Chapters 10
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1 01 - The 4-D Doodler 33:50
The Four-D-Doodler.
Reading by Greg Marguerite. The 4-D Doodler by Graf Waldier.
Do you believe, Professor Galt, that this four-dimensional plane contains life, intelligent life? At the question, Galt laughed shortly. You have been reading pseudoscience, Dr. Pilbott, he twitted. I realize that as a psychiatrist you are interested in minds, in living beings, rather than in dimensional planes, but I fear you will find no minds to study in the fourth dimension. There aren't any there. Professor Gault paused, peering from beneath bushy, white brows out over the laboratory. To his near-sighted eyes, the blurred figure of Harper, his young assistant, seemed busily at work over his mathematical charts. Gault hoped sourly that the young man was actually working and not just drawing more of his absurd, senseless designs amidst the mathematical computations.
"'Your proof,' Dr. Pilbott broke into his thoughts insistently, "'is purely negative, Professor.' How can you know there are no beings in the fourth dimension unless you actually enter this realm to see for yourself? Professor Galt stared at the fat, puffy face of his visitor and snorted loudly. I am afraid, Pilbot, you do not comprehend the impossibility of such a passage. We cannot possibly break from the confines of our three-dimensional world. Here, let me explain by a simple illustration. Galt took up a book. held it so that a shadow fell onto the surface of the desk. That shadow, he said, is two-dimensional, has length and breadth, but no thickness. Now, in order to enter the third dimension, our plane, the shadow would have to bulge out in some way into the dimension of thickness, an obvious impossibility.
Similarly, we cannot enter the fourth dimension. Do you see? No, retorted Pilbot with some heat. In the first place, we are not two-dimensional shadows. And—why? What is the matter? Professor Gault's lanky form had stiffened, his near-sighted eyes glaring out over the laboratory to the rear of Pilbott. The psychiatrist wheeled around, following his host's gaze. It was Harper. That young man's antics drew an amazed grunt from Pilbott. He was describing peculiar motions in the air with his pencil. Circles, whirls, angles, abrupt jabs forward. He bent over the paper on the desk, made a few sweeps of the pencil, then the pencil rose again into the air to describe more erratic motions. Harper himself seemed in a trance.
Suddenly, Pilbott gave a stifled gasp. It seemed to him that Harper's arm vanished at the elbow as it stabbed forward, then reappeared. Once again, the phenomenon happened. Pilbott blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes. It must have been an illusion, he decided. It was too—unlikely. Harper! Galt's voice was like the snapping of a steel trap. Startled, Harper came to with a jerk. Seeing he was being watched, he flushed redly, then bent over his charts again. An apologetic murmur floated from his desk. What was he doing? Pilbot asked puzzledly. Doodling. Galt spat out the word disgustedly. Doodling? echoed the psychiatrist. Why, that is a slang term we use in psychiatry to describe the absent-minded scrawls and designs people make while their attention is elsewhere occupied.
An overflow of the unconscious mind, we call it. Many famous people are doodlers. Their doodles often are a sign of special ability. Exactly, snapped Galt. It shows a special ability to waste time, and Harper has become worse since I hired him to do some of my mathematical work. Some influence in this laboratory, I blush to confess, seems to bring it on. Four-dimensional doodling, we call it, because as you saw, he doesn't confine it to the surface of the paper. Pilbott looked startled. "'By Jove!' he cried. "'I believe you've hit on something new to psychiatry. This young man may have some unknown faculty of mind, an instinctive perception of the fourth dimension.' Just as some people have an unerring sense of direction, so perhaps Harper has a sense of—of a fourth direction—the fourth dimension.
I should like to examine some of his doodles. Harper looked up in alarm as his crusty-tempered employer appeared, followed by the stout figure of Pilbott. He rose and stood aside unassumingly, as Pilbott bent over the scrawls on his charts, clucking interestedly. Harper flicked a worried glance over to the corner. He hoped they wouldn't notice his stress analyzing clay model standing there. It looked like a futurist's nightmare with angles curves and knobs stuck out at all angles. Professor Galt might not understand. For one of his retiring temperament, Harper was aiming high. There was a standing award of $50,000 for the lucky mathematician who would solve the mystery of the stress barrier encountered by skyscrapers as they were built up toward the 150-story mark.
At this height, they encountered stress and strains which mathematical computations and engineering designs had been unable to solve. Harper believed the stress barrier was due to an undetected space bending close to the Earth's surface. A bending of space greater than ever provided for in the prediction of Einstein. And if he was right, and could win that award, then there might be wedding bells and a little bungalow with Judith. Harper's greatest fear was that he would do something to annoy Galt into firing him, thus depriving him of the privilege of using the mathematical charts and computing machines available in the laboratory. Right now, he hoped Galt wouldn't notice that statue in the corner.
What's that? Harper's heart leaped. The professor was glaring at the statue, as though it were something the cat brought in. Pilbott looked up from examination of the doodles and followed Galt over to the futuristic statuary. As Galt made strangled noises, Pilbott stared interestingly. Why, it's like some of the designs in his doodling, he exclaimed. And made with some of my best modeling clay for reproducing geometric solids, rasped Galt. He wheeled upon Harper. "'Get that thing out of here! I won't stand for such rot in this laboratory! Throw it into the hall for the janitor!' "'Yes, sir,' said Harper, gulping. He took hold of the statue, pulled at it. "'It—it won't budge!' he exclaimed amazedly.
"'Eh? Won't move? It's not that heavy, is it?' demanded the professor. "'No, about thirty pounds. But it won't move.' Gault took hold of one of the angles of the thing, jerked at it savagely. He gave it up with an oath, returned to Harper's desk, muttering. Harper suddenly noticed the top portion of the statue. It didn't seem to be all there. He was positive there had been another section on top, shooting off at an angle, representing a problem in tangential stress. What had happened to that top section? He would figure that out later, when the occasion was more propitious. Right now, he realized that only the presence of Dr. Pilbot prevented Galt from firing him. He cast an apprehensive glance toward his employer.
With trepidation, he saw Galt reach for something projecting from behind a bench. Galt pulled it out, held it dangling before him. A strangled exclamation of wrath came from him, his long nose pointed accusingly toward Harper like a finger pointing at a criminal. "'I was afraid of that,' he grated. Cutting paper dolls. Galt was holding up a large paper cutout of a human figure. A long, rangy man. This is the last straw, Galt went on, his voice rising. I have stood enough. It—it wasn't me, sir, Harper cried quickly, with visions of his job and fifty thousand dollars vanishing. It was your ten-year-old nephew, Rudolph, when he was here yesterday. He—he cut it out. Said it looked like—like his uncle.
Harper stopped as Galt seemed about to explode. Then the mathematician subsided. A malicious expression crept over his face. "'Hm,' he said. "'Might be just what I need to explain things to Dr. Pilbott.' "'I shall take this matter before the Psychiatric Society,' Pilbott was saying excitedly. "'Undoubtedly you have some strange faculty, an instinctive perception of four-dimensional laws. What was that, Professor?' I said, if you will step over to this desk, I will explain to you in elementary terms, very elementary and easy to understand, why you will never be able to study four-dimensional beings, if any exist. Galt's voice was tinged with sarcasm. Pilbott came over, followed by Harper, who was interested in any explanations about the fourth dimension, even elementary ones.
Galt, with a glint in his eye, pressed the paper figure flatly on the surface of Harper's desk. This paper man, we will say, represents a two-dimensional creature. We lay him flatly against the desk which represents his world. Flatland, we mathematicians call it. Mr. Flatlander can't see into our world. He can see only along the flat plane of his own world. To see us, for instance, he would have to look up, which is the third dimension. A direction inconceivable to him. Now, doctor, are you beginning to understand why we can never see four-dimensional beings? Pilbott frowned thoughtfully, then looked up. And what about the viewpoint of the four-dimensioners themselves? What would prevent them from seeing us?
Harper hardly heard the professor's snort of disgust. This two-dimensional cutout in Flatland fascinated him. An idea occurred to him. Now. Just supposing the—as Galt and Pilbot argued, Harper grasped the paper cutout and bent it, jackknifed it, creasing it firmly in the middle. Then he raised the upper half so that it rose vertically from the desk, while the lower half was still pressed flatly against the desk surface. Now, he murmured to himself, the Flatlander would appear to his fellows to have vanished from the waist up, because from the waist up he is bent into the third dimension, so far as they are concerned.
At the wavering scream, Harper looked up quickly. Pilbot was staring frozenly in front of him toward the floor. Harper followed his glance and saw it. Professor Galt had vanished from the waist up. His lower body still stood before Pilbot, swaying slightly, but the upper body was unconditionally missing. From the large feet planted solidly on the floor, long legs rose majestically, terminating in slim, angular hips. and from thence vanished abruptly into nothingness. It was as though the upper body had been sheared away, neatly and precisely, at the waist. Pilbott stared from the visible portion of Galt to a slack-jawed harper and back again, sweat splashing from his puffy face. Why—why, really, my dear fellow, he quavered, addressing the half-figure.
This—this is a bit rude of you vanishing in the midst of my sentence. I—I trust you will— Return at once. Then, as the full import of the phenomenon penetrated to his understanding, his eyes became glazed and he backed away. The portion of Professor Galt addressed failed to give any indication it had heard the remonstrance. Slowly, the legs began to feel their way, like a blind man, about the floor. Harper stared wildly, white showing around his pale blue irises. No, he bleated. The professor didn't do it himself. I caused it to happen. I bent the paper cutout and—and something saw me do it and imitated me by bending the professor into the fourth dimension. Harper moaned faintly, wringing his hands.
Pilbott, at the moment, got little satisfaction from this demonstration of his point about four-dimensional life. He glanced fearfully at the half-figure. You—you mean to say— He quailed. That we are under scrutiny by some being of the fourth dimension? That's it, replied Harper with a whinny. I know it. I can feel it. It became aware of our three-dimensional life in some way, and its attention is now concentrated on the laboratory. He wrung his hands. I just know something else terrible is going to happen. He backed away quickly as the occupied pair of pants moved toward him. His retreat was halted by his desk. upon which reposed two large California oranges, an inevitable accompaniment to Harper's lunch.
To him, orange juice was a potent revivifying drink. Now he automatically reached for one of the oranges, as a more hearty individual might reach for a whiskey-and-soda in a moment of mental shock. His eyes wide on the shuffling approach of Galt's underpinnings, Harper nervously dug sharp fingernails into the orange, tore off large chunks of skin. A sudden blur seen from the corner of his eyes pulled his gaze back to the desk. The other orange had vanished. It dropped to the floor before Harper, but now it was a squashy mess, the inside standing out like petals, the juice running from it. The other orange slipped from Harper's nerveless fingers, rolled along the desktop. Harper pounced on the squashy thing on the floor, feverishly pushed back the projecting insides, closely examined it.
He looked up, wide-eyed, at Pilbott. "'Turned inside out,' he gasped hoarsely. "'Without breaking its skin!' Pilbott's expression indicated that the scientific attitude was slowly replacing his former fright. He snapped his fingers. "'Imitation again,' he said, half to himself. He looked at Harper. "'When you bent the paper figure, this—this four-dimensional entity imitated your action by bending the professor.' Now, as you started to peel the orange, your action was again imitated, in a four-dimensional manner, by this entity turning the other orange inside out. His voice dropped as he muttered, imitativeness, the mark of a mind of low evolutionary order, or of—his words faded off, his expression thoughtful.
More white showed around Harper's eyes. You—you mean I'm being specially watched by this being, that he—it— Imitates everything I do? That's it, clipped Pilbott. Because you possess this strange perception of its realm, the being has been especially attracted to you, imitates whatever you do, but in a four-dimensional manner. A being of inexplicable powers and prerogatives, with weird power over matter, but with a mentality that is either very primitive or—Harpert leaped into the air with a yell as Professor Gault's abbreviated body sidled up to him from behind. As he leaped, the inside-out orange flew out of his grasp. "'I just know,' he quavered, "'that Professor Galt wants me to do something.
He's probably barking orders at me from the other dimension. Oh, dear, I've dropped the orange on the Professor's—where his stomach should be.' The squashy orange had landed on the area of Galt that was the line of demarcation between his visible and invisible portions. The area that his stomach would occupy normally—the It rested there in plain sight of the two startled men. "'I—I'd better remove it,' said Harper weakly. He moved with a dreadful compulsion toward the swaying half-figure, one slender hand extended tremblingly toward the inverted orange. Abruptly, the orange vanished. Harper halted like he'd run into a brick wall, staring blankly ahead. He put his hands to his stomach, moaning faintly.
"'What's the matter?' cried Pilbot. The orange—it's—it's in my stomach. See, what did I tell you, exulted Pilbott. Another act of imitativeness. It saw you drop the orange on Galt's—where his stomach should be—and imitated by putting the orange in your stomach. It proves I'm right about the being. With a loud belch, Pilbott broke off. He stared blankly at Harper, then his hand slowly came up to clutch at his stomach. Harper looked quickly at the desktop. The other orange, he gasped. It's gone! Into—my—stomach! groaned Pilbott. Be—be careful what you do—my god! Don't do anything—don't even think! This—this four-dimensional creature will surely imitate whatever you do in some weird manner! Rubbing his stomach, Pilbott glanced about at the various articles of furniture.
He blanched. I wouldn't want any of that stuff inside me, he yammered. Harper flicked a despairing glance at the half-body now gliding along in the vicinity of the paper cutout. "'We—we must do something to get the professor back,' he said worriedly. He thought incongruously of a restaurant where he used to order lemon pie and invariably get apple. Finally, he found that he could get lemon by ordering peach. Now the problem was, what did he have to order to get his employer extricated from being stuck between dimensions, like a pig under a fence? Anything he did would be imitated in a manner that might prove tragic. The upright portion of the cutout was leaning over backward, the head drooping down like a wilted flower as the tension at the crease slowly lessened.
Gathering together what resolution he could, Harper determined to take the bull by the horns. He would get the professor returned by pressing the upper portion of the cutout flatly onto the desk surface. With trembling hands, he pressed down on it, Then sprang back with a muffled yell. Three feet above the half body, the professor's head had flashed into visibility. "'You only pressed the head onto the desk,' said Pilbot disgustedly. "'So the being only impressed Galt's head back into the laboratory. Now press down the rest of the body.' The professor's head, suspended above the body, glared about, affixed Harper with a smoldering glance. The mouth moved rapidly, but no words came out. "'Professor—' I can't hear you, whimpered Harper.
