and poorest member of the Galactic Federation and should have been protected in its inexperience against his thievishness. H.A. almerinth argued that it had earned his custody because it was its chief ruler who had suggested to police the method which had resulted in his arrest. Valvanor countered that it should be chosen recipient, since the theft there had included desecration of the High Temple, Little Agsk which was only a probationary Galactic associate, modestly said that if it were given the Eel, its prompt and exemplary punishment might qualify it for full membership, and it would be grateful for the chance. A special meeting of the Galactic Council had to be called for the sole purpose of deciding who got the Eel. Representatives from all the claimant planets made their representations. Each told in eloquent detail why his planet and his alone was entitled to custody of the arch criminal and what they would do to him when, not if, they got him. After they had all been heard, the councillors went into executive session with press and public Bard, an indiscreet councillor. It was O Al of Fillingor of Altair, if you want to know, leaked later some of the rather indecorous proceedings. The Earth councillor, he reported, had been granted a voice but no vote, since Earth was not an interested party as to the crime, but only as to the criminal. Each possible system of arbitration had been discussed chronologically, numerically in respect to the size of theft, legalistically in respect to whether the culprit should be available to hand on to another victim. When the first had got through punishing him in the welter of claims and counterclaims, the one harassed counselor wearily suggested a lottery. Another, in desperation, recommended handing the Eel a list of prospective punishments on each of the eight planets and observing which one seemed to inspire him with the most dread, which would then be the one selected. One even proposed poisoning him and announcing his sudden collapse and death. The sessions went on day and night. The exhausted counselors separated for brief periods of sleep, then went at it again. A hung jury was unthinkable. Something had to be decided. The news outlets of the entire galaxy were beginning to issue sarcastic editorials about procrastination and coddling criminals with hints about bribery and corruption, and remarks that perhaps what was needed was a few impeachments and a new general election. So at last, in utter despair, they awarded the Eel to Agsk as a sort of bonus and incentive. Whatever planet they named, the other seven were going to scream to high heaven, and Agsk was least likely to be able to retaliate against any expression of indignation. Agskins, as everyone knows, are fairly humanoid beings, primitives from the outer edge of the galaxy. They were like college freshmen invited to the senior fraternity. It was their big chance to make good. The Eel, taciturn as ever, was delivered to a delegation of six of them, sent to meet him in one of their lumbering spaceships. A low countergrab machine such as Earth had outgrown several millennia before. They were so afraid of losing him that they put a metal belt around him with six chains attached to it and fastened all six of themselves to him. Once on ags, he was placed in a specifically made stone pit surrounded by guards, and fed through the only opening in preparation for the influx of visitors to the trial, an anticipated greater assembly of off planeters than little Agsk had ever seen. They evacuated their capital city, temporarily resettling all its citizens except those needed to serve and care for guests, and remodeled the biggest houses for the accommodation of those who had peculiar space shape or other requirements. Never, since the Galactic Federation was founded, had so many beings, human, humanoid, semi humanoid, and non humanoid gathered at the same time on any one member planet. Every news tape, tritamens, audio, and all other varieties of information services, even including the drum amplifiers of Medorus and the ray variants of Ebb, applied for and were granted a place in the courtroom. This, because no other edifice was large enough, was an immense stone amphitheater, usually devoted to rather curious games with animals, since it rains on Agsk only for two specified hours on each one of their days, no roof was needed. At every seat was a translophone with interpreters ready in plastic cages to translate the intergalactic in which the trial was conducted into even the clicks and hisses of Jorg and the eye flashes of a Monroe. In the midst of all this, the cause and purpose of it all, sat the legendary Eel, seen at last. He was hardly an impressive figure. Time had been going on, and the Eel was in his 50s, bald and a trifle paunchy. He was completely ordinary in appearance, a circumstance which had of course enabled him to pass unobserved on so many planets. He looked like a salesman or a minor official, and indeed had been so taken by the unnoticing inhabitants of innumerable planets. People had wondered, when the word came of some new outrageous by this master thief, if perhaps he had disguised himself as a resident of the scene of each fresh crime. But now it was obvious that this has not been necessary. He had been too clever to pick any planet where visitors from Earth were not a common sight, and he had been too insignificant for anyone to pay attention to him. The criminal code of Eggs was unique in the galaxy, though there were rumors of something similar among the legendary extinct tribes tribes on Earth called the Gauches. The High Priest is also the chief executive, as well as the minister of education and the head of the medical facility, and he rules jointly with a priestess who also officiates as chief judge. The Agskians have some strange ideas. To the terrestrial eye, for example, suicide is an honor. And anyone of insufficient rank who commits it condemns his immediate family to punishment for his presumption. They are great family people in general. Also. They never lie and find it hard to realize that other beings do. Murder, to them is merely a matter for negotiation between the murderer and the relatives of the victim, provided it is open and without deceit. But grand larceny, since property is a foundation of the family, is punished in a way that shows that the Axeans, though technologically primitive, are psychologically very advanced. They reason that death, because it comes inevitably to all, is the least of misfortunes. Lasting grief, remorse and guilt are the greatest. So they let the thief live and do not even imprison him. Instead, they find out who it is that the criminal most loves. If they do not know who it is, they merely ask him. And since Agskins never lie, he always tells them. Then they seize that person and kill him or her slowly and painfully before the thief's eyes. And the agreement had been that the Eel was to be tried and punished by the laws and customs of the planet to which he was awarded. The actual trial and conviction of the Eel were almost perfunctory. Without needing to resort to torture. His jailers had been presented on a platter, as it were, with a full confession. So far as the particular robbery he had committed on Ags was concerned. There was a provision for defense in the Agskian code, but it was unneeded because the Eel had pleaded guilty. But he knew very well he would not be executed by the Axcians. He would instead be set free, presumably with a broken heart, to be handed over to the next claimant. And that, the Council had decided, would be Medoros. Since Medoros always kills its criminals, that would be the end of the whole controversy. So the Eel was quite aware that his conviction by AGS would be only the preliminary to an exquisitely painful and lingering demise at the two clawed hands of Bedorians. His business was somehow to get out from under. Naturally, the resources of the Galactic Police had been at the full disposal of of the officials of ags. The files had been opened and the Agskians had before them the Eel's history. Back to the day of his birth. He himself had been questioned, encephalographed, hypnotized, dormatized, injected, psychographed, subjected to all means of eliciting information devised by all eight planets for the other seven. Once their full resentment was over, had reconciled themselves and and cooperated wholeheartedly with the Askans. Medorus, especially, had been the greatest help. The Medorians could hardly wait. In the spate of news of the trial that had inundated every portion of the galaxy, there began to be discovered a note of sympathy for this one little creature arrayed against the mightiest powers of the galaxy. Poor people who wished they had his nerve and romantic people who dreamed of adventures they would never dare perform begin to say that the Eel wasn't so bad after all. He became a symbol of the rebellious individual, thumbing his nose at entrenched authority. Students of Earth prehistory will recognize such symbols in the mythical Robin Hood and Al Capone. These were the people who were glad to put up when bets began to be made. At first, the odds were 10 to 1 against the eel. Then, as time dragged by, they dropped until it was even money. AGS itself began to worry. It was one thing to make a big, expensive splurge to impress the galaxy and to hasten its acceptance into full membership in the Federation. But nobody had expected the show to last more than a few days. If it kept on much longer, AGST would be bankrupt, for the trial foundered on one insoluble problem. The only way the Eel could ever be punished by their laws was to kill the person he most loved. And nobody could discover that he had ever loved anyone. His mother, his father. He had been an undutiful and unaffectionate son, and his parents were long since dead. In any case, he had never had a brother, a sister, a wife, or a child. No probing could find any woman with whom he had ever been in love. He had never had an intimate friend. He did nothing to help, naturally. He simply sat in his chains and smiled and waited. He was perfectly willing to be escorted from the court every evening, relieved of his fetters and placed in his pit. It was a much pleasanter existence, and than being executed inch by inch by the Medorians. For all he cared, the Iscarians could go on spending their planetary income until he finally died of old age. The priestess judge and her coadjudicators wore themselves down in discussion far into the night. They lost up to 15 pounds apiece, which, on AGS, where the average weight of adults is about 40, was serious. It began to look as if the Eel's judges would predecease him. Whom did the Eel love? They went into minutiae and subterfuge. He had never had a pet to which he was devoted. He had never even loved a house which could be raised. He could not be said to have loved the immense fortune he had stolen, for he had concealed his wealth and used little of it, and in any event it had been confiscated and so far as possible, restored proportionately to those he had robbed. What he had loved most doubtless was his prowess in stealing unimaginable sums and getting away with it. But there was no way of killing a criminal technique. Almost a year had passed. Agsc had begun to wish the Eel had never been caught, or that they had never been awarded the glory of trying him. At last the Priestess Judge, in utter despair, took off her judge's robes, put on the cassock and surplice of her sacred calling, and laid the problem before the most unapproachable and august of the Gods of Ask. The trial was suspended while she lay for three days in trance on the high altar. She emerged weak and tottering, her skin a light blue instead of its healthy purple, but her head high and her mouth curved in triumph. At sight of her, renewed excitement surged through the audience. News gatherers, who had been finding it difficult of late to get anything to report, rushed to their instruments. Remove the defendant's chains and set him free, the Priestess Judge ordered in ringing tones. The Great God of the Unspeakable Name has revealed to me whom the defendant most loves. As soon as he is freed, seize him and slay him, for the only being he loves is himself. There was an instant's silence and then a roar. The Medorians howling in frustration. But the Eel, still guarded but unchained, stood up and laughed aloud. Your Great God is a fool, he said blasphemously. I deny that I love myself. I care nothing for myself at all. The Priestess Judge sighed. Since this is your sworn denial, it must be true, she said. So then we cannot kill you. Instead, we grant that you do indeed love no one. Therefore you are a creature so far outside our comprehension that you cannot come under our laws, no matter how you have broken them. We will notify the Federation that we abandon our jurisdiction and hand you over to our sister planet, which is next in line to judge you. Then all the viewers on tridents on countless planets saw something that nobody had thought to see. The Eel's armor of self confidence cracked and terror poured through the gap. He dropped to his knees and cried, wait, Wait. I confess that I blasphemed your God, but without realizing that I did. You mean, pressed the High Priestess Judge, you acknowledge that you yourself are the only being dear to you? No, not that either. Until now I have never known love, but now it has come upon me like a nova, and I must speak the truth. He paused, still on his knees, and looked piteously at the priestess Judge. Are. Are you bound by your law to to believe me and to kill in instead of me this. This thing I adore? We are so bound, she stated. Then, said the Eel, smiling and confident again, rising to his feet, before all the galaxy I must declare the object of my sudden but everlasting passion. Great lady, it is you. The Eel is still in his pit, which has been made more comfortable by his sympathisers, while the Council of the Galactic Federation seeks feverishly and vainly, year after year, to find some legal way out of this impasse. Agsc, however, requests all Federation citizens to submit solutions, the grand prize for the workable answer being a lifetime term as President of the planet. A secondary contest prize, lifetime Ambassadorship to the Galactic Federation, is offered for a legal way around the statute barring criminals, specifically the Eel, from entering the primary contest. End of the Eel By Miriam Allen Deford. The Eyes have It By Philip Kindred Dick 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 Grothman the Eyes have it by Philip K. Dick it was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by life forms from another planet. As yet, I haven't done anything about it. I can't think of anything to do. I wrote to the government and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known. I'm not the first to discover it. Maybe it's even under control. I was sitting in my easy chair, idly turning the pages of a paperback book someone had left on the bus, when I came across a reference that first put me on the trail. For a moment I didn't respond. It took some time for the full import to sink in. After I comprehended it seemed odd I hadn't noticed it right away. The reference was clearly to a non human species of incredible properties not indigenous to Earth, a species, I hastened to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious that the author knew everything, knew everything and was taking it in his stride, the line, and I tremble remembering it even now. His eyes slowly roved about the room. Vague chills, assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not. They seemed to move through the air, not over the surface, rather rapidly. Apparently no one in the story was surprised. That's what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified. His eyes moved from person to person. There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own. My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention of a totally unfamiliar race, obviously non terrestrial. Yet to the characters in the book it was perfectly natural, which suggested that they belonged to the same species. And the author. A slow suspicion burned in my mind. The author was taking it rather too easily in his stride. Evidently he felt that this was quite a usual thing. He made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge. The story continued. Presently his eyes fastened on Julia. Julia, being a lady, had at least the breeding to feel indignant. She is described as blushing and knitting her brow angrily. At this I sighed with relief. They weren't all non terrestrials. The narrative. Slowly, calmly, his eyes examined every inch of her. Great Scott. But here. The girl turned and stomped off and the matter ended. I lay back in my chair, gasping with horror. My wife and family regarded me in wonder. What's wrong dear? My wife asked.
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games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I couldn't tell her knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run of the mill person. I had to keep it to myself. Nothing. I gasped. I leapt up, snatched the book and hurried out of the room. In the garage I continued reading. There was more. Trembling, I read the next revealing passage. He put his arm around Julia. Presently she asked him if he would remove his arm. He immediately did so with a smile. It's not said what was done with the arm after the fellow had removed it. Maybe it was left standing upright in the corner. Maybe it was thrown away. I don't care. In any case, the full meaning was there, staring me right in the face. Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will. Eyes, arms, and maybe more without batting an eyelash. My knowledge of biology came in handy at this point. Obviously they were simple beings, unicellular, some sort of primitive single cell things. Beings no more developed than starfish. Starfish can do the same thing, you know. I read on and came to this incredible revelation, tossed off coolly by the author without the faintest tremor. Outside the movie theater, we split up. Part of us went inside, part over to the cafe for dinner. Binary fusion obviously splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being further, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage. I'm afraid there's no doubt about it. Poor Bibney has lost his head again. Which was followed by and Bob says he has no guts. Yet. Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as totally lacking in brains. There was no doubt of the thing in the next passage, Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form similar to the rest. Quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man. It didn't relate what the final disposition of the organ was, and I didn't really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book, without heart, arms, eyes, grave brains, viscera dividing up in two when the occasion demanded, without a qualm. Thereupon she gave him her hand. I was sickened. The rascal had her hand as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he's done with them by this time. He took her arm. Not content to wait, he had started dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leapt to my feet, but not in time to escape. One last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track. Her eyes followed him all the way down the road and across the meadow. I rushed from the garage and back inside the warm house as if the accusing things were following me. My wife and children were playing monopoly in the kitchen. I joined them and played with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering. I had had enough of the thing. I wanted to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade earth. I don't want to get mixed up in it. I have absolutely no stomach for it. The End of the Eyes have It by Philip Kindred Dick.
[160:39]
Lady Luck
Happy Families by Aldous Huxley 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 Matt Perrard Happy Families by Aldous Huxley the scene is a conservatory. Luxuriant tropical plants are seen looming through a greenish aquarium twilight, punctuated here and there by the surprising pink of several Chinese lanterns hanging from the roof or on the branches of trees, while a warm yellow radiance streams out from the ballroom by a door on the left of the scene. Through the glass of the conservatory at the back of the stage, one perceives a black and white landscape under the moon, expanses of snow lined and dotted with coal black hedges and trees. Outside is frost and death, but within the conservatory all is palpitating and steaming with tropical life and heat. Enormous fantastic plants encumber it trees, creepers that writhe with serpentine life, orchids of every kind everywhere, dense vegetation, horrible flowers that look like bottled spiders, like separating wounds, flowers with eyes and tongues, with moving sensitive tentacles, with breasts and teeth and spotted skins. The strains of a waltz float in through the ballroom door, and to that slow soft music there enter in parallel processions the two families, which are, respectively, Mr. Aston J. Tyrrell and Ms. Topsy. Yerik, the doyen of the Tyrrel family, is a young and perhaps too cultured literary man with rather long dark brown hair, a face well cut and sensitive if a trifle weak about the lower jaw, and a voice whose exquisite modulations could only be the product of education at one of the two great universities. We will call him plain Aston. Ms. Topsy, the head of the Garrick family, is a young woman of not quite 20, with sleek yellow hair hanging like a page's, short and thick about her ears, boyish too, in her slenderness and length of leg, boyish but feminine and attractive to the last degree. Ms. Topsy paints charmingly, sings in a small pure voice that twists the heart and makes the bowels yearn in the hearing of it, is well educated, and has read or at least heard of most of the best books in three languages, knows something too, of economics and the doctrines of Freud. They enter arm in arm, fresh from the dance, trailing behind them with their disengaged hands, two absurd ventriloquist dummies of themselves, they sit down on a bench placed in the middle of the stage under a kind of arbor festooned with fabulous flowers. The other members of the two families lurk in the tropical twilight of the background. Aston advances his dummy and makes it speak, moving its mouth and limbs appropriately by means of the secret levers which his hand controls. Aston's DUMMY What a perfect floor it is to night. Topsy's DUMMY yes, it's like ice, isn't it? And such a good band. Aston's DUMMY oh, yes, a very good band. Topsy's DUMMY they play at dinner time at the Necropole. You know, Ashton's DUMMY Really? A long, uncomfortable silence. From under a lofty twangum tree emerges the figure of Cain Washington Tyrrell, Aston's negro brother. For the Tyrrells, I regret to say, have a lick of the tar brush in them. And Kane is a Mendelian throwback to the pure Jamaican type. Cain is stout and his black face shines with grease. The whites of his eyes are like enamel. His smile is chryselephantine. He is dressed in faultless evening dress and a ribbon of seals tinkles on his stomach. He walks with legs wide apart, the upper part of his body thrown back and his belly projecting as though he were supporting the weight of an aristophanic actor's costume. He struts up and down in front of the couple on the seat, grinning and slapping himself on the waistcoat. Cain. What hair. Nyam. Nyam. And the nape of her neck and her body, how slender. And what lovely movements. Nyum. Nyum. Approaching Aston and speaking into his ear. Eh, eh, eh. Aston. Go away, you pig.
[165:50]
SpinQuest Advertiser
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[165:51]
Lady Luck
He holds up his dummy as a shield. Kane retires to stuff with it. Aston's DUMMY have you read any amusing novels lately, Topsy speaking over the head of her dummy? No, I never read novels. They are mostly so frightful, aren't they? How splendid. Neither do I. I only write them sometimes, that's all. They abandon their dummies, which fall limply into one another's arms and collapse on onto the floor with an expiring sigh. Topsy, you write them? I didn't know. Oh, I'd very much rather you didn't know. I shouldn't like you ever to read one of them. They're awful. Still, they keep the pot boiling, you know. But tell me, what do you read, Topsy? Mostly history and philosophy and a little criticism and psychology and lots of poetry. My dear young lady, how wonderful. How altogether unexpectedly splendid. Kane emerges with the third brother, Sir Jasper, who is a paler, thinner, more sinister and aristocratic Aston. Nyum, nyum, nyum. Sir Jasper. What a perfect sentence that was of Yours, Aston. Quite Henry Jamesian, my dear young lady. As though you were 40 years her senior. And the rare old worldliness of that altogether unexpectedly splendid. Admirable. I don't remember your ever employing quite exactly this opening gambit before. But of course there were things very like it. What a nasty spectacle you are, Kane. Gnashing our teeth like that. Kane. Nyum nyum nyum. Aston and Topsy are enthusiastically talking about books. The two brothers, finding themselves quite unnoticed, retire into the shade of their twangum tree. Belle Garrick has been hovering behind Topsy for some time past. She is more obviously pretty than her sister. Full bosomed and with a loose red laughing mouth. Unable to attract Topsy's attention, she turns around and calls Henrika. A pale face with wide surprised eyes peeps round the trunk, hairy like a mammoth's leg of a catapult tree, with magenta leaves and flame colored blossoms. This is Henrika, Topsy's youngest sister. She is dressed in a little white muslin frock set off with blue ribbons. Henrika tiptoes forward. Here I am. What is it? I was rather frightened of that man. But he really seems quite nice and tame, doesn't he, Belle? Of course he is. What a goose you are to hide like that, Henrika. He seems a nice, quiet, gentle man. And so clever. Belle. What good hands he has, hasn't he? I approaching Topsy and whispering in her ear. Your hair's going into your eyes, my dear. Toss it back in that pretty wig you have. Topsy tosses her head. The soft golden bell of hair quivers elastically about her ears. That's right, Kane. Bounding into the air and landing with feet apart, knees bent and a hand on either knee.
[169:20]
SpinQuest Advertiser
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[169:23]
Lady Luck
Oh, the beauty of that moment. It simply makes one catch one's breath with surprised pleasure as the gesture of a perfect dancer might. SIR Jasper. Beautiful, wasn't it? A pleasure. Purely aesthetic and aesthetically pure. Listen to Kane, to Topsy and did you ever try writing yourself? I'm sure you ought to, Sir Jasper yes, yes, we're sure you ought to, eh Kane? Well, I have written a little poetry or rather a few bad verses at one time or another. Really now. What about, may I ask? Topsy? Well, hesitating about different things, you know. She fans herself rather nervously, Bell leaning over Topsy's shoulder and addressing Astin directly. Mostly about love. She dwells long and voluptuously on the last word, pronouncing it love rather than love. Oh, dat's good. Dat's good. Dat's damn good. In moments of emotion, Kane's manners and language savor more obviously than usual of the old plantation. Did yo see her face? Den? Belle repeats slowly and solemnly, mostly about love. Henrika. Oh. Oh. She covers her face with her hands. How could you? It makes me tingle all over. She runs behind the catapultree again very seriously and intelligently. Really? That's very interesting. I wish you'd let me see what you've done sometime, Sir Jasper. We always like to see these things, don't we, Aston? Do you remember, Mrs. Towler, how pretty she was? And the way we criticised her Literary Productions. Mrs. Towler. He shudders as though he had touched something soft and filthy. Oh, don't, Jasper. Don't. Sir Jasper. Dear Mrs. Towler. We were very nice about her poems, weren't we? Do you remember the one that began. My love is like a silvern flower de luce within some wondrous dream garden Pent God made my lovely lily not for use but for an ornament. Even Cain, I believe, saw the joke of that, Mrs. Towler.
[172:01]
SpinQuest Advertiser
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[172:03]
Lady Luck
But this is quite different. This girl really interests me, Sir Jasper. Oh, yes, I know.
[172:10]
SpinQuest Advertiser
I know.
[172:11]
Lady Luck
She interests you too, Kane. Doesn't she? Kane? Prances two or three steps of a cakewalk and sings oh, My Honey. Oh my Honey. But I tell you, this is quite different, Sir Jasper. Of course it is. Any fool could see that it was. I've admitted it already to Topsy. You will show them me, won't you? I should so much like to see them, Topsy. Covered with confusion. No, I really couldn't. You're a professional. You see, Henrika. From behind the caterpillar. No, you mustn't show them to him. They're really mine. You know. A great many of them. Belle. Nonsense. She stoops down and moves Topsy's foot in such a way that a very well shaped white stocking leg is visible some way up to the calf. Then to Topsy. Pull your skirt down, my dear. You're quite indecent. Kane putting up his monocle. Oh, nyum nyum, my honey. Come wid me to Dixieland. Sir Gaspard.
[173:20]
SpinQuest Advertiser
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[173:21]
Lady Luck
A little conscious, don't you think? But even professionals are human, my dear young lady. And perhaps I might be able to give you some help with your writings, Topsy. That's awfully kind of you, Mr. Tyrell. Henrika. Oh, don't let him see them. I don't want him to. Don't let him. With heavy charm. It always Interests me so much when I hear of the young. And I trust you won't be offended if I include you in their number when I hear of the young taking to writing. It is one of the most important duties that we of the older generation can perform to help and encourage the young with their work. It's a great service to the cause of art. Sir Jasper. That was what I was always saying to Mrs. Towler. If I remember rightly. Topsy I can't tell you, Mr. Tyrell, how delightful it is to have one's work taken seriously. I am so grateful to you. May I send you my little efforts then? Kane executes a step dance to the furious clicking of a pair of bones. Sir Jasper I congratulate you. Aston. A most masterful bit of strategy. I wonder what he'll do next. Isn't it exciting? Topsy? Toss your head again. That's right. Oh, I wish something would happen. What have you done? Oh Topsy. You really mustn't send him my poems. Belle. You said he was such a nice man just now. HENRIKA oh yes, he's nice, I know. But then he's a man. You must admit that. I don't want him to see them. Topsy. You're being merely foolish. Henrika Mr. Tyrrell, a very distinguished literary man has been kind enough to take an interest in my work. His criticism will be the greatest help to me. Belle. Of course it will. And he has such charming eyes. A pause. The music which has all this while been faintly heard through the ballroom door becomes more audible. They are playing a rich creamy waltz. What delicious music. Henrika, come and have a dance. She seizes Henrika round the waist and begins to waltz. Henrika is reluctant at first, but little by little the rhythm of the dance takes possession of her hill. With her half closed eyes and languorous trance like movements she might figure as the visible living symbol of the waltz. Aston and Topsy lean back in their seats, marking the time with a languid beating of the hand. Kane sways and swoons and revolves in his own peculiar and inimitable version of the dance.
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[176:28]
Lady Luck
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Narrator/Reader
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[176:56]
Lady Luck
Sir Jasper, who has been watching the whole scene with amusement. What a pretty spectacle. Music hath charms Henrika in an almost extinct voice. Oh, Belle, Belle. I could go on dancing like this forever. I feel quite intoxicated with it. Topsy to Aston. What a jolly tune. This is Aston, isn't it? It's called Dreams of Desire, I believe. What a pretty name. These are wonderful flowers here. Let's go and have a look at them. They get up and walk round the conservatory. The flowers light up as they pass. In the midst of each is a small electric globe. This purple one with eyes is the asafoetida flower. Don't put your nose too near. It has a smell like burning flesh. This is a Cyclopedium from Sumatra. It is the only man eating flower in the world. Notice its double set of teeth. He puts a stick into the mouth of the flower, which instantly snaps to like a steel trap. Nasty, vicious fruit. These blossoms, like purple sponges, belong to the twangum tree. When you squeeze them, they ooze blood. This is the Jonesea, the octopus of the floral world. Each of its eight tentacles is armed with a stain capable of killing a horse. Now this is a most interesting and instructive flower, the patchouli bloom. It is perhaps the most striking example in nature of structural specialization brought about by evolution. If only Darwin had lived to see the patchouli plant. You have heard of flowers specially adapting themselves to be fertilized by bees or butterflies or spiders and such like. Well, this plant, which grows in the forests of Guatemala, can only be fertilized by English explorers. Observe the structure of the flower. At the base is a flat projecting pan containing the pistil. Above it, an overarching tube ending in a spout. On either side, a small crevice, about three quarters of an inch in length, may be discerned in the fleshy lobes of the cadx. The English traveler, seeing this plant, is immediately struck by its resemblance to those penny in the slot machines which provides scent for the public in the railway stations at home. Through sheer force of habit, he takes a penny from his pocket and inserts it in one of the crevices or slots. Immediate result. A jet of highly scented liquid pollen is discharged from the spout upon the pistil lying below and the plant is fertilized. Could anything be more miraculous? And yet there are those who deny the existence of God. Poor fools. Topsy. Wonderful sniffin. What a good scent. The purest Patchouli Belle. How delicious. Oh, my dear. She shuts her eyes in ecstasy. Henrika drowsily Delicious. Licious, Sir Jasper. I always like these rather canail perfumes. Their effect is admirable. This is the leopard flower. Observe its spotted skin and its thorns like agate claws. This is the singing discovered by Humboldt during his second voyage to the Amazons. If you stroke its throat in the right place, it will begin to sing like a nightingale. Allow me. He takes her by the wrist and guides her fingers towards the palpitating throat of a gigantic flower shaped like a gramothon trumpet. The alicutia bursts into song. It has a voice like Caruso's Cain. Oh, nyum nyum. What a hand. Oh, my honey. He runs a thick black finger along Topsy's arm. What a remarkable flower.
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[181:11]
Lady Luck
I wonder whether he struck my arm like that by accident or on purpose. Henrika gives a little shiver. He's touching me. He's touching me. But somehow I feel so sleepy I can't move. She moves on towards the next flower. Bel does not allow her to disengage her hand at once. What a curious smell this one has. Astonished. Be careful. Be careful. That's the chloroform plant. Topsy. Oh, I feel quite dizzy and faint. That smell and the heat. She almost falls. Aston puts out his arm and holds her up. Poor child. Kane. Poor child. Poor child. He hovers round her, his hands almost touching her. Trembling with excitement. His white eyeballs roll horribly. I'll open the door. The air will make you feel better. He opens the conservatory door, still supporting Totsi with his right arm. The wind is heard fearfully whistling. A flurry of snow blows into the conservatory. The flowers utter piercing screams of rage and fear. Their lights flicker wildly. Several turn perfectly black and drop onto the floor, writhing in agony. The floral octopus agitates its tentacles. The twangum blooms drip blood. All the leaves of all the trees clap together with a dry, scaly sound. Topsy. Thank you. That's better. Closing the door. Poor child. Come and sit down again. The chloroform flower is a real danger. Much moved, he leads her back towards the seat. Kane executes a war dance round the seated couple. Po chile, Po chile. Yum, yum, yum, Sir Jasper. One perceives the well known dangers of playing the Good Samaritan towards an afflicted member of the opposite sex. Pity has touched even our good king to tears. Oh, I wonder what's going to happen. It's so exciting. I'm so glad. Henrika's gone to sleep. Topsy. It was silly of me to go all faint like that. I ought to have warned you in time of the chloroform flower. But it's such a lovely feeling now. Like being in a very hot bath with lots of verbena bath salts and hardly able to move with limpness, but just ever so comfortable and happy. How do you feel now? I'm afraid you're looking very pale. Poor child. Po chile. Po chile. Sir Jasper. I don't know much about these things, but it seems to me, my dear Aston, that the moment has decidedly arrived. I'm so sorry. You poor little thing. He kisses her very gently on the forehead. Belle. Ah, Henrika. Oh, he kissed me. But he's so kind and good. So kind and good. She stirs and falls back again into her drowsy trance. Kane. Poor child. Poor child. He leans over Austin's shoulder and begins rudely kissing Topsy's trance. Calm parted lips. Topsy opens her eyes and sees the black greasy face, the chryselephantine smile, the pink thick lips, the goggling eyeballs of white enamel. She screams. Henrika springs up and screams too. Topsy slips onto the floor and Kane and Aston are left face to face with Henrika. Pale as death and with wide open terrified eyes. She is trembling in every limb. Aston gives Kane a push that sends him sprawling backwards and falls on his knees before the pathetic figure of Henrika. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. What a beast I am. I don't know what I can have been thinking of to do such a thing. Sir Jasper. My dear boy. I'm afraid you and Kane knew only too well what you were thinking of. Only too well. Will you forgive me? I can't forgive myself. Henrika. Oh, you hurt me. You frighten me so much. I can't bear it. She cries. Oh God. Oh God. The tears start into his eyes also. He takes Henrika's hand and begins to kiss it. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Sir Jasper. If you're not very careful, Aston, you'll have Kane to deal with again. Kane has picked himself up and is creeping stealthily towards the couple in the center of the conservatory. Turning round. Kane. You brute. Go to hell. Kane slinks back. Oh, will you forgive me for having been such a swine? What can I do? Thompson, who has recovered her self possession, rises to her feet and pushes Henrika into the background. Thank you. It is really quite all right. I think it would be best to say no more about it. To forget what has happened. Will you forgive me then, Topsy? Of course, of course. Please get up, Mr. Tyrell. Aston climbing to his feet. I can't think how I ever came to be such a brute. Topsy. Coldly. I thought we had agreed not to talk about this incident any further. There is a silence. Sir Jasper. Well, Aston, this has been rather fun. Belle, I wish you hadn't been quite so cold with him. Topsy. Poor man. He really is very sorry. One can see that. But did you see that awful face? She shudders and covers her eyes. Asked him, picking up his dummy and manipulating it. It is very hot in here, is it not? Shall we go back to the dancing room? Topsy also takes up her dummy. Yes, let us go back. Isn't that roses in Picardy that the band is playing? Topsy's dummy? I believe it is. What a very good band, don't you think? Yes. It plays during dinner, you know, at the Decropole. Lord, what a fool I am. I'd quite forgotten. It was she who told me so as we came in. Topsy's dummy at the Necropole. Really? A very good band. And a very good floor. Topsy's dummy. Yes, it's a perfect floor, isn't it? Like glass. They go out, followed by their respective families. Belle supports Henrika, who is still very weak after her shock. How exciting. It was, wasn't it? Henrika Henrigan. Wasn't it awful? Too awful. Oh, that face. Kane follows Aston out in silence and dejection. Sir Jasper brings up the rear of the procession. His face wears its usual expression of slightly bored amusement. He lights a cigarette. Sir Jasper Charming evening. Charming evening. Now it's over, I wonder whether it ever existed. He goes out. The conservatory is left empty. The flowers flash their luminous pistils. The eyes of the asafoetida blossoms solemnly wink. Leaves shake and sway and rustle. Several of the flowers are heard to utter a low chuckle. While the alocutia, after whistling a few derisive notes, finally utters a loud gross Oriental Hickok. The curtain slowly descends. End of Happy Families by Aldous Huxley. The Intruder by Emil Pataha this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading from Matt Berard the Intruder by Emile Pattaya From Future Fantasia Winter 1940 it was in San Francisco. On the walk above the sand and surf that pounded like the heart of the earth. There was wind. The sky and sea blended in a gray mist. I was sitting on a stone bench, one watching a faint hint of distant smoke, wondering what ship it was and from what far port. Mine was a pleasant wind, loneliness. So when he came, wrapped in his great overcoat and muffler hat, pulled down and sat on my bench, I was about to rise and leave him. There were other benches, and I was not in the mood for idle gossip about Hitler and taxes. Don't go, please. His plea was authentic. I must get back to my shop, I said. Surely you can spare a moment. I could not even to begin to place the accent in his voice, low as a whisper, tense. His deep set eyes held me. His face was pale and had a serenity born of suffering, a placid face not given to emotional betrayals, yet mystical. I sat down again. Here was someone bewilderingly strange, someone I wouldn't soon forget. He moved a hand toward me, as though to hold me from going, and I saw with mild curiosity that he wore heavy gloves like mittens. I am not well. I I must not be out in the damp air, I said. But today I just had to go out and walk. I had to. I can understand. I warmed to the wave of aloneness that lay in his words. I too have been ill. I know you, Otis Marlin. I have visited your shop off Market Street. You are not rich, but the feel of the covers on a fine book between your hands suffices. Am I right? I nodded. But how? You have tried writing but have had no success alone in the world. Your loneliness, as much a family man harassed, might envy.
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[192:30]
Lady Luck
That's true, I admitted, wondering if he could be a seer, a fake mystic bent on arousing in me an interest in spiritism favorable to his pocketbook. His next words were a little amused, but he didn't smile. No, I'm not a psychic in the ordinary sense. I visited your shop. I was there only yesterday, he said, and I remember him in returning from my lunch. I had met him coming out of my humble place of business. One glimpse into those brooding eyes was not a thing to soon forget, and I recalled pausing to watch his stiff legged progress down the street and around the corner. There was now a pause while I watched leaves scuttling along the oiled walk in the growling wind. And then a sound like a sigh came from my companion. It seemed to me that the wind and the sea spoke loudly. Of a sudden, as though approaching some dire climax. The sea wind chilled me as it had not before. I wanted to leave, dare I tell you? Dare. His white face turned upward. It was as though questioned some spirit in the winds. I was silent, curious, yet fearful of what it might be he might not be allowed to tell me. The winds were portentously still. Were you ever told as a child that you must not attempt to count the stars in the sky at night? That if you did you might lose your mind? Why, yes, I believe I heard that old superstition. Very reasonable, I believe, based on the assumption that the task would be too great for one brain. I suppose it never occurred to you, he interrupted, that this superstition might hold even more truth than that truth, as malignant as it is vast? Perhaps the cosmos holds secrets beyond comprehension of man. And what is your assurance that these secrets are beneficent and kind? Is nature rather not terrible than kind? In the stars are patterns, designs which, if read, might lure the intrepid miserable one who reads them out of earth and beyond beyond to immeasurable evil. Do you understand what I am saying? His voice quivered metallically, was vibrant with emotion. I tried to smile but managed only a sickly grin. I understand you, sir, but I am not in the habit of accepting nebulous theories such as that without any shred of evidence. There is, sad to say, only too much evidence. But do you believe that men have lost their minds from incessant study of the stars? Perhaps, somehow I don't know, I returned. But in the south of this state, in one of the country's leading observatories, I have a friend who is famous as an astronomer. He is as sane as you or I, if not saner. I tacked the last sentence on with significant emphasis. The fellow was muttering something into his muffler, and I fancied I caught the words danger and fools. We were silent again. Low dark clouds fled over the roaring sea and the gloom intensified. Presently, in his clipped speech the stranger said, do you believe that life exists on other planets, other stars? Have you ever wondered what kind of life might inhabit the other stars in the solar system and those beyond it. His eyes were near mine as he spoke, and they bewitched me. There was something in them, something intangible and awful. I sensed that he was questioning me idly, as an outlander might be questioned about things with which the asker is familiar. As I might ask a New Yorker, what do you think of the Golden Gate Bridge? I wouldn't attempt to guess, to describe, for instance, a Martian man, I said. Yet I read with interest various guesses by writers of fiction. I was striving to maintain a mood of lightness and ease, but inwardly I felt a bitter cold, as one on the rim of a nightmare. I suddenly realized with childish fear that night was falling. Writers of fiction and what if they were to guess too well? What then? Is it safe for them to have full reign over their imaginations, like the stargazers? I said nothing, but smiled. Perhaps, man, there have been those whose minds were acute beyond most earthly minds, those who have guessed too closely to truth. Perhaps those who are beyond are not yet ready to make themselves known to earthlings. And maybe they are annoyed with the puny publicity they receive from imaginative writers. Ask yourself, what is imagination? Are Earth minds capable of conceiving that which is not and has never been? Or is this imagination merely a deeper insight into worlds you know not of, worlds glimpsed dimly in the throes of dream? And whence come these dreams? Tell me, have you ever awakened from a dream with a sinister feeling that all was not well inside your mind? That while you, the real you, were away in limbo, someone, some thing, was probing in your mind, invading it and reading it? Might not they leave behind them in departure shadowy trailings of their own minds? Now I was indeed speechless, for a strange nothing had started my neck hairs to prickling. Authors who might have guessed too well two, no, three writers whose stories had hinted at inconceivable yet inevitable dooms. Riders I had known had recently died by accident. What of old legends of the serpent who shall one day devour the sun? That legend dates back to Moo and Atlantis. Who man was and is Satan, Christ, and Jehovah, benevolent and all saving, were but a monstrous jest fostered by they to keep man blindly content and keep him divided among himself, so that he strove not to unravel the stars. Man, in my foolish youth I study by candle flame secrets that would scorch your very soul of women who with their own bare hands have strangled the children they bore so that the world might not know disease and sickness at which physicians Throw up their hands in helpless bafflement when strong men tear at their limbs and heads and agony, seeking to drive forth alien forces that have netted themselves into their bodies. I need scarcely recount them all, each with its own abominable significance. It is them who are eternal and nameless, who send their scouts down to test Earthman. Don't you realize that they have watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble and finally walk? And that they are waiting, fighting their time? I shivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then, bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly, how do you know this? Are you one of them? He shook his head violently. No, no. I made has to go, feeling an aching horror within me. Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tell you all. I will not describe them, and I will not essay that which, when, upon first seeing you here by the sea, I first intended. I listened, not daring to look at him as in the grip of demonic dream. My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I have been able to write with them until now. So you see that I am everywhere, a worldless alien. Sometimes the secret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I must feel the presence of some one human near me. A else I shall attempt to commit suicide and again fail. It is without end, my horror. Have pity on me, man of Earth, as I have had pity on you. It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleading desperation into his staring eyes. Why? Have you told me what? My voice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered. He understood, shrieked one word, pity, into my insensible ear, and was gone. That was three nights ago. And each night since has been held. I cannot remember how long. It was after the stranger left that I found myself able to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. And I cannot, will not reveal to you all that I heard. I thought myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronounced me that I had been strained mentally. I am competent, but I wonder if he is wrong. I view the sylvan stars to night with loathing. He sought to master their inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined he dreamed, and he fed his sleep with potions so that he might learn where his mind might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered from space into his resting body shell. I am no scientist, no biochemist, so I learned little of his methods, only that he did succeed in removing his mind from Earth and soaring to some remote world over and beyond this universe where they dwell. And they knew him to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld, so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And they cured him and sent him back to Earth. They are waiting. He shrieked in his grating skeleton of a voice. They are contemptuous of man and his feeble colonies, but they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot child, he may do them harm. But before this time, when man has progressed into a ripeness, they will descend. Then they will come in hordes to exploit the world as they did before of his return and his assuming the role of a man. The alien spoke evasively. It was to be assured that this talk of his was not some repulsive caprice, to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him and beheld him to my everlasting horror. I must know little in itself what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this clutching terror from my soul. Only this, that when I looked into his staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that between the muffling of his coat and black scarf, the intruder wore a meticulously painted metal mask to hide what I must not see. End of the Intruder by Emile Petaha.
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Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson 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 Grothman did you ever wonder what might happen if mankind ever exceeded the speed of light? Here is a profound story based on that thought, a story which may well forecast one of the problems to be encountered in space travel. They had discovered a new planet, but its people did not see them until after they'd traveled on. Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson Albrecht and I went down in the shuttle ship leaving the stellatomic orbiting pole to pole 2,000 miles above Alpha Centauri's second planet. While we took an atmosphere brushing approach that wouldn't burn off the shuttle's skin, we went as swiftly as we could. A week before we had completed man's first trip through hyperspace. We were now making the first landing on an inhabited planet of another sun. All the preliminary investigations had been done via electron spectroscopes and electro telescopes from the stellatomic. We knew that the atmosphere was breathable and were reasonably certain that the peoples of the world into whose atmosphere we were dropping were at peace. We went unarmed, just two of us. It might not be wise to go in force. We were silent, and I know that Harry Albrecht was as perplexed as I was over the fact that our alway receivers failed to pick up any signs of radio communication whatever. We had assumed that we would pick up signals of some type as soon as we had passed down through the unfamiliar planet's ionosphere. The scattered arrangements of towering cities appeared to call for radio communications, the hundreds of atmosphere ships flashing along as the system of airways between the cities seemed to indicate the existence of electronic navigational and landing aids. But perhaps the signals were all tight beamed. We would know when we came lower. We dropped down into the airways level, and still our receivers failed to pick up a signal of any sort, not even a whisper of static. And strangely, our radarscope failed to record even a blip from their atmosphere ships. I guess it's our equipment, Harry, I said. It just doesn't seem to function in this atmosphere. We'll have to put Edwards to work on it when we go back upstairs. We spotted an airport on the outskirts of a large city. The runways were laid out with the precision of Earth's finest. We put our ship's nose eastward on a Runway and took it down fast through the lull in the atmosphere ship traffic. As we went down I saw tiny buildings spotted on the field, which surely housed electronic equipment, but our receivers remained silent. I taxied the shuttle up to the unloading ramp before the airport's terminal building, and I killed the drive. Harry, I said, if it weren't that their ships were so outlandishly stubby and their buildings so outflung, we might well be on Earth. Agreed, Captain. Strange, though, that they're not mobbing us. They couldn't take this Delta Wing job for one of their ships. It was strange. I looked up at the observation ramp's occupants, people who, except for their bizarre dress, might well be on Earth, and saw no curiosity in the eyes that sometimes swept across our position. Be that as it may, Harry, we certainly should cause a stir with these pressure suits. Let's go. We walked up to a dour looking individual at a counter on the ramp's end. Clearing my throat, I said rather inanely, hello, but what does one say to an extra solarian? I realized that my voice seemed thunderous and that the only other sounds came from a distance. The city's noise, the atmosphere ship engines on the horizon. The Centaurians ignored us. I looked at the atmosphere ships in the clear blue sky, at the Centaurians on the ramp, who appeared to be conversing. There was no sound from those planes. No sound from the people. Impossible, harry said. The atmosphere is nearly Earth normal. It should be. Well, dammit, it is as sound conductive. We're talking, aren't we? I looked at the Centaurians again. They were looking excitedly westward. Some turned to companions, mouths open and closed to form words we could not hear. Wide eyes lowered, following something I could not see. Sick inside, I turned to Albrecht and read confirmation in his drawn, blanched face. Captain, he said, I suspected that we might find something like this when we first came out of hyperspace and the big sleep. The recorder showed that we'd exceeded light speed in normal space time just after the transition. Einstein theorized that time would not pass as swiftly for those approaching light speed. We could safely exceed that speed in hyperspace, but should never have done so in normal space time. Beyond light speed, time must conversely accelerate. These people haven't seen us yet. They certainly just observed our landing. As we suspected, they probably do have speech and radio, but we can't pick up either. We're seconds ahead of them in time, and we can't pick up from the past sounds of nearby origin or nearby signals radiated at light speed. They'll see and hear us soon, but we'll never receive an answer from them. Our questions will come to them in their future, and we can never pick up answers from their past. Let's go, Harry, I said quickly. Where? He asked. Where can we go? That will be an improvement over this. He was resigned. Back into space, I said. Back to circle this system at near light speed. The computer should be able to determine how long and how slow we'll have to fly to cancel this out. If not, we are truly and forever lost. End of Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson. The Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison 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 Grothman it might seem a little careless to lose track of something as big as a battleship, but interstellar space is on a different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship in the wrong hands can be most dangerous. The Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison when it comes to picking locks and cracking safes, I admit to no master. The door to Inskip's private quarters had an old fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was, though, Inskip still heard me. The light came on and there he was, sitting up in bed, pointing a.75 caliber recoilless at my sternum. You should have more brains than that Degrees, he snarled, creeping into my room at night. You could have been shot. No, I couldn't, I told him as he stowed the cannon back under his pillow. A man with a curiosity bump as big as yours will always talk first and and shoot later. And besides, none of this pussyfooting around in the dark would be necessary if your screen was open and I could have got a call through. Inskip yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser unit above the bed. Just because I'm the head of Special Corps doesn't mean that I am the Special Corps, he said moistly while he drained the glass. I have to sleep sometimes. My screen is open only for emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held. Meaning I am in the hand holding category? I asked with as much sweetness as I could. Put yourself in any category you please, he grumbled as he slumped down in the bed. And also, put yourself out into the hall and see me tomorrow during working hours. He was at my mercy return. Really, he wanted to sleep so much, and he was going to be wide awake so very soon. Do you know what this is? I asked him, poking a large glossy pick under his long broken nose. One eye opened slowly. It's a big warship of some kind. Looks like Empire lines. Now for the last time, go away, he said. A very good guess for this late at night, I told him cheerily. It is a late Empire battleship of the Warlord class, undoubtedly one of the most truly efficient engines of destruction ever manufactured. Over half a mile of defensive screens and armaments that would probably turn any fleet existing today into fine radioactive dust. Except for the fact that the last one was broken up for scrap over a thousand years ago, he mumbled. I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear so there would be no chance of misunderstanding, speaking softly but clearly. True, true, I said. But wouldn't you be just a little bit interested if I was to tell you that one is being built today? Oh, it was beautiful to watch. The covers went one way and Inskip went the other in a single unfolding. In a concerted motion he left the horizontal and recumbent and stood tensely vertical against the wall, examining the pick of the battleship under the light. He apparently did not believe in pajama bottoms, and it hurt me to see the goosebumps rising on those thin shanks. But if the legs were thin, the voice was more than full enough to make up for the difference. The talk, blast you, Degrees. Talk. He roared. What is this nonsense about a battleship? Who's building it? I had my nail file out and was touching up a cuticle, holding it out for inspection before I said anything. From the corner of my eye I could see him getting purple about the face, but he was very quiet. I savored my small moment of power. Put Degrees in charge of the record room for a while, you said. That way he can learn the ropes. Burrowing around in century old dusty files will be just the thing for a free spirit like Slippery Jim. Degrees Teach him discipline. Show him what the core stands for. At the same time it will get the records in shape. They have been needing reorganization for quite a while. Inskip opened his mouth, made a choking noise, then closed it. He undoubtedly realized that any interruption would only lengthen my explanation, not shorten it. I smiled and nodded at his decision then. So you thought you had me out of the way, breaking my spirit under the guise of giving me a little background in the Corps activities. In this sense, your plan failed. Something else happened instead. I nosed through the files and found them most interesting, particularly the C and M setup, the Categorizer and Memory, that building full of machinery that takes in and digests news and reports on all the planets in the galaxy, indexes it to every category it can possibly relate, then files it. Great machine to work with. I had it dig out spaceship info for me, something I have always been interested in. You should be, inskipp interrupted rudely. You've stolen enough of em in your time. I gave him a hurt look and went on slowly. I won't bore you with all the details, since you seem impatient, but inevitably I turned up this plan. He had it out of my fingers before it cleared my wallet. What are you getting at? He he mumbled as he ran his eyes over the blueprints. This is an ordinary heavy cargo and passenger job. It's no more of a warlord battleship than I am. It's hard to curl your lips with contempt and talk at the same time. But I succeeded. Of course you don't expect them to file warship plans with the League registry, do you? But as I said, I know more than a little bit about ships. It seemed to me that this thing was just too big for the use intended enough. Old ships are fuel wasters. You don't have to build new ones to do that. This started me thinking and I punched up a complete list of ships that size that had been constructed in the past. You can imagine my surprise when after three minutes of groaning, the C M only produced six. One was built for a self sustaining colony attempt at the second galaxy. For all we know she is still on the way. The other five are all class D colonizers built during the expansion when large populations were moved too big to be practical now. I was still teased as I had no idea what a ship this large could be used for. So I removed the time interlocked on the C and M and let it pick around through the entire history of space to see if it could find a comparison. It sure did. Right at the golden age of Empire expansion and the giant warlord battleships. The machine even found a blueprint for me. Inskip grabbed it again and began comparing the two prints. I leaned over his shoulder and pointed out the interesting parts. Notice if the engine room specs were changed slightly to include this cargo hold. There is plenty of room for the brutes needed. This superstructure obviously just tacked into the plans gets thrown away and the turrets take its place. The hulls are identical. A change here, a shift there and the stodgy freighter becomes a fast battle wagon. These changes could be made during construction, then the plans filed. By the time anyone in the league found out what was being built, the ship would be finished and launched. Of course this could all be coincidence. The plans of a newly built ship agreeing to six places with those of a ship built a thousand years ago. But if you think so, I will give you 100 to 1 odds you are wrong. Any size bet you name. I wasn't winning any sucker bets that night. Inskip had led just as crooked a youth as I had and needed no help in smelling a fishy deal. While he pulled on his clothes, he shot questions at me and the name of a peace loving planet that is building this bad memory from the past. Second planet of a Besar in the Corona Borealis. No other colonized planets in the system. Never heard of it, Inskip said as we took the private drop chute to his office. Which may be a good or a bad sign. Wouldn't be the first time trouble came from some out of the way spot I never even knew existed. With the automatic disregard for others of the truly dedicated. He pressed the scramble button on his desk very Quickly, sleepy eyed clerks and assistants were bringing files and records. We went through them together. Modesty prevented me from speaking first, but I had a very short wait before Inskip reached the same conclusion I had. He hurled a folder the length of the room and scowled out at the harsh dawn light. The more I look at this, he said, the fishier it gets. This planet seems to have no possible motive or use for a battleship, but they are building one, that I will swear on a stack of 1,000 credit notes as high as this building. Yet what will they do with it when they have it built? They have an expanding culture, no unemployment, a surplus of heavy metals, and ready markets for all they produce. No hereditary enemies, feuds, or the like. If it wasn't for this battleship thing, I would call them the Ideal League Planet. I have to know more about them. I've already called the spaceport in your name, of course, I told him. Ordered a fast courier ship. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spin Quests and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get 30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms p-I n q u-e
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Narrator/Reader
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to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I'll leave within the hour. Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself? Degrees, he said, voice chill as an ice cap. I still give the orders and I'll tell you when you're ready for an independent command. I was sweetness and light because a lot depended on his decision. Just trying to help Chief get things ready in case you wanted more info. And this isn't really an operation, just a reconnaissance. I can do that as well as any of the experienced operators, and it might give me the experience I need so that some day I too will be qualified to join the ranks. All right, he said. Stop shoveling it on while I can still breathe. Get out of here. Find out what is going on, then get back. Nothing else. And that's an order. By the way he said it, I knew he thought there was little chance of its happening that way. Since my forced induction into the Corps six months earlier, I had been stuck on this super secret planetoid that was its headquarters and main base. I had very little sitting down patience anyway, and it had long since been exhausted. It had been interesting at first, particularly since up until the time I was drafted into the Special Corps, I wasn't even certain it really existed. It was too much like a con man's nightmare to be real. A secret worry After a few happy years of successful crime, you begin to wonder how long it will last. Planetary police are all pushovers, and you start to feel you can go on forever if they're your only competition. What about the League, though? Don't they take any interest in crime? Just about that time you hear your first rumor of the Special Corps. And it fits the Bad Dreams. A shadowy, powerful group that slips silently between the stars, ready to bring the interstellar lawbreaker low. It sounds like TV drama stuff. I had been quite surprised to find they really existed. I was even more surprised when I joined them. Of course, there was a little pressure at the time. I had the alternative choice of instant death. But I still think it was a wise move. Under the motto Set a thief to Catch one, the Corps supposedly made good use of men like myself to get rid of the most anti social types that infest the universe. This was all still hearsay to me. I had been pulled into headquarters and given routine administrative work for training. Six months of this had made me slightly gaga, and I wanted out. Since no one seemed to be in a hurry to give me an assignment, I found one for myself. I had no idea what would come of it, but I also had no intention of returning until the job was done. A quick stop at Supply and Records section gave me everything I needed. The sun was barely clear of the horizon when the silver needle of my ship lifted in the gray field, then blasted into space. The trip only took a few days, more than enough time to memorize everything I needed to know about Citta Nuevo. And the more I knew, the less I could understand their need for a battleship. It didn't fit. Citta Nuevo was a secondary settlement out of the Cellini system, and I had run into these settlements before. They were all united in a loose alliance and bickering a lot among themselves, but never came to blows. If anything, they shared a universal abhorrence of war, yet they were secretly building a battleship. Since I was only chasing my tail with this line of thought, I put it out of my mind and worked on some tri D chess problems. This filled the time until Cito Nuevo blinked into the bow screen. One of my most effective mottos has always been secrecy can be an obvisity, what the magicians call misdirection. Let people very obviously see what you want them to see. Then they'll never notice what is hidden. This is why I landed at midday on the largest field on the planet. After a very showy approach, I was already dressed for my role and out of the ship before the landing braces stopped vibrating. Buckling a fur cape around my shoulders with a platinum clasp, I stamped down the Runway. The sturdy little M3 robot rumbled after me with my bags, heading directly toward the main gate. I ignored the scurry of activity around the customs building. Only when a uniformed under official of some kind ran over to me did I give the field any attention. Before he could talk, I did. Foot in the door and stay on top. Beautiful planet you have here. Delightful climate, ideal spot for a country home, friendly people, always willing to help a stranger and all that. I imagine that's what I like. Makes me feel grateful. Very pleased to meet you. I am Grand Duke sant'. Angelo. I took his hand enthusiastically at this point and let the 100 pound note slip into his palm. Now I added, I wonder if you could ask the customs agents to look at my bags here. Don't want to waste time, do we? The ship is open and they can check it whenever they please. My manner, clothing, jewelry, the easy way I pass money around, and the luxurious sheen of my bags could only mean one thing. There was little that was worth smuggling into or out of Citta Nuevo, certainly nothing a rich man would be interested in. The official murmured something with a smile, spoke a few words into his phone, and the job was done. A small wave of customs men hung stickers on my luggage, peeking into one or two for conformity's sake, and waved me through. I shook hands all around a rustling handclasp, of course, and then was on my way. A cab was summoned, a hotel suggested. I nodded agreement and settled back while the robot loaded the bags about me. The ship was completely clean. Everything I might need for the job was in my luggage, some of it quite lethal and explosive and very embarrassing if it was discovered in my bags. In the safety of my hotel suite, I made a change of clothes and personality after the robot had checked the room for bugs and very nice gadgets too, these core robots. It looked and acted like a moron M3 all the time. It was anything but. The brain was as good as any other robot brain I have ever known, plus the fact that the chunky body was crammed with devices and machines of varying use. It chugged slowly around the room, moving my bags and laying out my kit, and all the time following a careful route that covered every inch of the suite. When it finished. It stopped and called the all clear. All rooms checked, results negative except for one optic bug in the wall. Should you be pointing like that? I asked the robot. Might make some people suspicious, you know. Impossible, the robot said with mechanical surety. I brushed against it and it is now unserviceable. With this assurance, I pulled off my flashy clothes and slipped into the midnight black dress uniform of an admiral in the League Grand Fleet. It came complete with decorations, gold bullion, and all the necessary documents. I thought it a little showy myself, but it was just the thing to make the right impression on Citta Nuevo. Like many other planets, this one was uniform. Conscious delivery boys, street cleaners, clerks, all had to have characteristic uniforms, much prestige attached to them, and my black dress outfit should rate as high as any uniform in the galaxy. A long cloak would conceal the uniform while I left the hotel, but the gold encrusted helmet and a briefcase full of papers were a problem. I had never explored all the possibilities of a pseudo M3 robot. Perhaps it could be of help. You there, short and chunky, I called. Do you have any concealed compartments or drawers built into your steel hide? If so, let's see. For a second I thought the robot had exploded. The thing had more drawers in it than a battery of cash registers. Big, small, flat, thin, they shot out on all sides. One held a gun and two more were stuffed with grenades. The rest were empty. I put the hat in one, the briefcase in another, and snapped my fingers. The drawers slid shut and its metal hide was as smooth as ever. I pulled on a fancy sports cap, buckled the cape up tight, and was ready to go. The luggage was all booby trapped and could defend itself. Guns, gas, poison needles, the usual sort of thing. In the last resort, it would blow itself up. The M3 went down by the freight elevator. I used the back stairs and we met in the street. Since it was still daylight, I didn't take a heli but rented a ground car instead. We had a leisurely drive out into the country and reach President Ferraro's house after dark, as befitted the top official of a rich planet. The place was a mansion, but the security precautions were ludicrous, to say the least. I took myself and the 350 kilo robot through the guards and alarms without causing the slightest stir. President Ferraro, a bachelor, was eating his dinner. This gave me enough undisturbed time to search his study. There was absolutely nothing. Nothing to do with wars or battleships, that is. If I had been interested in blackmail, I had enough evidence in my hands to support me for life. I was looking for something bigger than political corruption, however, when Ferraro rolled into his study after dinner, the room was dark. I heard him murmur something about the servants and fumble for the switch before he found it. The robot closed the door and turned on the lights. I sat behind his desk, all his personal papers before me weighed down with a pistol and as fierce a scowl as I could raise smeared across my face. Before he got over the shock, I snapped an order at him. Come over here and sit down quick. The robot hustled him across the room at the same time, so he had no choice except to obey. When he saw the papers on his desk, his eyes bulged and he just gurgled a little. Before he could recover, I threw a thick folder in front of him. I am Admiral Thar, League Grand Fleet. These are my credentials. You had better check them, since they were as good as any real admiral's. I didn't worry in the slightest. Ferraro went through them as carefully as he could in his rattled state, even checking the seals under uv. It gave him time to regain a bit of control, and he used it to bluster. What do you mean by entering my private quarters and burgling? You're in very bad trouble, I said in as gloomy a voice as I could muster. Ferraro's tanned face went dirty gray at my words. I pressed the advantage. I am arresting you for conspiracy, extortion, theft, and whatever other charges develop after a careful review of these documents. Seize him. This last order was directed at the robot, who was well briefed in its role. It rumbled forward and locked its hands around Ferraro's wrist, handcuff style. He barely noticed. I can explain, he said desperately. Everything can be explained. There is no need to make such charges. I don't know what papers you have there, so I won't attempt to say. They are all forgeries. I have many enemies, you know. If the League knew the difficulties faced on a backward planet like this, that will be entirely enough, I snapped, cutting him off with a wave of my hand. All those questions will be answered by a court at at the proper time. There is only one question I want an answer to now. Why are you building that battleship? The man was a great actor. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. He sank back into the chair as if he had been tapped lightly with a hammer. When he managed to speak, the words were completely unnecessary. He had already registered every evidence of injured innocence. What battleship? He gasped. The Warlord Class Battleship that is being built at the Center Intola shipyards disguised behind these blueprints. I threw them across the desk to him and pointed to one corner. These are your initials here, authorizing construction. Ferraro still had the baffled act going as he fumbled with the papers, examined the initials and such. I gave him plenty of time. He finally put them down, shaking his head. I know nothing about any battleship. These are plans for a new cargo liner. Those are my initials. I recall putting them there. I phrased my question carefully as I had him right where I wanted him. Now you deny any knowledge of the warlord battleship that is being built from these modified plans. These are the plans for an ordinary passenger freighter. That's all I know. His words had the simple innocence of a young child. Was he ever caught? I sat back with a relaxed sigh and lit a cigar. Wouldn't you be interested in knowing something about the robot who is holding you? I said. He looked down as if aware for the first time that the robot had been holding him by the wrists during the interview. That is no ordinary robot. It has a number of interesting devices built into its fingertips. Thermocouples, galvanometers, things like that. While you were talking, it registered your skin temperature, blood pressure, amount of perspiration and such. In other words, it is an efficient and fast working lie detector. We will now hear all about your lies. Ferraro pulled away from the robot's hands as if it had been a poisonous snake. I blew a relaxed smoke ring. Report, I said to the robot. Has this man told any lies? Many, the Robot said. Exactly 74% of all statements he made were fake. Very good. I nodded, throwing the last lock on my trap. That means he knows all about this battleship. This subject has no knowledge of the battleship, the robot said coldly. All of his statements concerning the construction of this ship were true. Now it was my turn for the gaping and eye popping act while Ferraro pulled himself together. He had no idea I wasn't interested in his other hanky panky, but could tell that I had had a low blow. It took an effort, but I managed to get my mind back into gear and considered the evidence. If President Ferraro didn't know about the battleship, he must have been taken in by a cover up job. But if he wasn't responsible, who was? Some militaristic clique that meant to overthrow him and take power. I didn't know enough about this planet, so I enlisted Ferraro on my side. This was easy, even without the threat of exposure of the Documents I had found in his files. Using their disclosure as a prod, I could have made him jump through hoops. It wasn't necessary. As soon as I showed him the different blueprints and explained the possibilities, he understood. If anything, he was more eager than I was to find out who was using his administration as a cat's paw. By silent agreement, the documents were forgotten. We agreed that the next logical step would be the Centranola space yards. He had some idea of sniffing around quietly first, trying to get a line on his political opponents. I gave him to understand that the League, the League Navy in particular, wanted to stop the construction of the battleship. After that, he could play his politics. With this point understood, he called his car and squadrons of guards and we made a parade to the shipyards. It was a four hour drive and we made plans on the way down. The spaceyard manager's name was Raka, and he was happily asleep when we arrived. But not for long. The parade of uniforms and guns in the middle of the night had him frightened into a state where he could hardly walk. I imagine he was as full of petty larcening as Ferraro. No innocent man could have looked so terror stricken. Taking advantage of the situation, I latched my motorized lie detector onto him and began snapping the questions. Even before I had all the answers, I began to get the drift of things. They were a little frightening, too. The manager of the spaceyard that was building the ship had no idea of its true nature. Anyone with less self esteem than myself or who had led a more honest early life might have doubted his own reasoning. At that moment, I didn't. The ship on the ways still resembled a warship to six places. And knowing human nature the way I do that was too much of a coincidence to expect. Occam's razor always points the way. If there are two choices to take, take the simpler. In this case, I chose the natural acquisitive instincts of man as opposed to blind chance and accident. Nevertheless, I put the theory to the test. Looking over the original blueprints again, the big superstructure hit my eye. In order to turn the ship into a warship, it would have to be one of the first things to go. Raca. I barked in what I hoped was authentic old space dog manner. Look at these plans at this space space going front porch here. Is it still being built onto the ship? He shook his head at once and said no. The plans were changed. We had to fit in some kind of new meteor repelling gear to operate in the planetary debris belt. I flipped through my case and drew out a plan. Does your new gear look anything like this? I asked, throwing it across the table at him. He rubbed his jaw while he looked at it. Well, he said hesitantly, I don't want to say for certain. After all, these details aren't in my department. I'm just responsible for final assembly, not unit work. But this surely looks like the thing they installed. Big thing, lots of power leads. It was a battleship all right. No doubt of that now. I was mentally reaching around to pat myself on the back when the meaning of his words sank in. Installed. I shouted. Did you say installed? Raka collapsed away from my roar and gnawed his nails. Yes, he said. Not too long ago. I remember there was some trouble. And what else? I interrupted him. Cold moisture was beginning to climb collect along my spine now. The drives controls, are they in two? Why yes, he said. How did you know? The normal scheduling was changed around, causing a great deal of unnecessary trouble. The cold sweat was now a running river of fear. I was beginning to have the feeling that I had been missing the boat all along the line. The original estimated date of completion was nearly a year away, but there was no real reason why it couldn't have changed too. Cars. Guns. I bellowed to the spaceyard. If that ship is anywhere near completion, we are in big, big trouble. All the board guards had a great time with the sirens, lights, accelerators on the floor, that sort of thing. We blasted a screaming hole through the night, right to the spaceyard and through the gate. It didn't make any difference. We were still too late. A uniformed watchman frantically waved to us and the whole convoy jerked to a stop. The ship was gone. Raca couldn't believe it. Neither could the President. They wandered up and down the empty ways where it had been built. I was crunched down in the back of the car, chewing my cigar to pieces and cursing myself for being a fool. I had missed the obvious fact, being carried away by the thought of a planetary government building a warship. The government was involved for sure, but only as a pawn. No little planet bound political mind could have dreamed up as big a scheme as this. I smelled a rat. A stainless steel one, someone who operated the way I had done before my conversion. Now that the rodent was well out of the bag, I knew just where to look and had a pretty good idea what I would find. Raca, the space yard manager, had staggered back and was pulling at his hair, cursing and crying at the same time. President Ferraro had his gun out and was staring at it grimly. It was hard to tell if he was thinking of murder or suicide. I didn't care which. All he had to worry about was the next election, when the voters and the political competition would carve him up for losing the ship. My troubles were a little bigger. I had to find the battleship before it blasted its way across the galaxy. Raka. I shouted. Get into the car. I want to see your records. All your records, and I want to see them right now. He climbed wearily in and had directed the driver before he fully realized what was happening. Blinking at the sickly light of dawn brought him slowly back to reality. But, Admiral, the hour Everyone will be asleep. I just growled, but it was enough. Raka cut the idea from my expression and grabbed the car phone. The office doors were open when we got there. Normally I cursed the paper tangles of bureaucracy, but this was one time when I blessed them all. These people had it down to a fine science. Not a rivet fell but that its fall was noted in quadruplic and later followed up by a rivet wastage query. The facts I needed were all neatly tucked away in their paper catacombs. All I had to do was sniff them out. I didn't try to look for first causes. This would have taken too long. Instead, I concentrated my attention on the recent modifications, like the gun turret that would quickly give me a trail to the guilty parties. Once the clerks understood what I had in mind, they hurled themselves into their work, urged on by the fires of patriotism and the burning voices of their superiors. All I had to do was suggest a line of search, and the relevant documents would begin to appear at once. Bit by bit, a pattern started to emerge, a delicate webwork of forgery, bribery, chicanery, and falsehood. It could only have been conceived by a mind as as brilliantly crooked as my own. I chewed my lip with jealousy. Like all great ideas, this one was basically simple. A party, or parties unknown, had neatly warped the ship construction program to their own ends. Undoubtedly, they had started the program for a giant transport that would have been checked later. And once the program was underway, it had been guided with the skill that bordered on genius. Orders were originated in many places, passed on, changed and shuffled. I painfully traced each one to its source. Many times the source was a forgery. Some changes seemed to be unexplainable until I noticed the officers in question had a temporary secretary, while their normal assistants were ill. All the girls had food poisoning. A regular epidemic, it seemed. Each of them in turn had been replaced by the same girl. She stayed just long enough in each position to see that the battleship plan moved forward one more notch. The girl was obviously the assistant to the master mind who originated the scheme. He sat in the center of the plane plot like a spider on its web, pulling the strings that set things into motion. My first thought that a gang was involved proved wrong. All my secondary subjects turned out to be simple forgeries, not individuals. In a few cases where forgery wasn't adequate, my mysterious X had apparently hired himself to do the job. X himself had the permanent job of assistant engineer, engineering designer. One by one the untangled threads ran into this office. He also had a secretary whose illness coincided with her employment in other offices. When I straightened up from my desk, the ache in my back stabbed like a hot wire. I swallowed a painkiller and looked around at my drooping, sad eyed assistants who had shared the sleepless 72 hours our task. They sat or slumped against the furniture, waiting for my conclusion. Even President Ferraro was there, his hair looking scraggly where he had pulled it out in handfuls. You found them the criminal ring? He asked, his fingers groping over his scalp for a fresh hold. I have found them, yes, I said hoarsely. But not a criminal ring. An inspired master criminal who apparently has more executive ability in one earlobe than all you bribe blooded bureaucrats and his female assistant. They pulled the entire job by themselves. His name, or undoubtedly pseudonym, is Pepe Nero. The girl is called Angelina. Arrest him at once. Guards. Guards. Ferraro's voice died away as he ran out of the room. I talked to his vanishing back. That is just what we intend to do, but it's a little difficult at the moment since they are the ones who not only built a battleship but undoubtedly stole it as well. It was fully automated, so no crew is necessary. What do you plan to do? One of the clerks asked. I shall do nothing, I told him with the snap precision of an old Spanish the League fleet is already closing in on the renegades, and you will be informed of the capture. Thank you for your assistance. I threw them as snappy a salute as I could muster and they filed out, staring gloomily at their backs. I envied for one moment their simple faith in the League Navy, when in reality the vengeful fleet was just as imaginary as my admiral's rating. This was still a job for the Corps. Inskip would have to be given the latest information at once. I sent him a psygram about the theft, and there was no answer as yet. Maybe the identity of the thieves would stir Some response out of him. My message was in code, but it could quickly be broken if someone wanted to try hard enough. I took it to the message center myself. The Psiman was in his transparent cubicle and I locked myself in with him. His eyes were unfocused as he spoke softly into a mic, pulling in a message from somewhere across the galaxy Outside. The rushing transcribers copied, coded and filed the messages, but no sound penetrated the insulated wall. I waited until his attention clicked back into the room and handed him the sheets of paper. League Central 14 rush, I told him. He raised his eyebrows but didn't ask any questions. Establishing contact only took a few seconds as they had an entire battery of Psiman for their communications. He read the code words carefully, shaping them with his mouth but not speaking aloud, the power of his thoughts carrying across the light years of distance. As soon as he was finished, I took back the sheet, tore it up and pocketed the pieces. I had my answer back quickly enough. Inskip must have been hovering around waiting for my message. The mic was turned off to the transcribers outside and I took the code groups down in shorthand myself. Xybb, dfil, fdno what's going on everyone? It's bluff here. And you know what's more American than America's 240 50th birthday? Supporting American owned companies like Spin Quest, America's number one social casino with over a thousand games like Live Dealer, Blackjack and Craps. They're offering new users a 30 coin package for just $10. Go to spinquest.com and sign up today. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spin quest.com for more details and if you don't, don't come back. The message broke into the clear at the end and the Psiman smiled as he spoke the words. I broke the point off my stylus and growled at him not to repeat any of this message as it was classified and I would personally see him shot if he did. That got rid of the smile, but it didn't make me feel any better. The decoded message turned out not not to be as bad as I had imagined. Until further notice, I was in charge of tracking and capturing the stolen battleship. I could call on the League for any aid I needed. I would keep my identity as an Admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my happiness from being complete. I had been handed my long awaited assignment but translated into simple terms. My orders were to get the battleship or it would be my neck. Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place. This is a heartless world we live in. This moment of self pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well. Asleep and waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks, such as ordering a naval cruiser for my own use and digging for more information on the thieves. But these really were secondary to my main purpose, which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could go that would be better situated for the chase than Sita Nuevo. The missing ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute, the sphere of probable locations grew larger by a power of the squared cube. I kept the on watch crew of the cruiser on duty stations and confined the rest within 100 yards radius of the ship. There was little more information on Pepe and Angela. They had covered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the fact they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off world origin. There was a dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be a happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager findings, controlling my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busy, pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The navigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the positions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the possible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and apparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigation proved them all to have natural causes. I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger area were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a deep sleep. Turning on the light and handing me a slip of paper, I blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the action station alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their business. When the sirens screamed, the crews secured ship and blasted off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs unsquashed back into focus, I read it through then once more carefully. From the beginning, it looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses to the tragedy, but a number of monitoring stations had picked up the discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had led investigators to the spot where they found the freighter Auget's dream with a hull punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The freighter's cargo of Plutonium was gone. I read Pepe in every line of the message. Since he was flying an undermanned battleship, he had to use it in the most efficient way possible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, the element of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to the unsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns his battleship packed. All 18 men aboard had been killed instantly. The thieves were now murderers. I was under pressure now to act and under a great pressure not to make any mistakes. Roly Poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthless killer. He knew what he wanted, then reached out and took it, destroying anyone who stood in his way. More people would die before this was over. It was up to me to make the number as small as possible. Ideally, I should have rushed out the fleet with guns blazing and dragged him to justice. Very nice, and I wish it could be done that way. Except where was he? A battleship might be gigantic on some terms of reference, but in the immensity of the galaxy it is microscopically infinitesimal. As long as it stayed out of the regular lanes of commerce and clear of the detector stations and planets, it would never be found. Then how could I find it, and having found it, catch it when the infernal thing was more than a match for any ship it might meet? That was my problem. It had kept me awake nights and talking to myself days. Since there was no easy answer, I had to construct a solution slowly and carefully. Since I couldn't be sure where Pepy was going to be next, I had to make him go where I wanted him to. There were some things in my favor. The most important was the fact that I had forced him to make his play before he was absolutely ready. It wasn't chance that he had left the same day I arrived on Sita Nuevo. Any plan as elaborate as his certainly included warning of approaching danger. The drive on the battleship, as well as controls and primary armament had been installed weeks before I showed up. Much of the subsidiary work remained to be done when the ship had left. One witness of the theft had graphically described the power lines and cables dangling from the ship's locks when she lifted. My arrival had forced Pepy off balance. Now I had to keep pushing until he fell. This meant I had to think as he did fall into his plan. Think ahead, then trap him. Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory only. I felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice. A drink helped, as did a cigar. Puffing on it, staring at the Smooth bulkhead relaxed me a bit. After all, there aren't many things you can do with a battleship. You can't run a big khan, blow safes or make Burmadex with is hell on jets for space piracy, but that's about all. Great, great. But why a battleship? I was talking to myself. Normally a bad sign, but right now I didn't care. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going along fine until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square in the eye. Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a ship that two people could just barely manage with a tenth of the effort? Pepy would have had a cruiser that would have suited his purpose just as well. Just as good for space piracy, that is. But not for his purposes. He had wanted a battleship and he had gotten himself a battleship. Which meant he had more in mind than simple piracy. What? It was obvious that Pepy was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shorted computer. Someday the mystery of how he had slipped through the screens of the official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn't my concern now. He still had to be caught. A plan was beginning to take shape in my head, but I didn't rush it. First I had to be sure that I knew him well. Any man that can con an entire world into building a battleship for him, then steal it from them, is not going to stop there. The ship would need a crew, a base for refueling and a mission. Fuel had been taken care of first. The gutted hull of Ogate's dream was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could be used as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peaceful times. Although I could think of a few answers to that one too. Raid the mental hospitals and jails do that often enough and you would have a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was of course too mean an ambition to ascribe to this. Boy, did he want to rule a whole planet. Or maybe an entire system or more. I shuddered a bit as the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan like this once it got rolling? During the kingly wars, any number of types with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepy had set up just this kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end since their success depended on one man rule. But the price that had to be paid first. This was the plan. And. And I felt in my bones that I was right. I might be wrong on some of the minor details, but they weren't important. I knew the general outline of the idea just as when I bumped into a mark. I knew how much he could be taken for and just how to do it. There are natural laws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I knew this was it. Get the communications officer in here at once. I. I shouted at the intercom. Also a couple of clerks with transcribers, and fast. This is a matter of life or death. This last had a hollow ring and I realized my enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar, straightened my ribbons, and squared my shoulders. By the time they knocked on the door, I was all admiral again. Acting on my orders, the ship dropped out of warp drive so our Psiman could could get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as we floated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days while half his crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insane instructions. My plan was above his understanding, which is of course why he is a captain and I'm an admiral, even a temporary one. Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere of speculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all the star systems a day's flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolen battleship. There weren't too many of these at first and the Psiman could handle them all, calling each in turn and sending by news releases to the naval public relations officers there. As the sphere kept growing, he started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had a general release prepared along with the directions for use and follow up, which he set to Central 14. The battery of Psiman there contacted the individual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list of planets. The release and follow ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it, waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. I wrote as many variations as I could so it could be slipped into as many different formats as possible in one form or another. I wanted the basic information in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside that expanding sphere. What in the devil does this nonsense mean? Captain Stig said peevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futile one and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the effect on his service record. Boredom or curiosity had driven him out, and he was reading one of my releases with horror. Billionaire to found own planet. Space yacht filled with luxuries to last a hundred years. The captain's face grew red as he flipped through the stack of notes. What connection does this tripe have to do with catching those murderers? When we were alone, he was anything but courteous to me, having assured himself by not too subtle questioning that I was a spurious admiral. There was no doubt I was still in charge, but our relationship was anything but formal. This tripe and nonsense, I told him, is the bait that will snag our fish a trap for Pepy and his partner in crime. Who is this mysterious billionaire? Me, I said. I always wanted to be rich. But this ship, a space shot. Where is it being built now? At the naval shipyard at Udradi. We're almost ready to go there now. Soon as this batch of instructions goes out. Captain Steng dropped the releases onto the table, then carefully wiped his hands off to remove any possible infection. He was trying to be fair and considerate of my views, but not succeeding in the slightest. It doesn't make any sense, he growled. How can you be sure this killer will ever read one of these things? And if he does, why should he be interested? It looks to me as if you are wasting time while he slips through your fingers. The alarm should be out and every ship notified, the Navy alerted and patrol set on all spacelanes, which he could easily avoid by going around, or better yet, not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That's not the answer, I told him. This Pepy is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That's his strength and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them, which is what I'm going to do. Modest, aren't you? Sting said. I try not to be. I told him. False. False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent. I'm going to catch this thug and I'll tell you how I'll do it. He is going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is after, he is going to take all the magazines and papers he can find, partly to satisfy his own ego, but mostly to keep track of the things he is interested in, such as ship sailings. You're just guessing. You don't know all this. His automatic assumption of my incompetence was beginning to get me annoyed. I bridled my temper and tried one last time. Yes, I'm guessing an informed guess, but I do know some facts as well. August's dream was cleaned out of all reading matter. That was one of the first things I checked we can't stop the battleship from attacking again, but we can see to it that the time after that she sails into a trap. I don't know, the captain said. It sounds to me like I never heard what it sounded like. Which is all right, since he was getting under my skin and might have been tempted to pull my pseudo rank. The alarm sirens cut his sentence off and we footraced to the communications room. Captain Steng won by a nose. It was his ship and he knew all the shortcuts. The Psiman was holding out a transcription, but he summed it up in one sentence. He looked at me while he talked and his face was hard and cold. They've hit again. Knocked out a naval supply satellite. 34 men dead. If your plan doesn't work, Admiral, the captain whispered hoarsely in my ear, I'll personally see that you're flayed alive. If my plan doesn't work, Captain, there won't be enough of my skin left to pick up with a tweezer. Now, if you please, I'd like to get to Udrade and pick up my ship as soon as possible. The easy going hatred and contempt of all my associates had annoyed me, thrown me off balance. I was thinking with anger now, not with logic. Forcing a bit of control, I ordered my thoughts checked off a mental list. Belay that last command. I shouted, getting back to my old space dog mood. Get a call through first and find out if any of our plants have been picked up during the raid. While the Psiman unfocused his eyes and mumbled under his breath, I riffled through some papers, relaxed and cool. The ratings and officers waited tensely and made some slight attempt to conceal their hatred of me. It took about 10 minutes to get an answer. Affirmative, the Psiman said. A store ship docked there 20 hours before the attack. Among other things, it left newspapers containing the article. Very good, I said calmly. Send a general order to suspend all future activity, which with the planted releases, send it by Psiman only. No mention on any other naval signaling equipment. There's a good chance now it might be overheard. I strolled out slowly in command of the situation, keeping my face turned away so they couldn't see the cold sweat. It was a fast run to ood ride where my billionaire's yacht, the Eldorado, was waiting. The dockyard commander showed me the ship and made a noble effort to control his curiosity. I took a sadistic revenge on the Navy by not telling him a word about my mission. After checking out the controls and special apparatus with the technicians, I cleared the ship. There was tape in the automatic navigator that would put me on the course mentioned in all the articles. Just a press of a button and I would be on my way. I pressed the button. It was a beautiful ship, and the dockyard had been lavish with their attention to detail. From bow to rear tubes. She was plated in pure gold. There are other metals with a higher albedo, but none that give a richer effect. All the fittings inside and out were either machine turned or plated. All this work could not have been done in the time allotted. The Navy must have adapted a luxury yacht to my needs. Everything was ready. Either Pepe would make his move or I would sail onto my billionaire's paradise planet. If that happened, it would be best if I stayed there. Now that I was in space, past the point of no return, all the doubts that I had dismissed fought for attention. The plan that had seemed so clear and logical now began to look like a patched and crazy makeshift. Hold on there, sailor, I said to myself, using my best admiral's voice. Nothing has changed. It's still the best and only plan possible under the circumstances. Was it? Could I be sure that Pepy, flying his mountain of a ship and eating navy rations, would be interested in some of the comforts and luxuries of life? Or if the luxuries didn't catch his eye, would he be interested in the planetary homesteading gear? I had loaded the cards with all the things he might want and planted the information where he could get it. He had the bait now, but would he grab the hook? I couldn't tell, and I could work myself into a neurotic state if I kept running through the worry cycle. It took an effort to concentrate on anything else, but it had to be made. The next four days passed very slowly. When the alarm blew off, all I felt was an intense sensation of relief. I might be dead and blasted to dust in the next few minutes, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Pepy had swallowed the bait. There was only one ship in the galaxy that could knock back a blip that big at such a distance. It was closing fast. Using the raw energy of the battleship engines for a headlong approach, my ship bucked a bit as the tractor beams locked on at maximum distance. The radio bleeped at me for attention at the same time. I waited as long as I dared, then flipped it on. The voice boomed out that you are under the guns of a warship. Don't attempt to run signal, take evasive action, or in any other way. Who are you? And what the devil do you want? I sputtered into the mic. I had my scanner on so they could see me, but my own screen stayed dark. They weren't sending any picture. In a way it made my act easier. I just played to an unseen audience. They could see the rich cut of my clothes, the luxurious cabin behind me. Of course, they couldn't see my hands. It doesn't matter who we are, the radio boomed again. Just obey orders if you care to live. Stay away from the controls until we have tied on, then do exactly as I say. There were two distinct clangs as the magnetic grapples hit the hull. A little later the ship lurched, drawn home against the battleship. I let my eyes roll in fear, looking around for a way to escape and taking a peek at the outside scanners. The yacht was flush against the space filling bulk of the other ship. I pressed a button that sent the torch wielding robot on his way. Now let me tell you something, I snapped into the mike, wiping away the worried billionaire expression. First, I'll repeat your own warning. Obey orders if you want to live. I'll show you why. When I threw the big switch, a carefully worked out sequence took place. First, of course. The hull was magnetized and the bombs fused. A light blinked as the scanner in the cabin turned off and the one in the generator room came on. I checked the monitor screen to make sure, then started into the spacesuit. It had to be done fast. At the same time it was necessary to talk. Naturally. They must still think of me as sitting in the control room. That's the ship's generator you're looking at, I said. 98% of their output is now feeding into coils that make an electromagnet out of the ship's hull. You will find it very hard to separate us, and I would advise you not to try. The suit was on and I kept the running chatter up through the mic in the helmet, relaying to the ship's transmitter. The scene in the monitor receiver changed. You are looking at a hydrogen bomb that is primed and aware of the magnetic field holding our ships together. It will of course go off if you try to pull away. I grabbed up the monitor receiver and ran toward the airlock. This is a different bomb now, I said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on on the slowly opening outer door. This one has receptors on the hull. Attempt to destroy any part of this ship or even gain entry to it, and this one will detonate. I was in space now, leaping across to the gigantic wall of the other ship. What do you want? These were the first words Pepe had spoken since his first threats. I want to talk to you, Arrange a deal. Something that would be profitable for both of us. But let me first show you the rest of the bombs so you won't get any strange ideas about cooperating. Of course I had to show him the rest of the bombs. There was no way of getting out of it. The scanners in the ship were following a planned program. I made light talk about all my massive armaments that would carry us both to perdition while I climbed through the hole in the battleship's hull. There was no armor or warning devices at this spot. It had been chosen carefully from the blueprints. Yah, yah. I take your word for it. You're a flying bomb. So stop this roving reporter bit and tell me what you have in mind. This time I didn't answer him because I was running, panting like a dog, and had the mic turned off. Just ahead, if the blueprints were right, was a door to the control room. Pepe should be there. I stepped through, gun out, and pointed it at the back of his head. Angelina stood next to him, looking at the screen. The game's over, I said. Stand up slowly and keep your hands in sight. What do you mean? He said angrily, looking at the screen in front of him. The girl caught Wise first. She spun around and pointed. He's here. They both stared, gaping at me, caught off guard and completely unprepared. You're under arrest, Crime King, I told him. And your girlfriend. Angelina rolled her eyes up and slid slowly to the floor. Real or fake, I didn't care. I kept the gun on Pepy's pudgy form while he picked her up and carried her to an acceleration couch against the wall. What will happen now? He quavered the question. His pouchy jaw shook and I swear there were tears in his eyes. I was not impressed by his acting, since I could clearly remember the dead men floating in space. He stumbled over to a chair, half dropped into it. Will they do anything to me? Angelina asked. Her eyes were open now. I have no idea what will happen to you, I told her truthfully. That's up to the courts to decide. But he made me do all those things. She wailed. She was young, dark, and beautiful. The tears did nothing to spoil this. Pepe dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders shook. I flicked the gun his way and snapped at him. Sit up, Pepe. I find it very hard to believe that you're crying. There are Some naval ships on the way now. The automatic alarm was triggered about a minute ago. I'm sure they'll be glad to see the man who don't let them take me, please. Angelina was on her feet, her back pressed against the wall. They'll put me in prison, do things to my mind. She shrunk away as she spoke, stumbling along the wall. I looked back at Pepy, not wanting to take my eyes off of him for any an instant. There's nothing I can do, I told her. I glanced her way and a small door was swinging open and she was gone. Don't try to run, I shouted after her. It can't do any good. Pepy made a strangling noise and I looked back to him quickly. He was sitting up now, and his face was dry of tears. In fact, he was laughing, not crying. So she caught you too, Mr. Wise Cop. Poor little Angelina with the soft eyes. He broke down again, shaking with laughter. What do you mean? I growled. Don't you catch yet. The story she told you was true, except she twisted it around a bit. The whole plan, building the battleship, then stealing it, was hers. She pulled me into it, playing me like an accordion. I fell in love with her, hated myself and happy at the same time. Well, I'm glad it's over now. At least I gave her a chance to get away. I owe her that much, though I thought I would explode when she went into that innocent act. A cold feeling was now a ball of ice that threatened to paralyze me. You're lying, I said hoarsely, and even I didn't believe it. Sorry, that's the way it is. Your brain boys will pick my skull to pieces and find out the truth. Anyway, there's no point in lying now. We'll search the ship. She can't hide for long. She won't have to, Pepe said. There's a fast scout we picked up stowed in one of the holds. That must be it. Leaving now. We could feel the vibration distantly through the floor. The Navy will get her, I told him with far more conviction than I felt. Maybe, he said, suddenly slumping and tired, no longer laughing. Maybe they will. But I gave her her chance. It is all over for me now. But she knows that I loved her to the end. He bared his teeth in sudden pain. Not that she will care in the slightest. I kept the gun on him and neither of us moved while the Navy ships pulled up and their boots stamped outside. I had captured my battleship and the raids were over and I couldn't be blamed if the girl had slipped away, if she evaded the Navy ships. That was their fault, not mine. I had my victory, all right. Then why did it taste like ashes in my mouth? It's a big galaxy, but it wasn't going to be big enough to hide Angelina. Now I can be conned once, but only once. The next time we met, things were going to be very different. The End of the Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison. Oh Rats By Miriam Allen Deford Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on spinquest. And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash prizes. That's visit spinquest.com S P I N
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play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. 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 Grothman Orthodren, Maxiton and glutamic acid. They were the prescription that made him king of his world. Oh Rats. By Marian Allen Dufour SK540 the 27th son of two very ordinary white laboratory rats surveyed his world. He was no more able than any other rat to process articulate speech or to use his paws as hands. All he had was a brain, which, relative to its size, was superior to any rats that had hitherto appeared on Earth. It was enough. In the first week of gestation, his embryo had been removed to a more suitable receptacle than the maternal womb, and his brain had been stimulated with Orthodren maxiton and glutamaic acid. It had been continuously irrigated with blood. One hemisphere had been activated far in excess of the other, since previous experiments had shown that increased lack of symmetry between the hemispheres produced superior mentality. The end result was an enormous increase in brain cells in both hemispheres. His brain showed also a marked increase in cholenster rate over that of other rats. Sk540, in other words, was a super rat. The same process had been applied to all his brothers and sisters. Most of them had died. The few who did not failed to show the desired results or showed them in so lopsided and partial a manner that it was necessary to destroy them. All of this, of course, had been mere preparation and Experimentation with a view to later developments in human subjects. What SK540's gods did not anticipate was that they would produce a creature mentally the superior not only of his fellow rats, but also in some respects of themselves. He was a super rat, but he was still a rat. His world of dreams and aspirations was not human, but Murin. What would you do if you were a brilliant, moody young super rat caged in a laboratory? SK540 did it. What human beings desired was health, freedom, wealth, love and power. So did SK540, but for him, health was taken for granted. Freedom was freedom from cages, traps, cats and dogs. Wealth meant shelter from the cold and rain and plenty to eat. Love meant a constant supply of available females. But power. It was in his longing for power that he most revealingly displayed his status as a super rat. Therefore, once he had learned how to open his cage, he was carefully selective of the companions, actually the followers, whom he would release to join his midnight hegira from the laboratory. Only the meekest and most subservient of the males, intelligent but not too intelligent, and the most desirable and amiable of the females were invited. Once free of the cages, SK540 had no difficulty in leading his troops out of the building. The door of the laboratory was locked, but a window was slightly open at the top. Rats can climb up or down like a silver ribbon. They flowed along the dark street SK540 looking exactly like all the rest at their head. Only one person in the deserted street seemed to have noticed them and he did not understand the nature of the phenomena. Young Mr. And Mrs. Philip Vincent started housekeeping in what had once been a mansion. It was now a run down eyesore. It had belonged to Nora Vincent's great aunt Martha, who had left it to her in her will. The estate was in litigation, but the executor had permitted the Vincents to settle down in the house, though they weren't allowed yet to sell it. It had no modern conveniences and was full of rooms they couldn't use and heavy old fashioned furniture. But it was solidly built and near the laboratory where he worked as a technician. And they could live rent free until they could sell the house and use the money to buy a real house. Something funny happened at the lab last night. Philip reported watching Nora struggling with the dinner on the massive coal stove. Somebody broke in and stole about half our experimental animals. They got our pride and Joy. The famous SK540. Nor Nora asked the same. Actually, it wasn't a break in. It Must have been an inside job. The cages were open, but there was no sign of breaking and entering. We're all under suspicion until they find out who done it. Nora looked alarmed. You too? What on earth would anyone want with a lot of laboratory rats? They aren't worth anything, are they? Financially, I mean. Not a cent. That's why I'm sure one of the cleanup kids must have done it. Probably wanted them for pets. They're all tame, of course. Not like wild rats, though. They can bite like wild rats if they want to. Some of the ones missing are treated and some are controls. It would just be a nuisance if they hadn't taken SK540. Now they've got to find him or do about five years work over again without any assurance of as great a success. To say nothing of letting our super rat loose on the world. What on earth could even a super rat do that would matter to human beings? I mean. Nobody knows. Maybe that's what we're going to find out. That night Nora woke suddenly with a loud scream. Philip got the gas lighted there was no electricity in the old house, and held her shaking body in his arms. She found her breath at long last enough to sob. It was a rat. A rat ran over my face. You're dreaming, darling. It's because I told you about the theft at the lab. There couldn't be rats in this place. It's too solidly built from the basement up. He finally got her to sleep again, but he lay awake for a long time, listening. Nothing happened. Rats can't talk, but they can communicate. About the time Nora Vincent dropped off after her frightened awakening, SK540 was confronting a culprit. The culprit was one of the liberated males. His beady eyes tried to gaze into the implacable ones of SK540, but his tail twitched nervously, and if he bared his teeth it was more in terror than in fight. They all knew that strict orders had been given not to disturb the humans in the house until SK540 had all his preparations made. A little more of that silent communication, and the rat who had run over Nora's face knew he only had two have his throat slit or get out. He got out. What do you know? Philip said. That evening one of our rats came back by itself. Yeah, I've never heard of such a thing. It was one of the experimental ones, so it was smarter than most, though not such an awful lot. I've never heard of a rat with a homing instinct before, but when we opened up this Morning. There he was, sitting in his cage, ready for breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, I thought I asked you to buy a big box of oatmeal on your way home yesterday. It's about the only thing in the way of cereal I can manage on that old stove. I did buy it. Don't you remember? I left it in the kitchen. Well, it wasn't there this morning. All I know is that you're going to have nothing but toast and coffee to morrow. We seem to be out of eggs, too. And bacon. And I thought we had half a pound left of that cheese, but it's gone too. Good Lord, Nora, if you've got that much marketing to do, can't you do it yourself? Sure. If you leave me the car, I'm not going to walk all that way and back. So of course Philip did do the shopping the next day. Besides, Nora had just remembered she had a date at the hairdresser's. When he got home, her hair was still uncurled and she was in hysterics. One of the many amenities Great Aunt Martha's house lacked was a telephone. Anyway, Nora couldn't have been coherent over one. She cast herself, shuddering and crying, into Philip's arms, and it was a long time before he got her soothed enough for her to gasp. Philip, they wouldn't let me out. They who? What do you mean? The. The rats. The white rats. They made a ring around me at the front door so I couldn't open it. I ran to the back and they beat me there and did the same thing. I even tried the windows, but it was no use. And their teeth, they all. I guess I went to pieces. I started throwing things at them and they just dodged. I yelled for help, but there's nobody near enough to hear. Then I gave up and ran to our bedroom and slammed the door on them. But they left guards outside. I heard them squeaking until you drove up. Then I heard them run away. Philip stared at her, scared to death. His wife had lost her mind. Now, now, sweetheart, he said soothingly. Let's get this straight. They fired a lab boy today. They found four of our rats in his home. He told some idiotic story about having found them with the others missing, running loose on the street that night. But of course he stole them. He must have sold the rest of them to other kids. They're working on that now. Nora blew her nose and wiped her eyes. She had regained her usual calm. Philip, Vincent, she said coldly. Are you accusing me of lying or of just being crazy? I'm Neither. I saw and heard those rats. They're here now. What's more, I guess I know where the oatmeal went. And the eggs and bacon, too, and the cheese. I'm a hostage. I don't suppose, she added sarcastically, that your SK540 is one of the ones they found in the boy's home. No, it wasn't, he acknowledged uneasily. A nasty little icy trickle stole down his spine. All right, Nora, I give up. You take the poker and I'll take the hammer, and we'll search this house from cellar to attic. You won't find them, said Nora bitterly. SK540 is too smart. They'll stay inside the walls and keep quiet. Then we'll find the holes they went through and rout them out. They didn't, of course. There wasn't a sign of a rat hole or of a rat. They got through dinner and evening somehow. Nora put all the food, not in cans, inside the old fashioned icebox, which took the place of a refrigerator. Philip thought he was too disturbed to be able to sleep. But he did, and Nora, exhausted, was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. His last doubt of his wife's sanity had vanished when the next morning they found the ice box door open and half the food gone. That settles it, Philip announced. Come on, Nora, put your coat on. You're coming with me to the lab and we'll report what's happened. They'll find those creatures if they have to tear this house apart to do it. That boy must have been telling the truth. You couldn't keep me away, Nora responded. I'll never spend another minute alone in this house while those dreadful things are in it. But of course, when they got to the front door, there they were, circling them, their teeth bared. The same with the back door and all the first floor windows. That's SK540 all right. Leading them, Philip whispered through clenched jaws. He could smash them all, he supposed, in time with what weapons he had. But he worked in a laboratory. He knew their value to science, especially SK540s. Rats couldn't talk, he knew, and they couldn't understand human speech. Nevertheless, some kind of communication might establish itself. SK540's eyes were too intelligent not to believe that he was getting the gist of the talk directed to him. This is utterly ridiculous, Philip grated. If you won't let us out, how can we keep bringing food into the house for you? We'll all star you and we together. He could have sworn that SK540 was considering, but he guessed the implicit answer. Let either one of them out, now that they knew the rats were there and the men from the laboratory would come quickly and overwhelm and carry off the besiegers. It was a true impasse, Philip, she reminded him. If you don't go to work, they know we haven't a phone, and somebody will be here pretty soon to find out if anything's wrong. But that wouldn't help, Philip reflected gloomily. They'd let anyone in and keep him there. And, he thought to himself, and was careful not to say it aloud. Rats are rats, even if they are 25th generation laboratory born. When the other food was gone, there would be human meat. He did not want to look at them anymore. He took Norah's arm and turned away into their bedroom. They stayed there all day, too upset to think of eating, talking and talking to no conclusion. As dusk came, they did not light the gas. Exhausted, they lay down on the bed without undressing. After a while there was a quiet scratching at the door. Don't let them in, nora whispered. Her teeth were chattering. I must, dear, he whispered back. It isn't them. I'm sure of it. It's just SK540 himself. I've been expecting it. We have got to reach some kind of understanding with a rat. With a super rat. We have no choice. Philip was right. SK540 alone stood there and sidled in as the door closed solidly behind him. How could one communicate with a rat? Philip could think of no way except to pick him up, place him where they were, face to face and talk. Are your followers outside? He asked. The rodent's face gave no expression, but Philip caught a glance of cat contempt in the beady eyes. The slaves were doubtlessly bedded down in their hideaway, with strict orders to stay there and keep quiet. You know, Philip, vincent went on, I could kill you very easily. The words would mean nothing to SK540. The tone might. He watched the beady eyes, but there was nothing in them but intelligent attention, no flicker of fear. Or I could tie you up and take you to the laboratory and let them decide whether to keep you or kill you. We are all much bigger and stronger than you. Without your army, you can't intimidate us. There was, of course, no answer, but SK540 did a startling and touching thing. He reached out one paw as if in appeal. Nora caught her breath in astonishment. He. He just wants to be free, she said in a choked whisper. You mean you're not afraid of him any more. You said it yourself. He can't intimidate us without his army. Philip thought a moment. Then he said slowly, I wonder if we had the right to do this to him. In the first place, he would have been an ordinary laboratory rat, mindless and content. We've made him into a neurotic alien in his world. You're not responsible, darling. You're a technician, not a biochemist. I share the responsibility. We all do. So what? The fact remains that it was done. And here he is. And here we are. The doorbell rang. Philip and Nora exchanged glances. Sk540 watched them. It's probably Kelly from the lab, philip said, trying to find out why I wasn't there today. It's just about quitting time, and he lives nearest to us. Nora astonished him. She picked up SK540 from the bedside table where Philip had placed him and hid him under her pillow. Get rid of whoever it is, she said defensively. Philip stared for an instant, then walked briskly downstairs. He was back in a few minutes. It was Kelly, all right, he told her. I said you were sick and I couldn't leave you to phone. I said I'd be there tomorrow. Now what? SK540's white whiskers emerged from under the pillow. He jumped over to the table again. Nora's cheeks were pink. When it came to the point. I just couldn't, she explained shamefacedly. I suddenly realized that he's a person. We couldn't let him be taken back to prison. Aren't you frightened anymore? Not of him. She faced the super rat squarely. Look, she said. If we take care of you, will you get rid of that gang of yours so we can be free, too? That's nonsense, Nora, philip objected. He can't possibly understand you. Dogs and cats learn to understand enough. And he's smarter than any dog or cat that ever lived. But the word froze on his lips. Sk540 had jumped to the floor and run to the door. There he stood and looked back at them, his tail twitching. He wants us to follow him, nora murmured. There was no sign of a hole in the back wall of the disused pantry, but behind it they could hear squeaks and rustling. SK540 scratched delicately at almost invisible cracks. A section of the wall, 2 by 4 inches, fell out on the floor. So that's where some of the oatmeal went, nora commented. Made into paste. Sh.SK540 vanished through the hole. They waited, listening to incomprehensible sounds outside. It had grown dark. Then the leader emerged and stood to one side of a long line that pattered through the hole. The two humans stared, fascinated, as the line made straight for the back door and under it. Sk540 stayed where he was. Will they go back to the lab? Nora asked. Philip shrugged. It doesn't matter. Some of them may. I feel like a traitor. I don't. I feel like one of those people who hid escaped war prisoners in Europe. When the rats were all gone, they turned to SK540, but without a glance at them, he re entered the hiding place. In the minute he returned, herding two white female rats before him. He stood, obviously expectant. What's up everybody? It's Bretzky. And America is turning 200, 150. And I can't think of a better
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Lady Luck
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play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Philip squatted on his heels. He picked up the two refugees and looked them over. Both females, he announced briefly. And both pregnant. Is he the father? Who else? He'd see to that. And will they inherit his. His. His super ratism? That's the whole point. That's the object of the entire experiment. They were going to try it soon. The three white rats had scarcely moved. The two mothers to be had apparently fallen asleep. Only SK540 stood quietly, eyeing the humans. When they left him to find a place where they could talk in private, he did not follow. It comes down to this, philip said at the end of a half hour's fruitless discussion. We promised him, or as good as he believed us and trusted us. But if we keep our promise, we're really traitors to the human race. You mean if the offspring should inherit his brain power, they might overrun us all? Not might. Would. So. So it's an insoluble problem. On our terms. We have to think of this as a war and of them as our enemies. What is our word of honor to a rat, but to a Super rat? To SK540, as if called SK540 appeared. Had he been listening? Had he understood? Neither of them dared to voice the question aloud in his presence. Later, Philip murmured. We must eat, said Nora. Let's see what's left in the way of food. Everything tasted flat. They weren't very hungry after all. There was enough left over to feed the three rats, but then they had evidently helped themselves earlier. They left the scraps untasted. Neither of the humans guessed what else had vanished from the pantry shelves. What? When he had heard enough, SK540 had slipped away and sprinkled on the remaining contents of the icebox wherever the white powder would not show. They did not know it until it was too late, until both of them lay writhing in their last spasms on their bedroom floor. By the time the house was broken into and their bodies found, SK540 and his two wives were far away and safe. And this, children, is the true account handed down by tradition from the days of our great founder of how the human race ceased to exist and we took over the world. End of oh Rats by Miriam Allen DeFore. The Other now by Murray Leinster 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 Grothman he knew his wife was dead because he'd seen her buried, but it was only one possibility out of infinitely more the Other now by Murray Leinster it was self evident nonsense. If Jimmy Patterson had told anybody but Haines, calm men in white jackets would have taken him away for psychiatric treatment, which undoubtedly would have been effective. He'd have been restored to sanity and common sense, and he'd probably have died of it. So to anyone who liked Jimmy and Jane, it is good that things worked out as they did. The facts are patently impossible and they are satisfying. Haines, though, would very much like to know exactly why it happened. In the case of Jimmy and Jane and nobody else, there must have been some specific reason, but there's absolutely no clue.
[309:29]
Lady Luck
To
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began about three months after Jane was killed in a freak accident. Jimmy had taken her death hard. This night seemed no different from any other. He came home just as usual and his throat tightened a little, just as usual as he went up to the door. It was still intolerable to know that Jane wouldn't be waiting for him. Him. The hurt in his throat was a familiar sensation which he was doggedly hoping would go away. But it was extra strong to night and he wondered rather desperately if he'd sleep, or if he did, whether he would dream. Sometimes he had dreams of Jane and was happy until he woke up and then he wanted to cut his throat. But he wasn't at that point tonight, not yet. As he explained it to Haines later he simply put his key in the door and opened it and started to walk in. But he kicked the door instead. So he absently put his key in the door and opened it and started to walk in. Yes, that is what happened. He was halfway through before he realized. He stared blankly. The door looked perfectly normal. He closed it behind him. Feeling queer, he tried to reason out what had happened. Then he felt a slight draft. The door wasn't shut. It was wide open. He had to close it again. That was all that happened to mark this night off from any other. And there was no explanation why it happened. Began rather this night instead of another. Jimmy went to bed with a taut feeling. He'd had the conviction that he'd opened the door twice. The same door. Then he'd had the conviction that he had had to close it twice. He'd heard of that feeling, queer, but no doubt commonplace. He slept blessedly without dreams. He woke next morning and found his muscles tense. That was an acquired habit. Before he opened his eyes every morning, he reminded himself that Jane wasn't beside him. It was necessary if he forgot and turned contentedly to emptiness. The ache of being alive when Jane wasn't was unbearable. This morning he lay with his eyes closed to remind himself and instead found himself thinking about the business of the door. He'd kick the door between the two openings so it wasn't only an illusion of repetition. He was puzzling over that repetition after closing the door when he found he had to close it again. That proved to him it wasn't a standard mental vagary. It looked like a delusion, but his memory insisted that it had happened that way, whether it was possible or not. Frowning, he went out and got his breakfast at a restaurant and rode to work. Work was blessed because he had to think about it. The main trouble was that sometimes something turned up which Jane would have been amused to hear. And he had to remind himself that there was no use making a mental note to tell her. Jane was dead. Today he thought a good deal about the door. But when he went home, he knew he was going to have a black night. He wouldn't sleep and oblivion would seem infinitely tempting. Because the ache of being alive when Jane wasn't was horribly tedious. And he could not imagine an end to it. To night would be a very bad one indeed. He opened the door and started in. He went crashing into the door. He stood still for an instant, then fumbled for the lock. But the door was open. He'd opened it. There hadn't been anything for him to run into yet his forehead hurt where he'd bumped into the door that wasn't closed at all. There was nothing he could do about it, though. He went in. He hung up his coat. He sat down wearily. He filled his pipe and grimly faced a night that was going to be one of the worst. He struck a match and lighted his pipe and put the match in an ashtray, and he glanced in the tray. There were the stubs of cigarettes in it. Jane's brand, freshly smoked. He touched them with his fingers. They were real. Then a furious anger filled him. Maybe the cleaning woman had had the intolerable insolence to smoke Jane's cigarettes. He got up and stormed through the house, raging as he searched for signs of further impertinence. He found none. He came back, seething to his chair. The ashtray was empty and there'd been nobody around. To empty was logical to question his own sanity, and the question gave him a sort of grim cheer. The matter of the recurrent oddities could be used to fight the abysmal depression ahead. He tried to reason them out, and always they added up to delusions only. But he kept his mind resolutely on the problem. Work during the day was a godsend. Sometimes he was able to thrust aside for whole half hours the fact that Jane was dead. Now he grappled relievedly with the question of his sanity or lunacy. He went to the desk where Jane kept her household accounts. He'd set the whole thing down on paper and examine it methodically, checking this item against that. Jane's diary lay on the desk blotter with a pencil between two of its pages. He picked it up with a tug of dread. Some day he might read it, an absurd chronicle Jane had never offered him. But not now. Not now. That was when he realized that it shouldn't be here. His hands jumped and it fell open. He saw Jane's angular writing and it hurt. He closed it quickly, aching all over. But the printed date at the top of the page registered on his brain even as he snapped the COVID shut. He sat still for minutes, every muscle taut. It was a long time before he opened the book again, and by that time he had a perfectly reasonable explanation. It must be that Jane hadn't restricted herself to assigned spaces. When she had something extra to write, she wrote it on, past the page allotted for a given date. Of course. Jimmy fumbled back to the last written page, where the pencil had been with a tense matter of factness. It was, as he noticed, today's date. The page was filled. The writing was fresh. It was Jane's handwriting. Went to the cemetery, said the scrawling letters. It was very bad. Three months since the accident and it doesn't get any easier. I'm developing a personal enmity to chance. It doesn't seem like an abstraction anymore. It was chance that killed Jimmy. It could have been me instead. Or neither of us. I wish. Jimmy went quietly mad for a moment or two. When he came to himself, he was staring at the empty desk blotter. There wasn't any book before him. There wasn't any pencil between his fingers. He remembered picking up the pencil and writing desperately under Jane's entry. Jane, he'd written. And he could remember the look of his scrawled script next to Jane's. Where are you? I'm not dead. I thought you were. In God's name, where are you? But certainly nothing of that sort had happened. It was delusion. The night was particularly bad, but curiously, not as bad as some other nights had been. Jimmy had a normal man's horror of insanity. Yet this wasn't, so to speak, normal insanity. A lunatic has always an explanation for his delusions. Jimmy had none. He noted the fact. The next morning he bought a small camera with a flashbulb attachment and carefully memorized the directions for its use. This was the thing that would tell the story. And that night, when he got home as usual after dark, he had the camera ready. He unlocked the door and opened it. He put his hand out tight, tentatively. The door was still closed. He stepped back and quickly snapped the camera. There was a sharp flash of the bulb. The glare blinded him, but when he put out his hand again, the door was open. He stepped into the living room without having to unlock and open it a second time. He looked at the desk as he turned the film and put in a new flashbulb. It was as empty as he'd left it in the morning. He hung up his coat and settled down tensely with his pipe. Presently he knocked out the ashes. There were cigarette butts in the tray. He quivered a little. He smoked again, carefully, not looking at the desk. It was not until he knocked out the second pipeful of ashes that he let himself look where Jane's diary had been. It was there. The book was open. There was a ruler laid across it to keep it open. Jimmy wasn't frightened and he wasn't hopeful. There was absolutely no reason why this should happen to him. He was simply desperate and grim. When he went across the room, he saw yesterday's entry and his own hysterical message, and there was more writing beyond that in Jane's hand. Darling, maybe I'm going crazy, but I think you wrote me as if you were alive. Maybe I'm crazy to answer you, but please, darling, if you are alive somewhere. And somehow there was a tear blot here. The rest was frightened and tender and as desperate as Jimmy's own sensations. He wrote with trembling fingers before he put the camera into position and pressed the shutter control for a second time. When his eyes recovered from the flash, there was nothing on the desk. He did not sleep at all that night, nor did he work the next day. He went to a photographer with the film and paid an extravagant fee to have the film developed and enlarged at once. He got back two prints, quite distinct, even very clear considering everything. One looked like a trick shot showing a door twice, once open and once closed in the same photograph. The other was a picture of an open book and he could read every word on its page. It was inconceivable that such a picture should have come out. He walked around practically at random for a couple of hours, looking at the pictures from time to time, pictures or no pictures. The thing was nonsense. The facts were preposterous. It must be that he only imagined seeing these prints. But there was a quick way to find out. He went to Haines. Haines was his friend and reluctantly, a lawyer. Reluctantly because law practice interfered with a large number of unlikely hobbies. Haines, jimmy said quietly, I want you to look at a couple of pictures and see if you can see what I do. What's going on, everyone? It's bluff here and we're driving through the states in the Bluffmobile, and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino style games on Spin Quest. They have over a thousand games, including live dealer blackjack and craps, with tons of slots and unlimited options. You can get a 30 coin pack for just $10 for new users.
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Go to spinquest.com right now. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I may have gone out of my head. He passed over the picture of the door. It looked to Jimmy like two doors nearly at right angles in the same door frame and hung from the same hinges. Haines looked at it and said, didn't know you went in for trick photography. He picked up a reading glass and examined the detail, a futile but highly competent job. You covered half the film and exposed with the door closed and then exposed for the other half of the film with the door open. A neat job of matching, though you're a good tripod. I held the camera with my hands, said Jimmy with restraint. You couldn't do it that way, Jimmy, objected Haines. Don't try to kid me. I'm trying not to fool myself, said Jimmy. He was very pale. He handed over the other enlargement. What do you see in this? Haines looked. Then he jumped. He read through what was so plainly photographed on the pages of the diary that hadn't been before the camera. Then he looked at Jimmy in palpable unease. Got any explanations? Asked Jimmy. He swallowed. I haven't any. He told what had happened to date, badly and without any attempts at making it reasonable. Haines gaped at him, but before long the lawyer's eyes grew shrewd and compassionate. As noted hitherto, he had a number of unlikely hobbies, among which was a loud insistence on the belief in the fourth dimension and other esoteric ideas, because it was good fun to talk authoritatively about them. But he had common sense, had Haines, and a good and varied law practice. Presently he said gently, if you want it straight, Jimmy, I had a client once. She accused a chap of beating her up. It was very pathetic. She was absolutely sincere. She really believed it. But her own family admitted that she'd made the marks on herself, and the doctors agreed that she'd unconsciously blotted it out of her mind afterwards. You suggest, said Jimmy composedly, that I might have forged all of that to comfort myself with as soon as I could forget the forging. I don't think that's the case, Haines. What possibility does that leave? Haines hesitated a long time. He looked at the pictures again, scrutinizing especially the one that looked like a trick shot. This is an amazingly good job of matching, he said wryly. I couldn't pick the place where the two exposures join. Some people might manage to swallow this, and the theoretical explanation is a lot better. The only trouble is it couldn't happen. Jimmy waited. Haines went on awkwardly, the accident in which Jane was killed. You were in your car. You came up behind a truck carrying structural steel. There was a long, slim girder sticking way out behind with a red rag on it. The truck had air brakes. The driver jammed them on just after he'd passed over a bit of wet pavement. The truck stopped. Your car slid even with the brakes locked. It's nonsense, Jimmy. I'd rather you continued Jimmy, said white. You ran into the truck, your car swinging a little as it slid the girder came through the windshield. It could have hit you. It could have missed both of you. By pure chance it happened to hit Jane and killed her, said Jimmy, very quietly. Yes, but it might have been me. The diary entry is written as if it had been me. Did you notice? There was a long pause in Haines office. The world outside the window was highly prosaic and commonplace and normal. Haines wiggled in his chair. I think, he said unhappily, you did the same as my girl, Clant. Forged that writing and then forgot it. Have you seen a doctor yet? I will, said Jimmy. Systematize my lunacy for me first, Haines, if it can be done. It's not accepted science, haines said. In fact, it's considered eyewash. But there have been speculations. He grimaced. First point is that it was pure chance that Jane was hit. It was just as likely to be you instead, or neither of you. If it had been you, jane said, jimmy would have lived in our house alone, and she might very well have written that entry in the diary. Yes, agreed Haines uncomfortably. I shouldn't suggest this, but there are a lot of possible futures. We don't know which one will come about for us. Nobody except Fatalist can argue with that statement. When today is in the future. There were a lot of possible todays. The present moment now is only one of any number of nows that might have been. So it's been suggested. Mind you, it isn't accepted science. It's pure charlatanry. It's been suggested that there may be more than one actual now before the girder actually hit. There were three nows in the possible future, one in which neither of you was hit, one in which you were hit, and one he paused, embarrassed. So some people would say, how do we know that the one in which Jane was hit is the only now? They'd say that the others could have happened and that maybe they did. Jimmy nodded. If that were true, he said detachedly, Jane would be in the present moment a Now where it was me who was killed. And I'm in the now where she was killed. Is that it? Haines shrugged. Jimmy thought, and said, thanks. Queer, isn't it? He picked up the two pictures and went out. Haines was the only one who knew about the affair, and he worried. But it was not easy to denounce someone as insane when there is no evidence that he is apt to be dangerous. He did go to the trouble to find out that Jimmy acted in a reasonably normal manner, working industriously and Talking quite sanely in the daytime. Only Haines suspected that of nights he went home and experienced the impossible. Sometimes Haynes suspected that the impossible might be the fact. That had been an amazingly good bit of trick photography. But it was too preposterous. Also, there was no reason for such a thing to happen to Jimmy. Four weeks after Haines pseudo scientific explanation, however, Jimmy was almost light hearted. He no longer had to remind himself that Jane was dead. The second week was not so good. To know that Jane was alive was good, but to be separated from her without hope was not. There was no meaning in a cosmos in which one could only write love letters to one's wife or husband in another now which only might have been. But for a while, both Jimmy and Jane tried to hide this new hopelessness from each other. Jimmy explained this carefully to Haines before it was all over. Their letters were tender and very natural and presently there was even time for gossip and actual bits of choice scandal. Haines met Jimmy on the street one day after about two weeks. Jimmy looked better, but he was drawn very fine. Though he greeted Haines without constraint, Haines felt awkward. After a little he said, er, Jimmy, that matter we were talking about the other day. Those photographs. Yes, you were right, said Jimmy casually. Jane agrees there is more than one now in the now I'm in. Jane was killed in the now she's in. I was killed. Haines fidgeted. Would you let me see that picture of the door again? He asked. A trick film like that simply can't be perfect. I'd like to enlarge the picture a little more. May I? You can have the film, said Jimmy. I don't need it anymore. Haines hesitated. Jimmy quite matter of factly told him most of what had happened to date. But he had no idea what started it. Haines almost wrung his hands. The thing can't be, he said desperately. You have to be crazy, Jimmy. But he would not have said that to a man whose sanity he really suspected. Jimmy nodded. Jane told me something. By the way, did you have a near accident night before last? Somebody almost ran into you out on Old Sawmill Road? Haines started and went pale. I went around a curve and the car plunged out from nowhere on the wrong side of the road. We both swung hard. He smashed my fender and almost went off the road himself. But he went racing off without stopping to see if I'd gone into the ditch and killed myself. If I'd been five feet nearer the curb when he came out of it. Where Jane is, Jimmy said. You were just about five feet nearer the curb. It was a bad smash. Tony Shields was in the other car. It killed him where Jane is. Haines licked his lips. It was absurd, but he said, how about me where Jane is? Jimmy told him. You're in the hospital. Haines swore in unreasonable irritation. There wasn't any way for Jimmy to know about that near accident. He hadn't mentioned it because he had no idea who'd been in the other car. I don't believe it. But, he said pleadingly, jimmy, it isn't so, is it? How the hell could you account for it? Jimmy shrugged. Jane and I, we're rather fond of each other. The understatement was so patent that he smiled faintly. Chance separated us. The feeling we have about each other draws us together. There's a saying about two people becoming one flesh. If such a thing could happen, it would be Jane and me. After all, men. Maybe only a tiny pebble or a single extra drop of water made my car swerve enough to get her killed. Where I am, that is, that's a very little thing. So, with such a trifle separating us and so much pulling us together, why, sometimes the barrier wears thin. She leaves a door closed in the house where she is, I open the same door where I am. Sometimes I have to open the door she left closed to. That's all. Haines didn't say a word. But the question he wouldn't ask was so self evident that Jimmy answered it. We're hoping, he said, it's pretty bad being separated. But the phenomenon kept up. So we hope her diary is sometimes in the now where she is and sometimes in the now of mine. Cigarette butts too. Maybe that was the only time he showed any sign of emotion. He spoke as if his mouth were dry. If ever I'm in her now or she's in mine, even for an instant, all the devils in hell couldn't separate us again. We hope. Which was insanity. In fact it was the third week of insanity. He'd told Haines, quite calmly, that Jane's diary was on her desk every night and there was a letter to him in it and he wrote one to her. He said quite calmly that the barrier between them seemed to be growing thinner, that at least once when he went to bed he was sure there was one more cigarette stub in the ash tray than had been there earlier in the evening. They were very near indeed. They were separated only by the difference between what was and what might have been. In one sense the difference was a pebble or A drop of water in another. The difference was that between life and death. But they hoped, they convinced themselves that the barrier grew thinner. Once it seemed to Jimmy that they were touching hands. But he was not sure. He was still sane enough not to be sure. And he told all this to Haines in a matter of fact fashion, and speculated mildly on what had started it all. Then one night, Haines called Jimmy on the telephone. Jimmy answered. He sounded impatient. Jimmy, Haines said. He was almost hysterical. I think I'm insane, you know. You said Tony Shields was in the car that hit me. Yes, jimmy said politely. What's the matter? It's been driving me crazy, wailed Haines feverishly. You said he was killed there. But I haven't told a soul about the incident. So? So just now I broke down and phoned him, and it was Tony Shields. That near crash scared him to death, and I gave him hell and he's paying for my fender. I didn't tell him that he was killed. Jimmy didn't answer. It didn't seem to matter to him. I'm coming over, haines said feverishly. I've got to talk. No, said Jimmy. Jane and I are pretty close to each other. We've touched each other again. We're hoping the barrier's wearing through. We hope it's going to break. But it can't, protested Haines, shocked at the idea of improbabilities in the preposterous can't. What'd happen if you turned up where she is or if she turned up here? I don't know, said Jimmy. But we'd be together. You're crazy. You mustn't. Goodbye, said Jimmy politely. I'm hoping. Haines. Something has to happen. It has to. His voice stopped. There was a noise in the room behind him. Haines heard it only two words, and those faintly and over a telephone, but he swore to himself that it was Jane's voice, throbbing with happiness. The two words Haines thought he heard were Jimmy, darling. Then the telephone crashed to the floor and Haines heard no more, even though he called back frantically again. Jimmy didn't answer. Haines sat up all night, practically gibbering, and he tried to call Jimmy again next morning, and then he tried his office and at last went to the police. He explained to them that Jimmy had been in a highly nervous state since the death of his wife. So finally the police broke into the house. They had to break in because every door and window was carefully fastened from the inside, as if Jimmy had been very careful to make sure Nobody would interrupt what he and Jane hoped would occur. But Jimmy wasn't in the house. There was no trace of him. It was exactly as if he had vanished into the air. Ultimately, the police dragged the ponds and such things for his body, but they never found any clues. Nobody ever saw Jimmy again. It was recorded that Jimmy simply left town. And everybody accepted that obvious explanation. The thing that really bothered Haines was the fact that Jimmy had told him who'd almost crashed into him on Sawmill Road. And it was true, that was to understate, hard to take. And there was a double exposed picture of Jimmy's front door which was much more convincing than any other trick picture Haines had ever seen. But on the other hand, if it did happen, why did it happen only to Jimmy and Jane? What set it off? What started it?
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Lady Luck
What?
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Why, in effect, did those oddities start at that particular time to those particular people, in that particular fashion? In fact, did anything happen at all now after Jimmy's disappearance? Haines wished he could talk to him once more. Talk sensibly, quietly, without fear and hysteria and this naggingly demanding wonderment. For he had sketched to Jimmy and. And Jimmy had accepted, hadn't he, the possibility of the other now. But with that acceptance came still others. In one, Jane was dead. In one, Jimmy was dead. It was between those two that the barrier had grown so thin. If he could talk to Jimmy about it, there was also a now in which both had died and another in which neither had died. And if it was togetherness that each wanted so desperately, which was it? These were things that Haines would have liked very much to know. But he kept his mouth shut or calm. Men in white coats would have come and taken him away for treatment as they would have taken Jimmy. The only thing really sure was it was all impossible to be someone who liked Jimmy and Jane. And doubtless to Jimmy and Jane themselves, no matter which barrier had been broken, it was rather satisfyingly impossible. Haines car had been repaired. He could easily have driven out to the cemetery. For some reason, he never did. End of the Other now by Murray Leinster.
[339:18]
Lady Luck
A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber 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 Matt Perrard I A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber the dark star passed, bringing with it eternal night and turning history into incredible myth in a single generation. Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air. I'd just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing. You know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady's face, all glowing in the dark and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I'd never seen a live young lady before, except in the old magazines. Cis is just a kid and Ma is pretty sick and miserable, and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you. Even at that, I don't suppose I should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty bad ones to judge from the way she bugs her eyes at nothing and just screams and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the nest. Pa says it is natural we should react like that sometimes. When I'd recovered the pail and could look again at the opposite apartment, I got an idea of what Ma might be feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn't a young lady at all, but simply a light, a tiny light that moved stealthily from window to window, just as if one of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the earth had gone away from the sun and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify now that the earth didn't have the sun's protection. I tell you, the thought of it gave me the creeps. I just stood there shaking and almost froze my feet and did frost my helmet so solid on the inside that I couldn't have seen the light even if it had come out of one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go back inside. Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the 30 or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around to slow down the escape of air from the nest. And I wasn't quite so scared. I began to hear the tick ticking of the clocks in the nest and I knew I was getting back into air because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets. Pa's got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat, and came into the nest. Let me tell you about the nest. It's low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is covered with Thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets and the blankets roofing it touch Pa's head. He tells me it's inside a much bigger room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling. Against one of the blanket walls is a big set of shelves with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a whole row of clocks. Pa's very fussy about keeping them wound. He says we must never forget time, and without a sun or moon that would be easy to do. The fourth wall has blankets all over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go out. It keeps us from freezing and does a lot more besides. One of us must always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarm and we can use them to remind us. In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa. I think of that when she gets difficult. But now there's me to help, and Sis too. It's Pa who who is the chief guardian of the fire, though I always think of him that way. A tall man sitting cross legged, frowning anxiously at the fire, his lined face golden in its light. And every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians of the fire sometimes in the very old old days. Festal virgins, he calls them, although there was unfrozen air all around then and you didn't really need one. He was sitting just that way now, though. He got up quick to take the pail from me and bawl me out for loitering. He spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she joined in, picking on me. She's always trying to get the load off her feet. Feelings, Pa explains. He shut her up pretty fast. Siss let off a couple of silly squeals too. Pa handled the pail of air in a twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the nest, you could really feel its coldness. It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames cringed away from it as Pa put it down close by the flower fire. Yet it's that glimmery white stuff in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pa'd like to seal the whole place, but he can't. Buildings to earthquake twisted and besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke. Pa says air is tiny molecules that fly away like a flash if there isn't something to stop them. We have to watch sharp not to let the air run low. Pa always keeps a big reserve supply of it in buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra coal and cans of food and other things such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a door to outside. You see, when the earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket 10ft thick or so everywhere. And then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making another white blanket 60 or 70ft thick, maybe. Of course, all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time. First to drop out was the carbon dioxide. When you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe for good, and make the fire go out. Next there's the nitrogen, which doesn't count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket on top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that keeps us alive. Pa says we lived better than kings ever did breathing pure oxygen, but we're used to it and don't notice. Finally, at the very top, there's a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases in neat separate layers. Like a pussy cafe, Pa laughingly says, Whatever that is. I was busting to tell them all about what I'd seen. And so as soon as I ducked out of my helmet and while I was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away, Ma got nervous and began making eyes at the entry slit in the blankets and. And wringing your hands together. The hand where she'd lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good one, as usual. I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me scaring her and wanted to explain it all away quickly, yet could see I wasn't fooling. And you watched this light for some time, son? He asked when I finished. I hadn't said anything about first thinking it was a young lady's face. Somehow that part embarrassed me long enough for it to pass five windows and go to the next floor. And it didn't look like stray electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused by a growing crystal or anything like that. He wasn't just making up those ideas. Odd things happen in a world that's about as cold as can be. And just when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A slimy stuff comes crawling toward the nest just like an animal snuffing for heat. That's the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of lightning, not even Pa could figure where it came from, hit the nearby steeple and crawled up and down it for weeks until the glow finally died. Not like anything I ever saw, I told him. He stood for a moment, frowning. Then I'll go out with you and you show it to me, he said. Ma raised a howl at the idea of being left alone, and Siss joined in too, but Pa quieted them. We started climbing into our outside clothes. Mine had been worn warming by the fire. Pa made them. They have plastic headpieces that were once big double duty transparent food cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a little while, long enough for our trips for water and coal and food and so on. Ma started moaning again. I've always known there was something out there waiting to get us. I've felt it for years. Something that's part of the cold and hates all warmth and wants to destroy the nest. It's been watching us all this time and now it's coming after us. It'll get you and then come for me. Don't go, Harry. Pa had everything on but his helmet. He knelt by the fireplace and reached in and shook the long metal rod that goes up the chimney and knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it. Once a week he goes up on the roof to check if it's working all right. That's our worst trick, and Pa won't let me make it alone. Sis, PA said quietly, Come watch the fire. Keep an eye on the air, too. If it gets low or doesn't seem to be boiling fast enough, fetch another bucket from behind the blanket. But mind your hands. Use the cloth to pick up the bucket. Sis quit helping Ma be frightened and came over and did as she was told. Ma quieted down pretty suddenly, though her eyes were still kind of wild as she watched Pa fix on his helmet tight and pick up a pail and the two of us go out. Pa led the way and I took hold of his belt. It's a funny thing. I'm not afraid to go by myself, but when Pa's along I always want to hold on to him. Habit, I guess. And then there's no denying that this time I was a bit scared.
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[352:02]
Lady Luck
You see, it's this way we know that everything is dead out there. Pa heard the last radio voices fade away years ago and had seen some of the last folks die who weren't as lucky or well protected as us. So we knew that if there was something groping around out there, it couldn't be anything human or friendly. Besides that, there's a feeling that comes with it always being night. Cold night. Pa says there used to be some of that feeling even in the old days, but then every morning the sun would come and chase it away. I have to take his word for that, not ever remembering the sun as being anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when the dark star snatched us away from the sun, and by now it's dragged us out beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, Pa says, and taking us farther out. All the time I found myself wondering whether there mightn't be something on the dark star that wanted us, and if that was why it had captured the Earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor and I followed Pa out on the balcony. I don't know what the city looked like in the old days, but now it's beautiful. The starlight lets you see it pretty well. There's quite a bit of light in those steady points speckling the blackness above. POV says the stars used to twinkle once, but that was because there was air. We are on a hill and the shimmery plain drops away from us and then flattens out, cut up into neat squares by the troughs that used to be streets. I sometimes make my mashed potatoes look like it before I pour on the gravy. Some taller buildings push up out of the feathery plain, topped by rounded caps of air crystals like the fur hood Ma wears, only whiter. On those buildings you can see the darker squares of windows underlined by white dashes of air crystals. Some of them are on a slant, for many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all the rest that happened when the dark Star captured the earth. Here and there a few icicles hang, water icicles from the first days of the cold. Other icicles of frozen air that melted on the roofs and dripped and froze again. Sometimes one of those icicles will catch the light of a star and. And send it to you so brightly you think the star has swooped into the city. That was one of the things Pa had been thinking of when I told him about the light. But I had thought of it myself first and known it wasn't so. He touched his helmet to mine so we could talk easier, and he asked me to point out the windows to him. But there wasn't any light moving around inside them now. I or anywhere else. To my surprise, Pa didn't bawl me out and tell me I'd been seeing things. He looked all around quite a while after filling his pail, and just as we were going inside, he whipped around without warning as if to take some peeping thing off guard. I could feel it, too. The old piece was gone. There was something lurking out there, watching, waiting, getting ready inside. He said to me, touching helmets. If you see something like that again, son, don't tell the others. Your ma's sort of nervous these days, and we owe her all the feeling of safety we can give her. Once it was when your sister was born. I was ready to give up and die, but your mother kept me trotting. Another time she kept the fire going a whole week all. All by herself when I was sick. Nursed me and took care of the two of you, too. You know that game we sometimes play sitting in a square in the nest, tossing a ball around. Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight and hope there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave. His talking to me that way made me feel grown up and good. But it didn't wipe away the thing outside from the back of my mind or the fact that Pa took it seriously. It's hard to hide your feelings about such a thing. When we got back in the nest and took off our outside clothes, Pa laughed about it all and told them it was nothing and kidded me for having such an imagination. But his words fell flat. He didn't convince Ma and Sis any more than he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling the Courage ball. Something had to Be done. And almost before I knew what I was going to say, I heard myself asking. Asking Pa to tell us about the old days and how it all happened. He sometimes doesn't mind telling that story, and Sis and I sure like to listen to it, and he got my idea. So we were all settled around the fire in a wink and Ma pushed up some cans to thaw for supper and Pa began. Before he did, though, I noticed him casually get a hammer from the shelf and. And lay it down beside him. It was the same old story as always. I think I could recite the main thread of it in my sleep, though. Pa always puts in a new detail or two and keeps improving it in spots. He told us how the earth had been swinging around the sun ever so steady and warm, and the people on it fixing to make money and wars and have a good time and get power and treat each other right are wrong when without warning there comes charging out of space this dead star, this burned out sun and upsets everything. You know, I find it hard to believe in the way those people felt, any more than I can believe in the swarming number of them. Imagine people getting ready for the horrible sort of war they were cooking up, wanting it even, or at least wishing it were over so as to end their nervousness. As if all folks didn't have to hang together and pool every bit of warmth just to keep alive. And how can they have hoped to end danger any more than we can hope to end the cold? Sometimes I think Pa exaggerates and makes things out too black. He's cross with us once in a while and was probably cross with all those folks. Still, some. Some of the things I read in the old magazines sound pretty wild. He may be right. The dark star, as Pa went on telling it, rushed in pretty fast and there wasn't much time to get ready. At the beginning. They tried to keep it a secret from most people, but then the truth came out, what with the earthquakes and floods. Imagine oceans of unfrozen water and people seeing stars blotted out by something on a clear night. First off they thought it would hit the sun, and then they thought it would hit the Earth. There was even the start of a rush to get to a place called China because people thought the star would hit on the other side, but then they found it wasn't going to hit either side, but was going to come very close to the Earth. Most of the other planets were on the other side of the sun and didn't get involved. The sun and the Newcomer fought over the Earth for a little while, pulling it this way and that, like two dogs growling over a bone. Pa described it this time, and then the newcomer won and carried us off. The sun got a consolation prize, though at the last minute he managed to hold on to the moon. That was the time of the monster earthquakes and floods 20 times worse than anything before. It was also the time of the Big Jerk, as Pa calls it, when all Earth got yanked suddenly, just as Pa has done to me once or twice, grabbing me by the collar to do it when I've been sitting too far from the fire. You see, the Dark Star was going through space faster than the sun and in the opposite direction, and it had to wrench the world considerably in order to take it away. The Big Jerk didn't last long. It was over as soon as the Earth was settled down in its new orbit around the Dark Star. But it was pretty terrible while it lasted. Pa says that all sorts of cliffs and buildings toppled, oceans slopped over, swamps and sandy deserts gave great sliding surges that buried nearby lands. Earth was almost jerked out of its atmosphere blanket, and the air got so thin in spots that people keeled over and fainted. Though, of course, at the same time they were getting knocked down by the Big Jerk. And maybe their bones broke or skulls cracked. We've often asked Pa how people acted during that time, whether they were scared or brave or crazy or stunned or all four. But he's sort of leery of the subject, and he was again tonight. He says he was mostly too busy to notice. You see, Pa and some scientist friends of his had figured out part of what was going to happen. They'd known we'd get captured and our air would freeze and. And they'd been working like mad to fix up a place with airtight walls and doors and insulation against the cold and big supplies of food and fuel and water and bottled air. But the place got smashed in the last earthquakes, and all Pa's friends were killed then and in the Big Jerk. So he had to start over and throw the nest together quick without any advantages, just using any stuff he could lay his hands on. I guess he's telling pretty much the truth when he says he didn't have any time to keep an eye on how other folks behaved, either then or in the Big freeze that followed. Followed very quick, you know, both, because the Dark Star was pulling its way very fast and because Earth's rotation had been slowed in the tug of war, so that the nights were ten old nights long. Still, I'VE got an idea of some of the things that happen from the frozen folk. I've seen a few of them in other rooms in our building, others clustered around the furnaces in the basements where we go for coal. In one of the rooms an old man sits stiff in a chair with an arm and a leg in splints. In another, a man and woman are huddled together in a bed with with heaps of covers over them. You can just see their heads peeking out close together. And in another, a beautiful young lady is sitting with a pile of wraps huddled around her, looking hopefully toward the door as if waiting for someone who never came back with warmth and food. They're all still and stiff as statues, of course, but just like life. Pa showed them to me once in quick winks of his flashlight when he still had a fair supply of batteries and could afford to waste a little light. They scared me pretty bad and made my heart pound, especially the young lady, now with Pa telling his story for the umpteenth time, to take our minds off another scare, I got to thinking of the frozen folk again. All of a sudden I got an idea that scared me worse than anything yet. You see, I just remembered the face I thought I'd seen in the window. I'd forgotten about that on account of trying to hide it from the others. What, I asked myself, if the frozen folk were coming to life. What if they were like the liquid helium that got a new lease on life and started crawling toward the heat just when you thought its molecules ought to freeze solid forever? Or like the electricity that moves endlessly when it's just about as cold as that? What if the ever growing cold with the temperature creeping down the last few degrees to the last zero had mysteriously wakened the frozen folk to life? Not warm blooded life, but something icy and horrible. That was a worse idea than the one about something coming down from the dark star to get us. Or maybe, I thought, both ideas might be true, something coming down from the dark star and making the frozen folk move, using them to do its work. That would fit with both things. I'd seen the beautiful young lady in the moving starlike light, the frozen folk with minds from the dark star behind their unwinking eyes, creeping, crawling, snuffing their way, following the heat to the nest. I tell you, that thought gave me a very bad turn, and I wanted very badly to tell the others my fears. But I remembered what Pa had said and clenched my teeth and didn't speak. We were all sitting very still, even the fire was burning silently. There was just the sound of Pa's voice and the clocks, and then from beyond the blankets, I thought I heard a tiny noise. My skin tightened all over me. Pa was telling about the early years in the nest and had come to the place where he philosophizes. So I ask myself, then he said, what's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Or why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold and loneliness? The human race is done. The Earth is done. Why not give up? I asked myself, and all of a sudden I got the answer. Again I heard the noise, louder this time, a kind of uncertain shuffling tread coming closer. I couldn't breathe. Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold, PA was saying. The Earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet, and no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur or the petals of flowers. You've seen pictures of those, but I can't describe how they feel.
[367:43]
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[368:02]
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[368:12]
Lady Luck
or the fires glow. It makes everything else worth while, and that's as true for the last man as the first. And still the steps kept shuffling closer. It seemed to me that the inmost blanket trembled and bulged a little, just as if they were burned into my imagination. I kept seeing those peering, frozen eyes. So right then and there, Pa went on, and now I could tell that he heard the steps too, and was talking loud so we maybe wouldn't hear them. Right then and there I told myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity ahead of us. I'd have children and teach them all I could. I'd get them to read books. I'd plan for the future, try to enlarge and seal the nest. I'd do what I could to keep everything beautiful and growing. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars. But then the blanket actually did move and lift, and there was a bright light somewhere behind it. Pa's voice stopped and his eyes turned to the widening slit and and his hand went out until it touched and gripped the handle of the hammer beside him. In through the blanket stepped the beautiful young lady. She stood there looking at us in the strangest way, and she carried something bright and unwinking in her hand, and two other faces peered over her shoulders, men's faces, white and staring. Well, my heart couldn't have been stopped for more than four or five beats before I realized she was wearing a suit and helmet like Pa's homemade ones, only fancier, and that the men were too, and that the frozen folk certainly wouldn't be wearing those. Also, I noticed that the bright thing in her hand was just a kind of flashlight. The silence kept on while I swallowed hard a couple of times, and after that there was all sorts of jabbering and confused commotion. They were simply people, you see. We hadn't been the only ones to survive. We just thought so for naturally enough reasons. These three people had survived, and quite a few others with them, and when we found out how they survived, Pa let out the biggest whoop of joy. They were from Los Alamos, and they were getting their heat and power from atomic energy, just using the uranium and plutonium intended for bombs. They had enough to go on for thousands of years. They had a regular little airtight city with airlocks and all. They even generated electric light and grew plants and animals by it. At this Pa let out a second whoop, waking Ma from her faint. But if we were flabbergasted at them, they were double flabbergasted at us. One of the men kept saying, but it's impossible, I tell you. You can't maintain an air supply without hermetic sealing. It's simply impossible. That was after he had got his helmet off and was using our air. Meanwhile, the young lady kept looking around at us as if we were still saints and telling us we'd done something amazing, and suddenly she broke down and cried. They'd been scouting around for survivors, but they never expected to find any in a place like this. They had rocket ships at Los Alamos and plenty of chemical fuel. As for liquid oxygen, all you had to do was go out and shovel the air blanket at the top level. So after they'd got things going smoothly at Los Alamos, which had taken years, they decided to make some trips to likely places where there might be other survivors. No good trying long distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the earth. Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harbor, Harwell and Tenatuba. And now they'd been giving our city a look, not really expecting to find anything. But they had an instrument that noticed the faintest heat waves and it had told them there was something warm down here, so they'd landed to investigate. Of course, we hadn't heard them land since there was no air to carry the sound and they'd had to investigate around quite a while to before finding us. Their instruments had given them a wrong steer and they'd wasted some time in the building across the street. By now all five adults were talking like 60. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of the ice in the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff and even asking about how the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkled their noses that they found the nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and just asked bushels of questions. In fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Paul forgot about things. And it wasn't until they were all getting groggy that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets. Of course that started them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk. They weren't used to so much oxygen. Funny thing, though, I didn't do much talking at all and Sis hung on to Ma all the time and hid her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable and disturbed myself. Even about the young lady glimpsing her outside there. I'd had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me. I sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the nest and let us be alone and get our feelings straightened out. And when the newcomers began to talk about our all going to Los Alamos, and as if that were taken for granted, I could see that something of the same feeling struck Pa and Ma too. Pa got very silent all of a sudden, and Ma kept telling the young lady, but I wouldn't know how to act there, and I haven't any clothes. The strangers were puzzled, like anything at first, but then they got the idea. As Pa kept saying, it just doesn't seem right to let this fire go out. Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a survival school. Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake, or in the Congo. Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I been thinking a lot about Los Alamos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for myself. You ask me, Pa wants to see them, too. He's been getting pretty thoughtful, watching Ma and Sis perk up. It's different now that we know others are alive, he explains to me. Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless any more. Neither do I, for that matter. Not having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a person. I looked around at the blanket walls and the fire and the pails of air boiling away, and Ma and Sis sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light. It's not going to be easy to leave the nest, I said, wanting to cry. Kind of. It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers. He nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. Then he looked at the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on, just as if it was one of our birthdays or Christmas. You'll quickly get over that feeling, son, he said. The trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller till it ended with just the nest. Now it'll be good to have a real huge world again, the way it was in the beginning. I guess he's right. You think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till I grow up? I'll be 20 in only 10 years. A pail of Air by Fritz Liber.
[377:42]
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Postmark Ganymede 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 recording by Dale Grothman Consider the poor mailman of the future. To sleet and snow and dead of night. Things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds will be added sub zero void meteors and planets that won't stay put. Maybe he'll decide that for six cents an ounce. It just ain't worth it. Postmark Ganymede by Robert Silverberg. I'm washed up, preston growled bitterly. They made a postman out of me. Me a postman. He crumpled the assignment memo into a small hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days, which was as long as it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his transfer to Postal Delivery. Suddenly Preston felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a man in the trim gray of a patrolman's uniform. What do you want, Dawes? Chief's been looking for you, Preston. It's time for you to get going on your run. Preston scowled. Time to go deliver the mail, eh? He spat. Don't they have anything better to do with good spacemen than make letter carriers out of them? The other man shook his head. You won't get anywhere grousing about it, Preston. Your papers don't specify which branch you're assigned to, and if they want to make you carry the mail, that's it. His voice became suddenly gentle. Come on, Bress. One last drink and then let's go. You don't want to spoil a good record, do you? No, preston said Reflexively. He gulped his drink and stood up. Okay, I'm ready. Neither snow nor rain shall stay me from my appointed rounds or however the damned thing goes. That's a smart attitude, Preston. Come on, I'll walk you over to Administration. Savagely, Preston ripped away the hand that the other had put around his shoulders. I can get there myself. At least give me credit for that. Ok, dawes said, shrugging. Well, good luck, Preston. Yeah, thanks. Thanks real lots. He pushed his way past the man in space grays and shouldered past a couple of barflies as he left. He pushed open the door of the bar and stood outside for a moment. It was near midnight and the sky over Nome Spaceport was bright with stars. Preston's trained eye picked out Mars, Jupiter, Uranus. There they were, waiting. But he could spend the rest of his days ferrying letters on the Ganymede run. He sucked in the cold night air of summertime Alaska and squared his shoulders. Two hours later Preston sat at the controls of a one man patrol ship, just as he had in the old days. Only the control panel was bare where the firing studs of the heavy guns was found in regular patrol ships in the cargo hold Instead of crates of spare ammo, there were three bulging sacks of mail destined for the colony on Ganymede. Slight difference, Preston thought as he set up his blast pattern. Okay, Preston, came a voice from the tower. You've got clearance. Cheers, preston said, and yanked the blast lever. The ship jolted upward, and for a second he felt a little of the old thrill, until he remembered. He took the ship out in space, saw the blackness in the viewplate. The radio crackled. Come in, Postal ship. Come in, Postal ship. I'm in. What do you want? We're your convoy, a hard voice said. Patrol ship O8756. Lieutenant Mellers above you. Down at three o'. Clock. Patrol ship 10732. Lieutenant Gunderson. We'll take you through the Pirate Belt. Preston felt his face go hot with shame. Mellor's Gunderson. They would stick two of his old sidekicks on the job of guarding him. Please acknowledge, mellor said. The ice worms are not expecting any mail. Just the mailman. Preston paused. Then postal ship 1872. Lieutenant Preston aboard. I acknowledge the message. There was a stunned silence. Preston? How Preston? The one and only, preston said. What are you doing on a postal ship? Mellors asked. Why don't you ask the chief that? He's the one who yanked me out of patrol and put me here. Can you beat that? Gunderson asked incredulously. Hal Preston on a postal ship? Yeah. Incredible, isn't it? Preston asked bitterly. You can't believe your ears. Well, you'd better believe it, because here I am. Must be some clerical error, gunderson said. Let's change the subject, preston snapped. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and flying, playing on spinquest, and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30, coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms P I N Q
[383:52]
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[383:54]
