SCIENCE

FURY%

25 CENTS

.r"

V?*Ki

(or, tT7)

BY GROUCHO MARX

W HAT do you want to save up a lot
of money for? You’U never need
the stuff.

Why, just think of all the wonderful,
wonderful things you can do without
money. Things like — well, things like —
On second thought, you’d better keep
on saving, chum. Otherwise you’re
licked.

For instance, how are you ever going
to build that Little Dream House, with-

out a trunk full of moolah? You think
the carpenters are going to work free?
Or the plumbers? Or the architects?
Not those lads. They’ve been around.
They’re no dopes.

And how are you going to do that
world-traveling you’ve always wanted
to do? Maybe you think you can stoke

your way across, or scrub decks. Well,
that’s no good. I’ve tried it. It inter-
feres with shipboard romances.

So — you’d better keep on saving.

Obviously the best way is by con-'
tinuing to buy U. S. Savings Bonds —
through the Payroll Plan.

They’re safe and sound. And you get
four bucks back for every three you
put in!

SAVE we ^ WAY... BUY YOU^ BONDS WROUGH PAYROLL SAVINGS

Contributed by this magazine in co-operation
with the Magazine Publishers of America as a public service.

CONTENTS

MAY, 1947 VOL. XXXIX, NO. 3

SERIAL

FUKy. hv Lawrence O’DonneU S

NOVELETTES

TINY AND THE MONSTER,

bv Theodore Sturgeon 00

E FOR EFFORT, bg T. L. Shared IIB

SHORT STORIES

JESTING PILOT, bg 'Lewie Padgett 70

THE JOURNEY AND THE GOAL, bg Chan Davis 09

ARTICLE

PSEUDOSCIENCE IN NAZILAND, by Willy Ley 90

READERS’ DEPARTMENTS

THE EDITOR’S PAGE 4

IN TIME? TO COME 40

BRASS TACKS 116

Udito,

.TOHN W. CAlfPBBLL, JR.

COVER BY ROGERS

Illustrations by Cartier, Orban and TIedeman

The editorial contenta bare not been published before, are protected by
copyright and cannot be reprinted without publishers’ permission. All stories
Ir this magazine are Action. No actual persons are designated by name or
character. Any similarity Is coincidental.

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President and Secretary. Copyright, 1947, In U. S. A. and Great Britain by
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NEXT ISSUE ON SALE MAY 20. 1047

AST— IS

DIMINISHING CRESCENDO

The atomic piles are at work; atomic
engineers are at work designing piles to
produce power and plutonium instead of
plutonium alone. And Hans Bethe, the
Manhattan Project physicist who de-
scribed — mathematically — what an atomic
bomb explosion would look like before
Alamagordo says “We are not real nu-
clear physicists ; we are just nuclear engi-
neers.” To date, the release of energy
from the super-heavy nuclei is strictly an
engineering proposition — a rule of thumb,
trial-and-error business. In the early days
of electrical engineering, it was perfectly
and strictly true that the engineers didn’t
know what it was they were working
with, but they knew how to make it do
certain things. As of 1890, that was the
situation. We had electric lights, tele-
phones, electric motors, generators, mag-
nets, telegraphs — a host of gadgets. But
no one had any idea what electricity was.

Obviously, if you don’t know what the
force you’re working with actually is, you
can’t know what it can do — you can only
know some of the things it will do. Not
knowing of electrons, or electron flow, the
best engineer couldn’t design an electron
microscope, a triode amplifier tube, or a
television image orthicon. The General
Electric engineers who first made trans-
formers didn’t know just what they were
making; the General Electric engineers
who designed and built the 100,000,000
volt betatron knew they were making a
transformer with a vacuum-tube second-
ary using orbital rotation of the electrons
instead of turns of copper wire. That took
electronic physics, not just engineering.

One U-235 nucleus plus one neutron
yields two fission products plus two or
more new neutrons — a simple engineering
equation. But it’s not nuclear physics. No
more than two hydrogens plus one oxy-
gen yields one water molecule, which is

s

sound engineering but doesn’t attempt to
define why it happens.

A bit over a century ago, John Dalton
reduced the atomic theory to engineering
operation ; with the atomic theory, a sys-
tem of chemical notation and chemical
mathematics became possible. Progress
could be made. And the chemists dropped
out of the atomic research story; they
knew all they needed — they thought!

Democritus’ idea of the atom — the un-
cuttable unit of matter — was what we now
call a molecule. Dalton’s work split the
molecule into structure, and gave us the
modern concept of the atom as the indi-
visible unit.

The physicists of the last decade of thd
Nineteenth Century broke off electrons;
with the aid of natural radioactives in the
first decade of the Twentieth Century,
they derived the general outline of atomic
structure. By 1933, the atom was com-
posed of neutrons, protons, electrons and
positrons. The story of the atom and its
structure was, seemingly, about solved.

But in ca'rbon-11, a proton emits a pos-
itron, and become a neutron, changing the
unstable C-11 into stable boron — B-11. In
C-14, a neutron emits an electron, chang-
ing itself into a proton, and the C-14 be-
comes stable nitrogen- 14. Evidently, we
have reached a new level of structure;
the proton and the neutron are not, obvi-
ously, the elementary particles we thought
them ; they, too, have structure.

The atomic engineers work with pile
design. The atomic physicists have left
the piles, though ; some are working with
pre-war cyclotrons, or newly completed
pre-war designed cyclotrons. But some
are working with new designs. Linear
accelerators and synchotrons and super-
super cyclotrons. It takes from 50,000 to
50,000,000 volt energies to crack a nucleus
for study. Even then, studying nuclear

ASTOUXDIMG SCIENCK-FICTION

structure becomes sonictliing of the sort
of job you’d have if you studied watch
design by cracking watches with ten-
pound mauls and inspecting the pieces.

The nucleons — the neutrons and pro-
tons — are far tougher than the nucleus
of an atom. That’s expectable. You can
crack a water molecule with a 1.5 volt
dry cell — but it takes millions of volts to
crack the oxygen atom you get out. The
parts that come from the crackea oxygen
atom, though, take not millions, but bil-
lion-volt energies. The new nuclear phys-
ics heavy ordnance is designed to produce
particle energies in the range of 500,000,-
000 to 1,500,000,000 volts.

’When you rearrange hydrogen and oxy-
gen atoms to make water, energy is re-
leased. When uranium nuclei and neu-
trons arc rearranged, enormously greater
energy is released. It’s a fair bet that
when you rearrange the structure of a
proton or neutron, all the energy will be
released. And that energy won’t have to
be derived from two elements in the Earth
— thorium and uranium. It can be de-
rived from any matter whatsoever.

The present probabilities appear to be
that the engineers will continue to work
with the atomic piles, gaining highly valu-
able information — and the physicists will
work with their super-high energy de-
vices, gaining immensely valuable basic
understanding. Just as the knowledge of
electrons made the fuller use of electrical
energy possible, so a fuller understanding
of nucleonic structure will, almost cer-
tainly, make the fuller use of atomic en-
ergy possible.

Somewhere inside the nucleon is the
secret of gravity, of inertia, and of the
strange force called "binding energy” or
“ejfthange forces” — forces so titanic that,
when they slip very slightly, and allow a
uranium nucleus to rearrange itself into
two new nuclei, the inconceivable violence
of the atomic bomb results.

The atomic physicists — if the atomic

politicians permit the continued existence
of our culture — should, within the next
five years, begin to get some glimpses of
the structure of the nucleon. These first
glimpses will be of immense aid in re-
designing atomic energy devices, and lead
to entirely new concepts of atomic energy
release. (The nuclear physicist, buried in
the morass of technical problems, is usu-
ally overconservative in his estimates of
what he and his brother workers can ac-
complish in a given period of time. He
is so keenly and painfully aware of the
difficulties he tends to underestimate the
triumphs. Nuclear physicists will, almost
certainly, object to that five-year estimate.
I do not claim that the new coficepts will
be applied and working within five years ;
only that the new concepts will be turned
over to the engineers by that time.)

Since Research is a self-accelerating
phenomenon, fifteen years time may see
the first efforts at harnessing nucleonic
as distinct from nuclear energy. In 1932
the first cyclotron was in operation; in
1942 the first atomic pile was working.

United Nations control and inspection
may work to restrain atomic weapons;
the mining and refining of uranium and
thorium are large-scale enterprises. But
the whole concept of world government,
and world, rather than national, allegiance
better be well established before the first
nucleonic energy device goes into opera-
tion. Water and air can’t be inspected
and controlled.

And my hunch is that "It Is Later
Than You Think.” Considerably so. The
smaller they are, the harder they f^l —
and the harder they are to regulate, the
more common their occurrence, the more
horrific their power.

And, concomitantly, the more miracu-
lous the potentialities.

Only knowledge of electrons could pro-
duce radar. No one Can even guess what
powers lie inherent in nucleonic physics.

The Editou.

DIMINISHING CRESCENDO

r>

t*art One of Three. A new novel of the under-
Hea civilization of Venus — an undersea cixnli-
zation that couldn’t make up its mind to crawl
out of the comfortable, but throttling, shells,
the great Keeps. A sequel to “Clash By Night.”

BY

FURY

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL

INTRODUCTION

It was white night upon Earth and
twilight’s dawn on Venus.

AU men knew of the shining darkness
that had turned Earth into a star in the
clouded skies. Few men understood that
on Venus dawn had merged imperceptibly
into dusk, in an era that never knew
noon. For as the slow twilight drew on,
the undersea lights flamed brighter and
brighter, turning tjie great Keeps into
enchanted citadels beneath the shallow sea.

Seven hundred years ago those lights
were brightest. Six hundred years had

8

Illustrated by Orban

passed since the destruction of Earth. It
was the Twenty-seventh Century.

Time had slowed now. In the begin-
ning it had moved much faster. There
was much to be done, and the advanced
technologies of the period had a nearly
impossible task to fulfill. Venus was un-
inliabitable. But men had to live on
Venus.

On Earth the Jurassic had passed be-
fore humans evolved into a reasoning race.
Man is both tough and fragile. How
fragile will be understood when a vol-
cano erupts or the earth shakes. How
tough will be understood when you know

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

that colonics existed for as long as two
months on the Venusian continents.

Man never knew the fury of the Juras-
sic — on Earth. On Venus it was worse.
When you pull a weed from the hydro-
ponic tanks, you may tlrink of the cycads
of a forgotten age ; when you see a small,
darting lizard, you may remember that
giants once walked the earth in this guise.
And Venus was alien land. Its ecolog>'
paralleled, but was not identical, with the
ecology of Earth.

Man had no weapons to conquer the
Venus lands. His weapons were cither
too weak or too potent. He could destroy
utterly, or he could wound lightly, but
be could not live on the surface of Venus.
He was faced with an antagonist no man
had ever known, because the equivalent
had perished from Earth before mar-
supials changed to true mammals.

He faced fury.

And he fled.

There was safety of a sort undersea.
Science had perfected interplanetary
travel and bad destroyed Earth; science
could build artificial environments on the
ocean bottom. The impervium domes
were built. Beneath them the cities began
to rise.

The cities were completed.

As soon as that happened, dawn on
Venus changed to twilight. Man had re-
turned to the sea from which he sprang.
The race had returned to the racial womb.

Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still

hast serv’d

Tell thee, Macduff zvas from his

mother’s zvomb
Untimely ripp’d.

— Shakespeare

Sam Harker’s birth was a double
prophecy. It showed what was hap-
pening to the great Keeps where
civilization’s lights still burned, and
it foreshadowed Sam’s life in those
underwater fortresses and out of
them. His mother Bessi was a frag-

ile, pretty woman who should have
known better tlran to have a child.
She was narrow-hipped and tiny.
Sam tore the life out of her before
the emergency Caesarean released
him into a wbrld that he had to
smash before it could smash him.

That was why Blaze Marker hated
his son with such a blind, vicious
hatred. Blaze could never think of
of the boy without remembering
what had happened that night. He
could never hear Sam’s voice with-
out hearing Bessi’s thin, frightened
screams. The caudal anesthesia
hadn’t helped much, because Bessi
was psychologically as well as phys-
ically unfit for motherhood. And
Blaze never saw Sam’s red hair with-
out thinking of blood.

Blaze and Bessi — it was a Romeo
and Juliet story with a happy end-
ing, up to the time Sam was con-
ceived. They were casual, purpose-
less hedonists. In the Keeps you had
to choose. You could either find a
drive, an incentive — be one of the
technicians or artists — or you could
drift. The technologies made a broad
field, everything from thalassopoli-
tics to the rigidly limited nuclear
physics. But drifting was easy, if
you could afford it. Even if you
couldn’t, lotus-eating was cheap in
the Keeps. You simply didn’t go in
for the expensive pleasures like the
Olympus rooms and the arenas.

Still, Blaze and Bessi could afford
the best. Their idyll could make a
saga of hedonism. And it seemed
that it would have a happy ending,
for in the Keeps it wasn’t the indi-
vidual who paid. It was the race
that was paying.

FURY

7

After Bessi died, Blaze had noth-
ing left except hatred.

These were the generations of
Harker :

Geoffrey begat Raoul ; Raoul begat
Zachariah; Zachariah begat Blaze;
and Blaze begat Sam.

Blaze relaxed in the cushioned seat
and looked at his great-great-grand-
father.

“^ou can go to the devil,” he said.
“All of you.”

Geoffrey was a tall, muscular,
blond man with curiously large ears
and feet. He said, “You talk like
that because you’re young, that’s all.
How old are you now ? Not twenty !”

“It’s my affair,” Blaze said.

“I’ll be two hundred in another
twenty years,” Geoffrey said. “I had
sense enough to w'ait till I was past
fifty before fathering a son. I had
sense enough not to use my common-
law wife for breeding. Why blame
the child ?”

Blaze stubbornly looked at his
fingers.

His father Zachariah, who had
been glaring silently, sprang up and
snapped, “He’s psychotic ! Where he
belongs is in a psych-hospital. Tliey’d
get the truth out of him!”

Blaze smiled. “I took precautions,
Father,” he said mildly. “I took a
number of tests and exams before I
came here today. Administration’s
aproved my I.Q. and my sanity. I’m
thoroughly compos mentis. Legally,
too. There's nothing any of you can
do, and you know it.”

“Even a two-week-old child has
his civil rights,” said Raoul, who was
thin, dark, elegantly tailored in soft

celoflex, and seemed wryly amused
by the entire scene. “But you’ve been
Careful not to 'admit anything, eh,
Blaze?”

“Very careful.”

Geoffrey hunched his buffalo
shoulders forward, met Blaze’s eyes
with his own cool blue ones, and said,
“Where’s the boy ?”

“I don’t know,”

Zachariah said furiously, “My
grandson — we’ll find him! Be sure
of that! If he’s in Delaware Keep
we’ll find him — or if he’s on Venus !”

“Exactly,” Raoul agreed. “The
Harkers are rather powerful. Blaze.
You should know that. That’s why
you’ve been allowed to do exactly as
you wanted all your life. But that’s
stopping now.”

“I don’t think it is stoping,” Blaze
said. “I’ve a great deal of money of
my own. As for your finding . . .
him . . . have you thought that it
might be difficult ?”

"We’re a powerful family,” Geof-
frey said steadily.

“So we are,” Blaze said. “But
what if you can’t recognize the boy
when you find him ?”

He smiled.

The first thing they did was to give
him a depilatory treatment. Blaze
couldn’t endure the possibility that
dyed hair would grow back red. The
baby’s scanty growth of auburn fuzz
was removed. It would never grow
again.

A culture catering to hedonism has
its perversions of science. And Blaze
could pay well. More than one tech-
nician had been wrecked by pleasure-
addiction ; such men were usually ca-

s

ASTOnNDING SCIEXCK-FICTION

pable — when they wei'e sober. But
it was a woman Blaze found, finally,
and she w'as capable only when alive.
She lived when she was wearing the
Happy Cloak. She wouldn’t live
long: Happy Cloak addicts lasted
about two years, on the average. The
thing was a biological adaptation of
an organism found in the Venusian
seas. It had been illegally devel-
oped, after its potentialities were
first realized. In its native state, it
got its prey by touching it. After
tliat neuro-contact had been estab-
lished, the prey w'as quite satisfied to
be ingested.

It was a beautiful garment, a liv-
ing white like the white of a pearl,
shivering softly with rippling lights,
stirring w’ith a terrible, ecstatic move-
ment of its own as the lethal symbi-
osis was established. It was beauti-
ful as the woman technician wore it,
as she moved about the bright, quiet
room in a tranced concentration upon
the task that would pay her enough
to insure her death within two years.
She was very capable. She knew en-
docrinology. When she had finished,
Sam Marker had forever lost his her-
itage. The matrix had been set — or,
rather, altered from its original pat-
tern.

Thalamus, thyroid, pineal — tiny
lumps of tissue, some already active,
some waiting till the trigger of ap-
proaching maturity started the secre-
tions. The infant was unformed, a
somewhat larger lump of tissue, with
cartilage for bones and his soft skull
imperfectly sutured as yet.

“Not a monster,” Blaze had said,
thinking about Bessi all the time.

“No, nothing extreme. Short, fleshy
—thick!"

The bandaged lump of tissue lay
still on the operating table. Germi-
cidal lamps focused on the anaesthet-
ized form.

The woman, swimming in antici-
pated ecstasy, managed to touch a
summoning signal-button. Then she
lay down quietly on the floor, the
shining pearly garment caressing
her. Her tranced eyes looked up,
flat and empty as mirrors. The man
who came in gave the Happy Cloak
a wide berth. He began the neces-
sary post-operative routine.

The elder Markers watched Blaze,
hoping they could find the child
through his father. But Blaze had
refined his plan too thoroughly to
leave such loopholes. In a secret
place he had Sam’s fingerprints and
retina-prints, and he knew that
through those he could locate his son
at any time. He was in no hurry.
What would happen would happen.
It was inevitable — now. Given the
basic ingredients, and the stable en-
vironment, there was no hojie at all
for Sam Marker.

Blaze set an alarm clock in his
mind, an alarm that would not ring
for many years. Meanwhile, having
faced reality for the first time in his
life, he did his utmost to forget it
again. He never forget Bessi, though
he tried. He plunged back into the
bright, euphoric spin of hedonism in
the Keeps.

The early years merged into the
unremembered past. Time moved
more slowly for him then. Days and

FUKV

hours dragged. The man and wonran
he knew as father and mother had
nothing in common with him, even
then. For the operation had not al-
tered his mind; his intelligence, his
ingenuity, he had inherited from
half-mutant ancestors. Though the
mutation was merely one of longev-
ity, that trait had made it possible
for the Markers to rise to dominance
on Venus. They were not the only
long-lived ones, by any means ; there
were a few hundred others who had
a life-expectancy of from two to
seven hundred years, depending on
various complicated factors. But the
strain bred true. It was easy to iden-
tify them.

There was a carnival season once,
he remembered, and his foster par-
ents awkwardly donned finery and
went to mingle with the rest. He was
old enough to be a reasoning animal
by then. He had already seen glam-
our from a distance, but he had never
seen it in operation.

Carnival was a respected custom.
All Delaware Keep was shining. Col-
ored perfumes hung like a haze above
the moving Ways, clinging to the
merrymakers as they passed. It was
a time when all classes mingled.

Technically there were no lower
classes. Actually —

He saw a woman — the loveliest
W'oman he had ever seen. Her gown
was blue. That does not describe its
color in the least. It was a deep,
rich, different blue, so velvety and
smooth that the boy ached to touch
it. He was too young to understand
the subtlety of the gown’s cut, its
sharp, clean lines, the way it en-
hanced the w'oman’s face and her

10

corn-yellow liair. He saw her from
a distance and was filled with a vio-
lent need to know more about her.

His foster mother could not tell
him what he wanted.

“That’s Kedre Walton. She must
be two, three hundred years old by
now.’’

“Yes.” Years meant nothing. “But
who 15 she ?”

“Oh — she runs a lot of things.”

"This is a farewell party, my
dear,” she said.

"So soon?”

“Sixty years — hasn’t it been?”

“Kedre, Kedre — sometimes I wish
our lives weren’t so long.”

She smiled at him. “Then we’d
never have met. We immortals grav-
itate to the same level — so we do
meet.”

Old Zachariah Marker reached for
her hand. Beneath their terrace the
Keep glittered with carnival.

“It’s always new,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be, though, if we’d
stayed together that first time. Imag-
ine being bound together indissolubly
for hundreds of years !”

Zachariah gave her a shrewd, ques-
tioning stare.

“A matter of proportion, proba-
bly,” he said. “Immortals shouldn’t
live in the Keeps. The restrictions
... the older you grow, the more
you’ve got to expand.”

“Well — I am expanding.”

“Limited by the Keeps. The young
men and the short-lived ones don’t
see the walls around them. We old
ones do. We need more room.
Kedre, I’m growing afraid. We’re
reaching our limits.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Are uc?"

“Coming close to them — we Im-
mortals. I’m afraid of intellectual
death. What’s the use of longevity
if you’re not able to use your skills
and powers as you gain them ? We’re
beginning to turn inward.”

“Well — what then? Inter-
planetary ?”

“Outposts, perhaps. But on Mars
we’d need Keeps, too. And on most
of the other planets. I’m thinking
of interstellar.”

“It’s impossible.”

“It was impossible when man
came to Venus. It's theoretically
possible now, Kedre. But not prac-
tically so. There’s no . . . no sym-
bolic launching-platform. No inter-
stellar ship could be built or launched
from an undersea Keep. I’m speak-
ing symbolically.”

“My dear,” she said, “we have all
the time in the world. We’ll discuss
this again in . . . oh, fifty years,
perhaps.”

“And I won’t see you till then ?”
“Of course you’ll see me, Zacha-
riah. But no more than that. It’s
time we took our vacation. Then,
when we come together again — ”
She rose. They kissed. That, too,
was symbolic. Both of them felt the
ardor fading into gray ash — and, be-
cause they were in love, they were
wise enough and patient enough to
wait till the fire could be rekindled
again.

So far the plan had been
successful.

After fifty years had passed they
would be lovers again.

Sam Harker Stared at the gaunt
gray-faced man moving purpose fully

through the throng. He was wear-
ing cheerful celoflex too, but nothing
could disguise the fact that he was
not a Keep man. He had been sun-
burned once, so deeply that centuries
undersea had not bleached him of
that deep tan. His mouth was set
in a habitual sneering grin.

“Who’s that ?”

“What? Where? Oh, I don't
know. Don’t bother me.”

He hated the compromise that had
made him don celoflex. But his old
uniform would have been far too
conspicuous. Cold, cruel-mouthed,
suffering, he let the Way carry him
past the enormous globe of the
Earth, draped in a black plastic pall,
that served in every Keep as a re-
minder of mankind’s greatest
achievement. He went to a walled
garden and handed in an identifica-
tion disk at a barred window. Pres-
ently he was admitted to the temple.

So this was the Temple of Truth!

It was impressive. He had respect
for technicians — logistics, logicians
. . . not logistics, that was behind
him now. A priest took him into an
inner chamber and showed him a
chair.

“You’re Robin Hale?”

“Right.”

“Well — you’ve collated and given
us all the data we need. But there
must be a few clarifying questions.
The Logician will ask them himself.”

He went away. Downstairs, in the
hydroponic gardens, a tall, thin,
bony- faced man was pottering about
cheerfull.

“The Logician is needed. Robin
Hale’s waiting.”

FURY

11

“Ah, rats,” said the tall, thin man,
setting down a spray and scratching
his long jaw. “Nothing I can tell
the poor fella. He’s sunk.”

“Sir!”

“Take it easy. I’ll talk to him. Go
away and relax. Got his papers
ready ?”

“Yes, sir.”

“O.K. I’ll be along. Don’t rush
me.” Muttering, the Logician sham-
bled toward a lift. Presently he was
in the control room, watching,
through a visor, the gaunt sunburned
man sitting uncomfortably on his
chair.

“Robin Hale,” he said, in a new,
deeper voice.

Hale automatically stiffened.

1 es.

“You are an Immortal. That means
you have a life-expectancy of up to
seven hundred years. But you have
no job. Is that right ?”

“That’s right.”

“What happened to your job?”

“What happened to the Free
Companies ?”

. . . They died. They passed, when
the Keeps unified under one govern-
ernment, and the token wars between
them became unnecessary. In those
days, the Free Companions had
been the warriors, hired mercenaries
paid to fight battles the Keeps dared
not fight themselves, for fear of
perishing.

The Logician said, “Not many
Free Companions were Immortals.
It’s been a long time since there was
a Free Company. You’ve outlived
vour job. Hale.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to find a job
for you ?”

“I can’t,” Hale said bitterly. "1
can’t find one, and I can’t face the
prospect of liundreds of years — do-
ing nothing. Just enjoying myself.
I’m not a hedonist.”

“I can tell you what to do very
easily,” the Logician said. “Die.”
There was silence.

The Logician went on: “I can’t
tell you how to do it quite so easily.
You’re a fighter. You’ll want to die
fighting for your life. And, prefer-
ably, fighting for something you be-
lieve.” He paused. When he spoke
again, his voice had changed.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’m
coming out there. Hang on.”

And a moment later his thin, tall
form shambled from behind a cur-
tain in the wall. Hale jumped to
his feet, staring at the scarecrow fig-
ure confronting him. The Logician
waved him back to his seat.

“Lucky I’m the boss,” he said.
“Those priests of mine wouldn’t
stand for this if they had a thing to
say about it. But what could they
do without me? I’m the Logician.
Sit down.” He pulled up a seat oppo-
site, took an odd-looking object from
his pocket — it was a pipe — and
stuffed it with tobacco.

“Grow it and cure it myself,” he
said. “Look, Hale. This phony stuff
is O.K. for the Keeps, but I don’t
see the point of handing you a line.”
Hale was staring. “But ... the
Temple . . . this is the Temple of
Truth? You mean it’s all — ”
“Phony ? Nope. It’s on the level.
Trouble is, the truth don’t always

la

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

come out dignified. Those old stat-
ues of Truth — naked, she was. Well,
she had the figger for it. But look
at me, now. I’d be a sight. There
was a time when we played it
straight ; it didn't work. People just
thought I was giving an opinion.
Fair enough ; I look like an ordinary
guy. But I’m not. I’m a trick mu-
tant. Come full circle. We went
around through Plato and Aristotle
and Bacon and Korzybski and the
truth-machines — and end up right
where we started, the best method
in the world to use logic on human

problems. I know the answers. The
right ones.”

Hale found it difficult to under-
stand. “But . . . you can’t be infal-
lible . . . don’t you use any system ?”
“Tried the systems,” the Logician
said. “Lots of four-bit words. Boils
down to one thing. Horse sense.”
Hale blinked.

The Logician kindled his pipe.
“I’m over a thousand years old,” he
said. “Kind of hard to believe, 1
know. But, I told you I was a trick
mutant. Son, I was born on Earth.
I can remember the atomic wars.

PURV

18

Not the first ones — that was how I
come to be born, my parents got in
the way of some secondary radia-
tions. I’m about as close to a real
Immortal as they come. But my main
talent — do you remember reading
about Ben the Prophet. No? Well,
he was only one of a lot of prophets,
in those days. Plenty of people
guessed what was coming. Didn’t
take much logic. I was Ben the
Prophet. Lucky some of the right
people listened and started coloniz-
ing Venus. I came along. Time the
Earth blew up, I was right here be-
ing studied. Some technicians found
out my brain was a little queer.
There was a new sense in it, instinct,
or whatever — nobody’s ever found
out exactly what: it is. But it’s the
same thing that made the thinking-
machines give the right answers —
when they did ! Brother, I just can’t
help giving the right answers !”

“You’re a thousand years old?”
Hale asked, fastening on the single
point.

• “Nigh. I’ve seen ’em come and
go. I’ve seen how I could get to
rule the whole roost, if I wanted to.
But preserve me from that! I can
see most of the answers to that, and
I don’t like any of ’em. I just sit
here in the Temple of Truth and an-
swer questions.”

Hale said blankly, “We’ve always
thought . . . there was a machine — ”

“Sure, I know. Funny people will
believe what a machine tells ’em,
where they won’t believe a fella like
themselves. Or maybe it isn’t funny
at all. Look, son — no matter how
you cut it, I know the answers. I
turn over the information in my

14

head, and pretty soon I see what they
add up to. Common sense is all. Only
requirement is that I’ve got to know ,
all about you and your problem.”
“Then you can read the future.”
“Too many variables,” the Logi-
cian said. “By the way, I hope you
won’t shoot off your mouth about
me. The priests won’t like it. Every
time I show myself to some client
and come off my high horse, they
raise the temple roof. Not that it
matters. You can talk if you want;
nobody’d believe the infallible ora-
cle’s anything but a super-machine.”
He grinned cheerfully. “Main thing
is, son, I got an idea. I told you I
add up the numbers and get the an-
swer. Well, sometimes I get more
than one answer. Why don’t you go
landside ?”

“Whatr

“Why not?” the Logician said.
“You’re pretty tough. Course you
may get killed. Probably will, I’ll
say. But you’ll go down fighting.
Not much fighting you can do in the
Keeps, for anything you believe in.
There’s some other people feel the
way you do. A few Free Compan-
ions, I think — Immortals too. Look
them up. Go landside.”

Hale said, “It’s impossible.”

“The Companies had their forts,
didn’t they ?”

“It took gangs of technicians to
keep the jungle out. And the ani-
mals. We had to keep waging a con-
tinual war against landside. Besides,
the forts — there isn’t much left of
them now.”

“Pick one out and rebuild it.”

“But — then what?”

“Maybe you can be top man,” the

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Logician said quietly. “IMaj’be you
can get to be top man — on Venus.”

The silence drew on and on. Hale’s
face changed.

“Good enough,” the Logician said,
getting up. He put out his hand.
“My name’s Ben Crowell, by the
way. Come see me if you run into
trouble. Or I might even drop in to
see you. If I do, don’t let on I’m
the great brain.” He winked.

He shambled out, sucking at his
pipe.

Life in the Keeps was ver}^ much
like a game of chess. In the barn-
yard, among fowls, social precedence
is measured by length of tenancy.
Extension in time is wealth. Pawns
have a low life-expectancy; knights
and bishops and castles have more.
Socially, there was a three-dimen-
sional democracy and a temporal
autocracy. There was a reason why
the long-lived Biblical patriarchs
achieved power. They could hold
power.

In the Keeps, the Immortals simply
knew more than the non-Immortals.
Psychologically a curious displace-
ment became evident. Immortals
weren’t worshiped as gods in those
practical days, but there was definite
displacement. Parents have one fac-
ulty a child. cannot have: maturity.
The plus factor. Experience. Age.

So there was displacement. Un-
consciously the short-lived peoples of
the Keeps began to look with depend-
ence upon the Immortals. They knew
more, of course. And, too, they were
older.

Let George do it.

Besides, it is a regrettably human

trait to disclaim unpleasant responsi-
bilities. For centuries the trend had
been away from individualism. So-
cial responsibility had been carried to
the point where everyone, theoreti-
cally, was his brother’s keeper.

Eventually they all formed a circle
and collapsed gracefully into one an-
other’s arms.

The Immortals, who knew what
long, empty centuries were ahead of
them, took pains to insure that those
centuries would not be so empty.
They learned. They studied. They
had plenty of time.

As they gained in knowledge and
experience, they began to take the
responsibilities easily delegated to
them by-die collapsing multitudes.

It was a stable enough culture —
for a moribund race.

He was always getting into
mischief.

Anything new was fascinating to
him. The Harker chromosomes took
care of that. His name, though, was
Sam Reed.

He kept fighting the invisible bars
that he knew prisoned him. There
were fourscore and ten of them.
Something in his mind, something
illogical and inherited, kept rebelling,
seeking expression. What can you
do in ninety years?

Once he tried to get a job in the
great hydroponic gardens. His blunt,
coarse face, his bald head, his preco-
cious mind — these made it possible
for him to lie convincingly about his
age. He managed it for a whilfc, till
his curiosity got the better of him,
and he began experimenting with
botanical forced cultures. Since he

FURY

1 .%

knew nothing about it, he spoiled a
good-sized crop.

Before that, though, he had dis-
covered a blue flower in one of the
tanks, and it reminded him of the
woman he had seen at carnival. Her
gown had been exactly the same
color. He asked one ©f the attend-
ants about it.

“Blasted weeds,” the man said.
"Can’t keep ’em out of the tanks.
Hundreds of years, and they still
show up. We don’t have much trou-
ble with these, though. It’s the crab
grass that’s worst.” He pulled up
the weed and tossed it aside. Sam
rescued it and asked more questions
later. It was, he learned, a violet.
The unobtrusive, pretty little plant
was a far cry from the glamqfous
hybrid flowers grown in other sec-
tions of Hydroponics. He kept it
till it broke into dust. He kept its
memory after that, as he kept the
memory of the woman in the violet-
blue gown.

One day he ran away to Canada
Keep, far across the Sea of Shal-
lows. He had never been outside a
Keep before, and was fascinated as
the great, transparent globe drove
upward through the bubbling water.
He went with a man whom he had
bribed — with stolen money — to pre-
tend to be his father. But after he
reached Canada Keep he never saw
the man again.

He was ingenious at twelve. He
worked out various ways to earn a
living. But none satisfied him. They
werewll too dull. Blaze Harker had
known what he was doing when he
had left the boy’s mind untouched in
a stunted, warped body.

ts

It was warped only by the aesthetic
standards of the time. The kng-
limbed, tall Immortals had set the
standard of beauty. There came to
be a stigma of ugliness attached to
the stocky, blunt- featured, thick-
boned short-lived ones.

There was a tough, violent seed of
un fulfillment within Sam. It drove
him. It couldn’t develop normally,
for it was seed of the Immortals, and
he obviously was no Immortal. He
simply could not qualify for work
that might take training of a hun-
dred years or more. Even fifty years
training — !

He did it the hard way, and the
inevitable way. He got his mentor,
his Chiron-Fagin, after he met the
Slider.

The Slider was a fat, wicked old
man without any name. He had
bushy white hair, a carbuncled red
nose, and a philosophy of his own.
He never proffered advice, but he
gave it when it was asked.

“People want fun,” he told the
boy. “Most of ’em. And they don’t
want to look at a thing that hurts
their tender feelings. Use your head,
kid. Thieving’s out. Best to make
yourself useful to people who’ve got
power. Now you take Jim Sheffield’s
gang. Jim caters to thej"ight people.
Don’t ask questions ; do what you’re
told — but first get the right connec-
tions.”

He sniffled and blinked his watery
eyes at Sam.

“I spoke to Jim alx>ut you. Gk»
see him. Here’s the place.” He
thrust a plastic disk at the boy. “I
wouldn’t of got you out of that

. ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

scrape if I hadn’t seen something in
you. Go see Jim.”

He stopped Sam at the door.

“You’ll get along. Likewise, you
won’t forget old Slider, eh? Some
people have. I can make trouble as
easy as I can do favors.”

Sam left the fat, malignant old
man sniffling and chuckling.

He went to see Jim Sheffield. He
was fourteen then, strong, short,
scowling. He found Sheffield stronger
and larger. Sheffield was seventeen,
a graduate of the Slider’s twisted
school, an independent, shrewd busi-
nessman whose gang was already be-
coming known. The human factor
was vital for Keep intrigue. It wasn’t
merely politics ; the mores of the era
were as punctilious and complicated
as the social life of Machiavelli’s
Italy. The straight thrust of the knife
was not only illegal but in poor taste.
Intrigue was the thing. In the con-
tinually shifting balance of power,
the man who could outwit an oppo-
nent, wind him in webs of his own
spinning, and force him to ruin him-
self — that was the game.

Sheffield’s gang free-lanced. Sam
Reed’s — he didn’t know the name
Marker except to identify it with one
of the great Families of his old Keep
— first job was to go undersea, with
one more experienced companion,
and collect some specimens of bluish
algae, illegal within the Keeps. When
he got back through the secret lock,
he was surprised to find the Slider
waiting, with a portable ray-mech-
anism already set up. The little room
had been sealed off.

The Slider was wearing protective

armor. His voice came through a
diaphragm.

“Stay right there, boys. Catch this.”
He tossed a spray-gun to Sam. “Now
spray that plastibulb. It’s sealed, isn’t
it? Right. Spray it all over — fine.
Now turn around slowly.”

“Wait a minute — ” said the other
boy.

The Slider sniffled. “Do what I tell
you or I’ll break your skinny neck,”
he said conversationally. “Raise your
arms. Turn slowly, while I use the
ray on you . , . that's it.”

Afterward, the three of them met
Jim Sheffield. Jim was subdued but
angry. He tried to argue with the
Slider.

The Slider sniffled and rumpled
his white hair.

“You shut up,” he said. “Too big
for your boots, you’re getting to be.
If you’d remember to ask me when
you get into something new, you’d
‘save yourself trouble.” He tapped
the black-painted globe Sam had set
on the table. “This algae — know
why it’s forbidden in the Keeps?
Didn’t your patron tell you to be
careful when he commissioned you
to get the stuff?”

Sheffield’s broad mouth twisted.
“I was careful !”

“The stuff’s safe to handle under
lab conditions,” the Slider said,
“Only then. It’s a metal-eater. Dis-
solves metal. Once it’s been treated
with the right reagents, it’s innocu-
ous. But raw like this, it could get
loose and cause a lot of trouble here
— and it’d be traced back to you, and
you’d land in Therapy. See? If
you’d come to me first. I’d have told
you to have this ultraviolet set up,

FOB Y

17

to burn the daylights out of any algae
the boys might bring in stuck to their
suits. Next time I won’t be so easy
on you. I don’t want to go to Ther-
apy, Jim.”

The old man looked innocuous-
enough, but Sheffield’s rebellious
stare wavered and fell. With a word
of agreement he rose, picked up the
globe and went out, beckoning to the
other boys. Sam waited for a mo-
ment.

The Slider winked at him.

“‘You make a lot of mistakes when
you don’t get advice, kid,” he said.

The.se were only episodes among
many like them along the course of
his outward life. Inwardly too he
was precocious, amoral,, rebellious.
Above all, rebellious. He rebelled
agfainst the shortness of life, that
made learning seem futile to him
when he thought of the Immortals.
He rebelled against his own body,
thick and stocky and plebeian. Here-
belled obscurely, and without know-
ing the reasons himself, against all
that he had irrevocably become in
that first week of his life.

There have always been angry men
in the world. Sometimes the anger,
like Elijah’s, is the fire of God and
the man lives in history as a saint
and a reformer whose anger moved
mountains to improve the lot of man-
kind. Sometimes the anger is de-
structive, and great war-leaders rise
to devastate whole nations. Angers
like that find outward expression and
need not consume their hosts.

But Sam Reed’s anger was a rage
against intangibles like time and des-
tiny and the only target it could find

to explode against was himself.
Granted that such anger is not nor-
mal in a man. But Sam Reed was
not normal. His father before him
could not have been normal, or he
would never have taken such dispro-
portionate vengeance on his son. A
flaw somewhere in the Harker blood
was responsible for the bitter rage in
which father and son alike lived out
their days, far separate, raging
against far different things, but in
armed rebellion all their lives, both
of them, against life itself.

Sam went through many inward
phases that would have astonished
the Slider and Jim Sheffield and the
others with whom he worked in those
days. Because his mind was more
complex than theirs, he was able to
live on many more levels than they,
and able to conceal it. From the day
he first discovered the great libraries
of the Keeps he became a passionate
reader. He was never an intellectual
man, and the unrest in him prevented
him from ever mastering any one
field of knowledge and so rising
above his station by the one superi-
ority he possessed — his mind.

But he devoured books as fire de-
vours fuel, as his own discontent de-
voured himself. He raced through
whole courses of reading on any sub-
ject that caught his quick, glancing
fancy, and emerged with knowledge
of that subject stored uselessly away
in a chamber of the uselessly capa-
cious brain. Sometimes the knowl-
edge helped him to promote a fraud
or consun-miate a murder. More
often it simply lay dormant in the
mind that had been meant for the
storage of five hundred years’ ex-

18

ASTOUXniXO SCIENCE-FICTION

pcrience, and was doomed to extinc-
tion in less than a century.

One great trouble with Sam Reed
was that he didn’t know what really
ailed him. He had long struggles
with his own conscience, in which he
tried to rationalize his mind out of
its own unconscious knowledge of its
lo-st heritage. For a time he hoped
to find among books some answer . . .

In those early days he sought and
found in them the respite of escapism
which he later tried in so many other
forms — drugs among them, a few
women, much restless shifting from
Keep to Keep — until he came at last
to the one great, impossible task
which was to resolve his destiny and
which he faced with such violent re-
luctance.

For the next decade and a half
he read, quietly and rapidly, through
the libraries of whichever Keep he
found himself in, as a smooth under-
current to whatever illicit affair he
might currently be involved with.
His profound contempt for the peo-
ple he victimized, directly or indi-
rectly, was one with the contempt he
felt for his associates. Sam Reed
was not in any sense a nice man.

Even to himself he was unpredict-
able. He was the victim of his own
banked fire of self-hatred, and when
that fire burst forth, Sam Reed’s
lawlessness took very direct forms.
His reputation became tricky. No
one trusted him very far — how could
they, when he didn’t even trust him-
self ? — but his hand and his mind
were so expert that his services were
in considerable demand among those
willing to take the chance that their
careful plans might blow up in

FURY

bloody murder if Sam Reed’s temper
got the better of him. Many were
willing. Many found him rather
fascinating.

For life in the Keeps had leveled
off to an evenness which is not native
to the minds of man. In many, many
people something like an unrecog-
nized flicker of the rebellion which
consumed Sam Reed burned rest-
lessly, coming to the surface in
odd ways. Psychological projective
screens took strange forms, such as
the wave of bloodthirsty ballads
which was sweeping the Keeps on a
high tide of popularity when Sam
was in his formative years. Less
strange, but as indicative, was the
fad for near-worship of the old Free-
Companion days, the good old days
of man’s last romantic period.

Deep in human minds lies the in-
sistence that war is glamorous, al-
though it never can have been except
to a select few, and for nearly a
thousand years now had been wholly
terrible. Still the tradition clung on
— perhaps because terror itself is
perversely fascinating, though most
of us have to translate it into other
terms before we can admire it.

The Free Companions, who had
been serious, hard-working men op-
erating a warfare machine, became
swaggering heroes in the public
fancy and many a man sighed nos-
talgically for a day he thought he
had missed by a period of heart-
breaking briefness.

They sang the wailing ballads the
Free Companions had carried over,
in changed forms, from the pioneer
days on Venus, which in turn had

19

derived from the unimaginably dif-
ferent days on Old Earth. But they
sang them with a difference now.
Synthetic Free Companions in inac-
curate costumes performed for sway-
ing audiences that followed their
every intonation without guessing
how wrong they were.

The emphasis was off, in words
and rhythm alike. For the Keeps
were stagnant, and stagnant people
do not know how to laugh. Their
humor is subtle and devious, evoking
the snigger rather than the guffaw.
Slyness and innuendo was the basis
of their oblique humor, not laughter.

For laughter is cruel and open.
The hour was on its way when men
would sing again the old bloodthirsty
ballads as they were meant to be
sung, and laugh again with the full-
throated heartiness that comes from
the need to laugh — at one’s own mis-
fortunes. To laugh because the only
alternative is tears — and tears mean
defeat. Only pioneers laugh in the
primitive fullness of the sense. No
one in the Keeps in those days had
so much as heard real laughter in its
cruelty and courage, except perhaps
the very eldest among them, who re-
membered earlier days.

Sam Reed along with the rest ac-
cepted the Free Companions — extinct
almost as Old Earth’s dinosaurs, and
for much the same reason— as the
epitome of glamorous romance. But
he understood the reasons behind
that emotional acceptance, and could
jeer at himself for doing it. It was
not Free Companionship but free en-
deavor which, in the last analysis, en-
chanted them all.