Your lungs and vocal cords are in the other dimension. Here, I'll have you completely returned. He reached a hand toward the cutout, the torso of which still bulged upward from the desk. Galt's head wagged in vigorous negation of Harper's contemplated act. His mouth moved in what, if audible, would have been clipped, burning accents. Harper drew back his hand as if he had touched a red-hot poker. The professor doesn't want me to touch the cutout, he said helplessly. Galt's head hovered over the cutout like a gaunt moon. It swooped down toward the paper figure, seeming to be studying its position on the desk closely. Pilbot watched him for a sign of his intention or wishes. Harper wandered distractedly over toward the high-wall bench.
He had it. He would distract the attention of the entity from Galt by making another cutout. He would then experiment with that second one without endangering Galt. He'd be careful not to make this one thin and tall, so as not to resemble the professor in outline. Perhaps with it he could trick the entity into releasing the missing part of Gault's body. He scraped in the bench drawer for the scissors and started to shear through a large, stiff piece of paper. A moment later he looked up as Pilbot walked over. Galt has some reason for not wanting his silhouette touched, he said. Can't quite make out his lip movements, but he seems afraid some permanent mark may be left on him by his return. He wants time to figure out—why, what are you doing?
I've made another cutout for experiment, explained Harper. And this one doesn't look like the professor. Isn't tall and thin. See? He lifted the second cutout from the flat surface of the bench, held it suspended before him. This one is short and fat. Harper halted abruptly, the breath whooshing from his lungs. There was no use talking to thin air. Pilbott had been whisked into nothingness. Where the portly figure of the eminent psychiatrist had stood was now nothing—not even a half-man. Too late, Harper realized that when he had lifted the paper figure from the surface of the bench, the entity had imitated him by lifting Pilbott into the fourth dimension. Belatedly, he knew that the cutout which he held dangling resembled Pilbott in outline.
Harper dashed back and forth in little rushes, carrying the paper figure. He dared not put it down, for fear of seeing some segment of Pilbott flash back. He did not know what to do with it. Finally, he compromised by suspending it to a low-hanging chandelier, where it dangled, swaying in the slight air currents. Gault was watching his assistant's antics with a bleak expression that changed to sardonic satisfaction as he realized Pilbott was in a predicament like his. Only more so. Abruptly, he frowned, staring ahead, and Harper guessed that Pilbot had located Galt's torso in the other realm, was nudging him to indicate the fact. Suddenly, Harper knew that he himself must enter this fourth-dimensional realm.
That strange instinct told him the solution to everything was there, somewhat as a woman's intuition impels her to act in a certain way without knowing why. How to get there? Another paper cut out? He glanced toward the professor, the occupied trousers, and swimming above it, the man's head. The head was watching him, the expression savage. No, there must be no more cutouts, Harper decided. While the four-dimensional entity distinguished between the outlines of a thin silhouette and a fat one, something in between, like Harper's form, would be testing it too far. He, Harper, would take the place of his own cutout. Galt's head reared up. glared fixedly at his assistant as the young man swung his legs onto the desk, then lay down flat.
A moment later he lay there, in flat land, then leaped to his feet. It was as though he had leaped into a different world. He was no longer in the laboratory. He wasn't on any floor at all. As far as he could make out, his feet rested on nothing, and yet there was some sort of tension under him, like the surface tension of water. He was— He suddenly knew it, standing on a segment of warped space. There was a spatial strain here that acted as a solid beneath him. Harper looked up, that is, overhead. There was nothing there but vast stretches of emptiness, at first. Then he saw that this emptiness was lined and laced with filmy striations like cellophane. They bore a strange resemblance to his doodlings, as though that strange faculty of his enabled him to somehow perceive this place of the fourth dimension.
And instinctively, Harper knew that these lacings were the boundaries of a vast enclosure, a four-dimensional enclosure, the walls of which consisted of joined and meshed space warps. Abruptly, he became aware of movement. He became aware of solidity there, above him, and the solidity was in motion. Harper knew he was gazing upon a being of the fourth dimension, doubtless the entity that had caused the phenomena in the laboratory, which had snatched him into the fourth dimension, and was even now observing him with its four-dimensional sight. There was a shape above him that strained his eyes, gave hint of form just beyond his comprehension. Harper hardly noticed that Pilbott was beside him, shaking him.
He had suddenly grasped a fundamental law of spatial stresses, and he whipped out a pad and pencil, began scribbling down the mathematical formula of these laws. He began to see now why skyscrapers encountered the stress barrier at a certain height. He understood it just as a person of innate musical ability. Hearing music for the first time would understand the laws of that music. Look out! It's moving! Descending! Pilbot was yelling into his ear. It's about to act! Became active the moment you got here. How did you induce it to bring you here? Huh? Harper looked up from his scribbling. Oh. Harper explained quickly how he had induced the being to act on himself. That's it, cried Pilbot hoarsely.
You switched the pattern of imitation on it, tricked it into bringing you here. That's what made it angry. Angry? Harper almost dropped his pad, clutched at Pilbott, as there was a sudden upheaval of the invisible tension surface on which they stood. A violent shake sprawled them on the ground, and now Harper saw the torso of Galt a few feet away, apparently hovering above the surface. Yes, angry! Pilbott was pale. As long as you merely gave it something to imitate, it was pacified. But now it recognizes opposition, an effort to outwit it due to your switching the pattern of imitation. Its condition is dangerous. It's bound to react violently. We have to get out of here. You must know some way.
Harper again scribbled some figures on his pad. As soon as I've worked out this formula—Pilbot shook him frantically. Can't you understand? This creature is a mental patient of a violent type. We're in a fourth-dimensional insane asylum. Pilbot gazed upward fearfully at the descending mass. The pattern of its action fits perfectly, he went on. Some violent type of insanity combined with delusions of grandeur. Any slightest opposition will cause a spasm of fury. It recognizes such opposition in the way you tricked it into bringing you here. At first I thought it was a primitive mentality, but now I know it is a highly evolved but insane creature, thinks it's Napoleon, wants to conquer the three-dimensional plane which its attention has been attracted to in some way.
Harper looked up in surprise. "'Does it know about Napoleon?' "'Of course not, you fool!' screamed Pilbott. "'It has the Napoleonic complex, identifies itself with some greater conqueror of its own realm. And now it's on the rampage. We have to get out of here.' He clutched at Harper as another upheaval of the surface threw them down. Rising, Harper put away his pad. His calculations were complete. He could now show engineers how to build high buildings, taking advantage of space stress instead of trying to fight the stress. For the first time, the danger of their positions seemed to penetrate to his consciousness. He looked about, and his eyes rested on a strange, familiar projection rising from the invisible floor a few feet away.
It was the section of his clay statue that had vanished. Vanished because its peculiar shape had somehow caused it to be warped into the fourth dimension. Why hadn't he been able to move it? Professor Galt moved about freely. He and Pilbott went over to it, tried to move it. A slight filmy web-work around the projection caught Harper's eye. Now he knew. The being had somehow affixed it to the spot as a landmark so it could locate the laboratory. It must have been this projection that had first attracted the being's attention to the three-dimensional world, since ordinarily it would never have noticed the presence of three-dimensional life any more than humans would notice the presence of two-dimensional life, if such existed.
Harper looked up at a bleat from Pilbott. Above them was a sudden furious play of lights and shades. Vast masses seemed shifting in crazy juxtapositions, now descending rapidly toward them. Quick! Harper, now fully aroused, gasped to Pilbott. "'Climb down this projection.' "'Climb down it?' "'Yes. There is a fluid condition of space where it penetrates between the two planes. By hugging its contours, you will emerge into the laboratory. I hope—' Pilbott glanced overhead nervously, then experimentally slid a foot down the projection. The foot vanished. With a cry of relief, Pilbott lowered himself until only head and shoulders were visible. Then that, too, vanished. Harper looked up. Some monstrous suggestion of form was almost upon him.
He grasped the projection, and just as his head sank out of sight, the form seemed to smash down on him. Pilbot helped Harper to his feet from where he had sprawled at the base of the statue on the laboratory floor. Quick, he gasped. The creature will be infuriated now by our escape from its realm. A maniacal spasm is sure to follow. We must get Galt back in some way, then leave the laboratory. Even as they dashed over toward the abbreviated form of Galt, the laboratory shook. Invisible strains seemed to be bulging the walls inward. Harper rushed to the desk, upon which still reposed the cutout. The section between neck and waist still arched off the surface. As Harper reached toward the cutout to press it flat, Galt's eyes widened.
His mouth opened in a soundless shout of opposition. Harper hesitated. "'Never mind him,' yammered Pilbott. "'Press the figure flat!' Harper pressed it flat. For an instant, the laboratory stopped its ominous vibration. Then the figure of Galt flew through the air, came up against a wall, but it was his complete figure. "'More signs of violence,' cried Pilbott. "'But that action won't appease it. We must get out of here!' Even as he spoke, there was a thunderous crackling and roaring. Harper felt himself flying about, and for an instant of awful vertigo he did not know up from down. Forces seemed to be tearing at him. He felt as though he were a piece of iron being attracted simultaneously in several directions by powerful electromagnets.
There was a flare of colored lights, a deafening detonation, and he felt himself knocked breathless against a wall. He picked himself up, looked around. On one side of him was the familiar south wall of the laboratory. To the north, east, and west was open air. He was standing on a section of laboratory flooring that jutted out over empty space from the wall. His desk was a few feet away, right at the edge of the jutting floor. Galt and Pilbot were picking themselves up to one side of the desk. The pair looked over the edge of the floor, then recoiled, frenziedly hugging the flooring under them. Harper crawled over, looked over the edge, quickly backed away. Several hundred feet below, the traffic of the city roared.
Galt went over to the door in one wall, opened it, then stepped back quickly, his face pale. The laboratory has been turned inside out, he shouted. We are on the outside. We must get away from here, squalled Pilbot. Another spasm of this creature will precipitate us into the street. Galt forgot his apprehensions long enough to freeze Harper with a glance. This is all you're doing, he bawled. You, with your absurd doodling, which attracted the attention of some being of the fourth dimension. In his anger, he overlooked the fact that he was contradicting his formerly held opinion. The laboratory wrecked, he continued. And that isn't all. He stalked up to the cringing Harper, thrust his face toward him.
Do you know, he yelled, why I didn't want to be returned hastily? Why I didn't want you to bring me back by flattening out the paper cutout, you dolt! Did you ever try to get a crease out of a piece of paper? I don't understand, murmured Harper. That paper doll was creased, wasn't it? shouted Galt. Once a piece of paper is creased, he resumed heatedly, it can't be perfectly flattened out again. At the crease, a thin cross-section continues to bulge. Into the third dimension, in the case of that paper cut-out. Into the fourth dimension, in my case. I'm creased, too. At the line where I was bent into the fourth dimension. Surely you aren't blind. Harper staggered back as he saw it. A thin, horizontal line of light shining through Galt's body, across his waistline, through clothes and all.
I shall have to go through life this way, Galt snarled. Due to your imbecilic doodling, you're meddling with what you don't understand. Go about constantly with that slit of daylight showing through me. You're fired! Gentlemen, cried Pilbott. The entity—we must get away. Another spasm will surely follow. Harper didn't think so. A few feet away, he had noticed something, his statue lying on its side. It was all there, including the portion that had been in the fourth dimension. The entity's landmark was gone. Harper didn't believe it would locate this particular area of the third dimension again. The scream of a fire siren rose up to them. As a ladder scraped over the projecting floor, Harper fondly felt the pad in his pocket with the formula on it.
He wasn't worried now about having been fired. He was seeing visions of a small cottage with Judith. Of course, he would have to be careful in the future with his doodling. He could not again risk attracting the attention of some four-dimensional being. Not with Judith to think about.
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2 02 - The Carnivore 12:01
The Carnival.
The Carnival by Catherine MacLean, A.K.A. G.A. Morris. The beings stood around my bed in air suits like ski suits, with globes over their heads like upside-down fish bowls. It was all like a masquerade with odd costumes and funny masks. I know that the masks are their faces, but I argue with them and find I think as if I'm arguing with humans behind the masks. They're people. I recognize people, and whether I'm going to like this person or that person, by something in the way they move and how they get excited when they talk. And I know that I like these people in a motherly sort of way. You have to feel motherly toward them, I guess. They all remind me of Ronnie, a medical student I knew once.
He was small and round and eager. You had to like him, but you couldn't take him very seriously. He was a pacifist, he wrote poetry and pulled it out to read aloud at ill-timed moments, and he stuttered when he talked too fast. They are like that, all fright and gentleness. I am not the only survivor, they have explained that, but I am the first they found and the least damaged, the one they have chosen to represent the human race to them. They stand around my bed and answer questions, and are nice to me when I argue with them. All in a group, they look halfway between a delegation of nations and an ark, one of each, big and small, thick and thin, four arms, all wings, all shapes and colours, in fur and skin and feathers.
I can picture them in their UN of the universe, making speeches in their different languages, listening patiently without understanding each other's different problems, boring each other, and being too polite to yawn. They are polite, so polite, I almost feel they are afraid of me, and I want to reassure them. But I talk as if I were angry. I can't help it, because if things had only been a little different—why couldn't you have come sooner? Why couldn't you have tried to stop it before it happened, or at least come sooner afterward? If they had come sooner to where the workers of the Nevada Power Pile starved slowly behind their protecting walls of lead—the If they had looked sooner for survivors of the dust with which the nations of the world had slain each other, George Craig would be alive.
He died before they came. He was my co-worker, and I loved him. We had gone down together, passing door by door the automatic safeguards of the plant, which were supposed to protect the people on the outside from the radioactive danger from the inside. But the danger of a failure of politics was far more real than the danger of failure in the science of the power pile, And that had not been calculated by the builders. We were far underground when the first radioactivity in the air outside had shut all the heavy, lead-shielded automatic doors between us and the outside. We were safe, and we starved there. Why didn't you come sooner? I wonder if they know or guess how I feel. My questions, not questions, but I have to ask them.