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free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. They were silent for a moment as the three ships, two armed and one loaded with mail for Ganymede, streaked outward away from Earth. Manipulating his controls with the ease of long experience, Preston guided the ship smoothly toward the gleaming bulk of far off Jupiter. Even at this distance, he could see five or six bright pips surrounding the huge planet. There was Callista, and there was Ganymede. He made computations, checked his controls figured orbits. Anything to keep from having to talk to his two ex patrol mates or from having to think about the humiliating job he was on. Anything to pirates Move up to two o'. Clock. Preston came awake. He picked off the location of the pirate ships. There were two of them coming up out of the asteroid belt. Small, deadly compact, they orbited toward him. He pounded the instrument panel in impotent rage, looking for the guns that weren't there. Don't worry, Prez, said Miller's voice. We'll take care of him for you. Thanks, preston said bitterly. He watched as the pirate ships approached, longing to trade places with the men in the patrol ships above and and below him. Suddenly a bright spear of flame lashed out across space, and the hull of Gunderson's ship glowed cherry red. I'm okay, gunderson reported immediately. Screens took the charge. Preston gripped his controls and threw the ship into a plunging dive that dropped it back behind the protection of both patrol ships. He saw Gunderson and Mellors converge on one of the pirates. Two blue beams licked out and the pirate ship exploded. But then the second pirate ship swooped down in an unexpected dive. Look out. Yelled Preston helplessly. But it was too late. Beams ripped into the hull of Mellor's ship, and a dark fissure line opened down the side of the ship. Preston smashed his hand against the control panel. Better to die in an honest dog fight than to live this way. It was one against one now, Gunderson against the pirate. Preston dropped back again to take advantage of the patrol ship's protection. I'm going to try a diversionary tactic, gunderson said on the untappable type beam. Get ready to cut under and streak for Ganymede with all you got. Check. Preston watched as the tactic got underway. Gunderson's ship traveled in a long, looping spiral that drew the pirate into the upper quadrant of space, his path free. Preston guided his ship under the other two and toward unobstructed freedom. As he looked back, he saw Gunderson streaming for the pirate on a sure collision orbit. He turned away. The score was two patrolmen dead, two ships wrecked, but the males would get through. Shaking his head, Preston leaned forward over his control board and headed on toward Ganymede. The blue, white frozen moon hung beneath him. Preston snapped on the radio, Ganymede Colony, come in, please. This is your postal ship. The words tasted sour in his mouth. There was silence for a second. Come in, Ganymede, preston repeated impatiently. And then the sound of a distress signal cut across his audio pickup. It was coming on wide beam from the satellite below, and they had cut out all receiving facilities in an attempt to step up their transmitter. Preston reached for the wide beam stud. Okay, I picked up your signal. Ganymede. Come in now. This is Ganymede, a tense voice said. We got trouble down here. Who are you? Mail ship, preston said. From Earth. What's going on? There was a sound of voices whispering something near the microphone. Finally. Hello, mail ship. Yeah, you're going to have to turn back to Earth, fellow. You can't land here. It's rough on us missing the mail trip. But Preston said impatiently, why can't I land? What the devil's going on down there? We've been invaded, a tired voice said. The colony's been completely surrounded by ice worms. Ice worms? The local native life, the colonists explained. They're about 30ft long, a foot wide, and mostly mouth. There's a ring of them about a hundred yards wide surrounding the dome. They can't get in and we can't get out, and we can't figure any possible approach for you. Pretty, preston said. But why didn't the things bother you while you were building your dome? Apparently they have a long hibernation cycle. We've only been here two years, you know. The ice worms must all have been asleep when we came. But they came swarming out of the ice by the hundreds last month. How come Earth doesn't know the antenna of our long range transmitter is outside the dome? One of the worms came by and chewed the antenna right off. All we've got left is this short range thing we're using, and it's no good more than 10,000 miles from here. You're the first one who's been this close since it happened. I get it. Preston closed his eyes for a second, trying to think things out. The colony was under blockade by hostile alien life, thereby making it impossible for him to deliver the mail. Okay. If he'd been a regular member of the postal service, he'd have given it up as a bad job and gone back to Earth to report the difficulty. But I'm not going back. I'll be the best damn mailman they've got. Give me a landing orbit anyway, Ganymede. But you can't come down here. How will you leave your ship? Don't worry about that, preston said calmly. We have to worry. We don't dare open the dome with those creatures outside. You can't come down postal ship. You want your mail or don't you? The colonists paused well, OK then, preston said. Shut up and give me the landing coordinates. There was a pause, and then the figures started coming over. Preston jotted them down on the scratch pad. Ok, I've got them now. Sit tight and wait. He glanced contemptuously at the three mail pouches behind him, grinned, and started setting up the orbit. Mailman, am I? I'll show them. He brought the postal ship down with all the skill of his years in the patrol, spiraling in around the big satellite of Jupiter as cautiously and as precisely as if he were zeroing in on a pirate lair in the asteroid belt. In its own way, this was as dangerous, perhaps even more so. Preston guided the ship into an ever narrowing orbit, which he stabilized about a hundred miles over the surface of Ganymede. As his ship swung around the moon's poles in its tight orbit, he began to figure some fuel computations. His scratch pad began to fill with fuel storage, escape velocity, margin of error, safety factor. Finally he looked up. He had computed exactly how much spare fuel he had, how much he could afford to waste. It was a small figure. Too small, perhaps. He turned on the radio. Ganymede, where are you, postal ship? I'm in a tight orbit about a hundred miles up, preston said. Give me the figures on the circumference of your dome. Ganymede. Seven miles, the colonist said. What are you planning to do? Preston didn't answer. He broke contact and scribbled some more figures. Seven miles of ice worms, eh? That was too much to handle. He had planned on dropping flaming fuel on them and burning them out, but he couldn't do it that way. He would have to try a different tactic. Down below, he could see the blue white ammonia ice that was the frozen atmosphere of Ganymede. Shimmering gently amid the whiteness was the transparent yellow of the dome, beneath whose curved walls lived the Ganymede colony. Even forewarned, Preston shuddered. Surrounding the dome was a living, writhing belt of giant worms. Lovely, he said. Just lovely. Getting up, he clambered over the mail sacks and headed toward the rear of the ship, hunting for the auxiliary fuel tanks. Working rapidly, he lugged one out and strapped it to an empty gun turret, making sure he could get it loose again when he needed it. He wiped away sweat and checked the angle at which the fuel tank would face the ground when he came down for a landing. Satisfied, he knocked a hole in the side of the fuel tank. Okay, Ganymede, he radioed. I'm coming down. He blasted loose from the tight orbit and rocked the ship down on manual. The forbidding surface of Ganymede drew closer and closer. Now he could see the ice worms plainly. Hideous thick creatures lying coiled in masses around the dome. Preston checked his spacesuit to make sure it was sealed. The instruments told him he was barely 10 miles above Ganymede now. One more swing around the poles would do it. He peered down as the dome came below and once again snapped on the radio. I'm going to come down and burn a path through those worms for you. Watch me carefully and jump to it when you see me land. I want that airlock open or else. But. No buts. He was right. Overhead now. Just one ordinary type gun would have solved the whole problem, he thought. But postal ships don't get guns. They weren't supposed to need them. He centered the ship as well as he could on the dome below and threw it into automatic pilot. Jumping from the control panel, he ran back toward the gun turret and slammed shut the plexi light screen. Its outer wall opened and the fuel tank went tumbling outward and down. He returned to his control panel seat and looked at the viewscreen. He smiled. The fuel tank was lying near the dome, right in the middle of the nest of ice worms. The fuel was leaking from the puncture. The ice worms writhed in from all sides. Now, preston said grimly. The ship roared down. Jets blasting the fire, licked out, heated the ground, melted the snow, ignited the fuel tank. A gigantic flame blazed up, reflecting harshly off the snows of Ganymede, and the mindless ice worms came marching toward the fire, being consumed as still others devoured the bodies of the dead and dying. Preston looked away and concentrated on the business of finding a place to land the ship. The holocaust still raged as he leapt down from the catwalk of the ship, clutching one of the heavy mail sacks and struggling through the melting snows to the airlock. He grinned. The airlock was open. Arms grabbed him, pulling him through. Someone opened his helmet. Great job, postman. There are two more mail sacks, preston said. Get men out after them. The man in charge gestured to two young colonists who donned spacesuits and dashed through the airlock. Preston watched as they raced to the ship, climbed in, and returned a few moments later with the mail sacks. You've got it all, Preston said. I'm checking out. I'll get word to the patrol to get down here and clean up that mess for you. How can we thank you? The official looking man said. No need to, preston said casually. I had to get the mail down here someway, didn't I? He turned away, smiling to himself. Maybe the chief had known what he was doing when he took an experienced patrolman and dumped him into postal. Delivering the mail to Ganymede had been more hazardous than fighting off half a dozen space pirates. I guess I was wrong, Preston thought. This is no snap job for old men. Preoccupied, he started out through the airlock. The man in charge caught his arm. Say we don't even know your name. Here you are a hero and hero? Preston shrugged. All I did was deliver the mail. It's all in a day's work, you know. The mail's got to get through. End of Postmark Ganymede By Robert Silverberg.
[397:33]
Lady Luck
Say hello from Me By Frank W. Coggins 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 Matt Perard say hello for Me By Frank W. Coggins 20 Years is a long time to live in anticipation. At least Professor Pettibone thought so. Until the 20 years were up, this was to be the day. But of course, Professor Pettibone had no way of knowing it. He rose as he had been doing for the previous 20 years, donned the tattered remnants of his spacesuit, and went out into the open. He stood erect, bronzed, magnificent, faced distant Earth, and recited, Good morning, bright sunshine. We are glad you are here. You make the world happy and bring us good cheer. It was something he had heard as a child and isolated here on Mars. He had remembered it and used it to keep from losing his power of speech. The ritual finished, he walked to the edge of the nearest canal and gathered a bushel or so of dried Martian moss. He returned and began polishing the shiny exterior of the wrecked spaceship. It had to really glitter if it was to be an effective beacon in guiding the rescue ship. Professor Cuddebone knew, had known for years that a ship would come. It was just a matter of time. And as the years, years, slipped by, his faith diminished. Not a whit with his task half completed, he glanced up at the sun and quickened the polishing. It was a long walk to the place the berry bushes grew, and if he arrived too late, the sun would have dried out the night's crop of fragile berries, and he would wait until the morrow for nourishment. But on this day he was fated to arrive, arrive at the bush area not at all, because an alien sound from above again drew the professor's eyes from his work, and he knew that the day had arrived. The ship was three times as large as any he had ever visualized, and its futuristic design told him sharply how far he had fallen behind in his dreaming. He smiled and said, quite calmly, I dare say I am about to be rescued. And he experienced a thrill as the great ship sat down and two men emerged therefrom. A thrill tinged with a guilt sense because emotional experiences were rare in an isolated life and seemed somehow indecent. The two men had weapons they advanced upon. Professor Pedagogue looked up into his face reflected a certain wary hostility. That the hostility was tinged with instinctive respect, even awe made it no less potent. One of them asked, fella man came and shook Skyboat. Long time ago. Him dead. Where appropriate gestures accompanied the words, Professor Pettibone smiled down at the little men and bowed. You are of course referring to me. I came in the ship. I am Professor Pettibone. It was nice of you to hunt me up. The eyes of the two Terran spacemen met and locked in startled inquiry. One of them voiced the reaction of both when he said, what the hell? You no doubt are curious as to the fate of the other members of the expedition. They were killed. All save Flying Fletcher, who lasted a week. Professor Pettibone waved a hand there in the graveyard, but their eyes remained on the only survivor of that ill fated first expedition. It was hard to accept him as the man they sought. But faced with undeniable similarity between what they expected and what they had found, the two spacemen had no alternative. I hope your food supply is ample and varied, Professor Pettibone said. This seemed to bring them out of their bemusement. Of course, Professor. Would you care to come aboard? The other made a try at congenial levity. You must be pretty hungry after 20 years. Really? Has it been that long? I tried to keep track at first. We can blast off any time. You say you're probably pretty anxious to get back. Indeed I am. The changes in 20 years must be breathtaking. I wonder if they'll remember me. A short time later the professor said, it's amazing. A ship of this size handled by only two men. Then he sat down to a repast laid out by one of the odd spacemen. But after nibbling a bit of this, a forkful of that, he found that satisfaction lay in the anticipation more so than than in the eating. We'll look around and see what we can find in the way of clothing for you, professor, one of the spacemen said. Then the man's bemusement returned. His eyes traveled over the magnificent physique before him the perfect giant of a man, the great Apollo like head with the calm clear eyes, the expression of complete contentment and serenity. The spaceman said, professor, to what do you attribute the changes in your body? What is there about this planet? I really don't know. Professor Pettibone looked down his torso with an impersonal eye. I think the greener skin pigmentation is a result of mineral heavy vapors that occur during certain seasons. The growth as to my body, I really don't know. But the two spacemen, though they didn't refer to it, were not concerned with the body so much as the aura of completeness, the radiation of contentment which came from somewhere within. And it was passing strange that nothing more was said about the professor returning to Earth. No great revelation suddenly arrived at that he would not go. Rather they discussed various things that three gentlemen meeting casually would discuss. Then Professor Pettigone arose from his chair and said, it was kind of you to drop off and see me. And one of the spacemen replied, a pleasure, sir, a real pleasure indeed. Then the professor left the ship and watched it lift up on a tail of red fire and go away. He raised an arm and waved. Say hello for me, he called. Then he turned away and from force of havoc he began again to polish the hull, knowing that he would keep it shining and be proud of it for many years to come. Almost beyond reach of the planet, one of the spacemen flipped a switch and put certain sensitive communication mechanisms to work. So sensitive they could pick up ethereum vibrations far away and make them audible. But only faintly came the pleasant voice, voice of a contented man. Good morning, bright sunshine. We're glad you are here. You make the world end of say hello for Me by Frank W. Coggins.
[405:13]
Celebration Host
The Semantic War by Bill Clothier this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org perhaps there have been causes for slaughter just as silly as this was. But try and find one. The rain pours down chill out of a sullen sky. My pace quickens as I try to regain the relative warmth and shelter of the cavern before I become thoroughly drenched. I cannot afford to catch a cold. All alone as I am and with no medicine, I would stand too great a chance of a quick death. These lowering Oregon skies that still hold traces of nameless disease in their writhing cloud tendrils. I'm not just afraid of a cold. That would only be the key for Some other malady to use and strike me down forever. I see the cave up ahead and feel a sense of contentment as I draw near, near and then duck inside its stony mouth. The rain hisses without, but inside it's dry. There's a heavy cowhide hanging on a peg in the wall, and I take it down and wrap it around me. Soon I will be warm once more. I may stave off my ultimate end. Sometimes I wonder why I wish to put it off. Certainly according to my old standards, there was no point in living. But somehow I feel that the mere fact of living is justification in itself, even for such a life as mine. I didn't always feel this way, but then circumstances change, and people change with them. I changed my circumstances more than myself, but I had no alternative. So now I exist. I suppose I should be content. After all, I am alive. And in my own simple way I enjoy life. I can remember people who asked nothing more than to be allowed to live, to exist. Ironically enough, I always considered them subnormal. I felt that a man should strive to do something that would not only perpetuate the happiness of his own life, but that of his fellow men, something that would make life more beautiful and easier and more kind. It was with this feeling that I applied myself as a student of philosophy at Stanford University. And the strengthening of this same belief led me to take up teaching and embrace it as the only way of obtaining genuine happiness. My personal philosophy was simple. I would learn about life in all its real and symbolic meanings and then teach it to my pupils, each of whom I felt sure or thirsting for the knowledge that I was extracting from my cultural environment. I would show them the meaning behind things that I felt was the key to successful living. Now it seems strangely pathetic that I should have essayed such an impossible task. But even a professor of philosophy can be mistaken and become confused. I remember when I first became aware of the movement. Movement. For years we had been drilling certain precepts into the soft, impressionable heads of those students who came under our influence. Liberalism, some called it. The right to take the values accumulated by society over a period of hundreds of years and bend them to fit whatever idea or act was contemplated. By such methods, it was possible to fit the more is to the deed, not the deed to the mortal mores. Oh, it was a wonderful theory, one that promised to project all human activities entirely beyond good and evil. However, I digress. It was a spring morning at Berkeley, California, when I had my first inkling of the movement. I was sitting in my office, gazing out the window and considering my life in my usual contemplative fashion. I might say I was being rather smug. I was thinking how fortunate I was to have been graduated from Stanford with such high honors, and how my good luck had stayed with me until I received my doctor's degree in a famous eastern university and came out to take an associate professorship at the Berkeley campus. I was watching the hurrying figures below on the crosswalks and idly noting the brilliant green of the shrubbery and trees and lawn. I was mixing up Keats with a bit of philosophy and thoroughly enjoying myself. Knowledge is truth, truth beauty, I mused. That is all we know on earth and all we need to know. There was a knock on my door and I said, come in, reluctantly abandoning my train of thought, which had just picked up Shakespeare, whom I was going to consider as two thirds philosopher and one third poet. I have never felt that the field of literature had the sole claim to Shakespeare's greatness. Professor Lillick came in, visibly perturbed. Lillick was a somewhat erratic individual for a professor at least, and he was often perturbed once he became excited about the possibilities of the campus shrubbery, being stunted and discolored by the actions of certain dogs living on campus. He was not a philosophy professor, of course, but a member of the political science group. Carlson? He asked nervously. Have you heard about it yet? I have no idea, I returned good naturedly. Have I heard about what? He looked behind him as if he thought he might be followed. Then he whirled around, his sharp featured face alight with feeling. Carlson. The wiftic doofles. The miradi. And he stared at me intently, his gimlet eyes almost blazing. I stared back at him blankly. You haven't heard? He exclaimed. I thought surely you would know about it. You're always talking about freedom to apply thought for the good of humanity. Well, we're finally going to do something about it. You'll see. Keep your ears open, Carlson. Then he turned and started out of the room. He paused at the threshold and fixed me again with his ferret like eyes. The wishtick doofles. The Miradi, he said, and vanished through the door. And that was my first unheeded omen of what was to come. I paid little attention to it. Lilac wasn't the sort of man who inspired attention. As a matter of fact, I consider reporting him to the head of his department as being on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But I didn't. In those days, nervous breakdowns were a common occurrence around college campuses the educational profession was a very hazardous occupation. One southern university, for example, reported five faculty suicides during spring quarter. In the days that followed, however, I began to realize that there was some sort of movement being fostered by the student body. It couldn't be defined, but it could be felt and seen. The students began to form groups and hold meetings, often without official sanction. What they were about could not be discovered, but some of the results soon became evident. For one thing, certain students began to walk on one side of the street and the other students walked on the other side. The ones who used the north side of the street wore green sweaters with white trousers or skirts, and the south side students wore white sweaters with green trousers or skirts. It even got to the point where those in green sweaters went only to classes in the morning morning, and those in white attended the afternoon sessions. Then the little white cards began to appear. They were sent through the mail. They were slipped under doorways and in desk drawers. They turned up beside your plate at dinner and under your pillow at night. They were pasted on your front door in the morning, and they appeared in the fly leaves of your books. They were even hung on trees like fruit and and surely no fruit ever spored so queer a seedling. They said either one thing or the other. The Wystik Doofles the Miraddy or the Mirati Doofles the Wystik. Which card belonged to what group was not immediately clear. It was not until the riots broke out that the thing began to be seen in its proper perspective. And then it was too late. When the first riot started, it was assumed that the university officials and the police could quell it in a very short time. But strangely enough, as additional police were called in, the battle raged even more fiercely. I could see part of the affair from my window and therefore was able to understand why the increasing police force only added to the turmoil. They were fighting one another, and through the din could be heard the wild shouts of the Woostick Doofles the Miradi or the Miradi Doofles the Woostick.
[414:14]
SpinQuest Advertiser
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[414:16]
Lady Luck
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[414:19]
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[414:44]
Celebration Host
The final blow came when I saw the Registrar and the Dean of Men struggling fiercely in one of the hedgerows and heard the Dean of Men yell in wild exultation as he brought a briefcase down on the registrar's head. The Wistick Doofles the Moretti. Then someone broke in through the door of my office. I turned in alarm and saw a huge three letter man standing only a few feet from me. He had been in one of my classes. I remembered something about his being the hardest driving fullback on the Pacific Coast. He was certainly the dumbest philosophy student I ever flunked. His hair was mussed and he was wild eyed. He had blood on his face and chest and his clothes were torn and grass stained. The Wistick Doofles. The Miradi, he said. Get out of my office, I told him coldly, and stay out. So you're on the other side, he snarled. I hoped you would be. He started toward me and I seized a book end on my desk and tried to strike him with it, but he brushed it aside and came on in. His first blow nearly broke my arm and as I dropped my guard due to the numbing pain and he struck me solidly on the side of the jaw. When I recovered consciousness I was lying by the side of my desk where I had fallen. My head ached and my neck was stiff. I got painfully to my feet and then noticed the big square of cardboard pinned to the door of my office. It was lettered in red pencil and in past tense, said the Wistick Doofled the Moretti. The uprisings arose spontaneously in all parts of the country. They were not confined to colleges. They were not confined to any particular group. They encompassed nearly the entire population, and the fervor aroused by their battle cry, whichever one it might be, was beyond all comprehension. I could not understand either slogan's meaning, and there were others like myself. On several occasions I attempted to find out, but I was beaten twice and threatened with a pistol the third time. So I gave up all such efforts. I was never much given to any sort of physical violence. One night I went home thoroughly disheartened by the state of affairs. The university was hardly functioning. Nearly the entire faculty, including the college president, had been drawn into one camp or the other. Their actions were utterly abhorrent to me. If the professor was a Green Top or Westikian, he lectured only the Green tops. If he belonged to the Maradians or White Top faction, they were the only ones who could enter his classroom. The two groups were so evenly divided that open violence was frowned upon as a means of attaining whatever end they had in view. They were biding their time and gathering strength for fresh onslaughts on each other. As I say, I went home feeling very discouraged. My wife was in the kitchen preparing dinner, and I went in and sat down at the table while she worked. The daily paper was lying on the table, its headlines loaded with stories of bloodshed and strife throughout the nation. I glanced through them. Lately there seemed to be a sort of pattern forming east of the Mississippi. The general slogan was emerging as the Moretti duffeling the wishtick west of the Mississippi. The Wystick was receiving the greater support, and it seemed that the younger people and the women preferred the Mirati, while the elderly people and most men were on the side of the Wystick. I commented on this. My wife answered briefly, of course, anyone should know that the Mirati will win out. She went on with preparations for dinner, not looking at me. I sat stunned for a moment. Great God in heaven, not my wife. Am I to understand that you are taking any part of this seriously? I asked with some heat. The whole thing is a horrible, pointless prank. She turned and faced me squarely. Not to me, I say the Moretti will win out. I want it to. And I think you'd be wise to get on the bandwagon while there's still time. I realized she was serious. Dead serious. I tried a cautious query. Just what does the duffelation of the WIS stick by the Mirati mean? And it made her angry. It actually made her angry. She switched off the front burner and walked past me into the living room. I didn't think she was going to answer, but she did. Sort of. There is no excuse for an egghead in your position not knowing what it means. Her voice was strained and tense. If you had any perception whatsoever, you would understand what the Moretti has to give the American people. It's our only hope and you've got to take sides. You're either for the Mirati or the Riftic. You can't take the middle way. I felt completely isolated. Wait. I don't know what it means. Forget it, she broke in. I should have known. You were born, you have lived, and you will die an egghead in your ivory tower. Just remember the Miradi doofles, the Wuftic. And she swept on upstairs to pack and out of my life. And that's the way it was. Whatever malignant poison had seeped into the collective brain of the nation, it was certainly a devastating leveler. Of all Sorts of institutions and values. Wives left husbands and husbands left wives. Joint bank accounts vanished. Families disintegrated. Wall street crumpled. Developments were swift and ominous. The army split up into various groups. Most of the enlisted men favored the Mirati, but the officers and older non coms pledged the Westickian faith. Their power was sufficient to hold many in line. But a considerable number in the lower ranks deserted and joined forces with the Maradians, who held the eastern half of the country. The Wishticks ruled the western half with an iron hand, and all signs pointed towards civil war. Labor and military authorities conscripted the entire population, regardless of age, sex, or religious convictions. For my own part, I slipped away from the campus and fled north into the Oregon mountains. It's not that I was afraid to fight, but I rebelled at the absolute stupidity of the whole thing. The ideafighting because of a few words. But they did. The destruction was frightful. However, it was not as bad as many had thought it would be. The forces of the Wistick leveled the city of New York, true, but it took three H bombs to do the job instead of one, as the Air Force had claimed. In retaliation, San Francisco and Los Angeles were destroyed in a single night by cleverly placed atom bombs smuggled in by a number of fifth columnist wives who gained access to the cities under the pretext of returning to their husbands. This was a great victory for the Meridians, even though the women had to blow themselves up to accomplish their mission. The Meridian forces were slowly beaten back toward the Atlantic shores. They were very cunning fighters, and they had youthful courage to implement that cunning. But their overall policy lacked the stability and long range thinking necessary to the prosecution of total war. One day they might overrun many populous areas, and the next day, due to the constant bickering and quarreling among their own armies, they would lose all they had won, and more too. Finally, in desperation, they loosed their most horrible weapon, germ warfare. But they forgot to protect themselves against their own malignity. The semantic war ground to a shuddering halt. The carrion smell of death lay around the world, the duffelation of the Wystick and the Miradi. So here I am, scuttling around in the forests like a lonely pack rat. It is not the sort of life I would choose if there were any other choice. Yet life has become very simple. I enjoy the simple things, and I enjoy them with gusto. When I find food that suits my stomach, I am happy. When I quench my thirst, I am happy. When I see a beautiful sunset from one of my mountain crags. I am happy. It takes little when you have little, and there have been few men who have had less. Only one thing troubles me. I suppose it doesn't matter. But I go on wondering. I wonder which side was right. I mean, really right. End of the Semantic War by Bill Clothier.
[423:53]
SpinQuest Advertiser
The Skull by Philip K. Dick 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 Grothman Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen, but he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger's skull under his arm. The Skull by Philip K. Dick what is this opportunity? Conger asked. Go on. I'm interested. The room was silent. All faces were fixed on Conger, still in a drab prison uniform. The speaker leaned forward slowly. Before you went to prison, your trading business was paying well. All illegal. All very profitable. Now you have nothing except the prospect of another six years. Tears in a cell. Conker scowled. There is a certain situation, very important to this council, that requires your peculiar abilities. Also, it is a situation you might find interesting. You were a hunter, were you not? You've done a great deal of trapping. Hiding in the bushes, waiting at night for game. I imagine hunting must be a source of sexual satisfaction to you. The chase. The stalking. Conger sighed. His lips twisted. All right, he said. Leave that out. Get to the point. Who do you want me to kill? The speaker smiled. All in proper sequence, he said softly. The car slid to a stop. It was night. There was no light anywhere along the street. Conger looked out. Where are we? What is this place? The hand of the guard pressed onto his arm. Come through that door. Conger stepped down onto the damp sidewalk. The guard came swiftly after him, and then the Speaker. Conger took a deep breath of the cold air. He studied the dim outline of the building rising up before them. I know this place. I've seen it before. He squinted his eyes, growing accustomed to the dark. Suddenly he became alert. This is. Yes, the first church. The speaker walked toward the steps. We're expected. Expected? Here? Yes. The speaker mounted the steps. You know we're not allowed in their churches. Especially with guns. He stopped. Two armed soldiers loomed up ahead, one on each side. All right. The speaker looked up at them. They nodded. The door of the church was open. Conger could see other soldiers inside, standing about, young soldiers with large eyes, gazing at the icons and holy images. I see, he said. It was necessary, the speaker said. As you know we have been singularly unfortunate in the past in our relations with the First Church. This won't help, but it's worth it. You will see. They passed through the hall into the main chamber where the altarpiece was and the kneeling places. The speaker scarcely glanced at the altar as they passed by. He pushed open a small door and beckoned Conger through. In here. We have to hurry. The faithful will be flocking in soon. Conger entered, blinking. They were in a small chamber, low ceilinged with dark panels of old wood. There was the smell of ashes and smoldering spices in the room. He sniffed. What's that? The smell cups on the wall? I don't know. The speaker crossed impatiently to the far side. According to our information, it is hidden here by this. Conger looked around the room. He saw books and papers, holy signs and images. A strange low shiver went through him. Does my job involve anyone of the Church? If it does. The speaker turned, astonished. Can it be that you believe in the Founder? Is it possible? A hunter? A killer? No, of course not. All their business about resignation to death. Non violence. What is it, then? Conger shrugged. I've been taught not to mix with such as these. They have strange abilities, and you can't reason with them. The speaker studied Conger thoughtfully. You have the wrong idea. It is no one here that we have in mind. We've found that killing them only tends to increase their numbers. Then why come here? Let's leave. No. We came for something important. Something you will need to identify your man. Without it, you won't be able to find him. A trace of a smile crossed the Speaker's face. We don't want you to kill the wrong person. It's too important. I don't make mistakes. Conger's chest rose. Listen, Speaker. This is an unusual situation, the speaker said. You see, the person you are after, the person that we are sending you to find, is known only by certain objects here. They are the only traces, the only means of identification. Without them, what are they? He came toward the Speaker. The speaker moved to one side. Look, he said. He drew a sliding wall away and showed a dark square hole in there. Conger squatted down, staring in. He frowned. A skull. A skeleton. The man you are after has been dead two centuries, the speaker said. This is all that remains of him. And this is all you have with which to find him. For a long time, Conger said nothing. He stared down at the bones, dimly visible in the recess of the wall. How could a man dead centuries be killed? How could he be stalked, brought down. Conger was a hunter, a man who lived as he pleased, where he pleased. He had kept himself alive by trading, bringing furs and pelts in from the provinces on his own ship, riding at high speed, slipping through the customs lines around Earth. He had hunted in the great mountains of the Moon. He had stalked through empty Martian cities. He had explored. The speaker said, soldiers, take these objects and have them carried to the car. Don't lose any part of them. The soldier went into the cupboard, reaching gingerly, squatting on his heels. It is my hope, the speaker continued softly to Conger, that you will demonstrate your loyalty to us now. There are always ways for citizens to restore themselves, to show their devotion to their society. For you, I think this would be a very good chance. I seriously doubt that a better one will come. And for your efforts there will be quite a restitution. Of course. The two men looked at each other, Conger thin, unkempt, the speaker immaculate in his uniform. I understand you, conger said. I mean, I understand this part about the chance. But how can a man who's been dead two centuries be I'll explain later, the speaker said. Right now we have to hurry. The soldier had gone out with the bones wrapped in a blanket, held carefully in his arms. The speaker walked to the door. Come. They've already discovered that we've broken in here, and they'll be coming at any moment. They hurried down the damp steps to the waiting car. A second later, the driver lifted the car up into the air above the housetops. The speaker settled back in the seat. The First Church has an interesting past, he said. I suppose you're familiar with it, but I'd like to speak of a few points that are relevant to us. It was in the 20th century that the movement began. During one of the periodic wars, the movement developed rapidly, feeding on the general sense of futility, the realization that each war was breeding greater war with no end in sight. The movement posed a simple answer to the problem. Without military preparations, weapons, there could be no war. And without machinery and complex scientific technocracy, there could be no weapons. The movement preached that you couldn't stop war by planning for it. They preached that man was losing to his machinery and science, and that it was getting away from him, pushing him into greater and greater wars. Down with society, they shouted. Down with factories and science. A few more wars and there wouldn't be much left of the world. The founder was an obscure person from a small town in the American Middle West. We don't even know his name all we know is that one day he appeared, preaching a doctrine of non violence, non resistance. No fighting, no paying taxes for guns. No research except for medicine. Live out your life quietly, tending your garden, staying out of public affairs. Mind your own business. Be obscure, unknown, poor. Give away most of your possessions. Leave the city. At least that's what developed from what he told the people. The car dropped down and landed on a roof. The founder preached this doctrine, or the germ of it. There's no telling how much the faithful have added themselves. The local authorities picked him up at once, of course. Apparently they were convinced that he meant it. He was never released. He was put to death and his body buried. Secretly, it seemed that the cult was finished. The speaker smiled. Unfortunately, some of his disciples reported seeing him after the the date of his death. The rumor spread. He had conquered death. He was divine. It took hold, grew. And here we are today with the first Church obstructing all social progress, destroying society, sowing the seeds of anarchy. But the wars, Congress said. What about them? The wars? Well, there were no more wars. It must be acknowledged that. That the elimination of war was a direct result of non violence practiced on a general scale. But we can take a more objective view of war today. What was so terrible about it? War had a profound selective value. Perfectly in accord with the teachings of Darwin and Mendel and others. Without war, the mass of useless, incompetent mankind without training or intelligence is permitted to grow and expand unchecked. War acted to reduce their numbers, like storms and earthquakes and droughts. It was nature's way of eliminating the unfit. Without war, the lower elements of mankind have increased all out of proportion. They threaten the educated few, those with scientific knowledge and training, the ones equipped to direct society. They have no regard for science or. Or a scientific society based on reason. This movement seeks to aid and abet them. Only when scientists are in full control can the. He looked at his watch and then kicked the car door open. I'll tell you the rest as we walk. They cross the dark roof. Doubtless you now know whom these bones belong to. Who it is that we are after. He has been dead just two centuries now, this ignorant man from the Middle west, this founder. The tragedy is that the authorities of the time acted too slowly. They allowed him to speak, to get his message across. He was allowed to preach, to start his cult. And once such a thing is under way, there's no stopping it. But what if he had died before he preached? What if none of his doctrines had ever been spoken? It took only a moment for him to utter them. That we know. They say he spoke just once, just one time. Then the authorities came, taking him away. He offered no resistance. The incident was small. The speaker turned to Conger. Small, but we're reaping the consequences of it today. They went inside the building. Inside, the soldiers had already laid out the skeleton on a table. The soldiers stood around, their young faces intense. Conger went over to the table, pushing past them. He bent down, staring at the bones. So these are his remains, he murmured. The founder. The church has hidden them for two centuries. Quite so, the speaker said. And now we have them. Come along. Down the hall. They went across the room to the door. The speaker pushed it open. Technicians looked up. Conger saw machinery whirring and turning, benches and retorts. In the center of the room was a gleaming crystal cage. The speaker handed a slim gun to Conger. The important thing to remember is that the skull must be saved and brought back for comparison and proof. Aim low at the chest. Conger weighed the gun in his hand. It feels good, he says. I know this gun. That is, I have seen them before, but I've never used one. The speaker nodded. You will be instructed on the use of the gun and the operation of the cage. You will be given all the data we have on the time and location. The exact spot is a place called Hudson's field, about 1960, in a small community outside Denver, Colorado. And don't forget, the only means of identification you will have will be the skull. There are visible characteristics of the front teeth, especially the left incisor. Conger listened absently. He was watching two men in white carefully wrap the skull in a plastic bag. They tied it and carried it to the crystal cage. And if I should make a mistake? Pick the wrong man, then find the right one. Don't come back until you succeed in reaching this founder. And you can't wait for him to start speaking. That's what we must avoid. You must act in advance. Take chances. Shoot a as soon as you think you've found him. He'll be someone unusual, probably a stranger in the area. Apparently he wasn't known. Conger listened dimly. Do you think you have it all now? The speaker asked. Yes, I think so. Conger entered the crystal cage and sat down, placing his hands on the wheel. Good luck, the speaker said. We'll be awaiting the outcome. There's some philosophical doubt as to whether one can alter the past. This should answer the question once and for all. Conger fingered the controls of the cage. By the way, the speaker said. Don't try to use this cage for purposes not anticipated in your job. We have a constant trace on it. If we want it back, we can get it back. Good luck. Conger said nothing. The cage was sealed, and he raised his fingers and touched the wheel control. He turned the wheel carefully. He was still staring at the plastic bag when the room outside vanished. For a long time there was nothing at all, nothing beyond the crystal mesh of the cage. Thoughts rushed through Conger's mind. Helter Skelter. How could he know the man? How could he be certain in advance? What had he looked like? What was his name? How had he acted before he spoke? Would he be an ordinary person or some strange, outlandish crank? Conger picked up the slim gun and held it against his cheek. The metal of the gun was cool and smooth. He practiced moving the sight. It was a beautiful gun, the kind of gun he could fall in love with, if he had owned such a gun in the Martian desert on the long nights when he had lain, cramped and numbed by the cold, waiting for things that moved through the darkness. He put the gun down and adjusted the meter readings of the cage. Spiraling mist was beginning to condense and settle all at once. Forms wavered and fluttered around him. Colors, sounds, movements fluttered through the crystal wire. He clamped the controls off and stood up. He was on a ridge overlooking a small town. It was high noon. The air was crisp and bright. A few automobiles moved along the road. Off in the distance were some level fields. Conger went to the door and stepped outside. He sniffed the air. Then he went back into the cage. He stood before the mirror over the shelf, examining his features. He had trimmed his beard. They had not got him to cut it off, and his hair was neat. He was dressed in clothing of the mid 20th century, the odd collar and coat, the shoes of animal hide. In his pocket was money of the times. That was important. Nothing more was needed. Nothing except his ability, his special cunning. But he had never used it in such a way before. He walked down the road toward the town. The first thing he noticed were the newspapers on the stands. April 5, 1961. He was not too far off. He looked around him. There was a filling station, a garage, some taverns, and and a 10 cent store. Down the street was a grocery store and some public buildings. A few minutes later he mounted the stairs of the little public library, passing through the doors into the warm interior. The librarian looked up, smiling. Good afternoon, she said. He smiled, not speaking because his words would not be correct. Accented and strange, probably. He went over to the table and sat down by a heap of magazines. For a moment he glanced through them. Then he was on his feet again. He crossed the room to a wide rack against the wall. His heart began to beat heavily. Newspapers, weeks on end. He took a roll of them over to the table and began to scan them quickly. The print was odd and the letters strained. Some of the words were unfamiliar. He set the newspapers aside and searched further. At last he found what he wanted. He carried the Cherry Wood Gazette to the table and opened it to the first page. He found what he wanted. Prisoner Hanged Self an unidentified man held by the county Sheriff's office for suspicion of criminal syndicalism was found dead this morning by he finished the item. It was vague, uninforming. He needed more. He carried the Gazette back to the racks and then, after a moment's hesitation, approached the librarian. More? He asked. More papers. Old ones. She frowned. How old? Which papers? Months old. And before of the Gazette. That's all we have. What did you want? What were you looking for? Maybe I can help you. He was silent. You might find older issues at the Gazette office, the woman said, taking off her glasses. Why don't you try there? If you'd tell me, maybe I could help you. He went out. The Gazette office was down a side street. The sidewalk was broken and cracked. He went inside. A heater glowed in the corner of the small office. A heavy set man stood up and came slowly over to the counter. What did you want, mister? He said. Old papers. A month or more. You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slots. Live blackjack, live preps with a live dealer. New players. $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. To buy. You want to buy them? Yes. He held out some of the money he had. The man stared. Sure, he said. Sure. Well, wait a minute. He went quickly out of the room. When he came back, he was staggering under the weight of his armload, his face red. Here are some. He grunted. Took what I could find. Covers the whole year. And if you want more. Conger carried the papers outside. He sat down by the road and began to go through them. What he wanted was four months back in December. It was a tiny item, so small that he almost missed it. His hands trembled as he scanned it, using the small dictionary for some of the archaic terms. Man Arrested for Unlicensed Demonstration an unidentified man who refused to give his name was picked up in Cooper Creek by special agents of the sheriff's office. According to Sheriff Duff, it was said the man was recently noticed in this area and had been watched continually. It was Cooper Creek, December 1960. His heart pounded. That was all he needed to know. He stood up, shaking himself, stamping his feet on the cold ground. The sun had moved across the sky to the very edge of the hills. He smiled. Already he had discovered the exact time and place. Now he needed only go back, perhaps to November, to Cooper Creek. He walked back through the main section of town, past the library, past the grocery store. It would not be hard. The hard part was over. He would go there, rent a room, prepare to wait until the men appeared. He turned the corner. A woman was coming out of a doorway, loaded down with packages. Conger stepped aside and let her pass. The woman glanced at him. Suddenly her face turned white. She stared, her mouth open. Conger hurried on. He looked back. What was wrong with her? The woman was still staring. She had dropped her packages on the ground. He increased his speed, turning a second corner and went up a side street. When he looked back again, the woman had come to the entrance of the street and was staring after him. A man joined her, and the two of them began to run toward him. He lost them and left the town, striding quickly, easily, up into the hills at the edge of town. When he reached the cage, he stopped. What had happened? Was it something about his clothing? His dress? He pondered. Then, as the sun set, he stepped into the cage. Conger sat before the wheel. For a moment he waited, his hands resting lightly on the control. Then he turned the wheel just a little, following the control readings carefully. The grayness settled down around him, but not for very long. The man looked him over critically. You better come inside, he said, out of the cold. Thanks. Conger went gracefully through the open door and into the living room. It was warm and close from the heat of a little kerosene heater in the corner. A woman, large and shapeless in her flowered dress, came from the kitchen. She and the man studied him critically. It's a good room, the woman said. I'm Mrs. Appleton. It's got heat. You need that this time of year? Yes. He nodded, looking around. You want to eat with us? What? You want to eat with us. The man's brow knitted. You're not a foreigner, are you, mister? No. He smiled. I was born in this country. Quite far west, though. California? No. He hesitated. In Oregon. What's it like up there? Mrs. Appleton asked. I hear there's a lot of trees in green. It's so barren here. I come from Chicago myself. That's the Midwest, the man said to her. You ain't no foreigner. Oregon isn't foreign either, conger said. It's part of the United States. The man nodded absently. He was staring at Conger's clothing. That's a funny suit you got on, mister, he said. Where'd you get that? Conger was lost. He shifted uneasily. It's a good suit, he said. Maybe I better go some other place if you don't want me here. They both raised their hands protestingly. The woman smiled at him. We just have to look out for those Reds. You know the government is always warning us about the Reds. He was puzzled. The government says they're all around. We're supposed to report anything strange or unusual. Anybody doesn't act normal like me. They looked embarrassed. Well, you don't look like a Red to me, the man said. But we have to be careful. The Tribune says. Conger half listened. It was going to be easier than he thought. Clearly he would know as soon as the Founder appeared. These people, so suspicious of anything different, would be buzzing and gossiping and spreading, spreading the story. All he had to do was lie low and listen. Down at the general store, perhaps, or even here in Mrs. Appleton's boarding house. Can I see the room? He said. Certainly. Mrs. Appleton went up the stairs. I'll be glad to show it to you. They went upstairs. It was cold upstairs, but not nearly as cold as outside, nor as cold as nights on the Martian desert. For that he was grateful. He walked slowly around the store, looking at the cans of vegetables, the frozen packages of fish and meat shining and clean in the open refrigerator counters. Ed Davis came toward him. Can I help you? He said. The man was a little oddly dressed and had a beard. Ed couldn't help smiling. Nothing, the man said in a funny voice. Just looking. Sure, ed said. He walked back behind the counter. Mrs. Hackett was wheeling her cart up. Who is he? She whispered, her sharp face turned, her nose moving as if it were sniffing. I never seen him before. I don't know. Looks funny to me. Why does he wear a beard? No one else wears a beard. Must be something the matter with him. Maybe he likes wearing a beard. I had an uncle who? Wait. Mrs. Hackett stiffened. Didn't that. What was his name? The red. The old one. Didn't he have a beard? Marks? He had a beard. Ed laughed. This ain't Karl Marx. I saw a photograph of him once. Mrs. Hackett was staring at him. You did? Sure. He flushed a little. What's the matter with that? I'd sure like to know more about him, Mrs. Hackett said. I think we ought to know more for our own good. Hey, mister, want a ride? Conger turned quickly, dropping his hands to his belt. He relaxed. Two young kids in a car. A girl and a boy. He smiled at them. A ride? Sure. Conger got into the car and closed the door. Bill Willett pushed the gas and the car roared down the highway. I appreciate the ride, conger said carefully. I was taking a walk between towns, but it was further than I thought. Where are you from? Laura Hunter asked. She was pretty, small and dark in her yellow sweater and blue skirt. From Cooper Creek. Cooper Creek, Bill said. He frowned. That's funny. I don't remember seeing you before. Why do you come from there? I was born there. I know everybody there. I just moved in from Oregon. From Oregon? I didn't know Oregon people had accents. Do I have an accent? You use funny words. How? I don't know. Doesn't he, Laura? You slur them, laura said, smiling. Talk some more. I'm interested in dialects. She glanced at him. White teeth. Conger felt his heart constrict. I have a speech impediment.
[454:24]
Lady Luck
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[454:25]
SpinQuest Advertiser
Her eyes widened. I'm sorry. They looked at him curiously as the car purred along. Conger, for his part, was struggling to find some way to ask them questions without seeming curious. I guess people from out of town don't come here much, he said. Strangers? No. Bill shook his head. Not very much. I'll bet I'm the first outsider for a long time. I guess so. Conger hesitated. A friend of mine, someone I know, might be coming through here. Where do you suppose? I might. He stopped. Would there be anybody certain to see him? Someone I could ask to make sure I don't miss him if he comes? They puzzled. Just keep your eyes open. Cooper Creek isn't very big. No, that's right. They drove in silence. Conger studied the outline of the girl. Probably she was the boy's mistress. Perhaps she was his trial wife. Or had they developed trial marriage back so far? He could not remember. But surely such an attractive girl would be someone's mistress by this time? She would be 16 or so. By her looks, he might ask her sometime if they ever met again. The next day Conger went walking along the 1 Main street in Cooper Park Creek. He passed the general store, the two filling stations, and then the post office. At the corner was a soda fount. He stopped. Laura was sitting inside, talking to the clerk. She was laughing, rocking back and forth. Conger pushed the door open. Warm air rushed around it. Laura was drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream. She looked up in surprise eyes as he slid into the seat beside her. I beg your pardon, he said. Am I intruding? No. She shook her head. Her eyes were large and dark. Not at all. The clerk came over. What do you want? Conger looked at the chocolate. Same as she has. Lora was watching Conger, her arms folded, elbows on the counter. She smiled at him. By the way, you don't know my name. Laura Hunt. She was holding out her hand. He took it awkwardly, not knowing what to do with it. Conger is my name, he muttered. Conger. Is that your last or first name? Last or first? He hesitated. Last. Omar Conger. Omar? She laughed. That's like the poet Omar Khayyam. I don't know of him. I know very little of poets. We restore very few works of art. Usually only the church has been interested enough. He broke off. She was staring. He flushed. Where I come from. He finished. The church. Which church do you mean? The church. He was confused. The chocolate came and he began to sip it great gratefully. Laura was still watching him. You're an unusual person, she said. Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He's soso prosaic. Don't you think that when a person gets older he should become broadened in his outlook? Conger nodded. He says foreign people ought to stay where they belong, not come here. But you're not so foreign. He means Orientals, you know. Conger nodded. The screen door opened behind them. Bill came into the room. He stared at them. Well, he said. Conger turned. Hello. Well. Bill sat down. Hello, Lora. He was looking at Conger. I didn't expect to see you here. Conger tensed. He could feel the hostility of the boy. Something wrong with that? No, nothing wrong with it. There was silence. Suddenly Bill turned to Laura. Come on, let's go. Go, she said, astonished. Why? Just go. He grabbed her hand. Come on, the car's outside. Why Bill Willett, she said. You're jealous. Who is this guy? Bill said. Do you know anything about him? Look at him. His beard. She flared. So what? Just because he doesn't drive a Packard or go to Cooper High. Conger sized the boy up. He was big, big and strong. Probably he was part of some civil control organization. Sorry, Conger, conger said. I'll go. What's your business in town? Bill asked. What are you doing here? Why are you hanging around Lora? Conger looked at the girl. He shrugged. No reason. I'll see you later. He turned away and froze. Bill had moved. Conger's finger went to his belt. Half pressure, he whispered to himself. No more half pressure. He squeezed. The room leapt around him. He himself was protected by the lining of his clothing, the plastic sheathing inside. My God. Lora put her hands up. Conger cursed. He hadn't meant any of it for her. But it would wear off. There was only a half amp to it. It would tingle. Tingle and paralyzed. He walked out the door with without looking back. He was almost to the corner when Bill came slowly out, holding onto the wall like a drunken man. Conger went on. As Conger walked, restless in the night, a form loomed in front of him. He stopped, holding his breath. Who is it? A man's voice came. Conger waited, tense. Who is it? The man said again. He clicked something in his hand. A light flashed. Conger moved. It's me, he said. Who is me? Conger is my name. I'm staying at the Appletons place. Who are you? The man came slowly up to him. He was wearing a leather jacket. There was a gun at his waist. I'm Sheriff Duff. I think you're the person I want to talk to. You were in Bloom's today, about 3 o'. Clock. Bloom's? The fountain where the kids hang out. Duff came up beside him, shining his light into Conger's face. Conger blinked. Turn that thing away, he said. A pause. All right. The light flickered to the ground. You were there. Some trouble broke out between you and the Willett boy. Is that right? You had a beef over his girl? We had a discussion, conger said carefully. Then what happened? Why? I'm just curious. They say you did something. Did something? Did what? I don't know. That's what I'm wondering. They saw a flash and something seemed to happen. They all blacked out. Couldn't move. How are they now? All right. There was silence. Well, Duff said. What was it? A bomb. A bomb? Conger laughed. No. My cigarette lighter caught fire. There was a leak and the fuel ignited. Why did they all pass out? Fumes. Silence. Conger shifted, waiting. His fingers moved slowly toward his belt. The sheriff glanced down. He grunted. If you say so he said. Anyhow, there wasn't any real harm done. He stepped back from Conger. And that Willet is a troublemaker. Good night then, Conger said. He started past the sheriff. One more thing, Mr. Conger. Conger, before you go, you don't mind if I have a look at your identification, do you? No, not at all. Conger reached into his pocket. He held his wallet out. The sheriff took it and shined his flashlight on it. Conger watched, breathing slowly. They had worked hard on the wallet, studying historical documents, relics of the time, all the papers they felt would be relevant. Duff handed it back. Ok. Sorry to bother you. The light blinked out. When Conger reached the house, he found the Appletons sitting around the television set. They did not look up as he came in. He lingered at the door. Can I ask you something? He said. Mrs. Appleton turned slowly. Can I ask you what's the date? The date? She studied him. 1st December. December 1st. Why, it was just November. They were all looking at him. Suddenly he remembered. In the 20th century they still used the old 12 month system. November fed directly into December. There was no quatrember between them. He gasped. Then it was tomorrow. 2nd December. Tomorrow. Thanks, he said. Thanks. He went up the stairs. What a fool. He was, forgetting the Founder had been taken into captivity on 2nd December. According to the newspaper records. Tomorrow, only 12 hours hence, the Founder would appear to speak to the people and then be dragged away. The day was worn and bright. Conger's shoes crunched the melting crust of snow. On he went through the trees, heavy with white. He climbed a hill and strode down the other side, sliding as he went. He stopped to look around. Everything was silent. There was no one in sight. He brought a thin rod from his waist and turned the handle of it. For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a shimmering in the air. The crystal cage appeared and settled slowly down. Conger sighed. It was good to see it again. After all, it was his only way back. He walked on up the ridge. He looked around with some satisfaction, his hands on his hips. Hudson's field was spread out all the way to the beginning of town. It was bare and flat. Flat, covered with a thin layer of snow. Here the Founder would come. Here he would speak to them. And here the authorities would take him. Only he would be dead before they came. He would be dead before he even spoke. Conger returned to the crystal globe. He pushed through the door and stepped inside. He took the slim gun from the shelf and screwed the bolt into place. It was ready to go, ready to fire. For a moment he considered. Should he have it with him? No. It might be hours before the Founder came. And suppose someone approached him in the meantime, when he saw the Founder coming toward the field, then he could go and get the gun. Conger looked toward the shelf. There was a neat plastic package. He took it down and unwrapped it. He held the skull in his hands, turning it over. In spite of himself, a cold feeling rushed through him. This was a man's skull. The skull of the Founder who was still alive, who would come here this day, who would stand on the field not 50 yards away? What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded, two centuries old? Would he still speak? Would he speak if he could see the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring? What action would not be futile when a man could look upon his own aged, yellow skull better? They should enjoy their temporary lives while they still had them to enjoy. A man who could hold his own skull in his hands would believe in few causes, few movements. Rather, he would preach the opposite. A sound. Conger dropped the skull back on the shelf and took up the gun. Outside, something was moving. He went quickly to the door, his heart beating. Was it he? Was it the Founder, wandering by himself in the cold, looking for a place to speak? Was he meditating over his words, choosing his sentences? What if he could see what Conger had held? He pushed the door open. The gun raised. Laura. He stared at her. She was dressed in a wool jacket and boots, her hands in her pockets. A cloud of steam came from her mouth and nostrils. Her breast was rising and falling. Silently, they looked at each other. At last, Conger lowered the gun. What is it? He said. What are you doing here? She pointed. She did not seem able to speak. He frowned. What was wrong with her? What is it? He said. What do you want? He looked in the direction she pointed. I don't see anything. They're coming. They who? Who are coming? They are the police. During the night, the sheriff had the state police send cars all around, everywhere, blocking the roads. There's about 60 of them coming, some from town, some from behind. She stopped, gasping. They said. They said what? They said you were some kind of a communist. They said. Conger went into the cage. He put the gun down on the shelf and came back out. He leapt down and went to the girl. Thanks. You. You came here to tell me you didn't believe it? No, I don't. I don't know. Did you come alone? No. Joe brought me in his truck from town. Joe? Who's he? Joe French, the plumber. He's a friend of my dad's. Let's go. They crossed the snow, up the ridge and onto the field. The little panel truck was parked halfway across the field. A heavy short man was sitting behind the wheel, smoking his pipe. He sat up when he saw the two of them coming toward him. Are you the one? He said to Conger. Yes. Thanks for warning me. The plumber shrugged. I don't know anything about this, lora said. You're all right. He turned around. It might interest you to know that some more of them are coming. Not to warn you, just curious. More of them? Conger looked toward the town. Black shapes were picking their way across the snow. People from the town. You can't keep this sort of thing quiet, not in a small town. We all listened to the police radio. They heard the same way Lora did. Someone tuned it in, spread it around. The shapes were getting closer. Conger could make out a couple of them. Bill Willett was the there, and some boys from the high school. The Appletons were along, hanging back in the rear. Even Ed Davis, conger murmured. The storekeeper was toiling into the field with three or four other men from the town, all curious as hell. French said, well, I guess I'm going back to town. I don't want my truck shot full of holes. Come on, Laura. She looked at Conger wide eyed. Come on, fret said. Let's go. You sure as hell can't stay here. You know why? There may be shooting. That's what they all came to see. You know that, don't you, Conger? Yes. You have a gun or you don't care? French smiled a little. They picked up a lot of people in their time, you know. You won't be lonely. He cared all right. He had to stay here on the field. He couldn't afford to let them take him away. Any minute the founder would appear, would step into the field. Would he be one of the townsmen standing silently at the foot of the field, waiting, watching? Or perhaps he was Joe French, or maybe one of the cops. Any one of them might find himself moved to speak. And the few words spoken this day were going to be important for a long time. And Conger had to be there, ready when the first word was uttered. I care, he said. You go back to town. Take the girl with you. Laura got stiffly in beside Joe French. The plumber started up the motor. Look at them Standing there, he said, like vultures, waiting to see somebody get killed. The truck drove away, Lora sitting stiffly and silently, frightened now. Conger watched for a moment. Then he dashed back into the woods, behind the trees, toward the ridge. He could get away, of course. Any time he wanted, he could get away. All he had to do was leap into the crystal cage and turn the handles. But he had a job, an important job. He had to be here, Here at this place, at this time. He reached the cage and opened the door. He went inside and picked up the gun from the shelf. The slem gun would take care of them. He notched it up to full count. The chain reaction from it would flatten them all. The police, the curious, sadistic people. They wouldn't take him before they got him. All of them would be dead. He would get away. He would escape. By the end of the day they would all be dead, if that is what they wanted. And he. He saw the skull. Suddenly. He put the gun down. He picked up the skull. He turned the skull over. He looked at the teeth. Then he went to the mirror. He held the skull up. Looking in the mirror. He pressed the skull against his cheek beside his own face. The grinning skull leered back at him, beside his skull, against his living flesh. He bared his teeth and he knew it was his own skull that he held. He was the one who would die. He was the founder. After a time he put the skull down. For a few moments he stood at the controls, playing with them. Idly. He could hear the sounds of motors outside, the muffled noise of men. Should he go back to the present, where the speaker waited? He could escape, of course. Escape. He turned toward the skull. There it was, his skull, yellow with age. Escape. Escape. When he had held it in his own hands. What did it matter if he put it off? A month, a year, 10 years, even 50. Time was nothing. He had sipped chocolate with a girl born a hundred and fifty years before his time. Escape for a little while, perhaps. But he could not really escape, no more so than anyone else ever escaped or ever would. Only he had held it in his hands. His own bones, his own death's head. They had not. He went out the door and across the field empty handed. There were a lot of them standing around, gathered together, waiting. They expected a good fight. They knew he had something. They had heard about the incident at the fountain. And there were plenty of police. Police with guns and tear gas creeping across the hills and ridges between the trees, closer and closer. It was an old story in this century, one of the men tossed something at him. It fell in the snow by his feet. He looked down. It was a rock. He smiled. Come on, one of them called. Don't you have any bombs? Throw a bomb. You with the beard, throw a bomb. Let em have it. Toss a few a bombs. They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands on his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak. I'm sorry, he said simply. I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken. There was a flurry of murmuring. I have a gun, he went on. A very good one. Made by science more advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that either. They were puzzled. Why not? Someone called. At the edge of the group, an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where? He remembered the day at the library. As he had turned the corner, he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why. Conger grinned. So he would escape death, the man who right now was voluntarily accepting it.
[475:50]
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Visit spinquest.com for more details. They were laughing. Laughing at a man who had a gun but didn't use it. But by a twist of science, he he would appear again a few months later, after his bones had been buried under the floor of a jail. And so, in a fashion, he would escape death. He would die. But then, after a period of months, he would live again, briefly, for an afternoon. An afternoon yet long enough for them to see him, to understand that he was still alive, to know that somehow he had returned to life. And and then, finally, he would appear once more after 200 years had passed. Two centuries later, he would be born again. Born, as a matter of fact, in a small trading village on Mars. He would grow up learning to hunt and trade. The police car came to the edge of the field and stopped. People retreated a little. Conger raised his hands. I have an odd paradox for for you, he said. Those who will take lives will lose their own. Those who kill will die. But he who gives his own life away will live again. They laughed faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, rather remember it. Smiling, Conger awaited the death foreordained end of the skull. By Philip K. Dick. Two Timer by Frederick Brown 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 Grothman two timer by Frederick Brown Experiment the first time machine, gentlemen, professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. True, it is a small scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than 3lb 5oz, and for distances into the past and future of 12 minutes or less. But it works. The small scale model looked like a small scale, a postage scale, except for two dials in the part under the platform. Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. Our experimental object, he said, is a brass cube weighing 1 pound 2.3 ounces. First I shall send it five minutes into the future. He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. Look at your watches, he said. They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine's platform. It vanished five minutes later to the second it reappeared. Professor Johnson picked it up. Now, five minutes into the past. He set another dial. Holding the cube in his hand, he looked at his watch. It is now 6 minutes before 3 o'. Clock. I shall now activate the mechanism by placing the cube on the platform at exactly 3 o'. Clock. Therefore, the cube should, at 5 minutes before 3, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform 5 minutes before I place it there. How can you place it there, then? Asked one of his colleagues. It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o'. Clock. Notice, please. The cube vanished from his hand. It appeared on the platform of the time machine. See? Five minutes before I shall place it there. It is there. His other colleague frowned at the Cuban cube. But he said, what if, now that it's already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at 3 o'. Clock. Wouldn't there be a paradox of some sort involved? An interesting idea, professor Johnson said. I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not. There was no paradox at all. The cube remained, but the entire rest of the universe, professors and all Vanished. He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and he was 50,000 light years from home. A strange blue sun gave light, and the gravity, twice what he was used to, made every movement difficult. But in 10,000 years, this part of the war hadn't changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips were down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry that had to take the ground and hold it foot by bloody foot, like this damned planet of a star he'd never heard of until they landed him there. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were the there too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the galaxy. Cruel, hideous, and repulsive monsters. Contact had been made with them near the center of the galaxy after the slow, difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets, and it had been war at sight. They'd shot without even trying to negotiate or to make peace. Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out. He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and the day was raw with the high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate, and every sentry post was vital he stayed alert, gun ready, 50,000 light years from home, fighting on a strange world and wondering if he'd ever lived to see home again. And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange, horrible sound they all make, then lay still. He shuddered at the sound and the sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while, but he'd never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were, with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skin and no scales. The End of two Timer by Frederick Brown.
[483:12]
Lady Luck
Two Weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson 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 Matt Berard Two weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson the humblest events sometimes result from the most grandiose beginnings. You'd never imagine space travel starting this way, for instance. I suppose there's a guy like McCleary in every office. Now, I'm not a hard man to get along with, and it usually takes quite a bit more than overly bright remarks from the office boy to bother me. But try as it might, I could never get along with McCleary. To be as disliked as he was, you have to work at it. What kind of guy was he? Well, if you came down to the office one day, proud as punch because of something little Johnny or Josephine had said. It was a sure cinch that McCleary would horn in with something his little Louis had spouted off that morning. At any rate, when McCleary got through, you felt like taking Johnny to the doctor to find out what made him so normal. Or maybe you happened to buy a new Super 8 that week and were bragging about the mileage, the terrific pickup and how quickly she responded to the wheel. Leave it to McCleary to give a quick rundown on his own car. That would make you feel like selling yours for junk at the nearest Grappie. Well, you see what I mean? But by far the worst of it was when vacation time rolled around. You could forgive a guy for talking you about how brainy his kids are. And you might even find it in your heart to forget the terrific bargain he drove to work, work in. But vacation time was when he'd really get on your nerves. You could pack the wife and kids in old Reliable and roll out to the lake for your two weeks. In August you might even break the bank and spend the two weeks at a poor man's Sun Valley. But no matter where you went, when you came back, you'd have to sit in silence and listen to McClary's account of his vacation in the Adirondacks. Or his tramp in the Canadian wilds. Or maybe even the old French Quarter. The trouble was, he always had the photographs, the ticket stubs and the souvenirs to prove it. Where he got the money, I'll never know. Sometimes I'd tell the wife about it and she'd sniff and wonder what kind of shabby house they lived in that they could afford all the other things. I never looked him up myself. Tell you the truth. I was afraid I'd find the McClearys lived on Park Avenue. Now, you look forward to a vacation all year, but particularly during the latter part of July when, what with the heat and the stuffy office, you begin to feel like a half done hot dog at a barbecue. I was feeling even worse than usual as I was faced with spending my two weeks in in my own back yard. Most of my vacation dough having gone to pay the doctor. The only thing I minded was having McCleary find out about it. And seeing that phony look of sympathy roll across his fat face while he rambled on about the vacation he was going to have. It was lunchtime and we had just finished talking about the latest on television and. And what was wrong with the administration. And who'd win the pennant? When Bob Young brought up the subject of vacations, it turned out he was due for a trip to the Ozarks and Donnelly was going after Walleye pike in northern Wisconsin. I could sense McCleary prick up his ears clear across the room. How about you, Bill? Donnelly asked me. Got any plans? I winked heavily and jerked a thumb warningly toward McCleary, making sure McCleary couldn't see the gesture. My vacation is really going to be out of this world this time, I said. Me and the wife are going to Mars Dry, you know. Even better than Arizona for her sinus. Even with the wink, they were caught off guard for a minute. Mars, Donnelly said feebly, edging his chair away. Yeah, sure. Great place. Never been there myself, though. Young just gaped, then grinned as he caught on. I understand it's a wonderful spot, he chipped in. I casually peeled a hard boiled egg the wife had packed in my lunch bucket and leaned back in my swivel chair. It's really swell, I said dreamily, but loud enough so McCleary couldn't help but overhear. Drifting down the Grand Canal at evening, the sun a faint golden disk behind the crystal towers of Marsport, I let my voice drift into a long sigh and reach for Donnelly's sack of grapes. About this time McCleary had gnawed his way through a big pastrami sandwich and waddled over. He stood there expectantly, but we carefully ignored him. Always wanted to go myself, donnelly said in the same tone of voice he would have used to say he'd like to go to California some day. Pretty expensive, though, isn't it? Expensive? I raised a studiedly surprised eyebrow. Oh, I suppose a little. But it's worth it. The wife and I got a roomette on the Princess of Mars for $139.50. That's one way, of course. Mars Young sighed wistfully. There was a moment of silence, with all three of us paying silent tribute to the ultimate in vacations. McCleary slowly masticated a leaf of lettuce, his initial look of suspicion giving way to half belief. Let's hear some more about it, young said enthusiastically, suddenly recovering from his reverie. Oh, there isn't much more, I said indifferently. We plan to stay at Red Sands Hotel in Marsport. American plan. Take in Marsport. With maybe a side trip to Crystallite if we have time. We might even take a walk. Waterway cruise to the North Pole. I broke off and dug Donnelly in the ribs. Man, you never fished until you have a Martian flying fish at the end of the line. I grabbed a ruler off the desk and began using it as an imaginary rod and reel. Talk about fight. Oh, sorry, Mac. My ruler had amputated part of a floppy lettuce leaf that hung from my McClary's sandwich. I settled down in my chair again and started paying attention to my lunch. Nothing like it, I added between mouthfuls of liverwurst. How about entertainment? Young winked slyly. Well, you know, the wife will be along, I said. But some of the places near the Grand Canal and those Martian mist, me brother, if I was unattached, There ain't any life on Mars, McClary said, suspicious again. All three of us looked at him in shocked silence. He says there's no life on Mars, donnie repeated. You ever been there, McClary? I asked sarcastically. No, but just the same. All right, I cut in, then. You don't know whether there is or isn't, so kindly reserve your opinion until you know a little about the subject under discussion.
[491:35]
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Lady Luck
I turned back to Donnelly and Young. Really a wonderful place for your health. Dry, thin air, nice and cool at night and beautiful. From Marsport you can see low slung mountains in the distance, dunes of soft red sand stretching out to them. If I were you, Bob, I'd forget all about the Ozarks and sign up on the rocket. There ain't any rockets going to Mars, McCleary said obstinately. Isn't, I corrected. I mean, there is besides McCleary. Just because you never heard of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The government's still working on V2, McClary said flatly. They haven't even reached the moon yet. I sighed softly, acting disgusted at having to deal with somebody as stupid as McCleary. Mac, that's the government. And besides, they're dealing with military rockets. And did you ever hear of the government perfecting something before private industry? Who perfected the telephone, the radio, television? The government? No, private industry, of course. Private industry has always been ahead of the government on everything, including rockets. Get on the stick, Mac. McCleary started in on his lettuce leaf again, looking very shrewd. How come I never heard of it before now? He asked, springing the clincher argument. Look, Mac, this is relatively new. The company's just starting. Can't afford to take full page ads and that sort of thing. Just give em time, that's all. Why, a couple of years from now you'll be spending your vacation on Venus or Jupiter or some place like that. From now on, California and the Bahamas will be strictly old hats. McCleary looked half believing. Where'd you get your tickets? I waved vaguely in the direction of downtown. There must be at least a couple of agencies downtown. Might even be able to find them in the phone book. Look under interplanetary rocket lines or something like that. You might have a little difficulty. Of course, like I say, they're not too well advertised. McCleary was about to say something more, but then the one o' clock bell rang and we went back to the office grind. Well, McCleary didn't say anything more about it the next day, even though we'd throw in a chance comment about Mars every now and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. But Mac didn't rise to the bait. We gradually forgot about it. The next couple of weeks came and went, and then my two weeks in August. Like I said before, my vacation dough had gone to pay the doctor, so I stayed at home and watered them begonias. The Monday morning after vacation we were all back in the office. If anything looked more fagged than we had when we left. When lunchtime rolled around, Donnelly and Young and I piled our lunches on Donnelly's daughter desk. His desk was near a window on the north side of the building so we could get the breeze and talked about what we had done during vacation. McCleary ambled up and like it usually does after McCleary comes around, the conversation just naturally died down. After a two minutes silence, I finally took the hook. Okay, Mac, I said. I know you're just dying to tell us. Where did you go? He almost looked surprised. To Mars, he said, like he might have said Aunt Minnie's. The three of us looked blank for a minute and then we caught on. It took us a while to recover from laughing, and my sides were still aching when I saw McCleary's face. It definitely had a hurt look on it. You don't think I did, he accused us. Oh, come off it, McClary. I said crossly. A gag's a gag, but it can be carried too far. Where'd you go? California? Oregon? Some place like that? I said. I went to Mars, McCleary repeated hotly. And I can prove it. Sure, I said. Like I can prove the world's flat and it's supported by four elephants standing on a turtle's back like the old Greeks, I cut off. McCleary had thrown a couple of pasteboards on the desk and I picked them up. The printing on it was like you see on a Pullman ticket. It said something about a Roumette first class passage on the Martian prince for $154.75, and there was even a place where they had the tax figured in two blanks. At the top of the ticket they had it filled out to E.C. mcCleary and wife. The bottom half was torn off just like they do with train tickets. Very clever, I said. But you shouldn't have gone to all that trouble to have these printed up. McCleary scowled and dropped a little bunch of Kodachrome slides on the desk. I took one and held it up to the light. It showed Mac and his wife mounted on something that looked like a cross between a camel and a zebra. They were at the top of a sand dune and in the distance you could see the towers of a city. The funny thing was, the towers looked a little but not much like minarets, and the sand dunes were colored a beautiful pink. I passed it on to Donnelly and Young and started leafing through the rest. They were beautiful slides. McCleary and spouse in front of various structures in a delicately tinted marble and Crystal City. McCleary in a pink and black boat on a canal that looked as wide as the Mississippi. McCleary standing on a strangely carved sandstone parapet, admiring a sunset caused by a sun looking half as big as ours. And everywhere were the dunes of pink sleep sand. Pictures can be faked, Mac, I said. He looked hurt and got some things out of his desk. A satin pillow with scenes like those on his snapshots, an urn filled with pink sand. A tiny boat like a gondola, only different. A letter opener made out of peculiar bubbly pink glass. They were all stamped Souvenir of Mars and that kind of junk you don't have. Made up for a gag. I know mass produced articles when I see them. We couldn't afford the first class tour, mcclary said expansively, but I figure we can cover that next year. He turned to me puzzledly. I asked the passenger agent about the Princess of Mars, and he said he had never heard of the ship. And it's Mars City, not Marsport. Couldn't understand how you made a mistake. It was easy, I said weakly. I pointed to the pasteboard ducats. Where'd you get these, Mac? He waved generously in the direction of downtown. Like you said, there's a couple of agencies downtown. You know, sometimes I think we misjudged McCleary. It takes a while to get to know a guy like Mac. Maybe his Louie is brighter than Johnny, and maybe his Chugmobile is something terrific. For the last few years, all on account of Mac, my two weeks in August have really been well spent. Beautiful. Why, from Mars City you can see low slung mountains in the distance and dunes of soft red sand stretching out to them, and the sunsets when you're standing on the parapets of that delicate crystal city and man fishing in the Grand Canal. How do you get to Mars? There's probably a couple of agencies in your own town. You can look them up in your phone book under Vacation at the Planets of Pleasure or something like that. They might be a little difficult to find, though. You see, they're not very well advertised yet. End of Two Weeks in Aug. By Frank M. Robinson.
[500:51]
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Whiskaboom by Alan Arkin 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 Grothman Jack's blunder was disastrous, but what he worried about was would Einstein have approved Whisker Boom By Alan Arkin Dear Mr. Gretsch, Mrs. Burroughs and I are sending your son Jack to you because we do not know what else to do with him. As you can see, we can't keep him with us in his present condition. Also, Jack owes us two weeks rent, and since Mrs. Burroughs and I are retired, we would appreciate you sending the money. It has been a dry year and our garden has done poorly. The only reason we put up with your son in the first place was because we are so hard pressed. He saw the sign on the porch, rang the bell, and paid Mrs. Burroughs a month's rent without even looking at the room. Then he ran out to his car and commenced pulling out suit cases and boxes and dragging them upstairs. After the third trip, Mrs. Burrows saw he was having trouble with the stuff and he looked kind of worn out, so she offered to help. He gave her a hard look, as she described it to me when I got home, he said, I don't want anyone touching anything. Please don't interfere. I didn't mean to interfere. My wife told him I only wanted to help. I don't want any help, he said quietly, but with a wild look in his eyes, and he staggered upstairs with the last of his baggage and locked the door. When I got home, Mrs. Burroughs told me she thought I ought to go have a look at the new boarder. I went up thinking we'd have a little chat and straighten things out. I could hear him inside hammering on something. He didn't hear my first knock or the second. I got sore and nearly banged the door down, at which time he decided to open up. I charged in ready to fight a bear, and there was this gate skinny red headed son of yours glaring at me. That's a lot of hammering you're doing, son, I said. That's the only way I can get these boxes open. And don't call me son. I don't like to disturb you, Mr. Gritch, but Mrs. Burroughs is a little upset over the way you acted today. I think you ought to come down for a cup of tea and get acquainted. I know I was rude, he said, looking a little ashamed, but I have waited for years for a chance to get to work on my own with no interference. I'll come down tomorrow when I have got all my equipment set up and apologize to Mrs. Burroughs. Then I asked him what he was working on, but he said he would explain later. Before I got out the door, he was hammering again. He worked till midnight. We saw Jack at mealtime for the next few days, but but he didn't talk much. We learned that he was 26, in spite of his looking like a boy in his teens, that he thought Professor Einstein was the greatest man ever and that he disliked being called son of his experiment. He didn't have much to say. Then he saw Mrs. Burroughs was a little nervous about his experimenting in the guest room and he assured her that it was not dangerous. Before the week was out we started hearing the noises. The first one was like a wire brush going around a barrel. It went whisk, whisk. Then he rigged up something that went skaboom every few seconds, like a loud heartbeat. Once in a while he got in a sound like a creaking well pump. But mostly it was skaboom and whisk, which eventually settled down to a steady rhythmic whisk.
[504:38]
Lady Luck
A boom.
[504:39]
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Whisk. A boom. It was kind of pleasant. Neither of us saw him for two days. The noises kept going. Mrs. Burroughs was alarmed because he was not answering her knock at meal times, and one morning she charged upstairs and hollered at him through the door. You stop your nonsense this minute and come down to breakfast. I'm not hungry, he called back. You opened this door, she ordered, and by George, he did. Your whiskaboom, or whatever it is, will wait until after breakfast. Breakfast. He sat at the table, but he was a tired boy. He had a cold. His eyelids kept battling, and I don't believe he could have lifted his coffee cup. He tried to look awake, and then over he went with his face in the oatmeal. Mrs. Burroughs ran for the ammonia, but he was out cold, so we wiped the oatmeal off his face and carried him upstairs. My wife rubbed Jack's wrist with garlic and put a wet towel on his face, and presently he came to. He looked wildly about the room at his machinery. It was all there, and strange looking stuff, too. Please go away, he begged. I've got work to do. Mrs. Burroughs helped him blow his nose. There'll be no more work for you, sonny. Not till you're well. We'll take care of you. He didn't seem to mind being called sonny. He was sick for a a week, and we tended him like one of our own. We got to know him pretty well, and we also got to know you. Now, Mr. Grouch, whatever you're doing in your laboratory is your business. You could be making atomic disintegrators for all jack toads, but he does not like it or approve of it, and he told us about your running battle with him to keep him working on your project instead of his own. Jack tried to explain his ideas of harnessing time and what he called the reintegration principle. It was all so much whiskaboom to us, so to speak, but he claimed it was for the good of mankind, which is fine with us. But he said you would not let him work it out because there was less money in it than in your project, and this is why he had to get away and work and worry himself into a collapse. When he got well, Mrs. Burroughs told him, from now on you're going to have three meals a day and eight hours sleep, and in between you can play on your whiskeboom all you please. The whiskebooming became as familiar to us as our own voices. Last Sunday Mrs. Burroughs and I came home from church about noon. She went inside through the front door to fix dinner. I walked around the house to look at the garden, and the moment I Walked past the front of the house. I got the shock of my life. The house disappeared. I was too surprised to stop walking, and a step later I was standing at the back of the house and it was all there. I stepped back and the whole house vanished again. One more step and I was at the front. It looked like a real house, in the front and in the back, but there wasn't any in between. It was like one of those false front saloons on the movie. Lots of, but thinner. I thought of my wife who had gone into the kitchen and for all I knew was as thin as a house. And I went charging in the back door yelling, are you all right? Of course I'm all right. What's the matter with you? I grabbed her and she was all there, thank heavens. She giggled and called me an old fool, but I dragged her outside and showed her what had happened to our house. She saw it too, so I knew I didn't have sunstroke, but she couldn't understand it any better than I. Right about then I detected a prominent absence of whiskebooming. Jack. I hollered, and we hurried back into the house and upstairs. Well, Mr. Gritch, it was so pitiful I can't describe it. He was there, but I never saw a more miserable human being. He was not only thin, but also flee flat, like a cartoon of a man who'd been steamrollered. He was lying on the bed, holding onto the covers with no more substance to him than a thin piece of paper less. Mrs. Burroughs took one of his shoulders between her thumb and forefinger, and I took the other. We held him up. There was a breeze coming through the window, and Jack. Well, he waved in the breeze. We closed the window and laid him down again, and he tried to explain what had happened. Professor Einstein wouldn't like this. He moaned. Something went wrong. He cried, shuddering. He went on gasping and mumbling. And we gathered that he had hooked up a circuit the wrong way. I didn't harness the fourth. I chopped off the third dimension. Einstein would not have approved. He was relieved to learn that the damage had been confined to himself and the house, so far as we knew. Like the house, Jack had insides, but we don't know where they are. We poured tea down him, and he could eat after a fashion, but there is never a sign of a lump anywhere. At night we pinned him to the bed with clothespins so he wouldn't blow off the bed. Next morning we rigged a line and pinned him to it so he could sit up. I know what to do, he said. But I have to go back to the lab. Dad would have to let me have his staff and all sorts of equipment and he won't do it if he thinks more of his money than he does his own son. Mrs. Burroughs said, then he's an unnatural father. But Jack made his promise not to get in touch with you. Still, people are beginning to talk. The man from the electric company couldn't find the meter yesterday because it's attached the the middle of the outside wall and has vanished. Mr. Greech, we are parents and we feel that you will not hesitate a moment to do whatever is necessary to get Jack back into shape. So despite our promise, we are sending Jack to you by registered parcel post air mail. He doesn't mind the cardboard mailing tube he is rolled up in as he has been sleeping in it, finding it more comfortable than being pinned to the sheets. Jack is a fine boy, sir, and we hope to hear soon that he is back to normal and doing the work he wants to do. Very truly Yours, W. Burroughs P.S. when Jack figures out the reintegration principle, we would appreciate his fixing our house. We get along as usual, but it makes us nervous to live in a house that, strictly speaking, has no insides. WB End of Whiskaboom by Alan Arkin. You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slot dots Live blackjack, live craps with a live dealer. New players $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. 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Summary10 min read