They didn’t want it, really. It

would have terrified and repelled
most of these people who so grace-
fully collapsed into the arms of any-
one willing to offer them moral and
mental support. But nostalgia is
graceful too, and they indulged them-
selves in it to the full.

Sam read of the pioneer days on
Venus wtih a sort of savage long-
ing. A man could use. all of himself
against an adversary like the raven-
ing planet the newcomers had fought.
He read of Old Earth with a burn-
ing no.stalgia for the wider horizons
it had offered. He hummed the old
songs over to himself and tried to
imagine what a free sky must have
looked like, terrifyingly studded with
the visible worlds of space.

His trouble was that his world was
a simple place, made intricate only
artificially, for the sake of intricate
intrigue, so that one couldn’t hurl
oneself wholeheartedly into conflict
against a barrier — because the bar-
rier was artificial and would collapse.
You had to support it with one hand
while you battered it with the other.

The only thing that could have of-
fered Sam an opponent worthy of
his efforts was time, the long, com-
plex stretch of centuries which he
knew he would never live. So he
hated men, women, the world, him-
self. He fought them all indiscrim-
inately and destructively for lack of
an opponent he could engage with in
a constructive fight.

He fought them for forty years.

One pattern held true through all
that time, though he recognized it
only dimly and without much inter-
est. Blue was a color that could

ASTOCKPING SCIENCE-FICTIOX

touch him as iiolliing else could. He
rationalized that, in part, by remera-
Jpering the stories of Old Earth and
a sky inconceivably colored blue.

Here water hemmed one in every-
where. The upper air was heavy
with moisture, the clouds above it
hung gravid with moisture and the
gray seas wltich were a blanket above
the Keeps seemed scarcely wetter
titan clouds and air. So the blueness
of that lost sky was one in his mind
with the thought of freedom . . .

But the first girl he took in free-
marriage was a little dancer from
one of the Way cafes, who had worn
a scanty costume of blue feathers
when he saw her first. She had blue
eyes, not so blue as the feathers or
the unforgotten skies of Earth, but
blue. Sam rented a little apartment
for them on a back street in Mon-
tana Keep, and for six months or so
they bickered no more than most do-
mestic couples.

One morning he came in from an
all-night job with the Sheffield gang
and smelled something strange the
moment he pushed the door open. A
heavy sw^eetness in the air, and a
sharp, thick, already familiar acrid-
ness that not many Keep men would
recognize these effete days.

The little dancer lay slumped
against the far wall, already stiffen-
ing in her slump. Where her face
had been was a great palely tinted
blossom whose petals gripped like a
many-fingered hand, plastering the
flower tight against her skull. It had
been a yellow flower, but the veins
in the petals were bright red now,
and more red ran down beneath the
blossom over the girl’s blue dress.

Beside ber on the floor lay the
florist’s box, spilling green tissue, in
which someone bad sent her the
flower.

Sam never knew who had done it,
or why. It might have been some
eneniy of his, taking revenge for past
indignities, it might even have been
one of his friends — he suspected the
Slider for awhile — afraid of the hold
the girl was getting over him, to di-
vert him from profitable business in
the dark hours. Or it might have
been one of the girl’s dancing rivals,
for the bitterest sort of struggle went
on constantly among people of that
profession for the too- few jobs that
were open just now in Montana
Keep.

Sam made inquiries, found out
what he wanted to know and exacted
dispassionate justice from people
who may or may not have been guil-
ty. Sam was not very concerned with
that. The girl had not been a partic-
ularly nice girl in any sense, any
more than Sam was a nice man. She
had been convenient, and she had
blue eyes. It was his own reputa-
tion Sam was upholding when he did
what he did about her murder.

After that other girls came and
went. Sam exchanged the little back-
■street apartment for a better one in
a quieter neighborhood. Then he fin-
ished an exceptionally profitable job
and forsook girl and apartment for
almost elegant quarters high up in a
tower looking out over the central
Way. He found a pretty blue-eyed
singer to share it with him.

By the time our story opens he
had three apartments in three Keeps,
one quite expensive, ' one average.

i’CSY

31

and one deliberately clK)sen down
among the port loading streets in the
dimmest section of Virginia Keep.
The occupants matched the apart-
ments. Sam was an epicure in his
own way. By now he could afford
to be. •

In the expensive apartment he had
two rooms sacred to his privacy,
stocked with a growing library of
books and music, and an elaborate
selection of liquors and drugs. This
was not known among his business
associates. He went here by another
name and was generally supposed to
be a commercial traveler from some
unspecified but distant Keep. It was
as close as Sam Reed could come to

the life Sam Harker would have led
by rights.

The Queen of Air and Darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,

O young man, O my slayer,

T omorrozv you shall die . . .

On the first day of the annual Car-
nival which ushered in the last year
of Sam Reed’s life, he sat across a
small, turning table and spoke prac-
tically of love and money with a girl
in pink velvet. It must have been
near noon, for the light filtering down
through the Sea of Shallows and the
great dome of the Keep fell at its
dim maximum upon them. But all

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

docks were slopped for the three-
day Carnival so that no one need
■Worry about time.

To anyone not reared from child-
hood upon such phenomena as a
merry-go-round cafe, the motion of
the city around Sam would have been
sickening. The whole room turned
slowly to slow music ivithin its trans-
parent circular walls. The tables
turned each upon its own axis, car-
rying a perimeter of chairs with it.
Behind the girl’s soft cloud of hair
Sam could see all of the Keep spread-
ing out and out below them and
wheeling solemnly in parade past his
unheeding -vantage point.

A drift of colored perfume floated
past them in a long, airy ribbon lifted
and dropped by the air currents.
Sam felt tiny spatters of scented
moisture beading his face as the
pink fog drifted past. He dispelled
it with an impatient fanning of the
hand and narrowed his eyes at the
girl across from him.

“Well?” he said.

The girl smiled and bent her head
over the tall, narrow, double-horned
lyre, streaming with colored ribbons,
which she embraced with one arm as
she sat there. Her eyes were gentian
blue, shadowed with lashes so heavy
she seemed to look up at him through
them from black eyes.

“I have another number in a min-
ute,” she said. “I’ll tell you later.”

“You’ll tell me now,” Sam de-
clared. not harshly as he w-ould have
spoken to most other women, but
firmly. The expensive apartment,
high up at the exclusive peak of the
Keep residential section, was vacant
just now, and if Sam had his way

this girl would be the next dw'dler
there. Perhaps a permanent dweller.
He was aware of an uneasy stir in
his mind whenever he thought of
Rosathe. He didn’t like any woman
to affect him this deeply.

Rosathe smiled at him. She had a
small, soft mouth and a cloud of soft
dark hair cut short and haloed all
over her head like a dark mist. There
was unexpected humor in her face
sometimes, a rather disconcerting in-
telligence behind the gentian eyes,
and she sang in a voice like the pink
velvet of her gown, a small soft
plaintive voice that brushed the
nerves with pleasant tremors.

Sam was. afraid of her. But be-
ing Sam Reed, he was reaching for
this particular nettle. He dealt with
danger by confronting it, and if
there was any way of getting this
velvety creature out of his mind, it
would be through surfeit, not by try-
ing to forget her. He proposed to
surfeit himself, if he could, as soon
as possible.

Rosathe plucked one string of the
lyre with a thoughtful forefinger.
She said, “I heard something inter-
esting on the grapevine this morning.
Jim Sheffield doesn’t like you any
more. Is it true, Sam ?”

Sam said without heat. “I asked
you a question.”

“I asked you one.”

“All right, it’s true. I’ll leave you
a year’s income in my will if Jim gets
me first-— is that what you’re after?”
She flushed and twanged the string
so that it disappeared in violent vi-
bration. “I could slap you, Sam
Reed. You know I can earn my own
money.”

FURY

23

He sighed. She could, which made
it rather more difficult to argue with
her. Rosathe was a more than pop-
ular singer. If she came to him it
wouldn’t be for the money involved.
That was another thing that made
her dangerous to his peace of mind.

The slow music which had been
matching the room’s slow turns
paused. Then a stronger beat rang
through the air, making all the per-
fume drifts shiver. Rosathe stood
up, hoisting the tall, narrow lyre
against her hip.

“That’s me,’’ she said. “I’ll think
it over, Sam. Give me a few days.
I might be very bad for you.’’

“I know you’ll be bad for me. Go
sing your song. I’ll see you after
Carnival, but not for an answer. I
know the answer. You’ll come.’’

She laughed and walked away
from him, sweeping her hand across
the strings and humming her song as
she went. Sam sat there watching,
seeing heads turn and faces light up
in anticipation.

But before her song was finished,
he got up and went out of the turn-
ing room, hearing behind him the
velvety little voice diminishing in
plaintive lament for a fabled Gene-
vieve. Every note was delicately true
as she slid up and down the difficult
flats which gave the old, old song its
minor wailing.

“Oh Genevieve, s-iVect Geneincve,
the days may come, the days may
go. . . wailed Rosathe, watching
Sam’s broad red-velvet back out ot
the room. When she had finished the
song she went quickly to her dress-
ing room and flipped the switch of

24

the communicator, giving Sheffield’s
call-signal.

“Listen, Jim,’’ she said rapidly
when his dark, scowling face swam
into the screen. “I was just talking
to Sam, and . . .’’

If Sam could have listened, he
probably would have killed her then,
instead of much later. But, of course,
he didn’t hear. At the moment the
conversation began, he was walking
into an important coincidence which
was a turning point in his life.

The coincidence was another
woman in blue. Sauntering down
the moving Way, she lifted an arm
and threw the corner of her filmy
blue robe over her hair like a veil.
The motion and the color caught
Sam’s eye, and he stopped so sud-
denly that men on both sides jolted
into him, and one turned with a
growl, ready to make a quarrel out
of it. Then he got a better glimpse
of the granite face, long-jawed, with
lines of strain etched from nose to
mouth, and for no clear reason
turned away, giving up the idea.

Because the image of Rosathe was
still vivid in his mind, Sam looked at
the woman with less enthusiasm than
he might have shown a few days ear-
lier. But deep in his mind buried
memories stirred and he stood mo-
tionless, staring. The breeze of the
sliding Way rippled the veil above
her face so that shadows moved in
her eyes, blue shadows from the blue
veil in the heavily shadowed blue of
her eyes. She was very beautiful.

Sam brushed aside a haze of pink
carnival perfume, hesitated — which
was not normal to him — and then

A.STOtTNDING SCIKNCE-FICTION

hitched his gilded belt with a ges-
ture of decision and went forward
with the long motion of a stride,
hut his feet falling softly, as was
his habit. He didn’t know' why the
woman’s face and her violet-blue
robe disturbed him. He had forgot-
ten a great deal since the long-ago
Carnival when he saw her last

At Carnival there are no social
barriers — in theory. Sam w'ould
have spoken anyhow. He came up
below her on the sliding street and
looked unsmilingly into her face.
On a level she would have been
taller than he. She was very slen-
der, very elegant, with a look of
graceful weariness much cultivated
in the Keep. Sam could not know
that it w'as she who had set the style,
or that with her w'eariness and grace
were native, not assumed.

The blue robe w’as wrapped tight
over a tighter sheath of flexible gold
that gleamed through the filmy blue.
Her hair was an extravagant cas-
cade of blue-black ringlets drawn
back from her lovely, narrow face
and gathered through a broad gold
ring at the crown of her head, so
that they fell free from the band
in a rich cascade to her waist.

With deliberate barbarism her
ears had been pierced, and she wore
a hooped gold bell through each lobe.
It was part of the current fad that
aped the vitality of barbarism. Next
season might see a gold ring through
the nose, and this woman would
wear one with the same air of ele-
gant disdain she turned now upon
Sam Reed.

He ignored it. He said in a voice
of flat command, “You can come

vx ith me now,’’ and he held out his
crooked arm slioulder-high before
him, in invitation.

She tilted her head back' slightly
and looked at him down her nar-
row nose. She may have Iteen
smiling. It was impossible to tell,
because she had the same full,
delicately curved mouth so many
Egyptian portrait heads once had,
with the smile implicit in the con-
tour of the lips. If she did smile,
it was in disdain. The heavy water-
fall of her ringlets seemed to pull
her head farther back on the deli-
cate slender neck, so that she looked
down on Sam partly in weariness,
partly in scorn, partly in sheer
contempt for him as he was.

She stood for a prolonged mo-
ment, looking at him down her
nose, so still the bells in her pierced
ears did not jingle.

For Sam, at first .glance merely a
squat plebeian like the rest of the
lower classes, at second glance
offered many contrasts to the
discerning eye. He had lived nearly
forty years now with his all-
devouring anger; if he had come
to terms with it, it consumed him
inwardly all the same. The marks
of that violence were on his face,
so that even in repose he looked
like a man straining against heavy
odds. It gave a thrust and drive
to his features which went far
toward redeeming their heavi-
ness.

The fact that he had no hair was
another curious thing. Baldness
was ordinary enough, but this man
was so completely hairless that he
did not seem bald at all. His bare

1-’UB¥

25

skull had a classical ijuality, and hair
would look anachronistic now upon
the well-shaped curve of his head.
Much harm had been done the in-
fant of forty years past but in some
haste and with some carelessness,
because of the Happy-Cloak, so
that things remained like the well-
shaped ears set close against a
well-shaped skull, and the good
lines of the jaw and neck, which
were Harker lines in essence, though
well disguised.

The thick neck was no Harker
neck, vanishing into a gaudy crim-
son shirt. No Harker would have
dressed even for Carnival in crimson
velvet from head to foot, with a
gilded belt supporting a gilded hol-
ster. And yet. if a Harker had put
this costume on — somehow, subtly,
this is the way a Harker would have
looked in it.

'I'hick-bodied, barrel-chested, roll-
ing a little with a wide stride when
he walked, nevertheless there was
in Sam Reed a full tide of Har-
ker blood that showed in subtle
ways about him. No one could
have said why or how, but he wore
his clothes with an air and moved
with an assurance that was almost
elegance in spite of the squatness
which the upper classes so scorned.

The velvet sleeve fell back from
his proffered arm. He stood there
steady, holding the crooked fore-
arm out, looking up over it at the
W'oman with his eyes narrow’ed,
steel-color in his ruddy face.

After a moment, moved by no
impulse she could natne, the woman
let her lips tuck in at the corners

m an acknowledged smile, dis.lain-
ful, condescending. She moved one
shoulder to shrug her robe aside and
stretched out a slender arm and a
very slender, small-boned hand with
plain, thick gold bands pushed down
well at the base of every finger.
Very delicately she laid the hand
on Sam Reed’s arm and stepped
down beside him. On that thick-
forearm, hazed with red hair, the
muscles interlacing in a hard column
tow'ard the wrist, her hand looked
wa.\en and unreal. She felt the
muscles tighten beneath her touch,
and her smile grew' even more
condescending.

Sam said, “Your hair wasn’t black
the last time I saw you at Car-
nival.”

She gave him an aloof glance
down her delicate thin nose. She
did not yet trouble herself to speak.
Sam looked at her unsmilingly.
inspecting her feature by feature
as if this were some portrait and
not a breathing, disdainful woman
who was here beside him only by
a precarious whim.

“It w'as yellow,” he said finally,
with decision. The memory wa.-
clear now, wrenched out of the
past in almost complete detail, so
that he realized iiow vividly it must
have impressed him at the time.
“That was — thirty years ago. You
wore blue on that day, too. I
remember it very well.”

The woman said disinterestedly ,
her head turned aside so that she
seemed to be addressing someone ai
her other shoulder, “That would
have been my daughter’s daughter.
I expect.”

26

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE -FICTION

It jolted Sain. He was well
aware of the long-lived aristocracy,
of course. But he had never spoken
directly to one before. To a man
who counts in decades his own life
and those of all his friends, the
sudden impact of a life that spans
centuries unimpaired must strike a
disconcerting blow.

He laughed, a short bark of
sound. The woman turned her
head and looked at him wdth faint
interest, because she had never be-
fore heard one of these lower
classes make quite such a sound as
that, self-assured, indifferent, the
laugh of a confident man who
doesn’t trouble himself with man-
ners.

Many people before Kedre Wal-
ton had found Sam rather mysteri-
ously fascinating. Few had Kedre’s
perception. She knew before very
long exactly w'hy. It w'as the same
iiuality that she and the world of
fashion groped for when they hung
barbaric ornaments through the
pierced flesh of their ears and sang
the wailing, forthright ballads of
bloodshed and slaughter which were
only words to them — yet. A quality
of vitality and virility which the
world of man had lost, and hun-
gered for obscurely, and would not
accept when it was next offered
them,- if ' they could avoid the
gift.

She looked at him scornfully,
turned her head a little to let the
black cascading curls caress her
shoulders, and said coldly, “Your
name ?”

His red brows met above his nose.

FURY

“You don't need to know,” he told
her with deliberate rudeness.

For an instant she froze. Then,
slowly, an almost imperceptible
warming seemed to flow down her
limbs, relaxing everything about
her, muscles, nerves, even the chill
of her aloofness. She drew a deep,
silent breath and the ringed fingers
which liad only touched his arm
until now moved deliberately, opened
out so that her palm lay against his
forearm. She let the palm slide
gently forward toward the thickly
tapered wrist, her rings cold and
catching a little in the heavy red
hair that thatched his arm.

She said without looking at him,
“You may tell me about yourself —
until you bore me.”

“Are you easily bored?”

“Very easily.”

He looked her up and down,
liking what he saw, and he thought
he understood it. In forty years
Sam Reed had gained an immense
store of casual knowledge about
the Keeps — not only the ordinary
life that anyone could see, but the
devious, secret methods a race uses
to whip its lagging interest in living
when life has gone on longer than
humans can easily adjust to. He
thought he could hold her interest.

“Come along,” he said.

That was the first day of Car-
nival. On the third and last day,
Sam got his first intimation from
her that this casual liaison might
not come to an end with the fes-
tival. It rather surprised him, and
he was not pleased. For one thing,
there was Rosathe. And for another

27

— well, Sam Reed was locked in the
confines of one prison he could
never escape, but he would not sub-
mit to gyves within the confines of
his cell.

Hanging without gravity in
empty darkness, they were watch-
ing a three-dimensional image. This
particular pleasure was expensive.
It required skilled operators and at
least one robot plane, equipped with
special long-view lenses and tele-
visor. Somewhere far above a
continent on Venus the plane was
hanging, focused on the scene 'it
had tracked down,

A beast fought with a plant.

It was enormous, that beast, and
magnificently equipped for fighting.
But its great wet body was wetter
now with the blood that ran from
gashes opened all over it by the
saber-thorned vines. They lashed
out with calculating accuracy, flirting
drops of venom that flashed in the
wet gray air. Music, deftly impro-
vised to fit the pulse of the battle,
crashed around them.

Kedre touched a stvid. The
music softened to a whisper. Some-
where far above the plane hovered
on ignored above the battle, the
improviser fingered his keys un-
heard. Kedre, in the darkness,
turned her head with a faint silken
rustling of unseen hair, and said,
“I made a mistake.”

Sam was impatient. He had
wanted to see the finish of the
fight.

“What ?” he demanded brusquely.

“You.” Out of the darkness a
finger brushed his cheek lightly,
with casual possessiveness. “I

underestimated you, Sam. Or over-
estimated. Or both.”

He shook his head to evade the
finger. He reached out in the
dark, feeling his hand slip across
a smooth, curved cheek and into
the back-drawn hair. He found
the ring through which the shower-
ing curls were drawn and seized a
handful of ringlets, shaking her
head roughly from side to side.
The hair moved softly over his fore-
arm.

“That’s enough of that,” he said.
“I’m not your pet dog. What do
you mean?”

She laughed. “If you weren’t so
young" she said insultingly.

He released her with such abrupt-
ness he unsteadied her on the divan
beside him, and she laid a hand
on his. shoulder to catch herself.
He was silent. Then in a remote
voice he asked, “fust how old are
you ?”

“Two hundred and twenty
years.”

“And I bore you. I’m a child.’’

Her laughter was flattering. “Not
a child, Sam — not a child ! But our
viewpoints are so different. No,
you don’t bore me. That’s the
trouble, or part of it. I wish you
did. Then I could leave you to-
night and forget all this had ever
happened. But there’s something
about you, Sam — I don’t know;”
Her voice grew reflective. Behind
it in the darkness the music swelled
to a screaming crescendo, but very
softly, a muted death-note as one
adversary or the other triumphed
far up in the swamplands over-
head.

28

ASTOUNDING SCIUNO K- I'lCT 10 N

“i£ you were the man you look,”
Kedre Walton was saying. “If you
only wiere! You have a fine mind,
Sam — it’s a pity you must die too
soon to use it. I wish you weren't
one of the commons. I’d marry you
— for awhile.”

“How does it feel,” Sam asked
her savagely, “to be a god?”

“I’m sorry. That was patron-
izing, wasn’t it? And you deserve
better. How does it feel? Well,
we are immortals, of a sort. We
can’t help that. It feels — good, and
frightening. It’s a responsibility.
We do much more than just play,
you know. I spent my first hun-
dred years maturing and studying,
traveling, learning people and things.
Then for a hundred years it was
intrigue I liked. Learning how to
))ull strings to make the Council see
things my way, for instance. A sort
of jujitsu of the mind — touch a
man’s vanity and make his ego re-
act in just the way I mean it to. I
think you know those tricks well
enough yourself — only you'll never
live long enough to master the art
as I know it. It’s a pity. There’s
something about you that I . . . I . . .
never mind.”

“Don’t say again you’d marry
me. I wouldn’t have you.”

“Oh yes you would. And I
might try it, at that, even if you
are a common. I might — ”

Sam leaned forward across her
knees and groped for the light
switch. The small,- cushioned room
sprang into illumination as the
switch clicked, and Kedre blinked
her beautiful ageless eyes and

laughed half in protest and half in
surprise.

“Sam ! I’m blind. Don’t do
that.” She reached to extinguish
the light. Sam caught her hand,
folding the fingers together over
their heavy golden rings.

“No. Listen. I’m leaving you
right now and I never want to see
you again. Understand? You’ve
got nothing I want.” He rose
abruptly.

There was something almost
serpentine in the way she moved
to her feet in one smooth, swift
flow, light glinting on the over-
lapping golden sequins that sheathed
her.

“Wait. No, wait! Forget about
all this, Sam. I want to show you
something. That was just talk,
before. I needed to sound you out.
Sam, I want you to come with me
to Haven. I have a problem for
you.” ,

He looked at her coldly, his eyes
steel splinters between the ruddy
lashes, under the rough, ruddy
brows. He named the sum his
listening would cost her. She
curled her lip at him and said she
would pay it, the subtle Egyptian
smile denting in tlie corners of her
mouth.

He followed her out of the
room.

Haven appro.ximated man’s half-
forgotten birthplace. It was Earth,
but an Earth glamourized and in-
accurately remembered. It was a
gigantic half-dome honeycombed
with cells that made a shell arched
over a great public room below.

IiMIRX

29

Each cell could be blocked off, or
a rearrangement of penetrating rays
could give 'you the illusion of being
in the midst of an immense, crowded
room. Or you could use the archi-
tect’s original plan and enjoy the
illusion of a terrestrial back-
ground.

True, palms and pines seemed to
grow out of the same surrogate
soil, grapes and roses and blossom-
ing fruit trees shouldered one an-
other; but since the.se were merely
clever images they did not matter
except to the purist. And only
scholars really knew the difference.
Seasons had become an exotic piece
of history.

It was a strange and glamorous
thought — ^the rhythmic equinoxes,
earth’s face changing from green
and brown to glittering blue-white,
and then the magic of pale green
blades pushing up and green buds
breaking from the trees, and all this
naturally, inevitably, unlike the con-
trolled growth of hydroponics.

Kedre Walton and Sam Reed
came to Haven. From the stage
where they entered they could look
up at that immense, shining hemi-
sphere, crowded with glittering
cells like fragments of a bright,
exploded dream, shifting and float-
ing, rising and falling in the intri-
cate light-currents. Down below,
very far away, was the bar, a
serpentine black shape where men
and women made centipede-legs for
its twisting body.

Kedre spoke into a microphone.
One of the circling cells moved in
its orbit and bumped gently against
the landing stage. They stepped

30

inside, and the swaying underfoot
told Sam that they were afloat
again.

Leaning among cushions by the
low table were a man and a woman.
Sam knew the man by sight. Fie
was Zachariah Flarker, oldest of
one of the great Immortal families.
He was a big man, long-boned, fine
of line, his face a curious mixture
of — not age — but experience, matur-
ity, contrasting with the ageless
youth that kept his features fresh
and unlined. He had a smoothnes.^
that came from within, smooth
assurance, smooth courtesy, smooth
and quiet wisdom.

The woman —

“Sari, my dear,’’ Kedre said.
“Fvc brought you a guest. Sari is
my granddaughter. Zachariah, thi.=
is ... I don’t know his name. FIc
wouldn’t tell me.’’

Sari Walton had the delicate,
disdain fid face that was apparently
a family characteristic. Her haii
was an improbable green-gold, fall
ing with careful disorder loose over
her bare shoulders. She w'orc a
tight garment of the very fine fur
of a landside beast, plucked down
to the undercoat which was as short
and thick as velvet and patterned
with shadowy stripes like a tiger.
Thin and flexible as cloth, it
sheathed her tightly to the knees
and lay in broad folds about her
ankles.

The two Immortals looked up,
surprise showing briefly on their
faces. Sam was aware of a quick
surge of resentment that they should
be surprised. He felt suddenly
clumsy, conscious of his thick

ASTOUNDING SCIRNCE-PICTION

body and his utter unlikeness to
these aristocrats. And he felt, too,
his immaturity. As a child resents
his elders, Sam resented the superior
knowledge implicit upon these hand-
some, quiet features.

“Sit down.” Kedre waved to the
cushions. Stiffly Sam lowered him-
self, accepted a drink, sat watching
the averted faces of his hosts with
a hot resentment he did not try to
hide. Why should he?

Kedre said, “I was .thinking of
the Free Companion when I brought
him here. He . . . what is your
name ? Or shall I give you one ?”

Sullenly Sam told her. She lay
back among the cushions, the gold
rings gleaming softly on her hand
as she raised her drink. She
looked at ease, gracefully comfort-
able, but there was a subtle tension
in her that Sam could sense. He
wondered if the others could.

“I’d better explain to you first,
Sam Reed,” she said, “that for
twenty years now I’ve been in
contemplation.”

He knew what that meant — a sort
of intellectual nunnery, a high
religion of the mind, wherein the
acolyte retires from the world in an
attempt to find — -well, what is in-
describable when found. Nirvana?
No — stasis, perhaps, peace, balance.

He knew somewhat more of the
Immortals than they probably sus-
pected. He realized, as well as a
short-lived mortal could, how com-
plete the life that will span up to
a thousand years must be. The
character must be very finely inte-
grated, so that their lives become a

sort of close and delicate mosaic, an
enormous one, but made up of tiles
the same size as those composing
an ordinary life. You may live a
thousand years, but one second is
still exactly one second long at a
time. And periods of contempla-
tion were sometimes necessary to
preserve balance.

“What about the Free Com-
panion ?” Sam demanded harshly.
He knew. Robin Hale, last of the
warriors, was very much in public
interest just now. The deep dis-
content which was urging popular
favor toward the primitive had
caught up the Companion, draped
him in synthetic glamour, and was
eager to follow his project toward
colonization of the landside.

Or they thought they were eager.
So far most of the idea was still on
paper. When it came to an actual
struggle with the ravening fury that
was continental Venus — well, real-
ists suspected how different a
matter that might turn out to be.
But just now Robin Hale’s crusade
for colonization was enjoying a
glowing, irrational boom.

“What about him?” Zachariah
Harker asked. “It won’t work.
Do you think it could, Sam Reed ?”

Sam gave him a red-browed
scowl. He snorted and shook his
head, deliberately not troubling to
answer aloud. He was conscious
of a rising desire to provoke discord
among these smoothly civilized Im-
mortals.

“When I came out of contempla-
tion,” Kedre said, “I found this
Free Companion’s project the most
interesting thing .that was happen-

FORY

31

ing. And one of the most danger-
ous. For many reasons, we feel
that to attempt colonization now
would be disastrous.”

Sam grunted. “Why?”

Zachariah Harker leaned across
the table to set down his drink. “We
aren’t ready yet,” he said smoothly.
“It will take careful planning,
psychologically and technologically.
And we're a declining race, Sam
Reed. We can’t afford to fail. This
Free Companion project will fail.
It must not be given the chance.”
He lifted his brows and regarded
Sam thoughtfully.

Sam squirmed. He had an un-
comfortable feeling that the deep,
quiet gaze could read more upon
his face than he wanted anyone to
read. You couldn’t tell about these
people. They had lived too long.
Perhaps they knew too much. -
He said bluntly, “You want me
to kill him?”

There was silence in the little
room for a moment. Sam had an
instant’s impression that until he
spoke they had not thought the
thing through quite so far. He
felt a swift rearrangement of ideas
going on all about him, as if the
Immortals were communicating with
one another silently. People who
have known each other for so many
centuries would surely develop a
mild ability at thought-reading, if
only through the nuances of facial
expression. Silently, then, the three
Immortals seemed to exchange
confidences above Sam’s head.

Then Kedre said, “Yes. Yes, kill
him if you can.”

“It would be the best solution,”

Zachariah added slowly. “To do
it now — today. Not later than
forty-eight hours from now. The
thing’s growing too fast to wait.
If we can stop him now, there’s no
one ready to step into his place as
figurehead. Tomorrow^ someone,
might. Can you handle it, Sam
Reed ?”

Sam scowled at them. “Are you
all fools?” he demanded. “Or do
you know more about me than I
think ?”

Kedre laughed. “We know. It’s
been three days, my dear. Do you
think I let myself get this involved
without knowing the mari I was
with ? I had your name before
evening of the first day. I knew
your record by the next morning.
It’s- quite safe to intrust a job like
this to you. You can handle it and
for a price you’ll keep quiet.”

Sam flushed. He hated her con-
sciously for the first time then. No
man cares to be told he has been
made a fool of,

“That,” he said, “will cost you
twice what it would cost anyone
else in the Keep.” He named a
very high price.

Zachariah said, “No. We can
get—”

“Please, Zachariah.” Kedre
lifted her hand. “I’ll pay it. I
have a reason.”

He looked at her carefully. The
reason was plain on her face, and
for an instant Zachariah winced.
He had hoped the free-marriage she
had stepped out of when she went
into contemplation might be re-
sumed very soon now. Seeing her

82

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

eyes upon Sam, he recpgnized that
it would not be soon.

Sari leaned forward and put her
pale, narrow hand -on his arm.

“Zachariah,” she said, warning
and possessiveness in her voice.
“Let her have lier way, my dear.
There’s time enough for every-
thing.”

Grandmother and granddaughter,
almost mirror-images, . exchanged a
look in which Sam, w'ho had missed
nothing, thought he saw both rivalry
and understanding.

Zachariah said, “Look over
there.” He moved his hand and
the cell wall glowed into transpar-
ence. Floating a little distance off
among the crowding jcells was an

At the long bar he found a
vacant seat and ordered a drink.
The bartender looked at him sTiarply.
This was a rendezvous for the Im-

inclosure in which a man sat alone.
. “He’s been here for two* hours now,”
Zachariah went on.

The cell drifted nearer. The
man in it was thin, dark, frowning.
He wore a dull brown costume.

“I know him by sight,” Sam said,
and stood up. The floor rocked
slightly at the motion. “Drop me
at the landing stage. I’ll take care
of him for you.”

FURV

33

mortals and the upper classes; it
was not often that a man as squatly
plebeian as Sam Reed appeared at
the bar. But there was something
about Sam’s scowl and the
imperiousness of his order that
after a moment made the bartender
mutter “Yes, sir,’’ rather sullenly
and bring him his drink.

Sam sat there a long while. He
ordered twice more and made the
drinks last, while the great shell
hummed and spun above him and
the crowd filled the dome with
music and a vast amorphous
murmuring. He watched the float-
ing cell with the brown figure in-
side drift aimlessly around the vast
circle. He was waiting for the
Immortal to descend, and he was
thinking very fast.

Sam was frightened. It was
dangerous to mix in the affairs of
the Immortals even politically; To
get emotionally involved was sheer
suicide and Sam had no illusion
about his chances for survival a-
soon as his usefulness was over.
He had seen the look of mild
speculation that Zachariah Harker
turned on him.

When the Free Companion’s cell
drifted finally toward the landing
stage, Sam Reed was there to meet
it. He wasted no words.

“I’ve just been hired to kill you,
Hale,” he said.

They were lea^•ing Flaven together
an hour later when the Sheffield
gang caught up with Sam.

Sam Reed would never have
come this far in his career if he
hadn’t been a glib and convincing
talker when he had to be. Robin

84

Hale had certainly been a target for
glib promotioners often enough
since his colonizing crusade began
to know how to brush them off.
But here again the Harker blood
spoke silently to its kindred Im-
mortality in Hale, and though Sam
credited his own glibness, it was
the air of quiet conviction carried
by his subsurface heritage which
convinced the Free Companion.

Sam talked very fast — in a lei-
surely way. He knew that his life
and Hale’s were bound together
just now by a short rope — a rope
perhaps forty-eight hours long.
Within those limits both were safe.
Beyond them, both would die un-
less something very, very clever
occurred to them. Sam’s voice as
he explained this carried sincere
conviction.

This was the point at which the
Sheffield boys picked him up. The
two came out of the Haven portal
and stepped onto the slow-speed
ril)bon of a moving Way. Their a
deliberate press of the crowd sepa-
rated them a bit and Sam, turning
to fight his way back, saw too late
the black bulb in the hand that rose
toward his face and smelled the
sickening fragrance of an invisible
dust too late to hold his breath.

Everything about him slowed and
stopped.

A hand slipped through his arm.
He w’as being urged along the Way.
Globes and lanterns made patche.s
of color along the street until it
curved ; there they coalesced into a
blob of hypnotic color. The War-
slid smoothly along and shining,
perfumed mists curled in fog-banks

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

above it. But he saw it all in
stopped motion. Dimly he knew
that this was his own fault. He
had let Kedre distract him; he had
allowed himself to take on a new
job before he finished an old one
that required all his attention. He
would pay now.

Then something like a whirlwind
in slow motion struck across the
moving belts of the Way. Sam
was aware only of jostling and
shouts and the thud of fists on
flesh. He couldn’t sort out the
faces, though he saw the Free
Companion’s floating Ijefore him
time and again in a sort of palimp-
sest superimposed upon other faces,
dimly familiar, all of them shout-
ing.

Witli a dreamlike smoothness he
saw the other faces receding back-
ward along the slower ramp while
the lights slipped rapidly away at
the edges of the highspeed Way and
Robin Hale’s hand gripped his
ann.

He let the firmness of the hand
guide him. He was moving, but not
moving. His brain had ceased al-
most entirely to function. He knew
only vaguely that they were mount-
ing the ramp to one of the hydro-
ponic rooms, that Hale was clinking
coins into an attendant’s hand, that
now they had paused before a tank
where a heavy, gray-green foliage
clustered.

From far off Hale’s voice mur-
mured, “It usually grows on this
stuff. Hope they haven’t sprayed
it too well, but it’s hardy. It gets in
-everywhere. Here!’’ A sound of
scraping fingernails, a glimpse of

bluish lichen crushed between Hale’s
palms and dusted in Sam’s face.

Then everything speeded up into
sudden accelerated motion timed to
Sam’s violent sneezes. A stinging
pain began in his sinuses and spread
through his brain. It exploded
there, rose to a crescendo, faded.

Sweating and shaking, he found
he could talk again. Time and
motion came back to normal and he
blinked streaming eyes at Hale.

“All right?’’ the Free Companion
asked.

“I — guess so.’’ Sam wiped his
eyes.

“What brought that on?’’ Hale
inquired with interest.

“My own fault,” Sam told him
shortly. “Personal matter. I’ll
settle it later — if I live.”

Hale laughed. “We’ll go up to
my place: I want to talk to you.”

“They don’t understand what
they’ll be facing,” the Free Com-
panion said grimly. “I can't seem
to convince anyone of that. They’ve
got a romantic vision of a crusade
and not one in a thousand has "ever
even set . foot on dry land.”

“Convince me,” Sam said.

“I savy the Logician,” Hale be-
gan. “The crusade was his idea.
I needed — sometliing. This is it,
and I’m afraid of it now. It’s got
out of. hand. These people are
emotional dead-beats. They’re
pawing me like so many dogs beg-
,ging for romance. All I can offer
them is personal hardship beyond
anything they can even dream, and
no hope of success for this genera-
tion or the next. That sort of

AST— 2S 35

spirit seems to have bred out of
the race since we’ve lived in Keeps.
Maybe the underwater horizons are
too narrow. They can’t see beyond
them, or their own noses.” He
grinned. “I offer not peace but a
sword,” he said. “And nobody will
believe it.”

“I’ve never been topside myself,”
Sam told him. “What’s it like?”

“You’ve seen it in the projectors,
relayed from planes above the jun-
gles. So have most people. And
that’s the fallacy — seeing it from
above. It looks pretty. I’d like to
take a projector down into the mud
and look up at all that stuff towering
over and reaching down, and the
mud- wolves erupting underfoot and
the poison-vines lashing out. If I
did, my whole crusade would fall flat
and there’d be an end of the coloniz-
ing.” He shrugged.

“I’ve made a start, you know, in
the old fort,” he said. “Tfie Doone-
men had it once. Now the jungle’s
got it l)ack. The old walls and bar-
riers are deactivated and useless. All
that great technology is dead now.
Whole rooms are solid blocks of veg-
etation, alive with vermin and snakes
and poison plants. We’re , cleaning
that out, but keeping it clean — well,
that’s going to take more than these
people have got. Why, the lichens
alone will eat through wood and glass
and steel and flesh! And we don’t
know enough about the jungle. Here
on Venus the ecology has no terres-
trial parallel. And it won’t be enough
simply to hold the fort. It’s got to
be self-supporting.”

“That’ll take money and backing,”

Sam reminded him. “The Families
are dead against it^ — now.”

“I know. I think they’re wrong
So does the Logician.”

“Are you working alone on this?”
Hale nodded. “So far I am."
“Why? A good promotion man
could get you all the backing you
need.”

“No good promotion man would.
It’d be a swindle. I believe in this,
Reed. With me it is a crusade. I
wouldn’t trust a man who’d be will-
ing to tackle it, knowing the truth.”
A beautiful idea was beginning to
take voluptuous shape in Sam’s mind.
He said, “Would you trust me?”
“Why should I ?”

Sam thought back rapidly over
how much of the truth he had al-
ready told Hale. Not too much. It
was safe to go ahead. “Because I’ve
already risked my neck to warn
you,” he said. “If I’d gone ahead
with the job Harker gave me, I’d be
collecting a small fortune right now.
I didn’t. I haven’t told you why yet.
I guess I don’t need to. I feel the
way you do about colonizing. I could
make some money out of promoting
it — I won’t deny that. But nothing
like the money I could make killing
you.”

“I’ve just told you the thing can’t
succeed,” Hale pointed out. But there
was a light in hjs eyes and more
eagerness in his manner than Sam
had yet seen.

“Hooked !” Sam. thouglit. Aloud,
he said, “Maybe not. All it needs is
plenty of backing — and I mean plen-
ty I I think I can provide that. And
we’ve got to give the crusaders a

36

ASTOUNDING SCI R NCK- FI CT ION

substilutc j»oal for the real one,
■somethinjj they think they can collect
on in their lifetime. Something they
can collect on. No cheating. Shall
I try?”

Hale pinched his chin thoughtful-
ly. At last he said, “Come with me
to the Logician.”

.Sam hedged. He was afraid of
the Logician. His own motives w'ere
not the kind that could stand the
light of clear reason. But Hale, es-
sentially romanticist as he was, had
several centuries of e.xperience be-
hind him to bolster up his apparent
naivete. They argued for over an
hour.

Then Sam went with him to see
the Logician.

A globe spoke to them, a shining
white globe on an iron pedestal. It
said, “I told you I can’t foretell the
future. Hale.”

“But you know the right answers.”

“The right answer for you may not
be the right one tor Sant Reed.”

Sam moved uneasily. “Then make
it tw’o answers,” he said. He thought
it was a machine speaking. He had
let down his guard a trifle ; machines
weren’t human. Willy-nilly, he had
given the data it required. Now' he
waited uneasily, knowing the hours
of his deadline were .slipping away
while Kedre and Harker waited for
new'S of the Companion’s death.

In the silver globe shadow's swam,
the distorted reflection of the Logi-
cian’s long, sardonic face. Robin
Hale could trace the likeness but he
knew' that to one who didn’t know
the secret the shadows would be
meaningless.

“The' Keep people aren't pio-
neers.” the Logician said unnecessa-
rily. "You need recruits from the
reformatories.”

“We need good men,” Hale said.

"Criminals are good men, most of
them. They're merely displaced so-
cially or temporally. Any antisocial
individual can be thoroughly pro-
social in the right environment. Mal-
contents and criminals will be your
best men. You’ll want biologists, nat-
uralists, geologists — ”

“We’d have to pay tremendous
sums to get even second-rate men,”
■Sam objected.

“No you wouldn't. You’d have to
pay — yes. But you’ll be surprised
how many top-flight men are malcon-
tents. The Keeps are too circum-
scribed. No good worker is ever
hapjjy operating at less than full ca-
pacity, and who in the Keeps has
ever used more than a fraction of
his ability since the undersea was
conquered ?”

"You think we can go ahead
then ? Hale asked specifically.

“If you and Reed can get around
this current danger — ask me again.”

“Hale tells me,” Sam put in, “that
the Logician disagrees with the Fam-
ilies about colonization. Why won’t
you help us against the Families,
then?”

The shadows moved in the globe ;
the Logician was shaking his head.

“I’m not omnipotent. The Fami-
lies mean well — as they see it. They
take a long view. By intrigue and
influence they do sway the Council
decisions, though the Council is per-
fectly free. But the Families sit back
and decide policy, and then see that

FUUY

87

their decisions are carried out. Nom-
inall}’ the councils and the governors
run the Keeps. Actually the Immor-
tals run them. They’ve got a good
deal of social consciousness, but
they’re ruthless, too. The laws they
promote may seem harsh, to the
short-lived, but the grandchildren of
the apparent victims may live to
thank 'the Families for their harsh-
ness. From the Families’ viewpoint
common good covers a longer period
of time. In this case I think they’re
wrong.

“The race is going downhill fast.
iThe Families argue we can’t finance
but one colonizing effort. If it fails
we’re ruined. We’ll never try again.
We won't have the materials or the
human drive. We’ve got to wait until
they give the word, until they’re con-
vinced failure won't happen. I say
they’re wrong. I say the race is de-
clining faster than they think. If we
wait for their word, we’ll have
waited too long . . .

“But the Families run this planet.
Not the Logician. I’ve opposed their
opinions too often in other things for
them to believe me now. They fig-
ure I’m against them in everything.”

To Robin Hale it was an old story.
He said impatiently when the voice
paused, “Can you give us a progno-
sis, Logician? Is there enough evi-
dence in now to tell us whether we’ve
got a chance to succeed ?”

The Logician said nothing for
awhile. Then a curious sound came
from the globe. It was a chuckle
that grew to a laugh which startled
Hale and uterly astonished Sam
Reed. That a machine could laugh
was inconceivable.

88

“Landside will be colonized,” the
Logician said, still chuckling,
“You’ve got a chance — a good
chance. And a better chance, my
friend, if this man Reed is with you.
That’s all I can say, Hale. I think
it’s enough.”

Sam froze, staring at the shad-
ows swimming in the globe. All his
preconceived ideas turned over in his
head. Was the Logician after all a
fraud? Was it offering them mere
guesswork? And if it could be this
wrong on the point of Sam’s depend-
ability, of what value was anything
else it said ?