He is dead. I don't mean to reproach them. They look well-meaning and kindly. But I feel as if somehow, knowing why it happened, could make it stop, could let me turn the clock back and make it happen differently. If I could have signalled them so that they would have come just a little sooner. They look at one another, turning their funny-faced heads uneasily, moving back and forth, but no one will answer. The world is dead. George is dead. That thin, pathetic creature with the bones showing through his skin that he was when we sat still at the last, with our hands touching, Thinking there were people outside who'd forgotten us, hoping they would remember. We didn't guess that the world was dead, blanketed in radiating dust outside.
Politics had killed it. These beings around me, they had been watching, seeing what was going to happen to our world, listening to our radios from their small settlements on the other planets of the solar system. They had seen the doom of war coming. They represented stellar civilizations of great power and technology, and with populations that would have made ours seem a small village. They were stronger than we were, and yet they had done nothing. Why didn't you stop us? You could have stopped us. A rabbity one who is closer than the others backs away, gesturing politely that he is giving room for someone else to speak, but he looks guilty and will not look at me with his big round eyes. I still feel weak and dizzy.
It's hard to think. But I feel as if they are hiding a secret. A doe-like one hesitates and comes closer to my bed. We discussed it. We voted. It talks through a microphone in its helmet, with a soft, lisping accent that I think comes from the shape of its mouth. It has a muzzle and very soft, dainty, long, nibbling lips like a deer that nibbles on twigs and buds. We were afraid, adds one who looks like a bear. To us, the future was very terrible, says one who looks as if it might have descended from some sort of large bird like a penguin. So much—your weapons were very terrible. Now they all talk at once, crowding about my bed, apologizing. So much killing. It hurt to know about—but your people didn't seem to mind.
We were afraid. "'And in your fiction,' the doe-like one lisped, "'I saw plays from your amusement machines "'which said that the discovery of beings in space "'would save you from war. "'Not because you would let us bring friendship "'and teach peace, "'but because the human race would unite "'in hatred of the outsiders. "'They would forget their hatred of each other "'only in a new and terrible war with us.' "'His voice breaks in a squeak "'and it turns its face away from me. "'You were about to come out into space. We were wondering how to hide.' "'That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if he might have descended from a bat, grey silken fur on his pointed face, big night-seeing eyes and big sensitive ears, with a hump-shape on the back of his air-suit which might be folded wings.
We were trying to conceal where we had built, so that humans would not guess we were near and look for us.' They are ashamed of their fear, for because of it they broke all the kindly laws of their civilisations, restrained all the pity and gentleness I see in them, and let us destroy ourselves. I am beginning to feel more awake and to see more clearly, and I am beginning to feel sorry for them, for I can see why they are afraid. They are herbivores. I remember the meaning of shapes. In the paths of evolution there are grass-eaters and berry-eaters and root-diggers. Each has its functional shape of face and neck, and its wide, startled-looking eyes to see and run away from the hunters. In all their racial history, they have never killed to eat.
They have been killed and eaten, or run away, and they evolved to intelligence by selection. Those lived who succeeded in running away from carnivores like lions, hawks, and men. I look up, and they turn their eyes and heads in quick, embarrassed motion, not meeting my eye. The rabbity one is nearest, and I reach out to touch him, pleased because I am growing strong enough now to move my arms. He looks at me, and I ask the question. Are there any carnivores, flesh-eaters, among you? He hesitates, moving his lips as if searching for tactful words. We have never found any that are civilized. We have frequently found them in caves and tents, fighting each other. Sometimes we find them fighting each other with the ruins of cities around them, but they're always savages.
The bear-like one said heavily, "'It might be that carnivores evolve more rapidly and tend toward intelligence more often, for we find radioactive planets without life, and places like the place you call your asteroid belt where a planet should be, but there are only scattered fragments of planet, places that look as if a planet had been blown apart. "'We think that usually,' he looked at me uncertainly, beginning to fumble the words, "'we think—' "'Yours is the only carnivorous race we have found that was civilised, that had a science and was going to come out into space,' the doe-like one interrupted softly. "'We were afraid.' They seemed to be apologising. "'The rabbity one, who seems to be chosen as the leader in speaking to me, says—' We will give you anything you want, anything we are able to give you.
They mean it. We survivors will be privileged people, with a key to all the cities, everything free. Their sincerity is wonderful, but puzzling. Are they trying to atone for the thing they feel was a crime, that they allowed humanity to murder itself, and lost to the galaxy the richness of a race? Is this why they are so generous? Perhaps, then, they will help the race to get started again, The records are not lost. The few survivors can eventually repopulate Earth. Under the tutelage of these peaceful races, without the stress of division into nations, we will flower as a race. No children of mine to the furthest descendant will ever make war again. This much of a lesson we have learned. These timid beings do not realize how much humanity has wanted peace.
They do not know how reluctantly we were forced and trapped by old institutions and warped tangles of politics to which we could see no answer. We are not naturally savage. We are not savage when approached as individuals. Perhaps they know this, but are afraid anyhow, instinctive fear rising up from the blood of their hunted, frightened forbears. The human race will be a good partner to these races. Even recovering from starvation as I am, I can feel in myself an energy they do not have. The savage in me and my race is a creative thing, for in those who have been educated as I was, it is a controlled savagery which attacks and destroys only problems and obstacles, never people. Any human raised outside of the political traditions that the race inherited from its blood-stained childhood would be as friendly and ready for friendship as I am toward these beings.
I could never hurt these pleasant overgrown bunnies and squirrels. "'We will do everything we can to make up for—we will try to help,' says the bunny, stumbling over the English, but civilized and cordial and kind. I sit up suddenly, reaching out impulsively to shake his hand. Suddenly, frightened, he leaps back, all of them step back, glancing behind them as though making sure of the avenue of escape. Their big, luminous eyes widen and glance rapidly from me to the doors, frightened. They must think I am about to leap out of bed and pounce on them and eat them. I am about to laugh and reassure them, about to say that all I want from them is friendship, when I feel a twinge in my abdomen from the sudden motion.
I touch it with one hand under the bed-clothes. There is the scar of an incision there, almost healed—an operation. The weakness I am recovering from is more than the weakness of starvation. For only half a second I do not understand. Then I see why they looked ashamed. They voted the murder of a race. All the human survivors found have been made sterile. There will be no more humans after we die. I am frozen, one hand still extended to grasp the hand of the rabbity one, My eyes still searching his expression, reassuring words still half-formed. There will be time for anger or grief later, for now, in this instant, I can understand. They are probably quite right. We were carnivores. I know, because at this moment of hatred, I could kill them all.
End of the Carnivore
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3 03 - Homesick 13:56
Holmesick.
Frankston pushed listlessly at a red chequer with his right forefinger. He knew the move would cost him a man, but he lacked enough interest in the game to plot out a safe move. His opponent, James, jumped the red disc with a black king and removed it from the board. Gregory, across the room, flicked rapidly through the pages of a magazine, too rapidly to be reading anything or even looking at the pictures. Ross lay quietly on his bunk, staring out of the viewport. The four were strangely alike in appearance, nearly the same age—the age where grey hairs finally outnumber black, or baldness takes over. The age when the expanding waistline has begun to sag tiredly. When robust middle age begins the slow, accelerating decline toward senility.
A strange group to find aboard a spaceship, but then the Columbus was a very strange ship. Bolted to its outer hull, just under the viewports, were wooden boxes full of red geraniums, and ivy wound tenuous green fronds over the gleaming hull that had withstood the bombardment of pinpoint meteors, and turned away the deadly power of naked cosmic rays. Frankston glanced at his wrist chrono. It was one minute to six. In about a minute, he thought, Ross will say something about going out to water his geraniums. The wrist chrono ticked fifty-nine times. "'I think I'll go out and water my geraniums,' said Ross. No one glanced up. Then Gregory threw his magazine on the floor. Ross got up and walked, limping slightly to a wall locker.
He pulled out the heavy, ungainly space suit in the big metal bulb of a headpiece. He carried them to his bunk and laid them carefully down. "'Will somebody please help me on with my suit?' he asked. For one more long moment, no one moved. Then James got up and began to help Ross fit his legs into the suit. Ross had arthritis, not badly, but enough so that he needed a little help climbing into a space suit. James pulled the heavy folds of the suit up around Ross's body, and held it while Ross extended his arms into the sleeve sections. His hands in the heavy gauntlets were too unwieldy to do the front fastenings, and he stood silently while James did it for him. Ross lifted the helmet, staring at it as a cripple might regard a wheelchair which he loathed but was wholly dependent upon.
Then he fitted the helmet over his head, and James fastened it down and lifted the oxygen tank to his back. "'Ready?' asked James. The bulbous headpiece inclined in a nod. James walked to a panel and threw a switch marked inner lock. A round aperture slid silently open. Ross stepped through it, and the door shut behind him as James threw the switch back to its original position. Opposite the switch marked outer lock, a signal glowed redly, and James threw another switch. A moment later, the signal flickered out. Frankston, with a violent gesture, swept the checkerboard clean. Red and black men clattered to the floor, rolling and spinning. Nobody picked them up. "'What does he do it for?' demanded Frankston, in a tight voice.
"'What does he get out of those stinking geraniums he can't touch or smell?' "'Shut up,' said Gregory." James looked up sharply. Kurtner's was unusual for Gregory—a bad sign. Frankston was the one he had been watching, the one who had shown signs of cracking. But after so long, even a psycho expert's opinion might be haywire. Who was a yardstick? Who was normal? "'Geraniums don't smell much anyway,' added Gregory, in a more conciliatory tone. "'Yeah,' agreed Frankston. "'I'd forgotten that. But why does he torture himself like this, and us, too?' "'Because that's what he wanted to do,' answered James. Sure," agreed Gregory. The whole trip, the last twenty years of it, anyhow. All he could talk about was how, when he got back to Earth, he was going to buy a little place in the country and raise flowers.
"'Well, we're back,' muttered Frankston, with a terrible bitterness. "'He's raising flowers, but not in any little place in the country.' Gregory continued almost dreamily. "'Remember the last night out? We were all gathered around the viewscreen, and there was Earth getting bigger and greener and closer all the time.' Remember what it felt like to be going back after thirty years? "'Thirty years cooped up in this ship,' grumbled Frankston, "'all our twenties and thirties and forties.' "'But we were coming home,' there was a rapt expression on Gregory's lined and weathered face. "'We were looking forward to the twenty or maybe thirty good years we had left, talking about what we'd do, where we'd live, wondering what had changed on earth.
At least we had that last night out.' All the data was stashed away in the microfiles, all the data about planets with air we couldn't breathe and food we couldn't eat. We were going home, home to big, friendly, green earth. Frankston's face suddenly crumpled as though he were about to weep, and he cradled his head against his arms. "'God, do we have to go over it all again, not again to-night.' "'Leave him alone,' ordered James, with an inflection of command in his voice. "'Go to the other section of the ship if you don't want to listen.' He has to keep going over it, just like Ross has to keep watering his geraniums. Frankston remained motionless, and Gregory looked gratefully at James. James was the steady one.
It was easier for him, because he understood. Gregory's face became more and more animated as he lost himself living again his recollections. The day we blasted in, the crowds, thousands of people, all there to see us come in. We were proud. Of course, we thought we were the first to land, just like we'd been the first to go out. Those cheers coming from thousands of people at once. For us, Ross, Lieutenant Ross, was the first one out of the lock. We'd decided on that. He'd been in command for almost ten years, ever since Commander Stevens died. You remember Stevens, don't you? He took over when we lost Captain Willers. Well, anyway, Ross out first, and then you, James, and you, Frankston, and then Trippett, and me last.
"'Because you were all specialists, and I was just a crewman—the crewman, I should say—the only one left.' Ross hesitated, and almost stumbled when he stepped out, and tears began pouring from his eyes. But I thought—well, you know, coming home after thirty years and all that. But when I stepped out of the lock, my eyes stung like fire, and a thousand needles seemed to jab at my skin. And then the President himself stepped forward with the flowers. That's where the real trouble began—with the flowers. I remember Ross stretching out his arms to take the bouquet like a mother reaching for a baby. Then suddenly he dropped them, sneezing and coughing and sobbing for breath, and the President reached out to help him, asking him over and over what was wrong.
It was the same with all of us, and we turned and staggered back to the ship closing the lock behind us. It was bad then. God, I'll never forget it. The five of us, moaning in agony, gasping for breath, our eyes all swollen shut, and the itching, that itching. Gregory shuddered. Even the emotionally disciplined James set his teeth and felt his scalp crawl at the memory of that horror. He glanced toward the viewport as though to cleanse his mind of the memory. He could see Ross out there among the geraniums, moving slowly and painfully in his heavy space suit. Occupational therapy. Ross watered flowers, and Gregory talked, and Frankston was bitter. And himself? Observation, maybe. Gregory's voice began again.
And then they were pounding on the lock, begging us to let the doctor in, but we were all rolling and thrashing with the itching, burning, sneezing. And finally James got himself under control enough to open the locks and let them in. Then came the tests, allergy tests. Remember those? They'd cut a little row of scratches in your arm. Each man, instinctively glanced at his forearm, saw neat rows of tiny pink scars, row on row. Then they'd put a little powder in each cut, and each kind of powder was an extract of some common substance we might be allergic to. The charts they made were full of P's, P for positive, long columns of big red P's, all pollen, dust, wool, nylon, cotton, fish, meat, fruit, vegetables, grain, milk, whiskey, cigarettes, dogs, cats, everything.
And wasn't it funny about us being allergic to women's face powder? Ha! We were allergic to women from their nylon hose to their face powder. Thirty years of breathing purified, sterilized, filtered air, thirty years of drinking distilled water and swallowing synthetic food tablets had changed us. The only things we weren't allergic to were the metal and plastics and synthetics of our ship, this ship. We're allergic to earth. That's funny, isn't it? Gregory began to rock back and forth, laughing the thin high laugh of hysteria. James silently walked to a water hydrant and filled a plastic cup. He brought Gregory a small white pill. "'You wouldn't take this with the rest of us at supper. You'd better take it now.