Science Fiction Books - Daily

Short Science Fiction Collection 059 – Various

Host: solgoodmedia.com
Air Date: July 30, 2026
Episode Summary Compiled by PodcastGPT

Overview

In this episode, the “Science Fiction Books – Daily” podcast presents an eclectic set of classic short science fiction stories, exploring everything from the dark comedy of consumer culture taken to the grave, to time travel paradoxes, cosmic mysteries, alien recruitment, and the gently absurd perils of do-it-yourself science. Culled from the public domain, these selections – with authors like H. Beam Piper, Robert Silverberg, Philip K. Dick, Fritz Leiber, Aldous Huxley, Frederic Brown, and more – offer a sweeping trip through the possibilities of speculative fiction.

Each tale is a self-contained universe, challenging conceptions of time, identity, technology, and the human (and non-human) condition, often through satire, irony, and philosophical reflection. Across these stories, listeners encounter apocalyptic visions, time-travel paradoxes, cosmic misunderstandings, and the absurdities of contemporary life viewed through the distorting lens of the future.

“The only thing really sure was it was all impossible. ...But, to someone who liked Jimmy and Jane, and doubtless to Jimmy and Jane themselves, no matter which barrier had been broken, it was rather satisfyingly impossible.” – Murray Leinster, The Other Now (3:37:08)

Key Stories and Discussion Points

1. And All the Earth a Grave by C.C. MacApp

[01:32 – 17:34]

Premise: A bureaucratic error at a coffin manufacturer supercharges its advertising budget, resulting in a surreal, consumerist craze for caskets as Christmas gifts.
Satirical critique: The commodification of death and the madness of advertising-driven consumption.
Notable moment: Department stores, service stations, even beauty parlors all sell coffins; a new “box-jacking” racket arises, and soon the entire culture orbits around caskets.
Quote:

“People just closed their eyes and exited smiling. ...Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids.”—Narrator [16:05]

2. And It Comes Out Here by Lester Del Rey

[17:34 – 48:51]

Premise: A classic time travel tangle told in conversational, dizzying fashion – a man encounters his future self, is whisked to the far future, and unwittingly causes himself to become the inventor of atomic power.
Themes: Causality loop, identity, and the self-fulfilling paradox of innovation.
Notable moment: The protagonist is both the discoverer and the stealer of his own invention; bureaucracy, museum culture, and future civility are wryly depicted.
Quote:

“You pick up an atomic generator in the future and bring it back to the past ...so it can be put in a museum with you as the inventor, so you can steal it to be the inventor.” —Narrator [47:05]

3. The Answer by H. Beam Piper

[48:51 – 78:01]

Premise: In a post-apocalyptic world, physicists Richardson and Pitov supervise an experiment involving nega-matter and, in the process, discover the cause of the world-ending ‘Auburn bomb’ from years earlier.
Key insight: Cosmic rays are explained as the mutual annihilation of nega-matter and posimatter across the universe; the catastrophic event that sparked World War III was likely a natural nega-matter meteor, not hostile action.
Themes: Misinterpretation, Cold War anxiety, the unpredictable dangers of technology, the universe as ultimately indifferent.
Quote:

“...Nobody in the world knew how to assemble atoms of negamatter and build them into masses. Nobody and nothing on this planet built that mass of negamatter. I doubt if it even came from this galaxy...” —Narrator [69:34]

4. Birds of a Feather by Robert Silverberg

[78:01 – 125:12]

Premise: An interstellar talent scout, Corrigan, fills his Earth zoo with alien “specimens” vying for the right to see Earth. Comic misunderstandings, con-men, and cross-species drama ensue.
Points of humor: Alien unionization, staged suicides, and the unmasking of a clever Earthman who fakes his way into Corrigan’s show.
Quote:

“Funny that the biggest draw at a zoo like ours should be a homegrown Earthman, but that's show business.” —Corrigan [125:04]

5. The Eel by Miriam Allen DeFord

[125:13 – 155:51]

Premise: The galaxy’s greatest con artist is finally caught and must be sentenced according to the customs of various planets – but Agsk’s system, which punishes thieves by killing what they love most, fails spectacularly.
Philosophical punch: The Eel can’t be punished, as he loves nothing (until he wittily professes love for the judge herself); a meditation on justice, selfhood, and bureaucratic impasses.
Quote:

“Therefore you are a creature so far outside our comprehension that you cannot come under our laws, no matter how you have broken them.” —Priestess Judge [154:45]

6. The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick

[155:52 – 160:39]

Premise: A tongue-in-cheek ‘discovery’ of literary evidence for an alien invasion, based on idiomatic English—e.g., "his eyes rolled about the room."
Themes: Misreading, language, and semantic confusion; the literal taken as science fiction.
Notable quote:

“Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will—eyes, arms, and maybe more, without batting an eyelash.” —Narrator [160:11]

7. Happy Families by Aldous Huxley

[160:39 – 181:11]

Premise: A one-act play, featuring two families mingling in a conservatory filled with surreal, monstrous flowers and grotesque, languorous interactions.
Atmosphere: Rich with absurdity, sexual tension, and social performance; a proto-satirical take on manners and mores.
Quote:

“Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else.” —Pa (from a later story, but fittingly resonant for the episode’s tone)

(Likewise, Huxley's story is full of quotable “meta” lines and flowery description.)

8. The Intruder by Emil Petaja

[181:11 – 205:11]

Premise: A mood piece about a weary bookseller meeting a mysterious, tormented stranger who hints at cosmic horrors and the peril of too-close knowledge.
Themes: Cosmic horror, Lovecraftian undertones, and the anxiety of forbidden knowledge.

9. Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson

[205:11 – 223:05]

Premise: Explorers exceed light speed and find themselves seconds ahead of the world they're trying to contact; a meditation on relativity and non-intersecting timelines.

10. The Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison

[223:05 – 284:44]

Premise: Master crook-turned-special-agent “Slippery Jim” DiGriz investigates the secret construction, then theft, of a titanic warship—the ensuing caper mixes space-faring bureaucracy, con artistry, and a relentless drive for the upper hand.
Memorable plotting: People are constantly outwitted, including the narrator himself, and the hunt for the battleship is filled with twists.
Quote:

“Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory—only I felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice.” —DiGriz [255:23]

11. Oh Rats by Miriam Allen DeFord

[284:44 – 305:24]

Premise: A super-intelligent lab rat, SK540, escapes captivity and leverages his gifts, resulting in a quietly chilling, sardonic world retold from the rats’ perspective.
Themes: Scientific hubris, animal intelligence, fate of humanity.

12. The Other Now by Murray Leinster

[305:24 – 339:17]

Premise: Jimmy Patterson, mourning his dead wife, discovers a doorway to an alternate timeline where their fates are reversed. Via diaries and fleeting glimpses, their communication erodes the walls between worlds.
Themes: Grief, parallel universes, quantum possibility, love enduring across realities.
Quote:

“We're hoping, he said. It's pretty bad being separated. But the phenomenon kept up. So we hope her diary is sometimes in the now where she is and sometimes in the now of mine.” —Narrator [3:35:32]

13. A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber

[339:17 – 377:41]

Premise: After a rogue star steals Earth from the sun, a family survives by melting “frozen” air in buckets and keeping the fire alive—a tale of bleak resilience and unexpected hope.
Atmosphere: End-of-world, domestic stoicism, the importance of story and connection.
Quote:

“Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else.” —Pa [3:52:02]

14. Postmark Ganymede by Robert Silverberg

[377:41 – 397:33]

Premise: An ex-space patroller, demoted to mailman, must deliver letters across a dangerous universe—proving that the postman’s determination “the mail must get through” is universal.
Satire and commentary: Class, dignity in work, perseverance.
Quote:

“All I did was deliver the mail. It's all in a day's work, you know. The mail's got to get through.” —Preston [397:28]

15. Say Hello for Me by Frank W. Coggins

[397:33 – 405:13]

Premise: Stranded on Mars for 20 years, Professor Pettibone is finally rescued, but finds contentment in solitude and politely refuses to return to Earth.
Theme: Adaptation, self-sufficiency, the peace of acceptance.

16. The Semantic War by Bill Clothier

[405:13 – 423:53]

Premise: A senseless split between factions (“Wystic Doofles the Miradi!” etc.) escalates into all-out linguistic civil war and apocalypse—satirizing human division, mob psychology, and the search for “meaning.”
Notable quote:

“Only one thing troubles me... I wonder which side was right. I mean, really right.” —Narrator [423:50]

17. The Skull by Philip K. Dick

[423:53 – 475:50]

Premise: A hired hunter is sent back in time to assassinate a figure whose death could prevent a cult from arising, only to discover—the skull is his own and he is the prophet he was tasked to kill.
Themes: Fate, time loops, dystopian power.
Quote:

“Suddenly. He put the gun down. He picked up the skull. He turned the skull over. He looked at the teeth. ...He pressed the skull against his cheek beside his own face. ...He was the founder.” —Narrator [472:57]

18. Two Timer by Frederic Brown

[475:51 – 483:11]

Premise: A time travel paradox: what if, having sent an object back five minutes in time, you then choose not to? The answer: the universe (except the object) vanishes—a wry take on causality and paradox.

19. Two Weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson

[483:11 – 500:51]

Premise: Office one-upmanship turns into absurd one-up-space-manship as a man feigns a vacation on Mars to beat his rival—only to be outdone when the rival takes an actual Mars trip.
Theme: Competition, social status, the blur of fantasy and reality.

20. Whiskaboom by Alan Arkin

[500:51 – End]

Premise: An amateur experimenter, desperate to be left alone to work on pseudoscience, ends up flattening both himself and his boarding house; a gentle parody of scientific obsession and unintended consequences.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“People just closed their eyes and exited smiling. ...Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids.” – And All the Earth a Grave [16:05]
“If you had any perception whatsoever, you would understand what the Moretti has to give the American people. It's our only hope and you've got to take sides.” – The Semantic War [414:43]
“Escape. When he had held it in his own hands. What did it matter if he put it off? …Time was nothing. He had sipped chocolate with a girl born a hundred and fifty years before his time. Escape for a little while, perhaps. But he could not really escape, no more so than anyone else ever escaped or ever would.” – The Skull [474:25]
“Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else.” – A Pail of Air [3:52:02]

Timestamps for Notable Sections

00:01 – Story sequences begin (after ads)
01:32 – And All the Earth a Grave
17:34 – And It Comes Out Here
48:51 – The Answer
78:01 – Birds of a Feather
125:12 – The Eel
155:52 – The Eyes Have It
160:39 – Happy Families
181:11 – The Intruder
205:11 – Lost in the Future
223:05 – The Misplaced Battleship
284:44 – Oh Rats
305:24 – The Other Now
339:17 – A Pail of Air
377:41 – Postmark Ganymede
397:33 – Say Hello for Me
405:13 – The Semantic War
423:53 – The Skull
475:51 – Two Timer
483:11 – Two Weeks in August
500:51 – Whiskaboom

Tone & Language

The episode adopts the classic storytelling mode of mid-century science fiction, alternating between poignant, satirical, and whimsical tones. The narration is crisp and wry, often breaking the fourth wall; dialogue mirrors the period, with a mix of earnestness and irony.

For Listeners

Even if you’re new to classic sci-fi or think you’ve “read it all,” this episode’s sweep through the genres of dark satire, cosmic irony, and tender comedy will spark your curiosity and touch on timeless questions: What makes us human? How do our ambitions and anxieties shape (or destroy) our worlds? Are the biggest paradoxes found in science—or in the heart?

Whether you drop in for one tale or binge the whole collection, you’re guaranteed a rich journey through the boundless possibilities of imaginations past.

Summarized for Science Fiction Books – Daily by PodcastGPT. For more episodes and bookish adventures, visit solgoodmedia.com.