“Thank you. Logician,” the Free
Companion was saying, and Sam
turned to stare anew at Robin Hale.
Why should he thank a machine, and
especially as faulty a machine as this
had just proved itself to be?

A deep chuckle sounded from the
globe as they turned away. It rose
again to laughter that followed them
out of the hall, wave upon wave of
full-throated laughter that had some-
thing of sympathy in it and much of
irony.

The Logician was laughing from
the bottom of his lungs, from the
bottom of his thousand-years e.xperi-
ence, at the future of Sam Reed.

“ ‘If we can get around this cur-
rent danger — ’ ” Sam quoted the Lo-
gician. He was sitting beside a trans-
parent plastic table, very dusty, look-
ing at the Free Companion across it.
This was a dim secret room the
Slider owned. So long as they sat
here they were safe, but they couldn’t
stay forever. Sam had a fair idea
of liow many of the Families’ retain-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ers were reporting on his movements
and Hale’s.

“Any ideas ?’’ Hale asked.

“You don’t seem much worrie^.
What’s the matter? Don’t you be-
lieve me?’’

“Oh, yes. I’ll admit I mightn’t be-
lieve just any man who came up to
me in a crowd and said he’d been
hired to kill me. It’s easy to say, if
you’re working up to a favor. But
I’ve rather been expecting the Fam-
ilies to do something drastic, and — I
trust the Logician. How about it —
have you any ideas ?’’

Sam looked at him from under
scowling red brows. He had begun
to hate Hale for this easy acquies-
cence. He wanted it. He needed it.
But he didn’t like Hale’s motive.
Hale wasn’t likely to intrust the suc-
cess or failure of his crusade to the
doubtful integrity of a promoter,
which was the role Sam aspired to
now. Even though the Logician —
moved by flawed logic — had pro-
nounced favorable judgment and
even though Hale trusted the Logi-
cian implicitly, there was another
motive. •

Robin Hale was an Immortal.

The thing Sam had sensed and
hated in the Waltons and Harker he
.sensed and hated in Hale, too. A
tremendous and supreme self-confi-
dence. He was not the slave of time ;
time, served him.. A man with cen-
turies of experience behind him must
already have encountered very nearly
every combination of social circum-
stance he was likely tcr encounter.
He had a pattern set for him. There
• would have been time enough to ex-
periment, to think things over care-

fully and try out this reaction and
that until the best treatment for a
given set of circumstances would
come automatically to mind.

It wasn’t fair, Sam thought child-
ishly. Problems that shorter-lived
men never solved the infinitely re-
sourceful Immortals must know
backward and forward. And there
was another unfairness — problems
the ordinary man had to meet with
drastic solutions or compromise Hale
could meet simply by waiting. There
was always, with the Immortals, that
last, surest philosophy to fall back
on : This, too, zmll pass.

The Immortals, then, were random
factors. They had extensions in time
that no non-Immortal could quite un-
derstand. You had to experience that
long, long life in order to know . . .

Sam drew a deep breath and an-
swered Hale’s question, obliquely
enough.

“The Families — I mean specifically
the Waltons and Harkers — won’t
strike overtly. They don’t want to
be publicly connected with your
death. They’re not afraid of the
masses, because the masses have
never organized. There’s never been
any question of a revolt, for there’s
never been any motive for revolt.
The Families are just. It’s only with
intangibles like this colonizing cru-
sade that a question may come up,
and — I hope — that may make it a
dangerous question for them. Be-
cause for the first time the masses
really are organized, in a loose sort
of way — they’re excited about the
crusade.’’ He squinted at Hale. “I’ve
got an idea about Low to use that,
but — ’’ Sam glanced at the dusty

as

rvJir

telexisor screen in the wall above
them — “I can’t explain it yet.”

“All right.” Hale sounded com-
fortable and unexcited. It was nor-
mal enough, Sam told himself, wdth
a suddenly quickened pulse as he
realized consciously for the first time
that to this man warfare — that glam-
orous thing of the dead past — was a
familiar story. He had seen slaugh-
ter and wreaked slaughter. The
threat of death must by now be so
old a tale to him that he faced it
with unshaken nerves. Sam hated
him anew.

“Meanwhile” — he forced himself
to speak calmly — “I’ve got to sell
myself to you on the crusading idea.
Shall I talk awhile ?”

Hale grinned and nodded.

“We’ve got the unique problem of
fighting off converts, not recruiting
them. We need key men and we
need manpower. One’s expendable.
The other — you can protect your key
men, can’t you ?”

“Against some dangers. Not
against boredom. Not against a few
things, like lichens — they can get
into an air vent and eat a man alive.
Some of the germs mutate under
UV, instead of dying. Oh, it isn’t
adventure.”

“So we’ll need a screening process.
Malcontents. Technical successes
and personal failures.”

“Up to a point, yes. What do you
suggest?” The laconic voice filled
Sam with unreasonable resentment.
He had a suspicion that this man al-
ready knew most of the answers,
that he was leading Sam on, like a
reciting child, partly to test his

knowledge, partly perhaps in the
hope that Sam might have ideas to
offer which Hale could twist to his
own use. And yet — under the con-
fidence, under the resourcefulness
that all his experiences had bred, the
man showed an unconquerable na-
ivete which gave Sam hope. Basically
Hale was a cmsader. Basically he
was selfless and visionary. A million
years of experience, instead of a few
hundred, would never give him
.something Sam had been bom with.
Yes, this was worth a try . . .

“Of course, not all the failures
will do,” he went on. “We’ve got to
find the reasons why they’re malcon-
tents. You had technicians in the
old days, when the wars were going
on.r

Hale nodded. “Yes. But they had
the traditions of the Free Compan-
ions behind them.”

“We’ll start a new tradition. I
don’t know what. Ad astra per as-
pera, maybe.” Sam considered. “Can
you get access to the psych records
and personal histories of those old
tachnicians ?”

“Some of the?n must have been
saved. I think I can. Why?” •

“This will come later, but I think
it’s our answer. Break down the fac-
tors that made them successful. The
big integrators will do that. It’ll give
us the prime equation. Then break
down the factors that make up the
current crop of technicians — mal-
contents preferable. X equals a suc-
cessful wartime technician, plus the
equivalent of the old tradition. Find
out who’s got X today and give him
the new tradition.

“It'll take careful propaganda and

A S T O U .V m X G S r I E X f • K • T ' K ■ T I O .V

semantic Imild-up. All we need is
the right channeling of public opin-
ion now. Catchwords-, a banner, a
new Peter the Hermit, maybe. The
Crusades had a perfect publicity
buildup. I’ve given you a solution
for your technicians — now al)Out the
manpower and the financial back-
ing.” Sam glanced at the quiet Im-
mortal face and looked aw’ay again.
Tint he went on.

"We’ll have to screen the volun-
teers for manpower, too. There are
plenty of good men left in the human
race. They won’t all fold up at the
first threat of danger. We’ll set up
a very rigid series of tests for every
potential colonist. Phony them up if
we have to. One set of answers for
the public, another for us. You can’t
openly reject a man for potential
cowardice, or the rest might not dare
take the test. But we’ve got to know.”

"So far — good,” Hale said. "What
about money ?”

"How much have you got?”

Hale shrugged. “Pennies. I’ve
got a foothold, cleaning out Doone
Keep. But it’ll take real money to
keep the thing going.

“Form a company and sell stock.
People will always gamble. Especial-
ly if they get dividends — and the
dividends they w'ant aren’t merely
money. Glamour. Excitement. The
romance they’ve been starved for.
The reason they go in for second-
hand thrills.”

"Will rejected volunteers buy
stock ?”

Sam laughed. ‘T’ve got it ! Every
share of stock will pay a dividend of
thrills. All the excitement of volun-
teering with none of the danger.

Every move the colony makes will be
covered by televisor — with a direct
beam to the receiver of every stock-
holder !”

Hale gave him a glance in which
anger and adiiiiration were mingled.
Sam was aware of a little surge of
gratification at having startled the
man into something like approval.
But Hale’s next reaction spoiled it.

"No. That’s cheap. And it’s cheat-
ing. This is no Roman holiday for
the thrill-hunters. And I’ve told you
it’s hard work, not romance. It isn’t
exciting, it’s drudgery.”

“It can be exciting,” Sam assured
him. “It’ll have to be. You’ve got
to make compromises. People pay
for thrills. Well, thrills can be staged
landside, can’t they?”

Hale moved his shoulders uncom-
fortably. "I don’t like it.”

"Yes, but it could be done. Just
in theory — is there anything going
on landside right now that could be
built up?”

After a pause. Hale said, “Well,
we’ve been having trouble with an
ambulant vine — it’s thermotropic.
Body heat attracts it. Refrigerating
units in our jungle suits stop it cold,
of course. And it’s easy to draw it
off by tossing thermite or something'
hot arouhd. It heads for that instead
of u?, and gets burned into ash.”
“What does it look like?”

Hale went into details. Sam sat
back, looking pleased.

"That’s the ticket. Perfectly safe,
but it’ll look ugly as the devil. That
ought to help us screen out the unfit
by scaring ’em off right at the start.
W’e’ll just have your men turn off

FURY

41

their refrigerating units and stage a
battle with the vines, while somebody
stands by out of' camera range with
thermite ready to throw. We’ll send
out a message that the vines are
breaking through — cover it with tel-
evisor — and that does it!”

‘‘No,” Hale said.

“The Crusades started as a pub-
licity stunt,” Sam remarked. But he
didn't press the point just yet. In-
stead he mentioned the fact that both
of them would be dead within thirty-
six hours now unless something
could be worked out. He had seen
a flicker in the wall screen. It was
time to bring up the next subject on
the agenda.

“The Families could get rid of us
both in ways that look perfectly in-
nocent. A few germs, for instance.
They’ve got us cold unless we do
somethipg drastic. My idea is to try a
trick so outrageous they won't know
how to meet it until it’s had a chance
to work.”

“What do you mean?”

. “The Families depend tremen-
dously on their own prestige to main-
tain their power. Their real power
is an intangible— longevity. But pub-
lic faith in their infallibility has kept
them on top. Attack that. Put them
in a spot- where they’ve got to defend
us.”

“But how?”

“You’re a public darling. Harker
gave me a forty-eight hour deadline
because he was afraid you might
turn up a henchman at any moment
who could step into your shoes and
carry on the crusade even if he got
you out of the way.” Sam tapped
his own chest. “Fin the man. I’ve

42

got to be, to save my own skin. But
it offers you an out, too. We halve
the danger if either of us is replace-
able — by the other. It wouldn’t solve
anything to kill either of us if the
other lives.”

“But how the devil do you expect
to make yourself that important to
the public in the few hours you’ve
got left ?” Hale was really interested
now.

Sam gave him a confident grin.
Then he kicked the leg of his chair.
An opening widened in the hall and
the Slider came in, sniffling.

He lowered his great bulk to a
chair and looked curiously at Hale.
Sam said, “First — the Sheffield
gang’s after me. I can’t afford to
fight it out right now. Got some-
thing really big on the fire. Can you
call ’em off?”

“Might manage it,” the Slider said.
It was a guarantee. The old poison-
master was still a top danger in the
underworld of the Keeps.

“Thanks.” Sam turned in his
chair to face the Slider. “Now, the
important thing. I need a quick job
of sound-track faking.”

“That’s easy,” the Slider assured
him, and sniffled.

“And the faces to match.”

“That’s harder. Whose faces ?”
“Zachariah Harker, for one. Any
other Harkers or Waltons you’ve got
on file, but Zachariah first.”

The Slider stared hard at him, for-
getting for the moment even to snif-
fle. “Harkers?” he demanded. And
then chuckled une.xpectedly. “Well,
guess I can swing it, but it’ll cost
you. How soon you want the job
done ?’■*

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Sani told him.

Faking a sound-track was an im-
memorially old gag, almost as old as
sound-tracks themselves. It takes
only nominal skill to snip out and re-
arrange already spoken words into
new sequences. But only recently
had a technique been developed for
illicit extensions of the idea. It took
a very deft operator, and a highly
skilled one, to break down speech-
sounds into their basic sibilants and
gutturals and build up again a whole
new pattern of speech. It was not
usually possible to transpose from
one language to another because of
the different phonetic requirements,
but any recorded speech of reason-
able length could usually be mined
for a large enough number of basic
sounds to construct almost any other
recorded speech out of its building
blocks.

From this it was, of course, only a
step to incorporating the speaker vis-
itally into the changed speech. The
lips that shaped each sound could be
stopped in mid-syllable and the pic-
tures transposed with the sounds.

The result was Jerky to the ear
and eye. Tliere was always a certain
amount of reducing and enlarging
and adjustment to make the faces
from various speeches into a single
speech. Some experiments had even
been made to produce a missing
full-face view, for verisimilitude, by
projecting onto a three-dimensional
form- the two-dimensional images of
profile or three-quarter views to
blend into the desired face, and pho-
tographing that anew. Afterward a
high degree of skill was necessary to

blend and blur the result into con-
vincing smoothness.

The Slider had access to a techni-
cian who knew the job forw'ard and
backward. And there ivere plenty of
Harker and Walton records on file.
But at best it was a dangerous thing
to tamper with and Sam knew it. He
had no choice.

It took five hours to talk Robin
Hale into the hoax. Sam had to con-
vince him of his own danger first;
there were Family agents by now
ringing in the building where they
hid, so that wasn’t too hard. Then
he had to convince him of Sam’s own
trustworthiness, which Sam finally
managed by rehearsing his argu-
ments with the straps of a pressure
gauge recording his blood-reactions
for conscious lies. That took some
semantic hedging, for Sam had much
to conceal and had to talk around it.

“You and I are as good as dead,”
he told Hale, with the recording
needles holding steady, for this was
true enough. “Sure, this trick is
dangerous. It’s practically suicide.
But if I’ve got to die anyhow. I’d as
soon do it taking chances. And it’s
our only chance, unless you can think
of something better. Can you ?”

The Immortal couldn’t.

And so on the evening telecast ad-
vance word went out that Robin Hale
would make an important announce-
ment about the colony. All through
the Keeps, visors were tuned in on
the telecast, waiting. What they were
really waiting for was a moment
when the Harker s and Waltons in-
volved in the faked reel were to-
gether and out of the way.

I'URY

■43

He said he had hoped to tell them
in detail of the magnificent idea
which his good friend Sam Reed had
produced to make full-scale coloniz-
ing possible without delay. But trou-
ble landside had just broken out
and he had been called up to offer
his experience as an old Free Com-
panion to the men who were facing
a new and deadly menace up above
them all, on the jungle shore. Then
he offered them a stiff, quick salute
and left the screen.

Zachariah Barker’s face replaced
Hale’s. It would have taken a bet-
ter than expert eye to detect the
faint qualities of unevenness which
might betray the fact that this was a
synthesis of rearranged sound-waves
and light-waves. Technkally, even
Zachariah, watching the screen from
wherever he was just now, could not
deny he had spoken the words, for

The private lives of the Immortals
were never very private, and the
Slider had a network of interlock-
ing connections that functioned very
efficiently. Hale’s influence kept
the telecast schedule open and wait-
ing, and presently word came that
the Immortals involved were all ac-
counted for.

Then on the great public screens
and on countless private ones the
driving color-ads gave place to Robin
Hale’s face. He was dressed for
landside, and he spoke his lines with
a reluctance and a haste to get it
over that gave the words an air of
unexpected conviction.

44

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

every sound he heard and every mo-
tion of his own' lips was genuine.

The synthetic speech was a tri-
umph in semantics. It was typical
of Sani that he should use this boldly
suicidal venture not only to clear
himself and Hale, if he could, but
also to further his plans for the col-
ony. So Harker was made to name
Sam — brought forward with modest
reluctance to stand beside the Im-
mortal as the speech went on — as the
public-spirited, adventurous philan-
thropist who was going to make the
colonizing crusade possible.

Sam Reed, man of the people,
.short-lived but far-seeing, would
Head his fellows to success behind
Robin Hale in the great crusade.
Landside lay the future of the race.
Even the Harker s, Zachariah said,
had been convinced of that by the
persuasions of Sam and Hale. A great
adventure lay ahead. Volunteers
would be accepted for examination
very soon. Ad astro per aspera!

He spoke of danger. He went into
details, each word carefully chosen
and charted to make the listeners dis-
contented. He hinted at the stag-
nation of the Keeps, of growing ra-
cial debility, new vulnerabilities to
disease. And most important — man
had stopped growing. His destiny
was no longer to be found in the
Keeps. The great civilizations of
Earth must not reach a dead end
under the seas of this fertile planet.
Ad astro!

Zachariah’s face left the screen.
Sam stepped forward to clinch the
matter, nervous and deeply worried
under his calm. Now that he had
actually done this, he quivered with

belated qualms. What would the
Harkers do when they discovered
how fantastically they had been
tricked ? How outrageously their
innermost convictions had been re-
versed and repudiated before all the
Keeps, apparently in their own
words ! They must be moving al-
ready; the Families were geared to
rapid action when the need arose.
But what they would do Sam
couldn’t guess.

He spoke with quiet confidence
into the screen. He outlined his ideas
for offering the people themselves
the opportunity to join in the cru-
sade, financially if not personally. In
deft words he referred to the hard-
ships and dangers of landside; he
wanted to discourage all but the
hardiest from offering as personal
volunteers. And to aid in that, as
well as to provide a smash finale to
his scheme, he made his great an-
nouncement.

Something which until today had
been a plaything for the wealthy
would now be offered to all who
owned shares in the magnificent ven-
ture before mankind. Each partici-
pant could watch the uses to which
his money was put, share almost at
first hand in the thrills and perils of
landside living.

Look!

On the screen flashed a dizzying
view of jungle that swooped up to-
ward the beholder with breathtaking
swiftness. A ring of velvet-black
mud studded, the flowery quilt of
trectops. The ring swung up toward
the view and you could see an irides-
cent serpent slithering across the
blackness. The mud erupted and a

it'URy

45

mud-wolf’s jaws closed upon the
snake. Blood and mud spattered
wildly. Churning and screaming,
the combatants sank from sight and
, the velvety pool quivered into still-
ness again except for the rings that
ran out around it from time to time
as bubbles of crimson struggled up
and burst on the surface with dull
ploj)s which every listener in the
Keeps could hear.

Sam thanked his audience. He
asked their patience for a few days
longer, until the first examination
trials could be set up. He observed
with arrogant humility that he hoped
to earn their trust and faith by his
service toward themselves and the
Free Companion, who had left all
such matters in his hands while Hale
himself struggled up there on land-
side in the jungles he knew so well.
We would all, Sam finished, soon be
watching such struggles, with men
instead of monsters enlisting our
sympathy in their brave attempts to
conquer Venus as our forebears once
conquered Old Earth . . .

The Families did nothing.

It worried Sam more than any di-
rect action could possibly have done.
For there was nothing here he could
fight. Profoundly he distrusted that
silence. All telecast attempts to in-
terview any of the Immortals on this
tremendous subject which was up-
permost, overnight, in every mind,
came to nothing. They would smile
and nod and refuse to comment —
yet.

But the plans went on at break-
neck rate. And after all, Sam told
himself, what could the Harkers do?

To deny the public this delightful
new toy might be disastrous. You
can’t give candy to a baby and then
snatch it away untasted without
rousing yells of protest. The people
of the Keeps were much more for-
midable than babies, and they were
used to collapsing into paternalistic
hands. Remove the support, and you
might expect trouble.

Sam knew he had won a gambit,
not the game. But he had too much
to do just now to let the future
worry him. All this was to be a
swindle, of course. He had never
intended anything else.

Paradoxically, Sam trusted the
judgment of the Harkers. They
thought this attempt would fail. Sam
was sure they were right. Of course
the Logician believed that colonizing
wonld succeed, and the Logician nor-
mally should be right. How can a
machine err? But the machine had
erred, very badly, in its analysis of
Sam himself, so it isn’t strange that
he disbelieved all its conclusions
now.

The only way to make the scheme
succeed as Sam intended it to suc-
ceed was to insure its failure. Sam
was out this time for really big
money. The public clamored to buy,
and Sam sold and sold.

He sold three hundred per cent i f
the stock.

After that he had to fail. If he
put the money into landside devel-
opment there’d be nothing left over
for the promoter, and anyhow, how
could he pay off on three hundred
per cent ?

But on paper it looked beautiful.
New sources of supply and demand,

ASTOUXDIKG SCIEKCK-FICT ION

a booming culture rising from the
underseas, shaking off the water
from gigantic shoulders, striding
onto the shore. And then interplan-
etary and interstellar travel for the
next goal, yld astra was a glorious
dream, and Sam worked it for all it
was worth.

Two months went by.

Rosathe, like all the other fruits
of .success, dropped delightfully into
his arms. Sam closed all three of his
apartments and with Rosathe found
a new place, full of undreamed of
luxuries, its windows opening out
over the hydroponic garden that
flourished as lavishly, though not so
dangerously, as the jungles over-
head. From these windows he could
see the lights of the whole Keep
spread out below, where every man
danced to his piping. It was dream-
like, full of paranoid splendors,
megalomaniac grandeur — ^and all of
it true.

Sam didn’t realize it yet, though
looking back he would surely have
seen, but he was spinning' faster and
faster down a vortex of events which
by now were out of his control.
Events would have blurred as they
whirled by, if he had been given time
enough to look back at them when
the moment of reckoning came. But
he was not given time . . .

Rosathe was sitting on a low has-
sock at his feet, her harp on her arm,
singing very sweetly to him, when
the moment finally came.

Her violet-blue skirts lay about her
in a circle on the floor, her cloudy
head was bent above the high horns

of the lyre and her voice was very
soft.

“Oh, slowly, slowly got she up, and
slowly she came nigh . . . him. . . .”
How delightfully the sweet voice
soared on the last word! That dip
and rise in the old ballads tried every
voice but an instrument as true as
the lovely instrument in Rosathe’s
throat. “But all she said” — Rosathe
reported in that liquid voice — and
was stopped by the musical buzzing
of the televisor. .

Sam knew it must be important,
or it would never have been put
through to him at this hour. Reluc-
tantly he swung his feet to the floor
and got up.

Rosathe did not lift her head. She
sat quite motionless for an instant,
curiously as if she had been frozen
by the sound of the buzzer. Then
without glancing up she swept the
strings with polished fingertips and
sang her final line. “Young man, I
think you're dyin’ . .

The cloudiness of the visor screen
cleared as Sam flipped the switch
and a face swam out of it that rocked
him back a bit on his heels. It was
Kedre Walton’s face, and she was
very angry. The black ringlets
whipped like Medusa-locks as she
whirled her head toward the screen.
She must have been talking to some-
one in the background as she waited
for Sam to acknowledge the call, for
her anger was not wholly for Sam.
He could see that. Her words be-
lied it.

“Sam Reed, you’re a fool!” she
told him flatly and without preamble.
The Egyptian calm was gone from
her delicate, disdainful face. Even

FUKT

47

the disdain was gone now. “Did you
really think you could get away with
all this?”

“I’ve got away with it,” Sam as-
sured her. He was very confident at
that point in the progress of his
scheme. ^

“You poor fool, you’ve never
fought an Immortal before. Our
plans work slowly. We can afford
to be slow! But surely you didn’t
imagine Zachariah Marker would let
you do what you did and live ! He — ”

A voice from behind her said, “Let
me speak for myself, Kedre, my
dear,” and the smooth, ageless young
face of Zachariah looked out at Sam
from the screen. The eyes were
quietly speculative as they regarded
him. “In a way I owe you thanks,
Reed,” the Immortal’s voice said.
“You were clever. You had more
resources than I expected. You put
my on my mettle, and that’s an un-
expected pleasure. Also, you've made
it possible for me to overthrow
Hale’s whole ambitious project. So
I want to thank you for that, too. I
like to be fair when I can afford
to be.”

His eyes were the eyes of a man
looking at something so impersonally
that Sam felt a sudden chill. Such
remoteness in time and space and ex-
perience — as if Sam were not there
at aH. Or as if Marker were looking
already on death. Something as im-
personal and remote from living as a
corpse. As Sam Reed.

And Sam knew a moment’s pro-
found shaking of his own convic-
tions — he had a flash of insight in
which he thought that perhaps Mar-
ker had planned it this way from the

48

start, knowing that Sam would
doublecross him with Hale, and
knowing, that Sam woidd double-
cross Hale, too. Sam was the weak
link in Hale’s crusade, the one thing
that might bring the whole thing
crashing if anyone suspected. Until
now, Sam had been sure no one did
suspect.

But Zachariah Marker knew.

“Good-by, Reed,” the smooth voice
said. “Kedre, my dear — ”

Kedre’s face came back into the
screen. She was still angry, but the
anger had been swallowed up in an-
other emotion as her eyes met Sam’s.
The long lashes half veiled them, and
there were tears on the lashes.

“Good-by, Sam,” she said. “Good-
by.” And the blue glance flickered
across his shoulder.

Sam had one moment to turn and
see what was coming, but not time
enough to stop it. For Rosathe
stood at his shoulder, watching the
screen, too. And as he turned her
pointed fingers which had evoked
music from the harp for him this
evening pinched together suddenly
and evoked oblivion.

He felt the sweet, terrifying odor
of dust stinging in his nostrils. He
stumbled forward futilely, reaching
for her, meaning to break her neck.
But she floated away before him, and
the whole room floated, and then Ro-
sathe was looking down on him from
far above, and there were tears in
her eyes, too.

The fragrance of dream-dust
blurred everything else. Dream-dust,
the narcotic euthanasia dirst which
was the way of the suicide.

His last vision was the sight of

ASTOUNDING SC I ENCE-U I OT TO N

the tcar-wei eves looking down, two
vTomen who must have loved him to
evoke tliose tears, and who together
had worked out his ruin.

Pie woke. The smell of scented
dust died from his nostrils. It was
dark here. He felt a wall at his
shoulder, and got up stiffly, i)racing
himself against it. Light showed
hlurrily a little way off. P'hc end of
an alley, he thought. People were
passing now and then through the
dimness out there.

The alley hurt his feet. His shoes
felt queer and loose. Investigating,
Sam found that he was in rags, his
hare feet pressing the pavement
through broken soles. And the fra-
grance of dream-dust was still a mi-
asma in the air around him.

Dream-dust — that could put a man
to sleep for a long, long while, //ow
long!

He stumbled toward the mouth of
the alley. A passer-by glanced at
him with curiosity and distaste. He
reached out and collared the man.

"The Colony,” he said urgently.
‘‘Has it — have they opened it yet ?”

The man struck his arm away.
■‘What colony?” he asked impa-
tiently.

‘‘The Colony ! The I-and Colony !”

‘‘Oh, that.” The man laughed.
“You’re a little lite.” Clearly he
thought Sam was drunk. “It’s been
open a long time now — what’s left
of it.”

‘■plow long?^’

‘‘Forty years.”

Sam hung on the bar of a vending
machine in the wall at the alley
mouth. He had to hold the bar to
keep hiniself upright, for his knees
were strengthless beneath him. Pie
was looking into the dusty mirror
and into his own eyes. “I'orty years.
P'orty years !” And the ageless, un-
changed face of Sam Harker looked
back at him, ruddy-browed, unlined
as ever.

“Forty years!” Sam Harker mur-
mured to himself.

TO BE CONTINUED.

IN TIMES TO COME

Next month features an A. E. van Vogt yarn, “Centaurus II.” It’s the
skillful piece of work you expect from van Vogt — and an interesting back-
ground theme, considering the political wanderings of an isolated colony of
men. But there’s another item you’ll -find highly interesting about that next
issue — the cover is by Sclmeeman; the black and whites for “Centaurus II”
are Schneeman’s, too.

Gradually, bit by bit, wc’rc getting back the old gang from one place and
another. Schneeman, incidentally, came back via our sister magazine, AIR
TRAILS AND SCIENCE FRONTIERS. R. S. Richardson has an article
“Forty Steps To The Moon” coming up, with Schneeman illustrations. And,
of interest to science-fictionoers, AIR TRAILS AND SCIENCE FRONTIERS
is running in its current May issue, an article “Fortress In The .Sky.” It’s a
discussion of the military potentialities of a Lunar base.

The Editor.

h'UHT

49

BY THEODORE STORGEON

Tiny wasn’t liny — but the mon-
ster teas definitely horrific. Tiny,
on the other hand, displayed a
quite incredible intelligence for
a dog, after one encounter —

Illustrated by Cartier

TINY AND THE MONSTER

She had to find out about Tiny —
everything about Tiny.

They were bound to call him Tiny.
The name was good for a laugh
when he was a pup, and many times
afterward.

He was a Great Dane, unfashion-
able with his long tail, smooth and
glossy in the brown coat which fit
so snugly over his heavily muscled
shoulders and chest. His eyes were

50

big and brown and his feet were big
and black ; he had a voice like thun-
der and a heart ten times his own
great size.

He was born in the Virgin Islands,
on St. Croix, which is a land of palm
trees and sugar, of soft winds and
luxuriant undergro%vth whispering
with the stealthy passage of pheasant
and mongoose. There were rats in
the ruins of the ancient estate houses

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-iriCT KIN

which stood among the foothills —
— ruins with slave-built walls forty
inches thick, and great arches of
weathered stone. There was pasture
land where the field mice ran, and
brooks asparkle with gaudy blue
minnows.

But — where in St. Croix had he
learned to be so strange ?

When Tiny was a puppy, all feet
and ears, he learned many things.
Most of these things were kinds of
respect. He learned to respect that
swift, vengeful -piece of utter engi-
neering called a scorpion, when one
of them whipped its barbed tail into
his inquiring nose. He learned to
respect the heavy deadness of the air
about him which preceded a hurri-
cane, for he knew that it meant
hurry and hammering and utmost
obedience from every creature on
the estate. He learned to respect the
justice of sharing, for he was pulled
from the teat and from the trough
when he crowded the others of his
litter. He was the largest.

These things, all of them, he
learned as respects. He was never
struck, and altliough he learned cau-
tion he never learned fear. The pain
he suffered from the scorpion — it
only happened once — the strong
but gentle hands which curbed his
greed, the frightful violence of the
hurricane which followed the tense
preparations — all these things and
inany more taught him the justice of
respect. He half understood a basic
ethic; namely, that he would never
be asked to do something, or to re-
frain from doing something, unless
there were a good reason for it. His
obedience, then, was a thing implicit.

for it was half-reasoned; and since
it was not based on fear, but on jus-
tice, it could not interfere with his
resourcefulness.

All of which, along with his blood,
explained why he was such a splen-
did animal. It did not explain how
he learned to read. It did not ex-
plain why Alec was compelled to sell
him — not only to sell him but to
search out Alistair Forsythe and sell
him to her.

She had to find out. The whole
thing was crazy. She hadn’t wanted
a dog. If she had wanted a dog, it
wouldn’t have been a Great Dane.
And if it had been a Great Dane, it
wouldn’t have been Tiny, for he was
a Crucian dog and had to be shipped
all the way to Scarsdale, New York
by air.

The series of letters she sent to
Alec were as full of wondering per-
suasion as his had been when he sold
her the dog. It was through these
letters that she learned about the
scorpion and the hurricane ; about
Tiny’s puppyhood and the way Alec
brought up his dogs. If she learned
something about Alec as well, that
was understandable. Alec and Ali-
stair Forsythe had never met, but
through Tiny they shared a greater
secret than many' people who have
grown up together.

“As for why I wrote you, of all
people,” Alec wrote in answer to her
direct question, “I can’t say I chose
you at all. It was Tiny. One of the
cruise-boat people mentioned your
name at my place, over cocktails one
afternoon. It was, as I remember, a
Dr. Schwellenbach. Nice old fellow.
As soon as your name was men-

TINY AND THE MON.STEU

61

tioned, Tiny’s head came up as if I
had called him. He got up from his
station by the door and lolloped over
to the doctor with his ears up and
his nose quivering. I thought for a
minute that the old fellow was offer-
ing him food, but no — he must have
wanted to hear Schw'ellenbach say
your name again. So I asked about
you. A day or so later I was telling
a couple of friends about it, and
when I mentioned the name again,
Tiny came snuffling over and shoved
his nose into my hand. He was shiv-
ering. That got me. I wrote to a
friend in New York who got your
name and address in the phone Ijook.
You know the rest. I just wanted
to tell you about it at first, but some-
thing made me suggest a sale. Some-
how it didn’t seem right to have
something like this going on and not
have you meet Tiny. When you
Wrote that you couldn’t get away
from New York, there didn’t seem
to be anything else to do but send
Tiny to you. And now — I don’t
know if I’m' too liappy about it.
Judging from those pages and pages
of questions you keep sending me, I
get the idea that you are more than
a little troubled by this crazy busi-
ness.”

She answered, “Please don’t think
I’m troubled about this! I’m not.
I’m interested, and curious, and more
than a little excited; but there is
nothing about the situation which
frightens me. I can’t stress that
enough. There’s something around
Tiny — sometimes I have the feeling
it’s something outside Tiny — which
is infinitely comforting. I feel pro-
tected, in a strange way, and it’s a

different and greater thing than the
protection I could expect from a
large and intelligent dog. It’s strange,
and it’s mysterious enough; but it
isn’t at all frightening.

“I have some more questions. Can
you remember exactly what it was
that Dr. Schwellenbach said the first
time he mentioned my name and
Tiny acted strangely ? Was there ever
any time that you can remember,
when Tiny was under some influence
other than your own — something
which might have given him these
strange traits? What about his diet
as a puppy? How many times did
he get — ” and so on.

And Alec answered, in part, “It
was so long ago now that I can’t re-
member exactly ; but it seems to me
Dr. Schwellenbach was talking about
his work. As you know, he’s a pro-
fessor of metallurgy. He mentioned
Professor Nowland as the greatest
alloy specialist of his time — said
Nowland could alloy anything with
anything. Then he went on about
No wland’s assistant. Said the assist-
ant was very highly qualified, having
been one of these Science Search
products and something of a prod-
igy, in spite of which she was com-
pletely feminine and as beautiful a
redhead as had ever exchanged
heaven for earth. Then he said her
name was Alistair Forsythe. (I hope
you’re not blushing. Miss Forsythe;
you asked for this!) And then it
was that Tiny ran over to the doctor
in that extraordinary way.

“The only time I can think of
when Tiny was off the estate and
possibly under some influence was

ASTOUNDINO RCIKKOE-PICTIOX

the day old Debbil disappeared for a
whole day with the pup when he was
about three months old. Debbil is
one of the characters who hang
around here. He’s a Crucian about
sixty years old, a piratical-looking
old gent with one eye and elephanti-
asis. He shuffles around the grounds
running odd errands for anyone who
will give him tobacco or a shot of
white rum. Well, one morning I sent
him over the hill to see if there was
a leak in the water line that runs
from the reservoir. It would only
take a couple of hours, so I told him
to take Tiny for a run.

“They were gone for the whole
day. I was short handed and busy
as a squirrel in a nuthouse and didn’t
have a chance to send anyone after
him. But he drifted in towards eve-
ning. I bawled him out thorough-
ly. It was no use asking him where
he had been ; he’s only about quarter-
witteA anyway. He jus*- claimed he
couldn’t remember, which is pretty
usual for him. But for the next three
days I was busy with Tiny. He
wouldn’t eat, and he hardly slept at
all. He just kept staring out over
the canefields at the hill. He didn’t
seem -to want to go there at all. I
went out to have a look. There’s
nothing out that way but the reser-
voir and the old ruins of the gover-
nor’s palace, which have been rotting
out there in the sun for the last cen-
tury and a half. Nothing left now
but an overgrown mound and a
couple of arches, but it’s supposed to
be haunted. I forgot about it after
that because Tiny got back to nor-
mal. As a matter of fact, he seemed
to be better than ever, although, from

TINY AND THK MONSTER

then on, he would sometimes freeze
and watch the hill as if he were lis-
tening to something. I haven’t at-
tached much importance to it until
now. I still don’t. Maybe he got
chased by some mongoose’s mother.
Maybe he chewed up some ganja-
weed — marijuana to you. But I
doubt that it has anything to do with,,
the way he acts now, any more than
that business of the compasses which
pointed west might have something
to do with it. Did you hear about
that, by the way? Craziest thing I
ever heard of. It was right after I
shipped Tiny off to you last fall, as
I remember. Every ship and boat
and plane from here to Sandy Hook
reported that its compass began to
indicate due west instead of a mag-
netic north! Fortunately the effeqt
only lasted a couple of hours so there
were no serious difficulties. One
cruise steamer ran aground, and
there were a couple of Miami fish-
ing boat mishaps. I only bring it up
to remind both of us that Tiny’s be-
havior may be odd, but not exclu-
sively so in a world where such
things as the crazy compasses occur.”
And in her next, she wrote,
“You’re quite the philosopher, aren’t
you ? Be careful of that Fortean at-
titude, my tropical friend. It tends
to accept the idea of the unexplain-
able to an extent where explaining,
or even investigating, begins to look
useless. As far as that crazy com-
pass episode is concerned, I remem-
ber it well indeed. My boss. Dr.
Nowland — yes, it’s true, he can al-
loy anything with anything ! — has
been up to the ears in that fantastic
happenstance. So have m«^ of his

58

colleagues in half a dozen sciences.
They’re able to explain it quite satis-
factorily, too. It was simply the
presence of some quasi-magnetic
phenomenon which created a result-
ant field at right angles to the Earth’s
own magnetic influences. That solu-
tion sent the pure theorists home
happy. Of course, the practical ones
— Nowland and his associates in
metallurgy, for example — have only
to figure out what caused the field.
Science is a wonderful thing.

“By the way, you will notice my
change of address. 1 have wanted
for a long time to have a little house
of my own, and I was lucky enough
to get this diie from a friend. It’s
up the Hud.son from New York,
quite countrified but convenient
enough to the city to be practical.
Pm bringing Mother here from up-
state. She’ll love it. And besides—
as if you didn’t know the most im-
portant reason when you saw it ! — it
gives Tiny a place to run. He’s no
city dog. ... I’d tell you that he
found the house for me, too, if I
didn’t think that, these days. I’m
crediting him with even more than
his remarkable powers. Gregg and
Marie Weems, the couple who had
the cottage l3efore, began to be
haunted. So they said, any way. Some
indescribably horrible monster that
both of them caught glimpses of, in-
side the house and out of it. Marie
finally got the screaming meemies
about it and insisted on Gregg’s sell-
ing the place, housing shortage or no.
They came straight to me. Why?
Because they — Marie, anyway ; she’s
a mystic little thing — had the idea
that someone with a large dog would

he safe in that house. The odd part
of that was that neither of them
knew I had recently acquired a Great
Dane. As soon as they saw Tiny
they threw themselves on my neck
and begged me to take the place.
Marie couldn’t explain the feeling
she had ; what she and Gregg came
to my place' for was to ask me to buy
a big dog and take the house. Why
me? Well, she just felt I would like
it, that was all. It seemed the right
kind of a place for me. And my
having the dog clinched it. Anyway,
you can put that down in your note-
lx)ok of unexplainables,’’

So it went for the better part of a
year. The letters were long and fre-
quent, and, as sometimes happens,
Alec and Alistair grew very close in-
deed. Almost by accident they found
themselves writing letters which did
not mention Tiny at all, although
there were others which concerned
nothing else. And, of course, Tiny
was not always in the role of canis
superior. He was a dog — ^all dog —
and acted accordingly. His strange-
ness only came out at particular in-
tervals. At first it had been at times
when Alistair was most susceptible
to being astonished by it — in other
words, when it was least expected.
Later he would perform his odd
feats when she was ready for him
to do it, and under exactly the right
circumstances. Later still, he only
became the super-dog when she
asked him to . . .

The cottage was on a hillside, such
a very steep hillside that the view
which looked over the river over-
looked the railroad, and the trains

5 «

ASTOUNDIXG SCIRXCK-FICTION

were a secret rumble and never a
sight at all. There was a wild and
clean air about the place — a perpet-
ual tingle of expectancy, as though
someone coming into New York for
the very first time on one of the
trains had thrown his joyous antici-
pation high in the air, and the cottage
had caught it and breathed it and
kept it forever.

Up the hairpin driveway to the
house, one spring afternoon, toiled a
miniature automobile in its lowest
gear. Its little motor grunted and
moaned as it took the last steep
grade, a miniature Old Faithful ap-
pearing around its radiator cap. At
the foot of the brownstone porch
steps, it stopped, and a miniature
lady slid out from under the wheel.
But for the fact that she was wear-
ing an aviation mechanic’s covei'alls,
and that her very first remark — an
earthy epithet directed at the steam-
ing radiator — was neither ladylike
nor miniature, she might have been
a model for the more precious vari-
ety of Mother’s Day greeting card.

Fuming, she reached into the car
and pressed the horn button. The
cjuavering ululation which resulted
had its desired effect. It was an-
swered instantly by the mighty howl
of a Great Dane at the peak of
aural agony. The door of the house
crashed open, and a girl rushed out
on the porch, to stand with her rus-
set hair ablaze in the sunlight, her
lips parted, and her long eyes squint-
ing against the light reflected from
the river. “What — Mother! Mother,
darling ... is that you? Already?
Tiny 1” she rapped as the dog bolted

TINY AND THE MONSTER

out of the open door and down the
steps. “Come back here !’’

The dog stopped. Mrs. Fors>-the
scooped a crescent wrench from the
ledge behind the driver’s seat and
brandished it. “Let him come, Ali-
stair,” she said grimly. “In the name
of sense, girl, what are you doing
with a monster like that ? I thought
you said you had a dog, not a Shet-
land pony with fangs. If he messes
with me. I’ll separate him from a
couple of those twelve-pound feet
and bring him down to my weight.
Where do you keep his saddle? I
thought there was a meat shortage in
this part o-f the country. Whatever
possessed you to take up your abode
with that carniverous dromedary,
anyway? And what’s the idea of
buying a barn like this, thirty miles
from nowhere and perched on a
precipice to boot, with a stepladder
for a driveway and an altitude fit to
boil water at eighty degrees centi-
grade? It must take you forever
to make breakfast. Twenty-minute
eggs, and then they’re raw. I’m hun-
gry. If that Danish basilisk hasn’t
eaten everything in sight. I’d like to
nibble on about eight sandwiches.
Salami on whole wheat. Your flow-
ers are gorgeous, child. So are you.
You always were, of course. Pity
you have brains. If you had no
brains, you’d get married. A lovely
view, honey, lovely. I like it here.
Glad you bought it. Come here, you.”
she said to Tiny.

He approached this small specimen
of volubility with his head a little
low and his tail down. She extended
a hand and held it still to let him
sniff it before she thumped him on

65

the withers. He waved life unfash-
ionable tail in acceptance and then
went to join the laughing Alistair,
who was coming down the steps.

“Mother, you’re marvelous. And
you haven’t changed a bit.’’ She bent
and kissed her. “What on earth
made that awful noise?”

“Noise? Oh — the horn.” Mrs.
Forsythe busily went about lifting
the hood of the car. “I have a friend
in the shoelace business. Wanted to
.stimulate trade for him. Fixed this
up to make people jump out of their
shoes. When they jump they break
the laces. Leave their shoes in the
street. Thousands of people walking
about in their stocking feet. More
people ought to anyway. Good for
the arches.” She pointed. There
were four big air-driven horns
mounted on and around the little
motor. Over the mouth of each was
a shutter, so arranged that it re-
volved about an axle which was set
at right angles to the horn, so that
the bell was opened and closed by
four small DC motors. “That’s what
gives it the warble. As for the beat-
note, the four of them are tuned a
sixteenth-tone apart. Pretty ?”

“Pretty,” Alistair conceded with
sincerity. “No — please don’t demon-
strate it again, Mother ! You almost
wrenched poor Tiny’s ears off the
first time.”

“Oh — did I ?” Contritely, she went
to the dog. “I didn’t mean to, honey-
poodle, really I didn’t.” The honey-
poodle looked up at her with somber
brown eyes and thumped his tail on
the ground. “I like him,” said Mrs.
Forsythe decisively. She put out a
fearless hand and pulled aflection-

ately at the loose flesh of Tiny's
upper lip. “Will you look at those
tusks! Great day in the morning,
dog, reel in some of that tongue or
you’ll turn yourself inside out. Why
aren’t you married yet, chicken ?”