You need it.' Gregory nodded bleakly, sobering at once, and swallowed the pellet. He made a face after the water. "'Distilled,' he spat. Distilled. No flavour, no life. Like us, distilled.' If only we could have blasted off again, Frankston's voice came muffled through his hands. It wouldn't have made any difference where, anywhere or nowhere. No, our fine ship is obsolete, and we're old, much too old. They have the space drive now. Men don't make thirty-year junkets into space and come back allergic to Earth. They go out, and in a month or two they're back, with their hair still black and their eyes still bright and their uniforms still fit. A month or two is all. Those crowds that cheered us, they were proud of us and sorry for us, because we had been out thirty years, and they never expected us back at all.
But it was inconvenient for spaceport." Bitter sarcasm tinged his voice. They actually had to postpone the regular monthly transgalactic run to let us in with this big clumsy hulk. "'Why didn't we ever see any of the new ships either going out or coming back?' asked Gregory. Frankston shook his head. You don't see a ship when it's in space drive. It's out of normal space-time dimensions. We had a smattering of the theory at cadet school. Anyway, if one did flash into normal space-time, say, for instance, coming in for a landing, the probability of us being at the same place at the same time was almost nil. Two ships passing in the night, as the old saying goes. Gregory nodded. I guess Trippett was the lucky one.
"'You didn't see Trippett die,' replied James. "'What was it?' asked Frankston. "'What killed Trippett? So quickly, too, he was only outside a few minutes, like the rest of us, and eight hours later he was dead.' "'We couldn't be sure,' answered James. "'Some virus. There are countless varieties. People live in a contaminated atmosphere all their lives, build up resistance to them. Sometimes a particularly virulent strain will produce an epidemic.' But most people, if they are affected, will have a mild case of whatever it is and recover. But after thirty years in space, thirty years of breathing perfectly pure, uncontaminated air, Trippett had no antibodies in his bloodstream. The virus hit, and he died.
But why didn't the rest of us get it? asked Gregory. We were lucky. Viruses are like that. Those people talked about building a home for us, muttered Frankston. Why didn't they? "'It wouldn't have been any different,' answered James gently. "'It would have been the same, almost an exact duplicate of the ship, everything but the rockets, same metal and plastic and filtered air and synthetic food. It couldn't have had wool rugs or down pillows or smiling wives or fresh air or eggs for breakfast. It would have been just like this. So since the ship was obsolete they gave it to us, and a plot of ground to anchor it to, and we're home. They did the best they could for us, the very best they could.' "'But I feel stifled, shut in.' "'The ship is large, Frankston.
We all crowd into this section because without each other we'd go mad.' James kicked the edge of the magazine on the floor. "'Thank God we're not allergic to decontaminated paper. They're still reading.' "'We're getting old,' said Gregory. "'Some day one of us will be here alone.' "'God help him, then,' answered James, with more emotion than was usual for him. During the latter part of the conversation, the little red signal had been flashing persistently. Finally, James saw it. Ross was in the outer lock. James threw the decontaminator switch, and the signal winked out. Every trace of dust and pollen would have to be removed from Ross's suit before he could come inside the ship. "'Just like on an alien planet,' commented Gregory.
"'Isn't that what this is to us, an alien planet?' asked Frankston. And neither of the other men dared answer his bitter question. A few minutes later, Ross was back in the cabin, and James helped him out of his space suit. "'How are the geraniums, Ross?' asked Gregory. "'Fine,' said Ross enthusiastically. "'They're doing just fine.' He walked over to his bunk and lay down on his side so he could see out of the viewport. There would be an hour left before darkness fell, an hour to watch the geraniums. They were tall and red. and swayed slightly in the evening breeze.
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4 04 - Longevity 4:36
Longevity by Therese Wenzor. A Morality Tale, 1960s Style Legend had it that many thousands of years ago, right after the great horror, the whole continent of the West had slowly sunk beneath the West water, and that once every century it arose during a full moon. Still, Captain Henrich clung to the hope that the legend would not be born out of truth. Perhaps the West continent still existed. Perhaps, dare he hope, was civilization. The crew of the Semilunis thought him quite mad. After all, hadn't the East and South continents been completely annihilated from the Great Sky Fires, and wasn't it said that they had suffered but a fraction of what the West Continent had endured? The Semilunis, anchored at the mouth of a great river, the months of fear and doubt were at end.
Here, at last, was the West Continent. A small party of scouts was sent ashore with many cautions to be alert for luminescent areas which meant certain death for those who remained too long in its vicinity. Armed with bow and arrow, the party made its way slowly up the great river. Nowhere was to be seen the color green, only dull browns and grays, and no signs of life save for an occasional patch of lichen on a rock. After several days of rowing, the food and water supply was almost half depleted, and still no evidence of either past or present habitation. It was time to turn back, to travel all the weary months across the West Water, the journey all in vain. What a small reward for such an arduous trip!
Just proof of the existence of a barren landmass, ugly and useless. On the second day of the return to the Semilunis, the scouting party decided to stop and investigate a huge opening in the rocky mountainside. How suspiciously regular and even it looked, particularly in comparison to the rest of the countryside, which was jagged and chaotic. They entered the cave apprehensively, torches of flare and weapons in hand. But all was darkness and quiet. Still, the regularity of the cave walls led them on. Some creature, man or otherwise, must have planned and built this. But to what end? Now the cave divided into three forks. The torches gave only a hint of the immensity of the chambers that lay at the end of each.
They selected the center chamber, approaching cautiously, breath caught in awe and excitement. The torches reflected on a dull black surface which was divided into many, many little squares. The sameness of them stretched for uncountable yards in all directions. What were these ungodly-looking edifices? The black surface was cold and smooth to the touch, and quite regular, except for a strange little hole at the bottom of each square and a curious row of pictures along the top. They would copy these strange pictures. Perhaps back home there would be a scholar who would understand the meaning behind these last remains of the people of the West Continent. The leader took out his slate and painstakingly copied.
Safeguard your valuables at Allegheny Mountain Vaults, Box Number 4544356782.
End of Longevity by Therese Windsor.
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5 05 - Lost in the Future 6:56
Lost in the Future by John Victor Peterson.
They had discovered a new planet, but its people did not see them until after they had traveled on. Albrecht and I went down in a shuttle ship Leaving the Stellatomic orbited pole to pole two thousand miles above Alpha Centauri's second planet. While we took an atmosphere-brushing approach, which 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 made via electron spectroscopes and electron 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 the 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 all-wave 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 arrangement of the towering cities appeared to call for radio communications. The hundreds of atmosphere ships flashing along a system of airways between the cities seemed to indicate the existence of electronic navigational and landing aids, but perhaps the signals were all tightly beamed. We would know when we came lower. We dropped into the airway levels, and still our receivers failed to pick up a signal of any sort, not even a whisper of static, and, strangely, our radar scopes 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 get 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. I put our ship's nose eastward on a runway and took it down fast through a lull in the atmosphere ship traffic. As we went down, I saw a tiny building spotted on the field, which surely housed electronic equipment, but our receivers remained silent. I taxied the shuttle up to an unloading ramp before the airport's terminal building, and I killed the drive. Harry, I said. If it weren't that their ships are so outlandishly stubby and their buildings so outflung, we might well be on earth."
"'I agree, 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 of 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 in these pressure suits. Let's go. We walked up to a dour-looking individual at a counter at the ramp's end. Clearing my throat, I said, rather inanely, Hello. But what does one say to an extra-Solarian? I realized then that my voice seemed thunderous, that the only other sounds came from a distance—the city's noise, the atmosphere ships' engines on the horizon.
The Centurion ignored us. I looked at the atmosphere ships in the clear blue sky, at the Centurions on the ramp who appeared to be conversing, And there was no sound from those planes. No sound from the people. "'It's impossible,' Harry said. "'The atmosphere's nearly earth-normal. It should be—well, damn it, it is—as sound conductive. We're talking, aren't we?' I looked up at the Centurions again. They were looking excitedly westward. Some turned to companions. Mouths opened 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 recorders showed we'd exceeded light-speed in normal space-time, just after the transition. Einstein theorized that time would not pass as swiftly to those approaching light speed. We could safely exceed that speed in hyperspace, but should never have done so in normal spacetime. Beyond light speed time, Musk conversely accelerated.
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, but we can never pick answers from their past.
"'Let's go, Harry,' I said quickly. "'Where?' he asked. "'Where can we ever 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
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6 06 - Man Made 25:12
Man Made by Albert R.
A story that comes to grips with an age-old question. What is Sol, and where? And postulates an age-new answer.
If I listed every trouble I've accumulated in a mere two hundred odd years, you might be inclined to laugh. When a tale of woe piles up too many details, it looks ridiculous. Unreal. So here, at the outset, I want to say my life has not been a tragic one. Whose life is in this day of advanced techniques and universal goodwill, but that—but that—but On the contrary, I have enjoyed this earth and solar system, and all the abundant interests that it has offered me. If, lying here beneath these great lights, I could only be as sure of joy in the future. My name is Treb Hawley. As far back as I can remember in my childhood, I was always interested in astronautics. From the age of ten I specialized in that subject, never for a moment regretting the choice.
When I was still a child of twenty-four, I took part in the Ninth Jupiter Expedition, and after that there were many more. I had a precocious marriage at thirty, and my boys, Robert and Neil, were born within a few years after Marla and I wed. It was fortunate that I fought for government permission that early. After the accident, despite my high rating, I would have been denied the rare privilege of parenthood. That accident, the first one, took place when I was fifty. On planet Twelve of the Centauri system, I was attacked by a six-limb primate and was badly mangled on the left side before breaking loose to destroy it. Surgical Corps operated within an hour. Although they did an excellent prosthetic job after removing my left leg and arm, the substituted limbs had their limitations.
While they permitted me to do all my jobs, phantom pain was a constant problem. There were new methods of prosthesis to eliminate this weird effect, but these were only available back on the home planets. I had to wait one year for this release. Meanwhile I had plenty of time to contemplate my mysterious affliction. The mystery of it was so great that I had little chance to notice how painful it actually was. There is enough strangeness in feeling with absolute certainty that a limb exists where actually there is nothing, but the strangeness is compounded when you look down and discover that not only is the leg gone, but that another, mechanical one, has taken its place. Dr. Ericks, who had performed the operation, said this difficulty would ultimately prove a blessing, but I often had my doubts.
He was right. Upon my return to earth, these serious operations took place, those giving me plastic limbs that would become living parts of my organic structure. The same outward push of the brain and nervous system that had created phantom pain now made what was artificial seem real. Not only did my own blood course through the protoplastic, but I could feel it doing so. The adjustment took less than a week, and it was a complete one. Fortunately, the time was already passed when Protoplast's patients were looked upon as something mildly freakish, and to be pitied. Artificial noses, ears, and limbs were becoming quite common. Whether there was some justification for the earlier reaction of pity, however, still remains to be seen.
My career resumed, and I was accepted for the next Centauri expedition without any questions being asked. As a matter of fact, Planning Center preferred people in my condition. Protoplast limbs were more durable than the real—no, let us say the original—thing. At home and at the beach, no one bothered to notice my reconstructed arm and leg. They looked too natural for the idea to occur to people who did not know me. And Marla treated the whole thing like a big joke. "'You're better than new,' she used to tell me. And the kids wanted to know when they could have second-matter limbs of their own. Life was good to me. The one-year periods away from home passed quickly, and the five-year layoffs on earth permitted me to devote myself to my hobbies, music, and mathematics, without taking any time away from my family.
Eventually, of course, my condition became an extremely common one. Who is there to-day among my readers, who has all the parts with which he was born? If any such person passed the childhood sixty years dead, he would be the freak. Then, at ninety, new difficulties arose. A new Centurion sub-virus attacked my chest marrow. As is still true in this infection, the virus proved to be ineradicable. My ribs weren't, though, and a protoplastic casing Exactly like the thoracic cavity was substituted. It was discovered that the infection had spread to my right radius and ulna, so here, too, a simple substitution was made. Of course, such a radical infection meant my circulatory system was contaminated, and synthetically created living haemoplast was pumped in as soon as all the blood was removed.
This did attract Attention. At the time, the procedure was still new, and some medical people warned it would not take. They were right only to this extent. The old cardio-arterial organs occasionally hunted into defective feedback that required systole-diastole adjustments. Protoplastic circulatory substitutes corrected the deficiency, and, just to avoid the slight possibility of further complications, the venous system was also replaced. Since the changeover, there hasn't been the least trouble in that sector. By then, Marla had a perfect artificial ear, and both of my sons had lost their congenitally diseased livers. There was nothing extraordinary about our family. Only in my case were replacements somewhat above the world average.
I am proud to say that I was among the first thousand who made the pioneer voyage on hyperdrive to the star group beyond Centaurus. We returned in triumph with our fantastic but true tales of the organic planet Vita, and the contemplative humanoids of Nerva, who will consciousness into subjectively grasping the life and beauty of the subatomic space. The knowledge we brought back assured that the fatal disease of ennui could never again attack man, though they lived to Aleph Null. On the second voyage, Marla, Robert, and Neil went with me. This took a little political wrangling, but it was worth throwing my merit around to see them benefit from Nirvan discoveries even before the rest of humanity.
Planetary Council agreed my services entitled me to this special consideration. Truly I could feel among the blessed. Then I volunteered for the small expeditionary force to the Thirty-eighth moon that the Nirvans themselves refused to visit. They tried to dissuade us, but, being of a much younger species, we were less plagued by caution, and went anyway. The mountains of this little moon are up to fifteen miles high, causing a state of instability that is chronic. Walking down those alabaster valleys was a more awesome experience than any galactic vista I have ever encountered. Our aesthetic sense proved stronger than common sense, alertness, and seven of us were buried in a rock slide. Fortunately, the great rocks formed a cavern above us.
After two days we were rescued. The others suffered such minor injuries that they were repaired before a craft landed on Nerva. I, though, unconscious and feverish, was in serious condition from skin abrasions and a comminuted cranium. Dr. Erick's made the only possible prognosis. My skull had to be removed, and a completely new proto-skin had to be supplied also. When I came out of coma, Marla was standing at my bedside. smiling down at me. "'Do you feel?' she stumbled. "'Darling, I mean, do you feel the way you did?' I was puzzled. "'Sure, I'm Treb Holly, I'm your husband, and I remember an awful fall of rocks, but now I feel exactly the way I always have. I did not even realize that further substitutions had been made, and did not believe them when they told me about it.