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a grave By CCMECAPP this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org there's nothing wrong with dying. It just hasn't ever had the proper sales pitch. It all began when a new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog or blew a transistor or something. It was fantastic that the error 1 of 2 decimal places should enjoy a straight run of oks, human and mechanical, clear down the line. But when the figures clacked out at the last clacking out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred, immutable, and it is doubtful whether the president of the concern or the chairman of the board would have dared question them even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town. As for the advertising manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them. They were the budget for the coming fiscal year into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped dazedly into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly 100 times what he'd been expecting, that is to say, 50 times what he'd put in for. When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home, he tossed clothes into a traveling bag and barged toward the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn't bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plane east, and no nonsense about it. With one thing and another, the economy hadn't exactly been in overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bored them out. Gift buying dribbled along feebly until Thanksgiving. Despite brave speeches by the administration, the holiday passed more in self pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift oriented businesses. Then, on Friday following Thanksgiving, the coffin adds struck. Struck may be too mild a word. People on the streets saw feverishly working crews at holiday rates slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly. A toothy and toothsome young woman leaned over a coffin she'd been unwrapping. She smiled as if she'd just received overtures of matrimony from an 80 year old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she had just gotten out of bed or were ready to get into it. For amorous young men, and some not so young, the message was plain. The motto the gift that will last more than a lifetime seemed hardly to the point. Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that if the young lady's gratitude were really precipitous and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy. Of course, the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man, there was a blow directly between the eyes. Do you want your widow to be half safe? And for the spinster without immediate hopes, I dreamt I was caught dead without my virgin form casket. Newspapers, magazines, and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign for sheer concentration that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy. Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers who had grudgingly and under strong sales pressure made space For a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store now rushed to the telephones like toots. With a direct pronouncement from a horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the actual grocery. Supermarkets put in casket departments. The association of pharmaceutical retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority, Tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers and whatever else could haul a coffin. The stock market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The president got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation short supply. State laws were passed against cremation. Under heavy lobby pressure, a new racket called box jacking blossomed overnight. The advertising manager who had put the thing over had been fighting with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping, but by Wednesday after thanksgiving, they, along with the original one, were on a 24 hour 7 day basis. Still, only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins. It might be supposed that Christmas goods and other caskets would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity and such was the shortage of coffins that nearly everything, with a few exceptions, enjoyed the biggest season on record. On Christmas Eve, the frenzy slumped to a crawl. Though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. Mostly it sat on coffins because there wasn't space in the living rooms for any other furniture. There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn't have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, several boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now or it would literally be a case of dust to dust. Of course, everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our advertising manager, who was by now of course sales manager and first vice president, also wasn't settling for any boom and bust. He'd been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years now, with his teeth in something that he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin payments and move the presents out of the front rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred megatonner. Within a week, everyone saw quite clearly that his Christmas models were now obsolete. The coffin became the new status symbol. The auto industry was, of course, demolished. Even people who had enough money to buy a new car weren't going to trade in the old one and let the new one stand out in the rain. The garages were full of coffins. Petroleum went along with autos. Though there were those who whispered knowingly that the same people merely moved over into the new industry. It was noticeable that the center of it became Detroit. A few trucks and buses were still being built, but that was all. Some of the new caskets were true works of art. Others, well, there was a variety. Compact models appeared in which the occupant's feet were to be doubled up alongside his ears. One manufacturer pushed a circular model, claiming that by all the laws of nature, the fetal position was the only right one. At the other extreme were virtual houses, ornate and lavishly equipped. Possibly the largest of all was the togetherness model. Triangular, with graduated recesses for father, mother, eight children, plus two playmates. And in the far corner, beyond the baby, the cat. The slump was over. Still, economists swore that the new boom couldn't last either, they reckoned, without the advertising manager, whose eyes gleamed brighter all the time. People already had coffins, which they polished and kept on display sometimes in the new coffin ports being added to houses. The advertising manager's reasoning was direct and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins, and now he had all the money to work with that he could use. The new note was woven in so gradually that it's not easy to put a finger on any one ad and say it began here. One of the first was surely the widely printed one, showing a tattooed, smiling young man with his chin thrust out manfully lying in a coffin. He was rugged looking and likable. Not too rugged for the spindly limbed to identify with. And he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at every pore. He was probably the finest looking corpse since Richard the Lion Hearted. Neither must one overlook the singing commercials, possibly the catchiest of these. A really cute little thing was achieved by jazzing up the funeral march. It started gradually and it was all so unviolent that few saw it as suicide. Teenagers began having popping off parties. Some of their elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up too. The tired, the unappreciated, the ill. And the heavy laden lay down in growing numbers and expired. A black market in poisons operated for a little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes were very comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited smiling. The beatniks, who had their own models of coffin, moldy, scroungy and without lids, since the beatniks insisted on being seen, placed their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They dyed with highly intellectual expressions and eventually were washed by the gentle rain. Of course there were voices shouting calamity when aren't there. But in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed not. It isn't hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world, so let us imagine a few. The Communist bloc immediately gave its stamp of disapproval, denouncing the movement as a filthy capitalist imperialist pig plot. Red China, which had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a matter of method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as patent stupidity, saying that if the capitalists wanted to die, warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried out the thing as an answer to excess population and found it good. It also appealed to the well known melancholy facet of Russian nature. Besides, after pondering for several days, the Red bloc decided it could not afford to fall behind in anything. So it started its own program, explaining with much logic how it differed. An elderly British philosopher endorsed the movement on the grounds that a temporary setback in evolution was preferable to facing up to anything. The free block, the red block, the neutral block, and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a block were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time. If in a variety of ways, in less than two years, the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it. Oddly enough, the country where the movement began was the last to succumb completely. Or perhaps it's not so odd. Coffin maker to the world, the American casket industry had by now almost completely automated box making and grave digging, with some interesting assembly lines and packaging arrangements. There still remained the jobs of management and distribution. The president of General Mortuary, an ebullient fellow affectionately called Sarcophagus Sam, put it well. As long as I have a single prospective customer and a single stockholder, he said, mangling a stogie and beetling his brows at the one reporter who'd showed up for the press conference, I'll try to put him in a coffin. So I can pay him a dividend. Finally, though, a man who thought he must be the last living human wandered contentedly around the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an automatic self adjusting cadaver contour, inner spring wear ever plastic covered mattress with a built in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, closed his eyes, and sighed in solid comfort. Soft music played as the lid closed itself. From a building nearby, a turkey buzzard swooped down, cawing in raucous anger. Because it had let its attention wander for a moment, it was too late. It clawed, screaming at the solid cover, hissed in frustration, and finally gave up. It flapped into the air again, still grumbling. It was tired of living on dead small rodents and coyotes. It thought it would take a swing over to Los Angeles, where the pickings were pretty good. As it moved westward over parched hills, it espied two black dots a few miles to its left. It circled over for a closer look, then grunted and went on its way. It had seen them before. The old prospector and his burro had been in the mountains for so long the buzzard had concluded they didn't know how to die. The prospector, whose name was Adams, trudged behind his burrow toward the buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver, he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny pack rats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the unburied coffins. Tarnation, he said to the burro Martians. A half buried piece of newspaper fluttered in the breeze. He walked forward slowly and picked it up. It told him enough so that he understood. They're gone, Evie, he said to the burro. All gone. He put his arm affectionately around her neck. I reckon it's up to me and you again. We got to start all over. He stood back and gazed at her with mild reproach. I sure hope they don't favor your side of the house so much this time. End of and all the Earth A Grave by CC Mac App.
[17:34]
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And it Comes out here By Lester Del Rey 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 Grothman There is one fact no sane man can quarrel with everything has a beginning and an end. But some men aren't sane. Thus it isn't always so. And it comes out here by Lester Del Rey. No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit like him. And it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least you always have. Or do. Or will. I don't know. Verbs get all mixed up. We don't have the right attitude toward tenses in a situation like this. Anyhow, you'll let me in. I did. So you will. Thanks. You think you're crazy, of course, but. But you'll find out that you aren't. It's just that things are a bit confused. And don't look at the machine out there for too long until you get used to it. You'll find it's hard on the eyes trying to follow where the veins go. You'll get used to it, of course, but it will take about 30 years. You're wondering whether to give me a drink as I remember it. Why not? And naturally, since we have the same tastes, you can make the same for me as you are having. Of course we have the same tastes. We're the same person. I'm you 30 years from now, or you're me. I remember just how you feel. I felt the same way when he. That is, of course I. Or we came back to tell me about it 30 years ago. Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple of more years. And you can look at the revenue stamp date if you still doubt my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter. Right now you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two of the same people. You sense things. So I'll simply go ahead talking for half an hour or so until you get over it. After that, you'll come along with me. You know, I would try to change things around by telling what happened to me. But he. I told me what I was going to do, so I might as well do the same thing. I probably couldn't help telling you the same thing in the same words, even if I tried. And I don't intend to try. I've gotten past that stage in worrying about all this. So let's begin. When you get up in half an hour and come out with me, you'll take a closer look at the machine then. Yes, it's pretty obvious that it must be a time machine. You'll sense that too. You've seen it. Just a small cage with two seats, a luggage compartment and a few buttons on the dash. You'll be puzzling over what I tell you. And you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes atomic power practical. Jerome Bol. Just a plain engineer. The man who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but you'll want to go along. I'll be tired of talking by then and in a hurry to get going. So I'll cut off your questions and get you inside. I snap on a green button and everything seems to cut off around us. You can see a sort of foggy nothing that surrounds the cockpit. It is probably the field that prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section isn't protected, though. You start to say something, but by then I'm pressing a black button and everything outside will disappear. You look for your house, but it isn't there. There is exactly nothing there. In fact, there is no there. You are completely outside of time and space. As best you can guess how things are, you can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out through the field into the nothing around you and your hand goes out all right. But nothing happens where the screen ends. Your hand just turns over and pokes back at you. Doesn't hurt. But when you pull your arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening and you don't try it again. Then it comes to you slowly, that you're actually traveling in time. You turn to me, getting used to the idea. So is this the fourth dimension? You ask. Then you feel silly because you'll remember that I said you'd ask that. Well, I asked it after I was told. And then I came back and told it to you. And I still can't help answering when you speak. Not exactly. I try to explain. Maybe it's no dimension. Or it might be the fifth. If you're going to skip over the so called fourth without traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent the machine and I don't understand it. But I let it go and so do you if you don't. It's a good way of going crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of course, there may have been a start for all this once, there may have been a time when you did invent the machine. The atomic motor first and then the time machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and saving yourself the trouble, it all got tangled up. I figured out once that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine and it's just easier for us to imagine it when you spend 30 years thinking about it, as I did. And you will. You get further and further from the answer anyhow. You sit there watching nothing at all around you and no time. Apparently, though, there is a time effect. Back in the luggage space, you look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either carry a small time field with you or you are catching a small increment of time from the main field. I don't know. And you won't think about that then either. I'm smoking and so are you. And the air in the machine is getting pretty stale. You suddenly realize that everything in the machine is wide open, yet you haven't seen any effects of air loss. Where are we getting our air, you ask? Or why don't we lose it? No place for it to go, I explained. There isn't out. There is neither time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel gravity, but I can't explain that either. Maybe the machine has a gravity field built in. Or maybe the time that makes your watch run is responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the idea that time is an effect of gravity. And I sort of agree. Still. Then the machine stops. At least the field around us cuts off. You feel a dankish sort of air. Replace the stale air and you breathe easier, though we're still in complete darkness, except for a weak light in the machine which always burns, and a few feet of rough dry cement floor around. You take another cigarette from me and you get out of the machine just as I do. I've got a bundle of clothes and I start changing. It's a sort of simple, short limbed, one piece affair I put on, but it feels comfortable. I'm staying here, I tell you. This is like the things they wear in this century, as near as I can remember it. And I should be able to pass fairly well. I had all my fortune, the one that you made on the atomic generator, invested in such a way I can get it all on using some identification I've got with Me, so I'll do all right. I know they still use some kind of money. You'll see evidence of that. And it's a pretty easy going civilization from what I could see. We'll go up and I'll leave you. I like the looks of things here. So I won't be coming back with you. You nod, remembering I've told you about it. What century is it anyway? I told you that too, but you've forgotten. As nearly as I can guess. It's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an interstellar civilization. You take another cigarette from me and follow me. I've got a small flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish out into a corridor. This is a sub sub sub basement. We have to walk up a flight of stairs and there's an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open. What about the time machine? You ask. Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe. We get in the elevator and I say first to gives out a coughing noise and the basement openings begin to click by us. There's no feeling of acceleration, some kind of false gravity they use in the future. Then the door opens and the elevator says first back at us. It's obviously a service elevator and we're in a dim corridor with nobody around. I grab your hand and shake it. You go that way. Don't worry about getting lost. You never did, so you can't find the museum. Grab the motor and get out and good luck to you. You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream. You nod at me and I move out into the main corridor. A second later you see me going by mixed into a crowd that is loafing along toward a restaurant or or something like it that is just opening. I am asking questions of a man who points and I turn and move off. You come out of a side corridor and go down a hall away from the restaurant. There are quiet little signs along the hall. You look at them, realizing for the first time that things have changed. Stygja Neri Fauchin Zagrut Dispensary. The signs are very quiet and dignified. Some of them can be decoded to stationery shops, fountains and the like. What a zurgot is, you don't know. You stop at a sign that announces Tervel Boro first class twrts Mars Vinz and ex Turzn planets Spilj retu owl enzu wikn 60 litzy ears. There is Only a single picture of a dull looking metal sphere with passengers moving up a ramp and the office is closed. You begin to get the hang of the spelling they're using, though now there are people around you, but nobody pays much attention to you. Why should they? You wouldn't care if you saw a man in a leopard skin suit. You'd figure it was some part of a play and let it go. Well, people don't change much. You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might be newspapers on tapes. Where do I find the Museum of Science? Dun errand tern Laeffe at the Seine Stu Blas, he tells you. Around you, you hear some pretty normal English, but there are others using stuff as garbled as his. The educated and the uneducated. I don't know. You go right until you find a big sign built into a rubbery surface. On the walk. There's an arrow pointing and you turn left. Ahead of you, two blocks on, you see a pink building with a faint aqua trim, bigger than most of the others. They are building lower than they used to, apparently. 20 floors up seems about the maximum. You head for it and find the sidewalk is marked with the information that it is a museum. You go up the steps, but you see that it seems to be closed. You hesitate for a moment, then you begin to think the whole affair is complete nonsense and you should get back to the time machine and go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs in his suit and friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other guard. What's more, he speaks pretty clearly. Everyone says things in a sort of drawl with softer vowels and slurred consonants, but it's rather pleasant. Help you, sir? Oh, of course. You must be playing in atoms and axioms. The museum's closed, but I'll be glad to let you study whatever you need for realism in your role. Nice show. I saw it twice. Thanks. You mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce guards as polite as that. I. I'm told I should investigate your display of atomic generators. He beams at that. Of course the gate is swung to behind you, but obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a lock. Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight of stairs and left. Finest display in all the known worlds. We've got the original of the first 13 models. Professor Jonas was using them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could not explain the principle either someone will some day though. Lord the genius of the 20th century inventor. It's quite a hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could read on the period. Oh, congratulations on your pronunciation. Sounds just like some of our old tapes. You get away from him. Finally, after some polite thanks, the building seems deserted and you wander up the stairs. There's a room on your right filled with something that proclaims itself the first truly plastic diamond Former and you go up to it. Hanging out at the pool is great, relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10@Spinquest.com Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. As you come near, it goes through a crazy wiggle inside, stops turning out a continual row of what seem to be bearings, and slips something the size of a penny toward you. Souvenir, it announces in a well modulated voice. This is a typical gem of the 20th century, properly cut to its 58 facets, known technically as a Jaeger Damon and approximately 20 carats in size. You can have it made into a ring on the third floor during your morning hours for 1/10 credit. If you have more than one child, press the red button for the number of stones you desire. You put it in your pocket, gulping a little, and get back to the corridor. You turn left and go past a big room in which models of spaceships from the original thing that looks like a V2 and is labeled first lunar rocket to a 10 foot globe complete with miniature mannequins are sailing around in some kind of orbits. Then there is one labeled Weapons filled with everything from a crossbow to a tiny rod four inches long and half the thickness of a pencil, marked Final Hand Arm. Beyond is the end of the corridor and a big place that bears the sign Mazel the Atomic Paul Suz. By that time you're almost convinced and you've been doing a lot of thinking about what you can do. The story I'm telling you has been sinking in, but you aren't completely willing to accept it. You notice that the models are all mounted on tables and that they're a lot smaller than you thought. They seem to be in chronological order, and the latest one, the mark 2147 rings Dyne Pat is about the size of a desktop Telephone. The early ones are larger, of course, clumsier, but with variations, probably depending on the power output. A big sign on the ceiling gives a lot of dope on the atomic generators, explaining that this is the first invention that leapt full blown into its basic final form. You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor without giving his name. Either they don't know it or they take it for granted that everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on the operation, and full patent application. They state that it has all the major refinements operating on any fuel producing electricity at any desired voltage up to 5 million, any chosen cyclical rate from direct current to 1000 megacycles, and any amperage up to 1000, its maximum power output being 50 kilowatts, limited by the current carrying capacity of the outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being investigated and that only such refinements as better alloys and the addition of magnetic and nucleotric current outputs have been added since the original. So you go to the end and look over the thing. It's a simple square box with a huge plug on either side and a set of veneer controls on the top, plus a little hole marked in old style spelling drop BBS or wire. Here, apparently that's the way it's fueled. It's about one foot on each side. Nice, the guard said over your shoulder. It finally wore out one of the cathode grids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly like the great inventor made it, and it still operates as well as ever. Like me to tell you about it? Not particularly. You begin, and then realize bad manners might be conspicuous here. While you're searching for an answer, the guard pulls something out of his pocket and stares at it. Fine, fine. The mayor of Altuscaraba, Centaurian, you know, is arriving and I'll be back in about 10 minutes. He wants to examine some of the weapons for a monograph on Centaurian primitives compared with 19th century man. You'll pardon me. You pardon him pretty eagerly and he wanders off happily. You go up to the head of the line, to the rinks, Dynapathu or whatever it translates to. It's small and you can carry it, but the damn thing is absolutely fixed. You can't see any bolts, but you can't budge it either. You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take an early model if you can get one with built in magnetic current terminals, Erhun shaft or some other principle, and nuclear binding force energy terminals, but they're all held down by the same whatchamacallit effect. And finally you're right back beside the original first model. It's probably bolted down too, but you try it tentatively and you find it moves. There's a little sign under it indicating you shouldn't touch it since the galvostatic plate is being renewed. Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing. You lift it. It only weighs about 50 pounds. Naturally it can be carried. You expect a warning bell, but nothing happens. As a matter of fact, if you'd stop drinking so much of that scotch and staring at the time machine out there now, you'd hear what I'm saying and know what will happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a lot of what I say from now on and have to find out for yourself. But maybe some of it helps. I tried to remember how much I remembered after he told me, but I can't be sure so I'll keep on talking. I probably can't help it anyhow. Preset, you might say. Well, you stagger down the corridor looking out for the guard, but all seems clear. Then you hear his voice from the weapons room. You bend down and try to scurry past, but you know you're in full view. Nothing happens, though. You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays of the world on your back, and still nothing happens ahead of you. The gate is closed. You reach it and it opens obligingly by itself. You breathe a quick sigh of relief and start out onto the street. Then there's a yell behind you. You don't wait. You put one leg in front of the other and you begin racing down the walk, ducking past people who stare at you with expressions you haven't time to see. There's another yell behind you. Something goes over your head and drops on the sidewalk just in front of your feet with a sudden ringing sound. You don't wait to find out about that either. Somebody reaches out a hand to catch you and you dart past. The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along with your arms, seeming to come out of the sockets and the atomic generator getting heavier with each step. Out of nowhere something in a blue uniform about 6ft tall and on the beefy side appears, and the badge hasn't changed much. The cop catches your arm and you know you're not going to get away, so you stop. You can't exert yourself that hard in this heat, fellow, the cop says. There are laws against that without a yellow sticker. Here, let me grab you a taxi. Reaction sets in a bit and your knees begin to buckle, but you shake your head and come up for air. I. I left my money at home, you begin. The cop nods. Oh, that explains it. Fine. I won't have to give you an appearance schedule, but you should have come to me. He reaches out and taps a pedestrian lightly on the shoulder. Sir, an emergency request. Would you help this gentleman? The pedestrian grins, looks at his watch, and nods. How far? You did notice the name of the building from which you came, and you mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him. Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the street at a trot with a nice clear path while the cop stands beaming at you both. That way it isn't so bad, and you begin to see why I decided I might like to stay in the future. But all the same, the organized cooperation here doesn't look too good. The guard can get the same and be there before you. And he is. He stands just inside the door of the building. As you reach it, the stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once. When you nod at him, not waiting for thanks, the guard comes up holding some dinkus in his hand, about the size of a big folding camera and not too dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck. You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications, he said. They go with the generator. We don't like to have them separated. A good thing. I knew the production office of Atoms and Axioms was in this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and we'll pick it up. You swallow several sets of tonsils you had removed years before and take the bundle of papers he hands you out of the little case. He pumps you for more information, which you give him at random. It seems to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction and heads back to the museum. You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator. There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there. You start looking for other doors or corridors, but you know this is right. The signs along the halls are the same as they were. Then there's a sort of cough, and something dilates in the wall. It forms a perfect door, and the elevator stands there, waiting. You get in, gulping out something about going all the way down, and then wonder how a machine geared for voice operation can make anything of that. What the deuce would the lowest basement be called? But the elevator has closed and it's moving downward in a hurry. It coughs again, and you're at the original level. You get out and realize you don't have a light. You'll never know what you stumbled over, but somehow you move back in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering here and there and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then a shred of dim light appears. It's the weak light in the time machine. You've located it. You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers down beside it, and climb into the cockpit. Sweating and mumbling, you reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one beside it, and you finally decide on that. Suddenly there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator, and a beam of light strikes against your eyes with a shout, punctuating it. Your finger touches the red button. You'll never know what the shout was about, whether they finally doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around you, and the next button you touch, the one on board that hasn't been used so far, sends you off into nothingness. There is no beam of light. You can't hear a thing. You're safe. It isn't much of a trip back. You sit there smoking and letting your nerves settle back to normal. You notice a third set of buttons with some pencil marks over them. Press these to return to yourself. Thirty years, and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. But it doesn't, because there's only one of you this time. Instead, everything flashes off, and you're sitting in the machine in your own backyard. You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub basement, land in your backyard, and then hop back 30 years to pick up yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic generator and taking it inside. It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing. Just some plates of metal, some spiral coils and a few odds and ends. All things that could be made easily enough. All obviously of common metals. But when you put it together about an hour later, you notice something. Everything in it is brand new and there's a set of copper wires missing. It won't work. You put some 12 house wire in exactly like the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings and try again. And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15amperes, you get just that. You don't need the power company anymore. And you feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't insulated from time effects by a field. So the motor has moved backward in time somehow and is back to its original youth, minus the replacement wires the guard mentioned, which probably wore out because of the makeshift job you've just done. But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find the papers are all in your own writing. That your name is down as the inventor and that the date of the patent application is 1951. It will begin to soak in. Then it you pick up an atomic generator in the future and bring it back to the past, your present, so it can be put in a museum with you as the inventor, so you can steal it to be the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to yourself who invented what and who built which. Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to be anything but a democracy and a peaceful one after some of the worst times in history. For a few years, your name eventually becomes as common as Ampere or Faraday or any other spelled without a capital letter. But you're thinking of the puzzle. You can't find any answer. One day you come across an old poem, something about Some folks call it evolution and others call it God. You go out, make a few provisions for the future. Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drink in one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10@Spinquest.com SpinQuest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details and come back to climb into the time machine that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be knocking on your own door 30 years back or right now from your view, and telling your younger self all the things I'm telling you. But now, well, the drinks are finished, you're woozy enough to go along with me without protest, and I want to find out just why those people up there came looking for you and shouting before the time machine left. Let's go. The End of and It Comes out here By Lester Del Rey.
[48:51]
Narrator/Reader
The Answer by H. Beam Piper this is a Librivax recording. All All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Dan Grzinski the Answer by H. Beam Piper For a moment after the screen door snapped and wakened him, Lee Richardson sat breathless and motionless, his eyes still closed, trying desperately to cling to the dream and print it upon his conscious memory before it faded. Are you there, Lee? He heard Alex Pitov's voice. Yes, I'm here. What time is it? He asked, and then added, I fell asleep. I was dreaming. It was all right. He was going to be able to remember. He could still see the slim women with the graying blond hair playing with the little dachshund among the new fallen leaves on the lawn. He was glad they'd both been in this dream together. These dream glimpses were all he'd had for the last 15 years, and they were too precious to lose. He opened his eyes. The Russian was sitting just outside the light from the open door of the bungalow, lighting a cigarette. For a moment he could see the blocky, high cheeked face now poached and wrinkled, and then the flame went out and there was only the red coal glowing in the darkness. He closed his eyes again and the dream picture came back to him, the woman catching the little dog and raising her head as though to speak to him. Plenty of time yet. Pitov was speaking German instead of Spanish, as they always did between themselves. They're still counting down from minus three hours. I just found the launching site for a Jeep. Eugenio's been there ever since dinner. They say he's running around like a cat looking for a place to have her first litter of kittens. He chuckled. This would be something new for Eugenio Galvez, for which he could be thankful. I hope the generators don't develop any last second bugs, he said. We'll only be a mile and a half away. That'll be too close to 50 kilos of nega matter. If the field collapses. It'll be all right, pituff assured him. The bugs have all been chased out years ago. Not out of those generators in the rocket. They're new. He fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. I never thought I'd run another nuclear bomb test as long as I lived, Lee. Pitov was shocked. You mustn't call it that. It isn't that at all. It's purely a scientific experiment. Wasn't that all any of them were? We made lots of experiments like this back before 1969. The memories of all those other tests, and each ending in an Everest high mushroom column, rose in his mind. And the end result? The United States and the Soviet Union blasted to rubble. A whole hemisphere pushed back into the Dark Ages. A quarter of a billion dead, including a slim woman with graying blond hair and a little red dog. And a girl from Odessa whom Alexis Pitov had been going to marry. Forgive me, Alexis. I just couldn't help remembering. I suppose it's this shot we're going to make tonight. It's so much like the other ones before. He hesitated slightly before the Auburn bomb. There he'd come out and said it. In all the years they'd worked together at the Instituto Argentino de Sciencia Fisiccia that had been unmentioned between them. The families of hanged cutthroats avoid mention of ropes and knives. He thumbed the old fashioned American lighter and held it to his pipe. Across the veranda. In the darkness he knew that Pitov was looking intently at him. You've been thinking about that lately, haven't you? The Russian asked, and then timidly, was that what you were dreaming of? Oh, no, thank heaven. I think about it too, always. I suppose. He seemed relieved now that it had been brought out into the open and could be discussed. You saw it fall, didn't you? That's right. From about 30 miles away. A little closer than will be to this shot tonight. I was in charge of the investigation at Auburn until we had New York and Washington and Detroit and Mobile and San Francisco to worry about. Then what had happened to Auburn wasn't important anymore. We were trying to get evidence to lay before the United Nations. We kept at it for about 12 hours after the United nations had ceased to exist. I could never understand about that, Lee. I don't know what the truth is. I probably never shall. But I know that my government did not launch that missile during the first days after yours began coming in. I talked to people who had been in the Kremlin at the time. One had been in the presence of Klychenko himself when the news of your bombardment arrived. He said that Klychenko was absolutely stunned. We always believed that your government decided upon a preventive surprise attack and picked out a town, Auburn, New York, that had been hit by one of our first retaliation missiles and. And claimed that it had been hit first. He shook his head. Auburn was hit an hour before the first American missile was launched. I know that to be a fact. We could never understand why you launched just that one and no more until after ours began landing on you. Why you threw away the advantage of surprise and priority of attack. Because we didn't do do it, Lee. The Russian's voice trembled with earnestness. You believe me when I tell you that. Yes, I believe you. After all that happened and all that you and I and the people you worked with and the people I worked with and your government and mine have been guilty of, it would be a waste of breath for either of us to try to lie to the other about what happened 15 years ago. He drew slowly on his pipe. But who launched it then? It had to be launched by somebody, don't you think I've been tormenting myself with that question for the last 15 years? Pitov demanded. You know, there were people inside the Soviet Union. Not many, and they kept themselves well hidden, who were dedicated to the overthrow of the Soviet regime. They, or some of them, might have thought that the devastation of both their countries and the obliteration of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere would be a cheap price to pay for ending the rule of the Communist Party. Could they have built an ICBM with a thermonuclear warhead in secret? He asked. There were also fanatical nationalist groups in Europe, both sides of the Iron Curtain, who might have thought our mutual destruction would be worth the risks involved. There was China and India. If your country and mine wiped each other out, they could go back to the old ways and the old traditions. Or Japan or the Moslem states. In the end, they all went down along with us. But what criminal ever expects to fail? We have too many suspects and the trail's too cold, Alexis. That rocket wouldn't have had to have been launched anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. For instance, our friends here in the Argentine have been doing very well by themselves since El Colosso del Norte went down. And there were the Australians picking themselves up bargains in real estate. In the East Indies at gunpoint. And there were the Boers, trekking north again in tanks instead of ox wagons. And Brazil, with a not too implausible pretender to the Braganza throne, calling itself the Portuguese Empire and looking eastward. And to complete the picture, here were Professor Dr. Lee Richardson and Comrade Professor Alexis Petrovich Pitov, getting ready to test a missile with a matter annihilation. Warhead. No, this thing just wasn't a weapon. A jeep came around the corner, lighting the dark roadway between the bungalows, its radio on and counting down 22 minutes, 21, 59, 58, 57. It came to a stop in front of their Bungalow at exactly -2 hours 21 minutes 54 seconds. The driver called out in Dr. Richardson, Dr. Pitov, are you ready? Yes, Ready. We're coming. They both got to their feet, Richardson pulling himself up reluctantly. The older you get, the harder it is to leave a comfortable chair. He settled himself beside his colleague and former enemy, and the jeep started again, rolling between the buildings of the living quarters area and out onto the long straight road across the pampas toward the distant blaze of electric lights. He wondered why he had been thinking so much lately about the Auburn bomb. He questioned at times indignantly, of course, whether Russia had launched it, but it wasn't until tonight, until he had heard what Pitov had had to say, that he seriously doubted it. Pitov wouldn't lie about it, and Pitov would have been in a position to have known the truth if the missile had been launched from Russia. Then he stopped, thinking about what was water or blood a long time over the dam. The special policeman at the entrance to the launching site reminded them that they were both smoking, and when they extinguished, respectively, their cigarette and pipe, he waved the jeep on and went back to his argument with a carload of tourists who wanted to get a good view of the launching. There now, Lee, do you need anything else to convince you that this isn't a weapon project? Pitov asked. No, now that you mention it, I don't. You know, I don't believe I've had to show an identity card the whole time I've been here. I don't believe I have an identity card, pitov said. Think of that. The lights blazed everywhere around them, but mostly about the rocket that towered above everything else, so thick that it seemed squat. The gantry cranes had been hauled away now, and it stood alone, but it was still wreathed in thick electric cables. They were pouring enough current into that thing to light half the streetlights in Buenos Aires. When the cables were blown free by separation charges at the blastoff, the generators powered by the rocket engines had better be able to take over, because if the magnetic field collapsed and that 50 kilo chunk of negative proton matter came in contact with natural positive proton matter, an old fashioned H bomb would be a firecracker to what would happen. Just 100 kilos of pure 200 proof mc2. The driver took them around the rocket, dodging assorted trucks and mobile machinery that were being hurried out of the way. The countdown was just beyond 2 hours, 5 minutes. The Jeep stopped at the edge of a crowd around three more trucks, and Dr. Eugenio Galvez, the director of the Institute, left the crowd and approached at an awkward half run as they got down. Is everything checked, gentlemen? He wanted to know. It was this afternoon at 17:30, Pitov told him, and nobody's been burning my telephone to report anything different. Are the balloons and the drone planes ready? The Air Force just finished checking. They're ready. Captain Urquoya flew one of the planes over the course and made a guidance tape. That's been duplicated and all the planes are equipped with copies. How's the wind? Richardson asked. Still steady. We won't have any troubles about fallout or with the balloons. Then we better go back to the bunker and make sure everybody there is on the job. The loudspeaker was counting down to two hours, one minute. Could you spare a few minutes to talk to the press, Eugenio Galvez asked, and perhaps say a few words for telecast? This last is most important. We can't explain too many times the purpose of this experiment. There is still much hostility arising from fear that we are testing a nuclear weapon. The press and telecast services were well represented. There were close to a hundred correspondents from all over South America, from South Africa and Australia, even one from Ceylon. They had three trucks with mobile telecast pickups, and when they saw who was approaching, they released the two rocketry experts they had been quizzing and pounced on the new victims. Was there any possibility that negative proton matter might be used as a weapon? Anything can be used as a weapon. You could stab a man to death with that lead pencil you're using, Pitov replied. But I doubt if nega matter will ever be so used. We're certainly not working on weapons design here. We started six years ago with the ability to produce negative protons, reverse spin, neutrons and positrons, and the theoretical possibility of assembling them into nega matter. We have just gotten a 50 kilogram mass of nega iron assembled in those six years, we had to invent all our techniques and design all our equipment. If we'd been insane enough to want to build a nuclear weapon after what we went through up north, we could have done so from memory and designed a better, which is to say a worse one from memory in a few days. Yes, and building a negamatter bomb for military purposes would be like digging a 50 foot ship shaft to get a rock to bash somebody's head in when you could do the job better with the shovel you're digging with. Richardson added.
[63:26]
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[63:57]
Narrator/Reader
The time, money, energy and work we put in on this thing would be ample to construct 20 thermonuclear bombs. And that's only a small part of it. He went on to tell them about the magnetic bottle and inside the rocket's warhead, mentioning how much electric current was needed to keep up the magnetic field that insulated the negamatter from contact with posimatter. Then what was the purpose of this experiment, Dr. Richardson? Oh, we were just trying to find out a few basic facts about natural structure. Long ago it was realized that the nucleonic particles, protons, neutrons, mesons and so on must have a structure of their own. Since we started constructing negative proton matter, we've found out a few things about nucleonic structure. Some rather odd things, including fractions of Planck's constant. A couple of the correspondents, a man from La Prenza and an Australian, whistled softly. The others looked blank. Pitov took over. You see, gentlemen, most of what we learned, we learned from putting negamatter atoms together. We annihilated a few of them. Over there in that little concrete building, we have one of the most massive steel vaults in the world where we do that. But we assembled millions of them for every one we annihilated. And that chunk of neg iron inside the magnetic bottle kept growing. And when you have a piece of nega matter you don't want, you. You can't just throw it out on the scrap pile. We might have rocketed it into escape velocity and let it blow up in space, away from the moon or any of the artificial satellites. But why waste it? So we're going to have the rocket eject it, and when it falls, we can see by our telemetered instruments just what happens. Well, won't it be annihilated by contact with atmosphere? Somebody asked. That's one of the things we want to find out, pitov said. We estimate about 20% loss from contact with atmosphere, but the mass that actually lands on the target area should be about 40 kilos. It should be something of a spectacle coming down. You say you had to assemble it after creating the negative protons and neutrons in the positrons. Doesn't any of this sort of matter exist in nature? The man who asked that knew better himself. He just wanted the answer on the record. Oh no, not on this planet, and probably not in the galaxy. There may be whole galaxies composed of nothing but negamatter. There may even be isolated stars and planetary systems inside our galaxy composed of negamatter, though I think that very improbable. But when negamatter and posimatter come into contact with one another, the result is immediate mutual annihilation. They managed to get away from the press and returned as far as the bunkers, a mile and a half away. Before they went inside, Richardson glanced up at the sky, fixing the location of a few of the more conspicuous stars in his mind. There were almost a hundred men and women inside each at his or her instruments, view screens, radar indicators, detection instruments of a dozen kinds. The reporters and telecast people arrived shortly afterward, and Eugenio Galvez took them in tow while Richardson and Pitov were making their last minute rounds. The countdown progressed past minus one hour, and at minus 20 minutes all the overhead lights went off and the small instrument operator's lights came on. Pitov turned on a couple of view screens, one from a pickup on the roof of the bunker and another from the launching pad. They sat down side by side and waited. Richardson got his pipe out and began loading it. The loudspeaker was saying, minus 2 minutes, 1, 59, 58, 57. He let his mind drift away from the test, back to the world that had been smashed around his ears, and in the autumn of 1969 he was doing that so often now, when he should be thinking about 2 seconds, 1 second firing. It was a second later that his eyes focused on the left hand view screen. Red and yellow flames were gushing out of the bottom of the rocket and it was beginning to tremble Then the upper jets, the ones that furnished power for the generators, began firing. He. He looked anxiously at the meters. The generators were building up power. Finally, when he was sure that the rocket would be blasting off anyhow, the separator charges fired and the heavy cables fell away. An instant later, the big missile started inching upward, gaining speed by the second, first slowly and jerkily, and then more rapidly until it passed out of the field of the pickup. He watched the rising spout of fire from the other screen until it passed from sight. By that time, Pitov had twisted a dial and gotten another view on the left hand screen, this time from close to the target. That camera was radar controlled. It had fastened onto the approaching missile, which was still invisible. The stars swung slowly across the screen until Richardson recognized the ones he had spotted at the zenith. In a moment now the rocket a hundred miles overhead would be nosing down, and then the warhead would open and the magnetic field inside would alter and the mass of nega matter would be ejected. The stars were blotted out by a sudden glow of light. Even at a hundred miles, there was enough atmospheric density to produce considerable energy release. Pitov, beside him, was muttering, partly in German and partly in Russian. Most of what Richardson caught was figures trying to calculate how much of the mass of unnatural iron would get down for the ground blast. Then the right hand screen broke into a wriggling orgy of color, and at the same time every scrap of radio transmitted apparatus either went out or began reporting erratically. The left hand screen, connected by wiring to the pickup on the roof, was still functioning. For a moment Richardson wondered what was going on. Then shocked recognition drove that from his mind as he stared at the ever brightening glare in the sky. It was the Auburn bomb again. He was back in memory to the night on the shore of Lake Ontario, the party breaking up in the early hours of the morning. He and Janet and the people with whom they had been spending a vacation week, standing on the lawn as the guests were getting into their cars. And then the sudden light in the sky. The cries of surprise and then of alarm as it seemed to be rushing straight down upon them. He and Janet clutching each other and staring up in terror at the falling blaze from which there seemed no escape. Then relief as it curved away from them and fell to the south. And then the explosion lighting the whole southern sky. There was a similar explosion in the screen when the mass of nega iron landed. A sheet of pure white light so bright and so quick as to almost pass above the limit of visibility. And then a moment's darkness that was in the stunned eyes more than in the screen, and then the rising glow of updates drawn incandescent dust. Before the sound waves had reached them, he had been legging it into the house. The television had been on, and it had been acting as insanely as the screen on his right now. He had called the state police, the telephone had been working all right, and told them who he was, and they had told him to stay put and they'd send a car for him. They did within minutes. Janet and his host and hostess had waited with him on the lawn until it came, and after he had gotten into it he had turned around and looked back through the rear window and seen Janet standing under the front light holding the little dog in her arms, flopping one of its silly little paws up and down with her hand to wave goodbye to him. He had seen her and the dog like that every day of his life for the last 15 years. What kind of radiation are you getting? He could hear Alexis Pitov asking into a phone. What? Nothing else? Oh, yes, of course, but mostly cosmic. That shouldn't last long. He turned from the phone. A devil's own dose of cosmic and some gamma. It was the cosmic radiation that put the radios and the telescreens out. That's why I insisted that the drone planes be independent of radio control. They always got cosmic radiation from the microannihilations in the test vault. Well, now they had an idea of what produced natural cosmic rays. There must be quite a bit of nega matter and posimatter going into mutual annihilation and total energy release through the universe. Of course, there were no detectors set up in advance around Auburn, he said. We didn't really begin to find anything out for for half an hour. By that time the cosmic radiation was over and we weren't getting anything but gamma. What. What has Auburn to do? The Russian stopped short. You think this was the same thing? He gave it a moment's consideration. Lee, you're crazy. There wasn't an atom of artificial nega matter in the world in 1969. Nobody had made any before us. We gave each other some scientific surprises then, but nobody surprised both of us. You and I, between us, knew everything that was going on in nuclear physics in the world. And you know as well as I do a voice came out over the public address speaker. Some of the radio equipment around the target area that wasn't knocked out by the blast is beginning to function again. There is an increasingly heavy gamma radiation, but no more Cosmic rays. They were all prompt radiation from the annihilation. The gamma is secondary effect. Wait a moment. Captain Urquoya of the Air Force says that the first drone plane is about to take off. It had been two hours after the blast that the first drones had gone over what had been Auburn, New York. He was trying to remember as exactly as possible what had been learned from them. Gamma radiation. A great deal of gamma. But it didn't last long. It had been down almost to a safe level by the time the investigation had been called off, and two months after, there had been no more missiles and no way of producing more, and no targets to send them against if they'd had them. Rather, he had been back at Auburn on his hopeless quest, and there had been almost no trace of radiation. Nothing but a wide, shallow crater almost 200ft in diameter and only 15 at its deepest, already full of water, and a circle of flattened and scattered rubble for a mile and a half all around it. He was willing to bet anything that that was what they'd find where the chunk of nega iron had landed 50 miles away on the pamphlet. Well, the first drone ought to be over the target area before long, and at least one of the balloons they had sent up was reporting its course by radio. The radios and the others were silent, and the recording counters had probably jammed in all of them. There'd be something of interest when the first drone came back. He dragged his mind back to the present and went to work with Alexis Pitov. They were at it all night, checking, evaluating, making sure that the masses of data that were coming in were being promptly processed for programming the computers. At each of the increasingly frequent coffee breaks he noticed Pitov looking curiously. He said nothing, however, until long after dawn. They stood outside the bunker, waiting for the jeep that would take them back to their bungalow and watching the line of trucks, Argentine army engineers, locally hired laborers, load after load of prefab Hudson equipment going down toward the target area where they would be working for the next week. Lee, were you serious? Pitov asked. I mean, about this being like the one at Auburn? It was exactly like Auburn. Even that blazing light that came rushing down out of the sky. I wondered about that at the time. What kind of missile would produce an effect like that? Now I know we just launched one like it. But that's impossible. I told you. Between us, we know everything that was happening in nuclear physics then. Nobody in the world knew how to assemble atoms of negamatter and build them into masses. Nobody and nothing on this planet built that mass of Nega matter. I doubt if it even came from this galaxy, but we didn't know that then. When that Negamatter meteor fell, the only thing anybody could think of was that it had been a Soviet missile. If it had hit around Leningrad or Moscow or Kharkov, who would you have blamed it on? End of the Answer by H. Beam Pip.
[78:02]
SpinQuest Advertiser
Birds of a Feather 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 recording by Dale Grothman Getting specimens for an interstellar zoo was no problem. They battled for the honor, but now I had to fight like a wildcat to keep a display from making a monkey of me. Birds of a Feather by Robert Silverberg it was our first day of recruiting on the planet, and the alien life forms had lined up for hundreds of feet back of my rented office. As I came down the block from my hotel, I could hear and see and smell them with ease. My three staff men, Auchinlecht, Stephens, and Ludlow, walked shieldwise in front of me. I peered between them to size the crop up. The aliens came in every shape and form, in all colors and textures, and all of them eager for a Corrigan contract. The galaxy is full of bizarre beings, but there is barely a species anywhere that can resist the old exhibitionist. Urgent. Send the men one at a time, I told Stebbins. I ducked into the office, took my place back of the desk, and waited for the procession to begin. The name of the planet is McTavish4 if you went by the official Terran listing, or Gurn if you called it what the people were accustomed to calling it. I thought of it privately as MacTavish4 and referred to it publicly as Gurn. I believe in keeping the locals happy wherever I go. Through the front window of the office I could see our big gay tritium scion plastered to a facing wall. Wanted extraterrestrials. We had saturated mactavish4 with our promotional poop for a month preceding arrival. Stuff like Want to visit Earth? See the galaxy's most glittering and exclusive world? Want to draw good pay and work short hours? Experience the thrill of show business on romantic Terra? If you're a non terrestrial, there may be a place for you in Corrigan's Institute for Morphological Science. No freaks Wanted normal beings only. J.F. corrigan will hold interviews in person on Gurn from 3rd day to 5th day of 10th month, his last visit to the Caledonian Cluster until 2937, so don't miss your chance. Hurry. A life of wonder and riches can be yours. Broadsides like this, distributed wholesale in half a thousand languages, always bring em running. And the Corrigan Institute really packs in a crowd back on Earth. Why not? It's the best of its kind, and the only really decent place where an Earthman can get a gander at the other species of the universe. The office buzzer sounded. Auchinlech said, the first applicant is ready to see you, sir. Send him her or it in. The door opened and a timid looking life form advanced toward me on nervous little legs. He was a globular creature, about the size of a big basketball, yellowish green, with two spindly double kneed legs and five double elbowed arms, the latter spaced regularly around his body. There was a lidless eye at the top of his head and five lidded ones, one above each arm, plus a big gaping toothless mouth. His voice was a surprisingly resounding Basso. Are you Mr. Corrigan? That's right. I reach for a data blank. Before we begin I need certain information about I am a being of Regulus too, gave the grave booming reply even before I could pick up the blank. I need no special care and I am not a fugitive from the law of any world. Your name? Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I throttled my exclamation of surprise, concealing it behind a quick cough. Let me have that again, please. Certainly. My name is Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. The R stands for Raymond, of course. That's not the name you were born with. The being closed his eyes and toddled around in a 360 degree rotation, remaining in place on his world. That gesture is the equivalent to an apologetic smile. My regular name no longer matters. I am now and shall forevermore be Lawrence R. Fitzgerald. I am a teraphile, you see. The little regulan was as good as hired, only the formalities remained. You understand our terms, Mr. Fitzgerald? I will be placed on exhibit at your institute on Earth. You will pay for my services, transportation, and expenses. I'll be required to remain on exhibit no more than one third of each Terran sidereal day, and the Pay will be 50 Galactic a week, plus expenses and transportation. The spherical creature clapped his hands in joy, three hands clapping on one side, two on the other. Wonderful. I will see Earth at last. I accept the terms. I buzzed for Ludlow and gave him the fast signal that meant we were signing this alien up at half the usual pay, and Ludlow took him into the other office to sign him up. I Grinned, pleased with myself. We need a green Regulan for our show. The last one had quit four years ago, but just because we needed him didn't mean we had to be extravagant in hiring him. A terrifying alien who goes to the extent of rechristening himself with a Terran moniker would work for nothing, or even pay us, just so long as we let him get to Earth. My conscience won't let me really exploit a being, but I don't believe in throwing money away either. The next applicant was a beefy ursinoid from Aldebaran9. Our outfit has all the ursinoids it needs, or is likely to need in the next few decades, and so I got rid of him in a couple of minutes. He was followed by a roly poly blue skinned humanoid from Donovan's planet. Four feet high and 500 pounds heavy. We already had a couple of his species in the show, but but they make good crowd pleasers. Being so plump and cheerful, I passed him along to Auchinleck to sign for anything short of top right. Next came a bedraggled Syrian spider who was more interested in a handout than a job. If there's any species we have a real oversupply of, it's those silver colored spiders. But this seedy specimen gave it a try anyway. He got the gate in half a minute and he didn't even get the handout he was angling for. I don't approve of begging. The flora of applicants was steady. Gurn is the heart of the Caledonian cluster where the interstellar crossroads meet. We had figured to pick up plenty of new exhibits here, and we were right. It was the isolation of the late 29th century that turned me into the successful professor proprietor of Corrigan's Institute. After some years as an impoverished carnival man in the Betelgeuse system, back in 2903, the World Congress declared Terra off bounds for non terrestrial beings as an offshoot of the Terra for Terrans movement. Before then, anyone could visit Earth. After the gate clanged down, a non terrestrial could only get to SOL3 as a specimen in a scientific collection. In short, as an exhibit in a zoo. That's what the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Science really is, of course, a zoo. We don't go out and hunt for our specimens. We advertise and they come flocking to us. Every alien wants to see Earth once in his lifetime, and there's only one way he can do it. We don't keep too big an inventory. At last count, we had six hundred and ninety specimens before this trip, representing 298 different intelligent life forms. My goal is at least one member of at least 500 different races. When I reach that, I'll sit back and let the competition catch up. If it can. After an hour of steady work that morning we had signed 11 new specimens. the same time we had turned away a dozen ursinoids, 50 of the reptilian natives of Gern, seven Syrian spiders, and no less than 19 chlorine breather procyanates wearing gas masks. It was my sad duty to nix a vegan who was negotiating through a Gerian agent. A Vegan would have been a top flight attraction, being some 400ft long and appropriately fearsome to the eye, but I don't see how we could take one on. They're gentle and likable beings, but their upkeep runs into literally tons of fresh meat a day. And not just any old kind of meat either. So we had to do without the vegan. One more specimen before lunch. I told Stebbins to make it an even dozen. He looked at me queerly and nodded. A being entered. I took a long close look at the life form when it came in, and after that I took another one. I wondered what kind of stunt was being pulled. So far as I could tell, the being was quite plainly nothing but an Earth man. He sat down facing me without being asked and crossed his legs. He was tall and extremely thin, with pale blue eyes and dirty blond hair, and though he was clean and reasonably well dressed, he had a shabby look about him. He said in level Terran accents, I'm looking for a job with your outfit, Corrigan. There's been a mistake. We're interested in non terrestrials only. I'm a non terrestrial. My name is Ildar Gorp of the planet Wazinaz 13. I don't mind conning the public from time to time, but I draw the line at being built myself. Look, friend, I'm busy and I'm not known for my sense of humor or my generosity. I'm not panhandling. I'm looking for a job. Then try elsewhere. Suppose you stop wasting my time, bud. You're as Earthborn as I am. I've never been within a dozen parsecs of Earth, he said smoothly. I happen to be the representative of the only Earth like race that exists anywhere in the galaxy but on earth itself. Wasinaz 13 is a small and little known planet in the Crab Nebula. Through an evolutionary fluke my race is identical with yours. Now do you want me in Your circus? No. And it's not a circus, it's a scientific institute. I stand corrected. There was something glib and appealing about this preposterous phony. I guess I recognized a kindred spirit or I would have tossed him out on his ear without another word. Instead, I played along. If you're from such a distant place, how come you speak English so well? I'm not speaking. I'm a telepath. Not the kind that reads minds, just the kind that projects. I communicate in symbols that you translate back into colloquial speech. Very clever, Mr. Gorb. I grinned at him and shook my head. You spin a good yarn. But for my money, you're really Sam Jones or Phil Smith from Earth. Stranded here and out of cash. You want a free trip back to Earth? No deal. The demand for beings from Wozenov's 13 is pretty low these days. Zero, in fact. Goodbye, Mr. Gorb. He pointed his finger squarely at me and said, you're making a big mistake. I'm just what your outfit needs. A representative of a hitherto unknown race, identical to humanity in every respect. Look here, examine my teeth. Absolutely. Like human teeth. And I pulled away from his yawning mouth. Good bye, Mr. Gorb, I repeated. All I ask is the contract, Corrigan. It isn't much. I'll be a big attraction. I'll Good bye, Mr. Gorb. He glowered at me reproachfully for a moment, stood up and sauntered to the door. I thought you were a man of acumen, Corrigan. Well, think it over. Maybe you'll regret your hastiness. I'll be back to give you another chance. He slammed the door and I let my grim expression relax into a smile. This was the best Khan switch yet. An Earthman posing as an alien to get a job. But I wasn't buying it, even if I could appreciate his cleverness intellectually, there's no such place as Wazanaz 13, and there's only one human race in the galaxy. On Earth I was going to need some really good reason before I gave a down and out grifter a free ticket home. I didn't know it then, but before the day was out I would have that reason and with it, plenty of trouble on my hands. The first harbinger of woe turned up after lunch in the person of a the Collarian was the sixth applicant of that afternoon. I had turned away three more ursinoids, hired a vegetable famousian, and said no to a scaly pseudo armadillo from one of the Delta worlds. Hardly had the Dillo scuttled dejectedly out of my office than the Collarian came striding in, not even waiting for Stebbins to admit him. Officially, he was big even for his kind, in the neighborhood of 9ft high and getting on towards a ton. He planted himself firmly on his three stocky feet, extending his massive arms in a Collarian greeting gesture, and growled, I am Valo herral Freeman of Kalar 5. You will sign me immediately to a contract. Sit down, Freeman Haral. I like to make my own decisions, thanks. You will grant me a contract. Will you please sit down? He said sulkily. I will remain standing as you prefer. My desk has a few concealed features which are sometimes useful in dealing with belligerent or disappointed life forms. My fingers roamed to the meshgun trigger just in case of trouble. The Collarian stood motionless before me. They are hairy creatures, and this one had a coarse, thick mat of blue fur completely covering his body. Two fierce eyes glimmered out through the otherwise dense blanket of fur. He was wearing the kilt girdle and ceremonial blaster of his warlike race. I said, you'll have to understand, Freeman Harral, that it's not our policy to maintain more than a few members of each species at our institute, and we're not currently in need of any Collarian males because you will hire me or trouble I will make. I opened our inventory chart. I showed him that we were already carrying four Kalarians, and that was more than plenty. The beady little eyes flashed like beacons in the fur. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spinquests, and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10, all the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms p-I n q u
[94:51]
Narrator/Reader
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[94:54]
SpinQuest Advertiser
to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Yes, you have four representatives of the Clan Verdroth, none of the Clan Gerstran. For three years I have waited for the chance to avenge this insult to the noble Clan Gerstrand at the keyword avenge. I readied myself to Ensnar the Kalerian in a spume of tangle mesh the instant he went for his blaster. But he didn't move. He bellowed, I have vowed a vow, Earthman. Take me to Earth. Enroll a Gerstran or the consequences will be terrible. I'm a man of principles, like all straightforward double dealers, and one of the most important of those principles is I never let myself be bullied by anyone. I deeply regret having unintentionally insulted your clan, Freeman Harral. Will you accept my apologies? He glared at me in silence. I went on. Please be assured that I'll undo the insult at the earliest possible opportunity. It's not feasible for us to hire another Collarian now, but I'll give the preference to the clan Gerstran as soon as a vacancy. No. You will hire me now. It can't be done, Freeman. Hurrau. We have a budget and we stick to it. You will rue. I will take drastic measures. Threats will get you nowhere, Freeman Harral, I give you my word. I'll get in touch with you as soon as our organization has room for another Collarian. And now, please, there are many applicants waiting. You'd think it would be sort of humiliating to become a specimen in a zoo, but most of these races take it as an honor, and there's always a chance that by picking a given member of a race will insult all the others. I nudged the trouble button on the side of my desk and Alconcek and Ludlow appeared simultaneously from the two doors at the right and left. They surrounded the towering Collarian and Sweet Talkingly led him away. He wasn't minded to quarrel physically, or he could have knocked them both into the next city with a backhand swipe of his shaggy paw, but he kept up the growling flow of invective and threats until he was out in the hall. I mopped the sweat off my forehead and began to buzz Stebbins for the next applicant. But before my fingers touched the button, the door popped open and a small being came scooting in, followed by an angry Stebbins. Come here, you Stebbins, I said gently. I'm sorry, Mr. Corrigan. I lost sight of this one for a moment and he came running in. Please, please. Squeaked the little alien pitifully. I must see you. Honoured, sir. It isn't his turn in lines, Stebbins protested. There are at least 50 ahead of him. All right, I said tiredly. As long as he's in here already, I might as well see him. Be more careful next time, Stebbins. Stebbins nodded dolefully and backed out. The alien was a pathetic sight, a Stortulian, a squirrel like creature about three feet high. His fur, which should have been lustrous black, was a dull gray and his eyes were wet and sad. His tail drooped. His voice was little more than a faint whimper, even at full volume. Begging your most honoured pardon, most humble, important sir, I am a being of Storetool 8 and have sold my last few possessions to travel to Gurn for the miserable purpose of obtaining an interview with yourself. I said, I better tell you right at the onset that we're already carrying our full complement of Stratulians. We have both a male and a female now, and this is known to me. The female is her name, perchance? Tiress. I glanced down at the inventory chart until I found the Stortulian entry. Yes, that's her name. The little being immediately emitted a soul shaking gasp. It is she. It is she. I am afraid we don't have room for any more. You are not in full understanding of my plight. The female she is was my own fire spent spouse, my comfort, my warmth, my life, my love. Funny, I said when we signed her three years ago. She said she was single. That's right. Here on the chart. She lied. She left my burrow because she longed to see the splendors of Earth. And I am alone, bound by our sacred customs, never to remarry, languishing in sadness and pining for her return. You must take me to Earth. But I must see her. Her and this disgrace bringing lover of hers. I must reason with her, Earthman. Can't you see? I must appeal to her inner flame. I must bring her back. My face was expressionless. You don't really intend to join our organization at all. You just want free passage to Earth. Yes, yes, wailed the Snortolian. Find some other member of my race, if you must. Let me have my wife again, Earthman. Is your heart a dead lump of stone? It isn't. But another of my principles is to refuse to be swayed by sentiment. I felt sorry for this being's domestic troubles, but I wasn't going to break up a good act just to make an alien squirrel happy, not to mention footing the transportation. I said, I don't see how we can manage it. The laws are very strict on the subject of bringing alien life to Earth. It has to be for scientific purposes only. And if I know in advance that your purpose in coming isn't scientific, I can't in all good conscience lie for you, can I? Well, of course not. I took advantage of his pathetic upset to stream right along. Now, if you had come in here and simply asked me to sign you up, I might conceivably have done it. But no, you had to go unburden your heart to me. I thought the truth would move you. It did. But in effect, you're now asking me to conspire in a fraudulent criminal act. Friend, I can't do it. My reputation means too much to me, I said piously. Then you will refuse me. My heart melts to nothing for you, but I can't take you to Earth. Perhaps you will send my wife to be here. There's a clause in every contract that allows me to jettison an unwanted specimen. All I have to do is declare it no longer of scientific interest, and the world government will deport the undesirable alien back to its home world. But I couldn't pull such a low trick like this on our female Stortulian. I said, I'll ask her about coming home, but I won't ship her back against her will. And maybe she's happier where she is. The Stortulian seemed to shrivel. His eyelids closed halfway to mask his tears. He turned and scrambled slowly to the door, walking like a living dishrag. In a bleak voice he said, there is no hope. Then all is lost. I will never see my soulmate again. Good day, Earthman. He spoke in a drab monotone that almost but not quite, had me weeping. I watched him shuffle out. I do have some conscience, and I had the uneasy feeling I had just been talking to a being who was about to commit suicide on my account. About 50 more applicants were processed without a hitch. Then life started to get complicated again. Nine of the 50 were okay. The rest were unacceptable for one reason or another, and they took the bad news quietly enough. The haul of the day so far was close to two dozen new life forms under contract. I had just about begun to forget about the incidents with the Collarian's outraged prize and the Stortulian's flighty wife when the door opened and the Earthman who called himself ilduar Gorb of Wazanaz 13 stepped in. How did you get in here? I demanded. Your man happened to be looking the wrong way, he said cheerily. Changed your mind about me yet? Get out of here before I have you thrown out. Gorb shrugged. I figured you hadn't changed your mind, so I've changed my pitch a bit. If you won't believe I'm from Wazenov's 13, suppose I tell you I am Earthborn and that I'm looking for a job on your staff. I don't care what your story is. Get out or you'll have me thrown out. Ok, ok, just give me half a second. Corrigan, you're no fool and neither am I, but that fellow of yours outside is he doesn't know how to handle alien beings. How many times today has a life form come in here unexpectedly? I scowled at him. Too damn many. You see, he's incompetent. Suppose you fire him and take me on instead. I've been living in the outworlds half my life. I've known all there is to know about alien life forms. You can use me, Corrigan. I took a deep breath and glanced all around the paneled ceiling of the office before I spoke. Listen, Gorb, or whatever your name is, I've had a hard day. There's been a Killerian in here who just about threatened murder, and there's been a Strutulian in here who's about to commit suicide because of me. I have a conscience and it's troubling me. But get this, I just want to finish off my recruiting, pack up, and go home to Earth. I don't want you hanging around here bothering me. I'm not looking to hire new staff members, and if you switch back to claiming you're an Unknown Life form from Wazanaz13, the answer is that I'm not looking for any of those either. Now will you scram or the office door crashed open at that point, and Haral the Kalarian came thundering in. He was dressed from head to toe in glittering metal foil, and instead of his ceremonial blaster he wielded a sword the length of a human being. Stebbins and Auchinlot came dragging helplessly along in his wake, hanging desperately to his belt. Sorry, Chief, Stebbins gasped. I tried to keep him out, but Horell, who had planted himself in front of my desk, drowned him out with a roar. Earthman, you have mortally insulted the Clan Gerstrand. Sitting with my hands poised near the meshgun trigger, I was ready to let him have it. At the first sign of actual violence, Harel boomed, you are responsible for what is to happen now. I have notified the authorities and you prosecuted will be for causing the death of a life form. Suffer, Earth born ape. Suffer. Watch it, Chief Evans yelled. He he's going to an instant before my numb fingers could tighten on the mesh gun trigger, Harel swung that huge sword through the air and plunged it savagely through his body. He toppled forward onto the carpet with the sword projecting a couple of feet out his back. A few driplets of bluish purple blood spread out from beneath him. Before I could react to the big life arm's hara kiri. The office door flew open again and three sleek reptilian beings entered, garbed in the green sashes of the local police force. Their golden eyes goggled down at the figure on the floor, then came to rest on me. You are J.F. corrigan? The leader asked. Yes. We have received word of a complaint against you, said complaint being that your unethical actions have directly contributed to the untimely death of an intelligent life form, filled in the second of the Guerinian police. The evidence lies before us, intoned the leader in the cadaver of the unfortunate Carillon, who filed the complaint with us several minutes ago. And therefore, said the third lizard, it is our duty to arrest you for this crime and declare you subject to a fine of no less than 100,000 Galactic or two years in prison. Hold on, I stormed. You mean that any being from anywhere in the universe could come in here and gut himself on my carpet and I'm responsible? It is the law. Do you deny that your stubborn refusal to yield to this late life form's request lies at the root of his sad demise? Well, no. But failure to deny is an admission of guilt. You are guilty, Earthman. Closing my eyes wearily, I tried to wish the whole babbling lot of them away. If I had to, I could pony up the hundred grand fine, but it was going to put an awful dent in this year's take, and I shuddered when I remembered that any minute that scrawny little Stertorian was likely to come bursting in here and kill himself too. Was it a fine of a hundred thousand per suicide? At that rate I would be out of business by nightfall. I was spared further such moribund thoughts by yet another unannounced arrival. The small figure of the Stertorian trudged through the open doorway and stationed itself limply near the threshold. The three Guerinian police and my three assistants forgot the dead kalerian for a moment and turned to eye the newcomer. I had visions of unending troubles with the law here on Garin. I resolved never to come here on a recruiting trip again, or, if I did come to figure out some more effective way of screening myself against crackpots. In heart rending tones, the storylian declared, life is no longer worth living. My last hope is gone. There is only one thing left for me to do. I was quivering at the thought of another hundred thousand smackers going down the drain. Stop him, somebody. He's going to kill himself. He's Then somebody sprinted toward me hit me amidships and knocked me flying out from behind my desk before I had a chance to fire the mesh gun. My head walloped the floor and for five or six seconds I guess, I wasn't fully aware of what was going on. Gradually the scene took shape around me. There was a monstrous hole in the wall behind my desk. A smoking blaster lay on the floor, and I saw three Guerinian policemen sitting on a raving Stratulian. The man who called himself Ilduar Gorp was was getting to his feet and dusting himself off. He helped me up. Sorry to have to tackle you, Corrigan, but that Sterilian wasn't here to commit suicide, you see. He was out to get you. I weaved dizzily toward my desk and dropped into my chair. A flying fragment of wall had deflated my pneumatic cushion. The smell of ashed plaster was everywhere. The police were effectively cocooning the struggling little alien in an unbreakable tangle.
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Evidently you don't know as much as you think you do about Stratilian psychology, Gorrigan, gorb said lightly. Suicide is completely abhorrent to them. When they're troubled, they kill the person who's causing their trouble. In this case, you. I begin to chuckle, more a tension relieving snicker than a full bodied laugh. Funny, I said. What is? Asked the self styled Woznazian. These aliens, big blustery harel, came in with murder in his eyes and killed himself. And the pint sized Tortullean who looked so meek and pathetic damn near blew my head off. I shuddered. Thanks for the tackle job. Don't mention it, corp said. I glared at the Guerinian police. Well, what are you waiting for? Take that murderous little beast out of here. Or isn't murder against the local laws? The Stortullian will be duly punished, replied the leader of the Guerinian cops calmly. But there is a matter of the dead Corellian and the fine of $100,000. I know, I groaned and turned to Stebbins. Get the Terran consul on the phone, Stebbins. Have them send down a legal advisor. Find out if there's any way we can get out of this mess with our skins intact. Right, Chief. Stebbins moved toward the Visiphone. Gorb stepped forward and put his hand on his chest. Hold it, the Waznerian said crisply. The consul can't help you. I can. You, I said. I can get you out of this cheap. How cheap? Gorp grinned. Rakishly 5,000 in cash, plus a contract as a specimen with your outfit. In advance, of course. That's a heck of a lot better than forking over a hundred grand, isn't it? I eyed Gorp uncertainly. The Terran consulate people probably wouldn't be much help. They tried to keep out of local squabbles unless they were really serious. And I knew from past experience that no officials ever worried much about the state of my pocketbook. On the other hand, giving this slicer a contract might be a risky proposition. Tell you what, I said finally. You've got yourself a deal. But on a contingency basis. Get me out of this and you'll have five grand and a contract. Otherwise, nothing. Gorb shrugged. What have I got to lose? Before the police could interfere, Gorb trotted over to the hulking corpse of the Kalerian and fetched it a mighty kick. Wake up, you faker. Stop playing possum and stand up. You aren't fooling anyone. The Guerinians got off the huddled little assassin and tried to stop Gorb. Your pardon, but the dead require your respect, began one of the lizards mildly. Gorb whirled angrily. Maybe the dead do, but this character isn't dead. He knelt and said loudly in the k' larion's dish like ear, you might as well quit it, Haral. Listen to this, you shamming mountain of meat. Your mother knits d' Oilies for the clan Verdroth. The supposedly dead Kalerian emitted a 20 cycle rumble that shook the floor and clambered to his feet, pulling the sword out of his body and waving it in the air. Gorb leapt back nimbly, snatching up the Sartorian's fallen blaster and training it neatly on the big alien's throat before he could do any damage. The Kalerian grumbled and lowered his sword. I felt groggy. I thought I knew plenty about non terrestrial life forms, but I was learning a few things today. I don't understand how the police were blue with chagrin. A thousand pardons, Earthman. There seems to have been some error. There seems to have been a cute little con game, gorb remarked quietly. I recovered my balance. Try to milk me for a hundred grand when there's been no crime, I snapped. I'll say there's been an error. If I wasn't a forgiving man, I'd clap the bunch of you in jail for attempting to defraud an Earthman. Get out of here and take that would be murderer with you. They got and they got fast burbling apologies as they went. They had tried to fox an Earthman, and that's a dangerous sport. They dragged the cocooned form of the Snortorlian with them. The air seemed to clear and peace was restored. I signaled to Auchinleck and he slammed the door. All right. I looked at Gorb and jerked a thumb at the Calarian. That's a nice trick. How does it work? Gorb smiled pleasantly. He was enjoying this, I could see. Kallarians of the Clan Gerstran specialize in a kind of mental discipline, Corrigan. It isn't too widely known in this area of the galaxy, but the men of the clan have unusual mental control over their bodies. They can cut off circulation and nervous system response in large chunks of their body for hours at a stretch. An absolutely perfect imitation of death. And of course, when Harrell put the sword through himself, it was a simple matter to avoid hitting any vital organs en route. The Collarian, still at gunpoint, hung his head in shame. I turned on him. So, try to swindle me, eh? You cooked this whole fake suicide up in collusion with those cops. He looked quite a sight with that gaping slash running clear through his body, but the wound had begun to heal already. I regret the incident, Earthman. I am mortified. Be good enough to destroy this unworthy person. It was a tempting idea, but a notion was forming in my showman's mind. No, I won't destroy you. Tell me, how often can you do that trick? The tissues will regenerate in a few hours. Would you mind having to kill yourself? Every day, Haral, and twice on Sundays. Haral looked doubtful. Well, for the honor of my clan, perhaps. Stebbins. Boss, you mean. Shut up, Haral. You're hired. 75 a week plus expenses. Stebbins, get me a contract form and type in a clause requiring Haral to perform his suicide stunt. At least five, but no more than eight times a week. I felt a satisfied glow. There's nothing more pleasing than to turn a swindle into a sure fire crowd puller. Aren't you forgetting something, Corrigan? Asked Ilduar Gorb in a quite menacing voice. We had a little agreement, you know. Oh, yes. I moistened my lips and glanced swiftly around the office. There had been too many witnesses. I couldn't back down. I had no choice but to write out a check for five grand and give Gorb a standard alien specimen contract. Unless. Just a second, I said. To enter Earth as an alien exhibit, you need proof of alien origin. He grinned, pulling out a batch of documents. Nothing to it. Everything stamped and in order. And anybody who wants to prove these papers are fraudulent will have to find Wasinaz 13 first. We signed and I filed the contracts away, but only then did it occur to me that the events of the past hour might have been even more complicated than they looked. Suppose, I wondered, Gorb had conspired with Harel to stage the fake suicide and rung in the cops as well, with contracts for both of them. The price of my getting off the hook, it could very well be, and if it was, it meant I had been taken as neatly as any chump I'd ever conned. Carefully keeping a poker face, I did a silent burn. Gorb, or whatever his real name was, was going to find himself living up to a contract he'd signed every damn word and letter of it. We left Gurn later that week, having interviewed some 1100 life forms and having hired 52. It brought the register of our zoo, pardon me, the Institute, to a nice, pleasant 742 specimens representing 326 intelligent life forms. Ildoir Gorb, the Wazinarian who admitted that his real name was Mike Higgins of St. Louis, turned out to be a tower of strength. On the return voyage it developed that he really did know all there was to know about alien life forms. When he found out I had turned down a 400 foot long vegan because the upkeep would be too big, Gorb Higgins rushed off to the vegan's agent and concluded a deal whereby we acquired a fertilized vegan ovum weighing hardly more than an ounce. Transporting that was a lot cheaper than lugging a full grown adult vegan. Besides which, he assured me that the infant beast could be adapted to a diet of vegetables without any difficulty. He made life a lot easier for me. During the six week four voyage to Earth in our specially constructed ship with 52 alien life forms aboard, all sorts of dietary problems arose, not to mention the headaches that popped up over pride of place and the like. The Killarian simply refused to be quartered anywhere but on the left hand side of the ship, for example. But that was the side we had reserved for low gravity creatures, and there was no room for him there. We will be traveling in hyperspace all the way to Earth, Gorb Higgins assured the stubborn Collarian. Our cosmostatic polarity will be reversed, you see. Huh? Asked Karel in confusion. The cosmostatic polarity. If you take a bunk on the left hand side of the ship, you'll be traveling on the right hand side, all the way there. Oh, said the big. I didn't know that. Thank you for explaining. He gratefully took a stateroom we assigned him. Higgins really had a way with creatures, all right. He made us look like fumbling amateurs, and I have been operating this business for more than 15 years. Somehow Higgins managed to be on the spot whenever trouble broke out. A highly strung Norvineth started a feud with a pair of Venithians over an alleged moral impropriety. Nor Venithi can be very stuffy sometimes, but Gorb convinced the outraged being that what the Venovians were doing in the washroom was perfectly proper. Well, it was, but I'd never have thought of using that particular analogy. I could list half a dozen other incidents in which Gorb Higgins special knowledge of outworld beings saved us from annoying hassles on the trip back. It was the first time I had ever had another man with brains in the organization, and I was getting worried. When I first set up the Institute back In the early 2920s, it was with my own capital scraped together while running a comparative biology show on Betelgeuse 9. I saw to it that I was the sole owner, and I took care to hire competent but unspectacular men as my staff. Men like Stebbins, Auchinleck, and Ludlow. Only now I had a viper in my bosom in the person of Ildoir Gorb. Mike Higgins. He could think for himself. He knew a good racket when he saw one. We were birds of a feather, Higgins and I. I doubted if there was room for both of us in this outfit. I sent for him just before we were about to make earthfall, offering him a few slugs of brandy before I got to the point. Mike, I've watched the way you handle the exhibits on the way back here. The other exhibits, he pointed out. I'm one of them, not a staff man. Your Waznozian status is just a fiction cooked up to get you past the immigration authorities, Mike, And I've got a proposition for you. Propose away. I'm getting a little too old for this starcombing routine, I said. Up to now I've been doing my own recruiting, but only because I couldn't trust anyone else to do the job. I think you could handle it, though. I stubbed up my cigarette and lit another one. Tell you what, Mike. I'll rip up your contract as an exhibit, and I'll give you another one as a staff man paying twice as much. Your job will be to roam the planets finding new material for us. How about it? I had a new contract all drawn up. I pushed it toward him, but he put his hands down over mine and smiled amiably as he said, no go. No. Not even for twice the pay. I've done my own share of roaming, he said. Don't offer me more money. I just want to settle down on Earth, Jim. I don't care about the cash. Honest. It was very touching. Also very phony. But there was nothing I could do.