“Why aren’t you?” Alistair
countered.

Mrs. Forsythe stretched. “Fve
been married,” she said, and Alistair
knew now her casualness was forced.
“A married season with the likes of
Dan Forsythe sticks with you.” Her
voice softened. “Your daddy was all
kinds of good people, baby.” She
shook herself. “Let’s eat. I want to
hear al)out Tiny. Your driblets and
drablets of information about that
dog are as tantalizing as Chapter
Eleven of a movie serial. Who’s this
Alec creature in St. Croix? Some
kind of native — cannibal, or some-
thing? He sounds nice. I wonder
if you know how nice you think he
is? Good heavens, the girl’s blush-
ing! I only know what I read in
your letters, darling, and I never
knew you to quote anyone by the
paragraph before but that old scoun-
drel Nowland, and that was all about
ductility and permeability and melt-
ing points. Metallurgy ! A girl like
you niucking about with molybs and
durals instead of heartbeats and hope
chests !”

“Mother, sweetheart, hasn’t it oc-
curred to you at all that I don’t want
to get married ? Not yet, anyway.”

“Of course it has! That doesn’t
alter the fact that a woman is only
forty per cent a woman until some-
one loves her, and only eighty per
cent a woman until she has children.

SCIKXPK-PICTION

As for you and your precious career,
I seem to remember something about
a certain Marie Slodowska who
didn’t mind marrying a fellow called
Curie, science or no science.”

“Darling,” said Alistair a little
tiredly, as they mounted the steps
and went into the cool house, “once
and for all, get this straight. The
career, as such, doesn’t matter at all.
The work does. I like it. I don’t
see the sense in being married purely
for the sake of being married.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, nei-
ther do I !” said Mrs. Forsythe quick-
ly. Then, ca.sting a critical eye over
her daughter, she sighed, “But it’s
such a waste!”

“What do }'ou mean?”

Her mother shook her head. “If
you don’t get it, it’s because there’s
sotuetliing wrong with your sense of
values ; in which case there’s no point
in arguing. I love your furniture.
Now for pity’s sake feed me and

tell me about this canine Camera of
yours.”

Moving deftly about the kitchen
while her mother perched like a
bright-eyed bird on a utility ladder,
Alistair told the story of her letters
from Alec, and Tiny’s arrival.

“At first he was just a dog. A
very wonderful dog, of course, arid
extremely well trained. We got along
beautifully. There was nothing re-
markable about him but his history,
as far as I could see, and certainly
no indication of ... of anything. I
mean, he might have responded to
my name the way he did because the
syllabic content pleased him.”

“It should,” said her mother com-
placently. “Dan and I spent weeks
at a sound laboratory graphing a
suitable name for you. Alistair For-
sythe. Has a beat, you know. Keej) ■
that in mind when you change it.”
“Mother !”

TINY AND THE MONSTER

87

*‘AU right, dear. Go on with the
story.”

“For all I knew, the whole thing
was a crazy coincidence. Tiny didn’t
responcl particularly to the sound of
my name after he got here. He
seemed to take a perfectly normal,
doggy pleasure in sticking around,
that was all.

“Then, one evening after he liad
l)een with me about a month, I found
out he could read.”

“Read!” Mrs. Forsythe toppled,
clutched the edge of the sink, and
righted herself.

“Well, practically that. I used to
study a lot in the evenings, and Tiny
used to stretch out in front of the
fire with his nose between his paws
and watch me. I was tickled by that.
I even got the habit of talking to
him while I studied. I mean, about
the work. Fie always seemed to be
paying very close attention, which, of
course, was silly. And maybe it was
my imagination, but the times he’d
get up and nuzzle me always seemed
to be the times when my mind was
wandering, or when I would quit
working and go on to something else.

“This particular evening I was
working on the permeability mathe-
matics of certain of the rare-earth
group. I put down my pencil and
reached for my ‘Handbook of Chem-
istry and Physics’ and found nothing
but a big hole in the bookcase. The
book wasn’t on the desk either. So
I swung around to Tiny and said,
just for something to say, ‘Tiny,
what have you done with my hand-
book ?’

“He went whuff! in the most star-
tled tone of voice, leapt to his feet

and went over to his bed. He turned
up the mattress with his paw atid
scooped out the book. He picked it
up in his jaws — I wonder what he
would have done if he were a Scot-
ty? That’s a chunky piece of litera-
ture I — and brought it to me.

“I just didn’t know what to do. I
took the book and riffled it. It was
pretty well shoved around. Appar-
ently he had been trying to leaf
through it with those big splay feet
of his. I put the book down and
took him by the muzzle. I called
him nine kinds of a rascal and asked
him what he was looking for.” She
])aused, building a sandwich.

“Well?”

“Oh,” said Alistair, as if coming
back from a far distance. “He didn’t
say.”

There was a thoughtful silence.
Finally Mrs. Forsythe looked up with
her odd birdlike glance and said,
“You’re kidding. That dog isn’t
shaggy enough.”

“You don’t Iielieve me.” It wasn’t
a question.

The older woman got up to put a
hand on the girl’s shoulder, “Honey-
lamb, your daddy used to say that
the only things worth believing were
things you learned from people you
trusted. Of course I believe you.
Thing is — do you believe you ?”

“I’m not — sick, Mum, if that’s
what you mean. Let me tell you the
rest of it.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“Plenty more.” She put the stack
of sandwiches on the .sideboard
where her mother could reach it.
Mrs. Forsythe fell to with a will.
“Tiny has been goading me to do

38

ASTOUNDING .SCIKNCE-PICTION

research. A particular kind of re-
search.”

“Hut hine uffefa ?”

“Mother ! I didn’t give you those
sandwiches only to feed you. . The
idea was to soundproof you a bit,
too, while I talked.”

“Hohay!” said her mother cheer-
fully.

“Well, Tiny won’t let me work on
any other project but the one he’s in-
terested in. Mum, I can’t talk if
you’re going to gape like that! No
... I can’t say he won’t let me do
any work. But there’s a certain line
of endeavor which he approves. Iff
do anything else, he snuffles around,
joggles my elbow, grunts, whimpers,
and generally carries on until I lose
my temper and tell him to go away.
Then he’ll walk over to the fireplace
and flop down and sulk. Never takes
his eyes off me. So, of course, I get
all soft-hearted and repentant and
apologize to him and get on with
what he wants done.”

Mrs. Forsythe swallowed, coughed,
gulped some milk and exploded,
“Wait a minute! You’re away too
fast for me ! What is it that he wants
done ? How do you know he wants
it ? Can he read, or can’t he ? Make
some sense, child !”

Alistair laughed richly. “Poor
Mum! I don’t blame you, darling.
No, I don’t think he can really read.
He shows no interest at all in books
or pictures. The episode with the
Handbook seemed to be an experi-
ment that didn’t bring any results.
But — he knows the difference be-
tween my books, even books that are
bound alike, even when I shift them
around in the bookcase. Tiny !”

The Great Dane scrambled to his
feet from the corner of the kitchen,
his paws skidding on the waxed lin-
oleum. “Get me Hoag’s ‘Basic
Radio’, old feller, will you ?”

Tiny turned and padded out. They
heard him going up the stairs. “I
was afraid he wouldn’t do it while
you were here,” she said. “He gen-
erally warns me not to say anything
about his powers. He growls. He
did that when Dr. Nowland dropped
out for lunch one Saturday. I started
to talk about Tiny, and just couldn’t.
He acted disgracefully. First he
growled and then he barked. It was
the first time I’ve ever known him
to bark in the house. Poor Dr. Now-
land ! He was scared half out of
his wits!”

Tiny thudded down the stairs and
entered the kitchen. “Give it to
Mum,” said Alistair. Tiny walked
sedately over to the stool and stood
before the astonished Mrs. Forsythe.
She took the volume from his jaws.

“ ‘Basic Radio’,” she breathed.

“I asked him for that because I
have a whole row of technical books
up there, all from the same publish-
er, all the same color and about the
same size,” said Alistair calmly.

“But . . . but . . . how does he
do it?”

Alistair shrugged. “I don’t know !
He doesn’t read the titles. That I'm
sure of. He can’t read an3'thing.
I’ve tried to get him to do it a dozen
different ways. I’ve lettered instruc-
tions on pieces of paper and shown
them to him . . . you know . . . ‘Go
to the door’ and ‘Give me a kiss’ and
so on. He just looks at them and

TINY AND THE MONSTER

59

wags his tail. But if I read them
first—”

“You mean, read them aloud?”
“No. Oh . . . he’ll do anything I
ask him to, sure. But I don’t have
to say it. Just read it, and he turns
and does it. That’s the way he makes
me study what he wants studied.”
“Are you telling me that that be-
hemoth can read your mind?”

“What do you think ? Here — I’ll
show you. Give me the book.”
Tiny’s ears went up. “There’s
something in here about the electri-
cal flux in super-cooled copper that
I don’t quite remember. Let’s see if
Tiny’s interested.”

She sat on the kitchen table and
began to leaf through the book. Tiny
came and sat in front of her, his
tongue lolling out, his big brown eyes
fixed on her face. There was silence
as she turned pages, read a little,
turned some more. -And suddenly
Tiny whimpered urgently.

“See what I mean. Mum? All
right. Tiny. I’ll read it over.”
Silence again, while Alistair’s long
green eyes traveled over the page.
All at once Tiny stood up and nuz-
zled her leg.

“Hm-m-m? The reference? Want
me to go back ?”

Tiny sat again, expectantly.
"There’s a reference here to a pass-
age in the first section on basic elec-
tric theory that he wants,” she ex-
plained. She looked up. “Mother!
You read it to him!” She jumped
off the table, handed the book over.
“Here. Section 45. Tiny ! Go listen
to Mum. Go on!” and she shoved
him toward Mrs. Forsythe, who said
in an awed voice, “When 1 was a

00

little girl, I used to read bedtime sto-
ries to my dolls. I thought I’d quit
that kind of thing altogether, and
now I’m reading technical literature
to this . . . this canine catastrophe
here. Shall I read aloud ?”

“No — don’t. See if he gets it.”
But Mrs. Forsythe didn’t get the
chance. Before she had read two
lines Tiny was frantic. He ran to
Mrs. Forsythe and back to Alistair.
He reared up like a frightened horse,
rolled his eyes, and panted. He
whimpered. He growled a little.
“For pity’s sakes what’s wrong?”
“I guess he can’t get it from you,”
said Alistair. “I’ve had the idea be-
fore that he’s tuned to me in more
ways than one, and this clinches it.
All right, then. Give me back the — ”

But before she could ask him. Tiny
had bounded to Mrs. Forsythe, taken
the book gently out of her hands,
and carried it to his mistress. Ali-
stair smiled at her paling mother, took
the book, and read until Tiny sud-
denly seemed to lose interest. He went
back to his station by the kitchen cab-
inet and lay down yawning.

“That’s that,” said Alistair, closing
the book. “In other words, class dis-
missed. Well, Mum?”

Mrs. Forsythe opened her mouth,
closed it again, and shook her head.
Alistair loosed a peal of laughter.

“Oh Mum, Mum,” she gurgled
through her laughter, “History has
been made. Mum darling, you’re
speechless !”

“I am not,” said Mrs. Forsythe
gruffly. “I ... I think . . . well, what
do you know! You’re right!

When they had their breath back —

.\STOCNmNG SCIENCE-FICTION

3'es, Mrs. Farsj'the joined in, for Ali-
stair’s statement was indeed true —
Alistajf picked up the book and said,
“Now look. Mum, it’s almost time
for. my session with Tiny. Oh yes;
it’s a regular thing, and he certainly
is leading me into some fascinating
bvways.’’

'“Like what?”

“Like the old impossible problem
of casting tungsten, for example.
You know, there is a way to do it.”
“You don’t say! What do you
cast it in — a play?”

Alistair wrinkled her straight nose.
“Did you ever hear of pressure ice?
Water compressed until it forms a
solid at what is usually its boiling
point ?”

“I remember some such.”

“Well, all you need is enough pres-
sure, and a chamber which can take
that kind of pressure, and jp'couple
of details like a high-intensity field
of umpteen megacycles phased with
. . . I forget the figures; anyhow,
that’s the way to go about it.”

“Tf we had some eggs we could
have some ham and eggs if we had
some ham,’ ” quoted Mrs. Forsythe.
“And besides, I seem to remember
something about that pressure ice
melting pretty much right now, like
so,” and she snapped her fingers.
“How do you know your molded
tung.sten — that’s what it would be,
not cast at all — wouldn’t change state
the same way ?”

“That’s what I’m working on
now,” said Alistair calmly. “Come
along. Tiny. Mum, you can find your
way around all right, can’t you ? If
you need anything, just sing out.
This isn’t a seance, you know.”

TINY AND THE MONSTER

“Isn’t it, though ?” muttered Mrs.
Forsythe as her lithe daughter and
the dog bounded up the stairs. She
shook her head, went into the kitch-
en, drew a bucket of water and car-
ried it down to her car, which had
cooled to a simmer. She was dash-
ing careful handfuls of it onto the
radiator, before beginning to pour,
when her quick ear caught the
scrunching of boots on the steep
drive.

She looked up to see a young man
trudging wearily in the mid-morning
heat. He wore an old sharkskin suit
and carried his coat. In spite of his
wilted appearance, his step was firm
and his golden hair was crisp in the
sunlight. He swung up to Mrs. For-
sythe and gave her a grin, all deep-
blue ty£s and good teeth. “For-
sythe’s?” he asked, in a resonant
baritone.

“That’s right,” said Mrs. Forsythe,
finding that she had to turn her head
from side to side to see both of his
shoulders. And yet she and he could
swap belts. “You must feel like the
Blue Kangaroo here,” she added,
slapping her miniature mount on its
broiling flank. “Boiled dry.”

“You cahl de cyah de Bluq Kanga-
roo?” he repeated, draping his coat
over the door and mopping his fore-
head with what seemed to Mrs. For-
sythe’s discerning eye, a pure linen
handkerchief.

“I do,” she replied, forcing herself
not to comment on the young man’s
slight but strange accent. “It’s strictlj'
a dry-clutch job, and acts like a cas-
tellated ene. Let the pedal out, she
races. Let it out three-thirty-seconds
of an inch more and you’re gone

61

from there. Always stopping to walk
back and pick up your head. Snaps
right off, you know. Carry a bottle
of collodion and a couple of splints
to put your head back on. Starve to
death • without a head to eat with.
What brings you here ?”

In answer he held out a yellow en-
velope, looking solemnly at her head
and neck, then at the car, his face
quiet, his eyes crinkling with a huge
enjoyment.

Mrs. Forsythe glanced at the en-
velope. “Qh. Telegram. She’s in-
side. I’ll give it to her. Come on
in and have a drink. It’s hotter than
the hinges of Hail Columbia, Happy
Land. Don’t go to wiping your feet
like that ! By jeepers, that’s enough
to give you an inferiority complex!
Invite a man in, invite the dust on
his feet, too. It’s good honest 'dirt and
we don’t run to white broadlooms
here. Are you afraid of dogs ?”

The young man laughed. “Dahgs
talk to me, ma’m.”

She glanced at him sharply, opened
her mouth to tell him he might just
be taken at his word around here,
then thought better of it. “Sit down,’’
she ordered. She bustled up a foam-
ing* glass of beer and set it beside
him. “I’ll get her down to sign for
the wire,” she said. The man half
lowered the glass into which he had
been jowls-deep, began to speak,
found he was alone in the room,
laughed suddenly and richly, wiped
off the mustache of suds and dove
down for a new one.

Mrs. Forsythe grinned and shook
her head as she heard the laughter,
and went straight to Alistait^s study.
“Alistair!”

“Stop pushing me about the ductil-
ity of tungsten. Tiny! You know
better than that. Figures are figures,
and facts are facts. I think I see
what you’re trying to lead me to.
All I can say is that if such a thing
is possible, I never heard of any
equipment that could handle it. Stick
around a few years and I’ll hire you
a nuclear power plant. Until then,
I’m afraid that — ”

“Alistair!”

“ — there just isn’t . . . hm-m-m?
Yes, Mother?”

“Telegram.”

“Oh. Who from?”

“I don’t know, being only one for-
tieth of one per cent as psychic as
that doghouse Dunninger you have
there. In other words, I didn’t open
it.”

“Oh, Mum, you’re silly! Of
course ^ou could have ... oh well,
let’s have it.”

“I haven’t got it. It’s downstairs
with Discobolus Junior, who brought
it. No one,” she said ecstatically,
“has a right to be so tanned with
hair that color.”

“What are you talking about ?”
“Go on down and sign for the tel-
egram and see for yourself. You
will find the maiden’s dream with his
golden head in a bucket of suds, all
hot and sweaty from his noble ef-
forts in attaining this peak without
spikes or alpenstock, with nothing
but his pure heart and Western
Union to guide him.”

“This maiden’s dream happens to
be tungsten treatment,” said Alistair
with some irritation. She looked
longingly at her worksheet, put down
her pencil and rose. “Stay here. Tiny.

•a

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

I’ll be right back as soon as I have
successfully resisted my conniving
mother’s latest scheme to drag my
red hairing across some young buck’s
path to matrimony.” She paused at
the door. “Aren’t you staying up
here, Mum?”

“Get that hair away from your
face,” said her mother grimly. “I am
not. 1 wouldn’t miss this for the
world. And don’t pun in front of
that young man. It’s practically the
only thing in the world I consider
vulgar.”

Alistair led the way down the
stairs and through the corridor to
the kitchen, with her mother crowd-
ing her heels, once fluffing out her
daughter’s blazing hair, once taking
a swift tuck in the back of the girl’s
halter. They spilled through the door
almost together. Alistair stopped
and frankly stared.

For the young man had risen, and,
•Still with the traces of beer foam on
his modeled lips, stood with his jaws
stupidly open, his head a little back,
his eyes partly closed as if against a
bright light. And it seemed as if
everyone in the room forgot to
breathe for a moment.

“Well!” Mrs. Forsythe e.xploded
after a moment. “Honey, you’ve
made a conquest. Hey — you! Chin
up ! Chest out !”

“I beg your humble pardon,” mut-
tered the young man ; and the phrase
seemed more a colloquialism than an
aft’ectation.

Alistair, visibly pulling herself to-
gether, said, “Mother 1 Please !” and
drifted forward to pick up the tele-
gram which lay on the kitchen table.

Her mother knew her well enough to
realize that her hands and her eyes
were steady only by a powerful ef-
fort. Whether the effort was in con-
trol of annoyance, embarrassment or
out-and-out biochemistry was a mat-
ter for later thought. At the moment
she was enjoying it tremendously.

“Please wait,” said Alistair coolly.
“There may be an answer to this.”
The young man simply bobbed his
head. He was still a little wall-eyed
with the impact of seeing Alistair, as
many a young man had been before.
But there were the beginnings of his
astonishing smile around his lips as
he watched her rip the envelope open.

“Mother! Listen!

“ARRIVED THIS MORNING AND
HOPE I CAN CATCH YOU AT
HOME, OLD DEBBIL KILLED
IN ACCIDENT BUT FOUND HIS
MEMORY BEFORE HE DIED.
HAVE INFORMATION WHICH
MAY CLEAR UP THE MYSTERY—
OR DEEPEN IT. HOPE I CAN SEE
YOU FOR I DON’T KNOW WHAT
TO THINK.

ALEC.”

“How old is this tropical savage?”
asked Mrs. Forsythe.

“He’s not a savage and I don’t
know how old he is and I can’t see
what that has to do with it. I think
he’s about my age or a little older.”
She looked up, and her eyes were
shining.

“Deadly rival,” said Mrs. Forsythe
to the messenger consolingly. “Rot-
ten timing here, somewhere.”

“I — ” said the young man.

“Mother, we’ve got to fix some-
thing to eat. Do you suppose he’ll
be able to stay over? Where’s my

TINT AND THE MONSTER

63

S4

ASTOUNDING SCIBNCK-PICTION

%

green dress with the . . . oh, you
wouldn’t know. It’s new.”

“Then the letters weren’t all about
the dog,” said Mrs. Forsythe, with a
Cheshire grin.

“Mum, you’re impossible ! This is
... is important. Alec is . . . is — ”
Her mother nodded. “Important.
That’s all I was pointing out.”

The young man said, “I — ”
Alistair turned to him. “I do hope
you don’t think we’re totally mad.
I’m sorry you had such a climb.”
She went to the sideboard and took
a quarter out of a sugar bowl. He
took it gravely.

“Thank you, ma’m. If you don’t
min’. I’ll keep this piece of silver for
the rest o’ my everlahstin’.”

“You’re wel — What?”

The young man seemed to get even
taller. “I greatly appreciate your
hospitality, Mrs. Forsythe. I have
you at a disadvantage, ma’m, and one
I Miall correct.” He put a crooked
forefinger between his lips and blew
out an incredible blast of sound.

“Tiny!” he roared. “Here to me,
dahg, an’ mek me known !”

There was a roar from upstairs,
and Tiny came tumbling dowm,
scrabbling wildly as he took the turn
at the foot of the stairs and hurtled
over the slick flooring to crash joy-
fully into the young man.

“Ah, you beast,” crooned the man,
cuffing the dog happily. His accent
thickened. “You thrive yourself here
wid de lady-dem, you gray-yut styou-
pid harse. You glad me, mon, you
glad me.” He grinned at the two as-
tonished women. “Forgive me,” he
said as he pummeled Tiny, pulled his
ears, shoved him away and caught

him by the jaws. “For true, I
couldn’t get in the first word with
Mrs. Forsythe, and after I couldn’t
help meself. Alec my name is, and
the telegram I took from the true
messenger, finding him sighing and
sw'eating at the sight of the hill
there.”

Alistair covered her face with her
hands and said “Oooh.” Mrs. For-
sythe whooped with laughter. She
found her voice and demanded,
“Young man, what is your last
name ?”

“Sundersen, ma’m.”

“Mother ! Why did you ask him
that?”

“For reasons of euphony,” said
Mrs. Forsythe with a twinkle.
Alexander Sundersen. Very good.
Alistair — ”

“Stop! Mum, don’t you dare — ”

“I was going to say, Alistair, if
you and our guest will excuse me.
I’ll have to get back to my knitting.”
She went to the door.

Alistair threw an appalled look at
Alec aiM^cried, “Mother ! What are
you k^Hng ?”

“My brows, darling. See you
later,” Mrs. Forsythe chuckled, and
went out.

It took almost a week for Alec to
get caught up with the latest devel-
opments in Tiny, for he got the story
in the most meticulous detail. There
never seemed to be enough time to
get an explanation or an anecdote in,
so swiftly did the time fly when he
and Alistair were together. Some of
these days he went into the city with
Alistair in the morning, and spent
the day in buying tools and equip-

TINY AXP THE MONSTEK

65

*

ment for his estate. New York was
a wonder city to him — • he had been
there only once before — and Ali.stair
found herself getting quite pos.ses-
sive about the place, showing it off
like the contents of a jewel box.
And then Alec stayed at the house
a couple of days. He endeared him-
self forever to Mrs. Forsythe by re-
moving, cleaning, and rcfacing the
clutch on the Blue Kangaroo, simpli-
fying the controls on the gas re-
frigerator so it could be defrosted
without a major operation, and put-
ting a building-jack under the corner
of the porch which threatened to sag.

And the sessions with Tiny were
resumed and intensified. At first he
seemed a little uneasy when Alec
joined one of them, but within half
an hour he relaxed. Thereafter, more
and more he would interrupt Alistair
to turn to Alec. Although he appar-
ently could not understand Alec’s
thoughts at all, he seemed to com-
prehend perfectly when Alec spoke
to Alistair. And within a few days
she learned to accept these interrup-
tions, for they speeded up.tlie re-
search they were doing. A Tec was
almost totally ignorant of the ad-
vanced theory with which Alistair
worked, but his mind was clear,
quick, and very direct. He was no
theorist, and that was good. He was
one of those rare grease-monkey
geniuses, with a grasp that amounted
to intuition concerning the laws of
cause and effect. Tiny’s reaction to
this seemed to be approval. At any
rate, the occasions when Alistair lost
the track of what Tiny was after,
happened less and less frequently.
Alec instinctively knew just how far

t!0

to go back, and then how to spot the
turning at which they had gone
astray. And liit by bit, they began
to identify what it was that Tiny was
after. As to why — and how — he was
after it, Alec’s experience with old
Debbil seemed a clue. It certainly
was sufficient to keep Alec plugging
away at a possible solution to the
strange animal’s stranger need.

“It was down at the sugar mill,’’
he told Alistair, after he had become
fully acquainted with the incredible
dog’s actions, and they were trying
to determine the why and the how.
“He called me over to the chute
where cane is loaded into the con-
veyors.

“ ‘Bahss,’ he told me, ‘dat t’ing
dere, it not safe, sah.’ And he pointed
through the guard over the bullgears
that drove the conveyor. Great big
everlahstin’ teeth it has. Miss Ali-
stair, a full ten inches long, and it
whirlin’ to the drive pinion. It’s old,
but strong for good. Debbil, what
he saw was a bit o’ play on the pinion
shaf’.

“ ‘Now, you’re an old fool,’ I told
him.

“ ‘No, bahss,’ ” he says. ‘Look
now, sah, de t’ing wit’ de teet’ — dem,
it not safe, sah. I mek you see,’
and before I could move meself or
let a thought trickle, he ol>ens the
guard up and thrus’ his han’ inside !
Bull gear, it run right up his arm
and nip it off, neat as ever, at the
shoulder. I humbly beg your par-
don, Miss Alistair.’’

“G-go on,’’ said Alistair, through
her handkerchief.

“W’ell, sir, old Debbil was an idiot
for true, and he only died the way

.\STOUNniXG SCIKNCK-PICTION

he lived, rest him. He was old and
he was all eaten out with malaria and
elephantiasis and the like, that not
even Dr. Thetford could save him.
But a strange thing happened. As
he lay dyin’, with the entire village
gathered roun’ the door whisperin’
plans for the wake, he .sent to tell
me come quickly. Down I run, and
for the smile on his face I glad him
when I cross the doorstep.’’

As Alec spoke, he was back in the
Spanish-wall hut, with the air close
under the palm-thatch roof, and the
glare of the. pressure lantern set on
the tiny window ledge to give the old
man light to die by. Alec’s accent
deepened; “ ‘How you feel, mon?’ I
ahsk him. ‘Bahss, I’m a dead man
now, but I got a light in mah hey-
yud.’

“ ‘Tell me, then, Debbil.’

“ ‘Bahss, de folk-dem .say, ol’ Deb-
Ijil, him cyahn’t remembah de taste
of a mango as he t’row away de skin.
JHim cyahn’t remembah his own
house do he stay away t’ree day.’

“ ‘Loose talk, Debbil.’

“ ‘True talk, Bahss. Foh de Lahd
give me a leaky pot fo’ hoi’ ma brains.
But Bahss, I do recall one t’ing now,
bright an’ clear, and you must know.
Bahss, de d.ay I go up the wahtah
line, I see a great jumbee in de stones
of de Gov’nor Palace dere.’ ”

“What’s a Jumbee?” asked Mrs.
Forsythe.

“A ghost, ma’m. The Crucians
-.arry a crawlin’ heap of supersti-
tions. Tiny ! What eats you, mon ?’’

Tiny growled again. Alec and Ali-
stair exchanged a look. “He doesn't
want you to go on.”

TtNy ANP THE MONSTE.

“Listen carefully. I want him to
get this. I am his friend. I want
to help you help him. I realize that
he wants as few people as possible
to find out about this thing. I will
say nothing to anybody unless and
until I have his permission.”

“Well, Tiny?”

The dog stood restlessly, swinging
his great head from Alistair to Alec.
Finally he made a sound like an
audible shrug, then turned to Mrs.
Forsythe.

“Mother’s part of me.” said Ali-
stair firmly. “That’s the way it’s
got to be. No alternative.’’ She
leaned forward. “You can’t talk to
us. You can only indicate what you
want said and done. I think Alec’s
story will help us to understand what
you want, and help you to get it more
quickly. Understand ?”

Tiny gazed at her for a long mo-
ment, said “IV huff!” and lay down
with his nose between his paws and
his eyes fixed on Alec.

“I think that’s the green light,’’
said Mrs. Forsythe, “and I might
add that most of it was due to my
daughter’s conviction that you’re a
wonderful fellow.”

“Mother!” '

“Well, pare me down and call me
Spud ! They’re both blushing !” said
Mrs. Forsythe blatantl}^

“Go on, Alec,” choked Alistair.
“Tlf&nk you. Old Debbil told me
a fine tale of the tilings he had seen
at the ruins. A great beast, mind
you, with no shape at all, and a face
ugly to drive you mad. And about
the beast was what he called a ‘feelin’
good’. He said it was a miracle, blit
he feared nothing. ‘Wet it was,

AST— 3S GT

Bahss, like a slug, an’ de eye it have
is whirlin’ an’ shakin’, an’ I standin’
dar feelin’ like a bride at de altar
step an’ no fear in me.’ Well, I
thought the old man’s mind was wan-
dering, for I knew he was touched.
But the story he told was that clear,
and never a simple second did he
stop to think. C^t it all came like
a true thing.

“He said that Tiny walked to the
be^st, and that it curved over him
like an ocean wave. It closed over
the dog, and Debbil was rooted there
the livelong day, still without fear,
and feelin’ no smallest desire to
move. He had no surprise at all,
even at the thing he saw restin’ in
the thicket among the old stones.

“He said it was a submarine, a
mighty one as great as the estate
house and with no break nor mar in
its surface but for the glass part let
in where the mouth is on a shark.

“And then when the sun begun to
dip, the beast gave a shudderin’ heave
and rolled back, and out walked Tiny.
He stepped up to Debbil and stood.
Then the beast began to quiver and
shake, and Debbil said the air aroun’
him heavied with the work the mon-
ster was doing, tryin’ to talk. A Cloud
formed in his brain, and a voice
swept over him. ‘Not a livin’ word,
Bahss, nor d sound at all. But it
said to forget. It said to leave dis
place and forget, sah.’ And |Jie last
thing old Debbil. saw as he turned
:iway was the beast slumping down,
seeming all but dead from the work
it had done to speak at all. ‘An’ de
cloud leave in mah hey-yud, Bahss,
f’om dat time onward. I’m a dead
man now, Bahss, but de cloud gone

«8

and Debbil know de story.’ ” Alec
leaned back and looked at his hands.
“That was all. This must have hap-
pened about fifteen months pahst,
just before Tiny began to show his
strange stripe.’’ He drew a deep
breath and looked up. “Maybe I’m
gullible. But I knew the old man too
well. He never in this life could in-
vent such a tale. I troubled myself
to go up to the Governor’s Palace
after the buryin’. I might have been
mistaken, but something big had lain
in the deepest thicket, for it was
crushed into a great hollow place
near a hundred foot long. Well, there
you are. For what it’s worth, you
have the story of a superstitious an’
illiterate old man, at the point of
death by violence and many years
sick to boot.’’

There was a long silence, and at
last Alistair threw her lucent hair
back and said, “It isn’t Tiny at all.
It’s a ... a thing outside Tiny.” She
looked at the dog, her eyes wide.
“And I don’t even mind.”

“Neither did Debbil, when he saw
it,” said Alec gravely.

Mrs. Forsythe snapped, “What are
we sitting gawking at each other for?
Don’t answer; I’ll tell you. All of
us can think up a story to fit the
facts, and we’re all too self-con-
scious to come out with it. Any story
which fit those facts would really be
a killer.”

“Well said,” Alec grinned. “Would
you like to tell us your idea ?”

“Silly boy,” muttered Alistair.

“Don't be impertinent, child. Of
course I’d like to tell you, Alec. I
think that the good Lord, in His in-
finite wisdom, has decided that it was

ASTOUNDING .SCI ENCK-FICTION

about time for Alistair to come to
her senses, and, knowing that it
would take a quasi-scientific miracle
to do it, dreamed up this — ”

“Some day,” said Alistair icily,
“I’m going to pry you loose from
your verbosity and your sense of
humor in one fell swoop.”

Mrs. Forsythe grinned. “There is
a time for jocularity, kidiet, and this
is it. I hate solemn people solemnly
sitting around being awed by things.
What do you make of all this, Alec ?”

Alec pulled his ear and said, “I
vote we leave it up to Tiny. It’s his
show. Let’s get on with the work,
and just keep in mind what we al-
ready know.”

And to their astonishment. Tiny
stumped over to Alec and licked his
hand.

The blowoff came six weeks after
Alec’s arrival. (Oh, yes ! he stayed
six weeks, and longer! it took some
fiendish cogitation for him to think
of enough legitimate estate business
which had to be done in New York
to keep him that long ; but after that
he was so much one qf the family
that he needed no excuse.) He had
devised a code system for Tiny, so
that Tiny could add something to
their conversations. His point : “Here
he sits, ma’am, like a fly on the wall,
seeing everything and hearing every-
thing and saying not a word. Pic-
ture it for yourself, and }'ou in such
a position, full entranced as you are
with the talk you liear.’’ And for
Mrs. Forsythe particularly, the men-
tal picture was altogether too vivid !
It was so well presented that Tiny’s
research went by the board for four

TINT AND THR MONSTER

days while they devised the code.
They had to give up the idea of a
glove with a pencil-pocket in it, with
which Tiny might write a little, or
any similar device. The dog was sim-
ply not deft enough for such meticu-
lous work; and besides, he showed
absolutely no signs of understanding
any written or printed symbolism.
Unless, of course, Alistair thought
about it . . .

Alec’s plan was simple. He cut
some wooden forms — a disk, a
square, a triangle to begin with. The
disk signified “yes”, or any other af-
firmation, depending on the context.
The square was “no” or any nega-
tion; and the triangle indicated a
question or a change in subject. The
amount of informationTiny was able
to impart by moving from one to an-
other of these forms was astonish-
ing. Once a subject for discussion
was established. Tiny would take up
a stand between the disk and the
square, so that all he had to do was
to swing his head to one side or the
other, to indicate a “yes” or a “no”.
No longer were there those exasper-
ating sessions in which the track of
his research was lost while they back-
trailed to discover where they had
gone astray. The conversations ran
like this :

“Tiny, 1 have a question. Hope
you won’t think it too personal. May
I ask it?” That was Alec, always
infinitely polite to dogs. He had al-
ways recognijzed their innate dignity^

Yes, the answer would come, as
Tiny swung his head "over the disk.

“Were we right in assuming that
you, the dog, are not communicating
with us: that you are the medium?’'

Tiny went to the triangle. “You
want to change the subject?”

Tiny hesitated, then went to the
square. No.

Alistair Said, “He obviously wants
something from us before he will
discuss the question. Right, Tiny?”
Yes.

Mrs. Forsythe said, “He’s had his
dinner, and he doesn’t smoke. I think
he wants us to assure him that we’ll
keep his secret.”

Yes.

“Good. Alec, you’re wonderful,”
said Alistair. “Mother, stop beam-
ing ! I only meant — ”

“Leave it at that, child ! Any qual-
ification will spoil it for the man !”
“Thank you, ma’m,” said Alec
gravely, with that deep twinkle of
amusement around his eyes. Then he
turned back to Tiny. “Well, what
about it, sah ? Are you a superdog ?”
No.

“Who . . . no, he can’t answer
that. Let’s go back a bit. Was old
Debbil’s story true?”

Yes.

“Ah.” They exchanged glances.
“Where is this — monster? Still in
St. Croix?”

No.

“Here?”

Yes.

“You mean here, in this room, or
in the house ?”

No.

“Nearby, though?”

Yes.

“How can we find out just where,
without mentioning the countryside
item by item ?” asked Alistair.

“I know,” said Mrs. Forsythe.
“Alec, according to Debbil, that ‘sub-

marine’ thing was pretty big, wasn’t
it?”

“That it was, ma’m.”

“Good. Tiny, does he , . . it . . .
have the ship here, too ?”

Yes.

Mrs. Forsythe spread her hands.
“That’s it, then. There’s only one
place around here where you could
hide such an object.” She nodded
her head at the west wall of the
house.

“The river !” cried Alistair. “That
right. Tiny?”

Yes. And Tiny w’ent immediately
to the triangle.

“Wait!” said Alec. “Tiny, beggin’
your pardon, but there’s one more
question. Shortly after you took
passage to New York, there was a
business with compasses, where they
all pointed to the west. Was that the
ship ?”

Yes.

“In the water?”

No.

“Why,” said Alistair, “this is pure
science fiction! Alec, do you ever
get science fiction in the tropics ?”

“Ah, Miss Alistair, not often
enough, for true. But well I know
it. The spaceships are old Mother
Goose to me. But there’s a differ-
ence here. For in all the stories I’ve
read, when a beast comes here from
space, it’s to kill and conquer; and
yet — and I don’t know why — I know
that this one wants nothing of the
sort. More, he’s out to do us good.”

“I feel the same way,” said Mrs.
Forsythe thoughtfully. “It’s sort of
a protective cloud which seems to
surround us. Does that make sense
to you, Alistair ?”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“I kncnv it from ’way back,” said
Alistair with conviction. She looked
at the dog thoughtfully. “I wonder
why he . . . it . . . won’t show itself.
And why it can communicate only
through me. And why me?”

“I’d say, Miss Alistair, that you
were chosen because of your metal-
lurgy. As to w'hy we never see the
beast — Well, it knows best. Its rea-
son must be a good one.”

Day after day, and bit by bit, they
got and gave information. Many
things remained mysteries; but
strangely, there seemed no real need
to question Tiny too closely. The at-
mosphere of confidence, of good will
that surrounded them madcquestions
seem not only unnecessary but down-
right rude.

And da)' by day, and little by little,
a drawing began to take shape under
Alec’s skilled hands. It was a cast-

ing, with a simple enough external
contour, but inside it contained a
series of baffles and a chamber. It
was designed, apparently, to support
and house a carballoy shaft. There
were no openings into the central
chamber except those taken by the
shaft. The shaft turned : something
within the chamber apparently drove
it. There was plenty of discussion
about it.

“Why the baffles?” moaned Ali-
stair, palming all the neatness out of
her flaming hair. “Why carballoy?
And in the name of Nemo, why
tungsten ?”

Alec stared at the drawing for a
long moment, then suddenly clapped
a hand to his head. “Tiny ! Is there
radiation inside that housing? I
mean, hard stuff?”

Yes.

“There you are, then,” said Alec.
“Tungsten to shield the radiation. A

TINX AND THE MONSTER

7t

casting for uniformity. The baffles
to make a meander out of the shaft
openings — see, the shjtft has plates
turned on it to fit between the
baffles.”

“And nowhere for anything to go
in, nowhere for anything to come
out — except the shaft, of course —
and besides, you can’t cast tungsten
that way! Maybe Tiny’s monster
can, but we can’t. Maybe with the
right flux, and with enough power —
but that’s silly. Tungsten won’t cast.”
“And we cahn’t build a spaceship.
There must be a way I”

“Not with today’s facilities, and
not with tungsten,” said Alistair.
“Tiny’s ordering it from us the way
we would order a wedding cake at
the corner bakery.”

“What made you say ‘wedding
cake’?” '

“You, too? Alec? Don’t I get
enough of that from Mother?” But
she smiled all the same. “But about
the casting — it seems to me that our
mysterious friend is in the position
of a radio fiend who understands
every part of his set, how it’s made,
how and why it works. Then a tube
blows, and he finds he can’t buy one.
He has to make one if he gets one at
all. Apparently old Debbil’s beast is
in that kind of a spot. What about
it. Tiny? Is your friend short a part
which he understands but has never
built before ?”

Ves.

“And he needs it to get away from
Earth?”

Ves.

Alec asked, "What’s the trouble?
Can’t get escape velocity ?”

Tiny hesitated, and then went to

the triangle. "Either he doesn’t want
to talk about it, or the question
doesn’t quite fit the situation,” said
Alistair. “It doesn’t matter. Our
main problem is the casting. It just
can’t be done. Not by anyone on this
planet, as far as I know ; and I think
I know. It has to be tungsten, Tiny ?”

Ves.

“Tungsten, for what ?” asked Alec.
“Radiation shield ?”

Ves.

He turned to Alistair. “Isn’t there
something just as good?”

She mused, staring at his drawing.
“Yes, several things,” she said
thoughtfully. Tiny watched her,
moveless. He seemed to slump as
she shrugged dispiritedly and said,
“But not anything with walls as thin
as that. A yard or so of lead might
do it, and have something like the
mechanical strength he seems to
want, but it would obviously be too
big. Beryllium — ” At the word.
Tiny went and stood right on top of
the square — a most emphatic no.

“How about an alloy ?” .Alec asked.

“Well, Tiny?”

Tiny went to the triangle. Alistair
nodded. “You don’t know. I can’t
think of one. I’ll take it up with Dr.
Nowland. Maybe — ”

The following day Alec stayed
home and spent the day arguing
cheerfully with Mrs. Forsythe and
building a grape arbor. It was a ra-
diant Alistair who came home that
evening. “Got it! Got it 1” she caroled
as she danced in. “.Alec! Tiny —
come on 1”

They flew upstairs to the study.
Without removing the green

ASTOtlNIUNG SeiKNCK-FICTION

“iK-anie" with the orange feather that
so nearly matched her hair, Alistair
hauled out four reference books and
began talking animatedly. “Auric
molybdenum, Tiny! What about
that ? Gold and molyb III should do
it ! Listen 1” And she launched forth
into a spatter of absorption data,
Greek-letter formulae, and strength
of materials comparisons which quite
made Alec’s head swim. He sat
watching her without listening. In-
creasingly, this was his greatest
pleasure.

When Alistair was quite through.
Tiny walked away from her and lay
down, gazing off into space.

“W'ell, strike me!’’ said Alec.
“Look yonder. Miss Alistair. The
very first time I ever saw him think-
ing something over.”

“Sh-h! Don’t disturb him, then.
If that is the answer, and if he never
thought of it before, it will take some
figuring out. There’s no knowing
what fantastic kind of science he’s
comparing it with.”

* “I see the point. Like . . . well,
suppose we crashed a plane in the
Brazilian jungle, and needed a new
hydraulic cylinder on the landing
gear. Now, then, one of the natives
shows us ironwood, and it’s up to
us to figure out if we can make it
serve.”

“That’s about it,” 1)reathed Ali-
■stair. “I — ” She was interrupted
by Tiny, who suddenly leaped up and
ran to her, kissing her hands, com-
mitting the forbidding enormity of
putting his paws on her shoulders,
running back to the wooden forms
and nudging the disk, the yes sym-
bol. His tail was going like a metro-

nome without its pendulum. Mrs.
Forsythe came in in the midst of all
this rowdiness and demanded :
“What goes on ? Who made a der-
vish out of Tiny? What have you
been feeding him? Don’t tell me.
Let me . . . you don’t mean you’ve
solved his problem for him? What
are you going to do — buy him a pogo
stick?”

“Oh, Mum ! We’ve got it ! An al-
loy of molybdenum and gold ! I can
get it alloyed and cast in no time !”
“Good, honey — good. You going
to cast the whole thing ?” She pointed
to the drawing.

“Why, yes.”

“Humph !”

“Mother ! Why, if I may ask, do
you ‘humph’ in that tone of voice?”
“You may ask. Chicken, who’s go-
ing to pay for it?”

“Why, that will . . . I— oh. Oh!"
she said, aghast, and ran to the draw-
ing.. Alec came and looked over her
shoulder. She figured in the corner
of the drawing, oh-ed once again,
and sat down weakly.

“How mucii?” asked Alec.

“I’ll get an estimate in tire morn-
ing,” she said faintly. “I know plenty
of people. I can get it at cost —
maybe.” She looked at Tiny de-
spairingly. He came and laid his
head against her knee, and she pulled
at his ears. “I won’t let you down,
darling,” she whispered.