Now I was an object of curiosity.' Upon our return to Earth, the News Plastics hailed me as one of the most highly reintegrated individuals anywhere. In all the teeming domain of man, there were only seven hundred who had gone through as many substitutions as I had. Where, they philosophized in passing, would a man cease to be a man in the sequence of substitutions? Philosophy had never been An important preoccupation of mine. It was the only discipline no further ahead in its really essential questions than the Greeks of 4,000 years ago. Oh, certainly, there had been lots of technical improvements that were fascinating, but these were peripheral points. The basic issues could not be experimentally tested, so they had to remain on the level of accepted or rejected axioms.
I wasn't about to devote much time to them when the whole fascinating field of subatomic mirror numbers was just opening up, certainly not because a few sensational journalists were toying with dead-end notions. For that matter, the news plastics weren't either, and quickly went back to the regular mathematical reportage they do so well. A few decades later, however, I wasn't so cocksure. The old Centurion virus had reappeared in my brain, of all places, and I started to have a peculiar feeling about where the endpoint in all this reintegrating routine would lie. Not that the brain operation was a risk. Thousands of people had already gone through it, and the substitute organisms had made no fundamental change in them.
It didn't in my case, either. But now I was more second matter than any man in history. It's the old question of Achilles' ship, Dr. Eriks told me. Never heard of it, I said. It's a parable, Trepp, about concretized forms of continuum in its discreet aspects. I see the theoretical question, but what has Achilles' ship to do with it? He furrowed his protoplasm Frau, that looked as youthful as it had a century ago. This ship consisted of several hundred planks, most of them forming the hull, some in the form of benches and oars, and a mainmast. It served its primitive purpose well, but eventually sprang a leak. Some of the hull planks had to be replaced, after which it was as good as new. Another year of hard use brought further hull troubles, and some more planks were removed for new ones.
Then the mass collapsed, and a new one was put in. After that, the ship was in such good shape that it could outrace most of those just off the ways. I had an uneasy feeling about where this parable was leading us, but my mind shied away from the essential point, and Eriks went relentlessly on. As the years passed, more repairs were made, first a new set of oars, then some more planks, still newer oars, still more planks. Eventually Achilles, an unthinking man of action, who still tried to be aware of what happened to the instruments of action he needed most, realized that not one splinter of the original ship remained. Was this, then, a new ship? At first he was inclined to say yes. But this only evoked the further question.
When had it become the new ship? Was it when the last plank was replaced, or when half had been? His confidently stated answer collapsed. Yet how could he say it was the old ship, when everything about it was a substitution? The question was too much for him. When he came to Athens, he turned the problem over to the wise men of that city, refusing ever to think about it again. My mind was now in turmoil. "'What?' I demanded. "'What did they decide?' Eriks frowned. "'Nothing. They could not answer the question. Every available answer was equally right and proved every other right answer wrong. As you know, philosophy does not progress in its essentials. It merely continues to clarify what the problems are.' "'I prefer to die next time!' I shouted.
I want to be a live human being, or a dead one, not a machine. Maybe you won't be a machine. Nothing exactly like this has happened before to a living, organic being. I knew I had to be on my guard. What peculiar scheme was afoot? You're trying to say something's still wrong with me. It isn't true. I feel as well as I ever have. Your feeling is a dangerous illusion. His face was space-dust gray, and I realized with horror that he meant all of it. I had to tell you the parable, and show the possible alternatives clearly. Treb, you're riddled with Centaurian Z virus. Unless we remove almost all the remaining first-growth organisms, you will be dead within six months.
I didn't care any more whether he meant it or not. The idea was too ridiculous. Death is too rare and anachronistic a phenomenon today. You're the one who needs treatment, doctor. Overwork. Too much study. One idea on the brain, too much. Resigned, he shrugged his shoulders. All the first matter should be removed, except for the spinal cord and the vertebrae. You'd still have that. Very kind of you. I said, and walked away, determined to have no more of his lectures now or in the future. Marla wanted to know why I seemed so jumpy. Seems is just the word, I snapped. Never felt better in my life. That's just what I mean, she said. Jumpy. I let her have the last word, but determined to be calmer from then on.
I was. And as the weeks passed, The mask I put on sank deeper and deeper, until that was the way I really felt. When you can face death serenely, you will not have to face it. That is what Sophilus, one of our leading philosophers, has said. I was living this truth. My work on infinite series went more smoothly and swiftly than any mathematical research I had engaged in before, and my senses responded to living with greater zest than ever. Five months later, while walking through a hydroponic park, I felt the first awful tremor through my body. It was as if the earth beneath my feet were shaking, like that awful afternoon on Nerva's moon. But no rocks fell from the sky, and other strollers moved across my vision as if the world of five minutes ago had not collapsed.
The horror was only inside me. I went to another doctor and asked for stabilizine. Perhaps you need a checkup, he suggested. That was the last thing I wanted, and I said so. He, too, shrugged resignedly and made out my prescription for the harmless drug. After that the hammer of pain did not strike again, but often I could feel it brush by me. Each time my self-administered dosage had to be increased.
Eventually my equations stopped tying together in my mind. I would stare at the calculation sheets for hours at a time, asking myself why X should be here, or integral operation there. The truth could not be avoided. My mind could no longer grasp truth. I went, in grudging defeat, to Erix. "'You have to win,' I said, and described my experiences. "'Some things are inevitable,' he nodded solemnly. "'And some are not. This may solve all your problems.' "'Not all,' I hoped aloud. "'Marla went with me to hospital. She realized the danger I was in, but put the best possible face on it. Her courage and support made all the difference, and I went into the second matter chamber, ready for whatever fate awaited me.' Nothing happened.
I came out of the chamber all protoplast except for the spinal zone. Yet I was still Treb Hawley. As the coma faded away, the last equation faded in, completely meaningful, and soon followed by all the leads I could handle for the next few years. Psychophysiology was in an uproar over my success. Man can now be all protoplast, some said. Others, as vehemently insisted some tiny but tangible chromosome-organ link to the past must remain. For my part, it all sounded very academic. I was well again. There was one unhappy moment when I applied for the new Centauri expedition. Too much of a risk, the consulting board told me. Not that you aren't in perfect condition, but there are unknown, untested factors, and out in space they might—mind you, we just say might—disadvantageous.
They all looked embarrassed and kept their eyes off me, preferring to concentrate on the medals lined up across the table that were to be my consolation prize. I was disconsolate at first, and would look longingly up at the stars, which were now Perhaps forever, beyond my reach. But my sons were going out there, and for some inexplicable reason that gave me great solace. Then, too, Earth was still young and beautiful, and so was Marla. I still had the full capacity to enjoy these blessings. Not for long. When we saw the boys off to Centauri, I had a dizzy spell, and only with the greatest effort hid my distress until the long train of ships had risen out of sight. Then I lay down in the visitor's lounge from where I could not be moved for several hours.
Great waves of pain flashed up and down my spine, as if massive voltages were being released within me. The rest of my body stood up well to this assault, but every few seconds I had the eerie sensation that I was back in my old body, a ghostly superimposition on the living protoplast as the spinal cord projected its agony outward. Finally the pain subsided, succeeded by a blank numbness.
I was carried on gravitational cushions to Eric's office.
It had to be, he sighed. I didn't have the heart to tell you after the last operation. The sub-virus is attacking the internuncial neurons. I knew what that meant, but was past caring. "'We're not immortal. Not yet,' I said. "'I'm ready for the end.' "'We can still try,' he said. I struggled to laugh, but even gave up that little gesture. "'Another operation?' No, it can't make any difference. It might. We don't know. How could it? Suppose, Treb, just suppose, you do come out of it all right. You'd be the first man to be completely of second matter. Erics, it can't work. Forget it. I won't forget it. You said we're not immortal. But, Treb, your survival would be another step in that direction.
The soul's immortality has to be taken on faith now, if it's taken at all. You could be the first scientific proof that the developing soul has the momentum to carry past the body in which it grows. At the least, you would represent a step in the direction of soul freed from matter. I could take no more of such talk. Go ahead, I said. Do what you want. I give my consent. The last few days have been the most hectic of my life. Dozens of great physicians, flown in from every sector of the solar system, have examined me. I'm leaving my body to science, I told one particularly prodding group. But you're not giving it a chance to die. It is easy for me to die now. When you have truly resigned yourself to death, nothing in life can disturb you.
I have at long last reached that completely stoical moment. That is why I have recorded this history with as much objectivity as continuing vitality can permit.
The operating theater was crowded for my final performance, and several Tri D video cameras stared down at me. Pupils, lights, and lenses all came to a glittering focus on me. I slowly closed my eyes to blot the hypnotic horror out. But when I opened them everything was still there as before. Then Eric's head, growing as he inspected my face more closely, covered everything else up. "'When are you going to begin?' I demanded. "'We have finished,' he answered in awe that verged upon reverence. "'You are the new Adam.' There was a mounting burst of applause as the viewers learned what I had said. My mind was working more clearly than it had in a long time, and, with all the wisdom of hindsight, I wondered how anyone could have ever doubted the outcome.
We had known all along that every bit of atomic matter in each cell is replaced many times in one lifetime, electron by electron, without the cell's overall form disappearing. Now, by equally gradual steps, it had happened in the vaster arena of Newtonian living matter. I sat up slowly. Looking with renewed wonder on everything from the magnetic screw in the light above my head to the nail on the wriggling toe of my left foot. I was more than Achilles' ship. I was a living being, at whose center lay a still yet turning point that could neither be new nor old, but only immortal.
End of Man Made by Albert R. Teichner.
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7 07 - The Mathematicians 8:42
The Mathematicians by Arthur Feldman. We gave this story to a very competent and very pretty gal artist. We said, read this carefully. Dream on it, and come up with an illustration. A week later, she returned with the finished drawing. The hero, she said. We did a double take. Hey, that's not the hero. She looked us straight in the eye. Can you prove it? She had us. We couldn't, and she left Hardley to go home and cook dinner for her family. And what were they having? Frog legs? What else?
They were in the garden. Now, Zoe, said Xenia Hawkins to her nine-year-old daughter, quit fluttering around, and Papa will tell you a story. Zoe settled down in the hammock. A true story, Papa?
It all happened exactly like I'm going to tell you, said Drake Hawkins, pinching Zoe's rosy cheek. Now... Two thousand and eleven years ago, in 1985, figuring by the earthly calendar of that time, a tribe of beings from the dog-star Sirius invaded the earth. What did these beings look like, father? Like humans, in many, many respects, they each had two arms, two legs, and all the other organs that humans are endowed with. Wasn't there any difference at all between the star beings and the humans, papa? There was. The newcomers each and all had a pair of wings covered with green feathers growing from their shoulders and long purple tails. How many of these beings were there, father?
Exactly three million and forty-one male adults and three female adults. These creatures first appeared on Earth on the island of Sardinia. In five weeks' time, they were the masters of the entire globe. Didn't the earthlings fight back, Papa? The humans warred against the invaders using bullets, ordinary bombs, super atom bombs, and gases. What were those things like, Father? Oh, they've passed out of existence long ago. Ammunition, they were called. The humans fought each other with such things. And not with ideas, like we do now, Father? No, with guns, just like I told you. But the invaders were immune to the ammunition. What does immune mean?
Proof against harm. Then the humans tried germs and bacteria against the star-beams. What were those things? Tiny, tiny bugs that the humans tried to inject into the bodies of the invaders to make them sicken and die. But the bugs had no effect at all on the star beans. Go on, Papa. These beans overran all Earth. Go on from there.
You must know these newcomers were vastly more intelligent than earthlings. In fact, the invaders were the greatest mathematicians in the system. What's the system? What does mathematician mean? The Milky Way. A mathematician is one who is good at figuring, weighing, measuring, clever with numbers. Then, father, the invaders killed off all the earthlings? Not all. They killed many, but many others were enslaved. Just as the humans had used horses and cattle, the newcomers so used the humans. They made workers out of some, others they slaughtered for food. Papa, what sort of language did these star beings talk? Very simple language, but the humans were never able to master it. So the invaders, being so much smarter, mastered all the languages of the globe.
What did the earthlings call the invaders, father? Anvils. Half angels, half devils. Then Papa, Everything was peaceful on Earth until after the anvils enslaved the humans? For a little while. Then some of the most daring of the humans, led by a man named Knowall, escaped into the interior of Greenland. This Knowall was a psychiatrist, the foremost on Earth. What's a psychiatrist? A dealer in ideas. Then he was very rich! He'd been the richest human on Earth. After some profound thought, Noe'le figured a way to rid the Earth of the anvils. How, Papa? He perfected a method called the Noe'le-Hughes-Illinsky technique of imbuing these anvils with human emotions. Aren't you talking a bit above the child's understanding, Drake?
What does imbuing mean? No, Mama, said Zoe. He filled them... I understand what Papa explained. Made them aware of. Now, don't interrupt.
So, no all, continued Drake, filled the anvils with human feelings such as love, hate, ambition, jealousy, malice, envy, despair, hope, fear, shame, and so on. Very soon the anvils were acting like humans, and in ten days, terrible civil wars wiped out the anvils population by two-thirds. Then, Papa, the anvils finally killed off each other? Almost. Until among them a being named Zalabar, full of saintliness and persuasion, preached the brotherhood of all anvils. The invaders, quickly converted, quit their quarrels, and earthlings were even more enslaved. Oh, Papa, weren't Nowall and his followers in Greenland awfully sad the way things had turned out? For a while, then Nowall came up with the final payoff.
Is that slang, Papa? Pay off? Yes, the coup de grace. The ace in a hole that he'd saved if all else failed. I understand, Papa. The idea that would out-trump anything the other side had to offer. What was it, Father? What did they have?
Know-all imbued the anvils with nostalgia. What is nostalgia? Home sickness.
Oh, Papa wasn't no all smart. That meant the anvils were all filled with the desire to fly back to the star from where they had started. Exactly. So, one day, all the anvils, an immense army flapping their great green wings, assembled in the black hills of North America, and at a given signal, they all rose up from Earth, and all the humans chanted, Glory! Glory! The day of our deliverance! So then, father, all the anvils flew away from Earth? Not all. There were two child anvils, one male and one female, aged two years, who had been born on Earth. And they started off with all the other anvils and flew up into the sky. But when they reached the upper limits of the stratosphere, they hesitated, turned tail, and fluttered back to Earth.