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But the unquestioned number one attraction here is confidence man Mike Higgins. He's billed as the only absolutely human life form from an extraterrestrial planet. And though we've had our share of debunkings, it has only increased business. Funny that the biggest draw at a zoo like ours should should be a homegrown Earthman, but that's show business. A couple of weeks after we got back, Mike added a new wrinkle to the act. He turned up with a blonde showgirl named Marie. And now we have a woman from Wazanaz, too. It's much more fun for Mike that way. And downright clever. He's too clever. In fact, like I said, I appreciate a good confidence man the way some people appreciate fine wine. But I wish I had left Ildoir Gorb back on Gurn. Instead of signing him up with us yesterday, he stopped by at my office, after we had closed down for the day. He was wearing that pleasant smile he always wears when he's up to something. He accepted a drink as usual, and then he Jim, I was talking to Lawrence R. Fitzgerald yesterday. The little regulant. The green basketball? That's the one. He tells me he's only getting $50 a week. And a lot of the other boys here are drawing pretty low pay too. My stomach gave me a warning twinge. Mike, if you're looking for a raise, I've told you time and again you're worth it to me. How about 20 a week? He held up one hand. I'm not angling for a raise for me, Jim. What then? He smiled beatifically. The boys and I held a little meeting yesterday evening and we formed a union with me as leader. I'd like to discuss the idea of a general wage increase for every one of the exhibits here. Higgins, you're a blackmailer. How can I afford. Easy, he said. You'd hate to lose a few weeks gross, wouldn't you? You mean you'd call a strike? He shrugged. If you leave me no choice, how else can I protect my members interests? After about half an hour of haggling, he sweated me into an across the board increase for the entire mob. With a distinct hint of further raises to come. But he also casually let me know the price he asked for calling off the hounds. He wants a partnership in the Institute, a share in the receipts. If he gets that, it makes him a member of management and he'll have to quit as union leader. That way I won't have him to contend with as a negotiator. But I will have him firmly embedded in the organization. And once he gets his foot in the door, he won't be satisfied until he's on top. Which means when I am out. But I'm not licked yet. Not after a lifetime of conniving and swindling. I've been over and over the angles, and there's one thing you can count on. A trickster will always outsmart himself if you give him a chance. I did it with Higgins. Now he's done it with me. He'll be back here in half an hour to find out whether he gets his partnership or not. Well, he'll get his answer. I'm going to affirm, as per the escape clause in the standard exhibit contract he signed, that he is no longer of scientific value and the feds will pick him up and deport him to his home world. Which leaves him two Equally nasty choices. Those fake documents of his were good enough to get him admitted to Earth as a legitimate alien. How the World police get him back there is their headache and his. If he admits the papers were phony, the only way he'll get out of prison will be when it collapses of old age. So I'll give him a third choice. He can sign an undated confession, which I will keep in my safe as a guarantee against future finagling. I don't expect to be around forever. You see, though, with that little secret I picked up on Rimbaugh 2, it'll be a good long time, not even barring accidents. And I've been wondering whom to leave the Corrigan Institute of Morphological Studies to. Higgins will make a fine successor. Oh, one more thing. He will have to sign. It remains the Corrigan Institute as long as the place is in business. Try to out con me, Willie. End of Birds of a Feather by Robert Silverberg. The Eel by Miriam Allen Deford 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 Grothman the punishment had to fit more than just the crime. It had to suit every world in the galaxy. The Eel by Miriam Allen Deford he was intimately and unfavorably known everywhere in the galaxy, but with special virulence. On eight planets in three different solar systems. He was eagerly sought on each. They all wanted to try him and punish him in each case by their own laws and customs. This had been going on for 26 terrestrial years, which means from minus 10 to plus 280 in some of the others. The only place that didn't want him was Earth, his native planet, where he was too smart to operate. But of course the Galactic Police were looking for him there, too, to deliver him to the authorities of the other planets in accordance with the Interplanetary constitution. For all those years, the Eel, which was his Earth moniker elsewhere he was known by names indicating equally squirmy and slimy life forms, had been gaily going his way, known under a dozen different aliases, turning up suddenly here, there and everywhere, committing his gigantic deceptions and disappearing as quickly and silently when his latest enterprise had succeeded. He specialized in enormous, unprecedented thefts. It was said that he despised stealing anything under the value of a hundred million terrestrial units, and most of his thefts were much larger than that. He had no recognizable modus operandi, changing his methods with each new crime. He never left a clue but in bravado, he signed his name to every job. His moniker flattered him, and after each malefaction, the victim, usually a government agency, a giant corporation, or one of the clan enterprises of the smaller planets, would receive a message consisting merely of an impudent depiction of a large wiggly eel. They got him at last. Of course, the Galactic Police, like the prehistoric Royal Canadian Mounted, have the reputation for always catching their man. Sometimes they don't catch him till he's dead, but they caught him. It took them 26 years, and it was a hard job for the for the Eel always worked alone and never talked afterwards. They did it by the Herculean effort of investigating the source of the fortune of every inhabitant of Earth. Since all that was known was that the Eel was terrestrial, every computer in the Federation worked overtime. Analyzing the data fed into wasn't entirely a thankless task, for as a byproduct, a lot of embezzlers, tax evaders and lesser robbers were turned up. In the end, it narrowed down to one man who owned more than he could account for having. Even so, they almost lost him, for his takings were cashed away under so many pseudonyms that it took several months to establish that they all belonged to the same person. When it was settled, the police swooped, the Eel surrendered quietly. The one thing he had been surest of was never being apprehended, and he was so dumbfounded he was unable to put up any resistance. And then came a still greater question. Which of the planets was to have him? Zikstal said it had first right, because his theft there had been the largest, a sum so huge it could be expressed only by an algebraic index. Arthur's argument was that his first recorded crime had been on that planet. Medorus wanted him because its only penalty for any felony was an immediate and rather horrible death, and that would guarantee getting rid of the eel forever. Ceres had a claim on the grounds that it was the only planet or moon in the solar system in which he had operated, and since he was a terrestrial, it was a matter for local jurisdiction. EB pleaded that it was the newest and poorest member of the Galactic Federation and should have been protected in its inexperience against his thievishness. H.A. almerinth argued that it had earned his custody because it was its chief ruler who had suggested to police the method which had resulted in his arrest. Valvanor countered that it should be chosen recipient, since the theft there had included desecration of the High Temple, Little Agsk which was only a probationary Galactic associate, modestly said that if it were given the Eel, its prompt and exemplary punishment might qualify it for full membership, and it would be grateful for the chance. A special meeting of the Galactic Council had to be called for the sole purpose of deciding who got the Eel. Representatives from all the claimant planets made their representations. Each told in eloquent detail why his planet and his alone was entitled to custody of the arch criminal and what they would do to him when, not if, they got him. After they had all been heard, the councillors went into executive session with press and public Bard, an indiscreet councillor. It was O Al of Fillingor of Altair, if you want to know, leaked later some of the rather indecorous proceedings. The Earth councillor, he reported, had been granted a voice but no vote, since Earth was not an interested party as to the crime, but only as to the criminal. Each possible system of arbitration had been discussed chronologically, numerically in respect to the size of theft, legalistically in respect to whether the culprit should be available to hand on to another victim. When the first had got through punishing him in the welter of claims and counterclaims, the one harassed counselor wearily suggested a lottery. Another, in desperation, recommended handing the Eel a list of prospective punishments on each of the eight planets and observing which one seemed to inspire him with the most dread, which would then be the one selected. One even proposed poisoning him and announcing his sudden collapse and death. The sessions went on day and night. The exhausted counselors separated for brief periods of sleep, then went at it again. A hung jury was unthinkable. Something had to be decided. The news outlets of the entire galaxy were beginning to issue sarcastic editorials about procrastination and coddling criminals with hints about bribery and corruption, and remarks that perhaps what was needed was a few impeachments and a new general election. So at last, in utter despair, they awarded the Eel to Agsk as a sort of bonus and incentive. Whatever planet they named, the other seven were going to scream to high heaven, and Agsk was least likely to be able to retaliate against any expression of indignation. Agskins, as everyone knows, are fairly humanoid beings, primitives from the outer edge of the galaxy. They were like college freshmen invited to the senior fraternity. It was their big chance to make good. The Eel, taciturn as ever, was delivered to a delegation of six of them, sent to meet him in one of their lumbering spaceships. A low countergrab machine such as Earth had outgrown several millennia before. They were so afraid of losing him that they put a metal belt around him with six chains attached to it and fastened all six of themselves to him. Once on ags, he was placed in a specifically made stone pit surrounded by guards, and fed through the only opening in preparation for the influx of visitors to the trial, an anticipated greater assembly of off planeters than little Agsk had ever seen. They evacuated their capital city, temporarily resettling all its citizens except those needed to serve and care for guests, and remodeled the biggest houses for the accommodation of those who had peculiar space shape or other requirements. Never, since the Galactic Federation was founded, had so many beings, human, humanoid, semi humanoid, and non humanoid gathered at the same time on any one member planet. Every news tape, tritamens, audio, and all other varieties of information services, even including the drum amplifiers of Medorus and the ray variants of Ebb, applied for and were granted a place in the courtroom. This, because no other edifice was large enough, was an immense stone amphitheater, usually devoted to rather curious games with animals, since it rains on Agsk only for two specified hours on each one of their days, no roof was needed. At every seat was a translophone with interpreters ready in plastic cages to translate the intergalactic in which the trial was conducted into even the clicks and hisses of Jorg and the eye flashes of a Monroe. In the midst of all this, the cause and purpose of it all, sat the legendary Eel, seen at last. He was hardly an impressive figure. Time had been going on, and the Eel was in his 50s, bald and a trifle paunchy. He was completely ordinary in appearance, a circumstance which had of course enabled him to pass unobserved on so many planets. He looked like a salesman or a minor official, and indeed had been so taken by the unnoticing inhabitants of innumerable planets. People had wondered, when the word came of some new outrageous by this master thief, if perhaps he had disguised himself as a resident of the scene of each fresh crime. But now it was obvious that this has not been necessary. He had been too clever to pick any planet where visitors from Earth were not a common sight, and he had been too insignificant for anyone to pay attention to him. The criminal code of Eggs was unique in the galaxy, though there were rumors of something similar among the legendary extinct tribes tribes on Earth called the Gauches. The High Priest is also the chief executive, as well as the minister of education and the head of the medical facility, and he rules jointly with a priestess who also officiates as chief judge. The Agskians have some strange ideas. To the terrestrial eye, for example, suicide is an honor. And anyone of insufficient rank who commits it condemns his immediate family to punishment for his presumption. They are great family people in general. Also. They never lie and find it hard to realize that other beings do. Murder, to them is merely a matter for negotiation between the murderer and the relatives of the victim, provided it is open and without deceit. But grand larceny, since property is a foundation of the family, is punished in a way that shows that the Axeans, though technologically primitive, are psychologically very advanced. They reason that death, because it comes inevitably to all, is the least of misfortunes. Lasting grief, remorse and guilt are the greatest. So they let the thief live and do not even imprison him. Instead, they find out who it is that the criminal most loves. If they do not know who it is, they merely ask him. And since Agskins never lie, he always tells them. Then they seize that person and kill him or her slowly and painfully before the thief's eyes. And the agreement had been that the Eel was to be tried and punished by the laws and customs of the planet to which he was awarded. The actual trial and conviction of the Eel were almost perfunctory. Without needing to resort to torture. His jailers had been presented on a platter, as it were, with a full confession. So far as the particular robbery he had committed on Ags was concerned. There was a provision for defense in the Agskian code, but it was unneeded because the Eel had pleaded guilty. But he knew very well he would not be executed by the Axcians. He would instead be set free, presumably with a broken heart, to be handed over to the next claimant. And that, the Council had decided, would be Medoros. Since Medoros always kills its criminals, that would be the end of the whole controversy. So the Eel was quite aware that his conviction by AGS would be only the preliminary to an exquisitely painful and lingering demise at the two clawed hands of Bedorians. His business was somehow to get out from under. Naturally, the resources of the Galactic Police had been at the full disposal of of the officials of ags. The files had been opened and the Agskians had before them the Eel's history. Back to the day of his birth. He himself had been questioned, encephalographed, hypnotized, dormatized, injected, psychographed, subjected to all means of eliciting information devised by all eight planets for the other seven. Once their full resentment was over, had reconciled themselves and and cooperated wholeheartedly with the Askans. Medorus, especially, had been the greatest help. The Medorians could hardly wait. In the spate of news of the trial that had inundated every portion of the galaxy, there began to be discovered a note of sympathy for this one little creature arrayed against the mightiest powers of the galaxy. Poor people who wished they had his nerve and romantic people who dreamed of adventures they would never dare perform begin to say that the Eel wasn't so bad after all. He became a symbol of the rebellious individual, thumbing his nose at entrenched authority. Students of Earth prehistory will recognize such symbols in the mythical Robin Hood and Al Capone. These were the people who were glad to put up when bets began to be made. At first, the odds were 10 to 1 against the eel. Then, as time dragged by, they dropped until it was even money. AGS itself began to worry. It was one thing to make a big, expensive splurge to impress the galaxy and to hasten its acceptance into full membership in the Federation. But nobody had expected the show to last more than a few days. If it kept on much longer, AGST would be bankrupt, for the trial foundered on one insoluble problem. The only way the Eel could ever be punished by their laws was to kill the person he most loved. And nobody could discover that he had ever loved anyone. His mother, his father. He had been an undutiful and unaffectionate son, and his parents were long since dead. In any case, he had never had a brother, a sister, a wife, or a child. No probing could find any woman with whom he had ever been in love. He had never had an intimate friend. He did nothing to help, naturally. He simply sat in his chains and smiled and waited. He was perfectly willing to be escorted from the court every evening, relieved of his fetters and placed in his pit. It was a much pleasanter existence, and than being executed inch by inch by the Medorians. For all he cared, the Iscarians could go on spending their planetary income until he finally died of old age. The priestess judge and her coadjudicators wore themselves down in discussion far into the night. They lost up to 15 pounds apiece, which, on AGS, where the average weight of adults is about 40, was serious. It began to look as if the Eel's judges would predecease him. Whom did the Eel love? They went into minutiae and subterfuge. He had never had a pet to which he was devoted. He had never even loved a house which could be raised. He could not be said to have loved the immense fortune he had stolen, for he had concealed his wealth and used little of it, and in any event it had been confiscated and so far as possible, restored proportionately to those he had robbed. What he had loved most doubtless was his prowess in stealing unimaginable sums and getting away with it. But there was no way of killing a criminal technique. Almost a year had passed. Agsc had begun to wish the Eel had never been caught, or that they had never been awarded the glory of trying him. At last the Priestess Judge, in utter despair, took off her judge's robes, put on the cassock and surplice of her sacred calling, and laid the problem before the most unapproachable and august of the Gods of Ask. The trial was suspended while she lay for three days in trance on the high altar. She emerged weak and tottering, her skin a light blue instead of its healthy purple, but her head high and her mouth curved in triumph. At sight of her, renewed excitement surged through the audience. News gatherers, who had been finding it difficult of late to get anything to report, rushed to their instruments. Remove the defendant's chains and set him free, the Priestess Judge ordered in ringing tones. The Great God of the Unspeakable Name has revealed to me whom the defendant most loves. As soon as he is freed, seize him and slay him, for the only being he loves is himself. There was an instant's silence and then a roar. The Medorians howling in frustration. But the Eel, still guarded but unchained, stood up and laughed aloud. Your Great God is a fool, he said blasphemously. I deny that I love myself. I care nothing for myself at all. The Priestess Judge sighed. Since this is your sworn denial, it must be true, she said. So then we cannot kill you. Instead, we grant that you do indeed love no one. Therefore you are a creature so far outside our comprehension that you cannot come under our laws, no matter how you have broken them. We will notify the Federation that we abandon our jurisdiction and hand you over to our sister planet, which is next in line to judge you. Then all the viewers on tridents on countless planets saw something that nobody had thought to see. The Eel's armor of self confidence cracked and terror poured through the gap. He dropped to his knees and cried, wait, Wait. I confess that I blasphemed your God, but without realizing that I did. You mean, pressed the High Priestess Judge, you acknowledge that you yourself are the only being dear to you? No, not that either. Until now I have never known love, but now it has come upon me like a nova, and I must speak the truth. He paused, still on his knees, and looked piteously at the priestess Judge. Are. Are you bound by your law to to believe me and to kill in instead of me this. This thing I adore? We are so bound, she stated. Then, said the Eel, smiling and confident again, rising to his feet, before all the galaxy I must declare the object of my sudden but everlasting passion. Great lady, it is you. The Eel is still in his pit, which has been made more comfortable by his sympathisers, while the Council of the Galactic Federation seeks feverishly and vainly, year after year, to find some legal way out of this impasse. Agsc, however, requests all Federation citizens to submit solutions, the grand prize for the workable answer being a lifetime term as President of the planet. A secondary contest prize, lifetime Ambassadorship to the Galactic Federation, is offered for a legal way around the statute barring criminals, specifically the Eel, from entering the primary contest. End of the Eel By Miriam Allen Deford. The Eyes have It By Philip Kindred Dick 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 Grothman the Eyes have it by Philip K. Dick it was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by life forms from another planet. As yet, I haven't done anything about it. I can't think of anything to do. I wrote to the government and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known. I'm not the first to discover it. Maybe it's even under control. I was sitting in my easy chair, idly turning the pages of a paperback book someone had left on the bus, when I came across a reference that first put me on the trail. For a moment I didn't respond. It took some time for the full import to sink in. After I comprehended it seemed odd I hadn't noticed it right away. The reference was clearly to a non human species of incredible properties not indigenous to Earth, a species, I hastened to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious that the author knew everything, knew everything and was taking it in his stride, the line, and I tremble remembering it even now. His eyes slowly roved about the room. Vague chills, assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not. They seemed to move through the air, not over the surface, rather rapidly. Apparently no one in the story was surprised. That's what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified. His eyes moved from person to person. There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own. My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention of a totally unfamiliar race, obviously non terrestrial. Yet to the characters in the book it was perfectly natural, which suggested that they belonged to the same species. And the author. A slow suspicion burned in my mind. The author was taking it rather too easily in his stride. Evidently he felt that this was quite a usual thing. He made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge. The story continued. Presently his eyes fastened on Julia. Julia, being a lady, had at least the breeding to feel indignant. She is described as blushing and knitting her brow angrily. At this I sighed with relief. They weren't all non terrestrials. The narrative. Slowly, calmly, his eyes examined every inch of her. Great Scott. But here. The girl turned and stomped off and the matter ended. I lay back in my chair, gasping with horror. My wife and family regarded me in wonder. What's wrong dear? My wife asked.
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games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks. Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I couldn't tell her knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run of the mill person. I had to keep it to myself. Nothing. I gasped. I leapt up, snatched the book and hurried out of the room. In the garage I continued reading. There was more. Trembling, I read the next revealing passage. He put his arm around Julia. Presently she asked him if he would remove his arm. He immediately did so with a smile. It's not said what was done with the arm after the fellow had removed it. Maybe it was left standing upright in the corner. Maybe it was thrown away. I don't care. In any case, the full meaning was there, staring me right in the face. Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will. Eyes, arms, and maybe more without batting an eyelash. My knowledge of biology came in handy at this point. Obviously they were simple beings, unicellular, some sort of primitive single cell things. Beings no more developed than starfish. Starfish can do the same thing, you know. I read on and came to this incredible revelation, tossed off coolly by the author without the faintest tremor. Outside the movie theater, we split up. Part of us went inside, part over to the cafe for dinner. Binary fusion obviously splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being further, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage. I'm afraid there's no doubt about it. Poor Bibney has lost his head again. Which was followed by and Bob says he has no guts. Yet. Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as totally lacking in brains. There was no doubt of the thing in the next passage, Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form similar to the rest. Quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man. It didn't relate what the final disposition of the organ was, and I didn't really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book, without heart, arms, eyes, grave brains, viscera dividing up in two when the occasion demanded, without a qualm. Thereupon she gave him her hand. I was sickened. The rascal had her hand as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he's done with them by this time. He took her arm. Not content to wait, he had started dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leapt to my feet, but not in time to escape. One last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track. Her eyes followed him all the way down the road and across the meadow. I rushed from the garage and back inside the warm house as if the accusing things were following me. My wife and children were playing monopoly in the kitchen. I joined them and played with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering. I had had enough of the thing. I wanted to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade earth. I don't want to get mixed up in it. I have absolutely no stomach for it. The End of the Eyes have It by Philip Kindred Dick.
[160:39]
Lady Luck
Happy Families by Aldous Huxley 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 Matt Perrard Happy Families by Aldous Huxley the scene is a conservatory. Luxuriant tropical plants are seen looming through a greenish aquarium twilight, punctuated here and there by the surprising pink of several Chinese lanterns hanging from the roof or on the branches of trees, while a warm yellow radiance streams out from the ballroom by a door on the left of the scene. Through the glass of the conservatory at the back of the stage, one perceives a black and white landscape under the moon, expanses of snow lined and dotted with coal black hedges and trees. Outside is frost and death, but within the conservatory all is palpitating and steaming with tropical life and heat. Enormous fantastic plants encumber it trees, creepers that writhe with serpentine life, orchids of every kind everywhere, dense vegetation, horrible flowers that look like bottled spiders, like separating wounds, flowers with eyes and tongues, with moving sensitive tentacles, with breasts and teeth and spotted skins. The strains of a waltz float in through the ballroom door, and to that slow soft music there enter in parallel processions the two families, which are, respectively, Mr. Aston J. Tyrrell and Ms. Topsy. Yerik, the doyen of the Tyrrel family, is a young and perhaps too cultured literary man with rather long dark brown hair, a face well cut and sensitive if a trifle weak about the lower jaw, and a voice whose exquisite modulations could only be the product of education at one of the two great universities. We will call him plain Aston. Ms. Topsy, the head of the Garrick family, is a young woman of not quite 20, with sleek yellow hair hanging like a page's, short and thick about her ears, boyish too, in her slenderness and length of leg, boyish but feminine and attractive to the last degree. Ms. Topsy paints charmingly, sings in a small pure voice that twists the heart and makes the bowels yearn in the hearing of it, is well educated, and has read or at least heard of most of the best books in three languages, knows something too, of economics and the doctrines of Freud. They enter arm in arm, fresh from the dance, trailing behind them with their disengaged hands, two absurd ventriloquist dummies of themselves, they sit down on a bench placed in the middle of the stage under a kind of arbor festooned with fabulous flowers. The other members of the two families lurk in the tropical twilight of the background. Aston advances his dummy and makes it speak, moving its mouth and limbs appropriately by means of the secret levers which his hand controls. Aston's DUMMY What a perfect floor it is to night. Topsy's DUMMY yes, it's like ice, isn't it? And such a good band. Aston's DUMMY oh, yes, a very good band. Topsy's DUMMY they play at dinner time at the Necropole. You know, Ashton's DUMMY Really? A long, uncomfortable silence. From under a lofty twangum tree emerges the figure of Cain Washington Tyrrell, Aston's negro brother. For the Tyrrells, I regret to say, have a lick of the tar brush in them. And Kane is a Mendelian throwback to the pure Jamaican type. Cain is stout and his black face shines with grease. The whites of his eyes are like enamel. His smile is chryselephantine. He is dressed in faultless evening dress and a ribbon of seals tinkles on his stomach. He walks with legs wide apart, the upper part of his body thrown back and his belly projecting as though he were supporting the weight of an aristophanic actor's costume. He struts up and down in front of the couple on the seat, grinning and slapping himself on the waistcoat. Cain. What hair. Nyam. Nyam. And the nape of her neck and her body, how slender. And what lovely movements. Nyum. Nyum. Approaching Aston and speaking into his ear. Eh, eh, eh. Aston. Go away, you pig.
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Lady Luck
He holds up his dummy as a shield. Kane retires to stuff with it. Aston's DUMMY have you read any amusing novels lately, Topsy speaking over the head of her dummy? No, I never read novels. They are mostly so frightful, aren't they? How splendid. Neither do I. I only write them sometimes, that's all. They abandon their dummies, which fall limply into one another's arms and collapse on onto the floor with an expiring sigh. Topsy, you write them? I didn't know. Oh, I'd very much rather you didn't know. I shouldn't like you ever to read one of them. They're awful. Still, they keep the pot boiling, you know. But tell me, what do you read, Topsy? Mostly history and philosophy and a little criticism and psychology and lots of poetry. My dear young lady, how wonderful. How altogether unexpectedly splendid. Kane emerges with the third brother, Sir Jasper, who is a paler, thinner, more sinister and aristocratic Aston. Nyum, nyum, nyum. Sir Jasper. What a perfect sentence that was of Yours, Aston. Quite Henry Jamesian, my dear young lady. As though you were 40 years her senior. And the rare old worldliness of that altogether unexpectedly splendid. Admirable. I don't remember your ever employing quite exactly this opening gambit before. But of course there were things very like it. What a nasty spectacle you are, Kane. Gnashing our teeth like that. Kane. Nyum nyum nyum. Aston and Topsy are enthusiastically talking about books. The two brothers, finding themselves quite unnoticed, retire into the shade of their twangum tree. Belle Garrick has been hovering behind Topsy for some time past. She is more obviously pretty than her sister. Full bosomed and with a loose red laughing mouth. Unable to attract Topsy's attention, she turns around and calls Henrika. A pale face with wide surprised eyes peeps round the trunk, hairy like a mammoth's leg of a catapult tree, with magenta leaves and flame colored blossoms. This is Henrika, Topsy's youngest sister. She is dressed in a little white muslin frock set off with blue ribbons. Henrika tiptoes forward. Here I am. What is it? I was rather frightened of that man. But he really seems quite nice and tame, doesn't he, Belle? Of course he is. What a goose you are to hide like that, Henrika. He seems a nice, quiet, gentle man. And so clever. Belle. What good hands he has, hasn't he? I approaching Topsy and whispering in her ear. Your hair's going into your eyes, my dear. Toss it back in that pretty wig you have. Topsy tosses her head. The soft golden bell of hair quivers elastically about her ears. That's right, Kane. Bounding into the air and landing with feet apart, knees bent and a hand on either knee.
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Lady Luck
Oh, the beauty of that moment. It simply makes one catch one's breath with surprised pleasure as the gesture of a perfect dancer might. SIR Jasper. Beautiful, wasn't it? A pleasure. Purely aesthetic and aesthetically pure. Listen to Kane, to Topsy and did you ever try writing yourself? I'm sure you ought to, Sir Jasper yes, yes, we're sure you ought to, eh Kane? Well, I have written a little poetry or rather a few bad verses at one time or another. Really now. What about, may I ask? Topsy? Well, hesitating about different things, you know. She fans herself rather nervously, Bell leaning over Topsy's shoulder and addressing Astin directly. Mostly about love. She dwells long and voluptuously on the last word, pronouncing it love rather than love. Oh, dat's good. Dat's good. Dat's damn good. In moments of emotion, Kane's manners and language savor more obviously than usual of the old plantation. Did yo see her face? Den? Belle repeats slowly and solemnly, mostly about love. Henrika. Oh. Oh. She covers her face with her hands. How could you? It makes me tingle all over. She runs behind the catapultree again very seriously and intelligently. Really? That's very interesting. I wish you'd let me see what you've done sometime, Sir Jasper. We always like to see these things, don't we, Aston? Do you remember, Mrs. Towler, how pretty she was? And the way we criticised her Literary Productions. Mrs. Towler. He shudders as though he had touched something soft and filthy. Oh, don't, Jasper. Don't. Sir Jasper. Dear Mrs. Towler. We were very nice about her poems, weren't we? Do you remember the one that began. My love is like a silvern flower de luce within some wondrous dream garden Pent God made my lovely lily not for use but for an ornament. Even Cain, I believe, saw the joke of that, Mrs. Towler.
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Lady Luck
But this is quite different. This girl really interests me, Sir Jasper. Oh, yes, I know.
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Lady Luck
She interests you too, Kane. Doesn't she? Kane? Prances two or three steps of a cakewalk and sings oh, My Honey. Oh my Honey. But I tell you, this is quite different, Sir Jasper. Of course it is. Any fool could see that it was. I've admitted it already to Topsy. You will show them me, won't you? I should so much like to see them, Topsy. Covered with confusion. No, I really couldn't. You're a professional. You see, Henrika. From behind the caterpillar. No, you mustn't show them to him. They're really mine. You know. A great many of them. Belle. Nonsense. She stoops down and moves Topsy's foot in such a way that a very well shaped white stocking leg is visible some way up to the calf. Then to Topsy. Pull your skirt down, my dear. You're quite indecent. Kane putting up his monocle. Oh, nyum nyum, my honey. Come wid me to Dixieland. Sir Gaspard.
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[173:21]
Lady Luck
A little conscious, don't you think? But even professionals are human, my dear young lady. And perhaps I might be able to give you some help with your writings, Topsy. That's awfully kind of you, Mr. Tyrell. Henrika. Oh, don't let him see them. I don't want him to. Don't let him. With heavy charm. It always Interests me so much when I hear of the young. And I trust you won't be offended if I include you in their number when I hear of the young taking to writing. It is one of the most important duties that we of the older generation can perform to help and encourage the young with their work. It's a great service to the cause of art. Sir Jasper. That was what I was always saying to Mrs. Towler. If I remember rightly. Topsy I can't tell you, Mr. Tyrell, how delightful it is to have one's work taken seriously. I am so grateful to you. May I send you my little efforts then? Kane executes a step dance to the furious clicking of a pair of bones. Sir Jasper I congratulate you. Aston. A most masterful bit of strategy. I wonder what he'll do next. Isn't it exciting? Topsy? Toss your head again. That's right. Oh, I wish something would happen. What have you done? Oh Topsy. You really mustn't send him my poems. Belle. You said he was such a nice man just now. HENRIKA oh yes, he's nice, I know. But then he's a man. You must admit that. I don't want him to see them. Topsy. You're being merely foolish. Henrika Mr. Tyrrell, a very distinguished literary man has been kind enough to take an interest in my work. His criticism will be the greatest help to me. Belle. Of course it will. And he has such charming eyes. A pause. The music which has all this while been faintly heard through the ballroom door becomes more audible. They are playing a rich creamy waltz. What delicious music. Henrika, come and have a dance. She seizes Henrika round the waist and begins to waltz. Henrika is reluctant at first, but little by little the rhythm of the dance takes possession of her hill. With her half closed eyes and languorous trance like movements she might figure as the visible living symbol of the waltz. Aston and Topsy lean back in their seats, marking the time with a languid beating of the hand. Kane sways and swoons and revolves in his own peculiar and inimitable version of the dance.
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Lady Luck
Sir Jasper, who has been watching the whole scene with amusement. What a pretty spectacle. Music hath charms Henrika in an almost extinct voice. Oh, Belle, Belle. I could go on dancing like this forever. I feel quite intoxicated with it. Topsy to Aston. What a jolly tune. This is Aston, isn't it? It's called Dreams of Desire, I believe. What a pretty name. These are wonderful flowers here. Let's go and have a look at them. They get up and walk round the conservatory. The flowers light up as they pass. In the midst of each is a small electric globe. This purple one with eyes is the asafoetida flower. Don't put your nose too near. It has a smell like burning flesh. This is a Cyclopedium from Sumatra. It is the only man eating flower in the world. Notice its double set of teeth. He puts a stick into the mouth of the flower, which instantly snaps to like a steel trap. Nasty, vicious fruit. These blossoms, like purple sponges, belong to the twangum tree. When you squeeze them, they ooze blood. This is the Jonesea, the octopus of the floral world. Each of its eight tentacles is armed with a stain capable of killing a horse. Now this is a most interesting and instructive flower, the patchouli bloom. It is perhaps the most striking example in nature of structural specialization brought about by evolution. If only Darwin had lived to see the patchouli plant. You have heard of flowers specially adapting themselves to be fertilized by bees or butterflies or spiders and such like. Well, this plant, which grows in the forests of Guatemala, can only be fertilized by English explorers. Observe the structure of the flower. At the base is a flat projecting pan containing the pistil. Above it, an overarching tube ending in a spout. On either side, a small crevice, about three quarters of an inch in length, may be discerned in the fleshy lobes of the cadx. The English traveler, seeing this plant, is immediately struck by its resemblance to those penny in the slot machines which provides scent for the public in the railway stations at home. Through sheer force of habit, he takes a penny from his pocket and inserts it in one of the crevices or slots. Immediate result. A jet of highly scented liquid pollen is discharged from the spout upon the pistil lying below and the plant is fertilized. Could anything be more miraculous? And yet there are those who deny the existence of God. Poor fools. Topsy. Wonderful sniffin. What a good scent. The purest Patchouli Belle. How delicious. Oh, my dear. She shuts her eyes in ecstasy. Henrika drowsily Delicious. Licious, Sir Jasper. I always like these rather canail perfumes. Their effect is admirable. This is the leopard flower. Observe its spotted skin and its thorns like agate claws. This is the singing discovered by Humboldt during his second voyage to the Amazons. If you stroke its throat in the right place, it will begin to sing like a nightingale. Allow me. He takes her by the wrist and guides her fingers towards the palpitating throat of a gigantic flower shaped like a gramothon trumpet. The alicutia bursts into song. It has a voice like Caruso's Cain. Oh, nyum nyum. What a hand. Oh, my honey. He runs a thick black finger along Topsy's arm. What a remarkable flower.
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Lady Luck
I wonder whether he struck my arm like that by accident or on purpose. Henrika gives a little shiver. He's touching me. He's touching me. But somehow I feel so sleepy I can't move. She moves on towards the next flower. Bel does not allow her to disengage her hand at once. What a curious smell this one has. Astonished. Be careful. Be careful. That's the chloroform plant. Topsy. Oh, I feel quite dizzy and faint. That smell and the heat. She almost falls. Aston puts out his arm and holds her up. Poor child. Kane. Poor child. Poor child. He hovers round her, his hands almost touching her. Trembling with excitement. His white eyeballs roll horribly. I'll open the door. The air will make you feel better. He opens the conservatory door, still supporting Totsi with his right arm. The wind is heard fearfully whistling. A flurry of snow blows into the conservatory. The flowers utter piercing screams of rage and fear. Their lights flicker wildly. Several turn perfectly black and drop onto the floor, writhing in agony. The floral octopus agitates its tentacles. The twangum blooms drip blood. All the leaves of all the trees clap together with a dry, scaly sound. Topsy. Thank you. That's better. Closing the door. Poor child. Come and sit down again. The chloroform flower is a real danger. Much moved, he leads her back towards the seat. Kane executes a war dance round the seated couple. Po chile, Po chile. Yum, yum, yum, Sir Jasper. One perceives the well known dangers of playing the Good Samaritan towards an afflicted member of the opposite sex. Pity has touched even our good king to tears. Oh, I wonder what's going to happen. It's so exciting. I'm so glad. Henrika's gone to sleep. Topsy. It was silly of me to go all faint like that. I ought to have warned you in time of the chloroform flower. But it's such a lovely feeling now. Like being in a very hot bath with lots of verbena bath salts and hardly able to move with limpness, but just ever so comfortable and happy. How do you feel now? I'm afraid you're looking very pale. Poor child. Po chile. Po chile. Sir Jasper. I don't know much about these things, but it seems to me, my dear Aston, that the moment has decidedly arrived. I'm so sorry. You poor little thing. He kisses her very gently on the forehead. Belle. Ah, Henrika. Oh, he kissed me. But he's so kind and good. So kind and good. She stirs and falls back again into her drowsy trance. Kane. Poor child. Poor child. He leans over Austin's shoulder and begins rudely kissing Topsy's trance. Calm parted lips. Topsy opens her eyes and sees the black greasy face, the chryselephantine smile, the pink thick lips, the goggling eyeballs of white enamel. She screams. Henrika springs up and screams too. Topsy slips onto the floor and Kane and Aston are left face to face with Henrika. Pale as death and with wide open terrified eyes. She is trembling in every limb. Aston gives Kane a push that sends him sprawling backwards and falls on his knees before the pathetic figure of Henrika. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. What a beast I am. I don't know what I can have been thinking of to do such a thing. Sir Jasper. My dear boy. I'm afraid you and Kane knew only too well what you were thinking of. Only too well. Will you forgive me? I can't forgive myself. Henrika. Oh, you hurt me. You frighten me so much. I can't bear it. She cries. Oh God. Oh God. The tears start into his eyes also. He takes Henrika's hand and begins to kiss it. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Sir Jasper. If you're not very careful, Aston, you'll have Kane to deal with again. Kane has picked himself up and is creeping stealthily towards the couple in the center of the conservatory. Turning round. Kane. You brute. Go to hell. Kane slinks back. Oh, will you forgive me for having been such a swine? What can I do? Thompson, who has recovered her self possession, rises to her feet and pushes Henrika into the background. Thank you. It is really quite all right. I think it would be best to say no more about it. To forget what has happened. Will you forgive me then, Topsy? Of course, of course. Please get up, Mr. Tyrell. Aston climbing to his feet. I can't think how I ever came to be such a brute. Topsy. Coldly. I thought we had agreed not to talk about this incident any further. There is a silence. Sir Jasper. Well, Aston, this has been rather fun. Belle, I wish you hadn't been quite so cold with him. Topsy. Poor man. He really is very sorry. One can see that. But did you see that awful face? She shudders and covers her eyes. Asked him, picking up his dummy and manipulating it. It is very hot in here, is it not? Shall we go back to the dancing room? Topsy also takes up her dummy. Yes, let us go back. Isn't that roses in Picardy that the band is playing? Topsy's dummy? I believe it is. What a very good band, don't you think? Yes. It plays during dinner, you know, at the Decropole. Lord, what a fool I am. I'd quite forgotten. It was she who told me so as we came in. Topsy's dummy at the Necropole. Really? A very good band. And a very good floor. Topsy's dummy. Yes, it's a perfect floor, isn't it? Like glass. They go out, followed by their respective families. Belle supports Henrika, who is still very weak after her shock. How exciting. It was, wasn't it? Henrika Henrigan. Wasn't it awful? Too awful. Oh, that face. Kane follows Aston out in silence and dejection. Sir Jasper brings up the rear of the procession. His face wears its usual expression of slightly bored amusement. He lights a cigarette. Sir Jasper Charming evening. Charming evening. Now it's over, I wonder whether it ever existed. He goes out. The conservatory is left empty. The flowers flash their luminous pistils. The eyes of the asafoetida blossoms solemnly wink. Leaves shake and sway and rustle. Several of the flowers are heard to utter a low chuckle. While the alocutia, after whistling a few derisive notes, finally utters a loud gross Oriental Hickok. The curtain slowly descends. End of Happy Families by Aldous Huxley. The Intruder by Emil Pataha this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading from Matt Berard the Intruder by Emile Pattaya From Future Fantasia Winter 1940 it was in San Francisco. On the walk above the sand and surf that pounded like the heart of the earth. There was wind. The sky and sea blended in a gray mist. I was sitting on a stone bench, one watching a faint hint of distant smoke, wondering what ship it was and from what far port. Mine was a pleasant wind, loneliness. So when he came, wrapped in his great overcoat and muffler hat, pulled down and sat on my bench, I was about to rise and leave him. There were other benches, and I was not in the mood for idle gossip about Hitler and taxes. Don't go, please. His plea was authentic. I must get back to my shop, I said. Surely you can spare a moment. I could not even to begin to place the accent in his voice, low as a whisper, tense. His deep set eyes held me. His face was pale and had a serenity born of suffering, a placid face not given to emotional betrayals, yet mystical. I sat down again. Here was someone bewilderingly strange, someone I wouldn't soon forget. He moved a hand toward me, as though to hold me from going, and I saw with mild curiosity that he wore heavy gloves like mittens. I am not well. I I must not be out in the damp air, I said. But today I just had to go out and walk. I had to. I can understand. I warmed to the wave of aloneness that lay in his words. I too have been ill. I know you, Otis Marlin. I have visited your shop off Market Street. You are not rich, but the feel of the covers on a fine book between your hands suffices. Am I right? I nodded. But how? You have tried writing but have had no success alone in the world. Your loneliness, as much a family man harassed, might envy.
[192:00]
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[192:30]
Lady Luck
That's true, I admitted, wondering if he could be a seer, a fake mystic bent on arousing in me an interest in spiritism favorable to his pocketbook. His next words were a little amused, but he didn't smile. No, I'm not a psychic in the ordinary sense. I visited your shop. I was there only yesterday, he said, and I remember him in returning from my lunch. I had met him coming out of my humble place of business. One glimpse into those brooding eyes was not a thing to soon forget, and I recalled pausing to watch his stiff legged progress down the street and around the corner. There was now a pause while I watched leaves scuttling along the oiled walk in the growling wind. And then a sound like a sigh came from my companion. It seemed to me that the wind and the sea spoke loudly. Of a sudden, as though approaching some dire climax. The sea wind chilled me as it had not before. I wanted to leave, dare I tell you? Dare. His white face turned upward. It was as though questioned some spirit in the winds. I was silent, curious, yet fearful of what it might be he might not be allowed to tell me. The winds were portentously still. Were you ever told as a child that you must not attempt to count the stars in the sky at night? That if you did you might lose your mind? Why, yes, I believe I heard that old superstition. Very reasonable, I believe, based on the assumption that the task would be too great for one brain. I suppose it never occurred to you, he interrupted, that this superstition might hold even more truth than that truth, as malignant as it is vast? Perhaps the cosmos holds secrets beyond comprehension of man. And what is your assurance that these secrets are beneficent and kind? Is nature rather not terrible than kind? In the stars are patterns, designs which, if read, might lure the intrepid miserable one who reads them out of earth and beyond beyond to immeasurable evil. Do you understand what I am saying? His voice quivered metallically, was vibrant with emotion. I tried to smile but managed only a sickly grin. I understand you, sir, but I am not in the habit of accepting nebulous theories such as that without any shred of evidence. There is, sad to say, only too much evidence. But do you believe that men have lost their minds from incessant study of the stars? Perhaps, somehow I don't know, I returned. But in the south of this state, in one of the country's leading observatories, I have a friend who is famous as an astronomer. He is as sane as you or I, if not saner. I tacked the last sentence on with significant emphasis. The fellow was muttering something into his muffler, and I fancied I caught the words danger and fools. We were silent again. Low dark clouds fled over the roaring sea and the gloom intensified. Presently, in his clipped speech the stranger said, do you believe that life exists on other planets, other stars? Have you ever wondered what kind of life might inhabit the other stars in the solar system and those beyond it. His eyes were near mine as he spoke, and they bewitched me. There was something in them, something intangible and awful. I sensed that he was questioning me idly, as an outlander might be questioned about things with which the asker is familiar. As I might ask a New Yorker, what do you think of the Golden Gate Bridge? I wouldn't attempt to guess, to describe, for instance, a Martian man, I said. Yet I read with interest various guesses by writers of fiction. I was striving to maintain a mood of lightness and ease, but inwardly I felt a bitter cold, as one on the rim of a nightmare. I suddenly realized with childish fear that night was falling. Writers of fiction and what if they were to guess too well? What then? Is it safe for them to have full reign over their imaginations, like the stargazers? I said nothing, but smiled. Perhaps, man, there have been those whose minds were acute beyond most earthly minds, those who have guessed too closely to truth. Perhaps those who are beyond are not yet ready to make themselves known to earthlings. And maybe they are annoyed with the puny publicity they receive from imaginative writers. Ask yourself, what is imagination? Are Earth minds capable of conceiving that which is not and has never been? Or is this imagination merely a deeper insight into worlds you know not of, worlds glimpsed dimly in the throes of dream? And whence come these dreams? Tell me, have you ever awakened from a dream with a sinister feeling that all was not well inside your mind? That while you, the real you, were away in limbo, someone, some thing, was probing in your mind, invading it and reading it? Might not they leave behind them in departure shadowy trailings of their own minds? Now I was indeed speechless, for a strange nothing had started my neck hairs to prickling. Authors who might have guessed too well two, no, three writers whose stories had hinted at inconceivable yet inevitable dooms. Riders I had known had recently died by accident. What of old legends of the serpent who shall one day devour the sun? That legend dates back to Moo and Atlantis. Who man was and is Satan, Christ, and Jehovah, benevolent and all saving, were but a monstrous jest fostered by they to keep man blindly content and keep him divided among himself, so that he strove not to unravel the stars. Man, in my foolish youth I study by candle flame secrets that would scorch your very soul of women who with their own bare hands have strangled the children they bore so that the world might not know disease and sickness at which physicians Throw up their hands in helpless bafflement when strong men tear at their limbs and heads and agony, seeking to drive forth alien forces that have netted themselves into their bodies. I need scarcely recount them all, each with its own abominable significance. It is them who are eternal and nameless, who send their scouts down to test Earthman. Don't you realize that they have watched man creep out of primal slimes, take limbs and shamble and finally walk? And that they are waiting, fighting their time? I shivered with a fear beyond name. I tried to laugh and could not. Then, bold with stark horror, I shouted quite loudly, how do you know this? Are you one of them? He shook his head violently. No, no. I made has to go, feeling an aching horror within me. Stay only a moment more, man. I will have pity on you and will not tell you all. I will not describe them, and I will not essay that which, when, upon first seeing you here by the sea, I first intended. I listened, not daring to look at him as in the grip of demonic dream. My fingers clutched at the edges of the bench so tightly that I have been able to write with them until now. So you see that I am everywhere, a worldless alien. Sometimes the secret is too great for one mind to contain, and I must talk. I must feel the presence of some one human near me. A else I shall attempt to commit suicide and again fail. It is without end, my horror. Have pity on me, man of Earth, as I have had pity on you. It was then that I gripped him by the shoulders and looked with pleading desperation into his staring eyes. Why? Have you told me what? My voice broke. My hands fell to my sides. I shuddered. He understood, shrieked one word, pity, into my insensible ear, and was gone. That was three nights ago. And each night since has been held. I cannot remember how long. It was after the stranger left that I found myself able to move, to rise, hobble home, suddenly ancient with knowledge. And I cannot, will not reveal to you all that I heard. I thought myself insane, but after an examination, a physician pronounced me that I had been strained mentally. I am competent, but I wonder if he is wrong. I view the sylvan stars to night with loathing. He sought to master their inscrutable secret meaning, and succeeded. He imagined he dreamed, and he fed his sleep with potions so that he might learn where his mind might be during sleep, and himself probe into the mind that wandered from space into his resting body shell. I am no scientist, no biochemist, so I learned little of his methods, only that he did succeed in removing his mind from Earth and soaring to some remote world over and beyond this universe where they dwell. And they knew him to be a mind of Earth, he told me. He but hinted of the evil he beheld, so potent with dread that it shattered his mind. And they cured him and sent him back to Earth. They are waiting. He shrieked in his grating skeleton of a voice. They are contemptuous of man and his feeble colonies, but they fear that some day, like an overgrown idiot child, he may do them harm. But before this time, when man has progressed into a ripeness, they will descend. Then they will come in hordes to exploit the world as they did before of his return and his assuming the role of a man. The alien spoke evasively. It was to be assured that this talk of his was not some repulsive caprice, to know that all of it was true, that I gripped him and beheld him to my everlasting horror. I must know little in itself what I saw, but sufficient to cause me to sink down on the stone bench in a convulsive huddle of fear. Never again in life can I tear this clutching terror from my soul. Only this, that when I looked into his staring eyes in the dimness of murky twilight, and before he understood and quickly avaunted, I glimpsed with astoundment and repugnance that between the muffling of his coat and black scarf, the intruder wore a meticulously painted metal mask to hide what I must not see. End of the Intruder by Emile Petaha.
[205:11]
SpinQuest Advertiser
Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson 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 Grothman did you ever wonder what might happen if mankind ever exceeded the speed of light? Here is a profound story based on that thought, a story which may well forecast one of the problems to be encountered in space travel. They had discovered a new planet, but its people did not see them until after they'd traveled on. Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson Albrecht and I went down in the shuttle ship leaving the stellatomic orbiting pole to pole 2,000 miles above Alpha Centauri's second planet. While we took an atmosphere brushing approach that wouldn't burn off the shuttle's skin, we went as swiftly as we could. A week before we had completed man's first trip through hyperspace. We were now making the first landing on an inhabited planet of another sun. All the preliminary investigations had been done via electron spectroscopes and electro telescopes from the stellatomic. We knew that the atmosphere was breathable and were reasonably certain that the peoples of the world into whose atmosphere we were dropping were at peace. We went unarmed, just two of us. It might not be wise to go in force. We were silent, and I know that Harry Albrecht was as perplexed as I was over the fact that our alway receivers failed to pick up any signs of radio communication whatever. We had assumed that we would pick up signals of some type as soon as we had passed down through the unfamiliar planet's ionosphere. The scattered arrangements of towering cities appeared to call for radio communications, the hundreds of atmosphere ships flashing along as the system of airways between the cities seemed to indicate the existence of electronic navigational and landing aids. But perhaps the signals were all tight beamed. We would know when we came lower. We dropped down into the airways level, and still our receivers failed to pick up a signal of any sort, not even a whisper of static. And strangely, our radarscope failed to record even a blip from their atmosphere ships. I guess it's our equipment, Harry, I said. It just doesn't seem to function in this atmosphere. We'll have to put Edwards to work on it when we go back upstairs. We spotted an airport on the outskirts of a large city. The runways were laid out with the precision of Earth's finest. We put our ship's nose eastward on a Runway and took it down fast through the lull in the atmosphere ship traffic. As we went down I saw tiny buildings spotted on the field, which surely housed electronic equipment, but our receivers remained silent. I taxied the shuttle up to the unloading ramp before the airport's terminal building, and I killed the drive. Harry, I said, if it weren't that their ships were so outlandishly stubby and their buildings so outflung, we might well be on Earth. Agreed, Captain. Strange, though, that they're not mobbing us. They couldn't take this Delta Wing job for one of their ships. It was strange. I looked up at the observation ramp's occupants, people who, except for their bizarre dress, might well be on Earth, and saw no curiosity in the eyes that sometimes swept across our position. Be that as it may, Harry, we certainly should cause a stir with these pressure suits. Let's go. We walked up to a dour looking individual at a counter on the ramp's end. Clearing my throat, I said rather inanely, hello, but what does one say to an extra solarian? I realized that my voice seemed thunderous and that the only other sounds came from a distance. The city's noise, the atmosphere ship engines on the horizon. The Centaurians ignored us. I looked at the atmosphere ships in the clear blue sky, at the Centaurians on the ramp, who appeared to be conversing. There was no sound from those planes. No sound from the people. Impossible, harry said. The atmosphere is nearly Earth normal. It should be. Well, dammit, it is as sound conductive. We're talking, aren't we? I looked at the Centaurians again. They were looking excitedly westward. Some turned to companions, mouths open and closed to form words we could not hear. Wide eyes lowered, following something I could not see. Sick inside, I turned to Albrecht and read confirmation in his drawn, blanched face. Captain, he said, I suspected that we might find something like this when we first came out of hyperspace and the big sleep. The recorder showed that we'd exceeded light speed in normal space time just after the transition. Einstein theorized that time would not pass as swiftly for those approaching light speed. We could safely exceed that speed in hyperspace, but should never have done so in normal space time. Beyond light speed, time must conversely accelerate. These people haven't seen us yet. They certainly just observed our landing. As we suspected, they probably do have speech and radio, but we can't pick up either. We're seconds ahead of them in time, and we can't pick up from the past sounds of nearby origin or nearby signals radiated at light speed. They'll see and hear us soon, but we'll never receive an answer from them. Our questions will come to them in their future, and we can never pick up answers from their past. Let's go, Harry, I said quickly. Where? He asked. Where can we go? That will be an improvement over this. He was resigned. Back into space, I said. Back to circle this system at near light speed. The computer should be able to determine how long and how slow we'll have to fly to cancel this out. If not, we are truly and forever lost. End of Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson. The Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison 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 Grothman it might seem a little careless to lose track of something as big as a battleship, but interstellar space is on a different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship in the wrong hands can be most dangerous. The Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison when it comes to picking locks and cracking safes, I admit to no master. The door to Inskip's private quarters had an old fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was, though, Inskip still heard me. The light came on and there he was, sitting up in bed, pointing a.75 caliber recoilless at my sternum. You should have more brains than that Degrees, he snarled, creeping into my room at night. You could have been shot. No, I couldn't, I told him as he stowed the cannon back under his pillow. A man with a curiosity bump as big as yours will always talk first and and shoot later. And besides, none of this pussyfooting around in the dark would be necessary if your screen was open and I could have got a call through. Inskip yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser unit above the bed. Just because I'm the head of Special Corps doesn't mean that I am the Special Corps, he said moistly while he drained the glass. I have to sleep sometimes. My screen is open only for emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held. Meaning I am in the hand holding category? I asked with as much sweetness as I could. Put yourself in any category you please, he grumbled as he slumped down in the bed. And also, put yourself out into the hall and see me tomorrow during working hours. He was at my mercy return. Really, he wanted to sleep so much, and he was going to be wide awake so very soon. Do you know what this is? I asked him, poking a large glossy pick under his long broken nose. One eye opened slowly. It's a big warship of some kind. Looks like Empire lines. Now for the last time, go away, he said. A very good guess for this late at night, I told him cheerily. It is a late Empire battleship of the Warlord class, undoubtedly one of the most truly efficient engines of destruction ever manufactured. Over half a mile of defensive screens and armaments that would probably turn any fleet existing today into fine radioactive dust. Except for the fact that the last one was broken up for scrap over a thousand years ago, he mumbled. I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear so there would be no chance of misunderstanding, speaking softly but clearly. True, true, I said. But wouldn't you be just a little bit interested if I was to tell you that one is being built today? Oh, it was beautiful to watch. The covers went one way and Inskip went the other in a single unfolding. In a concerted motion he left the horizontal and recumbent and stood tensely vertical against the wall, examining the pick of the battleship under the light. He apparently did not believe in pajama bottoms, and it hurt me to see the goosebumps rising on those thin shanks. But if the legs were thin, the voice was more than full enough to make up for the difference. The talk, blast you, Degrees. Talk. He roared. What is this nonsense about a battleship? Who's building it? I had my nail file out and was touching up a cuticle, holding it out for inspection before I said anything. From the corner of my eye I could see him getting purple about the face, but he was very quiet. I savored my small moment of power. Put Degrees in charge of the record room for a while, you said. That way he can learn the ropes. Burrowing around in century old dusty files will be just the thing for a free spirit like Slippery Jim. Degrees Teach him discipline. Show him what the core stands for. At the same time it will get the records in shape. They have been needing reorganization for quite a while. Inskip opened his mouth, made a choking noise, then closed it. He undoubtedly realized that any interruption would only lengthen my explanation, not shorten it. I smiled and nodded at his decision then. So you thought you had me out of the way, breaking my spirit under the guise of giving me a little background in the Corps activities. In this sense, your plan failed. Something else happened instead. I nosed through the files and found them most interesting, particularly the C and M setup, the Categorizer and Memory, that building full of machinery that takes in and digests news and reports on all the planets in the galaxy, indexes it to every category it can possibly relate, then files it. Great machine to work with. I had it dig out spaceship info for me, something I have always been interested in. You should be, inskipp interrupted rudely. You've stolen enough of em in your time. I gave him a hurt look and went on slowly. I won't bore you with all the details, since you seem impatient, but inevitably I turned up this plan. He had it out of my fingers before it cleared my wallet. What are you getting at? He he mumbled as he ran his eyes over the blueprints. This is an ordinary heavy cargo and passenger job. It's no more of a warlord battleship than I am. It's hard to curl your lips with contempt and talk at the same time. But I succeeded. Of course you don't expect them to file warship plans with the League registry, do you? But as I said, I know more than a little bit about ships. It seemed to me that this thing was just too big for the use intended enough. Old ships are fuel wasters. You don't have to build new ones to do that. This started me thinking and I punched up a complete list of ships that size that had been constructed in the past. You can imagine my surprise when after three minutes of groaning, the C M only produced six. One was built for a self sustaining colony attempt at the second galaxy. For all we know she is still on the way. The other five are all class D colonizers built during the expansion when large populations were moved too big to be practical now. I was still teased as I had no idea what a ship this large could be used for. So I removed the time interlocked on the C and M and let it pick around through the entire history of space to see if it could find a comparison. It sure did. Right at the golden age of Empire expansion and the giant warlord battleships. The machine even found a blueprint for me. Inskip grabbed it again and began comparing the two prints. I leaned over his shoulder and pointed out the interesting parts. Notice if the engine room specs were changed slightly to include this cargo hold. There is plenty of room for the brutes needed. This superstructure obviously just tacked into the plans gets thrown away and the turrets take its place. The hulls are identical. A change here, a shift there and the stodgy freighter becomes a fast battle wagon. These changes could be made during construction, then the plans filed. By the time anyone in the league found out what was being built, the ship would be finished and launched. Of course this could all be coincidence. The plans of a newly built ship agreeing to six places with those of a ship built a thousand years ago. But if you think so, I will give you 100 to 1 odds you are wrong. Any size bet you name. I wasn't winning any sucker bets that night. Inskip had led just as crooked a youth as I had and needed no help in smelling a fishy deal. While he pulled on his clothes, he shot questions at me and the name of a peace loving planet that is building this bad memory from the past. Second planet of a Besar in the Corona Borealis. No other colonized planets in the system. Never heard of it, Inskip said as we took the private drop chute to his office. Which may be a good or a bad sign. Wouldn't be the first time trouble came from some out of the way spot I never even knew existed. With the automatic disregard for others of the truly dedicated. He pressed the scramble button on his desk very Quickly, sleepy eyed clerks and assistants were bringing files and records. We went through them together. Modesty prevented me from speaking first, but I had a very short wait before Inskip reached the same conclusion I had. He hurled a folder the length of the room and scowled out at the harsh dawn light. The more I look at this, he said, the fishier it gets. This planet seems to have no possible motive or use for a battleship, but they are building one, that I will swear on a stack of 1,000 credit notes as high as this building. Yet what will they do with it when they have it built? They have an expanding culture, no unemployment, a surplus of heavy metals, and ready markets for all they produce. No hereditary enemies, feuds, or the like. If it wasn't for this battleship thing, I would call them the Ideal League Planet. I have to know more about them. I've already called the spaceport in your name, of course, I told him. Ordered a fast courier ship. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spin Quests and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get 30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms p-I n q u-e
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Narrator/Reader
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[223:08]
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to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I'll leave within the hour. Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself? Degrees, he said, voice chill as an ice cap. I still give the orders and I'll tell you when you're ready for an independent command. I was sweetness and light because a lot depended on his decision. Just trying to help Chief get things ready in case you wanted more info. And this isn't really an operation, just a reconnaissance. I can do that as well as any of the experienced operators, and it might give me the experience I need so that some day I too will be qualified to join the ranks. All right, he said. Stop shoveling it on while I can still breathe. Get out of here. Find out what is going on, then get back. Nothing else. And that's an order. By the way he said it, I knew he thought there was little chance of its happening that way. Since my forced induction into the Corps six months earlier, I had been stuck on this super secret planetoid that was its headquarters and main base. I had very little sitting down patience anyway, and it had long since been exhausted. It had been interesting at first, particularly since up until the time I was drafted into the Special Corps, I wasn't even certain it really existed. It was too much like a con man's nightmare to be real. A secret worry After a few happy years of successful crime, you begin to wonder how long it will last. Planetary police are all pushovers, and you start to feel you can go on forever if they're your only competition. What about the League, though? Don't they take any interest in crime? Just about that time you hear your first rumor of the Special Corps. And it fits the Bad Dreams. A shadowy, powerful group that slips silently between the stars, ready to bring the interstellar lawbreaker low. It sounds like TV drama stuff. I had been quite surprised to find they really existed. I was even more surprised when I joined them. Of course, there was a little pressure at the time. I had the alternative choice of instant death. But I still think it was a wise move. Under the motto Set a thief to Catch one, the Corps supposedly made good use of men like myself to get rid of the most anti social types that infest the universe. This was all still hearsay to me. I had been pulled into headquarters and given routine administrative work for training. Six months of this had made me slightly gaga, and I wanted out. Since no one seemed to be in a hurry to give me an assignment, I found one for myself. I had no idea what would come of it, but I also had no intention of returning until the job was done. A quick stop at Supply and Records section gave me everything I needed. The sun was barely clear of the horizon when the silver needle of my ship lifted in the gray field, then blasted into space. The trip only took a few days, more than enough time to memorize everything I needed to know about Citta Nuevo. And the more I knew, the less I could understand their need for a battleship. It didn't fit. Citta Nuevo was a secondary settlement out of the Cellini system, and I had run into these settlements before. They were all united in a loose alliance and bickering a lot among themselves, but never came to blows. If anything, they shared a universal abhorrence of war, yet they were secretly building a battleship. Since I was only chasing my tail with this line of thought, I put it out of my mind and worked on some tri D chess problems. This filled the time until Cito Nuevo blinked into the bow screen. One of my most effective mottos has always been secrecy can be an obvisity, what the magicians call misdirection. Let people very obviously see what you want them to see. Then they'll never notice what is hidden. This is why I landed at midday on the largest field on the planet. After a very showy approach, I was already dressed for my role and out of the ship before the landing braces stopped vibrating. Buckling a fur cape around my shoulders with a platinum clasp, I stamped down the Runway. The sturdy little M3 robot rumbled after me with my bags, heading directly toward the main gate. I ignored the scurry of activity around the customs building. Only when a uniformed under official of some kind ran over to me did I give the field any attention. Before he could talk, I did. Foot in the door and stay on top. Beautiful planet you have here. Delightful climate, ideal spot for a country home, friendly people, always willing to help a stranger and all that. I imagine that's what I like. Makes me feel grateful. Very pleased to meet you. I am Grand Duke sant'. Angelo. I took his hand enthusiastically at this point and let the 100 pound note slip into his palm. Now I added, I wonder if you could ask the customs agents to look at my bags here. Don't want to waste time, do we? The ship is open and they can check it whenever they please. My manner, clothing, jewelry, the easy way I pass money around, and the luxurious sheen of my bags could only mean one thing. There was little that was worth smuggling into or out of Citta Nuevo, certainly nothing a rich man would be interested in. The official murmured something with a smile, spoke a few words into his phone, and the job was done. A small wave of customs men hung stickers on my luggage, peeking into one or two for conformity's sake, and waved me through. I shook hands all around a rustling handclasp, of course, and then was on my way. A cab was summoned, a hotel suggested. I nodded agreement and settled back while the robot loaded the bags about me. The ship was completely clean. Everything I might need for the job was in my luggage, some of it quite lethal and explosive and very embarrassing if it was discovered in my bags. In the safety of my hotel suite, I made a change of clothes and personality after the robot had checked the room for bugs and very nice gadgets too, these core robots. It looked and acted like a moron M3 all the time. It was anything but. The brain was as good as any other robot brain I have ever known, plus the fact that the chunky body was crammed with devices and machines of varying use. It chugged slowly around the room, moving my bags and laying out my kit, and all the time following a careful route that covered every inch of the suite. When it finished. It stopped and called the all clear. All rooms checked, results negative except for one optic bug in the wall. Should you be pointing like that? I asked the robot. Might make some people suspicious, you know. Impossible, the robot said with mechanical surety. I brushed against it and it is now unserviceable. With this assurance, I pulled off my flashy clothes and slipped into the midnight black dress uniform of an admiral in the League Grand Fleet. It came complete with decorations, gold bullion, and all the necessary documents. I thought it a little showy myself, but it was just the thing to make the right impression on Citta Nuevo. Like many other planets, this one was uniform. Conscious delivery boys, street cleaners, clerks, all had to have characteristic uniforms, much prestige attached to them, and my black dress outfit should rate as high as any uniform in the galaxy. A long cloak would conceal the uniform while I left the hotel, but the gold encrusted helmet and a briefcase full of papers were a problem. I had never explored all the possibilities of a pseudo M3 robot. Perhaps it could be of help. You there, short and chunky, I called. Do you have any concealed compartments or drawers built into your steel hide? If so, let's see. For a second I thought the robot had exploded. The thing had more drawers in it than a battery of cash registers. Big, small, flat, thin, they shot out on all sides. One held a gun and two more were stuffed with grenades. The rest were empty. I put the hat in one, the briefcase in another, and snapped my fingers. The drawers slid shut and its metal hide was as smooth as ever. I pulled on a fancy sports cap, buckled the cape up tight, and was ready to go. The luggage was all booby trapped and could defend itself. Guns, gas, poison needles, the usual sort of thing. In the last resort, it would blow itself up. The M3 went down by the freight elevator. I used the back stairs and we met in the street. Since it was still daylight, I didn't take a heli but rented a ground car instead. We had a leisurely drive out into the country and reach President Ferraro's house after dark, as befitted the top official of a rich planet. The place was a mansion, but the security precautions were ludicrous, to say the least. I took myself and the 350 kilo robot through the guards and alarms without causing the slightest stir. President Ferraro, a bachelor, was eating his dinner. This gave me enough undisturbed time to search his study. There was absolutely nothing. Nothing to do with wars or battleships, that is. If I had been interested in blackmail, I had enough evidence in my hands to support me for life. I was looking for something bigger than political corruption, however, when Ferraro rolled into his study after dinner, the room was dark. I heard him murmur something about the servants and fumble for the switch before he found it. The robot closed the door and turned on the lights. I sat behind his desk, all his personal papers before me weighed down with a pistol and as fierce a scowl as I could raise smeared across my face. Before he got over the shock, I snapped an order at him. Come over here and sit down quick. The robot hustled him across the room at the same time, so he had no choice except to obey. When he saw the papers on his desk, his eyes bulged and he just gurgled a little. Before he could recover, I threw a thick folder in front of him. I am Admiral Thar, League Grand Fleet. These are my credentials. You had better check them, since they were as good as any real admiral's. I didn't worry in the slightest. Ferraro went through them as carefully as he could in his rattled state, even checking the seals under uv. It gave him time to regain a bit of control, and he used it to bluster. What do you mean by entering my private quarters and burgling? You're in very bad trouble, I said in as gloomy a voice as I could muster. Ferraro's tanned face went dirty gray at my words. I pressed the advantage. I am arresting you for conspiracy, extortion, theft, and whatever other charges develop after a careful review of these documents. Seize him. This last order was directed at the robot, who was well briefed in its role. It rumbled forward and locked its hands around Ferraro's wrist, handcuff style. He barely noticed. I can explain, he said desperately. Everything can be explained. There is no need to make such charges. I don't know what papers you have there, so I won't attempt to say. They are all forgeries. I have many enemies, you know. If the League knew the difficulties faced on a backward planet like this, that will be entirely enough, I snapped, cutting him off with a wave of my hand. All those questions will be answered by a court at at the proper time. There is only one question I want an answer to now. Why are you building that battleship? The man was a great actor. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. He sank back into the chair as if he had been tapped lightly with a hammer. When he managed to speak, the words were completely unnecessary. He had already registered every evidence of injured innocence. What battleship? He gasped. The Warlord Class Battleship that is being built at the Center Intola shipyards disguised behind these blueprints. I threw them across the desk to him and pointed to one corner. These are your initials here, authorizing construction. Ferraro still had the baffled act going as he fumbled with the papers, examined the initials and such. I gave him plenty of time. He finally put them down, shaking his head. I know nothing about any battleship. These are plans for a new cargo liner. Those are my initials. I recall putting them there. I phrased my question carefully as I had him right where I wanted him. Now you deny any knowledge of the warlord battleship that is being built from these modified plans. These are the plans for an ordinary passenger freighter. That's all I know. His words had the simple innocence of a young child. Was he ever caught? I sat back with a relaxed sigh and lit a cigar. Wouldn't you be interested in knowing something about the robot who is holding you? I said. He looked down as if aware for the first time that the robot had been holding him by the wrists during the interview. That is no ordinary robot. It has a number of interesting devices built into its fingertips. Thermocouples, galvanometers, things like that. While you were talking, it registered your skin temperature, blood pressure, amount of perspiration and such. In other words, it is an efficient and fast working lie detector. We will now hear all about your lies. Ferraro pulled away from the robot's hands as if it had been a poisonous snake. I blew a relaxed smoke ring. Report, I said to the robot. Has this man told any lies? Many, the Robot said. Exactly 74% of all statements he made were fake. Very good. I nodded, throwing the last lock on my trap. That means he knows all about this battleship. This subject has no knowledge of the battleship, the robot said coldly. All of his statements concerning the construction of this ship were true. Now it was my turn for the gaping and eye popping act while Ferraro pulled himself together. He had no idea I wasn't interested in his other hanky panky, but could tell that I had had a low blow. It took an effort, but I managed to get my mind back into gear and considered the evidence. If President Ferraro didn't know about the battleship, he must have been taken in by a cover up job. But if he wasn't responsible, who was? Some militaristic clique that meant to overthrow him and take power. I didn't know enough about this planet, so I enlisted Ferraro on my side. This was easy, even without the threat of exposure of the Documents I had found in his files. Using their disclosure as a prod, I could have made him jump through hoops. It wasn't necessary. As soon as I showed him the different blueprints and explained the possibilities, he understood. If anything, he was more eager than I was to find out who was using his administration as a cat's paw. By silent agreement, the documents were forgotten. We agreed that the next logical step would be the Centranola space yards. He had some idea of sniffing around quietly first, trying to get a line on his political opponents. I gave him to understand that the League, the League Navy in particular, wanted to stop the construction of the battleship. After that, he could play his politics. With this point understood, he called his car and squadrons of guards and we made a parade to the shipyards. It was a four hour drive and we made plans on the way down. The spaceyard manager's name was Raka, and he was happily asleep when we arrived. But not for long. The parade of uniforms and guns in the middle of the night had him frightened into a state where he could hardly walk. I imagine he was as full of petty larcening as Ferraro. No innocent man could have looked so terror stricken. Taking advantage of the situation, I latched my motorized lie detector onto him and began snapping the questions. Even before I had all the answers, I began to get the drift of things. They were a little frightening, too. The manager of the spaceyard that was building the ship had no idea of its true nature. Anyone with less self esteem than myself or who had led a more honest early life might have doubted his own reasoning. At that moment, I didn't. The ship on the ways still resembled a warship to six places. And knowing human nature the way I do that was too much of a coincidence to expect. Occam's razor always points the way. If there are two choices to take, take the simpler. In this case, I chose the natural acquisitive instincts of man as opposed to blind chance and accident. Nevertheless, I put the theory to the test. Looking over the original blueprints again, the big superstructure hit my eye. In order to turn the ship into a warship, it would have to be one of the first things to go. Raca. I barked in what I hoped was authentic old space dog manner. Look at these plans at this space space going front porch here. Is it still being built onto the ship? He shook his head at once and said no. The plans were changed. We had to fit in some kind of new meteor repelling gear to operate in the planetary debris belt. I flipped through my case and drew out a plan. Does your new gear look anything like this? I asked, throwing it across the table at him. He rubbed his jaw while he looked at it. Well, he said hesitantly, I don't want to say for certain. After all, these details aren't in my department. I'm just responsible for final assembly, not unit work. But this surely looks like the thing they installed. Big thing, lots of power leads. It was a battleship all right. No doubt of that now. I was mentally reaching around to pat myself on the back when the meaning of his words sank in. Installed. I shouted. Did you say installed? Raka collapsed away from my roar and gnawed his nails. Yes, he said. Not too long ago. I remember there was some trouble. And what else? I interrupted him. Cold moisture was beginning to climb collect along my spine now. The drives controls, are they in two? Why yes, he said. How did you know? The normal scheduling was changed around, causing a great deal of unnecessary trouble. The cold sweat was now a running river of fear. I was beginning to have the feeling that I had been missing the boat all along the line. The original estimated date of completion was nearly a year away, but there was no real reason why it couldn't have changed too. Cars. Guns. I bellowed to the spaceyard. If that ship is anywhere near completion, we are in big, big trouble. All the board guards had a great time with the sirens, lights, accelerators on the floor, that sort of thing. We blasted a screaming hole through the night, right to the spaceyard and through the gate. It didn't make any difference. We were still too late. A uniformed watchman frantically waved to us and the whole convoy jerked to a stop. The ship was gone. Raca couldn't believe it. Neither could the President. They wandered up and down the empty ways where it had been built. I was crunched down in the back of the car, chewing my cigar to pieces and cursing myself for being a fool. I had missed the obvious fact, being carried away by the thought of a planetary government building a warship. The government was involved for sure, but only as a pawn. No little planet bound political mind could have dreamed up as big a scheme as this. I smelled a rat. A stainless steel one, someone who operated the way I had done before my conversion. Now that the rodent was well out of the bag, I knew just where to look and had a pretty good idea what I would find. Raca, the space yard manager, had staggered back and was pulling at his hair, cursing and crying at the same time. President Ferraro had his gun out and was staring at it grimly. It was hard to tell if he was thinking of murder or suicide. I didn't care which. All he had to worry about was the next election, when the voters and the political competition would carve him up for losing the ship. My troubles were a little bigger. I had to find the battleship before it blasted its way across the galaxy. Raka. I shouted. Get into the car. I want to see your records. All your records, and I want to see them right now. He climbed wearily in and had directed the driver before he fully realized what was happening. Blinking at the sickly light of dawn brought him slowly back to reality. But, Admiral, the hour Everyone will be asleep. I just growled, but it was enough. Raka cut the idea from my expression and grabbed the car phone. The office doors were open when we got there. Normally I cursed the paper tangles of bureaucracy, but this was one time when I blessed them all. These people had it down to a fine science. Not a rivet fell but that its fall was noted in quadruplic and later followed up by a rivet wastage query. The facts I needed were all neatly tucked away in their paper catacombs. All I had to do was sniff them out. I didn't try to look for first causes. This would have taken too long. Instead, I concentrated my attention on the recent modifications, like the gun turret that would quickly give me a trail to the guilty parties. Once the clerks understood what I had in mind, they hurled themselves into their work, urged on by the fires of patriotism and the burning voices of their superiors. All I had to do was suggest a line of search, and the relevant documents would begin to appear at once. Bit by bit, a pattern started to emerge, a delicate webwork of forgery, bribery, chicanery, and falsehood. It could only have been conceived by a mind as as brilliantly crooked as my own. I chewed my lip with jealousy. Like all great ideas, this one was basically simple. A party, or parties unknown, had neatly warped the ship construction program to their own ends. Undoubtedly, they had started the program for a giant transport that would have been checked later. And once the program was underway, it had been guided with the skill that bordered on genius. Orders were originated in many places, passed on, changed and shuffled. I painfully traced each one to its source. Many times the source was a forgery. Some changes seemed to be unexplainable until I noticed the officers in question had a temporary secretary, while their normal assistants were ill. All the girls had food poisoning. A regular epidemic, it seemed. Each of them in turn had been replaced by the same girl. She stayed just long enough in each position to see that the battleship plan moved forward one more notch. The girl was obviously the assistant to the master mind who originated the scheme. He sat in the center of the plane plot like a spider on its web, pulling the strings that set things into motion. My first thought that a gang was involved proved wrong. All my secondary subjects turned out to be simple forgeries, not individuals. In a few cases where forgery wasn't adequate, my mysterious X had apparently hired himself to do the job. X himself had the permanent job of assistant engineer, engineering designer. One by one the untangled threads ran into this office. He also had a secretary whose illness coincided with her employment in other offices. When I straightened up from my desk, the ache in my back stabbed like a hot wire. I swallowed a painkiller and looked around at my drooping, sad eyed assistants who had shared the sleepless 72 hours our task. They sat or slumped against the furniture, waiting for my conclusion. Even President Ferraro was there, his hair looking scraggly where he had pulled it out in handfuls. You found them the criminal ring? He asked, his fingers groping over his scalp for a fresh hold. I have found them, yes, I said hoarsely. But not a criminal ring. An inspired master criminal who apparently has more executive ability in one earlobe than all you bribe blooded bureaucrats and his female assistant. They pulled the entire job by themselves. His name, or undoubtedly pseudonym, is Pepe Nero. The girl is called Angelina. Arrest him at once. Guards. Guards. Ferraro's voice died away as he ran out of the room. I talked to his vanishing back. That is just what we intend to do, but it's a little difficult at the moment since they are the ones who not only built a battleship but undoubtedly stole it as well. It was fully automated, so no crew is necessary. What do you plan to do? One of the clerks asked. I shall do nothing, I told him with the snap precision of an old Spanish the League fleet is already closing in on the renegades, and you will be informed of the capture. Thank you for your assistance. I threw them as snappy a salute as I could muster and they filed out, staring gloomily at their backs. I envied for one moment their simple faith in the League Navy, when in reality the vengeful fleet was just as imaginary as my admiral's rating. This was still a job for the Corps. Inskip would have to be given the latest information at once. I sent him a psygram about the theft, and there was no answer as yet. Maybe the identity of the thieves would stir Some response out of him. My message was in code, but it could quickly be broken if someone wanted to try hard enough. I took it to the message center myself. The Psiman was in his transparent cubicle and I locked myself in with him. His eyes were unfocused as he spoke softly into a mic, pulling in a message from somewhere across the galaxy Outside. The rushing transcribers copied, coded and filed the messages, but no sound penetrated the insulated wall. I waited until his attention clicked back into the room and handed him the sheets of paper. League Central 14 rush, I told him. He raised his eyebrows but didn't ask any questions. Establishing contact only took a few seconds as they had an entire battery of Psiman for their communications. He read the code words carefully, shaping them with his mouth but not speaking aloud, the power of his thoughts carrying across the light years of distance. As soon as he was finished, I took back the sheet, tore it up and pocketed the pieces. I had my answer back quickly enough. Inskip must have been hovering around waiting for my message. The mic was turned off to the transcribers outside and I took the code groups down in shorthand myself. Xybb, dfil, fdno what's going on everyone? It's bluff here. And you know what's more American than America's 240 50th birthday? Supporting American owned companies like Spin Quest, America's number one social casino with over a thousand games like Live Dealer, Blackjack and Craps. They're offering new users a 30 coin package for just $10. Go to spinquest.com and sign up today. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spin quest.com for more details and if you don't, don't come back. The message broke into the clear at the end and the Psiman smiled as he spoke the words. I broke the point off my stylus and growled at him not to repeat any of this message as it was classified and I would personally see him shot if he did. That got rid of the smile, but it didn't make me feel any better. The decoded message turned out not not to be as bad as I had imagined. Until further notice, I was in charge of tracking and capturing the stolen battleship. I could call on the League for any aid I needed. I would keep my identity as an Admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my happiness from being complete. I had been handed my long awaited assignment but translated into simple terms. My orders were to get the battleship or it would be my neck. Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place. This is a heartless world we live in. This moment of self pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well. Asleep and waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks, such as ordering a naval cruiser for my own use and digging for more information on the thieves. But these really were secondary to my main purpose, which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could go that would be better situated for the chase than Sita Nuevo. The missing ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute, the sphere of probable locations grew larger by a power of the squared cube. I kept the on watch crew of the cruiser on duty stations and confined the rest within 100 yards radius of the ship. There was little more information on Pepe and Angela. They had covered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the fact they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off world origin. There was a dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be a happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager findings, controlling my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busy, pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The navigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the positions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the possible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and apparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigation proved them all to have natural causes. I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger area were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a deep sleep. Turning on the light and handing me a slip of paper, I blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the action station alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their business. When the sirens screamed, the crews secured ship and blasted off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs unsquashed back into focus, I read it through then once more carefully. From the beginning, it looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses to the tragedy, but a number of monitoring stations had picked up the discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had led investigators to the spot where they found the freighter Auget's dream with a hull punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The freighter's cargo of Plutonium was gone. I read Pepe in every line of the message. Since he was flying an undermanned battleship, he had to use it in the most efficient way possible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, the element of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to the unsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns his battleship packed. All 18 men aboard had been killed instantly. The thieves were now murderers. I was under pressure now to act and under a great pressure not to make any mistakes. Roly Poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthless killer. He knew what he wanted, then reached out and took it, destroying anyone who stood in his way. More people would die before this was over. It was up to me to make the number as small as possible. Ideally, I should have rushed out the fleet with guns blazing and dragged him to justice. Very nice, and I wish it could be done that way. Except where was he? A battleship might be gigantic on some terms of reference, but in the immensity of the galaxy it is microscopically infinitesimal. As long as it stayed out of the regular lanes of commerce and clear of the detector stations and planets, it would never be found. Then how could I find it, and having found it, catch it when the infernal thing was more than a match for any ship it might meet? That was my problem. It had kept me awake nights and talking to myself days. Since there was no easy answer, I had to construct a solution slowly and carefully. Since I couldn't be sure where Pepy was going to be next, I had to make him go where I wanted him to. There were some things in my favor. The most important was the fact that I had forced him to make his play before he was absolutely ready. It wasn't chance that he had left the same day I arrived on Sita Nuevo. Any plan as elaborate as his certainly included warning of approaching danger. The drive on the battleship, as well as controls and primary armament had been installed weeks before I showed up. Much of the subsidiary work remained to be done when the ship had left. One witness of the theft had graphically described the power lines and cables dangling from the ship's locks when she lifted. My arrival had forced Pepy off balance. Now I had to keep pushing until he fell. This meant I had to think as he did fall into his plan. Think ahead, then trap him. Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory only. I felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice. A drink helped, as did a cigar. Puffing on it, staring at the Smooth bulkhead relaxed me a bit. After all, there aren't many things you can do with a battleship. You can't run a big khan, blow safes or make Burmadex with is hell on jets for space piracy, but that's about all. Great, great. But why a battleship? I was talking to myself. Normally a bad sign, but right now I didn't care. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going along fine until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square in the eye. Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a ship that two people could just barely manage with a tenth of the effort? Pepy would have had a cruiser that would have suited his purpose just as well. Just as good for space piracy, that is. But not for his purposes. He had wanted a battleship and he had gotten himself a battleship. Which meant he had more in mind than simple piracy. What? It was obvious that Pepy was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shorted computer. Someday the mystery of how he had slipped through the screens of the official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn't my concern now. He still had to be caught. A plan was beginning to take shape in my head, but I didn't rush it. First I had to be sure that I knew him well. Any man that can con an entire world into building a battleship for him, then steal it from them, is not going to stop there. The ship would need a crew, a base for refueling and a mission. Fuel had been taken care of first. The gutted hull of Ogate's dream was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could be used as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peaceful times. Although I could think of a few answers to that one too. Raid the mental hospitals and jails do that often enough and you would have a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was of course too mean an ambition to ascribe to this. Boy, did he want to rule a whole planet. Or maybe an entire system or more. I shuddered a bit as the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan like this once it got rolling? During the kingly wars, any number of types with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepy had set up just this kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end since their success depended on one man rule. But the price that had to be paid first. This was the plan. And. And I felt in my bones that I was right. I might be wrong on some of the minor details, but they weren't important. I knew the general outline of the idea just as when I bumped into a mark. I knew how much he could be taken for and just how to do it. There are natural laws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I knew this was it. Get the communications officer in here at once. I. I shouted at the intercom. Also a couple of clerks with transcribers, and fast. This is a matter of life or death. This last had a hollow ring and I realized my enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar, straightened my ribbons, and squared my shoulders. By the time they knocked on the door, I was all admiral again. Acting on my orders, the ship dropped out of warp drive so our Psiman could could get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as we floated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days while half his crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insane instructions. My plan was above his understanding, which is of course why he is a captain and I'm an admiral, even a temporary one. Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere of speculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all the star systems a day's flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolen battleship. There weren't too many of these at first and the Psiman could handle them all, calling each in turn and sending by news releases to the naval public relations officers there. As the sphere kept growing, he started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had a general release prepared along with the directions for use and follow up, which he set to Central 14. The battery of Psiman there contacted the individual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list of planets. The release and follow ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it, waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. I wrote as many variations as I could so it could be slipped into as many different formats as possible in one form or another. I wanted the basic information in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside that expanding sphere. What in the devil does this nonsense mean? Captain Stig said peevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futile one and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the effect on his service record. Boredom or curiosity had driven him out, and he was reading one of my releases with horror. Billionaire to found own planet. Space yacht filled with luxuries to last a hundred years. The captain's face grew red as he flipped through the stack of notes. What connection does this tripe have to do with catching those murderers? When we were alone, he was anything but courteous to me, having assured himself by not too subtle questioning that I was a spurious admiral. There was no doubt I was still in charge, but our relationship was anything but formal. This tripe and nonsense, I told him, is the bait that will snag our fish a trap for Pepy and his partner in crime. Who is this mysterious billionaire? Me, I said. I always wanted to be rich. But this ship, a space shot. Where is it being built now? At the naval shipyard at Udradi. We're almost ready to go there now. Soon as this batch of instructions goes out. Captain Steng dropped the releases onto the table, then carefully wiped his hands off to remove any possible infection. He was trying to be fair and considerate of my views, but not succeeding in the slightest. It doesn't make any sense, he growled. How can you be sure this killer will ever read one of these things? And if he does, why should he be interested? It looks to me as if you are wasting time while he slips through your fingers. The alarm should be out and every ship notified, the Navy alerted and patrol set on all spacelanes, which he could easily avoid by going around, or better yet, not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That's not the answer, I told him. This Pepy is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That's his strength and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them, which is what I'm going to do. Modest, aren't you? Sting said. I try not to be. I told him. False. False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent. I'm going to catch this thug and I'll tell you how I'll do it. He is going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is after, he is going to take all the magazines and papers he can find, partly to satisfy his own ego, but mostly to keep track of the things he is interested in, such as ship sailings. You're just guessing. You don't know all this. His automatic assumption of my incompetence was beginning to get me annoyed. I bridled my temper and tried one last time. Yes, I'm guessing an informed guess, but I do know some facts as well. August's dream was cleaned out of all reading matter. That was one of the first things I checked we can't stop the battleship from attacking again, but we can see to it that the time after that she sails into a trap. I don't know, the captain said. It sounds to me like I never heard what it sounded like. Which is all right, since he was getting under my skin and might have been tempted to pull my pseudo rank. The alarm sirens cut his sentence off and we footraced to the communications room. Captain Steng won by a nose. It was his ship and he knew all the shortcuts. The Psiman was holding out a transcription, but he summed it up in one sentence. He looked at me while he talked and his face was hard and cold. They've hit again. Knocked out a naval supply satellite. 34 men dead. If your plan doesn't work, Admiral, the captain whispered hoarsely in my ear, I'll personally see that you're flayed alive. If my plan doesn't work, Captain, there won't be enough of my skin left to pick up with a tweezer. Now, if you please, I'd like to get to Udrade and pick up my ship as soon as possible. The easy going hatred and contempt of all my associates had annoyed me, thrown me off balance. I was thinking with anger now, not with logic. Forcing a bit of control, I ordered my thoughts checked off a mental list. Belay that last command. I shouted, getting back to my old space dog mood. Get a call through first and find out if any of our plants have been picked up during the raid. While the Psiman unfocused his eyes and mumbled under his breath, I riffled through some papers, relaxed and cool. The ratings and officers waited tensely and made some slight attempt to conceal their hatred of me. It took about 10 minutes to get an answer. Affirmative, the Psiman said. A store ship docked there 20 hours before the attack. Among other things, it left newspapers containing the article. Very good, I said calmly. Send a general order to suspend all future activity, which with the planted releases, send it by Psiman only. No mention on any other naval signaling equipment. There's a good chance now it might be overheard. I strolled out slowly in command of the situation, keeping my face turned away so they couldn't see the cold sweat. It was a fast run to ood ride where my billionaire's yacht, the Eldorado, was waiting. The dockyard commander showed me the ship and made a noble effort to control his curiosity. I took a sadistic revenge on the Navy by not telling him a word about my mission. After checking out the controls and special apparatus with the technicians, I cleared the ship. There was tape in the automatic navigator that would put me on the course mentioned in all the articles. Just a press of a button and I would be on my way. I pressed the button. It was a beautiful ship, and the dockyard had been lavish with their attention to detail. From bow to rear tubes. She was plated in pure gold. There are other metals with a higher albedo, but none that give a richer effect. All the fittings inside and out were either machine turned or plated. All this work could not have been done in the time allotted. The Navy must have adapted a luxury yacht to my needs. Everything was ready. Either Pepe would make his move or I would sail onto my billionaire's paradise planet. If that happened, it would be best if I stayed there. Now that I was in space, past the point of no return, all the doubts that I had dismissed fought for attention. The plan that had seemed so clear and logical now began to look like a patched and crazy makeshift. Hold on there, sailor, I said to myself, using my best admiral's voice. Nothing has changed. It's still the best and only plan possible under the circumstances. Was it? Could I be sure that Pepy, flying his mountain of a ship and eating navy rations, would be interested in some of the comforts and luxuries of life? Or if the luxuries didn't catch his eye, would he be interested in the planetary homesteading gear? I had loaded the cards with all the things he might want and planted the information where he could get it. He had the bait now, but would he grab the hook? I couldn't tell, and I could work myself into a neurotic state if I kept running through the worry cycle. It took an effort to concentrate on anything else, but it had to be made. The next four days passed very slowly. When the alarm blew off, all I felt was an intense sensation of relief. I might be dead and blasted to dust in the next few minutes, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Pepy had swallowed the bait. There was only one ship in the galaxy that could knock back a blip that big at such a distance. It was closing fast. Using the raw energy of the battleship engines for a headlong approach, my ship bucked a bit as the tractor beams locked on at maximum distance. The radio bleeped at me for attention at the same time. I waited as long as I dared, then flipped it on. The voice boomed out that you are under the guns of a warship. Don't attempt to run signal, take evasive action, or in any other way. Who are you? And what the devil do you want? I sputtered into the mic. I had my scanner on so they could see me, but my own screen stayed dark. They weren't sending any picture. In a way it made my act easier. I just played to an unseen audience. They could see the rich cut of my clothes, the luxurious cabin behind me. Of course, they couldn't see my hands. It doesn't matter who we are, the radio boomed again. Just obey orders if you care to live. Stay away from the controls until we have tied on, then do exactly as I say. There were two distinct clangs as the magnetic grapples hit the hull. A little later the ship lurched, drawn home against the battleship. I let my eyes roll in fear, looking around for a way to escape and taking a peek at the outside scanners. The yacht was flush against the space filling bulk of the other ship. I pressed a button that sent the torch wielding robot on his way. Now let me tell you something, I snapped into the mike, wiping away the worried billionaire expression. First, I'll repeat your own warning. Obey orders if you want to live. I'll show you why. When I threw the big switch, a carefully worked out sequence took place. First, of course. The hull was magnetized and the bombs fused. A light blinked as the scanner in the cabin turned off and the one in the generator room came on. I checked the monitor screen to make sure, then started into the spacesuit. It had to be done fast. At the same time it was necessary to talk. Naturally. They must still think of me as sitting in the control room. That's the ship's generator you're looking at, I said. 98% of their output is now feeding into coils that make an electromagnet out of the ship's hull. You will find it very hard to separate us, and I would advise you not to try. The suit was on and I kept the running chatter up through the mic in the helmet, relaying to the ship's transmitter. The scene in the monitor receiver changed. You are looking at a hydrogen bomb that is primed and aware of the magnetic field holding our ships together. It will of course go off if you try to pull away. I grabbed up the monitor receiver and ran toward the airlock. This is a different bomb now, I said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on on the slowly opening outer door. This one has receptors on the hull. Attempt to destroy any part of this ship or even gain entry to it, and this one will detonate. I was in space now, leaping across to the gigantic wall of the other ship. What do you want? These were the first words Pepe had spoken since his first threats. I want to talk to you, Arrange a deal. Something that would be profitable for both of us. But let me first show you the rest of the bombs so you won't get any strange ideas about cooperating. Of course I had to show him the rest of the bombs. There was no way of getting out of it. The scanners in the ship were following a planned program. I made light talk about all my massive armaments that would carry us both to perdition while I climbed through the hole in the battleship's hull. There was no armor or warning devices at this spot. It had been chosen carefully from the blueprints. Yah, yah. I take your word for it. You're a flying bomb. So stop this roving reporter bit and tell me what you have in mind. This time I didn't answer him because I was running, panting like a dog, and had the mic turned off. Just ahead, if the blueprints were right, was a door to the control room. Pepe should be there. I stepped through, gun out, and pointed it at the back of his head. Angelina stood next to him, looking at the screen. The game's over, I said. Stand up slowly and keep your hands in sight. What do you mean? He said angrily, looking at the screen in front of him. The girl caught Wise first. She spun around and pointed. He's here. They both stared, gaping at me, caught off guard and completely unprepared. You're under arrest, Crime King, I told him. And your girlfriend. Angelina rolled her eyes up and slid slowly to the floor. Real or fake, I didn't care. I kept the gun on Pepy's pudgy form while he picked her up and carried her to an acceleration couch against the wall. What will happen now? He quavered the question. His pouchy jaw shook and I swear there were tears in his eyes. I was not impressed by his acting, since I could clearly remember the dead men floating in space. He stumbled over to a chair, half dropped into it. Will they do anything to me? Angelina asked. Her eyes were open now. I have no idea what will happen to you, I told her truthfully. That's up to the courts to decide. But he made me do all those things. She wailed. She was young, dark, and beautiful. The tears did nothing to spoil this. Pepe dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders shook. I flicked the gun his way and snapped at him. Sit up, Pepe. I find it very hard to believe that you're crying. There are Some naval ships on the way now. The automatic alarm was triggered about a minute ago. I'm sure they'll be glad to see the man who don't let them take me, please. Angelina was on her feet, her back pressed against the wall. They'll put me in prison, do things to my mind. She shrunk away as she spoke, stumbling along the wall. I looked back at Pepy, not wanting to take my eyes off of him for any an instant. There's nothing I can do, I told her. I glanced her way and a small door was swinging open and she was gone. Don't try to run, I shouted after her. It can't do any good. Pepy made a strangling noise and I looked back to him quickly. He was sitting up now, and his face was dry of tears. In fact, he was laughing, not crying. So she caught you too, Mr. Wise Cop. Poor little Angelina with the soft eyes. He broke down again, shaking with laughter. What do you mean? I growled. Don't you catch yet. The story she told you was true, except she twisted it around a bit. The whole plan, building the battleship, then stealing it, was hers. She pulled me into it, playing me like an accordion. I fell in love with her, hated myself and happy at the same time. Well, I'm glad it's over now. At least I gave her a chance to get away. I owe her that much, though I thought I would explode when she went into that innocent act. A cold feeling was now a ball of ice that threatened to paralyze me. You're lying, I said hoarsely, and even I didn't believe it. Sorry, that's the way it is. Your brain boys will pick my skull to pieces and find out the truth. Anyway, there's no point in lying now. We'll search the ship. She can't hide for long. She won't have to, Pepe said. There's a fast scout we picked up stowed in one of the holds. That must be it. Leaving now. We could feel the vibration distantly through the floor. The Navy will get her, I told him with far more conviction than I felt. Maybe, he said, suddenly slumping and tired, no longer laughing. Maybe they will. But I gave her her chance. It is all over for me now. But she knows that I loved her to the end. He bared his teeth in sudden pain. Not that she will care in the slightest. I kept the gun on him and neither of us moved while the Navy ships pulled up and their boots stamped outside. I had captured my battleship and the raids were over and I couldn't be blamed if the girl had slipped away, if she evaded the Navy ships. That was their fault, not mine. I had my victory, all right. Then why did it taste like ashes in my mouth? It's a big galaxy, but it wasn't going to be big enough to hide Angelina. Now I can be conned once, but only once. The next time we met, things were going to be very different. The End of the Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison. 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play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. 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 Grothman Orthodren, Maxiton and glutamic acid. They were the prescription that made him king of his world. Oh Rats. By Marian Allen Dufour SK540 the 27th son of two very ordinary white laboratory rats surveyed his world. He was no more able than any other rat to process articulate speech or to use his paws as hands. All he had was a brain, which, relative to its size, was superior to any rats that had hitherto appeared on Earth. It was enough. In the first week of gestation, his embryo had been removed to a more suitable receptacle than the maternal womb, and his brain had been stimulated with Orthodren maxiton and glutamaic acid. It had been continuously irrigated with blood. One hemisphere had been activated far in excess of the other, since previous experiments had shown that increased lack of symmetry between the hemispheres produced superior mentality. The end result was an enormous increase in brain cells in both hemispheres. His brain showed also a marked increase in cholenster rate over that of other rats. Sk540, in other words, was a super rat. The same process had been applied to all his brothers and sisters. Most of them had died. The few who did not failed to show the desired results or showed them in so lopsided and partial a manner that it was necessary to destroy them. All of this, of course, had been mere preparation and Experimentation with a view to later developments in human subjects. What SK540's gods did not anticipate was that they would produce a creature mentally the superior not only of his fellow rats, but also in some respects of themselves. He was a super rat, but he was still a rat. His world of dreams and aspirations was not human, but Murin. What would you do if you were a brilliant, moody young super rat caged in a laboratory? SK540 did it. What human beings desired was health, freedom, wealth, love and power. So did SK540, but for him, health was taken for granted. Freedom was freedom from cages, traps, cats and dogs. Wealth meant shelter from the cold and rain and plenty to eat. Love meant a constant supply of available females. But power. It was in his longing for power that he most revealingly displayed his status as a super rat. Therefore, once he had learned how to open his cage, he was carefully selective of the companions, actually the followers, whom he would release to join his midnight hegira from the laboratory. Only the meekest and most subservient of the males, intelligent but not too intelligent, and the most desirable and amiable of the females were invited. Once free of the cages, SK540 had no difficulty in leading his troops out of the building. The door of the laboratory was locked, but a window was slightly open at the top. Rats can climb up or down like a silver ribbon. They flowed along the dark street SK540 looking exactly like all the rest at their head. Only one person in the deserted street seemed to have noticed them and he did not understand the nature of the phenomena. Young Mr. And Mrs. Philip Vincent started housekeeping in what had once been a mansion. It was now a run down eyesore. It had belonged to Nora Vincent's great aunt Martha, who had left it to her in her will. The estate was in litigation, but the executor had permitted the Vincents to settle down in the house, though they weren't allowed yet to sell it. It had no modern conveniences and was full of rooms they couldn't use and heavy old fashioned furniture. But it was solidly built and near the laboratory where he worked as a technician. And they could live rent free until they could sell the house and use the money to buy a real house. Something funny happened at the lab last night. Philip reported watching Nora struggling with the dinner on the massive coal stove. Somebody broke in and stole about half our experimental animals. They got our pride and Joy. The famous SK540. Nor Nora asked the same. Actually, it wasn't a break in. It Must have been an inside job. The cages were open, but there was no sign of breaking and entering. We're all under suspicion until they find out who done it. Nora looked alarmed. You too? What on earth would anyone want with a lot of laboratory rats? They aren't worth anything, are they? Financially, I mean. Not a cent. That's why I'm sure one of the cleanup kids must have done it. Probably wanted them for pets. They're all tame, of course. Not like wild rats, though. They can bite like wild rats if they want to. Some of the ones missing are treated and some are controls. It would just be a nuisance if they hadn't taken SK540. Now they've got to find him or do about five years work over again without any assurance of as great a success. To say nothing of letting our super rat loose on the world. What on earth could even a super rat do that would matter to human beings? I mean. Nobody knows. Maybe that's what we're going to find out. That night Nora woke suddenly with a loud scream. Philip got the gas lighted there was no electricity in the old house, and held her shaking body in his arms. She found her breath at long last enough to sob. It was a rat. A rat ran over my face. You're dreaming, darling. It's because I told you about the theft at the lab. There couldn't be rats in this place. It's too solidly built from the basement up. He finally got her to sleep again, but he lay awake for a long time, listening. Nothing happened. Rats can't talk, but they can communicate. About the time Nora Vincent dropped off after her frightened awakening, SK540 was confronting a culprit. The culprit was one of the liberated males. His beady eyes tried to gaze into the implacable ones of SK540, but his tail twitched nervously, and if he bared his teeth it was more in terror than in fight. They all knew that strict orders had been given not to disturb the humans in the house until SK540 had all his preparations made. A little more of that silent communication, and the rat who had run over Nora's face knew he only had two have his throat slit or get out. He got out. What do you know? Philip said. That evening one of our rats came back by itself. Yeah, I've never heard of such a thing. It was one of the experimental ones, so it was smarter than most, though not such an awful lot. I've never heard of a rat with a homing instinct before, but when we opened up this Morning. There he was, sitting in his cage, ready for breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, I thought I asked you to buy a big box of oatmeal on your way home yesterday. It's about the only thing in the way of cereal I can manage on that old stove. I did buy it. Don't you remember? I left it in the kitchen. Well, it wasn't there this morning. All I know is that you're going to have nothing but toast and coffee to morrow. We seem to be out of eggs, too. And bacon. And I thought we had half a pound left of that cheese, but it's gone too. Good Lord, Nora, if you've got that much marketing to do, can't you do it yourself? Sure. If you leave me the car, I'm not going to walk all that way and back. So of course Philip did do the shopping the next day. Besides, Nora had just remembered she had a date at the hairdresser's. When he got home, her hair was still uncurled and she was in hysterics. One of the many amenities Great Aunt Martha's house lacked was a telephone. Anyway, Nora couldn't have been coherent over one. She cast herself, shuddering and crying, into Philip's arms, and it was a long time before he got her soothed enough for her to gasp. Philip, they wouldn't let me out. They who? What do you mean? The. The rats. The white rats. They made a ring around me at the front door so I couldn't open it. I ran to the back and they beat me there and did the same thing. I even tried the windows, but it was no use. And their teeth, they all. I guess I went to pieces. I started throwing things at them and they just dodged. I yelled for help, but there's nobody near enough to hear. Then I gave up and ran to our bedroom and slammed the door on them. But they left guards outside. I heard them squeaking until you drove up. Then I heard them run away. Philip stared at her, scared to death. His wife had lost her mind. Now, now, sweetheart, he said soothingly. Let's get this straight. They fired a lab boy today. They found four of our rats in his home. He told some idiotic story about having found them with the others missing, running loose on the street that night. But of course he stole them. He must have sold the rest of them to other kids. They're working on that now. Nora blew her nose and wiped her eyes. She had regained her usual calm. Philip, Vincent, she said coldly. Are you accusing me of lying or of just being crazy? I'm Neither. I saw and heard those rats. They're here now. What's more, I guess I know where the oatmeal went. And the eggs and bacon, too, and the cheese. I'm a hostage. I don't suppose, she added sarcastically, that your SK540 is one of the ones they found in the boy's home. No, it wasn't, he acknowledged uneasily. A nasty little icy trickle stole down his spine. All right, Nora, I give up. You take the poker and I'll take the hammer, and we'll search this house from cellar to attic. You won't find them, said Nora bitterly. SK540 is too smart. They'll stay inside the walls and keep quiet. Then we'll find the holes they went through and rout them out. They didn't, of course. There wasn't a sign of a rat hole or of a rat. They got through dinner and evening somehow. Nora put all the food, not in cans, inside the old fashioned icebox, which took the place of a refrigerator. Philip thought he was too disturbed to be able to sleep. But he did, and Nora, exhausted, was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. His last doubt of his wife's sanity had vanished when the next morning they found the ice box door open and half the food gone. That settles it, Philip announced. Come on, Nora, put your coat on. You're coming with me to the lab and we'll report what's happened. They'll find those creatures if they have to tear this house apart to do it. That boy must have been telling the truth. You couldn't keep me away, Nora responded. I'll never spend another minute alone in this house while those dreadful things are in it. But of course, when they got to the front door, there they were, circling them, their teeth bared. The same with the back door and all the first floor windows. That's SK540 all right. Leading them, Philip whispered through clenched jaws. He could smash them all, he supposed, in time with what weapons he had. But he worked in a laboratory. He knew their value to science, especially SK540s. Rats couldn't talk, he knew, and they couldn't understand human speech. Nevertheless, some kind of communication might establish itself. SK540's eyes were too intelligent not to believe that he was getting the gist of the talk directed to him. This is utterly ridiculous, Philip grated. If you won't let us out, how can we keep bringing food into the house for you? We'll all star you and we together. He could have sworn that SK540 was considering, but he guessed the implicit answer. Let either one of them out, now that they knew the rats were there and the men from the laboratory would come quickly and overwhelm and carry off the besiegers. It was a true impasse, Philip, she reminded him. If you don't go to work, they know we haven't a phone, and somebody will be here pretty soon to find out if anything's wrong. But that wouldn't help, Philip reflected gloomily. They'd let anyone in and keep him there. And, he thought to himself, and was careful not to say it aloud. Rats are rats, even if they are 25th generation laboratory born. When the other food was gone, there would be human meat. He did not want to look at them anymore. He took Norah's arm and turned away into their bedroom. They stayed there all day, too upset to think of eating, talking and talking to no conclusion. As dusk came, they did not light the gas. Exhausted, they lay down on the bed without undressing. After a while there was a quiet scratching at the door. Don't let them in, nora whispered. Her teeth were chattering. I must, dear, he whispered back. It isn't them. I'm sure of it. It's just SK540 himself. I've been expecting it. We have got to reach some kind of understanding with a rat. With a super rat. We have no choice. Philip was right. SK540 alone stood there and sidled in as the door closed solidly behind him. How could one communicate with a rat? Philip could think of no way except to pick him up, place him where they were, face to face and talk. Are your followers outside? He asked. The rodent's face gave no expression, but Philip caught a glance of cat contempt in the beady eyes. The slaves were doubtlessly bedded down in their hideaway, with strict orders to stay there and keep quiet. You know, Philip, vincent went on, I could kill you very easily. The words would mean nothing to SK540. The tone might. He watched the beady eyes, but there was nothing in them but intelligent attention, no flicker of fear. Or I could tie you up and take you to the laboratory and let them decide whether to keep you or kill you. We are all much bigger and stronger than you. Without your army, you can't intimidate us. There was, of course, no answer, but SK540 did a startling and touching thing. He reached out one paw as if in appeal. Nora caught her breath in astonishment. He. He just wants to be free, she said in a choked whisper. You mean you're not afraid of him any more. You said it yourself. He can't intimidate us without his army. Philip thought a moment. Then he said slowly, I wonder if we had the right to do this to him. In the first place, he would have been an ordinary laboratory rat, mindless and content. We've made him into a neurotic alien in his world. You're not responsible, darling. You're a technician, not a biochemist. I share the responsibility. We all do. So what? The fact remains that it was done. And here he is. And here we are. The doorbell rang. Philip and Nora exchanged glances. Sk540 watched them. It's probably Kelly from the lab, philip said, trying to find out why I wasn't there today. It's just about quitting time, and he lives nearest to us. Nora astonished him. She picked up SK540 from the bedside table where Philip had placed him and hid him under her pillow. Get rid of whoever it is, she said defensively. Philip stared for an instant, then walked briskly downstairs. He was back in a few minutes. It was Kelly, all right, he told her. I said you were sick and I couldn't leave you to phone. I said I'd be there tomorrow. Now what? SK540's white whiskers emerged from under the pillow. He jumped over to the table again. Nora's cheeks were pink. When it came to the point. I just couldn't, she explained shamefacedly. I suddenly realized that he's a person. We couldn't let him be taken back to prison. Aren't you frightened anymore? Not of him. She faced the super rat squarely. Look, she said. If we take care of you, will you get rid of that gang of yours so we can be free, too? That's nonsense, Nora, philip objected. He can't possibly understand you. Dogs and cats learn to understand enough. And he's smarter than any dog or cat that ever lived. But the word froze on his lips. Sk540 had jumped to the floor and run to the door. There he stood and looked back at them, his tail twitching. He wants us to follow him, nora murmured. There was no sign of a hole in the back wall of the disused pantry, but behind it they could hear squeaks and rustling. SK540 scratched delicately at almost invisible cracks. A section of the wall, 2 by 4 inches, fell out on the floor. So that's where some of the oatmeal went, nora commented. Made into paste. Sh.SK540 vanished through the hole. They waited, listening to incomprehensible sounds outside. It had grown dark. Then the leader emerged and stood to one side of a long line that pattered through the hole. The two humans stared, fascinated, as the line made straight for the back door and under it. Sk540 stayed where he was. Will they go back to the lab? Nora asked. Philip shrugged. It doesn't matter. Some of them may. I feel like a traitor. I don't. I feel like one of those people who hid escaped war prisoners in Europe. When the rats were all gone, they turned to SK540, but without a glance at them, he re entered the hiding place. In the minute he returned, herding two white female rats before him. He stood, obviously expectant. What's up everybody? It's Bretzky. And America is turning 200, 150. And I can't think of a better
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Lady Luck
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play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Philip squatted on his heels. He picked up the two refugees and looked them over. Both females, he announced briefly. And both pregnant. Is he the father? Who else? He'd see to that. And will they inherit his. His. His super ratism? That's the whole point. That's the object of the entire experiment. They were going to try it soon. The three white rats had scarcely moved. The two mothers to be had apparently fallen asleep. Only SK540 stood quietly, eyeing the humans. When they left him to find a place where they could talk in private, he did not follow. It comes down to this, philip said at the end of a half hour's fruitless discussion. We promised him, or as good as he believed us and trusted us. But if we keep our promise, we're really traitors to the human race. You mean if the offspring should inherit his brain power, they might overrun us all? Not might. Would. So. So it's an insoluble problem. On our terms. We have to think of this as a war and of them as our enemies. What is our word of honor to a rat, but to a Super rat? To SK540, as if called SK540 appeared. Had he been listening? Had he understood? Neither of them dared to voice the question aloud in his presence. Later, Philip murmured. We must eat, said Nora. Let's see what's left in the way of food. Everything tasted flat. They weren't very hungry after all. There was enough left over to feed the three rats, but then they had evidently helped themselves earlier. They left the scraps untasted. Neither of the humans guessed what else had vanished from the pantry shelves. What? When he had heard enough, SK540 had slipped away and sprinkled on the remaining contents of the icebox wherever the white powder would not show. They did not know it until it was too late, until both of them lay writhing in their last spasms on their bedroom floor. By the time the house was broken into and their bodies found, SK540 and his two wives were far away and safe. And this, children, is the true account handed down by tradition from the days of our great founder of how the human race ceased to exist and we took over the world. End of oh Rats by Miriam Allen DeFore. The Other now by Murray Leinster 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 Grothman he knew his wife was dead because he'd seen her buried, but it was only one possibility out of infinitely more the Other now by Murray Leinster it was self evident nonsense. If Jimmy Patterson had told anybody but Haines, calm men in white jackets would have taken him away for psychiatric treatment, which undoubtedly would have been effective. He'd have been restored to sanity and common sense, and he'd probably have died of it. So to anyone who liked Jimmy and Jane, it is good that things worked out as they did. The facts are patently impossible and they are satisfying. Haines, though, would very much like to know exactly why it happened. In the case of Jimmy and Jane and nobody else, there must have been some specific reason, but there's absolutely no clue.
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To
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began about three months after Jane was killed in a freak accident. Jimmy had taken her death hard. This night seemed no different from any other. He came home just as usual and his throat tightened a little, just as usual as he went up to the door. It was still intolerable to know that Jane wouldn't be waiting for him. Him. The hurt in his throat was a familiar sensation which he was doggedly hoping would go away. But it was extra strong to night and he wondered rather desperately if he'd sleep, or if he did, whether he would dream. Sometimes he had dreams of Jane and was happy until he woke up and then he wanted to cut his throat. But he wasn't at that point tonight, not yet. As he explained it to Haines later he simply put his key in the door and opened it and started to walk in. But he kicked the door instead. So he absently put his key in the door and opened it and started to walk in. Yes, that is what happened. He was halfway through before he realized. He stared blankly. The door looked perfectly normal. He closed it behind him. Feeling queer, he tried to reason out what had happened. Then he felt a slight draft. The door wasn't shut. It was wide open. He had to close it again. That was all that happened to mark this night off from any other. And there was no explanation why it happened. Began rather this night instead of another. Jimmy went to bed with a taut feeling. He'd had the conviction that he'd opened the door twice. The same door. Then he'd had the conviction that he had had to close it twice. He'd heard of that feeling, queer, but no doubt commonplace. He slept blessedly without dreams. He woke next morning and found his muscles tense. That was an acquired habit. Before he opened his eyes every morning, he reminded himself that Jane wasn't beside him. It was necessary if he forgot and turned contentedly to emptiness. The ache of being alive when Jane wasn't was unbearable. This morning he lay with his eyes closed to remind himself and instead found himself thinking about the business of the door. He'd kick the door between the two openings so it wasn't only an illusion of repetition. He was puzzling over that repetition after closing the door when he found he had to close it again. That proved to him it wasn't a standard mental vagary. It looked like a delusion, but his memory insisted that it had happened that way, whether it was possible or not. Frowning, he went out and got his breakfast at a restaurant and rode to work. Work was blessed because he had to think about it. The main trouble was that sometimes something turned up which Jane would have been amused to hear. And he had to remind himself that there was no use making a mental note to tell her. Jane was dead. Today he thought a good deal about the door. But when he went home, he knew he was going to have a black night. He wouldn't sleep and oblivion would seem infinitely tempting. Because the ache of being alive when Jane wasn't was horribly tedious. And he could not imagine an end to it. To night would be a very bad one indeed. He opened the door and started in. He went crashing into the door. He stood still for an instant, then fumbled for the lock. But the door was open. He'd opened it. There hadn't been anything for him to run into yet his forehead hurt where he'd bumped into the door that wasn't closed at all. There was nothing he could do about it, though. He went in. He hung up his coat. He sat down wearily. He filled his pipe and grimly faced a night that was going to be one of the worst. He struck a match and lighted his pipe and put the match in an ashtray, and he glanced in the tray. There were the stubs of cigarettes in it. Jane's brand, freshly smoked. He touched them with his fingers. They were real. Then a furious anger filled him. Maybe the cleaning woman had had the intolerable insolence to smoke Jane's cigarettes. He got up and stormed through the house, raging as he searched for signs of further impertinence. He found none. He came back, seething to his chair. The ashtray was empty and there'd been nobody around. To empty was logical to question his own sanity, and the question gave him a sort of grim cheer. The matter of the recurrent oddities could be used to fight the abysmal depression ahead. He tried to reason them out, and always they added up to delusions only. But he kept his mind resolutely on the problem. Work during the day was a godsend. Sometimes he was able to thrust aside for whole half hours the fact that Jane was dead. Now he grappled relievedly with the question of his sanity or lunacy. He went to the desk where Jane kept her household accounts. He'd set the whole thing down on paper and examine it methodically, checking this item against that. Jane's diary lay on the desk blotter with a pencil between two of its pages. He picked it up with a tug of dread. Some day he might read it, an absurd chronicle Jane had never offered him. But not now. Not now. That was when he realized that it shouldn't be here. His hands jumped and it fell open. He saw Jane's angular writing and it hurt. He closed it quickly, aching all over. But the printed date at the top of the page registered on his brain even as he snapped the COVID shut. He sat still for minutes, every muscle taut. It was a long time before he opened the book again, and by that time he had a perfectly reasonable explanation. It must be that Jane hadn't restricted herself to assigned spaces. When she had something extra to write, she wrote it on, past the page allotted for a given date. Of course. Jimmy fumbled back to the last written page, where the pencil had been with a tense matter of factness. It was, as he noticed, today's date. The page was filled. The writing was fresh. It was Jane's handwriting. Went to the cemetery, said the scrawling letters. It was very bad. Three months since the accident and it doesn't get any easier. I'm developing a personal enmity to chance. It doesn't seem like an abstraction anymore. It was chance that killed Jimmy. It could have been me instead. Or neither of us. I wish. Jimmy went quietly mad for a moment or two. When he came to himself, he was staring at the empty desk blotter. There wasn't any book before him. There wasn't any pencil between his fingers. He remembered picking up the pencil and writing desperately under Jane's entry. Jane, he'd written. And he could remember the look of his scrawled script next to Jane's. Where are you? I'm not dead. I thought you were. In God's name, where are you? But certainly nothing of that sort had happened. It was delusion. The night was particularly bad, but curiously, not as bad as some other nights had been. Jimmy had a normal man's horror of insanity. Yet this wasn't, so to speak, normal insanity. A lunatic has always an explanation for his delusions. Jimmy had none. He noted the fact. The next morning he bought a small camera with a flashbulb attachment and carefully memorized the directions for its use. This was the thing that would tell the story. And that night, when he got home as usual after dark, he had the camera ready. He unlocked the door and opened it. He put his hand out tight, tentatively. The door was still closed. He stepped back and quickly snapped the camera. There was a sharp flash of the bulb. The glare blinded him, but when he put out his hand again, the door was open. He stepped into the living room without having to unlock and open it a second time. He looked at the desk as he turned the film and put in a new flashbulb. It was as empty as he'd left it in the morning. He hung up his coat and settled down tensely with his pipe. Presently he knocked out the ashes. There were cigarette butts in the tray. He quivered a little. He smoked again, carefully, not looking at the desk. It was not until he knocked out the second pipeful of ashes that he let himself look where Jane's diary had been. It was there. The book was open. There was a ruler laid across it to keep it open. Jimmy wasn't frightened and he wasn't hopeful. There was absolutely no reason why this should happen to him. He was simply desperate and grim. When he went across the room, he saw yesterday's entry and his own hysterical message, and there was more writing beyond that in Jane's hand. Darling, maybe I'm going crazy, but I think you wrote me as if you were alive. Maybe I'm crazy to answer you, but please, darling, if you are alive somewhere. And somehow there was a tear blot here. The rest was frightened and tender and as desperate as Jimmy's own sensations. He wrote with trembling fingers before he put the camera into position and pressed the shutter control for a second time. When his eyes recovered from the flash, there was nothing on the desk. He did not sleep at all that night, nor did he work the next day. He went to a photographer with the film and paid an extravagant fee to have the film developed and enlarged at once. He got back two prints, quite distinct, even very clear considering everything. One looked like a trick shot showing a door twice, once open and once closed in the same photograph. The other was a picture of an open book and he could read every word on its page. It was inconceivable that such a picture should have come out. He walked around practically at random for a couple of hours, looking at the pictures from time to time, pictures or no pictures. The thing was nonsense. The facts were preposterous. It must be that he only imagined seeing these prints. But there was a quick way to find out. He went to Haines. Haines was his friend and reluctantly, a lawyer. Reluctantly because law practice interfered with a large number of unlikely hobbies. Haines, jimmy said quietly, I want you to look at a couple of pictures and see if you can see what I do. What's going on, everyone? It's bluff here and we're driving through the states in the Bluffmobile, and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino style games on Spin Quest. They have over a thousand games, including live dealer blackjack and craps, with tons of slots and unlimited options. You can get a 30 coin pack for just $10 for new users.
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Go to spinquest.com right now. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. I may have gone out of my head. He passed over the picture of the door. It looked to Jimmy like two doors nearly at right angles in the same door frame and hung from the same hinges. Haines looked at it and said, didn't know you went in for trick photography. He picked up a reading glass and examined the detail, a futile but highly competent job. You covered half the film and exposed with the door closed and then exposed for the other half of the film with the door open. A neat job of matching, though you're a good tripod. I held the camera with my hands, said Jimmy with restraint. You couldn't do it that way, Jimmy, objected Haines. Don't try to kid me. I'm trying not to fool myself, said Jimmy. He was very pale. He handed over the other enlargement. What do you see in this? Haines looked. Then he jumped. He read through what was so plainly photographed on the pages of the diary that hadn't been before the camera. Then he looked at Jimmy in palpable unease. Got any explanations? Asked Jimmy. He swallowed. I haven't any. He told what had happened to date, badly and without any attempts at making it reasonable. Haines gaped at him, but before long the lawyer's eyes grew shrewd and compassionate. As noted hitherto, he had a number of unlikely hobbies, among which was a loud insistence on the belief in the fourth dimension and other esoteric ideas, because it was good fun to talk authoritatively about them. But he had common sense, had Haines, and a good and varied law practice. Presently he said gently, if you want it straight, Jimmy, I had a client once. She accused a chap of beating her up. It was very pathetic. She was absolutely sincere. She really believed it. But her own family admitted that she'd made the marks on herself, and the doctors agreed that she'd unconsciously blotted it out of her mind afterwards. You suggest, said Jimmy composedly, that I might have forged all of that to comfort myself with as soon as I could forget the forging. I don't think that's the case, Haines. What possibility does that leave? Haines hesitated a long time. He looked at the pictures again, scrutinizing especially the one that looked like a trick shot. This is an amazingly good job of matching, he said wryly. I couldn't pick the place where the two exposures join. Some people might manage to swallow this, and the theoretical explanation is a lot better. The only trouble is it couldn't happen. Jimmy waited. Haines went on awkwardly, the accident in which Jane was killed. You were in your car. You came up behind a truck carrying structural steel. There was a long, slim girder sticking way out behind with a red rag on it. The truck had air brakes. The driver jammed them on just after he'd passed over a bit of wet pavement. The truck stopped. Your car slid even with the brakes locked. It's nonsense, Jimmy. I'd rather you continued Jimmy, said white. You ran into the truck, your car swinging a little as it slid the girder came through the windshield. It could have hit you. It could have missed both of you. By pure chance it happened to hit Jane and killed her, said Jimmy, very quietly. Yes, but it might have been me. The diary entry is written as if it had been me. Did you notice? There was a long pause in Haines office. The world outside the window was highly prosaic and commonplace and normal. Haines wiggled in his chair. I think, he said unhappily, you did the same as my girl, Clant. Forged that writing and then forgot it. Have you seen a doctor yet? I will, said Jimmy. Systematize my lunacy for me first, Haines, if it can be done. It's not accepted science, haines said. In fact, it's considered eyewash. But there have been speculations. He grimaced. First point is that it was pure chance that Jane was hit. It was just as likely to be you instead, or neither of you. If it had been you, jane said, jimmy would have lived in our house alone, and she might very well have written that entry in the diary. Yes, agreed Haines uncomfortably. I shouldn't suggest this, but there are a lot of possible futures. We don't know which one will come about for us. Nobody except Fatalist can argue with that statement. When today is in the future. There were a lot of possible todays. The present moment now is only one of any number of nows that might have been. So it's been suggested. Mind you, it isn't accepted science. It's pure charlatanry. It's been suggested that there may be more than one actual now before the girder actually hit. There were three nows in the possible future, one in which neither of you was hit, one in which you were hit, and one he paused, embarrassed. So some people would say, how do we know that the one in which Jane was hit is the only now? They'd say that the others could have happened and that maybe they did. Jimmy nodded. If that were true, he said detachedly, Jane would be in the present moment a Now where it was me who was killed. And I'm in the now where she was killed. Is that it? Haines shrugged. Jimmy thought, and said, thanks. Queer, isn't it? He picked up the two pictures and went out. Haines was the only one who knew about the affair, and he worried. But it was not easy to denounce someone as insane when there is no evidence that he is apt to be dangerous. He did go to the trouble to find out that Jimmy acted in a reasonably normal manner, working industriously and Talking quite sanely in the daytime. Only Haines suspected that of nights he went home and experienced the impossible. Sometimes Haynes suspected that the impossible might be the fact. That had been an amazingly good bit of trick photography. But it was too preposterous. Also, there was no reason for such a thing to happen to Jimmy. Four weeks after Haines pseudo scientific explanation, however, Jimmy was almost light hearted. He no longer had to remind himself that Jane was dead. The second week was not so good. To know that Jane was alive was good, but to be separated from her without hope was not. There was no meaning in a cosmos in which one could only write love letters to one's wife or husband in another now which only might have been. But for a while, both Jimmy and Jane tried to hide this new hopelessness from each other. Jimmy explained this carefully to Haines before it was all over. Their letters were tender and very natural and presently there was even time for gossip and actual bits of choice scandal. Haines met Jimmy on the street one day after about two weeks. Jimmy looked better, but he was drawn very fine. Though he greeted Haines without constraint, Haines felt awkward. After a little he said, er, Jimmy, that matter we were talking about the other day. Those photographs. Yes, you were right, said Jimmy casually. Jane agrees there is more than one now in the now I'm in. Jane was killed in the now she's in. I was killed. Haines fidgeted. Would you let me see that picture of the door again? He asked. A trick film like that simply can't be perfect. I'd like to enlarge the picture a little more. May I? You can have the film, said Jimmy. I don't need it anymore. Haines hesitated. Jimmy quite matter of factly told him most of what had happened to date. But he had no idea what started it. Haines almost wrung his hands. The thing can't be, he said desperately. You have to be crazy, Jimmy. But he would not have said that to a man whose sanity he really suspected. Jimmy nodded. Jane told me something. By the way, did you have a near accident night before last? Somebody almost ran into you out on Old Sawmill Road? Haines started and went pale. I went around a curve and the car plunged out from nowhere on the wrong side of the road. We both swung hard. He smashed my fender and almost went off the road himself. But he went racing off without stopping to see if I'd gone into the ditch and killed myself. If I'd been five feet nearer the curb when he came out of it. Where Jane is, Jimmy said. You were just about five feet nearer the curb. It was a bad smash. Tony Shields was in the other car. It killed him where Jane is. Haines licked his lips. It was absurd, but he said, how about me where Jane is? Jimmy told him. You're in the hospital. Haines swore in unreasonable irritation. There wasn't any way for Jimmy to know about that near accident. He hadn't mentioned it because he had no idea who'd been in the other car. I don't believe it. But, he said pleadingly, jimmy, it isn't so, is it? How the hell could you account for it? Jimmy shrugged. Jane and I, we're rather fond of each other. The understatement was so patent that he smiled faintly. Chance separated us. The feeling we have about each other draws us together. There's a saying about two people becoming one flesh. If such a thing could happen, it would be Jane and me. After all, men. Maybe only a tiny pebble or a single extra drop of water made my car swerve enough to get her killed. Where I am, that is, that's a very little thing. So, with such a trifle separating us and so much pulling us together, why, sometimes the barrier wears thin. She leaves a door closed in the house where she is, I open the same door where I am. Sometimes I have to open the door she left closed to. That's all. Haines didn't say a word. But the question he wouldn't ask was so self evident that Jimmy answered it. We're hoping, he said, it's pretty bad being separated. But the phenomenon kept up. So we hope her diary is sometimes in the now where she is and sometimes in the now of mine. Cigarette butts too. Maybe that was the only time he showed any sign of emotion. He spoke as if his mouth were dry. If ever I'm in her now or she's in mine, even for an instant, all the devils in hell couldn't separate us again. We hope. Which was insanity. In fact it was the third week of insanity. He'd told Haines, quite calmly, that Jane's diary was on her desk every night and there was a letter to him in it and he wrote one to her. He said quite calmly that the barrier between them seemed to be growing thinner, that at least once when he went to bed he was sure there was one more cigarette stub in the ash tray than had been there earlier in the evening. They were very near indeed. They were separated only by the difference between what was and what might have been. In one sense the difference was a pebble or A drop of water in another. The difference was that between life and death. But they hoped, they convinced themselves that the barrier grew thinner. Once it seemed to Jimmy that they were touching hands. But he was not sure. He was still sane enough not to be sure. And he told all this to Haines in a matter of fact fashion, and speculated mildly on what had started it all. Then one night, Haines called Jimmy on the telephone. Jimmy answered. He sounded impatient. Jimmy, Haines said. He was almost hysterical. I think I'm insane, you know. You said Tony Shields was in the car that hit me. Yes, jimmy said politely. What's the matter? It's been driving me crazy, wailed Haines feverishly. You said he was killed there. But I haven't told a soul about the incident. So? So just now I broke down and phoned him, and it was Tony Shields. That near crash scared him to death, and I gave him hell and he's paying for my fender. I didn't tell him that he was killed. Jimmy didn't answer. It didn't seem to matter to him. I'm coming over, haines said feverishly. I've got to talk. No, said Jimmy. Jane and I are pretty close to each other. We've touched each other again. We're hoping the barrier's wearing through. We hope it's going to break. But it can't, protested Haines, shocked at the idea of improbabilities in the preposterous can't. What'd happen if you turned up where she is or if she turned up here? I don't know, said Jimmy. But we'd be together. You're crazy. You mustn't. Goodbye, said Jimmy politely. I'm hoping. Haines. Something has to happen. It has to. His voice stopped. There was a noise in the room behind him. Haines heard it only two words, and those faintly and over a telephone, but he swore to himself that it was Jane's voice, throbbing with happiness. The two words Haines thought he heard were Jimmy, darling. Then the telephone crashed to the floor and Haines heard no more, even though he called back frantically again. Jimmy didn't answer. Haines sat up all night, practically gibbering, and he tried to call Jimmy again next morning, and then he tried his office and at last went to the police. He explained to them that Jimmy had been in a highly nervous state since the death of his wife. So finally the police broke into the house. They had to break in because every door and window was carefully fastened from the inside, as if Jimmy had been very careful to make sure Nobody would interrupt what he and Jane hoped would occur. But Jimmy wasn't in the house. There was no trace of him. It was exactly as if he had vanished into the air. Ultimately, the police dragged the ponds and such things for his body, but they never found any clues. Nobody ever saw Jimmy again. It was recorded that Jimmy simply left town. And everybody accepted that obvious explanation. The thing that really bothered Haines was the fact that Jimmy had told him who'd almost crashed into him on Sawmill Road. And it was true, that was to understate, hard to take. And there was a double exposed picture of Jimmy's front door which was much more convincing than any other trick picture Haines had ever seen. But on the other hand, if it did happen, why did it happen only to Jimmy and Jane? What set it off? What started it?
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Lady Luck
What?
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Why, in effect, did those oddities start at that particular time to those particular people, in that particular fashion? In fact, did anything happen at all now after Jimmy's disappearance? Haines wished he could talk to him once more. Talk sensibly, quietly, without fear and hysteria and this naggingly demanding wonderment. For he had sketched to Jimmy and. And Jimmy had accepted, hadn't he, the possibility of the other now. But with that acceptance came still others. In one, Jane was dead. In one, Jimmy was dead. It was between those two that the barrier had grown so thin. If he could talk to Jimmy about it, there was also a now in which both had died and another in which neither had died. And if it was togetherness that each wanted so desperately, which was it? These were things that Haines would have liked very much to know. But he kept his mouth shut or calm. Men in white coats would have come and taken him away for treatment as they would have taken Jimmy. The only thing really sure was it was all impossible to be someone who liked Jimmy and Jane. And doubtless to Jimmy and Jane themselves, no matter which barrier had been broken, it was rather satisfyingly impossible. Haines car had been repaired. He could easily have driven out to the cemetery. For some reason, he never did. End of the Other now by Murray Leinster.
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Lady Luck
A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber 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 Matt Perrard I A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber the dark star passed, bringing with it eternal night and turning history into incredible myth in a single generation. Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air. I'd just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing. You know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady's face, all glowing in the dark and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I'd never seen a live young lady before, except in the old magazines. Cis is just a kid and Ma is pretty sick and miserable, and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and you. Even at that, I don't suppose I should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty bad ones to judge from the way she bugs her eyes at nothing and just screams and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the nest. Pa says it is natural we should react like that sometimes. When I'd recovered the pail and could look again at the opposite apartment, I got an idea of what Ma might be feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn't a young lady at all, but simply a light, a tiny light that moved stealthily from window to window, just as if one of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the earth had gone away from the sun and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify now that the earth didn't have the sun's protection. I tell you, the thought of it gave me the creeps. I just stood there shaking and almost froze my feet and did frost my helmet so solid on the inside that I couldn't have seen the light even if it had come out of one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go back inside. Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the 30 or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around to slow down the escape of air from the nest. And I wasn't quite so scared. I began to hear the tick ticking of the clocks in the nest and I knew I was getting back into air because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets. Pa's got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat, and came into the nest. Let me tell you about the nest. It's low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is covered with Thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets and the blankets roofing it touch Pa's head. He tells me it's inside a much bigger room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling. Against one of the blanket walls is a big set of shelves with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a whole row of clocks. Pa's very fussy about keeping them wound. He says we must never forget time, and without a sun or moon that would be easy to do. The fourth wall has blankets all over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go out. It keeps us from freezing and does a lot more besides. One of us must always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarm and we can use them to remind us. In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa. I think of that when she gets difficult. But now there's me to help, and Sis too. It's Pa who who is the chief guardian of the fire, though I always think of him that way. A tall man sitting cross legged, frowning anxiously at the fire, his lined face golden in its light. And every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians of the fire sometimes in the very old old days. Festal virgins, he calls them, although there was unfrozen air all around then and you didn't really need one. He was sitting just that way now, though. He got up quick to take the pail from me and bawl me out for loitering. He spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she joined in, picking on me. She's always trying to get the load off her feet. Feelings, Pa explains. He shut her up pretty fast. Siss let off a couple of silly squeals too. Pa handled the pail of air in a twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the nest, you could really feel its coldness. It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames cringed away from it as Pa put it down close by the flower fire. Yet it's that glimmery white stuff in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pa'd like to seal the whole place, but he can't. Buildings to earthquake twisted and besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke. Pa says air is tiny molecules that fly away like a flash if there isn't something to stop them. We have to watch sharp not to let the air run low. Pa always keeps a big reserve supply of it in buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra coal and cans of food and other things such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a door to outside. You see, when the earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket 10ft thick or so everywhere. And then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making another white blanket 60 or 70ft thick, maybe. Of course, all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time. First to drop out was the carbon dioxide. When you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe for good, and make the fire go out. Next there's the nitrogen, which doesn't count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket on top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that keeps us alive. Pa says we lived better than kings ever did breathing pure oxygen, but we're used to it and don't notice. Finally, at the very top, there's a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases in neat separate layers. Like a pussy cafe, Pa laughingly says, Whatever that is. I was busting to tell them all about what I'd seen. And so as soon as I ducked out of my helmet and while I was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away, Ma got nervous and began making eyes at the entry slit in the blankets and. And wringing your hands together. The hand where she'd lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good one, as usual. I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me scaring her and wanted to explain it all away quickly, yet could see I wasn't fooling. And you watched this light for some time, son? He asked when I finished. I hadn't said anything about first thinking it was a young lady's face. Somehow that part embarrassed me long enough for it to pass five windows and go to the next floor. And it didn't look like stray electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused by a growing crystal or anything like that. He wasn't just making up those ideas. Odd things happen in a world that's about as cold as can be. And just when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A slimy stuff comes crawling toward the nest just like an animal snuffing for heat. That's the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of lightning, not even Pa could figure where it came from, hit the nearby steeple and crawled up and down it for weeks until the glow finally died. Not like anything I ever saw, I told him. He stood for a moment, frowning. Then I'll go out with you and you show it to me, he said. Ma raised a howl at the idea of being left alone, and Siss joined in too, but Pa quieted them. We started climbing into our outside clothes. Mine had been worn warming by the fire. Pa made them. They have plastic headpieces that were once big double duty transparent food cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a little while, long enough for our trips for water and coal and food and so on. Ma started moaning again. I've always known there was something out there waiting to get us. I've felt it for years. Something that's part of the cold and hates all warmth and wants to destroy the nest. It's been watching us all this time and now it's coming after us. It'll get you and then come for me. Don't go, Harry. Pa had everything on but his helmet. He knelt by the fireplace and reached in and shook the long metal rod that goes up the chimney and knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it. Once a week he goes up on the roof to check if it's working all right. That's our worst trick, and Pa won't let me make it alone. Sis, PA said quietly, Come watch the fire. Keep an eye on the air, too. If it gets low or doesn't seem to be boiling fast enough, fetch another bucket from behind the blanket. But mind your hands. Use the cloth to pick up the bucket. Sis quit helping Ma be frightened and came over and did as she was told. Ma quieted down pretty suddenly, though her eyes were still kind of wild as she watched Pa fix on his helmet tight and pick up a pail and the two of us go out. Pa led the way and I took hold of his belt. It's a funny thing. I'm not afraid to go by myself, but when Pa's along I always want to hold on to him. Habit, I guess. And then there's no denying that this time I was a bit scared.
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Lady Luck
You see, it's this way we know that everything is dead out there. Pa heard the last radio voices fade away years ago and had seen some of the last folks die who weren't as lucky or well protected as us. So we knew that if there was something groping around out there, it couldn't be anything human or friendly. Besides that, there's a feeling that comes with it always being night. Cold night. Pa says there used to be some of that feeling even in the old days, but then every morning the sun would come and chase it away. I have to take his word for that, not ever remembering the sun as being anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when the dark star snatched us away from the sun, and by now it's dragged us out beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, Pa says, and taking us farther out. All the time I found myself wondering whether there mightn't be something on the dark star that wanted us, and if that was why it had captured the Earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor and I followed Pa out on the balcony. I don't know what the city looked like in the old days, but now it's beautiful. The starlight lets you see it pretty well. There's quite a bit of light in those steady points speckling the blackness above. POV says the stars used to twinkle once, but that was because there was air. We are on a hill and the shimmery plain drops away from us and then flattens out, cut up into neat squares by the troughs that used to be streets. I sometimes make my mashed potatoes look like it before I pour on the gravy. Some taller buildings push up out of the feathery plain, topped by rounded caps of air crystals like the fur hood Ma wears, only whiter. On those buildings you can see the darker squares of windows underlined by white dashes of air crystals. Some of them are on a slant, for many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all the rest that happened when the dark Star captured the earth. Here and there a few icicles hang, water icicles from the first days of the cold. Other icicles of frozen air that melted on the roofs and dripped and froze again. Sometimes one of those icicles will catch the light of a star and. And send it to you so brightly you think the star has swooped into the city. That was one of the things Pa had been thinking of when I told him about the light. But I had thought of it myself first and known it wasn't so. He touched his helmet to mine so we could talk easier, and he asked me to point out the windows to him. But there wasn't any light moving around inside them now. I or anywhere else. To my surprise, Pa didn't bawl me out and tell me I'd been seeing things. He looked all around quite a while after filling his pail, and just as we were going inside, he whipped around without warning as if to take some peeping thing off guard. I could feel it, too. The old piece was gone. There was something lurking out there, watching, waiting, getting ready inside. He said to me, touching helmets. If you see something like that again, son, don't tell the others. Your ma's sort of nervous these days, and we owe her all the feeling of safety we can give her. Once it was when your sister was born. I was ready to give up and die, but your mother kept me trotting. Another time she kept the fire going a whole week all. All by herself when I was sick. Nursed me and took care of the two of you, too. You know that game we sometimes play sitting in a square in the nest, tossing a ball around. Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight and hope there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave. His talking to me that way made me feel grown up and good. But it didn't wipe away the thing outside from the back of my mind or the fact that Pa took it seriously. It's hard to hide your feelings about such a thing. When we got back in the nest and took off our outside clothes, Pa laughed about it all and told them it was nothing and kidded me for having such an imagination. But his words fell flat. He didn't convince Ma and Sis any more than he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling the Courage ball. Something had to Be done. And almost before I knew what I was going to say, I heard myself asking. Asking Pa to tell us about the old days and how it all happened. He sometimes doesn't mind telling that story, and Sis and I sure like to listen to it, and he got my idea. So we were all settled around the fire in a wink and Ma pushed up some cans to thaw for supper and Pa began. Before he did, though, I noticed him casually get a hammer from the shelf and. And lay it down beside him. It was the same old story as always. I think I could recite the main thread of it in my sleep, though. Pa always puts in a new detail or two and keeps improving it in spots. He told us how the earth had been swinging around the sun ever so steady and warm, and the people on it fixing to make money and wars and have a good time and get power and treat each other right are wrong when without warning there comes charging out of space this dead star, this burned out sun and upsets everything. You know, I find it hard to believe in the way those people felt, any more than I can believe in the swarming number of them. Imagine people getting ready for the horrible sort of war they were cooking up, wanting it even, or at least wishing it were over so as to end their nervousness. As if all folks didn't have to hang together and pool every bit of warmth just to keep alive. And how can they have hoped to end danger any more than we can hope to end the cold? Sometimes I think Pa exaggerates and makes things out too black. He's cross with us once in a while and was probably cross with all those folks. Still, some. Some of the things I read in the old magazines sound pretty wild. He may be right. The dark star, as Pa went on telling it, rushed in pretty fast and there wasn't much time to get ready. At the beginning. They tried to keep it a secret from most people, but then the truth came out, what with the earthquakes and floods. Imagine oceans of unfrozen water and people seeing stars blotted out by something on a clear night. First off they thought it would hit the sun, and then they thought it would hit the Earth. There was even the start of a rush to get to a place called China because people thought the star would hit on the other side, but then they found it wasn't going to hit either side, but was going to come very close to the Earth. Most of the other planets were on the other side of the sun and didn't get involved. The sun and the Newcomer fought over the Earth for a little while, pulling it this way and that, like two dogs growling over a bone. Pa described it this time, and then the newcomer won and carried us off. The sun got a consolation prize, though at the last minute he managed to hold on to the moon. That was the time of the monster earthquakes and floods 20 times worse than anything before. It was also the time of the Big Jerk, as Pa calls it, when all Earth got yanked suddenly, just as Pa has done to me once or twice, grabbing me by the collar to do it when I've been sitting too far from the fire. You see, the Dark Star was going through space faster than the sun and in the opposite direction, and it had to wrench the world considerably in order to take it away. The Big Jerk didn't last long. It was over as soon as the Earth was settled down in its new orbit around the Dark Star. But it was pretty terrible while it lasted. Pa says that all sorts of cliffs and buildings toppled, oceans slopped over, swamps and sandy deserts gave great sliding surges that buried nearby lands. Earth was almost jerked out of its atmosphere blanket, and the air got so thin in spots that people keeled over and fainted. Though, of course, at the same time they were getting knocked down by the Big Jerk. And maybe their bones broke or skulls cracked. We've often asked Pa how people acted during that time, whether they were scared or brave or crazy or stunned or all four. But he's sort of leery of the subject, and he was again tonight. He says he was mostly too busy to notice. You see, Pa and some scientist friends of his had figured out part of what was going to happen. They'd known we'd get captured and our air would freeze and. And they'd been working like mad to fix up a place with airtight walls and doors and insulation against the cold and big supplies of food and fuel and water and bottled air. But the place got smashed in the last earthquakes, and all Pa's friends were killed then and in the Big Jerk. So he had to start over and throw the nest together quick without any advantages, just using any stuff he could lay his hands on. I guess he's telling pretty much the truth when he says he didn't have any time to keep an eye on how other folks behaved, either then or in the Big freeze that followed. Followed very quick, you know, both, because the Dark Star was pulling its way very fast and because Earth's rotation had been slowed in the tug of war, so that the nights were ten old nights long. Still, I'VE got an idea of some of the things that happen from the frozen folk. I've seen a few of them in other rooms in our building, others clustered around the furnaces in the basements where we go for coal. In one of the rooms an old man sits stiff in a chair with an arm and a leg in splints. In another, a man and woman are huddled together in a bed with with heaps of covers over them. You can just see their heads peeking out close together. And in another, a beautiful young lady is sitting with a pile of wraps huddled around her, looking hopefully toward the door as if waiting for someone who never came back with warmth and food. They're all still and stiff as statues, of course, but just like life. Pa showed them to me once in quick winks of his flashlight when he still had a fair supply of batteries and could afford to waste a little light. They scared me pretty bad and made my heart pound, especially the young lady, now with Pa telling his story for the umpteenth time, to take our minds off another scare, I got to thinking of the frozen folk again. All of a sudden I got an idea that scared me worse than anything yet. You see, I just remembered the face I thought I'd seen in the window. I'd forgotten about that on account of trying to hide it from the others. What, I asked myself, if the frozen folk were coming to life. What if they were like the liquid helium that got a new lease on life and started crawling toward the heat just when you thought its molecules ought to freeze solid forever? Or like the electricity that moves endlessly when it's just about as cold as that? What if the ever growing cold with the temperature creeping down the last few degrees to the last zero had mysteriously wakened the frozen folk to life? Not warm blooded life, but something icy and horrible. That was a worse idea than the one about something coming down from the dark star to get us. Or maybe, I thought, both ideas might be true, something coming down from the dark star and making the frozen folk move, using them to do its work. That would fit with both things. I'd seen the beautiful young lady in the moving starlike light, the frozen folk with minds from the dark star behind their unwinking eyes, creeping, crawling, snuffing their way, following the heat to the nest. I tell you, that thought gave me a very bad turn, and I wanted very badly to tell the others my fears. But I remembered what Pa had said and clenched my teeth and didn't speak. We were all sitting very still, even the fire was burning silently. There was just the sound of Pa's voice and the clocks, and then from beyond the blankets, I thought I heard a tiny noise. My skin tightened all over me. Pa was telling about the early years in the nest and had come to the place where he philosophizes. So I ask myself, then he said, what's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Or why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold and loneliness? The human race is done. The Earth is done. Why not give up? I asked myself, and all of a sudden I got the answer. Again I heard the noise, louder this time, a kind of uncertain shuffling tread coming closer. I couldn't breathe. Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold, PA was saying. The Earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet, and no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur or the petals of flowers. You've seen pictures of those, but I can't describe how they feel.
[367:43]
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[368:02]
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[368:12]
Lady Luck
or the fires glow. It makes everything else worth while, and that's as true for the last man as the first. And still the steps kept shuffling closer. It seemed to me that the inmost blanket trembled and bulged a little, just as if they were burned into my imagination. I kept seeing those peering, frozen eyes. So right then and there, Pa went on, and now I could tell that he heard the steps too, and was talking loud so we maybe wouldn't hear them. Right then and there I told myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity ahead of us. I'd have children and teach them all I could. I'd get them to read books. I'd plan for the future, try to enlarge and seal the nest. I'd do what I could to keep everything beautiful and growing. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars. But then the blanket actually did move and lift, and there was a bright light somewhere behind it. Pa's voice stopped and his eyes turned to the widening slit and and his hand went out until it touched and gripped the handle of the hammer beside him. In through the blanket stepped the beautiful young lady. She stood there looking at us in the strangest way, and she carried something bright and unwinking in her hand, and two other faces peered over her shoulders, men's faces, white and staring. Well, my heart couldn't have been stopped for more than four or five beats before I realized she was wearing a suit and helmet like Pa's homemade ones, only fancier, and that the men were too, and that the frozen folk certainly wouldn't be wearing those. Also, I noticed that the bright thing in her hand was just a kind of flashlight. The silence kept on while I swallowed hard a couple of times, and after that there was all sorts of jabbering and confused commotion. They were simply people, you see. We hadn't been the only ones to survive. We just thought so for naturally enough reasons. These three people had survived, and quite a few others with them, and when we found out how they survived, Pa let out the biggest whoop of joy. They were from Los Alamos, and they were getting their heat and power from atomic energy, just using the uranium and plutonium intended for bombs. They had enough to go on for thousands of years. They had a regular little airtight city with airlocks and all. They even generated electric light and grew plants and animals by it. At this Pa let out a second whoop, waking Ma from her faint. But if we were flabbergasted at them, they were double flabbergasted at us. One of the men kept saying, but it's impossible, I tell you. You can't maintain an air supply without hermetic sealing. It's simply impossible. That was after he had got his helmet off and was using our air. Meanwhile, the young lady kept looking around at us as if we were still saints and telling us we'd done something amazing, and suddenly she broke down and cried. They'd been scouting around for survivors, but they never expected to find any in a place like this. They had rocket ships at Los Alamos and plenty of chemical fuel. As for liquid oxygen, all you had to do was go out and shovel the air blanket at the top level. So after they'd got things going smoothly at Los Alamos, which had taken years, they decided to make some trips to likely places where there might be other survivors. No good trying long distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the earth. Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harbor, Harwell and Tenatuba. And now they'd been giving our city a look, not really expecting to find anything. But they had an instrument that noticed the faintest heat waves and it had told them there was something warm down here, so they'd landed to investigate. Of course, we hadn't heard them land since there was no air to carry the sound and they'd had to investigate around quite a while to before finding us. Their instruments had given them a wrong steer and they'd wasted some time in the building across the street. By now all five adults were talking like 60. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of the ice in the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff and even asking about how the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkled their noses that they found the nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and just asked bushels of questions. In fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Paul forgot about things. And it wasn't until they were all getting groggy that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets. Of course that started them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk. They weren't used to so much oxygen. Funny thing, though, I didn't do much talking at all and Sis hung on to Ma all the time and hid her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable and disturbed myself. Even about the young lady glimpsing her outside there. I'd had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me. I sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the nest and let us be alone and get our feelings straightened out. And when the newcomers began to talk about our all going to Los Alamos, and as if that were taken for granted, I could see that something of the same feeling struck Pa and Ma too. Pa got very silent all of a sudden, and Ma kept telling the young lady, but I wouldn't know how to act there, and I haven't any clothes. The strangers were puzzled, like anything at first, but then they got the idea. As Pa kept saying, it just doesn't seem right to let this fire go out. Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back. It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a survival school. Or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake, or in the Congo. Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I been thinking a lot about Los Alamos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for myself. You ask me, Pa wants to see them, too. He's been getting pretty thoughtful, watching Ma and Sis perk up. It's different now that we know others are alive, he explains to me. Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless any more. Neither do I, for that matter. Not having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a person. I looked around at the blanket walls and the fire and the pails of air boiling away, and Ma and Sis sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light. It's not going to be easy to leave the nest, I said, wanting to cry. Kind of. It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers. He nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. Then he looked at the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on, just as if it was one of our birthdays or Christmas. You'll quickly get over that feeling, son, he said. The trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller till it ended with just the nest. Now it'll be good to have a real huge world again, the way it was in the beginning. I guess he's right. You think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till I grow up? I'll be 20 in only 10 years. A pail of Air by Fritz Liber.
[377:42]
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Postmark Ganymede 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 recording by Dale Grothman Consider the poor mailman of the future. To sleet and snow and dead of night. Things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds will be added sub zero void meteors and planets that won't stay put. Maybe he'll decide that for six cents an ounce. It just ain't worth it. Postmark Ganymede by Robert Silverberg. I'm washed up, preston growled bitterly. They made a postman out of me. Me a postman. He crumpled the assignment memo into a small hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days, which was as long as it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his transfer to Postal Delivery. Suddenly Preston felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a man in the trim gray of a patrolman's uniform. What do you want, Dawes? Chief's been looking for you, Preston. It's time for you to get going on your run. Preston scowled. Time to go deliver the mail, eh? He spat. Don't they have anything better to do with good spacemen than make letter carriers out of them? The other man shook his head. You won't get anywhere grousing about it, Preston. Your papers don't specify which branch you're assigned to, and if they want to make you carry the mail, that's it. His voice became suddenly gentle. Come on, Bress. One last drink and then let's go. You don't want to spoil a good record, do you? No, preston said Reflexively. He gulped his drink and stood up. Okay, I'm ready. Neither snow nor rain shall stay me from my appointed rounds or however the damned thing goes. That's a smart attitude, Preston. Come on, I'll walk you over to Administration. Savagely, Preston ripped away the hand that the other had put around his shoulders. I can get there myself. At least give me credit for that. Ok, dawes said, shrugging. Well, good luck, Preston. Yeah, thanks. Thanks real lots. He pushed his way past the man in space grays and shouldered past a couple of barflies as he left. He pushed open the door of the bar and stood outside for a moment. It was near midnight and the sky over Nome Spaceport was bright with stars. Preston's trained eye picked out Mars, Jupiter, Uranus. There they were, waiting. But he could spend the rest of his days ferrying letters on the Ganymede run. He sucked in the cold night air of summertime Alaska and squared his shoulders. Two hours later Preston sat at the controls of a one man patrol ship, just as he had in the old days. Only the control panel was bare where the firing studs of the heavy guns was found in regular patrol ships in the cargo hold Instead of crates of spare ammo, there were three bulging sacks of mail destined for the colony on Ganymede. Slight difference, Preston thought as he set up his blast pattern. Okay, Preston, came a voice from the tower. You've got clearance. Cheers, preston said, and yanked the blast lever. The ship jolted upward, and for a second he felt a little of the old thrill, until he remembered. He took the ship out in space, saw the blackness in the viewplate. The radio crackled. Come in, Postal ship. Come in, Postal ship. I'm in. What do you want? We're your convoy, a hard voice said. Patrol ship O8756. Lieutenant Mellers above you. Down at three o'. Clock. Patrol ship 10732. Lieutenant Gunderson. We'll take you through the Pirate Belt. Preston felt his face go hot with shame. Mellor's Gunderson. They would stick two of his old sidekicks on the job of guarding him. Please acknowledge, mellor said. The ice worms are not expecting any mail. Just the mailman. Preston paused. Then postal ship 1872. Lieutenant Preston aboard. I acknowledge the message. There was a stunned silence. Preston? How Preston? The one and only, preston said. What are you doing on a postal ship? Mellors asked. Why don't you ask the chief that? He's the one who yanked me out of patrol and put me here. Can you beat that? Gunderson asked incredulously. Hal Preston on a postal ship? Yeah. Incredible, isn't it? Preston asked bitterly. You can't believe your ears. Well, you'd better believe it, because here I am. Must be some clerical error, gunderson said. Let's change the subject, preston snapped. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and flying, playing on spinquest, and there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30, coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms P I N Q
[383:52]
Narrator/Reader
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SpinQuest Advertiser