She got the estimate the next day.
It was a little over thirteen thousaiid
dollars.

Alistair and Alec stared blankly at
each other and then at the dog.
“Maybe you can tell us where we

TINY .AND THE M0N8TEK

78

can raise that much money?” said
Alistair, as if she expected Tiny to
whip out a wallet.

Tiny whimpered, licked Alistair’s
hand, looked at Alec, and then lay
down.

“Now what ?” mused Alec.

“Now we go and fix something to
eat,” said Mrs. Forsythe, moving to-
ward the door. The others were about
to follow, when Tiny leaped to his
feet and ran in front of them. He
stood in the doorway and whimpered.
When they came closer, he barked.

“Shh! What is it. Tiny? Want
us to stay here a while?”

“Say! Who’s the boss around
here?” Mrs. Forsythe wanted to
know.

“He is,” said Alec, and he knew
he was speaking for all of them.
They sat down, Mrs. Forsythe on
the studio couch, Alistair at her desk,
Alec at the drawing table. But Tiny
seemed not to approve of the ar-
rangement. He became vastly ex-
cited, running to Alec, nudging him
hard, dashing to Alistair, taking her
wrist very gently in his jaws and
pulling gently toward Alec.

“What is it, fellow?”

“Seems like matchmaking to me,”
remarked Mrs. Forsythe.

■ “Nonsense, Mum!” said Alistair,
coloring. “He wants Alec and me
(0 change places, that’s all.”

Alec said, “Oh !” and went to sit
beside Airs. Forsythe. Alistair sat at
the drawing table. Tiny put a paw
up on it, poked at the large tablet of
paper. Alistair looked at him curi-
ously, then tore off the top sheet.
Tiny nudged a pencil with his nose.

Then they waited. Somehow, no

74

one wanted to speak. Perhaps no one
could, but there seemed to be no rea-
son to try. And gradually a tension
built up in the room. Tiny stood
stiff and rapt in the center of the
room. His eyes glazed, and when he
finally keeled over limply, no one
went to him.

Alistair picked up the pencil slow-
ly. Watching her hand, Alec was
reminded of the movement of the
pointer on a ouija board. ' The pen-
cil traveled steadily, in small surges,
to the very top of the paper and hung
there. .Alistair’s face was quite blank.

After that no one could say what
happened, exactly. It was as if their
eyes had done what their voices had
done. They could see, but they did
not care to. And Alistair’s pencil
began to move. Something, some-
where, was directing her mind — not
her hand. Faster and faster her
pencil flew, and it wrote what was
later to be known as the Forsythe
Formulae.

There was no sign then, of course,
of the furor that they would cause,
of the millions of words of conjec-
ture which were written when it was
discovered that the girl who wrote
them could not possibly have had the
mathematical background to have
written them. They were understood
by no one at first, and by very few
people ever. Alistair certainly did
not know what they meant.

An editorial in a popular magazine
came startlingly dose to the true na-
ture of the Formulae when it said,
“The Forsythe Formulae, which de-
scribe what tlie Sunday supplements
call the ‘Something-for-Nothing
Clutch’, and the drawing which ac-

ASTOUNDIXG SCIRNOE-FICTION

companies them, signify little to the
layman. As far as can be deter-
mined, the Formulae are the descrip-
tion and working principles of a de-
vice. It appears to be a power plant
of sorts, and if it is ever understood,
atomic power will go the way of gas-
lights.

“A sphere of energy is enclosed in
a shell made of neutron-absorbing
material. This sphere has inner and
outer ‘layers’. A shaft passes through
the sphere. Apparently a magnetic
field must be rotated about the outer
casing of the device. The sphere of
energy aligns itself with this field.
The inner sphere rotates with the
outer one, and has the ability to turn
the shaft. Unless the mathematics
used are disproved — and no one
seems to have come anywhere near
doing that, unorthodox as they are —
the aligning effect between the ro-
tating field and the two concentric
spheres, as well as the shaft, is quite
independent of any load. In other
words, if the original magnetic field
rotates at three thousand rpm, the
shaft will rotate at three thousand
rpm, even if there is only a sixteenth
horsepower turning the field while
there is a ten thousand braking stress
on the shaft.

“Ridiculous? Perhaps. And per-
haps it is no more so than the ap-
parent impossibility of fifteen watts
of energy pouring into the antenna
of a radio station, and nothing
coming down. The key to the whole
problem is in the nature of those
self-contained spheres of force in-
side the shell. Their power is appar-
ently inherent, and consists of an
ability to align, just as the useful

TINS iND THE MONSTEi.

property of steam is an ability to
expand. If, as is suggested by Rein-
hardt in his ‘Usage of the Symbol (3
in the Forsythe Formulae’ these
spheres are nothing but stable con-
centrations of pure binding energy,
we have here a source of power be-
yond the wildest dreams of maskind.
And whether or not we succeed in
building such devices, it cannot be
denied that whatever their mysteri-
ous source, the Forsythe Formulae
are an epochal gift to several sci-
ences, including, if you like, the art
of philosophy.’’

After it was over, and the Formu-
lae written, the terrible tension lifted.
The three humans sat in their happy
coma, and the dog'lay senseless on
the rug. Mrs. Forsythe was the
first to move, standing up abruptly.
“Well!” she said.

It seemed to break a spell. Every-
thing was quite normal. ■ No hang-
overs, no sense of strangeness, no
fear. They stood looking wonder-
ingly at the mass of minute figures.

“I don’t know,” murmured Ali-
stair, and the phrase covered a world
of meaning. Then, “Alec— that cast-
ing. We’ve got to get it done. We’ve
just got to, no matter what it costs
us!”'

“I’d like to,” said Alec. “Why do
we have to ?”

She waved toward the drawing
table. “We’ve been given that.”

“You don’t say!” said Mrs. For-
sythe. “And what is thatf”

Alistair put her hand to her head,
and a strange, unfocused look came
into her eyes. That look was the
only part of the whole affair that

75

ever really bothered Alec. It was a
place she had gone to, a little bit;
and he knew that no matter what-
ever happened, he would never be
able to go there with her.

.She said, “He’s been . . . talking
to me, you know. You do know that,
don’t you? I’m not guessing, Alec
—Mum.’’ •

“I believe you, chicken,’’ her
mother said softly. “What are you
trying to say ?’’

“I got it in concepts. It isn’t a
thing you can repeat, really. But
the idea is that he couldn’t give us
any thing'. His ship is completely
functional, and there isn’t anything
he can exchange for what he wants
us to do. But he has given us some-
thing of great value — ’’ Her voice
trailed off; she seemed to listen to
something for a moment. “Of value
in several ways. A new science, a
new approach to attack the science.
New tools, new mathematics.’’

“But what is it? What can it do?
-\nd how is it going to help us pay
for the casting?’’ asked Mrs. For-
sythe.

“It can’t, immediately,’’ said Ali-
stair decisively. “It’s too big. We
don’t even know what it is. Why are
you arguing ? Can’t you understand
that he can’t give us any gadgetry?
That we haven’t his techniques, ma-
terials, and tools, and so we couldn’t
make any actual machine he sug-
gested ? He’s done the only thing he
cSn; he’s given us a new science,
and tools to take it apart.’’

“That I know,’’ said Alec gravely.
“Well indeed. I felt that. And I . . .
I trust him. Do you, ma’m ?”

“Yes, of course. I think he’s —

people. I think he has a sense of
humor and a sense of justice,” said
Mrs. Forsythe firmly. “-Let’s get our
heads together. We ought to be able
to scrape it up some way. And why
shouldn’t we ? Haven't we three got
something to talk about for the rest
of our lives?”

And their heads went together.

. Tliis is the letter that arrived two
months later in St. Croix.

Honey-lamb,

Hold on to your seat. It’s all over./

The casting arrived. I missed you
more than ever, but when you have to go
— and you know I’m glad you went 1
Anyway, I did as you indicated, through
Tiny, before you left. The men who
rented me the boat and ran it for me
thought I was crazy, and said so. Do
you know that once we .were out on the
river with the casting, and Tiny started
whuffing and whimpering to tell me we
were on the right spot, and I told the
men to tip the castir^ over the side,
they had the collosal nerve to insist on
opening the crate? Got quite nasty about
it. Didn’t want to be a party to any
dirty work. It was against my principles,
but I let them, just to expedite matters.
They were certain there was a body in
the box 1 When they saw what it was,
I was going to bend my umbrelly over
their silly heads, but they looked so
funny! I couldn’t do a thing but roar
with laughter. That was when the man
said I was crazy.

Anyhow, over the side it went, into the
river. Made a lovely splash. And about
a minute later, I got the loveliest feeling
— I wish I could describe it to you. I
was sort of overwhelmed by a feeling of
utter satisfaction, and gratitude, and . . .
oh, I don’t know. I just felt good, all
over. I looked at Tiny, and he was
trembling. I think he felt it, too. I’d
call it a titank you, on a grand psychic
scale. I think you can rest a.ssured that
Tiny’s monster got what it wanted.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCK-FICTION

j?ut that wasn’t the end of it. 1 paid
oflf the boatmen, and started up tlie bank.
Something made me stop, and wait, and
then go back to the water’s edge.

It was early evening, and very still,
r was under some sort of a compulsion
— not an unpleasant thing, but an un-
breakable one. I sat down on the river
wall and watched the water. There was
no one around — the boat had left — except
one of those snazzy Sunloungc cruisers
anchored a few yards out. I remember
how still it was, because there was a
little girl playing on the deck of the
yacht, and I could hear her footsteps as
she ran about.

Suddenly I noticed something in the
water. I suppose I should have been
frightened, but somehow I wasn’t at all.
Whatever the thing was, it was big and
gray and slimy and quite shapeless. And
somehow, it seemed to be the source of
this aura of well-being and protective-
ness that I felt. It was staring at me.
I knew it was before I saw that it had
an eye — a big one, with something whirl-
ing inside of it ... I don’t know. I

wish I could w'rite. 1 wish I had the
power to tell you what it was like.
I know that it was, by human standards,
infinitely revolting. If this was Tiny’s
monster, I could understand its being
sensitive to the revulsion it might cause.
And wrongly, for I felt to the core that
the creature was good.

It winked at me. I don’t mean blink.
It winked. And then everything hap-
pened at once.

The creature was gone, and in seconds
there was a disturbance in the water by
the yacht. Something gray and wet
reached up out of the river and I saw it
was going for that little girl. Only a
tyke — about three, she* was. Red hair
just like yours. And it thumped that
child in the small of the back just enough
to knock her over — into the river.

And can you believe it? I just sat
there watching, and said never a word!
It didn’t seem right to me that that baby
could be struggling in the water. But it
didn’t seem zvrong either!

Well, before I could get my wits to-
gether, Tiny was off the wall like a hairj’

Produced By The Maker Of The Famous Gillette Blue Blade

TINY AND THE MONSTER

T7

bullet and streaking through the water.
I have often wondered why his feet are
so big; I never will again. The hound is
build like the lower half of a paddle
wheel ! In two shakes he had the baby
by the scruff of the neck and was bring-
ing her back to me. No one had seen
that child get pushed, Alistair! No one
but me. But there was a man on the
yacht who must have seen her fall. He
was all over the deck roaring orders and
getting in the way of things, and by the
time he had his wherry in the water.
Tiny had reached me with the little girl.
She wasn’t frightened either — she thought
it was a grand joke! Wonderful
youngster.

So the man came ashore, all gratitude
and tears, and wanted to gold-plate Tiny
or something. Then he saw me. “That
your dog?” I said it was my daughter’s.
She was in St. Croix on her honeymoon.
Before I could stop him he had a check-
book out and was scratching away at it.
He said he knew my kind. Said he
knew I’d never accept a thing for my-
self. but wouldn’t refuse something for
my (laughter. I enclose the check. Why
he picked a sum like thirteen thousand.
I’ll never know. Anyhow, I know it’ll
be a help to you. Since the money really
comes from Tiny’s monster. I suppose I
can confess that getting Alec to put up
the money, even though he would have to
clean out his savings and mortgage his
estate, would be a good idea if he were
one of the family, because then he’d have
you to help him make it all back again —
that was all my idea. Sometimes, though,
watching you, I wonder if I really had
to work so all-fired hard to get you nice
people married to each other.

Well, I imagine that closes the busi-
ness of Tiny’s monster. There are a lot
of things we’ll probably never know. I

can guess some things, though. It could
communicate with a dog, but not with a
human, unless it half-killed itself trying.
Apparently a dog is telepathic with hu-
mans to a degree, though it probably
doesn’t understand a lot of what it gets.
I don’t speak French, but I could prob-
ably transcribe French phonetically well
enough so a Frenchman could read it.
Tiny was transcribing that way. The
monster could “send” through him, and
control him completely. It no doubt in-
doctrinated the dog — if I can use the term
— the day old Debbil took him up the
waterline. And when the monster caught,
through Tiny, the mental picture of you
when Dr. Schwellenbach mentioned you,
it went to work through the dog to get
you working on its problem. Mental pic-
tures — that’s probably what the monster
used. That’s how Tiny could tell one
book from another, without being able ot
read. You visualize everything you think
about. What do you think? I think that
mine’s as g(X)d a guess as any.

You might be amused to learn that
last night all the compasses in this neigh-
borhood pointed west for a couple of
hours ! Bye now, chillun. Keep on be-
ing happy.

Love and love, and a kiss for Alec,
Mum.

P. S. Is St. Croix really a nice place
to honeymoon ? Jack — he’s the fellow who
signed the check — is getting very senti-
mental. He’s very like your father. A
widower, and— Oh, I don’t know. Says
fate, or something, brought us together.
Said he hadn’t planned to take a trip
upriver with the baby, but something
drove him to it. He can’t imagine why
he anchored just there. Seemeil a good
idea at the time. Maybe it was fate. He
is very sweet. I wish I could forget
that wink I saw in the water.

THE END.

78

A.STODNDING SCIBNCB-FICTl6>

JESTING PILOT

BY LEWIS PADGETT

Illustrated by Orban

Under normal circumstances, a man must face
reality to be a sane, well-balanced citizen. But
not in that city! Any man who faced and
understood the reality of the place was insane!

The city screamed. It had been
screaming for si.v hundred years.
And as long as that unendurable
scream continued — the city teas an
efficient unit.

“You’re getting special treatment,”
Nehral said, looking across the big,
bare, silent room to where young
Fleming sat on the cushioned seat.
“Normally you wouldn't have grad-
uated to Control for another six
months, but something’s come up.
The others think a fresh viewpoint
might help. And j'ou’re elected,
since you’re the oldest acolyte.”

JJ5SXING PILOT

. ^ -

“Britton’s older than I am,” Flem-
ing said. He was a short, heavy, red-
haired boy with an unusual sensitiv-
ity conditioned into his blunt fea-
tures. Utterly relaxed, he sat waiting.

“Physiological age doesn’t mean
anything. The civilization-index is
more important. And the empathy
level. You’re seventeen, but you’re
emotionally mature. On the other
hand, you’re not — set. You haven’t
been a Controller for years. We
think you may have some fresh an-
gles that can help us.”

“Aren’t fresh angles undesirable ?”
Nehral’s thin, tired face twisted

71 )

into a faint smile. “There’s been de-
bate about that. A culture is a liv-
ing oaganisin and it can’t exist in its
own waste products. Not indefinite-
ly. But w'e don’t intend to remain
isolated indefinitely.’’

“I didn’t know that,” Fleming
said.

Nehral studied his fingertips.
"Don’t get the idea that we’re the
masters. We’re servants, far more
so than the citizens. We’ve got to
follow the plan. And we don’t know
all the details of the plan. That was
arranged purposely. Some day the
Barrier will lift. Then the city won’t
be isolated any longer.”

“But — outside !” Fleming said, a
little nervously. “Suppose — ”

Nehral said, “Six hundred years
ago the city was built and the Bar-
rier created. The Barrier’s quite im-
passable. There’s a switch — I’ll show
it to you sometime — that’s useless at
present. Its purpose is to bring the
Barrier into existence. But no one
know'S how to destroy the Barrier.
One theory is that it can’t be de-
stroyed until its half-life is run, and
the energy’s reached a sufficiently
low level. Then it blinks out auto-
matically.”

“When?”

Nehral shrugged. “Nobody knows
that either. Tomorrow, or a thou-
sand years from now. Here’s the
idea. The city was isolated for pro-
tection. That meant — complete iso-
lation, Nothing — nothing at all —
can pass the Barrier. So we’re safe.
When the Barrier goes, we can see
what’s happened to the rest of the
world. If the danger’s gone, we can
colonize. If it hasn’t, we pull the

80

switch again, and we’re safe behind
the Barrier for another indefinite
period.”

Danger. The earth had been too
big, and too full of people. Archaic
mores had prevailed. The new sci-
ence had plunged on, but civilization
had lagged fatally. 'In those days
many plans had been proposed. Only
one had proved practicable. Rigid
control — thorough utilization of the
new power — and unbreakable armor.
So the city zvas built and isolated by
the Barrier, at a time when all other
cities were falling . . .

Nehral said, “We know the dan-
ger of status quo. New theories, new
experiments aren’t forbidden. Far
from it. Some of them can’t be stud-
ied now, a great many of them. But
records are kept. That reference li-
brary will be available when the Bar-
rier’s lifted. Meanwhile, the city’s
a lifeboat. This part of the human
race has to survive. That’s the main
concern. You don’t study physics in
a lifeboat. You try to survive. After
you’ve reached land, you can go to
work again. But now — ”

The other cities fell, and the ter-
ror roared across the earth, six hun-
dred years ago. It zvas an age of
genius and of znciousness. The weap-
ons of the gods zvere at last avail-
able. The foundations of matter
ripped screaming apart as the zveap-
ons zvere used. The lifeboat rode a
typhoon. The Ark breasted a deluge.

In other zvords, one thing led to
another — until the planet shook.

“First the builders thought the
Barrier alone would be enough. The
city, of course, had to be a self-con-
tained unit. That was difficult. A

ASTOONDING SCIENCE-l’ICTION

luuuati bdiifj isn'i. He has to get
food, fuel — from the air, from plants
and animals. The solution lay in
creating all the necessities within the
city. But then matters got worse.
There was germ warfare and germ
mutations. There were the chain re-
actions. The atmosphere itself, under
the constant bombardment — "

More and more complicated grew
the Ark.

“So they built the city as it had to
be built, and then they found that it
would be — uninhabitable.”

Fleming tilted back his head.
Nehral said, “Oh, we’re shielded.
We’re specialized. B'or we’re the
Controllers.”

“Yes, I know. But I've wondered.
Why can’t the citizens — ”

“Be shielded as we are? Because
they’re to be the survivors. We’re
important only till the Barrier lifts.
After that, we’ll be useless, away
from the lifeboat. In a normal
world, we have no place. But now
and here, as Controllers of the city,
we are important. We serve."
Fleming stirred uneasily.

Nehral said, “It will be difficult
for you to conceive this. You have
been siiecially conditioned since be-
fore your birth. You never knew —
none of us ever knew — normal ex-
istence. You are deaf, dumb, and'
blind.”

The boy caught a little of the
meaning. “That means — ?”
“Certain senses the citizens have,
because they’ll be needed when the
Harrier lifts. We can’t afford to
have them, under the circumstances
The telepathic sense is substituted,
[’ll tell you more about that later.

Right now I want ) ou to concentiate
on the problem of Bill Norman. He’s
a citizen.”

Nehral paused. He could feel the
immense weight of the city above
him, and it seemed to him that the
foundations were beginning to
crumble . . .

“He’s getting out of control,”
Nehral said flatly.

“But I’m not important,” Bill
Norman said.

They were dancing. Flickering,
quiet lights beat out from the Sev-
enth Monument, towering even above
the roof garden where they were.
Far overhead was the gray emptiness
of the Barrier. The music was ex-
citing. Mia’s hand crept up and ruf-
fled the back of his neck.

“You are to me,” she said. “Still,
I’m prejudiced.”

She was a tall, slim, dark girl,
sharp contrast to Norman’s blond
hugeness. His faintly puzzled blue
eyes studied her.

“I’m lucky. I’m not so sure you
are, Mia.”

The orchestra reached a rhythmic
climax; brass hit a low, nostalgic
note, throbbingly sustained. Norman
moved his big shoulders uneasily
and turned toward the parapet, tow-
ing Mia beside him. They walked
in silence through the crowd, to a
walled embrasure where they were
alone, in a tiny vantage-point over-
looking the city.

Mia stole occasional glances at the
man’s troubled face. He was looking
at the Seventh Monument, crowned
with light, and beyond it to the
Sixth, and. smaller in the distance.

.rrs'i rNo piLar

81

the Fifth — each a ineiiiorial to one
of the Great Eras of man’s history.

lint the city —

There had never been a city like it
in all the world. For no city before
had ever been built for man. Mem-
phis was a towered colossus for the
memory of kings; Baghdad was a
sultan’s jewel ; they were stately
pleasure-domes by decree. New York
and London, Paris and Moscow —
they were less functional, less effi-
cient for their citizens than the caves
of the troglodytes. In cities man had
always tried to sow on arid ground.

But this was a city for men.

It was not merely a matter of
ixirks and roads, of rolling ramps
and jiaragravity currents for levita-
tion, not simply a question of design
and architecture. The city was
planned according to rules of human
psychology. The people fitted into it
as into a foam mattress. It was quiet.
It was beautiful and functional. It
was ijerfect for its purpose.

"I saw that psychologist again to-
day.” Norman said.

Mia folded her arms and leaned
on the parapet. She didn’t look at
her companion.

“And?”

“Generalizations.”

“But they always know the an-
swers,” Mia said. “They always
know the right answers.”

“This one didn’t.”

“It may take time. Really, Bill,
you know ... no one’s . . . frus-
trated — ”

“I don’t know what it is,” Norman
said. ‘-Heredity, perhaps. All I know
is I get these . . . these flashes. Which
the psychologists can’t e.xplain.”

"But there has to be an ex-
planation.”

“That’s what the psychologist said.
Still, he couldn’t tell me what it was.”
“Can’t you analyze it at all ?” she
a.sked, sliding l»er hand into his. His
fingers tightened. He looked at the
Seventh Monument an5 beyond it.

“No,” he said. “It’s just that I
feel there isn’t any answer.”

“To what ?”

“I don’t know. 1 ... I wish 1
could get out o f the city.”

Her hand relaxed suddenly. “Bill.
You know — ”

He laughed softly. “I know.
There’s no way out. Not through
the Barrier. Maybe that isn’t what
I want, after all. But this . . . this — ”
He stared at the Monument. “It
seems all wrong sometimes. 1 just
can’t explain it. It’s the whole city.
It makes me feel haywire. Then 1
get these flashes — ”

She felt his hand stiffen. It was
jerked away abruptly. Bill Norman
covered his eyes and screamed.

“Flashes of realization,” Nehral
said to Fleming. “They don’t last
long. If they did, he’d go insane or
die. Of course the citizen psycholo-
gists can’t help him ; it’s outside their
scope by definition.”

Fleming, sensitive to telepathic
emotion, said, “You’re worried.” He
did not speak aloud.

“Naturally. We Controllers have
our own conditioning. An ordinary
citizen couldn’t hold our power; it
wouldn’t be safe. The builders
worked out a good many plans be-
fore they decided to create us.
They’d thought of making androids

S2

astounding soienck-uict ion

and robots to control, but the human
factor was needed. Emotion’s need-
ed, to react to the conditioning. From
birth, by hypnosis, we’re conditioned
to protect and serve the citizens. We
couldn’t do anything else if we tried.
It’s ingrained.”

“Every citizen?” Fleming asked,
and Nehral sighed.

“That’s the trouble. Every citizen.
The whole is equal to the sum total
of the parts. One citizen, to us, rep-
resents the entire group. I’m not cer-
tain that this wasn’t a mistake of the
builders. For when one citizen
threatens the group — as Norman
does — ”

“But we’ve got to solve Norman’s
problem.”

“Yes. It’s our problem. Every cit-
izen must have physical and mental
balance — must. I was wondering — ”

“Well?”

“For the good of the whole, it
would be better if Norman could
be eliminated. On purely logical
grounds, he should be allowed to go
mad or die. I can’t countenance that,
though. I’m too firmly conditioned
against it.”

“So am I,” Fleming said, and Neh-
ral nodded.

“Exactly. We must cure him.
We’ve got to get him back to a sane
psychological balance. Or we may
crack up ourselves — because we’re
not conditioned to react to failure.
Now. You’re the youngest of us
available ; you have more in common
with the citizens than any of us. So,
you may find an answer where we
can’t.”

“Norman should have been a Con-
troller,” Fleming said.

“Yes. But it’s too late for that
now. He’s mature. His heredity —
bad, from our viewpoint. Mathema-
ticians and theologians. The prob-
lems of every citizen in the city can
be solved, with the Monuments. We
can give them answers that are right
for them. But Norman’s hunting
an abstraction. That’s the trouble.
We can’t give him a satisfactory
ans7ver!”

“Haven’t there ever been parallel
psychoses — ”

“It’s not a psychosis, tlrat’s the
difficulty. Except by the arbitrary
standards of the city. Oh, there’ve
been plenty of human problems — a
woman who wants children, for ex-
ample, and can’t have them. If med-
icine fails to help her, the Monu-
ments will. By creating diversion —
arousing her maternal instinct for
something else, or channeling it else-
where. By substitution. Making
her believe she Iras a mission of some
sort. Or creating an emotional at-
tachment of another kind, not ma-
ternal. The idea is to trace the
problems back to their psychological
roots, and then get rid of the frus-
tration somehow. It’s the frustra-
tion that’s fatal.”

“Diversion, perhaps — ?”

“I don’t think it’s possible. Nor-
man’s problem is an abstraction. And
if we answered it — he would go in-
sane.”

“I don’t know what my problem
is,.” Norman said desperately. “I
don’t have any. I'm young, healthy,
doing work I like. I’m engaged — ”
The psychologist scratched his
jaw. "If we knew what your prob-

JESTING PILOT

83

lem is, we could do something about
it,” he said. “The most suggestive
point here — ” He rustled through
the papers before him. “Let's see.
Do I seem real to you now ?”

“Very,” Norman said.

“But there are times — The syn-
drome’s familiar. Sometimes you
doubt reality. Most people have
that feeling occasionally.” He leaned
back and made thoughtful noises.
Through the transparent wall the
Fifth Monument was visible, pulsat-
ing with soft beats of light. It was
very quiet here.

“You mean you don’t know what’s
wrong with me,” Norman said.

“I don’t know yet. But I will.
First we must find out what your
problem is.”

“How long will tliat take? Ten
years ?”

“I had a problem myself once,” the
psychologist said. “At the time 1
didn’t know what it was. I’ve found
out since. I was heading for mega-
lomania ; I wanted to change people.
So I took up this work. I turned mj
energy into a useful channel. That
solved my problem for me. It’s the
right way for you, once we get at
what’s bothering you.”

“All I want is to get rid of these
hallucinations,” Norman said.

“Auditory, visual, and olfactory —
mostly. And without e.xternal basis
in fact. They're not illusions, they’re
hallucinations. I wish you could give
me more details about them.”

“I can’t.” Norman seemed to
shrink. “It’s like being dropped into
boiling metal. It’s simply indescrib-
able. An impression of noise, lights

84

— it conies and goes in a flash. But
it’s a flash of hell.”

“Tomorrow we’ll try narcosynihe
sis again. I want to correlate my
ideas in the meantime. It’s just
possible — ”

Norman stepped into a levitating
current and was borne upward. At
the level of the Fifth Monument’s
upper balcony he stepped off. There
.were a few people here, not man}',
and they were busy with their own
affairs — love-making and sight-see-
ing. Norman rested his arms on the
rail and stared down. He had come
up here because of a vague, unlikeh
hope that it would be quieter on tht
high balcony far above the city.

It was quiet, but no more so than
the city had been. The rolling ways
curved and slid smoothly beneath
him. They were silent. Above him
the Barrier was a gray, silent dome.
He thought that gigantic claps oi
thunder were pounding at the Bar-
rier from outside, that the impreg
nable hemisphere was beginning u
crack, to buckle — to admit chaos in
a roaring flood.

He gripped the cool plastic rai!
hard. Its solidity wasn’t reassuring
In a moment the Barrier would splii
wide open —

There was no relief on the Monu
ment. He glanced behind him at the
base of the softly shining globe, with
its rippling patterns of light, but
that looked ready to shatter too. Ht
stumbled as he jumped back into the
drop-current. In fact, he missed ii
entirely. There was a heart-stopping
instant when he was in free fall ;theii
a safety-paragravity locked tight on

ASTOTJNDINO SCIRNC K-FICT I< i -\

his body and slid him easily into the
current. He fell slowly.

But he had a new thought now.
Suicide.

There were two questions involved.
Did he want to commit suicide ? And
would suicide be possible ? He stud-
ied the second point.

Without noticing, automatically
he stepped on a moving way and
dropped into one of the cushioned
seats. No one died of violence in
the city. No one ever had, as far as
he knew. But had people tried to
kill themselves ?

It was a new, strange concept.
There were so many safeties. No
danger had been overlooked. There
were no accidents.

The road curved. Forty feet away,
across a lawn and a low wall, was
the Barrier. Norman stood up and
walked toward it. He was conscious
of both attraction and repulsion.

Beyond the Barrier —

He stopped. There it was, directly
before him, a smooth, gray sub-
stance without any mark or pattern.
It wasn’t matter. It was something
the builders had made, in the old
days.

What was it like outside? Six
hundred years had passed since the
Barrier was created. In that time,
the rest of the world could have
changed considerably. An odd idea
struck him: suppose the planet had
been destroyed? Suppose a chain
reaction had finally volatilized it?
Would the city have been affected?
Or w’as the city, within that fantastic
barrier, not merely shielded but ac-
tually shifted into another plane of
existence ?

He struck his fist hard against the
grayness ; it was like striking rubber.
Without warning the terror engulfed
him. He could not hear himself
screaming . . .

Afterward, he wondered how an
eternity could be compressed into
one instant. His .thoughts swung
back to suicide.

“Suicide?” Fleming said.

Nehral’smindwas troubled. “Ecol-
ogy fails,” he remarked. “I suppose
the trouble is that the city’s a closed
unit. We’re doing artificially what
was a natural law six hundred years
ago. But nature didn’t play favor-
ites, as we’re doing. And nature
used variables. Mutations, I mean.
There weren’t any rules about intro-
ducing new pieces into the game — in
fact, there weren’t any rules about
not introducing new rules. But here
in the city we’ve got to stick by the
original rules and the original pieces.
If Bill Norman kills himself, I don’t
know what may happen.”

“To us?”

“To us, and, through us, to the cit-
izens. Norman’s psychologist can’t
help him ; he’s a citizen, too. He
doesn’t know — ”

“What was his problem, by the
way? The psychologist’s, I mean.
He told Norman he’d solved it by
taking up psychology.”

“Sadism. We took care of that
easily enough. We aroused his in-
terest in the study of psychology.
His mental index was so high we
couldn’t give him surgery ; he needed
a subtler intellectual release. But he’s
thoroughly social and well-balanced
now. The practice of psychology is

JESTING PILOT

85

tain its efficiency. It was an outboard ‘
motor on a lifeboat. The storm
rage. The motor strained, shrilled,
sparked — screamed. The environ-
ment was so completely artificial that
no normal technology could have
kept the balance.

Six hundred years ago the build-
ers had studied and discarded plan
after plan. The maximum diameter
of a Barrier was five miles. The
vulnerability increased according to
the square of the diameter. And in-
vulnerability was the main factor.

The city had to be built and main-
tained as a self-sufficient unit within
an impossibly small radius.

Consider the problems. Self-suf-
ficient. There were no pipe lines to
outside. A civilization had to exist
for an indefinite period in ts own
waste products. Steamships, space-
ships, are not parallels. They have to

the sublimation he needed, and he’s
very competent. However, he’ll never
get at the root of Norman’s trouble.
Ecology fails,” he repeated. “The re-
lationship between an organism and
its environment — irreconcilable, in
this case. Hallucinations! Norman
doesn’t have hallucinations. Or even
illusions. He simply has rational pe-
riods— luckily brief.”

“It's an abnormal ecology any-
way.”

“It had to Itc. The city is un-
inhabitable.”

The city screamed!

It was a microcosm, and it had to
battle unimaginable stresses to main-

86

ASTOUNDING SCI ENCE-iaCTION

make port and take in fresh supplies.

This lifeboat would be at sea for
much longer than six hundred years.
And the citizens -- the survivors —
must be kept not only alive, but
healthy physically and mentally.

The smaller the area, the higher
the concentration. The builders could
make the necessary machines. They
knew how to do that. But such ma-
chines had never been constructed
before on the planet. Not in such
concentration !

Civilization is an artificial environ-
ment. With the machines that were
necessary, the city became so artifi-
cial that nobody could live in it. The
builders got their efficiency ; they
made the city so that it could exist
indefinitely, supplying all the air,
water, food and power required. The
machines took care of that.

But such machines !

The energy required and released
was slightly inconceivable. It had to
be released, of course. And it was.
In light and sound and radiation —
within the five-mile area under the
Barrier.

.\nyone living in the city would
have developed a neurosis in two
minutes, a psychosis in ten, and
would have lived a little while longer
than that. Thus the builders had an
efficient city, but nobody could use it.

There was one answer.

Hypnosis.

Everyone in the city was under
hypnosis. It was selective telepathic
hypnosis, with the so-called Monu-
ments — powerful hypnopedic ma-
chines — as the control devices. The
survivors in the lifeboat didn’t know

JESTING PILOT

there was a storm. They saw only
placid water on which the boat
drifted smoothly.

The city screamed to deaf ears.
No one had heard it for six hundred
years. No one had felt the radiation
or seen the blinding, shocking light
that flashed through the city. The
citizens could not, and the Control-
lers could not either, because they
were blind and deaf and dumb, and
lacking in certain other senses. They
had their telepathy, their ESP, which
enabled them to accomplish their task
of steering the lifeboat. As for the
citizens, their job was to survive.

No one had heard the city scream-
ing for six hundred years — except
Bill Norman.

“He has an inquiring mind,” Neh-
ral said dryly. “Too inquiring. His
problem’s an abstraction, as I’ve
mentioned, and if he gets the right
answer it’ll kill him. If he doesn’t,
he’ll go insane. In either case, we’ll
suffer, because we’re not conditioned
to failure. The main hypnotic maxim
implanted in our minds is that every
citizen must survive. All right.
You’ve got the facts now, Fleming.
Does anything suggest itself ?”

“I don’t have all the facts. What’s
Norman’s problem ?”

“He comes of dangerous stock,”
Nehral answered indirectly. “The-
ologians and mathematicians. His
mind is ... a little too rational. As
for his problem — well, Pilate asked
the same question three thousand
years ago, and I don’t recall his ever
getting an answer. It’s a question
that’s lain behind every bit of re-
search since research first started.

87

But the answer lias never been fatal
till now. Norman’s question is sim-
ply this — 7vhat is truthf”

There was a pause. Nehra! went
on.

“He hasn’t expressed it even to
himself. He doesn’t know he’s ask-
ing that question. But we know ; we
have entree to Ills' mind. That’s the
question that he’s finding insoluble,
and the problem that’s bringing him
gradually out of control, out of his
hypnosis. So far there’ve been only
flashes of realization. Split-second
rational periods. Those are bad
enough, for him. He’s heard and
seen the city as it is — ”

Another pause. Fleming’s thoughts
stilled. Nehral said :

“It’s the onl}' problem we can’t
solve by hypnotic suggestion. We’ve
tried. But it’s useless. Norman’s
that remarkably rare person^ some-
one who is looking for the truth.’’
Fleming said .slowly, “He’s look-
ing for the truth. But — does he
have — to find it ?’’

His thoughts raced into Nehral’s
brain, flint against steel, and struck
fire there.

Three weeks later the psychologist
pronounced Norman cured and he
instantly married Mia. They went
up to the Fifth Monument and held
hands.

“As long as you understand — ’’
Norman said.

“I’ll go with you,’’ she told him.
“Anywhere.”

“Well, it won’t be tomorrow. I vvas
going at it the wrong way. Imag-
ine trying to tunnel out through the
Barrier! No. I’ll have to fight fire

88

with tire. The Barrier’s the result
of natural physical laws. There’s no
secret about how it was created. But
how to destroy it — that’s another
thing entirely.”

“They say it can’t be destroyed
Some day it’ll disappear. Bill.”

“When? I’m not going to wait
for that. It may take me years, be-
cause I’ll have to learn how to ust
my weapons'. Years of study and
practice and research. But I’ve got
a purpose.”

“You can’t become an expert nu-
clear physicist overnight.”

He laughed and put his arm around
her shoulders, “I don’t expect to.
First things come 'first. First I’ll
have to learn to be a good physicist.
Ehrlich and Pasteur and Curie —
they had a drive, a motivation. So
have I, now. I know what I want.
I want out.”

“Bill, if you should tail — ”

“I expect to, at first. But in the
end I won’t fail. I know what I
want. Out!”

She moved closer to him, and the\
were silent, looking down at the
quiet, familiar friendliness of the
city. I can stand it for a while, Nor-
man thought. Especially with Mia.
Now that the psychologist’s got rid
of my trouble, I can settle doivn to
work.

Above them the rippling, soft
light beat out from the great globe
atop the Monument.

“Mia—”

“Yes?”

“I know what I want now."

“But he doesn’t know,” Fleming
said.

ASTOUNDING SCIBNCE-F I CT lO .\

“That’s all right,’’ Nehral said
cheerfully. “He never really knew
what his problem was. You found
the answer. Not the one he want-
ed, but the best one. Displacement,
diversion, sublimation — the name
doesn’t matter. It was the same
treatment, basically, as turning sadis-
tic tendencies into channels of bene-
ficial surgery. We’ve given Norman
his comproihise. He still doesn’t
know what he’s looking for, but he’s
been hypnotized into believing that
he can find it outside the city. Put
food on top of a wall, out of reach
of a starving man, and you’ll get a
neurosis. But if you give the man
materials for building a ladder, his
energy will be deflected into a pro-
ductive channel. Norman will spend
all his life in research, and probably
make some valuable discoveries. He’s
sane again. He’s under the preven-
tive hypnosis.- And he’ll die think-
ing there’s a way out.’’

“Through the Barrier? There
isn’t.’’

“Of course there isn’t. But Nor-
man could accept the hypnotic sug-
gestion that there was a way, if only
he could find it. We’ve given him
the materials to build his ladder.
He’ll fail and fail, but he’ll never
really get discouraged. He’s looking
for truth. We’ve toldjiim he can

find truth outside the Barrier, and
that he can find a way out. He’s
happy now. He’s stopped rocking
the lifeboat.”

“Truth . . Fleming said, and
then, “Nehral — I’ve been wonder-
ing.”

“What?”

“Is there a Barrier?”

Nehral said, “But the city’s sur-
vived! Nothing from outside has
ever come through the Barrier — ”
“Suppose there isn’t a Barrier,”
Fleming said. “How would the city
look from outside? Like a ... a
furnace, perhaps. It’s uninhabitable.
We can’t conceive of the real city,
ally more than the hypnotized citi-
zens can. Would you walk into a
furnace ? Nehral, perhaps the city’s
its own Barrier.”

“But we sense the Barrier. The
citizens see the Barrier—”

“Do they? Do — we? Or is that
part of the hypnosis too, a part we
don’t know about? Nehral — I don’t
know. There may be a Barrier, and
it may disappear when its half-time
is run. But suppose we just think
there’s a Barrier ?”

“But — ” Nehral said, and stopped.
“That would meafi — Norman might
find a way out !”

“I wonder if that was what the
builders planned?” Fleming said.

THE END.

SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC

E. E. Smith’s long novel, “Spacehounds of IPC,” has at last appeared in
book form. The story has been almost totally unobtainable for some ten years;
in the Smith tradition, it’s a bang-up yarn. The science-fiction books are begin-
ning to appear, but this one is a 2000-copy limited edition. Fantasy Press of
Reading, Pa., published it. It’s $3.00, and if yours is order #2001, you’ll wait
another ten years.

JESTING rn.OT

89

PSEUDOSCIENCE IN NAZILAND

BY WILLY LEY

The Nariis did accomplish a- remarkable series of scientific
advances. Willy Ley explains, in part, how come. Nani research
seems to have been strictly on the shotgun technique; if you shoot
enough holes in the unknoxim, something's apt to drop in your lap.
And the Nanis tided everything — anything, no matter how zeild!

Illustrated by Tiedeman

\\'lien things get so tough that
there seems to be no way out, the
Russian embraces the vodka bottle,
the Frenchman a woman and the
American the Bible.

The German tends to resort to
magic, to some nonsensical belief
•which he tries to validate by way of
hysterics and physical force. Not
every German, of course. Not even
a majority, but it seems to me that
the percentage of people so inclined

90

is higher in Germany than in other
countries. It was the willingness of
a noticeable proportion of the Ger-
mans to rate rhetoric above research,
and intuition above knowledge, that
brought to power a political party
which was frankly and loudly anti-
intellectual. The Nazis not only
burned books they disliked, they also
classified theoretical physicists with
“Jews and Marxists.”

Small wonder the pseudoscientists

ASTOUNDING SC lUN CE -I'lC'l' 10 N

experienced a heyday under such a
regime — but it would be a mistake
to beleive that these pseudosciences
which 1 am going to describe, origi-
nated with the Nazis. They existed,
and to some extent even flourished,
before Hitler. But then they were
hemmed in by the authority of the
scientists — after Hitler had become
Fiihrer it was almost the other way
round.

When speaking about German
pseudoscience I am not thinking so
much of the usual run of astrologers,
fortune tellers, theosophers and dev-
otees to occultism. Of course there
was a theosophical society — or rather
a few branches hurling noncompli-
ments at one another — there were as-
trological magazines and presumably
astrological societies. There were
struggling clairvoyants, mostly
struggling among themselves by way
of the printed word and resulting
lawsuits — I won’t judge, but I should
think that they should have known
the outcome — and there was an
occultistic magazine vainly trying to
make peace and “advance the cause.”

Representatives of all these groups
existed in Germany before World
War I and began to flourish during
World War I. They kept flourish-
ing during the inflationary period,
received a slight setback during the
few years of mild prosperity in the
Twenties, and flourished again dur-
ing the years leading up to Hitler.
Under Hitler they did not do so
well and some groups were even out-
lawed. If my information is correct,
the astrologers found themselves
among the outlawed groups, al-
though everybody inside Germany

r.SEUDOSCIENCE IN NAZILAND

as well as outside knew that Hitler
and Himmler had a personal astrol-
oger, reportedly a man whose name
happened to be Fiihrer, a Dr. W.
Fiihrer who also was “Plenipoten-
tiary for Mathematics, Astronomy
and Physics.”

The pseudosciences I have in mind
are not these internationally distrib-
uted permanent fads, but some which
originated in Germany and, while not
completely unknown elsewhere, had
a special appeal to Germans, in about
the same sense in which it might be
said that the pyramidologists are a
British prerogative.

Much of their appeal must have
been based on semantic connota-
tions ; it is difficult even to translate
the names of these “sciences”
properly.

The most important of them were
Pendelforschung — Pendulum Re-
search, Hohlweltlehre — Hollow
Earth Doctrine, and Welteislehre —
usually abbreviated as WEL, trans-
latable approximately as World Ice
Doctrine. But before devoting any
space to these more outstanding
“achievements” I have to clean up
a few minor but not less surprising
matters.

In the days before the Nazis be-
came important the term “Arioso-
phy” could be seen occasionally in
some newspapers. Then, one day,
there was a small ad, announcing a
lecture on Ariosophy by a man
whose name I forget. It was stated
that he was a disciple of the founder
of Ariosophy, Dr. Jdrg Lanz von
Liebenfels. It was also stated that

91

pi'iests would not be admitted to the
lecture.