Where they'd been born. Their names were Zizo and Ziza. What happened to Zizo and Ziza, Papa? Well, like all the animals, they were great mathematicians, so they multiplied. Oh, Papa, laughed Zoe, flapping her wings excitedly. That was a very nice story.
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8 08 - McIlvaine\'s Star 23:46
Mickleveen's Star by August Derleth.
Micklevane Star by August Derleth Old Thaddeus Micklevane discovered a dark star and took it for his own. Thus he inherited a dark destiny. Or did he?
Call them what you like, said Tex Harrigan. Lost people, or strayed crackpots, or warped geniuses. I know enough of them to fill an entire department of queer people. I've been a reporter long enough to have run into quite a few of them. For example, I said, recognizing Harrigan's mellowness. Take Thaddeus Mickilvayne, said Harrigan. I never heard of him. I suppose not, said Harrigan, but I knew him. He was an eccentric old fellow who had a modest income, enough to keep up his hobbies, which were three. He played cards and chess at a tavern called Bixby's on North Clark Street. He was an amateur astronomer. And he had the fixed idea that there was life somewhere outside this planet, and that it was possible to communicate with other beings.
But unlike most others, he tried it constantly with the queer machinery he had rigged up. Well, now, this old fellow had a trio of cronies with whom he played on occasion down at Bixby's. He had no one else to confide in. He kept them up with his progress among the stars, and his communication with other life in the cosmos beyond our own. And they made a great joke out of it, from all I could gather. I suppose because he had no one else to talk to, Micklevane took it without complaint. Well, as I said, I never heard of him until one morning the city editor—it was old Bill Henderson, then—called me in and said, Harrigan, we just got a lead on a fellow named Thaddeus Micklevane who claims to have discovered a new star.
Amateur astronomer up North Clark. Find him and get the story. So I set out to track him down. It was a great moment for Thaddeus Micklevane. He sat down among his friends almost portentously, adjusted his spectacles, and peered over them in his usual manner, halfway between a querulous oldster and a reproachful schoolmaster. "'I've done it,' he said quietly. "'Aye, and what?' asked Alexander testily. "'I've discovered a new star.' "'Oh?' said Leopold flatly. A cinder in your eye? It lies just off Arcturus, Micklevane went on, and it would appear to be coming closer. Give it my love, said Richardson with a wry smile. Have you named it yet, or don't the discoverers of new stars name them any more?
Micklevane Star. That's a good name for it. Hard a port of Arcturus, with special displays on windy nights. Micklevane only smiled. It's a dark star, he said presently. It doesn't have light. He spoke almost apologetically, as if somehow he had disappointed his friends. I'm going to try and communicate with it. That's the ticket, said Alexander. Cut for deal, said Leopold. That was how the news about Micklevane's star was received by his cronies. Afterward, after Micklevane had dutifully played several games of Euchre, Richardson conceived the idea of telephoning the globe to announce Micklevane's discovery. The old fellow took himself seriously, Harrigan went on, and yet he was so damned mousy about it.
I mean, you got the impression that he had been trying for so long that now he hardly believed in his star himself any longer. But there it was. He had a long detailed story of its discovery, which was an accident, as those things usually are. They happen all the time, and his story sounded convincing enough. Just the same, you didn't feel that he really had anything. I took down notes, of course. That was routine. I got a picture of the old man, with never an idea we'd be using it. To tell the truth, I carried my notes around with me for a day or so before it occurred to me that it wouldn't do any harm to put a call into Yerkes Observatory up in Wisconsin. So I did, and they confirmed Micklevane's star.
The Globe had the story, did it up in fine style. It was two weeks before we heard from Micklevane again. That night, Micklevane was more than usually diffident. He was not like a man bearing a message of considerable importance to himself. He slipped into Bixby's, got a glass of beer, and approached the table where his friends sat almost with trepidation. "'It's a nice evening for May,' he said quietly. Richardson grunted. Leopold said, "'By the way, Mac, whatever became of that star of yours, the one the papers wrote up?' "'I think.' said Mickilvain cautiously. I'm quite sure. I have got in touch with them. Only—his brow wrinkled and furrowed—I can't understand their language. Ah, said Richardson, with an edge to his voice.
The thing for you to do is to tell them that's your star, and they'll have to speak English from now on so you can understand them. Why, next thing we know, you'll be getting yourself a rocket or a spaceship and going over to that star to set yourself up as king or something. King Thaddeus I, said Alexander loftily. All you star-dwellers may kiss the royal foot. That would be unsanitary, I think, said Mickilvayne, frowning. Poor Mickilvayne. They made him the butt of their jests for over an hour before he took himself off to his quarters, where he sat himself down before his telescope and found his star once more, almost huge enough to blot out But not quite, since it was moving away from that amber star now.
Micklevane's star was certainly much closer to Earth than it had been. He tried once again to contact it with his home-made radio, and once again he received a succession of strange rhythmic noises which he could not doubt were speech of some kind or other. A rasping, grating speech, to be sure, utterly unlike the speech of Micklevane's own kind. It rose and fell. became impatient, urgent, despairing. Micklevane sensed all this and strove mightily to understand. He sat there for perhaps two hours when he received the distant impression that someone was talking to him in his own language. But there was no longer any sound on the radio. He could not understand what had taken place, But in a few moments he received the clear conviction that the inhabitants of his star had managed to discover the basic elements of his language by the simple process of reading his mind, and were now prepared to talk with him.
What manner of creatures inhabited Earth? They wished to know. Mikkelvayn told them. He visualized one of his own kind and tried to put him into words. It was difficult, since he could not rid himself of the conviction that his interlocutors might be utterly alien. They had no conception of man, and doubted man's existence on any other star. There were plant people on Venus, ant people on Andromeda, six-legged and four-armed beings which were equal parts mineral and vegetable on Betelgeuse, but nothing resembling man. You are evidently alone of your kind in the cosmos. said his interstellar correspondent. And what about you? cried Mickilvayne with unaccustomed heat. Silence was his only answer.
But presently he conceived a mental image which was remarkable for its vividness. But the image was of nothing he had ever seen before, of thousands upon thousands of miniature beings, utterly alien to man. They resembled amphibious insects, with Thin, elongated heads, large eyes, and antennae set upon a scaled, four-legged body with rudimentary beetle-like wings. Curiously, they seemed ageless. He could detect no difference among them. They all appeared to be the same age. "'We are not, but we rejuvenate regularly,' said the creature with whom he corresponded in this strange manner. "'Did they have names?' Mickilvane wondered. "'I am Guru.' said the star's inhabitants. You are Mikkelveen. And the civilization of their star?
Instantly he saw in his mind's eye vast cities, which rose from beneath a surface which appeared to bear no vegetation recognizable to any human eye, in a terrain which seemed to be desert, of monolithic buildings which were windowless and had openings only of sufficient size to permit the free passage of its dwarfed dwellers. Within the buildings was evidence of a great and old civilization. You see, Micklevane really believed all this. What an imagination the man had. Of course, the boys at Bixby's gave him a bad time. I don't know how he stood it, but he did. And he always came back. Richardson called the story in. He took a special delight in deviling Micklevane, and I was sent out to see the old fellow again.
You couldn't doubt his sincerity. And yet he didn't sound touched. But of course that part about the insect-like dwellers of the star comes straight out of Wells, doesn't it? I put in. Wells and scores of others, agreed Harrigan. Wells was probably the first writer to suggest insectivorous inhabitants on Mars. His were considerably larger, though. Go on. Well, I talked with Micklevane for quite a while. He told me all about their civilization and about his friend Guru. You might have thought he was talking about a neighbor of his. I had only to step outside to meet. Later on, I dropped around at Bixby's and had a talk with the boys there. Richardson let me in on a secret. He had decided to rig up a connection to Micklevane's machine and do a little talking to the old fellow, making him believe Goodoo was coming through in English.
He meant to give Micklevane a harder time than ever, and once he had him believing everything he planned to say, they would wait for him at Bixby's and let him make a fool of himself. It didn't work out quite that way, however. "'Micklevane, can you hear me?' Micklevane started with astonishment. His mental impression of Guru became confused. The voice speaking English came clear as a bell, as if from no distance at all. "'Yes,' he said hesitantly. Well, then, listen to me. Listen to Guru. We have now had enough information from you to suit our ends. Within twenty-four hours, we, the inhabitants of Ali, will begin a war of extermination against Earth. But—why? cried Mikkelvayn, astounded. The image before his mind's eye cleared.
The cold, precise features of Guru betrayed anger. There is interference, the thought image informed him. Leave the machine for a few moments while we use the disintegrators. Before he left the machine, Micklevane had the impression of a greater machine being attached to the means of communication which the inhabitants of his star were using to communicate with him. "'Micklevane's story was that a few moments later there was a blinding flash just outside his window,' continued Harrigan. "'There was also a run of instantaneous fire from the window to his machine.' When he had collected his wits sufficiently, he ran outside to look. There was nothing there but a kind of grayish dust in a little mound, as if, as he put it, somebody had cleaned out a vacuum bag.
He went back in and examined the space from the window to the machine. There were two thin lines of dust there, hardly perceptible, just as if something had been attached to the machine and led outside. Now, the obvious supposition is naturally that it was Richardson out there, and that the lines of dust from the window to the machine represented the wires he had attached to his microphone while Micklevane was at Bixby's entertaining his other two cronies. But this is fact, not fiction, and the point of the episode is that Richardson disappeared from that night on. "'You investigated, of course?' I asked. Harrigan nodded. "'Quite a lot of us investigated.' The police might have done better. There was a gang war on in Chicago just at that time, and Richardson was nobody with any connections.
His nearest relatives weren't anxious about anything but what they might inherit. To tell the truth, his cronies at Bixby's were the only people who worried about him. Mickilvane as much as the rest of them. Oh, they gave the old man a hard time all right. They went through his house with a fine-toothed comb. They dug up his yard, his cellar, and generally put him through it, figuring he was a natural to hang a murder wrap on. But there was just nothing to be found, and they couldn't manufacture evidence when there was nothing to show that Micklevane ever knew that Richardson planned to have a little fun with him. And no one had seen Richardson there. There was nothing but Micklevane's word that he had heard what he said he heard.
He needn't have volunteered that, but he did. After the police had finished with him, they wrote him off as a harmless nut. But the question of what happened to Richardson wasn't solved from that day to this. People have been known to walk out of their lives, I said, and never come back. Uh, sometimes they do. Richardson didn't. Besides, if he walked out of his life here, he did so without more than the clothing he had on. So much was missing from his effects. Nothing more. And Mickilvain? Arrigan smiled thinly. He carried on. You couldn't expect him to do anything less. After all, he had worked most of his life trying to communicate with the worlds outside, and he had no intention of resigning his contact, no matter how much Richardson's disappearance upset him.
For a while, he believed that Guru had actually disintegrated Richardson. He offered that explanation, but by the time the dust had vanished and he was laughed out of face, So he went back to the machine and Guru and the little excursions to Bixby's. "'What's the latest word from that star of yours?' asked Leopold when Micklevane came in. "'They want to rejuvenate me,' said Micklevane with a certain shy pleasure. "'What's that?' asked Alexander sourly. "'They say they can make me young again. Like them up there. They never die. They just live so long and then—' They rejuvenate. They begin all over. It's some kind of process they have. And I suppose they're planning to come down and fetch you up there and give you the works, is that it?
asked Alexander. Well, no, answered Mikkelveen. Guru says there's no need for that. It can be done through the machine. They can work it like the disintegrators. It puts you back to thirty or twenty or wherever you like. Well, I'd like to be twenty-five again myself, admitted Leopold. I'll tell you what, Mac, said Alexander. You go ahead and try it, then come back and let us know how it works. If it does, we'll all sit in. Better make your will first, though. Just in case—oh, I did. This afternoon—Leopold choked back a snicker. Don't take this thing too seriously, Mac. After all, we're short one of us now. We'd hate to lose you, too. Mikkelvane was touched. Oh, I wouldn't change. He hastened to assure his friends.
I'd just be younger, that's all. They'll just work on me through the machine, and overnight I'll be rejuvenated. That's certainly a little trick that's got it all over monkey glands, conceded Alexander, grinning. Those little bugs on that star of yours have made scientific progress, I'd say, said Leopold. They're not bugs, said Mickilvayne with faint indignation. They're people— Maybe not just like you and me, but they're people just the same. He went home that night filled with anticipation. He had done just what he had promised himself he would do, arranging everything for his rejuvenation. Guru had been astonished to learn that people on Earth simply died when there was no necessity of doing so.
He had made the offer to rejuvenate Mikkelvein himself. Mikkelveen sat down to his machine and turned the complex knobs until he was en rapport with his dark star. He waited for a long time, it seemed, before he knew his contact had been closed. Guru came through. "'Are you ready, Mikkelveen?' he asked soundlessly. "'Yes, all ready,' said Mikkelveen, trembling with eagerness. "'Don't be alarmed now. It will take several hours,' said Guru. "'I'm not alarmed,' answered Mikkelveen. And indeed he was not. He was filled with an exhilaration akin to mysticism, and he sat waiting for what he was certain must be the experience above all others in his prosaic existence. "'Micklevane's disappearance coming so close on Richardson's gave us a beautiful story,' said Harrigan.
"'The only trouble was it wasn't new when the globe got around to it. We had lost our informant in Richardson.' It never occurred to Alexander or Leopold to telephone us or anyone about Micklevane's unaccountable absence from Bixby's. Finally, Leopold went over to Micklevane's house to find out whether the old fellow was sick. A young fellow opened up. "'Where's Micklevane?' Leopold asked. "'I'm Micklevane,' the young fellow answered. "'Thaddeus Micklevane,' Leopold explained. "'That's my name,' was the only answer he got. I mean, the Thaddeus Micklevane who used to play cards with us over at Bixby's," said Leopold. He shook his head. "'Sorry, you must be looking for someone else.' "'What are you doing here?' Leopold asked then.