free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. They were silent for a moment as the three ships, two armed and one loaded with mail for Ganymede, streaked outward away from Earth. Manipulating his controls with the ease of long experience, Preston guided the ship smoothly toward the gleaming bulk of far off Jupiter. Even at this distance, he could see five or six bright pips surrounding the huge planet. There was Callista, and there was Ganymede. He made computations, checked his controls figured orbits. Anything to keep from having to talk to his two ex patrol mates or from having to think about the humiliating job he was on. Anything to pirates Move up to two o'. Clock. Preston came awake. He picked off the location of the pirate ships. There were two of them coming up out of the asteroid belt. Small, deadly compact, they orbited toward him. He pounded the instrument panel in impotent rage, looking for the guns that weren't there. Don't worry, Prez, said Miller's voice. We'll take care of him for you. Thanks, preston said bitterly. He watched as the pirate ships approached, longing to trade places with the men in the patrol ships above and and below him. Suddenly a bright spear of flame lashed out across space, and the hull of Gunderson's ship glowed cherry red. I'm okay, gunderson reported immediately. Screens took the charge. Preston gripped his controls and threw the ship into a plunging dive that dropped it back behind the protection of both patrol ships. He saw Gunderson and Mellors converge on one of the pirates. Two blue beams licked out and the pirate ship exploded. But then the second pirate ship swooped down in an unexpected dive. Look out. Yelled Preston helplessly. But it was too late. Beams ripped into the hull of Mellor's ship, and a dark fissure line opened down the side of the ship. Preston smashed his hand against the control panel. Better to die in an honest dog fight than to live this way. It was one against one now, Gunderson against the pirate. Preston dropped back again to take advantage of the patrol ship's protection. I'm going to try a diversionary tactic, gunderson said on the untappable type beam. Get ready to cut under and streak for Ganymede with all you got. Check. Preston watched as the tactic got underway. Gunderson's ship traveled in a long, looping spiral that drew the pirate into the upper quadrant of space, his path free. Preston guided his ship under the other two and toward unobstructed freedom. As he looked back, he saw Gunderson streaming for the pirate on a sure collision orbit. He turned away. The score was two patrolmen dead, two ships wrecked, but the males would get through. Shaking his head, Preston leaned forward over his control board and headed on toward Ganymede. The blue, white frozen moon hung beneath him. Preston snapped on the radio, Ganymede Colony, come in, please. This is your postal ship. The words tasted sour in his mouth. There was silence for a second. Come in, Ganymede, preston repeated impatiently. And then the sound of a distress signal cut across his audio pickup. It was coming on wide beam from the satellite below, and they had cut out all receiving facilities in an attempt to step up their transmitter. Preston reached for the wide beam stud. Okay, I picked up your signal. Ganymede. Come in now. This is Ganymede, a tense voice said. We got trouble down here. Who are you? Mail ship, preston said. From Earth. What's going on? There was a sound of voices whispering something near the microphone. Finally. Hello, mail ship. Yeah, you're going to have to turn back to Earth, fellow. You can't land here. It's rough on us missing the mail trip. But Preston said impatiently, why can't I land? What the devil's going on down there? We've been invaded, a tired voice said. The colony's been completely surrounded by ice worms. Ice worms? The local native life, the colonists explained. They're about 30ft long, a foot wide, and mostly mouth. There's a ring of them about a hundred yards wide surrounding the dome. They can't get in and we can't get out, and we can't figure any possible approach for you. Pretty, preston said. But why didn't the things bother you while you were building your dome? Apparently they have a long hibernation cycle. We've only been here two years, you know. The ice worms must all have been asleep when we came. But they came swarming out of the ice by the hundreds last month. How come Earth doesn't know the antenna of our long range transmitter is outside the dome? One of the worms came by and chewed the antenna right off. All we've got left is this short range thing we're using, and it's no good more than 10,000 miles from here. You're the first one who's been this close since it happened. I get it. Preston closed his eyes for a second, trying to think things out. The colony was under blockade by hostile alien life, thereby making it impossible for him to deliver the mail. Okay. If he'd been a regular member of the postal service, he'd have given it up as a bad job and gone back to Earth to report the difficulty. But I'm not going back. I'll be the best damn mailman they've got. Give me a landing orbit anyway, Ganymede. But you can't come down here. How will you leave your ship? Don't worry about that, preston said calmly. We have to worry. We don't dare open the dome with those creatures outside. You can't come down postal ship. You want your mail or don't you? The colonists paused well, OK then, preston said. Shut up and give me the landing coordinates. There was a pause, and then the figures started coming over. Preston jotted them down on the scratch pad. Ok, I've got them now. Sit tight and wait. He glanced contemptuously at the three mail pouches behind him, grinned, and started setting up the orbit. Mailman, am I? I'll show them. He brought the postal ship down with all the skill of his years in the patrol, spiraling in around the big satellite of Jupiter as cautiously and as precisely as if he were zeroing in on a pirate lair in the asteroid belt. In its own way, this was as dangerous, perhaps even more so. Preston guided the ship into an ever narrowing orbit, which he stabilized about a hundred miles over the surface of Ganymede. As his ship swung around the moon's poles in its tight orbit, he began to figure some fuel computations. His scratch pad began to fill with fuel storage, escape velocity, margin of error, safety factor. Finally he looked up. He had computed exactly how much spare fuel he had, how much he could afford to waste. It was a small figure. Too small, perhaps. He turned on the radio. Ganymede, where are you, postal ship? I'm in a tight orbit about a hundred miles up, preston said. Give me the figures on the circumference of your dome. Ganymede. Seven miles, the colonist said. What are you planning to do? Preston didn't answer. He broke contact and scribbled some more figures. Seven miles of ice worms, eh? That was too much to handle. He had planned on dropping flaming fuel on them and burning them out, but he couldn't do it that way. He would have to try a different tactic. Down below, he could see the blue white ammonia ice that was the frozen atmosphere of Ganymede. Shimmering gently amid the whiteness was the transparent yellow of the dome, beneath whose curved walls lived the Ganymede colony. Even forewarned, Preston shuddered. Surrounding the dome was a living, writhing belt of giant worms. Lovely, he said. Just lovely. Getting up, he clambered over the mail sacks and headed toward the rear of the ship, hunting for the auxiliary fuel tanks. Working rapidly, he lugged one out and strapped it to an empty gun turret, making sure he could get it loose again when he needed it. He wiped away sweat and checked the angle at which the fuel tank would face the ground when he came down for a landing. Satisfied, he knocked a hole in the side of the fuel tank. Okay, Ganymede, he radioed. I'm coming down. He blasted loose from the tight orbit and rocked the ship down on manual. The forbidding surface of Ganymede drew closer and closer. Now he could see the ice worms plainly. Hideous thick creatures lying coiled in masses around the dome. Preston checked his spacesuit to make sure it was sealed. The instruments told him he was barely 10 miles above Ganymede now. One more swing around the poles would do it. He peered down as the dome came below and once again snapped on the radio. I'm going to come down and burn a path through those worms for you. Watch me carefully and jump to it when you see me land. I want that airlock open or else. But. No buts. He was right. Overhead now. Just one ordinary type gun would have solved the whole problem, he thought. But postal ships don't get guns. They weren't supposed to need them. He centered the ship as well as he could on the dome below and threw it into automatic pilot. Jumping from the control panel, he ran back toward the gun turret and slammed shut the plexi light screen. Its outer wall opened and the fuel tank went tumbling outward and down. He returned to his control panel seat and looked at the viewscreen. He smiled. The fuel tank was lying near the dome, right in the middle of the nest of ice worms. The fuel was leaking from the puncture. The ice worms writhed in from all sides. Now, preston said grimly. The ship roared down. Jets blasting the fire, licked out, heated the ground, melted the snow, ignited the fuel tank. A gigantic flame blazed up, reflecting harshly off the snows of Ganymede, and the mindless ice worms came marching toward the fire, being consumed as still others devoured the bodies of the dead and dying. Preston looked away and concentrated on the business of finding a place to land the ship. The holocaust still raged as he leapt down from the catwalk of the ship, clutching one of the heavy mail sacks and struggling through the melting snows to the airlock. He grinned. The airlock was open. Arms grabbed him, pulling him through. Someone opened his helmet. Great job, postman. There are two more mail sacks, preston said. Get men out after them. The man in charge gestured to two young colonists who donned spacesuits and dashed through the airlock. Preston watched as they raced to the ship, climbed in, and returned a few moments later with the mail sacks. You've got it all, Preston said. I'm checking out. I'll get word to the patrol to get down here and clean up that mess for you. How can we thank you? The official looking man said. No need to, preston said casually. I had to get the mail down here someway, didn't I? He turned away, smiling to himself. Maybe the chief had known what he was doing when he took an experienced patrolman and dumped him into postal. Delivering the mail to Ganymede had been more hazardous than fighting off half a dozen space pirates. I guess I was wrong, Preston thought. This is no snap job for old men. Preoccupied, he started out through the airlock. The man in charge caught his arm. Say we don't even know your name. Here you are a hero and hero? Preston shrugged. All I did was deliver the mail. It's all in a day's work, you know. The mail's got to get through. End of Postmark Ganymede By Robert Silverberg.
[397:33]
Lady Luck
Say hello from Me By Frank W. Coggins 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 Matt Perard say hello for Me By Frank W. Coggins 20 Years is a long time to live in anticipation. At least Professor Pettibone thought so. Until the 20 years were up, this was to be the day. But of course, Professor Pettibone had no way of knowing it. He rose as he had been doing for the previous 20 years, donned the tattered remnants of his spacesuit, and went out into the open. He stood erect, bronzed, magnificent, faced distant Earth, and recited, Good morning, bright sunshine. We are glad you are here. You make the world happy and bring us good cheer. It was something he had heard as a child and isolated here on Mars. He had remembered it and used it to keep from losing his power of speech. The ritual finished, he walked to the edge of the nearest canal and gathered a bushel or so of dried Martian moss. He returned and began polishing the shiny exterior of the wrecked spaceship. It had to really glitter if it was to be an effective beacon in guiding the rescue ship. Professor Cuddebone knew, had known for years that a ship would come. It was just a matter of time. And as the years, years, slipped by, his faith diminished. Not a whit with his task half completed, he glanced up at the sun and quickened the polishing. It was a long walk to the place the berry bushes grew, and if he arrived too late, the sun would have dried out the night's crop of fragile berries, and he would wait until the morrow for nourishment. But on this day he was fated to arrive, arrive at the bush area not at all, because an alien sound from above again drew the professor's eyes from his work, and he knew that the day had arrived. The ship was three times as large as any he had ever visualized, and its futuristic design told him sharply how far he had fallen behind in his dreaming. He smiled and said, quite calmly, I dare say I am about to be rescued. And he experienced a thrill as the great ship sat down and two men emerged therefrom. A thrill tinged with a guilt sense because emotional experiences were rare in an isolated life and seemed somehow indecent. The two men had weapons they advanced upon. Professor Pedagogue looked up into his face reflected a certain wary hostility. That the hostility was tinged with instinctive respect, even awe made it no less potent. One of them asked, fella man came and shook Skyboat. Long time ago. Him dead. Where appropriate gestures accompanied the words, Professor Pettibone smiled down at the little men and bowed. You are of course referring to me. I came in the ship. I am Professor Pettibone. It was nice of you to hunt me up. The eyes of the two Terran spacemen met and locked in startled inquiry. One of them voiced the reaction of both when he said, what the hell? You no doubt are curious as to the fate of the other members of the expedition. They were killed. All save Flying Fletcher, who lasted a week. Professor Pettibone waved a hand there in the graveyard, but their eyes remained on the only survivor of that ill fated first expedition. It was hard to accept him as the man they sought. But faced with undeniable similarity between what they expected and what they had found, the two spacemen had no alternative. I hope your food supply is ample and varied, Professor Pettibone said. This seemed to bring them out of their bemusement. Of course, Professor. Would you care to come aboard? The other made a try at congenial levity. You must be pretty hungry after 20 years. Really? Has it been that long? I tried to keep track at first. We can blast off any time. You say you're probably pretty anxious to get back. Indeed I am. The changes in 20 years must be breathtaking. I wonder if they'll remember me. A short time later the professor said, it's amazing. A ship of this size handled by only two men. Then he sat down to a repast laid out by one of the odd spacemen. But after nibbling a bit of this, a forkful of that, he found that satisfaction lay in the anticipation more so than than in the eating. We'll look around and see what we can find in the way of clothing for you, professor, one of the spacemen said. Then the man's bemusement returned. His eyes traveled over the magnificent physique before him the perfect giant of a man, the great Apollo like head with the calm clear eyes, the expression of complete contentment and serenity. The spaceman said, professor, to what do you attribute the changes in your body? What is there about this planet? I really don't know. Professor Pettibone looked down his torso with an impersonal eye. I think the greener skin pigmentation is a result of mineral heavy vapors that occur during certain seasons. The growth as to my body, I really don't know. But the two spacemen, though they didn't refer to it, were not concerned with the body so much as the aura of completeness, the radiation of contentment which came from somewhere within. And it was passing strange that nothing more was said about the professor returning to Earth. No great revelation suddenly arrived at that he would not go. Rather they discussed various things that three gentlemen meeting casually would discuss. Then Professor Pettigone arose from his chair and said, it was kind of you to drop off and see me. And one of the spacemen replied, a pleasure, sir, a real pleasure indeed. Then the professor left the ship and watched it lift up on a tail of red fire and go away. He raised an arm and waved. Say hello for me, he called. Then he turned away and from force of havoc he began again to polish the hull, knowing that he would keep it shining and be proud of it for many years to come. Almost beyond reach of the planet, one of the spacemen flipped a switch and put certain sensitive communication mechanisms to work. So sensitive they could pick up ethereum vibrations far away and make them audible. But only faintly came the pleasant voice, voice of a contented man. Good morning, bright sunshine. We're glad you are here. You make the world end of say hello for Me by Frank W. Coggins.
[405:13]
Celebration Host
The Semantic War by Bill Clothier this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org perhaps there have been causes for slaughter just as silly as this was. But try and find one. The rain pours down chill out of a sullen sky. My pace quickens as I try to regain the relative warmth and shelter of the cavern before I become thoroughly drenched. I cannot afford to catch a cold. All alone as I am and with no medicine, I would stand too great a chance of a quick death. These lowering Oregon skies that still hold traces of nameless disease in their writhing cloud tendrils. I'm not just afraid of a cold. That would only be the key for Some other malady to use and strike me down forever. I see the cave up ahead and feel a sense of contentment as I draw near, near and then duck inside its stony mouth. The rain hisses without, but inside it's dry. There's a heavy cowhide hanging on a peg in the wall, and I take it down and wrap it around me. Soon I will be warm once more. I may stave off my ultimate end. Sometimes I wonder why I wish to put it off. Certainly according to my old standards, there was no point in living. But somehow I feel that the mere fact of living is justification in itself, even for such a life as mine. I didn't always feel this way, but then circumstances change, and people change with them. I changed my circumstances more than myself, but I had no alternative. So now I exist. I suppose I should be content. After all, I am alive. And in my own simple way I enjoy life. I can remember people who asked nothing more than to be allowed to live, to exist. Ironically enough, I always considered them subnormal. I felt that a man should strive to do something that would not only perpetuate the happiness of his own life, but that of his fellow men, something that would make life more beautiful and easier and more kind. It was with this feeling that I applied myself as a student of philosophy at Stanford University. And the strengthening of this same belief led me to take up teaching and embrace it as the only way of obtaining genuine happiness. My personal philosophy was simple. I would learn about life in all its real and symbolic meanings and then teach it to my pupils, each of whom I felt sure or thirsting for the knowledge that I was extracting from my cultural environment. I would show them the meaning behind things that I felt was the key to successful living. Now it seems strangely pathetic that I should have essayed such an impossible task. But even a professor of philosophy can be mistaken and become confused. I remember when I first became aware of the movement. Movement. For years we had been drilling certain precepts into the soft, impressionable heads of those students who came under our influence. Liberalism, some called it. The right to take the values accumulated by society over a period of hundreds of years and bend them to fit whatever idea or act was contemplated. By such methods, it was possible to fit the more is to the deed, not the deed to the mortal mores. Oh, it was a wonderful theory, one that promised to project all human activities entirely beyond good and evil. However, I digress. It was a spring morning at Berkeley, California, when I had my first inkling of the movement. I was sitting in my office, gazing out the window and considering my life in my usual contemplative fashion. I might say I was being rather smug. I was thinking how fortunate I was to have been graduated from Stanford with such high honors, and how my good luck had stayed with me until I received my doctor's degree in a famous eastern university and came out to take an associate professorship at the Berkeley campus. I was watching the hurrying figures below on the crosswalks and idly noting the brilliant green of the shrubbery and trees and lawn. I was mixing up Keats with a bit of philosophy and thoroughly enjoying myself. Knowledge is truth, truth beauty, I mused. That is all we know on earth and all we need to know. There was a knock on my door and I said, come in, reluctantly abandoning my train of thought, which had just picked up Shakespeare, whom I was going to consider as two thirds philosopher and one third poet. I have never felt that the field of literature had the sole claim to Shakespeare's greatness. Professor Lillick came in, visibly perturbed. Lillick was a somewhat erratic individual for a professor at least, and he was often perturbed once he became excited about the possibilities of the campus shrubbery, being stunted and discolored by the actions of certain dogs living on campus. He was not a philosophy professor, of course, but a member of the political science group. Carlson? He asked nervously. Have you heard about it yet? I have no idea, I returned good naturedly. Have I heard about what? He looked behind him as if he thought he might be followed. Then he whirled around, his sharp featured face alight with feeling. Carlson. The wiftic doofles. The miradi. And he stared at me intently, his gimlet eyes almost blazing. I stared back at him blankly. You haven't heard? He exclaimed. I thought surely you would know about it. You're always talking about freedom to apply thought for the good of humanity. Well, we're finally going to do something about it. You'll see. Keep your ears open, Carlson. Then he turned and started out of the room. He paused at the threshold and fixed me again with his ferret like eyes. The wishtick doofles. The Miradi, he said, and vanished through the door. And that was my first unheeded omen of what was to come. I paid little attention to it. Lilac wasn't the sort of man who inspired attention. As a matter of fact, I consider reporting him to the head of his department as being on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But I didn't. In those days, nervous breakdowns were a common occurrence around college campuses the educational profession was a very hazardous occupation. One southern university, for example, reported five faculty suicides during spring quarter. In the days that followed, however, I began to realize that there was some sort of movement being fostered by the student body. It couldn't be defined, but it could be felt and seen. The students began to form groups and hold meetings, often without official sanction. What they were about could not be discovered, but some of the results soon became evident. For one thing, certain students began to walk on one side of the street and the other students walked on the other side. The ones who used the north side of the street wore green sweaters with white trousers or skirts, and the south side students wore white sweaters with green trousers or skirts. It even got to the point where those in green sweaters went only to classes in the morning morning, and those in white attended the afternoon sessions. Then the little white cards began to appear. They were sent through the mail. They were slipped under doorways and in desk drawers. They turned up beside your plate at dinner and under your pillow at night. They were pasted on your front door in the morning, and they appeared in the fly leaves of your books. They were even hung on trees like fruit and and surely no fruit ever spored so queer a seedling. They said either one thing or the other. The Wystik Doofles the Miraddy or the Mirati Doofles the Wystik. Which card belonged to what group was not immediately clear. It was not until the riots broke out that the thing began to be seen in its proper perspective. And then it was too late. When the first riot started, it was assumed that the university officials and the police could quell it in a very short time. But strangely enough, as additional police were called in, the battle raged even more fiercely. I could see part of the affair from my window and therefore was able to understand why the increasing police force only added to the turmoil. They were fighting one another, and through the din could be heard the wild shouts of the Woostick Doofles the Miradi or the Miradi Doofles the Woostick.
[414:14]
SpinQuest Advertiser
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[414:16]
Lady Luck
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[414:44]
Celebration Host
The final blow came when I saw the Registrar and the Dean of Men struggling fiercely in one of the hedgerows and heard the Dean of Men yell in wild exultation as he brought a briefcase down on the registrar's head. The Wistick Doofles the Moretti. Then someone broke in through the door of my office. I turned in alarm and saw a huge three letter man standing only a few feet from me. He had been in one of my classes. I remembered something about his being the hardest driving fullback on the Pacific Coast. He was certainly the dumbest philosophy student I ever flunked. His hair was mussed and he was wild eyed. He had blood on his face and chest and his clothes were torn and grass stained. The Wistick Doofles. The Miradi, he said. Get out of my office, I told him coldly, and stay out. So you're on the other side, he snarled. I hoped you would be. He started toward me and I seized a book end on my desk and tried to strike him with it, but he brushed it aside and came on in. His first blow nearly broke my arm and as I dropped my guard due to the numbing pain and he struck me solidly on the side of the jaw. When I recovered consciousness I was lying by the side of my desk where I had fallen. My head ached and my neck was stiff. I got painfully to my feet and then noticed the big square of cardboard pinned to the door of my office. It was lettered in red pencil and in past tense, said the Wistick Doofled the Moretti. The uprisings arose spontaneously in all parts of the country. They were not confined to colleges. They were not confined to any particular group. They encompassed nearly the entire population, and the fervor aroused by their battle cry, whichever one it might be, was beyond all comprehension. I could not understand either slogan's meaning, and there were others like myself. On several occasions I attempted to find out, but I was beaten twice and threatened with a pistol the third time. So I gave up all such efforts. I was never much given to any sort of physical violence. One night I went home thoroughly disheartened by the state of affairs. The university was hardly functioning. Nearly the entire faculty, including the college president, had been drawn into one camp or the other. Their actions were utterly abhorrent to me. If the professor was a Green Top or Westikian, he lectured only the Green tops. If he belonged to the Maradians or White Top faction, they were the only ones who could enter his classroom. The two groups were so evenly divided that open violence was frowned upon as a means of attaining whatever end they had in view. They were biding their time and gathering strength for fresh onslaughts on each other. As I say, I went home feeling very discouraged. My wife was in the kitchen preparing dinner, and I went in and sat down at the table while she worked. The daily paper was lying on the table, its headlines loaded with stories of bloodshed and strife throughout the nation. I glanced through them. Lately there seemed to be a sort of pattern forming east of the Mississippi. The general slogan was emerging as the Moretti duffeling the wishtick west of the Mississippi. The Wystick was receiving the greater support, and it seemed that the younger people and the women preferred the Mirati, while the elderly people and most men were on the side of the Wystick. I commented on this. My wife answered briefly, of course, anyone should know that the Mirati will win out. She went on with preparations for dinner, not looking at me. I sat stunned for a moment. Great God in heaven, not my wife. Am I to understand that you are taking any part of this seriously? I asked with some heat. The whole thing is a horrible, pointless prank. She turned and faced me squarely. Not to me, I say the Moretti will win out. I want it to. And I think you'd be wise to get on the bandwagon while there's still time. I realized she was serious. Dead serious. I tried a cautious query. Just what does the duffelation of the WIS stick by the Mirati mean? And it made her angry. It actually made her angry. She switched off the front burner and walked past me into the living room. I didn't think she was going to answer, but she did. Sort of. There is no excuse for an egghead in your position not knowing what it means. Her voice was strained and tense. If you had any perception whatsoever, you would understand what the Moretti has to give the American people. It's our only hope and you've got to take sides. You're either for the Mirati or the Riftic. You can't take the middle way. I felt completely isolated. Wait. I don't know what it means. Forget it, she broke in. I should have known. You were born, you have lived, and you will die an egghead in your ivory tower. Just remember the Miradi doofles, the Wuftic. And she swept on upstairs to pack and out of my life. And that's the way it was. Whatever malignant poison had seeped into the collective brain of the nation, it was certainly a devastating leveler. Of all Sorts of institutions and values. Wives left husbands and husbands left wives. Joint bank accounts vanished. Families disintegrated. Wall street crumpled. Developments were swift and ominous. The army split up into various groups. Most of the enlisted men favored the Mirati, but the officers and older non coms pledged the Westickian faith. Their power was sufficient to hold many in line. But a considerable number in the lower ranks deserted and joined forces with the Maradians, who held the eastern half of the country. The Wishticks ruled the western half with an iron hand, and all signs pointed towards civil war. Labor and military authorities conscripted the entire population, regardless of age, sex, or religious convictions. For my own part, I slipped away from the campus and fled north into the Oregon mountains. It's not that I was afraid to fight, but I rebelled at the absolute stupidity of the whole thing. The ideafighting because of a few words. But they did. The destruction was frightful. However, it was not as bad as many had thought it would be. The forces of the Wistick leveled the city of New York, true, but it took three H bombs to do the job instead of one, as the Air Force had claimed. In retaliation, San Francisco and Los Angeles were destroyed in a single night by cleverly placed atom bombs smuggled in by a number of fifth columnist wives who gained access to the cities under the pretext of returning to their husbands. This was a great victory for the Meridians, even though the women had to blow themselves up to accomplish their mission. The Meridian forces were slowly beaten back toward the Atlantic shores. They were very cunning fighters, and they had youthful courage to implement that cunning. But their overall policy lacked the stability and long range thinking necessary to the prosecution of total war. One day they might overrun many populous areas, and the next day, due to the constant bickering and quarreling among their own armies, they would lose all they had won, and more too. Finally, in desperation, they loosed their most horrible weapon, germ warfare. But they forgot to protect themselves against their own malignity. The semantic war ground to a shuddering halt. The carrion smell of death lay around the world, the duffelation of the Wystick and the Miradi. So here I am, scuttling around in the forests like a lonely pack rat. It is not the sort of life I would choose if there were any other choice. Yet life has become very simple. I enjoy the simple things, and I enjoy them with gusto. When I find food that suits my stomach, I am happy. When I quench my thirst, I am happy. When I see a beautiful sunset from one of my mountain crags. I am happy. It takes little when you have little, and there have been few men who have had less. Only one thing troubles me. I suppose it doesn't matter. But I go on wondering. I wonder which side was right. I mean, really right. End of the Semantic War by Bill Clothier.
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The Skull by Philip K. Dick 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 Grothman Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen, but he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger's skull under his arm. The Skull by Philip K. Dick what is this opportunity? Conger asked. Go on. I'm interested. The room was silent. All faces were fixed on Conger, still in a drab prison uniform. The speaker leaned forward slowly. Before you went to prison, your trading business was paying well. All illegal. All very profitable. Now you have nothing except the prospect of another six years. Tears in a cell. Conker scowled. There is a certain situation, very important to this council, that requires your peculiar abilities. Also, it is a situation you might find interesting. You were a hunter, were you not? You've done a great deal of trapping. Hiding in the bushes, waiting at night for game. I imagine hunting must be a source of sexual satisfaction to you. The chase. The stalking. Conger sighed. His lips twisted. All right, he said. Leave that out. Get to the point. Who do you want me to kill? The speaker smiled. All in proper sequence, he said softly. The car slid to a stop. It was night. There was no light anywhere along the street. Conger looked out. Where are we? What is this place? The hand of the guard pressed onto his arm. Come through that door. Conger stepped down onto the damp sidewalk. The guard came swiftly after him, and then the Speaker. Conger took a deep breath of the cold air. He studied the dim outline of the building rising up before them. I know this place. I've seen it before. He squinted his eyes, growing accustomed to the dark. Suddenly he became alert. This is. Yes, the first church. The speaker walked toward the steps. We're expected. Expected? Here? Yes. The speaker mounted the steps. You know we're not allowed in their churches. Especially with guns. He stopped. Two armed soldiers loomed up ahead, one on each side. All right. The speaker looked up at them. They nodded. The door of the church was open. Conger could see other soldiers inside, standing about, young soldiers with large eyes, gazing at the icons and holy images. I see, he said. It was necessary, the speaker said. As you know we have been singularly unfortunate in the past in our relations with the First Church. This won't help, but it's worth it. You will see. They passed through the hall into the main chamber where the altarpiece was and the kneeling places. The speaker scarcely glanced at the altar as they passed by. He pushed open a small door and beckoned Conger through. In here. We have to hurry. The faithful will be flocking in soon. Conger entered, blinking. They were in a small chamber, low ceilinged with dark panels of old wood. There was the smell of ashes and smoldering spices in the room. He sniffed. What's that? The smell cups on the wall? I don't know. The speaker crossed impatiently to the far side. According to our information, it is hidden here by this. Conger looked around the room. He saw books and papers, holy signs and images. A strange low shiver went through him. Does my job involve anyone of the Church? If it does. The speaker turned, astonished. Can it be that you believe in the Founder? Is it possible? A hunter? A killer? No, of course not. All their business about resignation to death. Non violence. What is it, then? Conger shrugged. I've been taught not to mix with such as these. They have strange abilities, and you can't reason with them. The speaker studied Conger thoughtfully. You have the wrong idea. It is no one here that we have in mind. We've found that killing them only tends to increase their numbers. Then why come here? Let's leave. No. We came for something important. Something you will need to identify your man. Without it, you won't be able to find him. A trace of a smile crossed the Speaker's face. We don't want you to kill the wrong person. It's too important. I don't make mistakes. Conger's chest rose. Listen, Speaker. This is an unusual situation, the speaker said. You see, the person you are after, the person that we are sending you to find, is known only by certain objects here. They are the only traces, the only means of identification. Without them, what are they? He came toward the Speaker. The speaker moved to one side. Look, he said. He drew a sliding wall away and showed a dark square hole in there. Conger squatted down, staring in. He frowned. A skull. A skeleton. The man you are after has been dead two centuries, the speaker said. This is all that remains of him. And this is all you have with which to find him. For a long time, Conger said nothing. He stared down at the bones, dimly visible in the recess of the wall. How could a man dead centuries be killed? How could he be stalked, brought down. Conger was a hunter, a man who lived as he pleased, where he pleased. He had kept himself alive by trading, bringing furs and pelts in from the provinces on his own ship, riding at high speed, slipping through the customs lines around Earth. He had hunted in the great mountains of the Moon. He had stalked through empty Martian cities. He had explored. The speaker said, soldiers, take these objects and have them carried to the car. Don't lose any part of them. The soldier went into the cupboard, reaching gingerly, squatting on his heels. It is my hope, the speaker continued softly to Conger, that you will demonstrate your loyalty to us now. There are always ways for citizens to restore themselves, to show their devotion to their society. For you, I think this would be a very good chance. I seriously doubt that a better one will come. And for your efforts there will be quite a restitution. Of course. The two men looked at each other, Conger thin, unkempt, the speaker immaculate in his uniform. I understand you, conger said. I mean, I understand this part about the chance. But how can a man who's been dead two centuries be I'll explain later, the speaker said. Right now we have to hurry. The soldier had gone out with the bones wrapped in a blanket, held carefully in his arms. The speaker walked to the door. Come. They've already discovered that we've broken in here, and they'll be coming at any moment. They hurried down the damp steps to the waiting car. A second later, the driver lifted the car up into the air above the housetops. The speaker settled back in the seat. The First Church has an interesting past, he said. I suppose you're familiar with it, but I'd like to speak of a few points that are relevant to us. It was in the 20th century that the movement began. During one of the periodic wars, the movement developed rapidly, feeding on the general sense of futility, the realization that each war was breeding greater war with no end in sight. The movement posed a simple answer to the problem. Without military preparations, weapons, there could be no war. And without machinery and complex scientific technocracy, there could be no weapons. The movement preached that you couldn't stop war by planning for it. They preached that man was losing to his machinery and science, and that it was getting away from him, pushing him into greater and greater wars. Down with society, they shouted. Down with factories and science. A few more wars and there wouldn't be much left of the world. The founder was an obscure person from a small town in the American Middle West. We don't even know his name all we know is that one day he appeared, preaching a doctrine of non violence, non resistance. No fighting, no paying taxes for guns. No research except for medicine. Live out your life quietly, tending your garden, staying out of public affairs. Mind your own business. Be obscure, unknown, poor. Give away most of your possessions. Leave the city. At least that's what developed from what he told the people. The car dropped down and landed on a roof. The founder preached this doctrine, or the germ of it. There's no telling how much the faithful have added themselves. The local authorities picked him up at once, of course. Apparently they were convinced that he meant it. He was never released. He was put to death and his body buried. Secretly, it seemed that the cult was finished. The speaker smiled. Unfortunately, some of his disciples reported seeing him after the the date of his death. The rumor spread. He had conquered death. He was divine. It took hold, grew. And here we are today with the first Church obstructing all social progress, destroying society, sowing the seeds of anarchy. But the wars, Congress said. What about them? The wars? Well, there were no more wars. It must be acknowledged that. That the elimination of war was a direct result of non violence practiced on a general scale. But we can take a more objective view of war today. What was so terrible about it? War had a profound selective value. Perfectly in accord with the teachings of Darwin and Mendel and others. Without war, the mass of useless, incompetent mankind without training or intelligence is permitted to grow and expand unchecked. War acted to reduce their numbers, like storms and earthquakes and droughts. It was nature's way of eliminating the unfit. Without war, the lower elements of mankind have increased all out of proportion. They threaten the educated few, those with scientific knowledge and training, the ones equipped to direct society. They have no regard for science or. Or a scientific society based on reason. This movement seeks to aid and abet them. Only when scientists are in full control can the. He looked at his watch and then kicked the car door open. I'll tell you the rest as we walk. They cross the dark roof. Doubtless you now know whom these bones belong to. Who it is that we are after. He has been dead just two centuries now, this ignorant man from the Middle west, this founder. The tragedy is that the authorities of the time acted too slowly. They allowed him to speak, to get his message across. He was allowed to preach, to start his cult. And once such a thing is under way, there's no stopping it. But what if he had died before he preached? What if none of his doctrines had ever been spoken? It took only a moment for him to utter them. That we know. They say he spoke just once, just one time. Then the authorities came, taking him away. He offered no resistance. The incident was small. The speaker turned to Conger. Small, but we're reaping the consequences of it today. They went inside the building. Inside, the soldiers had already laid out the skeleton on a table. The soldiers stood around, their young faces intense. Conger went over to the table, pushing past them. He bent down, staring at the bones. So these are his remains, he murmured. The founder. The church has hidden them for two centuries. Quite so, the speaker said. And now we have them. Come along. Down the hall. They went across the room to the door. The speaker pushed it open. Technicians looked up. Conger saw machinery whirring and turning, benches and retorts. In the center of the room was a gleaming crystal cage. The speaker handed a slim gun to Conger. The important thing to remember is that the skull must be saved and brought back for comparison and proof. Aim low at the chest. Conger weighed the gun in his hand. It feels good, he says. I know this gun. That is, I have seen them before, but I've never used one. The speaker nodded. You will be instructed on the use of the gun and the operation of the cage. You will be given all the data we have on the time and location. The exact spot is a place called Hudson's field, about 1960, in a small community outside Denver, Colorado. And don't forget, the only means of identification you will have will be the skull. There are visible characteristics of the front teeth, especially the left incisor. Conger listened absently. He was watching two men in white carefully wrap the skull in a plastic bag. They tied it and carried it to the crystal cage. And if I should make a mistake? Pick the wrong man, then find the right one. Don't come back until you succeed in reaching this founder. And you can't wait for him to start speaking. That's what we must avoid. You must act in advance. Take chances. Shoot a as soon as you think you've found him. He'll be someone unusual, probably a stranger in the area. Apparently he wasn't known. Conger listened dimly. Do you think you have it all now? The speaker asked. Yes, I think so. Conger entered the crystal cage and sat down, placing his hands on the wheel. Good luck, the speaker said. We'll be awaiting the outcome. There's some philosophical doubt as to whether one can alter the past. This should answer the question once and for all. Conger fingered the controls of the cage. By the way, the speaker said. Don't try to use this cage for purposes not anticipated in your job. We have a constant trace on it. If we want it back, we can get it back. Good luck. Conger said nothing. The cage was sealed, and he raised his fingers and touched the wheel control. He turned the wheel carefully. He was still staring at the plastic bag when the room outside vanished. For a long time there was nothing at all, nothing beyond the crystal mesh of the cage. Thoughts rushed through Conger's mind. Helter Skelter. How could he know the man? How could he be certain in advance? What had he looked like? What was his name? How had he acted before he spoke? Would he be an ordinary person or some strange, outlandish crank? Conger picked up the slim gun and held it against his cheek. The metal of the gun was cool and smooth. He practiced moving the sight. It was a beautiful gun, the kind of gun he could fall in love with, if he had owned such a gun in the Martian desert on the long nights when he had lain, cramped and numbed by the cold, waiting for things that moved through the darkness. He put the gun down and adjusted the meter readings of the cage. Spiraling mist was beginning to condense and settle all at once. Forms wavered and fluttered around him. Colors, sounds, movements fluttered through the crystal wire. He clamped the controls off and stood up. He was on a ridge overlooking a small town. It was high noon. The air was crisp and bright. A few automobiles moved along the road. Off in the distance were some level fields. Conger went to the door and stepped outside. He sniffed the air. Then he went back into the cage. He stood before the mirror over the shelf, examining his features. He had trimmed his beard. They had not got him to cut it off, and his hair was neat. He was dressed in clothing of the mid 20th century, the odd collar and coat, the shoes of animal hide. In his pocket was money of the times. That was important. Nothing more was needed. Nothing except his ability, his special cunning. But he had never used it in such a way before. He walked down the road toward the town. The first thing he noticed were the newspapers on the stands. April 5, 1961. He was not too far off. He looked around him. There was a filling station, a garage, some taverns, and and a 10 cent store. Down the street was a grocery store and some public buildings. A few minutes later he mounted the stairs of the little public library, passing through the doors into the warm interior. The librarian looked up, smiling. Good afternoon, she said. He smiled, not speaking because his words would not be correct. Accented and strange, probably. He went over to the table and sat down by a heap of magazines. For a moment he glanced through them. Then he was on his feet again. He crossed the room to a wide rack against the wall. His heart began to beat heavily. Newspapers, weeks on end. He took a roll of them over to the table and began to scan them quickly. The print was odd and the letters strained. Some of the words were unfamiliar. He set the newspapers aside and searched further. At last he found what he wanted. He carried the Cherry Wood Gazette to the table and opened it to the first page. He found what he wanted. Prisoner Hanged Self an unidentified man held by the county Sheriff's office for suspicion of criminal syndicalism was found dead this morning by he finished the item. It was vague, uninforming. He needed more. He carried the Gazette back to the racks and then, after a moment's hesitation, approached the librarian. More? He asked. More papers. Old ones. She frowned. How old? Which papers? Months old. And before of the Gazette. That's all we have. What did you want? What were you looking for? Maybe I can help you. He was silent. You might find older issues at the Gazette office, the woman said, taking off her glasses. Why don't you try there? If you'd tell me, maybe I could help you. He went out. The Gazette office was down a side street. The sidewalk was broken and cracked. He went inside. A heater glowed in the corner of the small office. A heavy set man stood up and came slowly over to the counter. What did you want, mister? He said. Old papers. A month or more. You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slots. Live blackjack, live preps with a live dealer. New players. $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again. Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. To buy. You want to buy them? Yes. He held out some of the money he had. The man stared. Sure, he said. Sure. Well, wait a minute. He went quickly out of the room. When he came back, he was staggering under the weight of his armload, his face red. Here are some. He grunted. Took what I could find. Covers the whole year. And if you want more. Conger carried the papers outside. He sat down by the road and began to go through them. What he wanted was four months back in December. It was a tiny item, so small that he almost missed it. His hands trembled as he scanned it, using the small dictionary for some of the archaic terms. Man Arrested for Unlicensed Demonstration an unidentified man who refused to give his name was picked up in Cooper Creek by special agents of the sheriff's office. According to Sheriff Duff, it was said the man was recently noticed in this area and had been watched continually. It was Cooper Creek, December 1960. His heart pounded. That was all he needed to know. He stood up, shaking himself, stamping his feet on the cold ground. The sun had moved across the sky to the very edge of the hills. He smiled. Already he had discovered the exact time and place. Now he needed only go back, perhaps to November, to Cooper Creek. He walked back through the main section of town, past the library, past the grocery store. It would not be hard. The hard part was over. He would go there, rent a room, prepare to wait until the men appeared. He turned the corner. A woman was coming out of a doorway, loaded down with packages. Conger stepped aside and let her pass. The woman glanced at him. Suddenly her face turned white. She stared, her mouth open. Conger hurried on. He looked back. What was wrong with her? The woman was still staring. She had dropped her packages on the ground. He increased his speed, turning a second corner and went up a side street. When he looked back again, the woman had come to the entrance of the street and was staring after him. A man joined her, and the two of them began to run toward him. He lost them and left the town, striding quickly, easily, up into the hills at the edge of town. When he reached the cage, he stopped. What had happened? Was it something about his clothing? His dress? He pondered. Then, as the sun set, he stepped into the cage. Conger sat before the wheel. For a moment he waited, his hands resting lightly on the control. Then he turned the wheel just a little, following the control readings carefully. The grayness settled down around him, but not for very long. The man looked him over critically. You better come inside, he said, out of the cold. Thanks. Conger went gracefully through the open door and into the living room. It was warm and close from the heat of a little kerosene heater in the corner. A woman, large and shapeless in her flowered dress, came from the kitchen. She and the man studied him critically. It's a good room, the woman said. I'm Mrs. Appleton. It's got heat. You need that this time of year? Yes. He nodded, looking around. You want to eat with us? What? You want to eat with us. The man's brow knitted. You're not a foreigner, are you, mister? No. He smiled. I was born in this country. Quite far west, though. California? No. He hesitated. In Oregon. What's it like up there? Mrs. Appleton asked. I hear there's a lot of trees in green. It's so barren here. I come from Chicago myself. That's the Midwest, the man said to her. You ain't no foreigner. Oregon isn't foreign either, conger said. It's part of the United States. The man nodded absently. He was staring at Conger's clothing. That's a funny suit you got on, mister, he said. Where'd you get that? Conger was lost. He shifted uneasily. It's a good suit, he said. Maybe I better go some other place if you don't want me here. They both raised their hands protestingly. The woman smiled at him. We just have to look out for those Reds. You know the government is always warning us about the Reds. He was puzzled. The government says they're all around. We're supposed to report anything strange or unusual. Anybody doesn't act normal like me. They looked embarrassed. Well, you don't look like a Red to me, the man said. But we have to be careful. The Tribune says. Conger half listened. It was going to be easier than he thought. Clearly he would know as soon as the Founder appeared. These people, so suspicious of anything different, would be buzzing and gossiping and spreading, spreading the story. All he had to do was lie low and listen. Down at the general store, perhaps, or even here in Mrs. Appleton's boarding house. Can I see the room? He said. Certainly. Mrs. Appleton went up the stairs. I'll be glad to show it to you. They went upstairs. It was cold upstairs, but not nearly as cold as outside, nor as cold as nights on the Martian desert. For that he was grateful. He walked slowly around the store, looking at the cans of vegetables, the frozen packages of fish and meat shining and clean in the open refrigerator counters. Ed Davis came toward him. Can I help you? He said. The man was a little oddly dressed and had a beard. Ed couldn't help smiling. Nothing, the man said in a funny voice. Just looking. Sure, ed said. He walked back behind the counter. Mrs. Hackett was wheeling her cart up. Who is he? She whispered, her sharp face turned, her nose moving as if it were sniffing. I never seen him before. I don't know. Looks funny to me. Why does he wear a beard? No one else wears a beard. Must be something the matter with him. Maybe he likes wearing a beard. I had an uncle who? Wait. Mrs. Hackett stiffened. Didn't that. What was his name? The red. The old one. Didn't he have a beard? Marks? He had a beard. Ed laughed. This ain't Karl Marx. I saw a photograph of him once. Mrs. Hackett was staring at him. You did? Sure. He flushed a little. What's the matter with that? I'd sure like to know more about him, Mrs. Hackett said. I think we ought to know more for our own good. Hey, mister, want a ride? Conger turned quickly, dropping his hands to his belt. He relaxed. Two young kids in a car. A girl and a boy. He smiled at them. A ride? Sure. Conger got into the car and closed the door. Bill Willett pushed the gas and the car roared down the highway. I appreciate the ride, conger said carefully. I was taking a walk between towns, but it was further than I thought. Where are you from? Laura Hunter asked. She was pretty, small and dark in her yellow sweater and blue skirt. From Cooper Creek. Cooper Creek, Bill said. He frowned. That's funny. I don't remember seeing you before. Why do you come from there? I was born there. I know everybody there. I just moved in from Oregon. From Oregon? I didn't know Oregon people had accents. Do I have an accent? You use funny words. How? I don't know. Doesn't he, Laura? You slur them, laura said, smiling. Talk some more. I'm interested in dialects. She glanced at him. White teeth. Conger felt his heart constrict. I have a speech impediment.
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Lady Luck
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Her eyes widened. I'm sorry. They looked at him curiously as the car purred along. Conger, for his part, was struggling to find some way to ask them questions without seeming curious. I guess people from out of town don't come here much, he said. Strangers? No. Bill shook his head. Not very much. I'll bet I'm the first outsider for a long time. I guess so. Conger hesitated. A friend of mine, someone I know, might be coming through here. Where do you suppose? I might. He stopped. Would there be anybody certain to see him? Someone I could ask to make sure I don't miss him if he comes? They puzzled. Just keep your eyes open. Cooper Creek isn't very big. No, that's right. They drove in silence. Conger studied the outline of the girl. Probably she was the boy's mistress. Perhaps she was his trial wife. Or had they developed trial marriage back so far? He could not remember. But surely such an attractive girl would be someone's mistress by this time? She would be 16 or so. By her looks, he might ask her sometime if they ever met again. The next day Conger went walking along the 1 Main street in Cooper Park Creek. He passed the general store, the two filling stations, and then the post office. At the corner was a soda fount. He stopped. Laura was sitting inside, talking to the clerk. She was laughing, rocking back and forth. Conger pushed the door open. Warm air rushed around it. Laura was drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream. She looked up in surprise eyes as he slid into the seat beside her. I beg your pardon, he said. Am I intruding? No. She shook her head. Her eyes were large and dark. Not at all. The clerk came over. What do you want? Conger looked at the chocolate. Same as she has. Lora was watching Conger, her arms folded, elbows on the counter. She smiled at him. By the way, you don't know my name. Laura Hunt. She was holding out her hand. He took it awkwardly, not knowing what to do with it. Conger is my name, he muttered. Conger. Is that your last or first name? Last or first? He hesitated. Last. Omar Conger. Omar? She laughed. That's like the poet Omar Khayyam. I don't know of him. I know very little of poets. We restore very few works of art. Usually only the church has been interested enough. He broke off. She was staring. He flushed. Where I come from. He finished. The church. Which church do you mean? The church. He was confused. The chocolate came and he began to sip it great gratefully. Laura was still watching him. You're an unusual person, she said. Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He's soso prosaic. Don't you think that when a person gets older he should become broadened in his outlook? Conger nodded. He says foreign people ought to stay where they belong, not come here. But you're not so foreign. He means Orientals, you know. Conger nodded. The screen door opened behind them. Bill came into the room. He stared at them. Well, he said. Conger turned. Hello. Well. Bill sat down. Hello, Lora. He was looking at Conger. I didn't expect to see you here. Conger tensed. He could feel the hostility of the boy. Something wrong with that? No, nothing wrong with it. There was silence. Suddenly Bill turned to Laura. Come on, let's go. Go, she said, astonished. Why? Just go. He grabbed her hand. Come on, the car's outside. Why Bill Willett, she said. You're jealous. Who is this guy? Bill said. Do you know anything about him? Look at him. His beard. She flared. So what? Just because he doesn't drive a Packard or go to Cooper High. Conger sized the boy up. He was big, big and strong. Probably he was part of some civil control organization. Sorry, Conger, conger said. I'll go. What's your business in town? Bill asked. What are you doing here? Why are you hanging around Lora? Conger looked at the girl. He shrugged. No reason. I'll see you later. He turned away and froze. Bill had moved. Conger's finger went to his belt. Half pressure, he whispered to himself. No more half pressure. He squeezed. The room leapt around him. He himself was protected by the lining of his clothing, the plastic sheathing inside. My God. Lora put her hands up. Conger cursed. He hadn't meant any of it for her. But it would wear off. There was only a half amp to it. It would tingle. Tingle and paralyzed. He walked out the door with without looking back. He was almost to the corner when Bill came slowly out, holding onto the wall like a drunken man. Conger went on. As Conger walked, restless in the night, a form loomed in front of him. He stopped, holding his breath. Who is it? A man's voice came. Conger waited, tense. Who is it? The man said again. He clicked something in his hand. A light flashed. Conger moved. It's me, he said. Who is me? Conger is my name. I'm staying at the Appletons place. Who are you? The man came slowly up to him. He was wearing a leather jacket. There was a gun at his waist. I'm Sheriff Duff. I think you're the person I want to talk to. You were in Bloom's today, about 3 o'. Clock. Bloom's? The fountain where the kids hang out. Duff came up beside him, shining his light into Conger's face. Conger blinked. Turn that thing away, he said. A pause. All right. The light flickered to the ground. You were there. Some trouble broke out between you and the Willett boy. Is that right? You had a beef over his girl? We had a discussion, conger said carefully. Then what happened? Why? I'm just curious. They say you did something. Did something? Did what? I don't know. That's what I'm wondering. They saw a flash and something seemed to happen. They all blacked out. Couldn't move. How are they now? All right. There was silence. Well, Duff said. What was it? A bomb. A bomb? Conger laughed. No. My cigarette lighter caught fire. There was a leak and the fuel ignited. Why did they all pass out? Fumes. Silence. Conger shifted, waiting. His fingers moved slowly toward his belt. The sheriff glanced down. He grunted. If you say so he said. Anyhow, there wasn't any real harm done. He stepped back from Conger. And that Willet is a troublemaker. Good night then, Conger said. He started past the sheriff. One more thing, Mr. Conger. Conger, before you go, you don't mind if I have a look at your identification, do you? No, not at all. Conger reached into his pocket. He held his wallet out. The sheriff took it and shined his flashlight on it. Conger watched, breathing slowly. They had worked hard on the wallet, studying historical documents, relics of the time, all the papers they felt would be relevant. Duff handed it back. Ok. Sorry to bother you. The light blinked out. When Conger reached the house, he found the Appletons sitting around the television set. They did not look up as he came in. He lingered at the door. Can I ask you something? He said. Mrs. Appleton turned slowly. Can I ask you what's the date? The date? She studied him. 1st December. December 1st. Why, it was just November. They were all looking at him. Suddenly he remembered. In the 20th century they still used the old 12 month system. November fed directly into December. There was no quatrember between them. He gasped. Then it was tomorrow. 2nd December. Tomorrow. Thanks, he said. Thanks. He went up the stairs. What a fool. He was, forgetting the Founder had been taken into captivity on 2nd December. According to the newspaper records. Tomorrow, only 12 hours hence, the Founder would appear to speak to the people and then be dragged away. The day was worn and bright. Conger's shoes crunched the melting crust of snow. On he went through the trees, heavy with white. He climbed a hill and strode down the other side, sliding as he went. He stopped to look around. Everything was silent. There was no one in sight. He brought a thin rod from his waist and turned the handle of it. For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a shimmering in the air. The crystal cage appeared and settled slowly down. Conger sighed. It was good to see it again. After all, it was his only way back. He walked on up the ridge. He looked around with some satisfaction, his hands on his hips. Hudson's field was spread out all the way to the beginning of town. It was bare and flat. Flat, covered with a thin layer of snow. Here the Founder would come. Here he would speak to them. And here the authorities would take him. Only he would be dead before they came. He would be dead before he even spoke. Conger returned to the crystal globe. He pushed through the door and stepped inside. He took the slim gun from the shelf and screwed the bolt into place. It was ready to go, ready to fire. For a moment he considered. Should he have it with him? No. It might be hours before the Founder came. And suppose someone approached him in the meantime, when he saw the Founder coming toward the field, then he could go and get the gun. Conger looked toward the shelf. There was a neat plastic package. He took it down and unwrapped it. He held the skull in his hands, turning it over. In spite of himself, a cold feeling rushed through him. This was a man's skull. The skull of the Founder who was still alive, who would come here this day, who would stand on the field not 50 yards away? What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded, two centuries old? Would he still speak? Would he speak if he could see the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring? What action would not be futile when a man could look upon his own aged, yellow skull better? They should enjoy their temporary lives while they still had them to enjoy. A man who could hold his own skull in his hands would believe in few causes, few movements. Rather, he would preach the opposite. A sound. Conger dropped the skull back on the shelf and took up the gun. Outside, something was moving. He went quickly to the door, his heart beating. Was it he? Was it the Founder, wandering by himself in the cold, looking for a place to speak? Was he meditating over his words, choosing his sentences? What if he could see what Conger had held? He pushed the door open. The gun raised. Laura. He stared at her. She was dressed in a wool jacket and boots, her hands in her pockets. A cloud of steam came from her mouth and nostrils. Her breast was rising and falling. Silently, they looked at each other. At last, Conger lowered the gun. What is it? He said. What are you doing here? She pointed. She did not seem able to speak. He frowned. What was wrong with her? What is it? He said. What do you want? He looked in the direction she pointed. I don't see anything. They're coming. They who? Who are coming? They are the police. During the night, the sheriff had the state police send cars all around, everywhere, blocking the roads. There's about 60 of them coming, some from town, some from behind. She stopped, gasping. They said. They said what? They said you were some kind of a communist. They said. Conger went into the cage. He put the gun down on the shelf and came back out. He leapt down and went to the girl. Thanks. You. You came here to tell me you didn't believe it? No, I don't. I don't know. Did you come alone? No. Joe brought me in his truck from town. Joe? Who's he? Joe French, the plumber. He's a friend of my dad's. Let's go. They crossed the snow, up the ridge and onto the field. The little panel truck was parked halfway across the field. A heavy short man was sitting behind the wheel, smoking his pipe. He sat up when he saw the two of them coming toward him. Are you the one? He said to Conger. Yes. Thanks for warning me. The plumber shrugged. I don't know anything about this, lora said. You're all right. He turned around. It might interest you to know that some more of them are coming. Not to warn you, just curious. More of them? Conger looked toward the town. Black shapes were picking their way across the snow. People from the town. You can't keep this sort of thing quiet, not in a small town. We all listened to the police radio. They heard the same way Lora did. Someone tuned it in, spread it around. The shapes were getting closer. Conger could make out a couple of them. Bill Willett was the there, and some boys from the high school. The Appletons were along, hanging back in the rear. Even Ed Davis, conger murmured. The storekeeper was toiling into the field with three or four other men from the town, all curious as hell. French said, well, I guess I'm going back to town. I don't want my truck shot full of holes. Come on, Laura. She looked at Conger wide eyed. Come on, fret said. Let's go. You sure as hell can't stay here. You know why? There may be shooting. That's what they all came to see. You know that, don't you, Conger? Yes. You have a gun or you don't care? French smiled a little. They picked up a lot of people in their time, you know. You won't be lonely. He cared all right. He had to stay here on the field. He couldn't afford to let them take him away. Any minute the founder would appear, would step into the field. Would he be one of the townsmen standing silently at the foot of the field, waiting, watching? Or perhaps he was Joe French, or maybe one of the cops. Any one of them might find himself moved to speak. And the few words spoken this day were going to be important for a long time. And Conger had to be there, ready when the first word was uttered. I care, he said. You go back to town. Take the girl with you. Laura got stiffly in beside Joe French. The plumber started up the motor. Look at them Standing there, he said, like vultures, waiting to see somebody get killed. The truck drove away, Lora sitting stiffly and silently, frightened now. Conger watched for a moment. Then he dashed back into the woods, behind the trees, toward the ridge. He could get away, of course. Any time he wanted, he could get away. All he had to do was leap into the crystal cage and turn the handles. But he had a job, an important job. He had to be here, Here at this place, at this time. He reached the cage and opened the door. He went inside and picked up the gun from the shelf. The slem gun would take care of them. He notched it up to full count. The chain reaction from it would flatten them all. The police, the curious, sadistic people. They wouldn't take him before they got him. All of them would be dead. He would get away. He would escape. By the end of the day they would all be dead, if that is what they wanted. And he. He saw the skull. Suddenly. He put the gun down. He picked up the skull. He turned the skull over. He looked at the teeth. Then he went to the mirror. He held the skull up. Looking in the mirror. He pressed the skull against his cheek beside his own face. The grinning skull leered back at him, beside his skull, against his living flesh. He bared his teeth and he knew it was his own skull that he held. He was the one who would die. He was the founder. After a time he put the skull down. For a few moments he stood at the controls, playing with them. Idly. He could hear the sounds of motors outside, the muffled noise of men. Should he go back to the present, where the speaker waited? He could escape, of course. Escape. He turned toward the skull. There it was, his skull, yellow with age. Escape. Escape. When he had held it in his own hands. What did it matter if he put it off? A month, a year, 10 years, even 50. Time was nothing. He had sipped chocolate with a girl born a hundred and fifty years before his time. Escape for a little while, perhaps. But he could not really escape, no more so than anyone else ever escaped or ever would. Only he had held it in his hands. His own bones, his own death's head. They had not. He went out the door and across the field empty handed. There were a lot of them standing around, gathered together, waiting. They expected a good fight. They knew he had something. They had heard about the incident at the fountain. And there were plenty of police. Police with guns and tear gas creeping across the hills and ridges between the trees, closer and closer. It was an old story in this century, one of the men tossed something at him. It fell in the snow by his feet. He looked down. It was a rock. He smiled. Come on, one of them called. Don't you have any bombs? Throw a bomb. You with the beard, throw a bomb. Let em have it. Toss a few a bombs. They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands on his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak. I'm sorry, he said simply. I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken. There was a flurry of murmuring. I have a gun, he went on. A very good one. Made by science more advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that either. They were puzzled. Why not? Someone called. At the edge of the group, an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where? He remembered the day at the library. As he had turned the corner, he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why. Conger grinned. So he would escape death, the man who right now was voluntarily accepting it.
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Visit spinquest.com for more details. They were laughing. Laughing at a man who had a gun but didn't use it. But by a twist of science, he he would appear again a few months later, after his bones had been buried under the floor of a jail. And so, in a fashion, he would escape death. He would die. But then, after a period of months, he would live again, briefly, for an afternoon. An afternoon yet long enough for them to see him, to understand that he was still alive, to know that somehow he had returned to life. And and then, finally, he would appear once more after 200 years had passed. Two centuries later, he would be born again. Born, as a matter of fact, in a small trading village on Mars. He would grow up learning to hunt and trade. The police car came to the edge of the field and stopped. People retreated a little. Conger raised his hands. I have an odd paradox for for you, he said. Those who will take lives will lose their own. Those who kill will die. But he who gives his own life away will live again. They laughed faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, rather remember it. Smiling, Conger awaited the death foreordained end of the skull. By Philip K. Dick. Two Timer by Frederick Brown 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 Grothman two timer by Frederick Brown Experiment the first time machine, gentlemen, professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. True, it is a small scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than 3lb 5oz, and for distances into the past and future of 12 minutes or less. But it works. The small scale model looked like a small scale, a postage scale, except for two dials in the part under the platform. Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. Our experimental object, he said, is a brass cube weighing 1 pound 2.3 ounces. First I shall send it five minutes into the future. He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. Look at your watches, he said. They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine's platform. It vanished five minutes later to the second it reappeared. Professor Johnson picked it up. Now, five minutes into the past. He set another dial. Holding the cube in his hand, he looked at his watch. It is now 6 minutes before 3 o'. Clock. I shall now activate the mechanism by placing the cube on the platform at exactly 3 o'. Clock. Therefore, the cube should, at 5 minutes before 3, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform 5 minutes before I place it there. How can you place it there, then? Asked one of his colleagues. It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o'. Clock. Notice, please. The cube vanished from his hand. It appeared on the platform of the time machine. See? Five minutes before I shall place it there. It is there. His other colleague frowned at the Cuban cube. But he said, what if, now that it's already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at 3 o'. Clock. Wouldn't there be a paradox of some sort involved? An interesting idea, professor Johnson said. I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not. There was no paradox at all. The cube remained, but the entire rest of the universe, professors and all Vanished. He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and he was 50,000 light years from home. A strange blue sun gave light, and the gravity, twice what he was used to, made every movement difficult. But in 10,000 years, this part of the war hadn't changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips were down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry that had to take the ground and hold it foot by bloody foot, like this damned planet of a star he'd never heard of until they landed him there. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were the there too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the galaxy. Cruel, hideous, and repulsive monsters. Contact had been made with them near the center of the galaxy after the slow, difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets, and it had been war at sight. They'd shot without even trying to negotiate or to make peace. Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out. He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and the day was raw with the high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate, and every sentry post was vital he stayed alert, gun ready, 50,000 light years from home, fighting on a strange world and wondering if he'd ever lived to see home again. And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange, horrible sound they all make, then lay still. He shuddered at the sound and the sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while, but he'd never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were, with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skin and no scales. The End of two Timer by Frederick Brown.
[483:12]
Lady Luck
Two Weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson 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 Matt Berard Two weeks in August by Frank M. Robinson the humblest events sometimes result from the most grandiose beginnings. You'd never imagine space travel starting this way, for instance. I suppose there's a guy like McCleary in every office. Now, I'm not a hard man to get along with, and it usually takes quite a bit more than overly bright remarks from the office boy to bother me. But try as it might, I could never get along with McCleary. To be as disliked as he was, you have to work at it. What kind of guy was he? Well, if you came down to the office one day, proud as punch because of something little Johnny or Josephine had said. It was a sure cinch that McCleary would horn in with something his little Louis had spouted off that morning. At any rate, when McCleary got through, you felt like taking Johnny to the doctor to find out what made him so normal. Or maybe you happened to buy a new Super 8 that week and were bragging about the mileage, the terrific pickup and how quickly she responded to the wheel. Leave it to McCleary to give a quick rundown on his own car. That would make you feel like selling yours for junk at the nearest Grappie. Well, you see what I mean? But by far the worst of it was when vacation time rolled around. You could forgive a guy for talking you about how brainy his kids are. And you might even find it in your heart to forget the terrific bargain he drove to work, work in. But vacation time was when he'd really get on your nerves. You could pack the wife and kids in old Reliable and roll out to the lake for your two weeks. In August you might even break the bank and spend the two weeks at a poor man's Sun Valley. But no matter where you went, when you came back, you'd have to sit in silence and listen to McClary's account of his vacation in the Adirondacks. Or his tramp in the Canadian wilds. Or maybe even the old French Quarter. The trouble was, he always had the photographs, the ticket stubs and the souvenirs to prove it. Where he got the money, I'll never know. Sometimes I'd tell the wife about it and she'd sniff and wonder what kind of shabby house they lived in that they could afford all the other things. I never looked him up myself. Tell you the truth. I was afraid I'd find the McClearys lived on Park Avenue. Now, you look forward to a vacation all year, but particularly during the latter part of July when, what with the heat and the stuffy office, you begin to feel like a half done hot dog at a barbecue. I was feeling even worse than usual as I was faced with spending my two weeks in in my own back yard. Most of my vacation dough having gone to pay the doctor. The only thing I minded was having McCleary find out about it. And seeing that phony look of sympathy roll across his fat face while he rambled on about the vacation he was going to have. It was lunchtime and we had just finished talking about the latest on television and. And what was wrong with the administration. And who'd win the pennant? When Bob Young brought up the subject of vacations, it turned out he was due for a trip to the Ozarks and Donnelly was going after Walleye pike in northern Wisconsin. I could sense McCleary prick up his ears clear across the room. How about you, Bill? Donnelly asked me. Got any plans? I winked heavily and jerked a thumb warningly toward McCleary, making sure McCleary couldn't see the gesture. My vacation is really going to be out of this world this time, I said. Me and the wife are going to Mars Dry, you know. Even better than Arizona for her sinus. Even with the wink, they were caught off guard for a minute. Mars, Donnelly said feebly, edging his chair away. Yeah, sure. Great place. Never been there myself, though. Young just gaped, then grinned as he caught on. I understand it's a wonderful spot, he chipped in. I casually peeled a hard boiled egg the wife had packed in my lunch bucket and leaned back in my swivel chair. It's really swell, I said dreamily, but loud enough so McCleary couldn't help but overhear. Drifting down the Grand Canal at evening, the sun a faint golden disk behind the crystal towers of Marsport, I let my voice drift into a long sigh and reach for Donnelly's sack of grapes. About this time McCleary had gnawed his way through a big pastrami sandwich and waddled over. He stood there expectantly, but we carefully ignored him. Always wanted to go myself, donnelly said in the same tone of voice he would have used to say he'd like to go to California some day. Pretty expensive, though, isn't it? Expensive? I raised a studiedly surprised eyebrow. Oh, I suppose a little. But it's worth it. The wife and I got a roomette on the Princess of Mars for $139.50. That's one way, of course. Mars Young sighed wistfully. There was a moment of silence, with all three of us paying silent tribute to the ultimate in vacations. McCleary slowly masticated a leaf of lettuce, his initial look of suspicion giving way to half belief. Let's hear some more about it, young said enthusiastically, suddenly recovering from his reverie. Oh, there isn't much more, I said indifferently. We plan to stay at Red Sands Hotel in Marsport. American plan. Take in Marsport. With maybe a side trip to Crystallite if we have time. We might even take a walk. Waterway cruise to the North Pole. I broke off and dug Donnelly in the ribs. Man, you never fished until you have a Martian flying fish at the end of the line. I grabbed a ruler off the desk and began using it as an imaginary rod and reel. Talk about fight. Oh, sorry, Mac. My ruler had amputated part of a floppy lettuce leaf that hung from my McClary's sandwich. I settled down in my chair again and started paying attention to my lunch. Nothing like it, I added between mouthfuls of liverwurst. How about entertainment? Young winked slyly. Well, you know, the wife will be along, I said. But some of the places near the Grand Canal and those Martian mist, me brother, if I was unattached, There ain't any life on Mars, McClary said, suspicious again. All three of us looked at him in shocked silence. He says there's no life on Mars, donnie repeated. You ever been there, McClary? I asked sarcastically. No, but just the same. All right, I cut in, then. You don't know whether there is or isn't, so kindly reserve your opinion until you know a little about the subject under discussion.
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Lady Luck
I turned back to Donnelly and Young. Really a wonderful place for your health. Dry, thin air, nice and cool at night and beautiful. From Marsport you can see low slung mountains in the distance, dunes of soft red sand stretching out to them. If I were you, Bob, I'd forget all about the Ozarks and sign up on the rocket. There ain't any rockets going to Mars, McCleary said obstinately. Isn't, I corrected. I mean, there is besides McCleary. Just because you never heard of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The government's still working on V2, McClary said flatly. They haven't even reached the moon yet. I sighed softly, acting disgusted at having to deal with somebody as stupid as McCleary. Mac, that's the government. And besides, they're dealing with military rockets. And did you ever hear of the government perfecting something before private industry? Who perfected the telephone, the radio, television? The government? No, private industry, of course. Private industry has always been ahead of the government on everything, including rockets. Get on the stick, Mac. McCleary started in on his lettuce leaf again, looking very shrewd. How come I never heard of it before now? He asked, springing the clincher argument. Look, Mac, this is relatively new. The company's just starting. Can't afford to take full page ads and that sort of thing. Just give em time, that's all. Why, a couple of years from now you'll be spending your vacation on Venus or Jupiter or some place like that. From now on, California and the Bahamas will be strictly old hats. McCleary looked half believing. Where'd you get your tickets? I waved vaguely in the direction of downtown. There must be at least a couple of agencies downtown. Might even be able to find them in the phone book. Look under interplanetary rocket lines or something like that. You might have a little difficulty. Of course, like I say, they're not too well advertised. McCleary was about to say something more, but then the one o' clock bell rang and we went back to the office grind. Well, McCleary didn't say anything more about it the next day, even though we'd throw in a chance comment about Mars every now and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. But Mac didn't rise to the bait. We gradually forgot about it. The next couple of weeks came and went, and then my two weeks in August. Like I said before, my vacation dough had gone to pay the doctor, so I stayed at home and watered them begonias. The Monday morning after vacation we were all back in the office. If anything looked more fagged than we had when we left. When lunchtime rolled around, Donnelly and Young and I piled our lunches on Donnelly's daughter desk. His desk was near a window on the north side of the building so we could get the breeze and talked about what we had done during vacation. McCleary ambled up and like it usually does after McCleary comes around, the conversation just naturally died down. After a two minutes silence, I finally took the hook. Okay, Mac, I said. I know you're just dying to tell us. Where did you go? He almost looked surprised. To Mars, he said, like he might have said Aunt Minnie's. The three of us looked blank for a minute and then we caught on. It took us a while to recover from laughing, and my sides were still aching when I saw McCleary's face. It definitely had a hurt look on it. You don't think I did, he accused us. Oh, come off it, McClary. I said crossly. A gag's a gag, but it can be carried too far. Where'd you go? California? Oregon? Some place like that? I said. I went to Mars, McCleary repeated hotly. And I can prove it. Sure, I said. Like I can prove the world's flat and it's supported by four elephants standing on a turtle's back like the old Greeks, I cut off. McCleary had thrown a couple of pasteboards on the desk and I picked them up. The printing on it was like you see on a Pullman ticket. It said something about a Roumette first class passage on the Martian prince for $154.75, and there was even a place where they had the tax figured in two blanks. At the top of the ticket they had it filled out to E.C. mcCleary and wife. The bottom half was torn off just like they do with train tickets. Very clever, I said. But you shouldn't have gone to all that trouble to have these printed up. McCleary scowled and dropped a little bunch of Kodachrome slides on the desk. I took one and held it up to the light. It showed Mac and his wife mounted on something that looked like a cross between a camel and a zebra. They were at the top of a sand dune and in the distance you could see the towers of a city. The funny thing was, the towers looked a little but not much like minarets, and the sand dunes were colored a beautiful pink. I passed it on to Donnelly and Young and started leafing through the rest. They were beautiful slides. McCleary and spouse in front of various structures in a delicately tinted marble and Crystal City. McCleary in a pink and black boat on a canal that looked as wide as the Mississippi. McCleary standing on a strangely carved sandstone parapet, admiring a sunset caused by a sun looking half as big as ours. And everywhere were the dunes of pink sleep sand. Pictures can be faked, Mac, I said. He looked hurt and got some things out of his desk. A satin pillow with scenes like those on his snapshots, an urn filled with pink sand. A tiny boat like a gondola, only different. A letter opener made out of peculiar bubbly pink glass. They were all stamped Souvenir of Mars and that kind of junk you don't have. Made up for a gag. I know mass produced articles when I see them. We couldn't afford the first class tour, mcclary said expansively, but I figure we can cover that next year. He turned to me puzzledly. I asked the passenger agent about the Princess of Mars, and he said he had never heard of the ship. And it's Mars City, not Marsport. Couldn't understand how you made a mistake. It was easy, I said weakly. I pointed to the pasteboard ducats. Where'd you get these, Mac? He waved generously in the direction of downtown. Like you said, there's a couple of agencies downtown. You know, sometimes I think we misjudged McCleary. It takes a while to get to know a guy like Mac. Maybe his Louie is brighter than Johnny, and maybe his Chugmobile is something terrific. For the last few years, all on account of Mac, my two weeks in August have really been well spent. Beautiful. Why, from Mars City you can see low slung mountains in the distance and dunes of soft red sand stretching out to them, and the sunsets when you're standing on the parapets of that delicate crystal city and man fishing in the Grand Canal. How do you get to Mars? There's probably a couple of agencies in your own town. You can look them up in your phone book under Vacation at the Planets of Pleasure or something like that. They might be a little difficult to find, though. You see, they're not very well advertised yet. End of Two Weeks in Aug. By Frank M. Robinson.
[500:51]
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Whiskaboom by Alan Arkin 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 Grothman Jack's blunder was disastrous, but what he worried about was would Einstein have approved Whisker Boom By Alan Arkin Dear Mr. Gretsch, Mrs. Burroughs and I are sending your son Jack to you because we do not know what else to do with him. As you can see, we can't keep him with us in his present condition. Also, Jack owes us two weeks rent, and since Mrs. Burroughs and I are retired, we would appreciate you sending the money. It has been a dry year and our garden has done poorly. The only reason we put up with your son in the first place was because we are so hard pressed. He saw the sign on the porch, rang the bell, and paid Mrs. Burroughs a month's rent without even looking at the room. Then he ran out to his car and commenced pulling out suit cases and boxes and dragging them upstairs. After the third trip, Mrs. Burrows saw he was having trouble with the stuff and he looked kind of worn out, so she offered to help. He gave her a hard look, as she described it to me when I got home, he said, I don't want anyone touching anything. Please don't interfere. I didn't mean to interfere. My wife told him I only wanted to help. I don't want any help, he said quietly, but with a wild look in his eyes, and he staggered upstairs with the last of his baggage and locked the door. When I got home, Mrs. Burroughs told me she thought I ought to go have a look at the new boarder. I went up thinking we'd have a little chat and straighten things out. I could hear him inside hammering on something. He didn't hear my first knock or the second. I got sore and nearly banged the door down, at which time he decided to open up. I charged in ready to fight a bear, and there was this gate skinny red headed son of yours glaring at me. That's a lot of hammering you're doing, son, I said. That's the only way I can get these boxes open. And don't call me son. I don't like to disturb you, Mr. Gritch, but Mrs. Burroughs is a little upset over the way you acted today. I think you ought to come down for a cup of tea and get acquainted. I know I was rude, he said, looking a little ashamed, but I have waited for years for a chance to get to work on my own with no interference. I'll come down tomorrow when I have got all my equipment set up and apologize to Mrs. Burroughs. Then I asked him what he was working on, but he said he would explain later. Before I got out the door, he was hammering again. He worked till midnight. We saw Jack at mealtime for the next few days, but but he didn't talk much. We learned that he was 26, in spite of his looking like a boy in his teens, that he thought Professor Einstein was the greatest man ever and that he disliked being called son of his experiment. He didn't have much to say. Then he saw Mrs. Burroughs was a little nervous about his experimenting in the guest room and he assured her that it was not dangerous. Before the week was out we started hearing the noises. The first one was like a wire brush going around a barrel. It went whisk, whisk. Then he rigged up something that went skaboom every few seconds, like a loud heartbeat. Once in a while he got in a sound like a creaking well pump. But mostly it was skaboom and whisk, which eventually settled down to a steady rhythmic whisk.
[504:38]
Lady Luck
A boom.
[504:39]
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Whisk. A boom. It was kind of pleasant. Neither of us saw him for two days. The noises kept going. Mrs. Burroughs was alarmed because he was not answering her knock at meal times, and one morning she charged upstairs and hollered at him through the door. You stop your nonsense this minute and come down to breakfast. I'm not hungry, he called back. You opened this door, she ordered, and by George, he did. Your whiskaboom, or whatever it is, will wait until after breakfast. Breakfast. He sat at the table, but he was a tired boy. He had a cold. His eyelids kept battling, and I don't believe he could have lifted his coffee cup. He tried to look awake, and then over he went with his face in the oatmeal. Mrs. Burroughs ran for the ammonia, but he was out cold, so we wiped the oatmeal off his face and carried him upstairs. My wife rubbed Jack's wrist with garlic and put a wet towel on his face, and presently he came to. He looked wildly about the room at his machinery. It was all there, and strange looking stuff, too. Please go away, he begged. I've got work to do. Mrs. Burroughs helped him blow his nose. There'll be no more work for you, sonny. Not till you're well. We'll take care of you. He didn't seem to mind being called sonny. He was sick for a a week, and we tended him like one of our own. We got to know him pretty well, and we also got to know you. Now, Mr. Grouch, whatever you're doing in your laboratory is your business. You could be making atomic disintegrators for all jack toads, but he does not like it or approve of it, and he told us about your running battle with him to keep him working on your project instead of his own. Jack tried to explain his ideas of harnessing time and what he called the reintegration principle. It was all so much whiskaboom to us, so to speak, but he claimed it was for the good of mankind, which is fine with us. But he said you would not let him work it out because there was less money in it than in your project, and this is why he had to get away and work and worry himself into a collapse. When he got well, Mrs. Burroughs told him, from now on you're going to have three meals a day and eight hours sleep, and in between you can play on your whiskeboom all you please. The whiskebooming became as familiar to us as our own voices. Last Sunday Mrs. Burroughs and I came home from church about noon. She went inside through the front door to fix dinner. I walked around the house to look at the garden, and the moment I Walked past the front of the house. I got the shock of my life. The house disappeared. I was too surprised to stop walking, and a step later I was standing at the back of the house and it was all there. I stepped back and the whole house vanished again. One more step and I was at the front. It looked like a real house, in the front and in the back, but there wasn't any in between. It was like one of those false front saloons on the movie. Lots of, but thinner. I thought of my wife who had gone into the kitchen and for all I knew was as thin as a house. And I went charging in the back door yelling, are you all right? Of course I'm all right. What's the matter with you? I grabbed her and she was all there, thank heavens. She giggled and called me an old fool, but I dragged her outside and showed her what had happened to our house. She saw it too, so I knew I didn't have sunstroke, but she couldn't understand it any better than I. Right about then I detected a prominent absence of whiskebooming. Jack. I hollered, and we hurried back into the house and upstairs. Well, Mr. Gritch, it was so pitiful I can't describe it. He was there, but I never saw a more miserable human being. He was not only thin, but also flee flat, like a cartoon of a man who'd been steamrollered. He was lying on the bed, holding onto the covers with no more substance to him than a thin piece of paper less. Mrs. Burroughs took one of his shoulders between her thumb and forefinger, and I took the other. We held him up. There was a breeze coming through the window, and Jack. Well, he waved in the breeze. We closed the window and laid him down again, and he tried to explain what had happened. Professor Einstein wouldn't like this. He moaned. Something went wrong. He cried, shuddering. He went on gasping and mumbling. And we gathered that he had hooked up a circuit the wrong way. I didn't harness the fourth. I chopped off the third dimension. Einstein would not have approved. He was relieved to learn that the damage had been confined to himself and the house, so far as we knew. Like the house, Jack had insides, but we don't know where they are. We poured tea down him, and he could eat after a fashion, but there is never a sign of a lump anywhere. At night we pinned him to the bed with clothespins so he wouldn't blow off the bed. Next morning we rigged a line and pinned him to it so he could sit up. I know what to do, he said. But I have to go back to the lab. Dad would have to let me have his staff and all sorts of equipment and he won't do it if he thinks more of his money than he does his own son. Mrs. Burroughs said, then he's an unnatural father. But Jack made his promise not to get in touch with you. Still, people are beginning to talk. The man from the electric company couldn't find the meter yesterday because it's attached the the middle of the outside wall and has vanished. Mr. Greech, we are parents and we feel that you will not hesitate a moment to do whatever is necessary to get Jack back into shape. So despite our promise, we are sending Jack to you by registered parcel post air mail. He doesn't mind the cardboard mailing tube he is rolled up in as he has been sleeping in it, finding it more comfortable than being pinned to the sheets. Jack is a fine boy, sir, and we hope to hear soon that he is back to normal and doing the work he wants to do. Very truly Yours, W. Burroughs P.S. when Jack figures out the reintegration principle, we would appreciate his fixing our house. We get along as usual, but it makes us nervous to live in a house that, strictly speaking, has no insides. WB End of Whiskaboom by Alan Arkin. You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slot dots Live blackjack, live craps with a live dealer. New players $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. 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