The lecturer, who tried hard to
look like'AlbrechtDiirer, the famous
but long-dead German painter, began
his lecture with the statement that
there were several human races but
that skin color is not the most im-
portant criterion for distinguishing
the races. Then he launched into an
explanation of the hidden impor-
tance of language, saying that fig-
ures of speech contain deep truths
which,. in everyday usage, are usu^
ally overlooked. People say, for
example, “I can’t stand that man’s
smell” — remember, the lecture was
in German, where that figure of
speech is used to express personal
dislike for somebody, a dislike lack-
ing specific rational reasons — well,
that just indicates the otherwise for-
gotten fact that the various races
have different smells, in short it ex-
presses revulsion at the other man’s
race.

By that time the lecture had got
around to the word -Man — in Ger-
man Mensch — and he jwinted out
that there was a rare word manschen
which means to mix — soiu.ething un-
savory — and with a long jump from
linguistics into the Bible manschen
and Mcnscli were connected. Hu-
manity, it turned out, was the result
of a — forbidden — mixture of angels
and animals. Each person has a small
percentage of angel and a large per-
centage of animal. The races indi-
cate roughly what the percentages
are, a “true race” consists of indi-
viduals of about the same percentage
which seek each other out. Obvi-
ously any small community is apt to

62

harbor individuals of about the same
“race” ; pure Aryans, like, for exam-
ple, the inhabitants of mountain vil-
lages in Norway, may be as^high as
one per cent angel.

You can easily see how and where
such dream-reasoning fitted into the
Nzai philosophy; to my surprise no
Party Group or Nazi community
ever erected a statue in honor of Dr.
Jdrg Lanz von Liebenfels — whose
real name may have been Ignaz
Donnerwetter.

The Ariosophers could at least
quote a few Biblical passages in sup-
port of their ideas — they stated that
their founder had been a Catholic
priest before “he saw the light.” The
next group was literally founded
upon a novel. That group which 1
think called itself W ahrheitsgesell-
scliaft — Society for Truth — and.
which was more or less localized in
Berlin, devoted its spare time look-
ing for Vril, Yes, their convictions
were founded upon Bulwer-Lytton’s
“The Coming Race.” They knew
that the book was fiction, Bulwer-
Lytton had used that device in order
to be able to tell the truth about
this “power.” The subterranean hu-
manity was nonsense, Vril was not.
Possibly it had enabled the British,
who kept it as a State secret, to
amass their colonial empire. Surel\-
the Romans had had it, inclosed in
small metal balls, which guarded
their homes and were referred to a.<
lares. For reasons which I failed to
penetrate, the secret of Vril could be
found by contemplating the struc-
ture of an apple, sliced in halves.

No, I am not joking, that is what
I was told w'ith great solemnity and

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

secrecy. Such a group actually ex-
isted, they even got out the first» issue
of a magazine which was to proclaim
their credo. (I wish I had kept some
of these things; but I had enough
hooks to smuggle out as it was.)

And now we are ready for
C rndelforschutig.

As translated above, the word
means Pendulum Research, which
sounds like a serious scientific occu-
pation — say a branch of mechanics.
What it meant Avas this: if you sus-
])ended a piece of gold, say a plain
wedding ring, from a thread of pure
silk, the ]>endulum would reveal “se-
crets.” To work it you placed both
elbows on the table and placed the

PSEUDOSCIENCE IN NAZILAND

fingertips of your two hands to-
gether, fingers slightly spread apart.
The silk thread was put between the
tips of the middle fingers and then
an object, say a photograph, was
placed upside down' under the sus-
pended ring. After a little while the
pendulum would describe a figure,
either a circle or an ellipse. The
circle was male, the ellipse female.
The figure corresponded to the sex
of the person on the picture.

If it didn’t, the picture either
showed a very masculine woman or
a very feminine man. The method
could be used to establish whether
two people who wanted to get mar-
ried, would harmonize, whether em-

•3

ployer and employee would get along
and a thousand other things. I was
informed, for example, why my
wrist watch did not want to go. It
was “male” too. 1 .ater, an uninitiated
watchmaker also found a bent shaft.

For further development see the
report by Gerard P. Kuiper on “Ger-
man Astronomy During the War,”
pul)lished in Popular Astroitomv.
Vol. LI V, No. 6, June, 1946:

Otlicr groups (of the German navy)
including officers of flag rank, supported
Pendelforsclnmg : a large map of the At-
lantic was spread out horizontally, with
a onc-inch toy battleship as test object.
A i>cndulum, consisting of a cube of metal
about one cubic centimeter and a short
string, was swung above the battleship.
If the )K-ndulum reacted, it proved the
presence of a true battleship at that loca-
tion.

The // oltkuelilclirc — Flollow Earth
Doctrine — was invented, as far as I
was ,Tnle to find out, in about 1920.
Its main tenet was : the Earth is real,
everything else is an optical illusion.
The Earth was a spherical bubble,
of the same dimensions which “or-
thodox geography” ascribes to it, in
an infinity of solid rock. Humanity
lived on the inside of that bubble
which was precisely like an “ortho-
dox globe,” but seen from the inside.
Three bodies moved near the center
of that empty bubble, the Sun, the
Moon, and the “phantom Universe,”
a dark-blue sphere with little lights
on it, mistaken for the fixed stars.
Night was caused by the phantom
Universe obscuring the Sun for a
part ot the Earth ; eclipses by the
shadow of the phantom Universe
falling upon the Moon.

The “wrong impression” which we
have about the Universe is caused

iSA

by the mistake of thinking that light
rays are straight. All rays are al-
ways curved, their radius of curva-
ture being on the order of of the
Earth’s radius. Because of the curved
rays we see distorted projections of
things which result in the “astro-
nomical universe” because we always
straightened the light rays out. More,
distortions result from the fact that
violet rays have a stronger curvature
than red rays.

And now a direct quote — from
memory — from the final.chapter of
the treatise I saw : “Old folk talcs
often speak of the time when God
still walked on Earth. We know that
the Earth-Universe expands, even
Einstein admits that. What is more
logical then, than to take the old folk
tales at face value and assume that
they refer to a time when the Earth-
Universe was smaller and the dis-
tance from the central luminosities to
the surface less than it is now ?”

For further developments here is
an excerpt from Gerard P. Kuiper’s
report :

Certain German naval circles believed in
the Hohlwelttheorie. .They considered it
helpful to locate the British fleet, be-
cause the curvature of tlie Earth would
not obstruct observation. Visual r.iys
were not suitable because of refraction;
but infrared rays had less refraction.
Accordingly a party of about ten men un-
der the scientific leadership of Dr. Heinz
Fischer, an infrared expert, was sent out
from Berlin to the isle of Rugen to
photograph the British fleet with infra-
red equipment at an upward angle of
some forty-five degrees.

The remaining phenomenon of
German pseudoscience, the Wclteis-
lehre or WEL is in many respects

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

the most remarkable. It had literally
millions of fanatical supporters who
would interrupt educational meetings
with concerted yelling, “Out With
Astronomical Orthodoxy, Give Us
Horbiger,” it owned and maintained
an Information Bureau in Vienna, it
maintained a monthly magazine —
The Key to World Events — of large
circulation, it produces three or four
“scientific,” close to forty “popular”
books and several dozen throw-away
pamphlets. The leaders of the WEL
wrote openly threatening letters ; I
once saw one — not addressed to me
— in which the director of a govern-
ment institute was told “once we
have won, you and your kind will go
begging.” And the founder of it all,
Hanns Horbiger, with whom I was
in correspondence about rockets for
some time, bared the WEL’s chief
doctrine once in a letter in which he
wrote: “either you believe me and
learn, or you must be treated as an
enemy.” And I know of a minor
businessman who hired help only if
the prospective employee, to use his
own words, “had assured him that
he or she felt friendly about the
World Ice.”

It was in 1913 that one Philipp
Fauth, school teacher and amateur
astronomer — with some reputation
as a Moon specialist — published a
book of about eight hundred pages,
about the size and weight of one
volume of the Britannica. It was
entitled Horbiger’s Glazial-Kos-
mogonie. Much of it had actually
been written by Horbiger, an Aus-
trian mining engineer who at first
said very politely that he had tried
to solve the riddles of the Universe,

PSEUDOSCIENCE IN NAZILAND

especially the formation of planets,
geological history and meteorology
with engineering principles. Later
on he claimed that recognition had
been denied him because he was an
engineer and not an astronomical
theorist. I may add 'that both his
publications and his letters revealed
clearly that he was not even a good
engineer.

The outbreak of World War I
killed interest in this first publication
which was later referred to as the
Main Work. After the first World
War Hanns Horbiger, equipped with
a long white beard and a handwrit-
ing which was calculated to impress
amateur graphologers, appeared on
the scene like a political party, with
leaflets and posters, publicity machin-
ery and everything. If anybody
doubted him he shouted : “Instead of
trusting me you trust equations !
How long will you need to learn that
mathematics is valueless and decep-
tive?” The “practical engineer”
Horbiger never calculated anything,
it was his loudest and proudest claim.

One of his pupils, an architect,
told aw'ed and large audiences that
Hdrbiger’s information about the
tnie state of the Universe was based
entirely on intuition. As a boy, he
said, the Master had a small tele-
scope with which he looked at the
Moon. Then, suddenly, he realized
that what he saw was ice, cold ice,
the whole MoOn was made of ice.
He glanced at blinding Venus which
was still in the sky; Venus too was
cold and brilliant ice. Years later,
Horbiger was asleep, dreaming about
astronomy. He saw the Earth as a
pendulum suspended from a lumi-

95

nous thread and saw it swing, in
longer and longer swings. It swung
to Jupiter, and to Saturn and be-
yond, but when it swung to three
times the distance of Neptune the
string broke. Hdrbiger awakened
and realized that the Sun’s attraction
stops at that distance.

When I asked Hdrbiger by mail
whether these claims were true, he
replied modestly saying, “Yes, that
way the truth was revealed to me,
but the clue factor was when, as a
young engineer, I saw molten iron
run over waterlogged earth with
patches of snow on it and observed
that the wet lumps of soil exploded
with a delay and with great violence.”

What did Hdrbiger actually say r
Here is his tale :

Many millions of years ago there
existed in the constellation Columba
a super giant^sun, millions of times
as large and heavy as our sun. Near
that sun there was a gigantic planet,
many times as heavy as Jupiter, cov-
ered by layers of ice hundreds of
miles thick and water-logged all
through.' This planet fell into its
sun and settled at a depth corre-
sponding to its specific gravity. Its
water and ice was changed into
super-heated steam, but nothing hap-
pened for more millions of years.
Then the equilibrium was disturbed
for some reason, and the super-

08

ASTOUNDING SCIRNCE-FICT rO?'

heated steam blew the old planet and
the layers of sun material above it
into space, as a whirling mass. This
was the birth of our sun and our
solar system. Much of the original
planet mass had been metal dxides,
the heat released the oxygen and the
oxygen combined with the thin at-
mosphere of hydrogen which fills all
space into water which then froze.

Through many successive stages
our solar system evolved, with more
than thirty planets. Surrounding the
system at about right angles there is
a mighty ring of blocks of cosruic
ice, hovering a little beyond three
times the distance of Neptune. It is
this ring of ice blocks which astron-
omers believe to be the Milky Way
Ijecause a few normal stars like our
sun shine through the ice ring. Ac-,
tually the Milky Way has never been
and will never be resolved in a tele-
scope ; photographs claiming to show
the individual stars of the Milky
Way are fakes. Because of the re-
sistance of the hydrogen in space a
number of these ice blocks is suffi-
ciently retarded to be caught in the
Sun’s gravitational field and finally
to fall into the Sun. Each such ice
block impact causes a sunspot — even
astronomers admit that the sunspots
are cooler than their surroundings —
and the sunspots have an eleven-year
cycle because of Jupiter who needs
the same time to circle the Sun.

Of planets there are two types, the
Heliodes or inner planets, mostly
metal and metal compounds, and the
Neptodes or outer planets, consist-
ing almost entirely of ice. Hence
their low specific gravity, which is

f.SEUDOSCIENCE IN NAZILAND

about -that of ice.* If an ice block
on its way to the Sun happens to hit
Earth, we get a devastating hail-
storm, as proved by the fact that
hailstorms often move in straight
lines. But the ice block which fell
into the Sun does not stay there, it
evaporates and is blown out through
the funnel of the sunspot as a jet^of
hot- water vapor which freezes in
space and forms the Fine Ice. Both
Mercury and Venus, being so dose
ot the Sun, are completely covered
with it. W’hen it hits Earth, the Fine
Ice produces those very high cirrus
clouds, in fact the diameter of Earth
would grow by about six inches
every year because of Fine Ice if
water did not disappear in the
Earth’s interior at the .same rate.

Earth’s position is unique, not only
because of that lucky balance. ■* If it
were closer to the Sun, it would be
covered by Fine Ice like Venus. If
it were farther out, it would be hit
more often by ice’blocks and be cov-
ered by an ice ocean several miles
deep like Mars. The continents of
Mars are merely permanent ice con-
tinents, the canals are cracks in the
ice. Our Moon is covered with ice
like Mars, being originally an inde-
pendent planet which has been cap-
tured. Because of the resistance of
the hydrogen in space, the Moon will
ultimately crash on Earth ; that will
be the end of all life. Several smaller
moons preceded our Moon, fortu-
nately they were too small to kill all

* I asked Horbiger alx>ut Saturn whose aver-
age density is less than that of water. Hor-
biger replied that “orthodox astronomers” would
probably say that they don’t know the height
of the atmosphere, but that he would explain
later why Saturn is in a gravitational shadow.

»7

life; their masses formed what we
now call geological deposits.

The most recent Moon cataclysm
was witnessed by primitive Man ; the
Norse legends about Gotterdamme-
rung and the apocalyptic visions rep-
resent attempts to describe this event.
They were written after the present
moon had been captured — its capture
caused Atlantis to sink — and the
people who wrote them knew that
the experience of the past was- also a
prophecy of the future.

To pick flaws in this theory is
about as easy — and as pleasant — as
gathering Jafianese beetles from an
infested flowerbed. At first German
scientists amused themselves by com-
piling long lists of Horbigerian im-
possibilities. But they grew serious
and even alarmed when the VVEL
suddenly assumed the proportions of
a ]iowerful popular movement in
pseudo-intellectual circles. And after
Hitler had come to power, the WEL
adherents declared threateningly that
now everybody MUST believe Hor-
biger, or else. “Our Nordic ances-
tors grew strong in ice and snow ;
belief in the World Ice is conse-
quently the natural heritage of Nor-
dic Man.” “Just as it needed a child

THE

of Austrian culture — Hitler ! — lo
put the Jewish politicians in their
place, so it needed an Austrian to
cleanse the world of Jewish science.”
“The Fiihrer, by his very life, has
proved how much a so-called ‘ama-
teur’ can be superior to self-styled
professionals; it needed another
‘amateur’ to give us complete under-
standing of the universe.”

Maybe Hitler did not like the term
“amateur,” at any event the WEI .
people did not find the going as ca.sy
as they had hoped. The Propaganda
Ministry even stated once that “one
can . be a good National Socialist
without believing in the WEL.” The
astronomer Robert Henseling con-
tinued to struggle against the WEI.,
universities continued to teach “or-
thodox astronomy,” but the WEL
remained popular to the bitter end.
The WEL claimed that its princii)lcs
permitted reliable “general” — as dis-
tinct from local — weather forecasts
for months and even years in ad-
vance. Their organization did pub-
lish such forecasts, and a good num-
ber of young meteorologists toyed
with the W’orld Ice. But they' failed
to foresee that winter which broke
Hitler’s back on the Russian plains.

END.

SLAN!

A. E. van Vogt’s most famous novel, “Sian” !, is at last available in book
form. If you read it in Astounding, you’ll want the hard-cover book form; if
you missed it in Astounding, you’ve finally got a chance to get it. It’s available
at or through book stores or from Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. But
don't write us for it. It’s $2.50.

Almost simultaneously, Hadley Publishing Company, 271 Doyle Avc., Provi-
dence 6, R. I., has brought out another one of van Vogt’s top novels — “The
Weapon Makers.” The same comments as above apply to this one, with the
following addition ; Hadley, a smaller publishing house, has turned out a limited
edition — and the limited isn’t in quotes. This one’s $3.00.

as

ASTOUNDINCJ S C IRNrE-HIOT I ON

BY CHAN DAVIS

Illustrated by Orban

THE

lOURNEY AND THE GOAL

The journey from Titan to Earth was
Jong and hard anyway — but the colonists
xcere forbidden to make it. Two, defying
all laxes tried it — and found that there
arc two Icinds of laws: Man’s xeliich can
be broken, and Nature’ s~xchich can’t.

Jack and Evlyn met after work to
go up together to the Observatory.

This trip was a regular thing for
them, partly a habit, like any ritual,
init mostly a holy pilgrimage. Jack
had been making it ever since the
time, fifteen years before, when his
father had first told him of the many
other worlds far in space outside
their own. The tales had wakened
his imagination, and his father, hard
put to it by some of the boy’s ques-

THB JOCRNEV .V.VD THE GO.M.

tions, had one day answered Jack’s
pleas and taken him to the “Sky
lioom.” There was a man named
Creeden at the Observatory who had
been willing and able to answer his
questions, and — there had been the
tiny, inconceivably distant stars. Mr.
Creeden had shown him the planets
through the telescope, and had smiled
at the rush of questions which each
one brought forth. Eagerly, Jack
had looked and listened, wishing si-

A.ST 99

leiitly that it was possible for him to
go himself to all these strange worlds,
to see himself all these incredible
things of which he was told.

The longing had lasted. Even when
Jack had had to start work in the
mines, his friendship and almost ap-
prenticeship to Mr. Creeden had con-
tinued. He had studied ; slowly, be-
cause there was so much he did not
know, and with difficulty, because at
first he had patience only for the
stars themselves and not for the
seemingly unrelated subjects which
Mr. Creeden insisted he must also
know. Creeden had told hjm that in
the place from which he had come
Jack would have been able to spend
all his time in studying instead of '
working in the mines, and neither
would his teachers have had other
duties beside education. Jack came
to hate, as Creeden did, the dictator,
Montiel, who denied them all this.
The hate, like the curiosity, was part
of Jack’s longing, but always strong-
est was the dream of some day cross-
ing space.

And then he had met Evlyn Win-
ters and told her of his longing, and
she had understood it, she had shared
it : and it had become, no longer Jack
Rowell’s dream, but the dream of
Jack and Evlyn. And when, later,
they had gazed upw'ard at the great,
starred sky of night and said, like
many more before them, “We shall
live together always,’’ they had
thought, not of a life in this place
that was their birthplace and their
home, but of a life there, up there,
of a new home on one of the distant,
shining worlds of the sky.

They planned, and made a kind of

joke out of working great detail into
the plans, just as if there was hope
that they might be fulfilled. Yet the
serious core of the thing was always
there; repeatedly they were shocked
by the enduring intensity of it, by
the unabating lure of the impossible.

Inevitably, their thoughts turned
finally to one in particular of the
planets they saw. For they knew
that only there could they breathe
the native air — stride barefoot the
living soil — look at the stars direct,
without inevitable intervening panes
of artificial glass. Anywhere else
they must dwell always within pro-
tecting metal domes, air-tight, insu-
lated, and sterile, and eat none but
synthetic foods ; they must, in short,
live as they were living here, on the
planet Titan. Oh, it was natural
that Jack and Evlyn should have
turned to that one particular planet ;
the home of their ancestors — Earth.

Creeden was sitting before the
calculator when Jack and Evlyn got
there. He glanced up as they en-
tered.

“Hello, Tony,” .said Jack, and
“Hello, Mr. Creeden,” said Evlyn.

“Come on in,” Creeden responded,
strangely without his usual cheer,
and punched a few more keys. “You
can go out to the observatory and
wait, if you want to ; I have to finish
the landing trajectory for the FB-
916 .”

“When’s she due in ?”

“About five hours, I think. Tell
you when I’m through.” This time
he hadn’t even looked up ; Jack and
Evlyn didn’t bother him further.

The observatory was kept evacu-

100

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

lied, like those of Luna. The inside
of the telescope had to be evacuated
anyway, exposed as it must be to the
emptiness that is where Titan’s at-
mosphere would be if Titan had an
atmosphere. And, that being the case,
all parts of the scope proper had to
be open to empty space too, to avoid
sharp temperature dififerentials that
could ruin the optical jjroperties or
even crack the mirror. Temperature
was still a problem. During the
Titanian day the scope had to be
carefully shaded, lest the sun’s radi-
ant heat warm it unevenly.

Jack and Evlyn put on two of the
spacesuits that were stacked beside
the air lock, then stepped through
into blackness. Jack groped, pressed
a stud l)eside the door — and stars
flowed brilliantly across the ceiling.
Jack fejt again the old wonder. He
knew that really nothing had hap-
])ened, the roof had merely slid back
into the low wall. But it seemed as
if the whole universe of light had
been poured into the room with them.

The sun was not up, it had not
Ijeen for fifteen “days” now. If it
had been, they would not be here
like this; the one time Jack had
looked at the sun he had had to close
his eyes against the demonic bright-
ness of it. The sun was not up, but
Saturn loomed low over the eastern
horizon, in the position it always
occupied. It seemed to fill half the
sky with its soft-limned streaks of
pastel red and blue. To Jack’s eyes,
used to the dimness of a planet
where power was at a premium, it
looked garish even beside the un-
restrained, overflowing whiteness of
the stars. Old faithful Saturn, for-

ever hogging Titan’s sky. And some-
where out there, Earth modest among
the thousand stars, too dim to find
unless you knew its position in ad-
vance, too distant for you to distin-
guish its vague disk or crescent ; but
certainly there, somewhere. Some-
where, too, was the ship which had
left the Mother World ^uch a short
time before.

They looked for a long minute,
then turned back toward the air lock.
Jack looked back once, and felt pity
for his friends in the mine who had
never seen the sky.

Just inside the door they, stopped.
Creeden had just extracted from the
machine a centimeter-wide strip,
whose twin was now being fed to the
calculator. Silently, invisibly, the
machine calculated a course for a
spaceship thousands of miles away.

Creeden stood, and crossed the
room to file the strip. Jack had long
since grown used to the Earthman’s
short stature — not even two meters
— but he could see it still startled
Evlyn. And to think that on Earth
Creeden would be considered tall!

Ordinarily Crebden would have put
on a spacesuit and gone with them
back to the scope, or else taken them
up to the photography room. He did
neither. Instead, he motioned them
to take ofif their suits and sit down
in the weblike, fragile-looking metal
chairs beside his desk. When they
had done so, he gave an odd smile
and said abruptly, “Montiel won’t
let you go to Earth, you know.”

Jack and Evlyn looked dumbly at
each other ; they had never told any-
one of their dream.

rllE .TOUKNEY .\ND THE GOAL

101

“Oh, I know you’ve been thinking
about it,” Creeden went on with calm
understatement. “I’ve overheard
some of the things you’ve said, and
I knew long ago that Jack had some-
thing like that in the back of his
mind. But you can’t do it.”

“We know that,” said Evlyn.

“Do you know why?”

“Yes,” answered Jack. “Montiel
knows that if he allows emigration
he may not have enough men left to
run his mines, because no new
colonists are coming here any more.”
“There’s a story behind that, too.
You may not know the whole thing,
so I’d better tell it from the begin-
ning.” And he told how, long be-
fore, when man was first extending
his rule from Earth to the other
planets of the system, the World
State had broken down into rival
factions, just as Seventeenth Cen-
tury English companies had com-
peted with each other in the develop-
ment of what was then the New
World. But this time the schisms
had lasted. The 'Asian Common-
wealth had established its rule over
half of Mars, most^of the remainder
going finally to the European Union.
America — a nation actually compris-
ing only about half of the continent
of that name — had had to be con-
tented with a disappointingly barren
Venus, plus a small share of Luna;
so, impatient for further conquest,
it had reached for the outer planets.

The asteroids, surprisingly enough,
proved to be valuable as refrigera-
tors — large-scale sources of liquid
oxygen and other low-boiling liquids.
Encouraged, America had struck
outward again. The other nations

102

had not followed just then, for,
having temporarily neglected rock-
etry research in the all-out exploita-
tion of their new colonies, they had
no ships capable of making the
Jupiter trip at opposition. When
Titan was finally colonized, it was
by Americans, with Jack’s and
Evljm’s grandparents among them.
The new world had sent back pure,
titanium, a rarity on Earth, and a
scarce isotope of mercury; and it
had prospered. , .

Creeden broke off the narrative as
the calculator emitted a series of
sharp clicks, indicating that the -tape
was finished. He went over, took it
out, and inserted it in the coder
which he had previously connected
to the microwave transmitter. The
co-ordinates of the landing trajec-
tory would now automatically be
beamed from the antenna outside
the dome to the incoming spaceship.
Creeden sat down again and pro-
ceeded.

Titan’s trade had been limited to
America, but it had not been many
years before the Titanians realized
that the other nations, too, were
good markets for their products.
They had rebelled, under Montiel’s
father; America had made little ef-
fort to keep them subject, and they
had set up their own government,
like several other planet-colonies l>e-
f ore them ; Montiel’s father had be-
come the first dictator, though he
had not been called that at first.
Again Titan prospered — until dis-
aster struck.

The mercury isotope which had
been their most profitable product
was obtained on Earth as the end

A.STOUNDIXG SCIENCE-FICTION

product of a radioactive disintegra-
tion series. It could be manufac-
tured cheaply and simply in a small
pile, wherever it was needed. Titan’s
mercury became valueless. The
young nation was reduced to export-
ing titanium — a bulky substance,
therefore wasteful of rocket fuel.
They were forced to live a Spartan
life, using a minimum of food,
power, and even air. Immigration
abruptly stopped, and, in compensa-
tion, those already present were for-
bidden to leave. The dictatorship
was established and the dictators
blamed all the unpleasant economies
on Earth’s imagined effort to starve
the independent state into submis-
sion.

Here Jack interrupted the history
with a thought which had been
bothering him for the past few
minutes: “Say, Tony, if you knew
all along about our wanting to return
to Earth” — he said “return” uncon-
sciously — “why didn’t you ever say
anything about it before?”

“There’s a reason for my bringing
it up just now,” Creeden smiled ; and
the way he jjhrased his answer
brought Jack the first glimmerings
of a wild hope. “You’ll see what 1
mean in just a minute. Let me go
on.”

“You may not know that we’re in
a worse position now than we ever
were before. We have nothing to
offer but titanium. Well, that’s a
pretty common element everywhere,
the only difficulty lies in extracting
it from Martian and Earthian ores.
Recently there’s been work done on
improved methods of extraction.

THE JOURNEY .\ND THE GOAL

Pretty promising work. You see
where that leaves us.

“Montiel won’t face the possibility
that Titan may have to become a
dead world. He’s trying to keep
down the inner planets’ demand for
new sources of titanium by increas-
ing our output. That’s why you’re
working longer hours than your
parents did ; that’s why I'm working
in the mines part time now ; that’s
also why Montiel’s kee])ing news
of the danger from the people. He
doesn’t want anyone to consider
leaving now.”

“Is anyone considering leaving?”
asked Jack.

“Yes.”

“Yourself among them.”

“That’s right,” Creeden admitted.

“Then we can go?”

“Slow down there, slow down,”
smiled Creeden. Then he added,
with it seemed some reluctance,
“Maybe you can — Do you want to
gor

Jack, surprised at his own calm-
ness, said simply, “Yes, we do.’’

“I tell you. I may have to give
that ship a cour.se correction in as
little as an hour; but that gives me
time to take you down to see some
friends of mine. They’re also —
shall we say, a little discontented
with the way tilings are going.

“I guess you realize we don’t like
the idea of Montiel’s guards finding
us out. I wouldn’t be telling you
all this if I wasn’t pretty sure you’d
want to help us. How about it ?”

Evlyn assented immediately, but
Jack pondered. There had been
anticlimax, both in Creeden’s last
w'ords and in his tone. Jack per-

108

sistecl, “Is there any chance of our
going to Earth ?”

“Oh, you can — ’’ Creeden checked
whatever he had started to say.
“Maybe. Yes, there’s a chance.”
He broke the ambiguous silence by
starting toward the door. Jack and
Evlyn followed.

Creeden was slightly out of breath
when the three of them reached
Mildred Robertson’s home. She
lived on the ground level, at the ex-
treme outer edge of the dome. It
had been a long walk down that dim,
metal-sheathed corridor, and no one
raised under Earth’s terrific surface
gravity, as Creeden was, can ever
learn the effortless five-meter stride
of the native Titanian. Nor was the
dome’s low air pressure helpful to
one accustomed to the rich, dense at-
mosphere of Earth. Jack and Evlyn
had tried to hold themselves back
for the sake of the little Earthman,
but habit is strong. A man on a
bicycle has a hard time holding him-
self to a pedestrian’s pace.

Creeden dropped his hand to the
small photocell beside the door and
.shut off the light to it for a second.
Removing his hand, then replacing
it several times more, he traced a
rapid combination. A low buzzing
told them someone was covering the
corresponding photocell inside; the
door swung open.

“Well, hello, Tony,” said the wo-
man who stood before them, “come
in, come in, we’ve been waiting for
you. Is this — ?”

Creeden said, “Mildred Robertson
— Jack Rowell and Evlyn Winters,”

“I’m glad to know you,” she said,
almost too heartily, and ushered
them to seats opposite the one she
then took, “Glad to know you. Mr.
Rowell and Miss Winters, this is
Art Rand.” She indicated a tired-
looking fat man sitting in the dark-
ness of a corner. Jack and Evlyn
.said hello. Art Rand grunted.

“I think,” said Tony Creeden to
Mildred Robertson, “we’d better be-
gin by telling these two something
about our organization.” Pie
stopped as she bent uix>n him an
almost hostile look; when he went
on, it was that look which he an-
swered. “We’ve got plenty of time,
Mildred. Even I don’t have to
leave for nearly an hour. And you
remember what we agreed before.”
Art Rand nodded.

Creeden began, “As an organiza-
tion, we’re not much. You’d be sur-
prised how effective Montiel’s
guards are. We can’t go out and
recruit chance acquaintances ; the
mere attempt could be suicide, you
know\ We have to be dead sure a
person’s with us before we can give
even a reasonably broad hint of the
organization’s existence.

“And occasionally one of us gets
caught. There haVe been two so far.
That danger’s alw'ays there, and it
means we have to organize on the
cell-system, so that each member
knows only a few of the other mem-
bers. Once I spent about fifty days
trying to sound out a friend of mine,
wondering whether I dared ask him
to join. In the end I decided not to.
It turned out, much later, that he
had already been a member! You
see, even though I’m one of the lead-

104

ASTOUNDING .SCIKNCE-FICTION

ers 1 still don’t know more than a
fraction of our men.

“Yes,” he answered Evlyn’s un-
spoken comment, “we three, Rand,
Robertson, and myself, ar» the lead-
ers. Each of us knows roughly a
third of the cell captains, and a scat-
tered few of the members of the
cells.”

Evlyn commented vocally on this.
“Why do you bring us here? Why
didn’t you just ask us to join cells?”

Mildred Robertson answered : “In
the first place, Tony has told us we
could trust you absolutely. And you
tw’o are more important than you
realize — ” She stopped, under the
combined frowms of Rand and Cree-
den.

Jade, mystified though he was by
the by-play, decided to take a shot in
the dark. Hoping it was not all wish-
ful thinking, he finished the sentence
for her : “Because your organization
is working for a return to Earth, and
you want us two to go, soon.”

Evlyn looked up at him sharply,
and he could not read her expres-
sion. Mildred Robertson’s face
spelled, plainly enough, eager assent •
but again she was restrained from
'peaking.

Creeden said, “You may have no-
ticed that this room is on the very
outside of the dome. Mildred got it
for that very reason. It’s not only
on the otitside, it’s on the eastern
face, the side toward the spaceport.
From that room in back of Mildred,
there’s a little passage through the
inner shells, through the insulation,
to the outer shell. At the end of the
passage, there is a ring of explosive

XUK JOrUNEV .\XD THE GOAL

lithium capsules set into the outer
shell ; there’s a welding set to repair
the outer shell should we ever . . .
er . . . make a breach in it ; and there
are several spacesuits. Everything’s
set up for someone to make his es-
cape from the dome, cross the two
hundred meters or so to the space-
])ort, and stow away on an outbound-
ship. We know how the stowing-
away can be accomplished; we’ve
even got hold of some acceleration
dope.”

“Am I right, Tgny?-!’ said Jack,
more diffidently this time. “Do you
W'ant us to be the first?”

“We don’t know who is going
first,” was the answer. “Why should
you ?”

Mildred Robertson asked, “Do you
want to go ?”

Jack noticed in passing thit this
was the same apparently superfluous ,
question Creeden had put before, but
both he and Evlyn answered quickly,
“Yes.” They exchanged smiles at
the accident of speaking together:
amused smiles, but very determined
smiles.

“Mildred,” Tony Creeden put in,
“don’t you want to reconsider? It’s
only fair to tell them — ” Art Rand
lifted his hand and Creeden stopped.

Mildred said to Jack and Evlyn,
“Then you shall go. The FB-916 will
leave again for Earth in . . v'hen
does it leave, Tony?”

“Between nine and ten hours, de-
pending on how fast they unload her
and load her up,” was the laconic
answer.

“Ten hours from now you’ll be on
your way.”

Amazed happiness made a blurring

105

in Jack’s eyes. He looked over at
Evlyn and again they smiled quietly
together, and the blurring became a
little harder to control. In jack’s
mind formed the old picture, him-
self, Jack Rowell, surrounded by
green, the strange green, the living
green of the far world which was his
dream’s goal. He didn’t have com-
plete mastery over the picture ; some-
times it would close the green around
him, in walls and ceiling such as he
knew here. He could abolish the
ceiling by substituting the starry
night sky. The sky of Earth’s day
he could not imagine.

106

Oh, Jack did not lose. himself in
daydreams. He heard and remem-
bered all Mildred Robertson’s in-
structions: how to don the space-
suits; how to leave the dome, cross
the plain to the spaceport, and enter
the port ; when inside, how to avoid
the tunnel which was the usual means
of reaching the spaceport; where on
the ship to stow away — she knew all
the details, even to the stowage of
the cargoes, — and n^re. He heard
and understood.

But always at the back of his mind
was the imagined sight and sound
of Earth, and the scoffing thought,

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“You don't need to keep imagining
now, Jack. This is i-eal.” -

They slept in Mildred Robert-
son’s home, in the room next to the
passage.

Jack had a dim dream in which
Creeden quarreled with Robertson
and ended by shooting at her the one
word, “Murderer !” Then he thought
it might have been more than a
dream, for he was awake and Evlyn
was calling, in the voice of a small
child, “Jack, I’m afraid.’’ She came
to him and lay weeping softly, her
head on his chest.

Much later Jack awoke again, to
hear a strange voice in the next room
saying, “ — and he told us there was
an excessive heat loss from this j^art
of Level 1 and the guards would have
to check the insulation. My cell cap-
tain told me once that if that ever
happened I should — ”

“Yes,’’ came Mildred Robertson’s
voice, sounding suddenly weary,
“you did right to let me know. M’hen
will the guards arrive ?’’

“They will start checking almost
immediately. I don’t know how long
it will take them to get here.’’

“All right. Go to Art Rand, Level
S, Number E626; tell him what
you’ve told me. Remember not to
mention it to anyone else except —
once — to your cell captain. You can
go now.

“Good work,’’ she finished.

Awkwardly, “Thank you’’ ; and
the smooth swish and thud of the
door’s closing told that the stranger
was gone.

Jack was already fully dressed, and
now he slipped into the room where

I'HE JOUKNEY AXD THE GOAL

Robertson sat, and stood before her.
She raised her head, slowly. “Vou
heard that ?’’

“Yes.”

“You know what it means?”

“Maybe.”

“It means that if yoji two stay here
you may be dead today. As far as
you’re concerned, that’s essentially
the whole story. You can take your
choice. You stay, and maybe } ou’ll
make that ship, maybe 3mu’ll be
caught. Or you can leave ; there’s
still time for you to be at work this
morning as usual, with no one the
wiser. Miss Winters?”

Jack followed her eyes; Evlyn
stood in the doorway behind liim.
“What — ?” she said sleepily.

Mildred Robertson repeated to her
the things Jack had heard. Evlyn
asked her, “What abotit you ?”

“Hm-m-m!” she chuckled mirth-
lessly. “Yes, what about me. They’re
sure to find our little passage through
the dome eventually. .Mtogether, it
may be a week before they kill me.
Probably less. Possibly 1 might get
away.”

Jack realized for the first time how
hard it would be to hide or to adopt
a disguise in the isolated and well-
policed domes of Titan. Once you
were marked by the guards, vou’d
have a hard time avoiding them. He
said nothing.

“Well, let Art and Tony and me
worry about that. What are you twp
going to do ?”

Jack was startled: he'd forgotten
the question still needed answering.
Evlyn frowned briefly. P>ut her vague
fears of a few hours before seemed

t07

to have been dispelled by this con-
crete threat. She nodded toward the
passage entrance. “Earth,” she said,
with more firmness than even Jack
felt. She looked appealingly at Jack,
who said, “Of course.”

Mildred Robertson had been sit-
ting, chin in hand, like a despondent
statue. She shook her head, roused
herself with visible effort, and led
the way into the back room they had
just left. Once she was moving, her
despair seemed to leave her, and she
resumed her energetic manner of the
night before. She led the way to the
wall which was the innermost shell
of the dome. In the wall you could
just make out the shape of a small
door. She worked a catch, the door
opened, and all three of them ducked
into the blackness of the passageway.

Around them were the plastic lay-
ers of the insulation, unseen but oc-
casionally brushed against by a hand
in passing. The narrow doors through
• which they went were entrance ways
through the successive metal shells
which incased almost the whole
dome. The normal exit was by tun-
nel, so only at the observatory was
the smooth regularity of the shells’
perfect spheroids broken — at the ob-
servatory, and here.

The last door they passed through
was carefully fitted to serve as an
air lock port. Jack could tell by the
sound as it closed behind them. That
should mean that^the next shell was
the last, so that this space they were
now in must serve as the air lock
when one left the dome into the
vacuum outside.

Robertson’s next words confirmed
his guess. “The next door,” she said,

108

“you’d better not open till you’re
ready to leave. Breathing might be-
come rather difficult. Here are your
spacesuits. You might put them on
now ; you’ll have to stay here' and as
you’ve noticed it’s rather cold.” That
very distinct understatement some-
how gave away the fact that her cas-
ual tone was assumed. Whatever else
she was, she was not calm.

She finished, “If the guards don't
come, I’ll be in again before you —
go. But the guards might come. If
you hear someone inside who fum-
bles around with the catch on the
door and doesn’t open it right away
— then it’s the guards, not me; get
out.” She was by now quite thor-
oughly chilled, and thoroughly glad
to leave.

Jack 'and Evlyn groped their way
into spacesuits, closing face plates
and chest flaps but leaving their air
masks open. Already invisible to each
other, they were now partially in-
audible ; the porous air masks would
deaden any sound to a whisper.

They scooped up two little piles of
insulation, sat down on opposite
sides of the passage, and waited for
their eyes to become accustomed to
the darkness. This, their eyes would
not do, for here there was no light.
Jack’s eyes tricked him, scrawled
meaningless red splotches on the
blank darkness ; that was all.

After a while it occurred to them
to turn on their communicator sets.

Evlyn said, “I am. afraid. Jack.”

Jack couldn’t answer; he was si-
lenced by an abrupt suspicion of her.
Suspicion that she would not go
through with this, that she had never
really shared the dream.

A.STOUNpiNQ SClENCK KirTION

She went on, "rm afraid, and last
night I thought wc shouldn’t try to
go. But then I saw that staying here
wouldn’t be — possible. Not any more.
1? was jjossible before, but not now
ihat we’ve been offered a chance to
leave.”

Anything jack could have said
would have been inadequate.

They sat there listening to the
sound of their own breathing, and
to a surrounding silence like that of
outer space.

“Listen !” said Evlyn, and moinen-
tarliy cracked her face plate. “Yes,
1 thought I heard something.”

Both of them closed air masks and
started the suits’ air supply, ready to
leave the dome if necessary. But the
inner door immediately began to
move under Jack’s hand, and he
knew it was Robertson coming. He
couldn’t see her, nor could he hear
her with his suit sealed, yet he could
feel her presence as she entered, and
another’s. He opened his face plate
and heard her voice: “It’s about time
for }mu to go, according to Tony.
The guards haven’t arrived yet, but
we don’t know when they may. Oh,
this is Art Rand with me; I don’t
know if you can see him.”

As amatter of fact, Jack had found
that he could see a little; the new-
comers had left all the doors open
behind them, admitting a little light.
He could sec faintly the stooped,
vvorried Robertson ; the fat, placid
Rand ; and a hulking robot that was
the spacesuited Evlyn.

They all stood, silent, conscious of
the situation. Jack started a pitiful
attempt at formal thanks to Robert-

THE .TOUKNEY .\ND THE GOAL

.son and Rand. I'he latter cut him
short : “Don’t thank us, Rowell.
Good luck to you.” It was the first
time Jack had heard his voice, and
it was the most .sincere and friendly
voice Jack had ever heard.

Suddenly Evlyn said, “Miss Rob-
ertson, if you’re in such danger here,
why can’t you get away along with
us? You — ”

“No; no,” was the quick answer.

■ “Why not? Both of you — because
if you’re found here, Mr. Rand,
you’ll be as badly off as she is. It’s
the only safe thing for you to do.”

“It’s not the best — ” She was in-
terrupted by a low cry from Rand.
Looking down the passage. Jack
thought he saw a flickering glow on
the wall where it took a bend. Then
against the glow was silhouetted Ihe
retreating figure of Art Rand. Mil-
dred Robertson whispered swiftly,
“You'rb a little early, but better get
to the ship as fast as you can just
the same” ; she followed Rand into
the darkness, and, presumably, into
the hands of the guards.

Jack had no time to be puzzled.
There was the urgent business of
their own escape. He and Evlyn had
set off the explosive caps which
cracked the outer shell before Rob-
ertson had completely closed the door
behind her; air pressure pulled the
door shut with a swift fhlook, and
popped a section of the outer shell,
'fhe two spacesuited figures stepped
through the breach from darknes.s.
into Saturn-light.

At first they could see nothing but
all-pervading radiance, but Jack had

109

the presence of mind to lead Evlyn
along the shell until they were out of
sight around the curve of the dome.
After a while they were able to look
around them.

It was the first time Jack had ever
stood on the ground ! It was strange
to think of walking a floor so uneven
and so wide in every direction. It
was strange to think of walking
freely under the stars. So strange
was it that part of Jack’s picture of
Earth seemed realized right there.

The spaceport was about two hun-
dred meters away, almost between
them and Saturn ; were they to move
some meters to the right they would
see it silhouetted against the giant
disk. As it was, they could just make
out the port’s pillbox-shaped build-
ings. Projecting upward above the
largest was the aspiring cylindrical
bow' of the spaceship.

They started eastward, watching
the outline of the ship swell forward
into the sky as they drew nearer it.

As soon as he was used to the
rough footing. Jack looked back over
his shoulder. The plain looked very
diflferent when you faced away from
Saturn ; the irregularities made a
confusing pattern of streaked light
and dark. And to see the dome from
the outside, this dully, smoothly glint-
ing metal egg that had been their
universe — this itself was almost
frightening in its novelty. He spoke
into his communicator set, telling
Evlyn to turn around and look. They
had time to spare for this sight they
had never seen before nor would
again. Hadn’t they been told they
were early for the ship’s take-off?

So they stopped and turned — and

saw a spacesuited figure emerge from '
the hole by which they had left.