"'Why, I inherited what my uncle left,' said the young fellow. And sure enough, when Leopold talked to me and persuaded me to go around with him to Micklevane's lawyer, we found that the old fellow had made a will and left everything to his nephew, a namesake. The stipulations were clear enough. Among them was the express wish that if anything happened to him, the elder Thaddeus Micklevane, of no matter what nature, but particularly something allowing a reasonable doubt of his death, the nephew was still to be permitted to take immediate possession of the property and effects. "'Of course you called on the nephew,' I said. Harrogant nodded. "'Sure. That was the indicated course, in any event.
It was routine for both the press and the police.' There was nothing suspicious about his story. It was straightforward enough, except for one or two little details. He never did give us any precise address. Just mentioned Detroit once. I called up a friend on one of the papers there, and put him up to looking up Thaddeus Mickleveen. The only young man of that name he could find appeared to be the same man as the present inhabitant's uncle, though the description fit pretty well. There was a resemblance, then? Oh, sure. One could have imagined that old Thaddeus Micklevane had looked somewhat like his nephew when he himself was a young man. But don't let the old man's rigmarole about rejuvenation make too deep an impression on you.
The first thing the young fellow did was to get rid of that machine of his uncle's. Can you imagine his uncle having done something like that? I shook my head, but I could not help thinking what an ironic thing it would have been if there had been something to Micklevane's story. And in the process to which he had been subjected from out of space, he had not been rejuvenated so much as just sent back in time, in which case he would have no memory of the machine, nor of the use to which it had been put. It would have been as ironic for the inhabitants of Micklvain's star, too. They doubtless have looked forward to keeping this contact with Earth open, and failed to realize that Micklvain's construction differed appreciably from theirs.
He virtually junked it. Said he had no idea what it could be used for and didn't know how to operate it. And the telescope? Oh, he kept that. He said he had some interest in astronomy and meant to develop that if time permitted. So much ran in the family, then. Yes. More than that, old Micklevane had a trick of seeming shy and self-conscious. So did this nephew of his. Wherever he came from, his origins must have been backward. I suspect that he was ashamed of them. and if I had to guess I'd put him in the Kentucky Hill Country or the Ozarks. Modern concepts seemed to be pretty well too much for him, and his thinking would have been considerably more natural at the turn of the century. I had to see him several times.
The police chived him a little, but not much. He was so obviously innocent of everything that there was nothing for them in him, and the search for the old man didn't last long. No one had seen him after that last night at Bixby's, and since everyone had already long since concluded that he was mentally a little off-center, it was easy to conclude that he had wandered away somewhere, probably an amnesiac. That he might have anticipated, that is indicated in the hasty preparation of his will, which came out of the blue, said Barnaval, who drew it up for him. I felt sorry for him. For whom? The nephew. He seemed so lost, you know, like a man who wants to remember something but couldn't. I noticed that several times when I tried to talk to him.
I had the feeling each time that there was something he wanted desperately to say. It hovered always on the rim of his awareness, but somehow there was no bridge to it, no clue to put it into words. He tried so hard for something he couldn't put his finger on. What became of him? Oh, he's still around. I think he found a job somewhere. As a matter of fact, I saw him just the other evening. He had apparently just come from work, and he was standing in front of Bixby's with his face pressed to the window, looking in. I came up nearby and watched him. Leopold and Alexander were sitting inside, a couple of lonely old men looking out, and a lonely young man looking in. There was something in Micklevane's face that Same thing I had noticed so often before.
A kind of expression that seemed to say there was something he ought to know, something he ought to remember, to do, to say. But there was no way in which he could reach back to it. Or forward, I said with a wry smile. As you like, said Harrigan. Pour me another, will you? I did, and he took it. That poor devil, he muttered. He'd be happier if he could only go back where he came from. Wouldn't we all? I asked. But nobody ever goes home again. Perhaps Micklevane never had a home like that. You'd have thought so if you could have seen his face looking in at Leopold and Alexander. Oh, it may have been a trick of the street light there. It may have been my imagination. But it sticks to my memory, and I keep thinking how alike the two were.
Old Micklevane trying so desperately to find someone who could believe him, and his nephew now trying just as hard to find someone to accept him. Or a place he could accept on the only terms he knows.
End of Micklevein's Star by August Derleth
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9 09 - Stopover Planet 16:09
Stop Over Planet. Stop Over Planet. At Two Thirty Four A.M. Patrolman Lewis Weedby left the Zip Cab Station. With arch support squeaking and night-stick swinging, Weeby walked east to the call box at the corner of Sullivan and Cherokee. The traffic signal suspended above the intersection blinked a cautionary amber. Not a car moved on the silent streets. Weeby reached for the box. Then he swore softly and stepped off the curb. Pardon me, he said, for he believed that a patrolman should be courteous at all times, even when arresting a school-zone speedster. This, however, was not a speedster. It seemed to be a huge man standing on top of a truck and cutting down the stoplight. "'What's going on here?' Weedby asked.
Honeychilly Bakery was advertised on the side of the truck. Instinctively, Weedby jammed his whistle in his mouth when he realized that the man on the truck wore something like a suit of long underwear made of improbable black fur sprinkled with tiny red spots. "'What are you doing to the stoplight?' Weedby demanded. The amber light quit blinking without the expected electrical display. Sinuous as beheaded snakes, the wires and cables supporting the traffic signal fell into the street. The unusual man pocketed his cutting tool, a long, thin tube, and lowered the stoplight to the truck. He looked at Weedby. The corner street lamp reacted upon his eyes like a flashlight thrown on a tomcat in an alley.
The eyes gleamed green. Weedby's whistle arced to the end of the chain and clanked against his metal buttons. A block away on Center Street, a heavy truck roared through the business section. The bell of a switch engine tolled near the freight depot, and a small dog barked suddenly at the obscured sky. "'I am promoting you to Captain. You will replace Hanks, who I am demoting,' the figure on the truck announced. "'Chief Grindstaff?' Weedby wondered. The chief of police glared down at the patrolman. He hooked a bright metal globe to the stoplight, lifted it in one hand, and jumped, landing lightly on the pavement. Put this in the mobile unit, he said. The truck, i evil. Huh? Sure, chief, Weeby said.
He tucked his nightstick under his arm and prepared to accept a heavy load. Tense muscles almost felled him when the signal proved to weigh not more than one pound. Chief Grindstaff opened the doors in the rear of the truck, releasing a faint odor of stale bread. The truck was empty. Weedby deposited the almost weightless burden. The chief looked him in the eye. "'I am promoting you to Captain,' he repeated. "'You will replace Hanks, who I am demoting.' "'Thanks, chief,' weedby exulted. "'You know Hanks didn't treat me fair that time I—' "'Yes, I know all about that,' the chief interposed. "'Go bring the postage-box, and place it in the truck.' "'The which?' "'Oh, you mean the mailbox.' Weedby walked across the street to the square green box with the rounded metal top.
Another of the globes had been attached to the mailbox, and the legs had been burned loose from the concrete sidewalk. Confidently, Weedby lifted the light object, carried it to the truck, and deposited it inside. "'Bleachers there,' said Chief Grindstaff. "'What you say, Chief?' Stands there! No, stand there! Patrolman Weedby stood by the back of the truck. Chief Grindstaff placed a device like an atomizer under Weedby's nose and released the spray. Miss Betsy Tapp awoke after not more than one hour of fitful sleep. The door to the garage apartment shook under the tattoo of a heavy fist. Miss Tapp's heart thudded somewhere inside her thirty-eight-inch bosom. She lay rigid in darkness, Penetrated only by the glimmer of a distant streetlight.
The knocking ceased. Boards creaked on the platform outside the door. A face appeared at the window, a face in complete shadow except for two eyes that glowed with greenish light. Miss Tapp, unaware of the disarray of her nightgown, sat upright. The alarm clock on the floor by the bed clacked in the stillness. The Tapp in the kitchen cubicle dripped. Timbers, contracting in the cool of early morning, popped faintly. "'I need to marry you,' the face said. "'I was wrong to-night. Forgive me.' "'Fred?' Miss Tapp gasped in sudden joy. "'Open the portal,' Fred said. Wrenching metal curlers from her permanently waved hair, Miss Tapp bounded to the door. She released the catch and threw herself at the figure on the landing.
Fred purred. "'I want to marry you.' I was wrong tonight. Forgive me. Oh, Fred," Miss Tapp sighed. I knew you'd come back. You just had too much to drink. I forgive you, Fred. Well— Yes. Bring your rayon crepe with tall tucking. What, Fred? Bring your garb, your clothing. Hurry. Miss Tapp skillfully fought a blush. Oh, Fred, I'm sorry. I'll be dressed in a minute. Fred slowly stated, I want to marry you. I was wrong tonight. Forgive me. He walked into the apartment and rapidly gathered and rolled together the dress and undergarments scattered on and about the chair. He stuffed the spike-heeled shoes into pockets on his black fur suit and lifted Miss Tapp in his arms. "'We're eloping,' Miss Tapp sighed as Fred carried her down the outside stairs.
A honeychilly bakery truck, with rear doors open, waited in the driveway. Fred tossed the roll of clothing and the slippers into the truck, and swiftly sprayed Miss Tapp. An unearthly glow permeated the bedroom and cast the black shadows of heavy furniture against the faded paper walls. Within the glow, two dots of green flickered. The Reverend Ennis Shackelford dropped on creaking knees and bowed his grizzled head. A voice said, "'Well done, good and faithful servant. Arise and follow me.' "'Lord,' said Reverend Shackelford, "'I have served thee faithfully all the days of my life.' Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. Remember also—yes, well done, good and faithful servant. Arise and follow me.
Shackelford stood on tottering old legs. His nightshirt hung below his knees. Horrified shock blanched his lying face. Blasphemer! he cried. False prophet! Get thee behind me, Satan! The glow danced and faded. A towering black shape pointed a bent rod. The rod hissed. The Reverend Shackelford staggered against a small table, dragging it with him to the floor. He lay still with one gnarled old hand on a large golden-edged book that had fallen from the table. "'You're fired!' the man in the dream said over and over. Calvin C. Kerr rolled off the half-bed, struck the floor, and awoke. "'First time I've fallen out of bed in years,' he groaned. His shaking hand fumbled with the switch and succeeded in turning on the lamp.
Mrs. Calvin C. Kerr sprawled on her back in the other bed and snored. "'You and your fifteen-thousand-dollar house,' Kerr muttered. He combed his thinning hair with his fingers. "'You and your sterling silver. You and your chosen pattern. Your service for eight. How far do you think fifty-four dollars a week will go with twelve-gauge shells three and a quarter a box?' Green eyes glittered beside the frilly dressing-table. The man standing there said, I'm not igniting you. I'm giving you a bonus for your fine work. Enough currency to pay the loan on this house. You'll be making two hundred per week. This fall, I'll take you hunting at my place in the country. Boss? Kerr mumbled. I mean, Mr. Darmond?
Put on your clothing, the boss said. I'll show you your new office. You may have a secretary also. I'm not firing you. I'm giving you a bonus. Kerr sat gasping on the floor. "'That's great, boss!' he exclaimed. "'I thought I did an extra special job on the plastics mill design. "'It'll mean a lot to the company. "'We—yes, dress quickly.' Kerr threw off his pajamas and started stuffing arms and legs into his clothes. Mrs. Kerr opened her eyes and squeaked like a dying rabbit. The bent rod in the boss's hand hissed, and Mrs. Kerr stopped squeaking. With tie flapping, shirt unbuttoned, shoes unlaced, Kerr followed the boss through the living room and down the flagstone walk to the street. The boss opened the doors on the Honeychilli Bakery truck and said, "'In here!' Mrs.
Jane Huprick dropped her mop. Her varicose legs trotted across the wet lobby of the Jordan building, and her flabby, fat arms reached for the tall man with bright eyes who stood near the elevators. "'It's me, Mom!' the man cried. "'Matt!' Mrs. Huprick cried. "'Matt, baby!' "'I got a full pardon, Mom,' Matt said, stroking her tangled white hair. "'Right from the ruling state official. You won't have to scrub floors any more. I'm going straight, Mom. I'm a good mechanic now. They learned me a lot in the enclosure. Come on. I got a used truck outside. I bought cheap.' Mrs. Huprick and son walked through the oddly twisted doors of the Jordan Building, and into the gray twilight that awaited dawn.
The honeychilly bakery truck waited too.
Gary Abston peddled his bicycle against the flow of cars carrying day-shift workers through the half-light. He whirled into Walnut Street, twisted a fresh copy of the Morning Herald into a fiendishly clever knot, and hurled it in the general direction of a front porch that flashed past on his right. Never slowing, Gary threw the next paper entirely across the street. He chuckled as it cleared a picket fence. "'Bang, bang!' he blurted. His red shirt, with a picture of a mounted cowboy on the back, ballooned in the early morning breeze. "'Whoa!' Garry roared. He stopped, held the bicycle upright with one foot on the pavement. A tall, lanky, slightly bow-legged man with squinting, luminous green eyes stood on the sidewalk.
Garry looked at the man. The newspapers fluttered to the parkway. The bicycle clattered in the street. "'Howdy, partner,' the tall man said. "'The rustlers are heading for the plateau. We'll take the short gash and head him off at the canyon.' "'Ramrod Jones?' Gary chirped. "'Here's the truck I haul Quiz Kid, the IQ horse, in. Let's get after the rustlers,' Jones said. "'Gee, I've seen all your pictures, Ramrod,' Gary said. "'Silver City Raiders? Rustlers of Silver City?' Silver City Rustlers? The great cowboy lifted the newsboy into the Honeychili truck. Pink and rose clouds drifted through a brightening sky as the Honeychili bakery truck careened along a narrow road, badly in need of rock and grating.
From the road, the truck rattled into a rutted track through dewy woods and skidded Swain to a stop at the side of a long, low, grassy hill. The tall creature dressed in black, red-spotted fur stepped from the cab. An opening appeared in the hillside. Four machines, dull metal eggs, balancing on single tractor treads, rolled silently through the opening. Jointed steel arms darted from recesses in the eggs. One machine opened the truck doors. The creature walked up a ramp inside the hill and entered a shimmering metallic compartment. "'Greetings, EO. I have returned.' EO, who wore a suit of white fur, hummed, "'None to zoons, ah.' We miscalculated Don. What success?" An excellent group, Zaa said.