" Jack, realizing Evlyn and he were
probably silhouetted against Saturn,
as seen from the dome, pulled the
girl down to the ground beside him.
Calmly, Evlyn said, “Yes, I see. Do
you think it’s the guards? We've got
guns, you know.” They both pulled
their weapons — old rocket pistols,
firing missiles as large as fists. There
were twin tubes slanting outward
and backward from the combustion
chamber, to carry the initial blast
away to the sides, so you could hold
the weapon in front of you like a
pistol to aim it.

The guns might not have been used
since the dome was built, but they
should work. Jack had leveled his
sights on the figure at the base of
the dome when Mildred Robertson’s
voice sounded coolly in his ears:
“Don’t shoof.” Of course ! That was
who it was. And her communicator
was tuned to theirs. The voice went
on, “Don’t wait for me. I’ll follow
vou to the ship if I can make it, but
don’t—”

Jack and Evlyn interrupted her al-
most simultaneously. “Look ! Some-
one else is coming out of the air
lock.” In fact, not one, but two,
bulging spacesuits had appeared.

Mildred Robertson said calmly,
“That'll be Art,” and turned around
in time to get a bullet in the face and
one in the belly. The first was ex-
plosive. Her suit deflated instantane-
ously and settled to the ground with
her dead flesh inside it.

Jack fired twice, then jumped to
his feet and ran. Evlyn was still

110

ARTOUNPINO .SCITtXCK-FrCTION

firing, hut followed quickly. They
ran, not toward the spaceport, but at
an angle to the right, so as to get out
of the direct line from the dome to
Saturn. When Jack judged they’d
gone far enough to be safe, he called
a halt. They cut toward the space-
port then, at the habitual loping five-
meter stride that is the walk of the
Titanian. Once Jack tripped on an
unseen obstacle, I)ut on Titan a fall
hardly decreases your speed at all.

They were cpiite close to their goal
when suddenly Jack’s shadow leaped
forth on the ground in front of him.
A searchlight from behind ! Shoving
Evlyn sharply to the left, he ducked
to the right himself, and, when he
was out of the beam, let the weak
gravity pull him down to a sprawled-
uut landing.

Evlyn wasn’t in sight. Had she es-
caped the beam before she was hit?
The lines of faint fire which arrowed
jjast above him at intervals were, he
knew, rocket projectiles like those in
liis own weapon. Some of them ex-
ploded when they hit the ground far
beyond, but, of course, he couldn’t
hear them.

He tried to locate the searchlight. .
It wasn’t easy, because there was no
air out of here to reveal the path of
the beam; but the light was just
about where he’d expected, and
soon he made it out.

■‘Evlyn?” he said into his mike,
Iweaking the intolerable silence.

“Yes?” came the voice in his ears.

“You O.K.?”

“Yes. How aliout you ?”

“O.K. so far. Look, let’s shoot at
the light.”

“I sec it. Yes, all right.”

THK .lOUnXF.Y .\xn THE OO.'iL

That was all, yet now they were
fighting side by side instead of being
isolated on the vast hostile plain. Jack
fired several times. The guards’ fire at
him liecame abruptly more accurate,
and the searchlight began to sw'ing
to the right. That was O.K. ; if it
was on him it couldn’t be on Evlyn.
Then he was directly in its path, and
its reflector became a blinding little
sun and a perfect target. Miracu-
lously, he got it, and slid behind the
barely adequate cover of a rock be-
fore the guards’ shots could find hini.

Evlyn was still shooting. ‘‘Wait,
Evlyn,” he said. ‘‘Hold your fire
for half a minute. Without their
light they’ll forget exactly where you
are; remember, they’re looking to-
ward Saturn so they can’t make out
the features of the ground as well as
we can. Then we can run for the
port.”

‘‘I’m out of ammunition anyway.”
Jack waited silently, patiently, look-
ing up at the same stars he’d seen
and yearned for fifteen years ago.
The “Sky Room.”

Evlyn, somewhere out of sight,
whispered in his ear, “Do 3'ou think
we’ll make it. Jack.”

“I don’t know,” he said, attempt-
ing a matter-of-fact tone. ‘‘Are they
coming after us ?”

“I haven’t seen them, but they
probably are.”

“Let’s start. We’re pretty close to
tliE port, we'd just as well run as
crawl. Let’s go.”

He sprang erect himself, and ran
zigzag torvard where the shape of the
waiting spaceship cut a corner out of
Saturn', .'\round him apppeared the

ui

momentary fiery traces of the small
rocket-bullets which sped by him un-
heard. All missed him. Twenty
meters from a spaceport entrance he
again stopped and took cover. That
was the entrance he could safely use
— unless guards had been sent to
cover it by those who had seen him
and Evlyn. He’d have to chance that.

Best for the two of them to rush
the entrance together. He called,
“You O.K.?”

He waited anxiously. “You O.K.,
Evlyn ?’

Silence. He strained to hear the
sound of her breathing, heard only
his own. Then he got his answer ; a
short, strangled cough.

He looked around him. She had
been heading for the same entrance
as he, so she should be nearby. He
caught a glint from something over
to the left, faced around. There she
lay. He crawled to her.

Behind her face plate, above the
monstrously machinelike body of her
spacesuit, her small face seemed dis-
embodied, ethereal in the starlight.
But the eyes that looked from the
face —

Jack squatted beside her. “Where
are you hit ?’’

The eyes moved downward, as if
pointing. Jack saw that her right
hand was pressed to her side. Prob-
ably she was stopping the hole in her
spacesuit.

“Down there on 3'our side?”

Almost inaudibly, “Yes.”

Jack watched in anguish, not trust-
ing himself to speak further. What
could he do? There was no haven
for her back there in the dome.
They’d have to go ahead. He looked

over his shoulder at where the dis-
tant dome occulted stars. Somewhere
between there and here guards might
be coming toward them. He'd almost
forgotten about the guards.

“We’ve got to try to make the
ship,” he said unsteadil}’. ‘Tve got
to carry you.”

She seemed to be nedding. He
bent to lift her, but set her down
again in horror. It must have been
pain that had made her writhe so
suddenly and so terribly, yet she had
made no sound. Either that or her
communicator’s mike wasn’t work-
ing. When she’d spoken, before, he’d
scarcely heard it.

He looked again at her face as she
lay there. She was smiling !

Then she coughed terribly, and her
face disappeared. The face plate was
covered with blood. Jack’s brain xeg-
istered the fact that Evlyn’s mike
wasn’t working, for he hadn’t heard
the cough; and the fact that Evlyn
was dying. Register the facts was
all he could do. He felt burned out
inside.

He registered the fact that Evlyn’s
spacesuit was deflating. Deduction :
her hand was not on the hole. There-
fore : he must stop the leak. Secpnd
deduction: she was unconscious.
Therefore : he could carry her with-
out her feeling pain.

Blinded and mad, reckless of the
fire of the guards behind him, gin-
gerly carrying the inert bundle that
was a wounded human being, Jack
Rowell raced to the spaceport en-
trance. After that his brain automat-
ically followed the directions given it
so long before: down this corridor,
through this hatch — He didn’t think.

112

ASTOUNDING S C I E N C U - T 1 0 T I O N

When he was safely *in the pre-
scribed compartment of the ship, he
administered the acceleration dope to
himself and Evlyn. If the guards
found them before the ship took off,
he’d rather be under the dope than
awake. He wouldn’t want to know
about it just then.

“I finally got him on the visor,”
Jack said wearily, the Earth slang
.sounding strange on his lips. “The
Secretary himself. I tried to make
him listen, but no soap.”

“What did he say?” Evlyn was
loo weak to lift her head from the
pillows.

“Just what his assistants said. He
seemed surprised Ivshould ask .him

♦

about it. I’d try to argue with him
and he’d repeat what he said before,
as if he thought I hadn’t understood.
It was as good a way of stalling me
off as any, I suppose.” He made a
hopeless gesture. There was no reply
from Evlyn.

We must make a strange picture,
‘ Jack thought for the hundredth time
since their arrival on Earth. Shock-
ingly tall, head and shoulders above
everyone else — when we stand up-
right. Evelyn lying, cramped, in the
hospital’s longest bed, I leaning back
in a wheelchair that had to be spe-
cially made. Freaks. So the Secre-
tary must have thought this after-
noon; That bean-pole yokel, that
freak.

XHE JOURNEY AND THE GOAL

113

Aloud, “No, he wouldn’t even 3is
cuss it with me. Said Titan’s produce
wasn’t useful any more, so Earth
woftidn’t use it any more. Didn’t
know where the Titanians could go ;
all the other colonial planets have
been abandoned except Mars and
Venus. And he didn’t care,”

“Where can they go. Jack ? Where
can zve go ?”

He answered the first question.
“They can’t come here, that’s cer-
tain.”'

Evlyn shuddered assent.

“Mars, maybe.” Jack pulled him-
self up from the chair with great ef-
fort, leaned against its back to catch
his breath. Consciously imitating the
Earthmen’s short, awkward steps, he
stumped across the room to the win-
dow, and looked out, his eyes slitted
against the piercing fire of the May
sunshine, the agonizing glare of sun
on Arizona sand. He stood there,
torturing himself by looking as di-
rectly as he was able at the violent
colors of hell.

“Do you think Tony knew?” he
asked meditatively.

“He must have suspected better
than anyone,” said Evlyn slowly.
"After all, he lived here; he knew
how different Titan was.”

“But not how different w'e were.”
“No . . . Mildred Robertson sus-
pected, and Art Rand.”

“They knew most of it,” said Jack,
feeling no resentment against those
w'ho had damned him without warn-
ing, had withheld the warning Tony
Creeden had wanted to give. The
only concession they’d made to Tony
had been to wait for Evlyn and Jack
to volunteer, rather than asking

114

them. Though Jack understood ah
this now, there was no resentment at
all.

“They knew most of it,” he re-
peated. “What was there to know?
The gravity — they knew about that.
They knew what we should have
thought about ourselves : a child that
grows up in a low gravity has long,
thin bones ; not a matter of heredity
at all, but purely environment. I
don’t think they did know that that
child’s bones are also brittle, very
brittle, and his muscles very weak.

“They didn’t know,” he went on
savagely, still torturing himself,
“that the first step I took on the new
planet I’d fall and break my arm in
too ;nany places- to count.’~

“No, they didn’t, or they wouldn’t
have let us go,” Evlyn said gently.
“They wanted to find out. They
wanted to send guinea pigs, and we
were good choices.”

“They’ll find out all right, soon,
without our telling them — when they
have to abandon Titan and come here
themselves.”

“They won’t,” she reminded him.
“No ; no. Not Robertson and Rand.
The rest — some of the things, they
couldn’t have known. The air.
Higher air pressure here, more oxy-
gen, but also more nitrogen. They
couldn’t have guessed how bad that
would be. It’s just like the mental
'dullness that gets underwater divers
on Earth when the pressure goes up
too high. I don’t spend twenty hours
a day sleeping any more, but I feel
slow and stupid. And I am. I can’t
remember. I can’t think.”

“I know.” There was subdued
horror in her voice.

ASTOCXDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“That’s the worst of it. Then there
are the infections — I’ve been rela-
tively well for five days now, Evlyn,
but it won’t be long before I’ve got
another of those diseases that Earth
doctors never knew about. Children
here develop lots of immunities early
and painlessly, but the dome w'e were
in was so nearly sterile we never
needed those immunities ; the minute
we breathed this air everything hit
us at once. At least that’s what the
doc told me. Your doctor might have
a different explanation.

“And the light here. Of course
it’s just because our irises are almost
atrophied, so our pupils can’t con-
tract to shut out enough of the
brightness. Knowing the explanation
doesn’t help.” He realized that while
he’d been talking he’d let his lids
drop. Brutally, he forced his eyes
open, forced them to follow moving
objects outside : .a plane on the hori-
zon, a copter circling above the hos-
pital. The blue sky shimmered, the
white clouds danced. Pain spilled
forth inside him, stimulating his
dulled brain.

Evlyn was speaking behind him.
“Why are you saying all this, Jack ?”
He shrugged foolishly. “Maybe
because I got myself all ready to say
it to the Secretary this afternoon and
then got stalled before I got it off
my chest. I don’t think so, though.
I think I’m saying sit to see if I can
diange my own nrind.”

“Change your mind ?”

“That’s right. And I can’t change
it. I still feel the same. I’m still
glad we’re here.” He made his strug-
gling way back to the wheelchair and

THE

sank again into its supporting cush-
ions. “No, not glad we’re here. Not
that exactly.

“Evlyn, when we were waiting on
the plane outside the spaceport, just
before you were . . . just before we
got away ... I thought for a while
it was all pointleis, our going out
and taking the chances we took. It
wasn’t. It’s not pointless, if the
dream’s big enough. And Earth was,
then.”

“Even if I had died ?” She seemed
to ask purely from curiosity.

“Even if one of us had died. On
the ship, when each time I went to
sleep I wondered if you’d be alive
when I awoke. Even then it was
worth it to me — ”

“And to me. And after we got
here, even though it was so different
from w'hat we expected. We had to
come. Jack.”

“That’s it, Evlyn, that’s it. I think
you always saw this, but I’m just
seeing it now: The dream is big
enough, it still is, it was worth it to
come here, it’s worth it now. But
what was it we wanted? Not any
one planet. We thought it was that,
but it was simply crossing space. All
along, the journey was more impor-
tant than the goal.

“And if the days we spent in the
spaceship were torture, and the days
since then, well, that’s unimportant
too. Just crossing space — ”

“The sky’s still there at night,”
murmured Evlyn.

“It’s still there. It doesn’t matter
. that Earth isn’t in it any more. Alpha
Centauri is. And Sirius. And the
dream.”

END.

THE JOURNEY AND THE GOAL

lie

BRASS TACKS

Edwards' little gag article seems to
have been one of the most popular
in a long time.

Dear Editor;

1 read with considerable interest
the article "Meihem in ce Klasrum,”
by Dolton Edwards, which, although
obviously written with tongue in
cheek, made more sense than was
at first reading apparent.

However, I should like to point
out two inconsistencies in Mr. Ed-
wards’ last jjaragraph, which I am
sure that he overlooked. First, the
matter of the two sounds for “g.”
-\ccording to his own suggestions,
only one sound should be repre-
sented by one letter. I would sug-
ge.st retaining the present character
■‘g” to represent the hard sound, and
using the letter “j” for the soft
sound. Thus, “knowledge” would
be written as “nolej.” Also, Mr.
Edwards violated his own rule by
using the character “u” as two dif-
ferent sounds, in “language” and in
“tu.” I would use the letter “w”
in the former instance, as “lan-
gwaj.” — Jack D. Rodgers, 225 27th
Street, San Bernardino, Calif.

n«

There must be some fancy control

problems!

Dear Mr. Campbell ;

That was a pretty interesting
letter of Mr. Shelton’s that you
published. A few months back
there was a story published on the
V-2 — (which the Germans inciden-
tally called the A-4) — and among
the pictures was one of the track
in the sky corresponding to Mr.
Shelton’s description. The caption
said the crookedness was caused
by winds. I have seen only one
other i^hotograph and there the
track was nearly straight.

I happen to have access to cer-
tain reports concerning the construc-
tion and operation of the V-2.
They are marked secret so I can’t
say what is in them. I can say,
however, that I found nothing in
them that would explain the crooked
track. However,- 1 am a chemist
and not an engineer so perhaps I
missed something.

I have a theory to explain the ir-
regularity, but I’m not at all sure
that it is correct. The control sys-
tem has a rapid response to short

ASTOU.NDING SCIBXCE-FICTION

j)criod oscillations of the rocket so
that it ma\’ be that once an oscil-
lation is set up, the controls either
overcompensate or the rocket is car-
ried past the neutral point by its
own inertia. This causes the con-
trol gyros to move the vanes in the
jet stream and the tabs at the outer
corners of the tail so as to make
the rocket back to the neutral point
and the cycle is repeated again and
again, at least until the motor ceases
to function. After it is stopped no
further control is exerted.

I notice that the last half of the
trail in the picture is relatively
straight. Due to increasing Mach
number, the effectiveness of the
vanes drops to about half its former
value at a certain velocity of the
rocket. This would seem to indicate
that the ragged trail is due in part
at least to overcompensation of the
control surfaces. Once their effec-
tiveness is reduced, they compensate
for irregularities in flight more cor-
rectly and the track becomes
straight.

I don’t agree that dwi-cesium and
dwi-iodine would react violently.
Synthetic eka-iodine is already well
on the metallic side' so that dwi-
iodine would be definitely a metal.
The only metals I know of that
get violent when they meet are
mercury and the alkali metals. I
suspect a pound or so of dwi-cesium
could get pretty violent all by it-
self. We have: Li — relatively stable
in air; Na — ozidizes in air, decom-
poses water rather quietly; K — in-
flames in water ; Cs — inflames in air.
By the time you get dwi-cesium you
should have something that will ex-

BRASS TACKS

plode in air. — John Buddhue. 99
South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena
2, California,

Rate away — everybody's ivelcome!
Dear Sir :

May I try a hand at this rating
game?

1. “Command.” The resolution
was a bit simple, and it seems to me
spaceships have carried their own
gardens before, but the writing held
together nicely, and there seemed to
be no harsh notes in the entire story.

2. “Bad Patch.” A dangerous
idea for a story, but for me it came
off, partially because I was looking
for December 7, 1941 to change the
ideas of Lloral. And probably his
idea was right — the machine makes
the difference.

3. “Tomorrow And Tomorrow.”
This would have been better if the
introduction had not been so long,
and there was some confusion. And
for a society that was against new
ideas or research, there seemed to be
plenty of renegades.

4. “Housing Shortage.” In such
a setup, would breaking windows let
one enter into the right house, when
only the door was so designed ? My
sympathy was won because the in-
ventor couldn’t think of anything
better to do with his idea than earn
more rent.

5. “Sinecure.” With machines as
complicated as those, and as numer-
ous, there would have been techni-
cians around, or at least repairmen,
not just tlie three men. But the plot
twist was nice.

6. “The Undamned.” This story

m

was talked to death. Conver.sation is
all right, but not in the face of
atomic bombs with difficult fuses.
Besides, if I could make a detonator
that would go off to certain thought
patterns, I could make one that
would respond to the presence of a
pretty gray-eyed brunette at ranges
up to five miles — and not be taken in
by any “Gay Deceivers.”

7. “Time to Die.” I just couldn’t
get interested, maybe because the
illustration foretold the ending. —
Alderson Fry, 4055 9th, N.E.,
Seattle 5, Washington.

The art department is really looking
up ! Cartier — Orban — Schneeman
— Rogers — all back!

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Just got my January ASF and had
to dash off a note immediately to
congratulate you on getting Cartier
back. His three pics were a welcome
.sight after these last few dismal
years of poor art in the magazine.
It’s also good to see Orban back.

I.et’s give Cartier the entire mag
to illustrate, or nearly all with a pos-
sible few pix by Orban.

Is it true that we fans who have
waited so long are going to get Un-
knou'u back at last ? — Richard A.
Frank, 342 Susquehanna Street,
Williamsport 15, Pennsylvania.

.'llejandro will be back— and with a
coi’cr style totally different from
anything you’ve seen!

Dear Mr. Campbell :

This letter is being written with

the express purpose of commenting
on a few points in the DECEMBER
issue of ASF.

First and foremost I would like to
give three rousing cheers for the
change of cover artists. Not only is
Timmins off the cover but Alejandro
seems to have a style of great prom-
ise. There is a weird atmo.sphere
about the “Metaniorphosite’-’ that
makes your scalp crawl. Give the
guy some more covers to do instead
of reverting back to Timmins as I
see you have on the next cover.

Next we come to the feature story,
and an excellent story it is, too. In
fact, it ristis above the usual run of
feature stories like “World Of A”
does in comparison to “Slaves of the
Lamp.” And the ending was cer-
tainly unexpected in its dramatic in-
tensity. But why go on — surely the
voters will bear me out.

And for my selections as to first,
second, and third place . . .

1. “ Metaniorphosite,” by Eric
Frank Russell.

2. “For the Public,” by Bernard
I. Kahn. For a new author he’s tops !

3. “Hand of the Gods,” by A. E.
van Vogt. Clane’s quite a guy.

4. “Time Enough,” by Lewis
Padgett. Padgett could have done
much better.

5. “The Impossible Pirate,” by
George O. Smith. Maybe it’s me,
maybe it’s purely personal prefer-
ence but G. O. Smith seems strictly
a last-place author — not once but
always. — Joseph B. Baker,

U8

A.STODNDIXG SCIEXCE-FIOTION

E FOR EFFORT

A new author brings a new idea of how to use a
time-viewing . machine. But there's one thing wrong
with time-viexeers ; they may work perfectly techni-
cally, but in human society they're deadly weayons!

•

Illustrated by Tiedeman

BY T. L. SHERRED

The captain was met at the airport
by a staff car. Long and fast it sped.
In a narrow, silent room the general
sat, ramrod-backed, tense. The major
waited al the foot of the gleaming
steps .shining frostily in the night air.
Tires screamed to a stop and to-
gether the captain and the major
raced up the steps. No words of
greeting were spoken. The general
stood quickly, hand outstretched.
The captain ripped open a dispatch
case and handed over a thick bundle
of papers. The general flipped them
over eagerly and spat a sentence at
the major. The major disappeared
and his harsh voice rang curtly down
the outside hall. The man with
glasses came in and the general
handed him the papers. With jerky
fingers the man with glasses sorted

E FOR EFFORT

them out. With a wave from the
general the captain left, a proud
smile on his weary young face. The
general tapped his fingertips on the
black glossy surface of the table.
The man with glasses pushed aside
crinkled maps, and began, to read
aloud.

Dear Joe:

I started this just to kill time, because
I got tired of just looking out the win-
dow. But when I got almost to the end
I began to catch the trend of what’s go-
ing on. You’re the only one I know that
can come through for me, and when you
finish this you’ll know why you must.

I don’t know who will get this to you.
Whoever it is won’t want you to identify
a face late Remember that, and please.
Joe — hurry!

Ed

It all started because I’m lazy. By
the time I’d shaken oft the sandman
and checked out of the hotel every

u»

seat in the bus was full. 1 stuck my
bag in a dime locker and went out
to kill the hour I had until the next
bus left. You know the bus termi-
nal ; right across from the Book-
Cadi llac and the Statler, on Wash-
ington Boulevard near Michigan
.Avenue. Michigan Avenue. Like
Main in Los Angeles, or maybe Six-
ty-third in its present state of decay
in Chicago, where I was going.
Cheap movies, pawnshops ancl bars
by the dozens, a penny arcade or
two, restaurants that feature ham-
burg steak, bread and butter and cof-
fee for forty cents. Before the War,
a quarter.

I like pawnshops. I like camera^,
I like tools, I like to look in windows
crammed with everything from elec-
tric razors to sets of sgcket wrenches
to upper plates. So, with an hour to
spare, I walked out Michigan to
.Sixth and back on the other side of
the street. There are a lot of Chi-
nese and Mexicans around that part
of town, the Chinese running the
restaurants and the Mexicans eating
Southern Home Cooking. Between
Fourth and Fifth 1 stopped to stare
at what passed for a movie. Store
windows painted black, amateurish
signs extolling in Spanish “Detroit
premiere . . . cast of thousands . . .
this week only . . . ten cents — ” The
few 8x10 glossy stills pasted on the
windows were poor blowups, spotty
and wrinkled ; pictures of mailed
cavalry and what looked like a good
sized battle. All for ten cents. Right
down my alley.

Maybe it’s lucky that history was
my major in school. Luck it must
have been, certainly not cleverness.

120

that made me pay a dime for a seal
in an undertaker’s rickety folding
chair imbedded solidly — although the
only other customci;^ were a half-
dozen Sons of the Order of Tortilla —
in a cast of second-hand garlic. I sat
near the door. A couple of hundred
watt bulbs dangling naked from the
ceiling gave enough light for me to
look around. In front of me, in the
rear of the store, was the screen,
wh.at looked like a white-painted
sheet of beaverboard, and when over
my shoulder I saw the battered six-
teen millimeter projector I began to
think that even a dime was no bar-
gain. .Still, I had forty minutes to
wait.

Everyone was smoking. I lit a
cigarette and the discouraged Mexi-
can who had taken my dime locked
the door and turned off the lights,
after giving me a long, questioning
look. I’d paid my dime, so I looked
right back. In a minute the old pro-
jector started clattering. No film
credits, no producer’s name, no di-
rector, just a tentative flicker before
a closeup of a be whiskered mug la-
beled Cortez. Then a painted and
feathered Indian with the title of
Guateinotzin, successor to Monte-
zuma ; an aerial shot of a beautiful
job of model-building tagged Ciudad
de Mejico, 1521. Shots of old muz-
zle-loaded artillery banging away,
great walls spurting stone splinters
under direct fire, skinny Indians dy-
in,g violently with the customary gy-
rations, smoke and haze and blood.
The photography sat me right up
straight. It had none of the scratches
and erratic cuts that characterize an
old print, none of the fuzziness, none

.\ ,s T o r : .\ n I N G s o i E x c i : - F r c t i o n

of the usual mugging at the camera
by the handsome hero. There wasn’t
any handsome hero. Did you ever
see one of these French pictures, or
a Russian, and comment on the real-
ity and depth brought out by work-
ing on a small budget that can’t
afford famed actors ? This, what
there was of it, was as good, or
better.

It wasn’t until the picture ended
with a pan shot of a dreary desola-
tion that I began to add two and
two. You can’t, for pennies, really
have a cast of thousand, or sets
big enough to fill Central Park. A
mock-up, even, of a thirty-foot fall
costs enough to irritate the auditors,
and there had been a lot of wall.
That didn’t fit with the bad editing
and lack of sound track, not unless
the picture had been made in the old
silent days. And 1 knew it hadn’t
by the color tones you get with pan
film. It looked like a well-rehearsed
and badly-planned newsreel.

The Mexicans were easing out and
I followed them to where the dis-
couraged one was rewinding the reel.
I asked him where he got the print.

“I haven’t heard of any epics from
the press agents lately, and it looks
like a fairly recent print.”

He agreed that it was recent, and
added that he’d made it himself. I
was polite to that, and he saw that I
didn’t believe him and straightened
up from the projector.

“You don’t believe that, do you?”
I said that I certainly did, and I had
to catch a bus. “Would you mind
telling me why, exactly why?” I
said that the bus — “I mean it. I’d

appreciate it if you’d tell me just
what’s wrong with it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it,”
I told him. He waited for me to go
on. “W'’ell, for one thing, pictures
like that aren’t made for the sixteen
millimeter trade. Y'ou’ve got a re-
duction from a thirty-five millimeter
master,” and I gave him a few of
the other reasons that separate home
movies from Hollywood. When I
finished he smoked quietly for a
minute.

“I see.” He took the reel off the
projector spindle and clo.sed the case.
“I have beer in the back.” I agreed
beer sounded good, but the bus —
well, just one. From in back of the
beaverboard screen he brought paper
cups and a Jumbo bottle. With a
whimsical “Business suspended” he
closed the open door and opened the
bottle with an opener screwed on the
wall. The store had lik«ly been a
grocery or restaurant. There were
plenty of chairs. Two we shoved
around and relaxed companionably.
The beer was warm.

“You know something about this
line,” tentatively.

I took it as a question and laughed.
“Not too much. Flerc’s mud,” and
we drank. “Used to drive a truck
for the Film Exchange.” He was
amused at that.

“Stranger in town?”

“Yes and no. Mostly yes. Sinus
trouble chased me out and relatives
bring me back. Not any more,
though ; my father’s funeral was last
week.” He said that was too bad,
and I said it wasn’t. “He had sinus,
too.” That was a joke, and he re-

E FOR EFFORT

121

filled the cups. We talked awhile
about Detroit climate.

Finally he said, rather specula-
tively, “IDidn’t I see you around here
last night? Just about eight.” He
got up and went after more beer.

I called after him. “No more beer
for me.” He brought a bottle any-
way, and I looked at my watch.
“Well, just one.”

“Was it you?”

“Was it me what?” I held out
my paper cup.

"Weren’t you around here — ”

I wijxid foam off my mustache,
"l.ast night? No, but I wish I had.
I’d have, caught my bus. No, I was
in the Motor Bar last night at eight.
And I was still there at midnight.”

He chewed his lip thoughtfully.
“The !Motor Bar. Ju.st down the
street ?” and I nodded. “The Motor
Bar. Hm-m-m.^’ I looked at him.
“Would you like . . . sure, you
would.” Before I could figure out
what he was talking about he went
to the back and from behind the
beaverboard screen rolled out a big
radio - phomjgraph and another
Jumbo bottle. I held the bottle
against the light. Still half full. I
looked at my watch. He rolled the
radio against the wall and lifted the
lid to get at the dials.

“Reach behind you, will you? The
switcli on the wall.” I could reach
the switcli without getting up, and I
did. The lights went out. I hadn’t
expected that, and I groped at arm’s
length. Then the lights came on
again, and I turned back, relieved.
But the lights weren’t on; I was
looking at the street !

Now, all this happened while I

] 1>2

was dripping beer and trying to keep
my balance on a tottering chair — the
street moved, I didn’t and it was day
and it was night and I was in front
of the Book-Cadillac and I was go-
ing into the Motor Bar and I was
watching myself order a beer and 1
knew I was wide awake and not
dreaming. In a panic I scrabbled
off the floor, shedding chairs and
beer like an umbrella while I ripped
my nails feeling frantically for that
light switch. By the time I found
it — and all the while I was watching
myself pound the bar for the bar-
keep — I was really in fine fettle, just
about ready to collajise. Out of thin
air right into a nightmare. At last
I found the switch.

The Mexican was looking at me
with the queerest expression I’ve
ever seen, like he’d baited a mouse-
trap and caught a frog. Me? I sup-
pose I looked like I’d seen the devil
himself. Maybe I had. The beer
was all over the floor and I barely
made it to the nearest chair.

“What,” I managed to get out,
“what was that?”

The lid of the radio went down.
“I felt like that too, tlic first time.
I’d forgotten.”

My fingers were too shaky to get
out a cigarette, and I rippecl off the
top of the package. “1 said, what
was that ?”

He sat down. “That w^as you, in
the Motor Bar, at eight last night.”
I must have looked blank as he
handed me another paper cup. Auto-
matically I held it out to be refilled.

“Look here — ” I started.

“I suppose it is a shock. I’d for-
gotten what I felt like the first time

A STOUXniXO SrTKXOK-FIOTrOX

I ... I don’t care much any more.
Tomorrow I’m going out to Phillips
Radio.” That made no sense to me,
and I said so. He went an.

“I’m licked. I’m flat broke. I
don’t give a care any more. I’ll set-
tle for cash and live off the royal-
ties.” The story came out, slowly at
first, then faster until he was pacing
the floor. I guess he was tired of
having no one to talk to.

His name was Miguel Jose Zapata
Laviada. I told him mine; Lefko.
Ed Lefko. He was the son of sugar
beet workers who had emigrated
from Mexico somewhere in the
Twenties. They were sensible enough
not to quibble when their oldest son
left the back - breaking Michigan
fields to seize the chance provided by
a NYA scholarship. When the
scholarship ran out, he’d worked in
garages, driven trucks, clerked in
stores, and sold brushes door-to-
door to exist and learn. The Army
cut short his education with the First
Draft to make him a radar techni-
cian, the Army had given him an
honorable discharge and an idea so
nebulous as to be almost merely a
hunch. Jobs were plentiful then,
and it wasn’t too hard to end up ■
with enough money to rent a trailer
and fill it with Army surplus radio
and radar equipment. One year ago
he’d finished what he’d started, fin-
ished underfed, underweight, and
overexcited. But successful, because •
he had it.

“It” he installed in a radio cabi-
net, both for ease in handling and
for camouflage. For reasons that
will become apparent, he didn’t dare

apply for a patent. I looked “it”
over pretty carefully. Where the
phonograph turntable and radio con-
trols had been were vernier dials ga-
lore. One big one was numbered 1
to 24, a couple were numbered 1 to
60, and there were a dozen or so
numbered 1 to 25, plus two or three
with no numbers at all. Closest of
all it resembled one of these fancy
radio or motor testers found in a
super super-service station. That
was all, except that there was a sheet
of heavy plywood hiding whatever
was installed in place of the radio
chassis and speaker. A perfectly in-
nocent cache for —

Daydreams are swell, I suppose
we’ve all had our share of mental
wealth or fame or travel or fantasy.
But to sit in a chair and drink warm
beer and realize that the dream of
ages isn’t a dream any more, to feel
like a god, to know that just by turn-
ing a few dials you can see and watch
anything, anybody, anywhere, that
has ever happened — it still bothers
me once in a while.

I know this much, that it’s high
frequency stuff. And there’s a lot
of mercury and copper and wiring
of metals cheap and easy to find,
but what goes where, or how, least
of all, why, is out of my line. Light
has mass and energy, and that mass
always loses part of itself and can be
translated back to electricity, or
something. Mike Laviada himself
says that what he stumbled on and
developed was nothing new, that
long before the war it had been
observed many times by men like
Compton and Michelson and Pfeif-
fer, who di.scarded it as a useless

E FOR EFFORT

123

laboratory effect. And, ot course,
that was before atomic research took
jrrecedence over everything.

When the first shock wore off —
and Mike had to give me another
demonstration — I must have made
tjuite a sight. Mike tells me I
couldn’t sit down. I’d pop up and
• gallop up and down the floor of that
ancient store kicking chairsvout of
my way or stumbling over them, all
the time gobbling out words and dis-
connected sentences faster than my
tongue could trip. Finally it filtered
through that he was laughing at me.
I didn’t see where it was any laugh-
ing matter, and I prodded him. He
began to get angry.

“I know what I have,” he snapped.
“I’m not the biggest fool in the
world, as you seem to think. Here,
watch this,” and he went back to
the radio. “Turn out the light.” I
did, and tliere I was watching my-
self at the Motor Bar again, a lot
happier this time. “Watch this.”

The bar backed away. Out in the
street, two blocks down to the City
Hall. Up the steps to the Council
Room. No one the're. Then Coun-
cil was in session, then they were
gone again. Not a picture, not a
projection of a lantern slide, but a
slice of life about twelve feet square.
If we were close, the field of view
was narrow. If we were further
away, the background was just as
much in foctis as the foreground.
The images, if you want to call them
images, were just as real, just as life-
like as looking in the doorway of a
room. Real they were, three-dimen-
sional, stopped by only the back wall

I '-’4

or the distance in the background.
Mike was talking as he spun the
dials, but I was too engrossed to pay
much attention.

I yelped and grabbed and closed
my eyes as you would if you were
looking straight down with nothing
between you and the ground except
a lot of smoke and a few clouds. I
winked my eyes open almost at the
ends of what must have been a long
racing vertical dive, and there I was,
looking at the street again.

“Go any place up to the Heaviside
Layer, go down as deep as any hole,
anywhere, any time.” A blur, and
the street changed into a glade of
spar.se pines. “Buried treasure. Sure.
Find it, with what ?” The trees dis-
appeared, and I reached back for the
light switch as he dropped the lid of
the radio and sat down.

“How are you going to make any
money when you haven’t got it to
start?” No answer to that from me.
“I ran an ad in the paper offering
to recover lost articles ; my first cus-
tomer was the Law wanting to see
my private detective’s license. I’ve
seen every big speculator in the
country sit in his office buying and
selling and making plans ; what do
3’^ou think would happen if I tried to
peddle advance market information?
I’ve watched the stock market get
shoved up and down while I had
barely the money to buy the paper
that told me about it. I watched a
bunch of Peruvian Indians bury the
second ransom of Atuahalpa; I
haven’t the fare to get to Peru, or
the money to buy the tools to dig.”
He got up and brought two more

A.STOUNPINO .sCIKX(’E-FK'TIOX

lx>ttles. He went on. By tliat time-
I was getting a few ideas.

“I’ve w'atched scribes indite the
books that burnt at Alexandria ; who
would buy, or who would believe
me, if I copied one? What would
happen if I went over to the Library
and told them to rewrite their histo-
ries? How many would fight to tie
a rope around my neck if they knew
I’d watched them steal and murder
.and take a bath? What sort of a
padded cell would I get if I showed
up with a photograph of Washing-
ton, or Caesar? Or Christ?’’

I agreed that it was all probably
true, but —

“Why do you think I’m here now ?
You saw the picture I showed for a
dime. A dime’s worth, and that’s
all, because I didn’t have the money
to buy film or to make the picture as
I knew I should.’’ His tongue be-
gan to get tangled. He was excited.
“I’m doing this because I haven’t the
money to get the things I need to
get the money I’ll need — ’’ He was
so disgusted he booted a chair half-
way across the r' om. It was easy
to see that if I had been around a
little later, Phillips Radio would
have profited. Maybe I’d have been
better off, too.

Now, although always I’ve been
told that I’d never be worth a hoot,
no one has ever accused me of being
slow for a dollar. Especially an easy
one. I saw money in front of me,
easy money, the easiest and the
quickest in the world. I saw, for a
minute, so far in the future with me
on top of the heap, that my head
reeled and it was hard to breathe.

“Mike,” I said, “let’s finish that

beer and go where we can get some
more, and maybe something to eat.
We’ve got a lot of talking to do. So
we did.

Beer is a mighty fine lubricant ; 1
have always been a pretty smooth
talker, and by the time we left the
gin mill I had a pretty good idea of
just what Mike had on his mind.
By the time we’d shacked up for
the night behind that beaverboard
screen in the store, we were full-
fledged partners. I don’t recall our
even shaking hands on the deal, but
that partnership still holds good.
Mike is ace high with me, and I
guess it’s the other way around, too.
That was six years ago ; it only took
me a year or so to discard some of
the corners I used to cut.

Seven days after that, on a
Tuesday, I was riding a bus to
Grosse Pointe with a full briefcase.
Two days after that I was riding
back from Grosse Pointe in a shiny
taxi, with an empty briefcase and
a pocketful of folding money. It
was easy.

“Mr. Jones — or Smith — or
Brown — I’m with Aristocrat Stu-
dios, Personal and Candid Portraits.
We thought you might like this
picture of you and ... no, this is
just a test proof. The negative is
in our files. . . . Now, if you’re
really interested. I’ll be back the
day after tomorrow with our
files. . I’m sure you will, Mr.
Jones. Thank you, Mr. Jones. .”

Dirty? Sure. Blackmail is al-
ways dirty. But if I had a wife and
family and a good reputation. I’d
stick to the roast beef and forget

E FOE EFFORT

125

the Roquefort. Very smelly
Roquefort, at that. Mike liked it
less than I did. It took some talk-
ing, and I had to drag out the old
one about the ends justifying the
means, and they could well afford
it, anyway. Besides, if there was a
squawk, they’d get the negatives
free. Some of them were pretty
bad.

So we had the cash ; not too
much, but enough to start. Before
we took the next step there was
plenty to decide. There are a lot
who earn a living by convincing
millions that Sticko soap is better.
We had a harder problem than
that : we had, first, to make a
salable and profitable product, and
second, we had to convince many,
many millions that our “Product”
was absolutely honest and abso-
lutely accurate. We all know that
if you repeat something long enough
and loud enough many — or most —
will accept it as gospel truth. That
called for publicity on an inter-
national scale. For the skeptics
who know better than to accept
advertising, no matter how blatant,
we had to use another technique.
And since we were going to get
certainly only one chance, we had
to be right the first time. Without
Mike’s machine the job would have
been impossible; without it the job
would have been unnecessary.

A lot of sweat run under the
bridge before we found what we
thought — and we still do ! — the only
workable scheme. We picked the
only possible way to enter every
mind in the world without a fight;
the field of entertainment. Abso-

126

lute secrecy was imperative, and
it was only when we reached the
last decimal jwint that we made a
move. We started like this.

First we looked for a smtable
building, or Mike did, while I flew
east, to Rochester, for a month.
The building he rented was an old
bank. We had the windows sealed,
a flossy office installed in the front
— the bulletproof glass was my idea
— air conditioning, a portable bar,
electrical wiring of whatever type
Mike’s little heart desired, and a
blond secretary who thought she
was working for M-E Experimen-
tal Laboratories. When I got back
from Rochester I took over the
job of keeping happy the stone
masons and electricians, while Mike
fooled around in our suite in the
Book where he could look out the
window at his old store. The last
I heard, they were .selling snake oil
there. When the Studio, as we
came to call it, was finished, Mike
moved in and the blonde settled
down to a routine of reading love
stories and saying no to all the
salesmen that wandered by. I left
for Hollywood.

I spent a week digging through
the files of Central Casting before
I was satisfied, but it took a month
of snooping and some under-the-
table cash to lease a camera that
would handle Trucolor film. That
took the biggest load from my mind.
When I got back to Detroit the big
view camera had arrived from
Rochester, with a truckload of glass
color plates. Ready to go.

We made quite a ceremony of it.
We closed the Venetian blinds and

ASTOUNDING SCIENOK-FICTION

I popped the cork on one of the
bottles of champagne I’d bought.
Tl;p blond secretary was im-
pressed ; all slje’d been doing for her
’ salary was to accept delivery of
packages and crates and boxes. We
had no wine glasses, but we made
no fuss about that. Too nervous
and excited to drink any more than
one bottle, we gave the rest to the
blonde and told her to take the rest
of the afternoon off. After she left
— and I think she was disappointed
at breaking up what could have been
a good party— :we locked up after
her, went into the studio itself,
locked up again and went to work.

I’ve mentioned that the windows
were scaled. All the inside wall
had been painted dull black, and
with the high ceiling that went with
that old bank lobby, it w'as impres-
sive. But not gloomy. Midway in
the studio was planted the big Tru-
color cairtera, loaded and ready. Not
much could we see of Mike’s ma-

chine, but I knew it was off to the
side, set to throw on the back wall.
Not on the wall, understand, be-
cause the images produced are pro-
jected into the air, like the meeting
of the rays of two searchlights.
Mike lifted the lid and I could see
him silhouetted against the tiny
lights that lit the dials.

“Well?” he said expectantly.

I felt pretty good just then, right
down to my billfold.

“It’s all yours, Mike,” and a
switch ticked over. There he was.
There was a youngster, dead
twenty-five hundred years, real
enough, almost, to touch. Alexan-
der. Alexander of Macedon.

Let’s take that first picture in de-
tail. I don’t think I can ever forget
what happened in the next year or
so. First we followed Alexander
through his life, from beginning to
end. We skipped, of course, the
little things he did, jumping ahead
days and weeks and years at a time.
Then we’d miss him, or find that

H FOB EFFORT

127

he'd moved in space. That would
mean we’d have to jump back and
forth, like the artillery firing
bracket or ranging shots, until we
found him again. Helped only
occasionally by his published lives,
we were astounded to realize how
much distortion has crept into his
life. I often wonder why legends
arise about tfie famous. Certainly
their lives are as startling or appal-
ling as fiction. • And unfortunately
we had to hold closely to the ac-
ce])ted histories. If we hadn’t, every
professor w'ould have gone into his
corner for a hearty sneer. We
couldn’t take that chance. Not at
' first.

After we knew approximately
what had happened and where, we
used our notes to go back to what
had seemed a particularly photo-
genic section and work on that
awhile. Eventually we had a fair
idea of what we were actually going
to film. Then we sat down and
wrote an actual script to follow,
making allowance for whatever
shots we’d have to double in later.
]\Iike used his machine as the pro-
jector, and I operated the Trucolor
camera at a fixed focus, like taking
moving pictures of a movie. As
fast as we finished a reel it would
go to Rochester for processing, in-
stead of one of the Hollywood out-
fits that might have done it cheaper.
Rochester is so used to horrible
amateur stuff that I doubt if anyone
ever looks at anything. When the
reel was returned we’d run it our-
selves to check our choice of scenes
and color sense and so on.