He stretched and reclined on a transparent slab. The servants are unloading the vehicle. I captured a young male, a mature male, an aged male, some sort of official or guardian male, a mature female, and an aged female. Let's view them, Eo said. You can rest after we're away. The tall creatures entered a second compartment, Furnished with a large table upon which the silent machines deposited inanimate bodies. Extraordinary, said EO, staring at Miss Betsy Tapp. These things have reached a peak of mammalian development. Her correct garments are in this bundle, Zah explained. The servants are bringing the properties now. I secured a signaling device and a box used in an extremely primitive system of communication.
Also, I brought the quaint muscle-powered vehicle ridden by the young male. The photograph should be sufficient for other details. Any difficulty? EO asked as the machines dumped patrolman Weedby on the table. The language was the greatest obstacle, Zah said. The same word has many different meanings, or many different words have the same meaning, rather crude. Did you use bait or force? Bait, Zah said. It's much simpler. This is a completely selfish, egocentric breed. Most of them have one thing in mind, which they want solely for themselves. Their sending power is weak, but that one selfish desire is powerful enough to be received. I merely dangled it before their minds, and they were hooked.
He tapped the foot of Calvin C. Kerr. I killed this one's female companion. She awoke and screamed. The males and females pair off and live together for years. Strange custom. Breeding seems to be only one reason for the mutual bondage. Zah pointed to Mrs. Jane Hubrick. The old female may be an exception to the selfishness. I couldn't decide whether she most wanted to be relieved of cleaning floors by primitive methods, or wanted her male offspring to be released from some structure where he had been secured for reasons I couldn't determine. The machines deposited the Reverend Ennis Shackelford, and then lined up in a precise row. This thing is dead, EO buzzed. Zah shook his head. That was the only genuine exception.
He confused me till I forgot his proper clothing. But some can be devised from the other samples. He seems to have been a witch doctor. His mind was cluttered with myths and superstitions from an ancient text. I don't understand him, EO, and I wish I had time to study the phenomena. He was different from the others. He believed in something and considered himself lowly and humble. The minds of the others were in constant confusion. They believed, actually, in nothing. Somehow he saw me, EO. I was forced to kill him. No harm done, EO decided. He faced the machines and said, Destroy the vehicle. Draw in the camouflage net. Prepare for takeoff. The machines rolled from the compartment, and the two creatures followed.
Seal it, EO said. I'll plasticize them when we're in space. Fine work, Zah. I can see the plaque now. Mounted by EO, collected by Zah. Typical street corner on planet Earth, star Sol. The directors will surely give the group a prominent place in the Galactic Museum of Natural History. Yes, Zah agreed, glancing back at the Reverend Ennis Shackelford. This planet was a fortunate stopover. The end.
End. of Stopover Planet.
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10 10 - Trees are where you find them 13:56
Trees are where you find them.
You might say the trouble started at the Ivy, which is a moving-picture house in Cave Junction being built like a big quonset. It's the only show in these parts And most of us old-timers up here in the timber country of southwest Oregon have got into the habit of going to see a picture on Saturday nights before we head for a tavern. But I don't think old Doc Yoris, who was there with Lou and Rusty and me, had been to more than two or three shows in his life. Doc is kind of sensitive about his appearance on account of his small eyes and big nose and ears, and since gold-mining gave way to logging and lumber-mills, with outsiders drifting into the country, Doc has taken to staying on his homestead away back up along Deer Creek, near the boundary of the Siskiyou National Forest.
It's gotten so he'll come to Cave Junction only after dark, and even then he wears dark glasses so strangers won't notice him too much. I couldn't see anything funny about the picture when Doc started laughing, but I figure it's a man's own business when he wants to laugh, so I didn't say anything. The show was one of these scientific things, and when Doc began to cackle, it was showing some men getting out of a rocket ship on Mars and running over to look at some trees. Rusty, whose top choker setter in our logging outfit, was trying to see Doc's point. He can snare logs with a hunk of steel cable faster than anyone I know, but he's never had much schooling. He turned to Doc. "'I don't get it, Doc,' he said.
"'What's the deal?' Doc kept chuckling. "'It's them trees,' he said. "'There's no trees like that on Mars.' "'Oh,' said Rusty. "'I suppose it was just chance that Bert Holden was sitting behind us and heard the talk. Bert is one of the newcomers. He'd come down from Grant's Pass and started a big lumber mill and logging outfit, and was trying to freeze out the little operators. He growled something about keeping quiet. That got Rusty and Lou kind of mad, and Lou turned around and looked at Bert. Lou is even bigger than Bert, and things might have got interesting, but I wanted to see the rest of the picture. I nudged him and asked him if he had a chew. They won't let you smoke in the show, but it's okay to chew, and most of us were in the habit anyway, because there's too much danger of forest fire when you smoke on the job.
Doc laughed every time the screen showed trees, and I could hear Bert humping around in his seat like he was irritated. At the end of the show, we drifted over to the Owl Tavern and took a table against the north wall, behind the pool tables and across from the bar. Doc had put his dark glasses back on, and he sat facing the wall. Not that many people apart from the insiders knew Doc. He hadn't been very active since the young medical doctor had come to Cave Junction in 1948, although he never turned down anyone who came for help, and as far as I knew, He'd never lost a patient unless he was already dead when Doc got there. We were kidding Lou because he was still wearing his tin hat and caulked boots from work.
"'You figgerin' on startin' early in the mornin?' I asked him. Rusty and Doc laughed. It was a good joke because we rode out to the job in my Jeep, and so we'd naturally get there at the same time. Then Rusty sat up straighter and looked over at the bar. "'Hey,' he said. "'Pop's talkin' to Bert Holden.' Pop Johnson owns our outfit. He's one of the small operators that guys like Bert are trying to squeeze out. Hope he don't try to rip Pop into no deals, said Lou. Doc tipped up his bottle of beer. In Oregon, they don't sell anything but beer in the taverns. Times change, he said. Back in 1900, all they wanted was gold. Now they're trying to take all the trees. It's the big operators like Bert, I said.
Little guys like Pop can't cut em as fast as they grow. The companies don't have to reseed, either, except on national forest land. "'That Bert Holden was up to my place a couple weeks ago,' said Doc. "'Darn near caught me skinning out a deer.' "'He'd better not yap to the game warden,' said Rusty. "'Them laws is for sports and outsiders, not us guys who need the meat.' "'He wanted to buy all my timber,' said Doc. "'Offered me $10 a thousand board feet. On the stump.' "'Don't sell,' I advised him. "'If Bert offers that much, almost anyone else will pay twelve.' Doc looked at me. "'I'd never sell my trees, not at any price. I got a hundred and sixty acres of virgin stand, and that's the way it's going to stay.
I cut up the windfalls and snags for firewood, and that's all.' "'Here comes Pop,' said Lou. Pop sat down with us and had a beer. He looked worried. We didn't ask him any questions, because we figure a man will talk if he wants to, and if he doesn't it's his own business. He finally unlimbered. Bert Holden wants to buy the mill, he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Buy your mill? said Lou. Hell, his mill is five times as big, and he's even got a burner to take care of slashings, so he don't have to shut down in the fire season. He just wants the land, said Pop, because it's near the highway. He wants to tear down my setup and build a pulp mill. A pulp mill? If we could have seen Doc's eyes through the glasses, I imagine they'd have been popped open a full half-inch.
Why, then they'll be cutting down everything but the brush. Pop nodded. Yeah, size of a log don't matter when you make paper, just so it's wood. It seemed as though Doc was talking to himself. They'll strip the land down bare, he mumbled, and the hills will wash away. And the chemicals they use in the mill will kill the fish in the creeks and the Illinois River. That's why they won't let anyone start a pultmere near Grant's Pass, said Pop. Most of the town's money comes from sports who come up to the Rouge River to fish. Rusty set his jaw. In the winter we need them fish, he said. He was right, too. The woods close down in the winter, on account of the snow. And if a man can't hunt and fish, he's liable to get kind of hungry.
That rockin' chair money doesn't stretch very far. "'I ain't goin' to sell,' said Pop, but that won't stop Bert Holden, and any place he builds the mill around here will drain into the Illinois. Doc pushed back his chair and stood up to his full height of five foot four. "'I'm goin' to talk to Bert Holden,' he said. Rusty stood up to his six-foot three. "'I'll bring him over here, Doc,' he said. "'We're handy to the cue rack here.' "'And Lou and Simmons can keep them guys he's with off my back.' I stood up and shoved Rusty back down. I'm no taller than he is, but I outweigh him about twenty pounds. I started working in the woods when we still felled trees with axes and misery whips. Cross-cut saws to the outsiders.
"'I'll go get him,' I said. "'You're still mad about the show, and you wouldn't be able to get him this far without mustn't him up.' "'There won't be no trouble,' said Doc. "'I just want to make him an offer.' I went over and told Bert that Doc wanted to talk to him. The three guys with him followed us back to the table. Bert figured he knew what it was all about, and he just stood over Doc and looked down on him. "'If it's about your timber, Yoris,' he said, "'I'll take it, but I can't pay you more than nine dollars now. Lumber's coming down, and I'm taking a chance even at that.' He rocked back and forth on his heels and looked at Pop as though daring him to say different. I still don't want to sell, Mr.
Holden, said Doc, but I've got better than three million feet on my place, and I'll give it to you if you won't put a pulp mill anywhere in the Illinois Valley. We were all floored at that, but Bert recovered first. He gave a nasty laugh. Not interested, Yoris. If you want to sell, look me up. Wait, said Doc. A pulp mill will take every tree in the valley. In a few years. It'll make money, too, said Bert flatly. Money ain't everything by a long shot. It won't buy trees and creeks and rain. It'll buy trees to make lumber. Bert was getting mad. I don't want any opposition from you, I've had enough trouble from people who try to hold back progress. If you don't like the way we run things here, you can—hell, you can go back to Mars.
It seemed to me that it was just about time to start in. I could have taken Bert easiest, but I knew Rusty would probably swing on him first and get in my way. So I planned to work on the two guys on Bert's right, leaving the one on his left for Lou. I didn't want Pop to get tangled up in it. I don't generally wait too long after I make up my mind, but then I noticed Rusty reaching out slowly for a cue stick, and I thought maybe I'd better take Bert first, while Rusty got set. I never did see a guy so one way about having something in his hands. But Doc didn't drop out. "'There ain't nothin' but a few scrub-trees on Mars,' he said to Bert, looking him square in the eye, "'and no creaks and no rain.' Bert curled his lips sarcastically.
"'The hell, you say? Is that why you didn't like it there?' You could see he was just trying to egg Doc into saying he'd come from Mars, so he could give him the hoarse laugh. The guys he was with were getting set for a fracas, but they were waiting for Bert to lead off. Doc didn't get caught. But there's gold, he said, like he hadn't heard Bert at all. Tons of it, laying all over the ground. I guess Bert decided to ride along. Okay, Yoris, he said. Tell you what I'll do. For only one ton of Martian gold, I'll agree to drop all plans for a pulp mill, here or anywhere else. In fact, I'll get out of business altogether. Doc moved in like a log falling out of the loading tongs. That's a deal, he said.
You ready to go? Bert started to look disgusted, then he smiled. Sure. Mars must be quite a place if you came from there. Okay, said Doc. You just stand up against the wall, Mr. Holden. Bert's smile faded. He figured Doc was trying to maneuver him into a likely position for us. But Doc cleared that up quick. You boys get up and stand aside, he ordered. Get back a ways and give Mr. Holden plenty of room. We didn't like it, but we cleared out from around the table. A bunch from the bar and pool tables, sensing something was up, came drifting over to watch. I could feel tension building up. Now, said Doc, pointing. You just stand right over there, Mr. Holden, and fold your arms. Bert didn't like the audience, and I guess he figured his plans were backfiring when Doc didn't bluff.
You hill-happy old coot, he snarled. You'd better go home and sleep it off. I grabbed hold of Lou's arm and shook my head at Rusty. I wasn't going to interfere with Doc now. "'You're not scared, are you, Mr. Holden?' said Doc quietly. "'Just you stand against the wall and take it easy. It won't hurt a bit.' Bert Holden was plenty tough for an outsider, and a hard-headed businessman to boot, but he'd never run into a customer like Doc before. You could see him trying to make up his mind on how to handle this thing. He glanced around quick at the crowd, and I could tell he decided to play it out to where Doc would have to draw in his horns. He actually grinned, for the effect it would have on everybody watching.
"'All right, Yoris,' he said. He backed up against the wall and folded his arms. "'But hadn't you better stand up here with me?' "'I ain't going,' said Doc. "'I don't like Mars. But you won't have no trouble getting your gold.' There's nuggets the size of your fist laying all over the dry riverbeds. "'I hate to be nosy,' said Bert, playing to the crowd. "'But how are you going to get me there?' "'With his head, of course,' blurted Rusty before I could stop him. "'Just like he cures you when you're sick.' Doc had pulled Rusty through two or three bad kid sicknesses, and a lot of the rest of us, too. "'Yep,' said Doc. "'A man don't need one of them rocket things to get between here and Mars.' Fact is, I never seen one.
Bert looked at the ceiling like he was a martyr, then back at Doc. "'Well, Yoris,' he said in a tone that meant he was just about through hearing him, "'I'm waiting. Can you send me there, or can't you?' The start of a nasty smile was beginning to show at the corners of his mouth. "'Sure,' said Doc. He slumped down in his chair and cupped his hands lightly around his dark glasses. I noticed his fingers trembling a little against his forehead. The lights dimmed, flickered, and went out, and we waited for the bartender to put in a new fuse. The power around here doesn't go haywire except in the winter when trees fall across the lines. A small fight started over in a corner. When the lights came back on, Doc and Pop started for the door, and Lou and Rusty and I followed.
Bert's buddies were looking kind of puzzled, and a few old-timers were moving over to watch the fight. The rest were heading back to the bar. Rusty piled into the jeep with Doc and me. "'When you going to bring him back, Doc?' he asked when we started moving. "'Don't know,' said Doc. He took off his glasses to watch me shift gears. He's been after me for a long time to teach him how to drive. It only works on a man once." The End End of Trees Are Where You Find Them