Eor example, we had to show the

J28

traditional quarrels with Jiis father.
Philip. Most of that we figured on
doing with doubles, later. Olympias,
his mother, and the fangless snakes
she affected, didn’t need any dou-
bling, as we used an angle and
amount of distance that didn’t call
for actual conversation. The scene
where Alexander rode the bucking
horse no one else could ride came
out of some biographer's head, but
we thought it was so famous we
couldn’t leave it out. We dubbed
the closeups later, and the actual
horseman was a young Scythian
that hung around the royal stables
for his keep. Roxanne was real
enough, like the rest of the Per-
sian’s wives that Alexander took
over. Luckily most of them had
enough poundage to look luscious.
Philip and Parmenio and the rest
of the characters were heavily
bearded, which made easy the neces-
sary doubling and dubbing-in the
necessary speech. % (If you ever
saw them shave in those days, you’d
know why whiskers were popular.)

The most trouble we had with the
interior shots. Smoky wicks in a
howl of lard, no matter how plenti-
ful, are too dim even for fast film.
Mike got around that by running
the Trucolor camera at a single
frame a second, wdth his machine
paced accordingly. That accounts
for the startling clarity and depth of
focus we got from a lens well
stopped down. We had all the time
in the world to choose the best pos-
sible scenes and camera angles; the
best actors in the world, expensive
camera booms, or repeated retakes
under the most exacting director

ASTOUNDING .SGIRNCB-FICTTON

can’t compete with us. We had a
lifetime from which to choose.

Eventually we had on film about
eighty per cent of what you saw in
the finished picture. Roughly we
spliced the reels together and sat
there entranced at what we had
actually done. Even more exciting,
even more spectacular than we’d
dared to hope, the lack of continuity
and sound didn’t stop us from
realizing that we’d done a beautiful
job. We’d done all we could, and
the worst was yet to come. So we
sent for more champagne and told
the blonde we had cause for cele-
bration. She giggled.

“What are you doing in there,
anyway?” she asked. “Every sales-
man who comes to the door wants
to know what you’re making.”

I opened the first bottle. “Just
tell them you don’t know.”

“That’s just what I’ve been tell-
ing them. They think I’m awfully
dumb.” We all laughed at the
salesmen.

Mike was thoughtful. “If we’re
going to do this sort of thing very,
often, we ought to have some of
these fancy hollow-stemmed glasses.”
The blonde was pleased with that.
“And we could keep them in my
bottom drawer.” Her nose wrinkled
prettily. “These bubbles — You
know, this is the only time I’ve ever
had champagne, except at a wed-
ding, and then it was only one
glass.”

“Pour her another,” Mike sug-
gested. “Mine's empty, too.” I
did. “What did you do with those
bottles you took home last time ?”

A blush and a giggle. “My father

wanted to open them, but I told him
you said to save it for a special
occasion.”

By that time I had my feet on her
desk. “This is the special occasion,
then,” I invited. “Have another.
Miss . . . what’s your first name,
anyway? I hate being formal after
working hours.”

She was shocked. “And you and
Mr. Laviada sign my checks every
week! It’s Ruth.”

“Ruth. Ruth.” I rolled it around
the piercing bubbles, and it sounded
all right.

She nodded. “And your name is
Edward, and Mr. Laviada’s is Mig-
well. Isn’t it?” and she smiled at
him.

“MiGELL,” he smiled back. “An
old Spanish custom. Usually short-
ened to Mike.”

“If you’ll hand me another bot-
tle,” I offered, “shorten Edward to
Ed.” She handed it over.

By the time we got to the fourth
bottle we were as thick as bugs in a
rug. It seems that she was twenty-
four, free, white, and single, and
loved champagne.

“But,” she burbled fretfully, “I
wish I knew what you were doing in
there all hours of the day and night.
I know you’re here at night some-
times because I’ve seen your car out
in front.”

Mike thought that over. “Well,”
he said a little unsteadily, “we take
pictures.” He blinked one eye.
“Might even take pictures of you if
we were approached properly.”

I took over. “We take pictures
of models.”

H FOR EFFORT

129

■‘Oh, no.”

"Yes. Models of things and peo-
ple and vvliat not. Little ones. We
make it look like it’s real.” I think
she was a trifle disappointed.

“Well, now I know, and that
makes me feel better. I sign all
those bills from Rochester and I
don’t know what I’m signing for.
Except that they must be film or
something.”

■‘That’s- just what it is; film and
things like that.”

■‘Well, it bothered me — No,
there’s two more behind the fan.”

Only two more. She had a ca-
pacity. I asked her how she would
like a vacation. She hadn’t thought
about a vacation just yet.

I told her she’d better start think-
ing about it. ■■We’re leaving day
after tomorrow for Los Angeles,
Hollywood.”

■‘The day after tomorrow?
Why—”

I reassured her. “You’ll get paid
just the same. But there’s no telling
liow long we’ll be gone, and there
doesn’t seem to be much use in your
sitting around here with nothing to
do.” '

From Mike “Let’s have that bot-
tle,” and I handed it to him. I went
on.

■■You’ll get your checks just the
same. I f you want, we’ll pay you in
.'idvance so — ”

I was getting full of champagne,
and so were we all. Mike was hum-
ming softly to himself, happy as a
taco. The blonde, Ruth, was having
a little trouble with my left eye. I
knew just how she felt, because I
was having a little trouble watching

where .she overlapped the swivel
chair. Blue eyes, sooo tall, fuzzy
hair. Hm-m-ni. All work and no
play — She handed me the last bottle.

Demurely she hid a tiny hiccup.
“I’m going to save all the corks —
No I won’t either. My father would
want to know what I’m thinking of,
drinking with my bosses.”

I said it wasn’t a good idea to an-
noy your father. Mike said why fool
with bad ideas, when he had a good
one. We were interested. Nothing
like a good idea to liven things up.

Mike was expansive as the very
devil. “Going to Los .\ngeles.”

We nodded solemnly.

“Going to Los Angeles to work.”
Another nod.

“Going to work in Los Angeles.
What will we do for pretty blond
girl to write letters ?”

Awful. No pretty blonde to write
letters and drink champagne. Sad
case.

“Gotta hire somelwdy to write let-
ters anyway. Might not be blonde.
No blondes in Hollywood. No good
ones, anyway. So — ”

I saw the wonderful idea, and
finished for him. “.So we take
pretty blonde to I-os Angeles to
write letters!”

What an idea that was ! One bot-
tle sooner and its brilliancy would
have been dimmed. Ruth bubbled
like a fresh bottle and Mike and I
sat there, smirking like mad.

“But I can’t 1 I couldn't leave day
after tomorrow just like that — !” .

Mike was magnificent. “Who said
day after tomorrow? Oianged our
minds. Leave right now.”

.\STm'xnix(? sr: i'.X('K-]'ir"noN

She was appalled. “Right now!
Just like tliat?”

“Right now. Just like that.” I
was firm.

“But—”

“No huts. Right now. Just like
that.”

“Nothing to wear—”

“Buy clothes any place. Best ones
in Los Angeles.

“But my hair — ”

Mike suggested a haircut in Hol-
lywood, maybe?

I pounded the table. It felt solid.
“Call the airport. Three tickets.”

She called the airport. She intim-
idated easy.

The airport said we could leave
for Chicago any time on the hour,
and change there for Los Angeles.
Mike wanted to know why she was
wasting time on the telephone when
we could be on our way. Holding
up the wheels of progress, emery
dust in the gears. One minute to get
her hat.

“Call Pappy from the airport.”

Her objections were easily brushed
away wdth a few word-pictures of
how much fun there was to be had
in Hollywood. We left a sign on
the door, “Gone to Lunch — Back in
December,” and made the airport in
time for the four o’clock plane, with
no time left to call Pappy. I told
the parking attendant to hold the car
until he heard from me and we made
it up the steps and into the plane
just in time. The steps were taken
away’ the motors snorted, and we
w'erc off, with Ruth holding fast her
hat in an imaginary iweeze.

There was a two-hour layover in
Chicago. They don’t serve liquor at
the airport, but an obliging cab
driver found us a convenient bar
down the road, where Ruth made
her call to her father. Cautiously
we stayed away from the telephone
booth, but from what Ruth told us,
he must have read her the riot act.
The bartender didn’t have cham-
pagne, but gave us the special treat-
ment reserved for those that order it.
The cab driver saw that we made the
liner two hours later.

In Los Angeles we registered at
the Commodore, cold sober and
ashamed of ourselves. The next day
Ruth went shopping for clothes for
herself, and for us. We gave her the
sizes and enough money to soothe
her hangover. Mike and I did some
telephoning. After breakfast we
sat around until the desk clerk an-
nounced a Mr. Lee Johnson to see
us.

Lee Johnson was the brisk profes-
sional type, the high-bracket sales-
man. Tall, rather homely, a clipped
way of talking. We introduced our-
selves as embryo producers. His eyes
brightened when we said that. His
meat.

“Not exactly the way you think,”
I told him. “We have already eighty
per cent or better of the final print.”

He wanted to know where he
came in.

“We have several thousand feet
of Trucolor film. Don’t bother ask-
ing where or when we got it. This
footage is silent. We’ll need sound
and. in places, speech dubbed in.”

He nodded. “Easy enough. What
condition is the master ?”

j: foh effort

AST— 5S 131

“Perfect condition. It’s in the
hotel vault right now. There are
gaps in the story to fill. We’ll need
quite a few male and female charac-
ters. And all of these will have to
do their doubling for cash, and not
for screen credit.”

Johnson raised his eyebrows.
“And why ? Out here screen credit
is bread and butter.”

“Several reasons. This footage
was made — never mind where — with
the understanding that film credit
would favor no one.”

“If you’re lucky enough to catch
your talent between pictures you
might get away with it. But if your
footage is worth working with, my
boys will want screen credit. And I
think they’re entitled to it.”

I said that was reasonable enough.
The technical crews were essential,
and I wa§ prepared to pay well. Par-
ticularly to keep their mouths closed
until the print was ready for final
release. Maybe even after that.

“Before we go any further,” John-
son rose and reached for his hat,
“let’s take a look at that print. I
don’t know if we can—

I knew what he was thinking.
Amateurs. Home movies. Feelthy
peekchures, mebbe?

We got the reels out of the hotel
safe and drove to his laboratory, out
Sunset. The top was down on his
convertible and Mike hoped audibly
that Ruth would have sense enough
to get sport shirts that didn’t itch.
“Wife?” Johnson asked carelessly.
“Secretary,” Mike answered just
as casually. “We flew in last night
and she’s out getting' us some light

132

clothes.” Johnson’s estimation of us
rose visibly.

A porter came out of the labora-
tory to carry the suitcase containing
the film reels. It was a long, low
building, with the offices at the front
and the actual laboratories tapering
off at the rear. Johnson took us in
the side door and called for someone
whose name we didn’t catch. The
anonymous one was a projectionist
who took the reels and disappeared
into the back of the projection room.
We sat for a minute in the soft easy-
cliairs until the projectionist buzzed
ready. Johnson glanced at us and
we nodded. He clicked a switch on
the arm of his chair and the over-
head lights went out. The picture
started.

It ran a hundred and ten minutes
as it stood. We both watched John-
son like a cat at a rathole. When
the tag end showed white on the
screen he signaled with the chair-
side buzzer for lights. They came
on. He faced us.

“Where did you get that print ?”

Mike grinned at him. “Can we
do business ?”

“Do business ?” He was vehement.
“You bet your life we can do busi-
ness. We’ll do the greatest business
you ever saw!”

The projection man came down.
“Hey, that’s all right. 'Where’d you
get it ?”

Mike looked at me. I said, “This
isn’t to go any further.”

Johnson looked at his man, who
shrugged. “None of my business.”

I dangled the hook. "That wasn’t
made here. Never mind where.”

Johnson rose and struck, hook, line

ASTOCNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

and sinker. "Europe! Hni-m-m.
Germany. No, France. Russia,
maybe. Einstein, or Eisenstein, or
whatever his name is ?”

I shook my head. “Tliat doesn’t
matter. The leads are all dead, or
out of commission, but their heirs
. . . well, you get what I mean.”
Johnson saw what I meant. “Ab-
solutely right. No point taking any
chances. Where’s the rest — ?”
“Who knows ? We were lucky to
salvage tliat much. Can do?”

“Can do.” He thought for a min-
ute. “Get Bernstein in here. Better
get Kessler and Marrs, too.” The
projectionist left. In a few minutes
Kessler, a heavy-set man,and.Marrs,
a young, nervous chain-smoker, came
in with Bernstein, the sound man.
We were introduced all around and
john.son asked if we minded .sitting
through another showing.

' “Nope. We like it better than
you do.”

Not quite. Kessler and Marrs and
Bernstein, the minute the film was
over, bombarded us with startled
questions. We gave them the same
answers we’d given Johnson. But
we were pleased with tlie reception,
and said so.

Kessler grunted. “I’d like to know
who was behind that camera. Best
I've seen, by Cripes, since ‘BenHur.’
Better than ‘Ben Hur.’ The boy’s
good.”

I grunted right back at him.
"That’s- the only thing I edn tell you.
The photography was done by the
l)oys you’re talking to right now.
Thanks for the kind word.”

All four of them stared.

Mike said, “That’s right.”

“Hey, hey!” from Marrs. They
all looked at us with new respect.
It felt.good.

Johnson broke into the silence
when it became awkward. “What’s
next on the score card?”

We got down to cases. Mike, as
usual, was content to sit there with
his eyes half closed, taking it all in,
letting me do all the talking.

“We want sound dul)bed in all the
way through.”

“Pleasure,” said Bernstein.

“At least a dozen, maybe more, of
speaking actors with a close resem-
blance to the leads you’ve seen.”

Johnson was confident. “Easy.
Central Casting has everybody’s pic-
ture since the Year One.” .

“I know. We’ve already checked
that. No trouble there. They'll have
to take the cash and let the credit go,
for reasons I’ve already explained to
Mr. Johnson.”

A moan from Marrs. “I bet I get
that job.”

Johnson was snappish. “You do.
What else?” to me.

I didn’t know. “Except that we
have no plans for distribution as yet.
That will have to be worked out.”

“Like falling off a log.” Johnson
was happy about that. “One look at
the rushes and United Artists would
spit in Shakespeare’s eye.”

Marrs came in. “What about the
other shots ? Got a writer lined up ?”

“We’ve got what will pass for the
shooting script, or would have in a
w'eek or so. Want to go over it with
us ?”

He’d like that.

“How much time have we got?”
interposed Kessler. “This is going

j: 7'’OR EFFORT

1.S3

to be a job. When do we want it?”
Already it was “we.”

“Yesterday is when we want it,”
snapped Johnson, and he rose. “Any
ideas about music ? No? We’ll try
for Werner Janssen and his boys.
Bernstein, you’re responsible for
that print from now on. Kessler,
get your crew in and have a look at
it. Marrs, you’ll go with Mr. Lefko
and Mr. Laviada through the files at
Central Casting at. their convenience.
Keep in touch with them at the Com-
modore. N ow, i f you'll step into my
office, we’ll discuss the financial ar-
rangements — ”

As easy as all that.

Oh, I don’t say that it was easy
work or anything like that, because
in the next few months we were
playing Busy Bee. What with run-
ning down the only one registered at
Central Casting who looked like
Alexander himself, he turned out to
be a young Armenian who had given
up hope of ever being called from
the extra lists and had gone home to
Santee — casting and rehearsing the
rest of the actors and swearing at
the costumers and the boys who built
the sets, we were kept hopping. Even
Ruth, who had reconciled her father
with soothing letters, for once earned
her salary. We took turns shooting
dictation at her until we had a script
that satisfied Mike and myself and
young Marrs, who turned out to be
clever as a fox on dialogue.

What I really meant is that it was
easy, and immensely gratifying, to
crack the shell of the tough boys who
had seen epics and turkeys come and
go. They were really impressed by

134

what we had done. Kessler was
disappointed when we refused to be
bothered with photographing the rest
of the film. We just batted our eyes
and said that we were too busy, that
we were perfectly confident that he
would do as well as we could. He
outdid himself, and us. I dpn’t know
what we would have done if he had
asked us for any concrete advice. 1
suppose, when I think it all over,
that the boys we met and worked
with were so tired of working with
the usual mine-run Grade B’s, that
they were glad to meet someone that
knew the difference between glycerin
tears and reality and didn't care if it
cost two dollars extra. They had
us placed as a couple of city slickers
with plenty on the ball. I hope.

Finally it was all over with. We
all sat in the projection room ; Mike
and I, Marrs and Johnson, Kessler
and Bernstein, and all the lesser
technicians that had split up the
really enormous amount of work
that had been done watched the
finished product. It was terrific.
Everyone had done his work well.
When Alexander came on the
screen, he was Alexander the Great.
(The Armenian kid got a good bonus
for that. ) All that blazing color, all
that wealth and magnificence and
glamor seemed to flare right out of
the screen and sear across your
mind. Even Mike and I, who had
seen the original, were on the edge
of our seats.

The sheer realism and magnitude
of the battle scenes, I think, really
made the picture. Gore, of course,
is glorious when it’s all tnake-believe
and the dead get up to go to lunch.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

But when Bill Mauldin sees a pic-
ture and sells a breathless article on
the similarity of infantrymen of all
ages — well, Mauldin knows what
war is like. So did the infantrymen
throughout the world who wrote let-
ters comparing Alexander’s Arbcla
to Anzio and the Argonne. The
weary peasant, not stolid at all,
trudging and trudging into mile after
mile of those dust-laden plains and
ending as a stinking, naked, ripped
corpse peeping under a mound of
flies isn’t any different when he car-
ries a sarissa instead of a rifle. That
we’d tried to make obvious, and we
succeeded.

When the lights came up in the
projection room we knew we had a
winner. Individually we shook hands
all around, proud as a bunch of pen-
guins, and with chests out as far.
The rest of the men filed out and we
retired to Johnson’s office. He poured
a drink all around and got down to
Imsiness.

“How about releases?”

I asked him what he thought.

“Write your own ticket,” he
shrugged. I don’t know whether or
not you know it, but the word has
already gone around that you’ve got
something.”

I told him we’d had calls at the
hotel from various .sources, and
named them.

“See what I mean ? 1 know those
babies. Kiss them out if you want
to keep your shirt. And while I’m
at it, you owe us quite a bit. I sup-
])ose you’ve got it.”

“We’ve got it.”

“I was afraid you would. If you
didn’t, I’d be the one that would

have your shirt.” He grinned, but
we all knew he meant it. “-A.11 right,
that’s settled. Let’s talk about re-
lease.

“There are two or three outfits
around town that will want a crack
at it. My boys will have the word
spread around in no time ; there’s no
point in trying to keep them quiet
any longer. I know — they’ll have
sense enough not to talk about the
things you want off the record. I’ll
see to that. But you're top dog right
now. You got loose cash, you’ve got
the biggest potential gross I’ve ever
seen, and you don’t have to take the
first offer. That’s important, in this
game.”

“How would you like to handle it
yourself ?”

“I’d like to try. The outfit I’m
thinking of needs a feature right
now, and they don’t know I know it.
They’ll pay and jiay. What’s in it
for me ?”

“That,” I said, “we can talk about
later. And I think I know just
what you’re thinking. We’ll take the
usual terms and we don’t care if you
hold up whoever you deal with.
What we don’t know won’t hurt us.”
That’s what he was thinking, all
right. That’s a cutthroat game out
there.

“Good. Kessler, get your setup
ready for duplication.”

“Always ready.”

“Marrs, start the ball rolling on
publicity . . . what do you want to
do about that?” to us.

Mike and I had talked about that
before. “As far as we’re concerned,”
I said slowly, “do as you think best.
Personal publicity, O.K. We won’t

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ASTOITNDIXO SC rKKCK-FICTTON

look for it, but we won’t dodge it.
As far as that goes, we’re the local
yokels making good. Soft pedal any
questions about where the picture
was made, without being too obvi-
ous. You’re going to have trouble
when you talk about the nonexistent
actors, but you ought to be able to
figure out something.”

Marrs groaned and Johnson
grinned. “He’ll figure out some-
thing.”

“As far as technical credit goes,
we’ll be glad to see you get all you
can, becau.se you’ve done a .swell
job.” Kessler took that as a per-
.sonal compliment, and it was. “You
might as well know now, before we
go any further, that some of the
work came right from Detroit.”
They all sat up at that.

“Mike and I have a new process
of model and trick work.” Kessler
ojjened his mouth to say something
but thought better of it. “We’re not
going to say what was done, or how
much was done in the laboratory, but
you’ll admit that it defies detection.”

About that they were fervent. “I’ll
say it defies detection. In the game
this long and process work gets by
me . . . where — ”

“I’m not going to tell you that.
What we’ve got isn’t patented and
won’t be, as long as we can hold it
up.” There wasn’t any griping there.
These men knew process work when
they saw it. If they didn’t see it, it
was good. They could understand
why we’d want to keep a process
that good a secret.

“We can practically guarantee
there’ll be more work for you to do
later on.” Their interest was plain.

“We’re not going to predict when,
or make any definite arrangement,
but we still have a trick or two in
the deck. We like the way we’ve
been getting along, and we want to
stay that way. Now, if you’ll excuse
us, we have a date with a blonde.”

Johnson was right about the bid-
ding for the release. We — or rather
Johnson — made a very profitable
deal with United Amusement and
the affiliated theaters. Johnson, the
bandit, got his percentage from us
and likely did better with United.
Kessler and Johnson’s boys took
huge ads in the trade journals to
boast about their connections with
the Academy Award Winner. Not
only the Academy, but every award
that ever went to any picture. Even
the Europeans went overboard.
They’re the ones that make a fetish
of realism. They knew the real thing
when they saw it, and so did every-
one else.

Our success went to Ruth’s head.
In no time she wanted a secretary. ^
At that, she needed one to fend off '
the screwballs that popped out of the
woodwork. So we let her hire a girl
to help out. She picked a good
typist, about fifty. Ruth is a smart
girl, in a lot of ways. Her father
showed signs of wanting to see the
Pacific, so we raised her salary on
condition he’d stay away. Tlie three
of us were having too much fun.

The picture opened at the same
time in both New York and Holly-
wood. We went to the premiere in
great style with Ruth between us,
swollen like a trio of bullfrogs. It’s
a great feeling to sit on the floor.

W FOR EFFORT

187

early in the morning, and read re-
views that make you feel like float-
ing. It’s a better feeling to have a
mintful of money. Johnson and his
men were right along with us. I
don’t think he could have been too
flush in the beginning, and we all got
a kick out of riding the crest.

It was a good-sized wave, too. \\’e
had all the personal publicity we
wanted, and more. Somehow the
word was out that we had a new
gadget for process photography, and
every big studio in town was after
what they thought would be a mighty
economical thing to have around.
The studios that didn’t have a spec-
tacle scheduled looked at the receipts
of “Ale.xander” and promptly sched-
uled a spectacle. We drew some very
good offers, Johnson said, but we
made a series of long faces and broke
the news that we were leaving for
Detroit the next day, and to hold the
fort awhile. I don’t think he thought
we actually meant it, but we did. We
left the next day.

Back in Detroit we went right to
work, helped by the knowledge, that
we were on the right track. Ruth
was kept busy turning away the
countless would-be visitors. We ad-
mitted no reporters, no salesmen, no
one. We had no time. We were
using the view camera. Plate after
plate we sent to Rochester for devel-
oping. .A print of each was returned
to us and the plate was held in Roch-
ester for our disposal. We sent to
New York for a representative of
one of the biggest publishers in the
country. We made a deal.

Your main library has a set of the
books we published, if you’re in-

138

terested. Huge heavy volumes,
hundreds of them, each page a razor-
sharp blowup from an 8.x 10 nega-
tive. A set of those books went to
every major library and university in
the world. Mike and I got a real
kick out of solving some of the prob-
lems that have had savants guessing
for years. In the Roman volume,
for example, we solved the trireme
problem with a series of pictures, not
only the interior of a trireme, but a
line-of-battle quinquereme. (Natu-
rally, the professors and amateur
yachtsmen weren’t convinced at all.)
We had a series of aerial shots of
the City of Rome taken a hundred
years apart, over a millennium.
Aerial views of Ravenna and Lon-
dinium. Palmyra and Pompeii, of
Eboracum and Byzantium. Oh, we
had the time of our lives! We had
a volume for Greece and for Rome,
for Persia and for Crete, for Egypt
and for the Eastern Empire. We
had pictures of the Parthenon and
the Pharos, pictures of Hannibal and
Caractacus and Vercingctorix, pic-
tures of the Walls of Babylon and
the building of the pyramids and the
palace of Sargon, pages from the
Lost Books of Livy and the plays of
Euripedes. Things like that.

Terrifically expensive, a second
printing sold at cost to a surprising
number of private individuals. If the
cost had been less, historical interest
would have become even more the
fad of the moment.

When the flurry had almost died
down, some Italian digging in the
hitherto-unexcavated section of ash-
buried Pompeii, dug right into a tiny
buried temple right where our aerial

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

shot had showed it to be. Ills budget
was expanded and he found more
ash-covered ruins that agreed with
our aerial layout, ruins that hadn’t
seen the light of day for almost two
thousand years. Everyone promptly
wailed that we were the luckiest
guessers in captivity ; the head of
some California cult suspected aloud
that we were the reincarnations of
two gladiators named Joe.

To get some peace and quiet Mike
and I moved into our studio, lock,
stock, and underwear. The old bank
vault had never been removed, at our
request, and it served well to store
our equipment when we weren’t
:iround. All the mail Ruth couldn’t
handle we disposed of, unread ; the
old bank building began to look like
a well-patronized soup kitchen. We
hired burly private detectives to
handle the more obnoxious visitors
and subscribed to a telegraphic pro-
tective service. We had another job
to do, another full-length feature.

We still stuck to the old historical
theme. This time we tried to do
what Gibbon did in the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire. And, I
think, we were rather successful, at
that. In four hours you can’t com-
pletely cover two thousand years, but
you can, as we did, show the crack-
ing up of a great civilization, and
how painful the process can be. The
criticism we drew for almost ignor-
ing Christ and Christianity was un-
just, we think, and unfair. Very-
few knew then, or know now, that
we had included, as a kind of trial
balloon, some footage of Christ Him-
self, and His times. This footage
we had to cut. The Board of Re-

view, as you know, is both Catholic
and Protestant. They — the Board —
went right up in arms. We didn’t
protest very hard when they claimed
our “treatment” was irreverent, in-
decent, and biased and inaccurate
“by any Christian standard. Why,”
they wailed, “it doesn’t even look
like Him,” and they w-ere right; it
didn’t. Not any picture they ever
saw. Right then and there we decided
that it didn’t pay to tamper with any-
one’s religious beliefs. That’s why
you’ve never seen anything emanat-
ing from us that conflicted even re-
motely with the accepted historical,
sociological, or religious features of
Someone Who Knew Better. That
Roman picture, by the way, — but not
accidentally — deviated so little from
the textbooks you conned in school
that only a few enthusiastic special-
ists called our attention to what they
insisted were errors. W’e were still
in no position to do any mass rewrit-
ing of history, because we were un-
able to reveal just where we got our
information.

Johnson, when he saw the Roman
epic, mentally clicked high his heels.
His men went right to work, and we
handled the job as we had the first.
One day Kessler got me in a corner,
dead earnest.

“Ed,” he said, “I’m going to find
out where you got that footage if
it’s the last thing I ever do.”

I fold him that some day he would.

“And I don’t mean some day,
either; I niean right now. That
bushwa about Europe might go once,
but not twice. I know better, and so

K POn KPPORT

130

does everyone else. Kow, what about
it?”

I told him I’d have to consult
Mike and I did. We were up. against
it. We called a conference.

“Kessler tells me he has troubles.
I guess you all know what they are.”
They all knew.

Johnson spoke up. “He’s right,
too. We know better. Where did
you get it ?”

I turned to Mike. “Want to do
the talking?”

A shake of his head. “You’re do-
ing all right.”

“All right.” Kessler hunched a
little forward and Marts lit another
cigarette. “We weren’t lying and we
weren’t exaggerating w'hen we said
the actual photography was ours.
Every frame of film was taken right
here in this country, within the last
few' months. Just how — I won’t
mention why or where — we can’t tell
you jtu^ now.” Kessler snorted in
disgust. “Let me finish.

“We all know that w'e’re cashing
in, hand over fist. And we're going
to cash in some more. We have, on
our personal schedule, five more pic-
tures. Three of that five we want
you to handle as you did the others.
The last two of the five wdll show
you both the reason for all the child-
ish secrecy, as Kessler calls it, and
another motive that we have so far
kept hidden. The last two pictures
will show you both our motives and
our methods ; one is as important as
the other. Now — is that enough?
Can we go ahead on that basis?”

It wasn’t enough for Kessler.
“That doesn’t mean a thing to me.
What are w'e, a bunch of hacks?”

Johnson was thinking about his
bank balance. “Five more. Tw'o
years, maybe four.”

Marrswas skeptical. “Who do you
think you’re going to kid that long?
Where’s your studio ? W’here’s your
talent? Where do you shoot your
exteriors? Where do you get your
costumes and your extras? In one
single shot you’ve got forty thousand
extras, if you’ve got one! Maybe
you can shut me up, but who’s going
to answer the questions that Metro
and Fox and Paramount and RKO
have been asking ? Those boys aren’t
fools, they know theirbusiness. How
do you expect me to handle any pub-
licity when r don’t know what the
score is, -myself?”

Johnson told him to pipe down for
awhile and let him think. Mike and
I didn’t like this one bit. But what
could we do — tell the-truth and end
up in a strait- jacket?

“Can we do it this way ?” he finally
a.sked. “Marrs : these boys have an
in with the Soviet Government.
They work in some place in Siberia,
maybe. Nobody gets within miles of
there. No one ever knows what the
Russians are doing — ”

“Nope!” Marrs was definite. “Any
hint that these came from Russia
and we’d all be a bunch of Reds.
Cut the gross in half.”

Johnson began to pick up speed.
“All right, not from Russia. From
one of these little republics fringed
around Siberia or Armenia or one
of those places. They’re not Russian-
made films at all. In fact, they’ve
been made by some of these Germans
and Austrians the Russians took
over and moved after the War. The

140

ASTOUXntXO SOTKXCE-FTCTION'

war fever had died down enough for
people to realize that the Germans
knew their stuff occasionally. The old
sympathy racket for these refugees
struggling with faulty equipment,
lousy climate, making super-specta-
cles and smuggling them out under
the nose of the Gestapo or whatever
they call it — That’s it!”

Doubtfully, from Marrs; “And
the Russians tell the world we’re
nuts, that they haven’t got any loose
Germans ?”

That, Johnson overrode. '“Who
reads the back pages? Who pays
any attention to what the Russians
say ? Who cares ? They might even
think we’re telling the truth and start
looking around their own backyard
for something that isn’t there! All
right with you?” to Mike and my-
sel f .

I looked at Mike and he looked
at me.

“O.K. with us.”

“O.K. with the rest df you ? Kess-
ler ? Bernstein ?”

They weren’t too agreeable, and
certainly not happy, but they agreed
to play games until we gave the
w’ord.

We w'ere warm in our thanks.
■’You won’t regret it,”

Kessler doubted that very much,
but Johnson eased them all out, back
to work. Another hurdle leaped, or
sidestepped.

■’Rome” was released on schedule
and drew the same friendly review's.
■’Friendly” is the wrong word for
reviews that stretched ticket line-ups
blocks long. Marrs did a good job
on the ])ublicity. Even that chain of

newspapers that afterward turned on
us so viciously fell for Marrs’ word
wizardry and ran full-page editorials
urging the reader to see “Rome.”

With our third picture, “Flame
Over France,” we corrected a few
misconceptions about the French
Revolution, and began stepping on a
few tender toes. Luckily, however,
and not altogether by design, there
happened to be in power in Paris a
liberal government. They backed us
to the hilt with the confirmation we
needed. At our request they released
a lot of documents that had hitherto
conveniently been lost in the caver-
nous recesses of the Bibliotheque
Nationale. Fve forgotten the nameof
whoever happened to be the peren-
nial pretender to the French throne.
At, Fm sure, the subtle prodding of
one of Marrs’ ubiquitous publicity
men, the pretender sued us for our
whole net, alleging the defamation
of the good name of file Bourbons.
A lawyer Johnson dug up for us
sucked the poor chump into a court-
room and cut him to bits. Not even
six cents damages did he get. Sam-
uels, the lawyer, and Marrs drew a
good-sized bonus, and the pretender
moved to Honduras.

Somewhere around this point, I
lielieve, did the tone of the press be-
gin to change. Up until then we’d
been regarded as crosses between
Shakespeare and Barnum. Since
long obscure facts had been dredged
into the light, a few well-known pes-
simists began to wonder sotto voce if
we weren’t just a pair of blasted
pests. “Should leave well enough
alone.” Only our huge advertising
budget kept them from saying more.

n FOR EFFORT

141

I’m going to stop right here and
say something about our personal life
while all this was going on. Mike
I’ve kept in the background pretty
well, mostly because he wants it that
way. He lets me do all the talk-
ing and stick my neck out while he
sits in the most comfortable chair in
sight. I yell and I argue and he just
sits there; hardly ever a word com-
ing out of that dark-brown pan, cer-
tainly never an indication showing
that behind those polite eyebrows
there’s a brain — and a sense of
humor and wit — faster and as deadly
as a bear trap. Oh, I know we’ve
played around, sometimes with a
loud bang, but we’ve been, ordinar-
ily, too busy and too preoccupied
with what we were doing to waste
any time. Ruth, while she was with
us, was a good dancing and drinking
partner. She was young, she was al-
most what you’d call beautiful, and
she seemed to like being with us,-
For awhile I had a few ideas about
her that miglrt; have developed into
something serious. We both — I
should say, all three of us — found '
out in time that we looked at a lot of
things too differently. So we weren’t
too disappointed when she signed
with, Metro. Her contract meant
what she thought was all the fame
and money and happiness in the
world, plus the personal attention she
was doubtless entitled to have. They
put her in Class B’s and serials and
she, financially, is better off than she
ever expected to be. Emotionally, I
don’t know. We heard from her
sometin'ie ago, and I think she’s about
due for another divorce. Maybe it’s
just as well.

But let's get away from Ruth. I’m
ahead of myself, anyway. All this
time Mike and I had been working
together, our approach to the final
payoff had been divergent. Mike was
hopped on the idea of making a bet-
ter world, and doing that by making
war impossible. “War,” he’s often
said, “war of any kind is what has
made man spend most of his history
in merely staying alive. Now, with
the atom to use, he has within him-
self the seed of self-extennination.
So help me, Ed, I’m going to do my
share of stopping that, or I don’t see
any ]>oint in living. I mean it !”

He did mean it. He told me that
in almost the same words the first
day we met. Then. I tagged that
idea as a pipe dream picked up on
an empty stomach. I saw his ma-
chine only as a path to a luxurious
and personal Nirvana, and I thought
he’d soon be going my way. I was
wrong.

You can’t live, or work, with a
likable person without admiring some
of the qualities that make that per-
son likable. Another thing; it’s a
lot easier to worry about the woes of
the world when you haven’t any
yourself. It’s a lot easier to have a
conscience when you can afford it.
When I donned the rose-colored
glasses half my battle was won;
when I realized how grand a world
this could be, the battle was over.
That was about the time of “Flame
Over France,” I think. The actual
time isn’t important. M’hat is im-
portant is that, from that time on,
we became the tightest team possible.
Since then the only thing we’ve dif-
fered on would be the time to knock

142

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

off for a sandwich. Most of our
leisure time, what we had of it, has
been spent in locking vip for the
night, rolling out the portable bar,
opening just enough beer to feel
good, and relaxing. Maybe, after
one or two, we might diddle the dials
of the machine, and go rambling.

Together we’ve been everywhere
and seen anything. It might be a
good night to check up on Francois
Villon, that faker, or maybe we
might chase around with Haroun-el-
Rashid. (If there was ever a man
born a few hundred years too soon,
it was that careless caliph.) Or if
we were in a bad or discouraged
mood we might follow the Thirty
Years War for a while, or if we
were real raffish we might inspect
the dressing rooms at Radio City.
For Mike the crackup of Atlantis
has always had an odd fascination,
jjrobably because he’s afraid that
man will do it again, now that he’s
rediscovered nuclear energy. And if
I doze off he’s quite apt to go back
to the very Beginning, back to the
start of the world as we know it
now. (It wouldn’t do any good to
tell you what went before that.)

When I stop to think, it’s prob-
ably just as well that neither of us
married. We, of course, have hopes
for the future, but at present we’re
both tired of the whole human race ;
tired of greedy faces and hands.
With a world that puts a premium
on wealth and power and strength,
it’s no wonder what decency there is
stems from fear of what’s here now,
or fear of what’s hereafter. We’ve
seen so much of the hidden actions
of the world — call it snooping, if

you like — that w'e've learned to dis-
regard the surface indications of
kindness and good. Only once did
Mike and I ever look into the pri-
vate life of someone we knew and
liked and respected. Once was
enough. From that day on we made
it a point to take people as they
seemed. Let’s get away from that.

The next two pictures we released
in rapid succession; the first “Free-
dom for Americans,” the American
Revolution, and “The Brothers and
the Guns,” the American Civil War.
Bang! Every third politician, a lot
of so-called “educators,” and all the
professional patriots started after
our scalps. Every single chapter of
the DAR, the Sons- of Union Vet-
erans, and the Daughters of the
Confederacy pounded their collec-
tive heads against the wall. The
South w'ent frantic; every state in
the Deep South and one state on the
border flatly banned both pictures,
the second because it was truthful,
and the first because censorship is
a contagious disease. They stayed
banned until the professional politi-
cians got wise. The bans were re-
voked. and the choke-collar and
string-tie brigade pointed to both
pictures as horrible examples of
what some people actually believed
and thought, and felt pleased that
someone had given them an oppor-
tunity to roll out the barrel and beat
the drums that sound sectional and
racial hatred.

New England was tempted to
stand on its dignity, but couldn’t
stand the strain. North of New York
both pictures were Itanned. In New

R FOU KFFOUT

143

York state the rural representatives
voted en bloc, and the ban was
clamped on statewide. Special trains
ran to Delaware, where the corpora-
tions were too busy to pass another
law. Libel suits flew like spaghetti,
and although the extras blared the
filing of each new suit, very few
knew that we lost not one. Although
we had to appeal almost every suit
to higher courts, and in some cases
request a change -of venue which
was seldom granted, the documen-
tary proof furnished by the record
cleared us once we got to a judge,
or series of judges, with no fences
to mend.

It was a mighty rasp we drew over
wounded ancestral pride. We had
shown that not all the mighty had
haloes of purest gold, that not all
the Redcoats were strutting bullies
— nor angels, and the British Em-
pire, except South Africa, refused
entry to both pictures and made vio-
lent passes at the State Department.
The spectacle of Southern and New
England congressmen approving the
efforts of a foreign ambassador to
suppress free speech drew hilarious
hosannahs from certain quarters.
H. L. Mencken gloated in the clover,
doing loud nip-ups, and the news-
papers hung on the triple-horned di-
lemma of anti-foreign, pro-patriotic,
and quasi-logical criticism. In De^
troit the Ku Klux Klan fired an
anemic cross on our doorstep, and
the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the
NAACP,. and the WCTU passed
flattering resolutions. We forwarded
the most vicious and obscene letters
— together wdth a few names and ad-
dresses that hadn’t been originally

ASTOIINTHNO SCIKXCK-FICTtO^•

signed — to our lawyers and the Post
Office Dejiartment, There were no
convictions south of Illinois.

Johnson and his boys made hay.
Johnson had pyramided his bets into
an international distributing organi-
zation, and pushed Marrs into hiring
every top press agent either side of
the Rockies. What a job they did!
In no time at all there were two defi-
nite schools of thought that over-
flowed into the public letter boxes.
One school held that we had no busi-
ness raking up old mud to throw,
that such things were better left for-
gotten and forgiven, that nothing
wrong had ever happened, and if it
had, we were liars anyway. The
other school reasoned more to our
liking. Softly and slowly at first,
then with a triumphant shout, this
fact began to emerge; such things
had actually happened, and could
ballpen again, were possibly happen-
ing even now ; had happened because
twisted truth had too long left its
imprint on international sectional,
and racial feelings. It jdeased us
when many began to agree, with us,
that it is important to forget the
past, but that it is even more impor-
tant to understand and evaluate it
with a generous and unjaundiced
eye. That was what we were trying
to bring out.

The banning that occurred in the
various states hurt the gross receipts
only a little, and we were vindicated
in Johnson’s mind. .He had dolefully
predicted loss of half the national
gross because “you can’t tell the
truth in a movie and get away with
it. Not if the house holds over three
hundred.’’ Not even on the stage?

“Who goes to anything but a movie ?”
So far things had gone just about
as. we’d planned. We’d earned and
received more publicity, favorable
and otherwise, than anyone living.
Most of it stemmed from the fact
that our doing had been newsworthy.
Some, naturally, had been the ninety-
day -wonder material that fills a
thirsty newspaper. W e had been very
careful to make our enemies in the
strata that can afford to fight back.
Remember the old saw about know-
ing a man by the enemies he makes ?
Well, publicity was our ax. Here’s
how we put an edge on it.

I called Johnson in Hollywood.
He was glad to hear from us. “Long
time no see. What’s the pitch, Ed ?’’
“I want some lip readers. And I
w'ant them yesterday, like you tell
your boys.’’

“Lip readers? Are you nuts?
What do you want with lip
readers ?’’

“Never mind why. I want lip
readers. Can you get them ?’’

“How should I know? What do
you want them for?”

“I said, can you get them ?”

He was doubtful. “I think you’ve
been working too hard,”

“Look—”

“Now, I didn’t say I couldn’t.
Cool off. When do you want them ?
And how many?”

“Better write this down. Ready?
I want lip readers for these lan-
guages ; English, French, German,
Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek,
Belgian, Dutch and Spanish.”

“ED LEFKO, HAVE YOU
GONE CRAZY?”

R FOB EFFORT

14.5

. I guess it didn’t sound very sensi-
ble, at that. “Maybe I have. But
those languages are essential. If you
run across any who can work in any
other language, hang on to them. I
might need them, too.” I could see
him sitting in front of his telephone,
wagging his head like mad. Crazy.
The heat must have got Lefko, goo'd
old Ed. “Did you hear what I said ?”

“Yes, I heard you. If this Is a
rib—”

“No rib. Dead serious.”

He began to get mad. “Where you
think I’m going to get lip readers,
out of my hat ?”

“That’s your worry. I’d suggest
you start with the local School for
the Deaf.” He was silent. “Now,
get this into your head ; this isn’t a
rib, this is the real thing. I don’t
care what you do, or where you go,
or what you spend — I want those
lip readers in Hollywood when we
get there or I want to know they’re
on the way.”

“When are you going to get
here ?”

I said I wasn’t sure. “Probably a
day or two. We’ve got a few loose
ends to flean up.”

He swore a blue streak at the in-
equities of fate. “You’d better have
a good story when you do — ” I
hung up.

Mike met me at the studio. “Talk
to Johnson?” I told him, and he
laughed. “Does sound crazy, I sup-
pose. But he’ll get them, if they
exist and like money. He’s the Origi-
nal Resourceful Man.”

I tossed my hat in a corner. “I’m
glad this is about over. Your end
caught up ?”

146

“Set and ready to go. The fdms
and the notes are on the way, the
real estate company is ready to take
over the lease, and the girls are paid
up to date, with a little extra.”

I opened a bottle of beer for my-
self. Mike had one. “How about
the office files ? How about the bar.
here ?”

“The files go to the bank to be
stored. The bar? Hadn’t thought
about it.”

The beer was cold. “Have it
crated and send it to Johnson.’’

We grinned, together. “Johnson
it is. He’ll need it.”

I nodded at the machine. ‘What
about that ?”

“That goes with us on the plane
as air express.” He looked closely
at me. “What’s the matter with you
— jitters ?”

“Nope. Willies. Same thing.”
“Me, too. Your clothes and mine
left this morning.”

“Not even a clean shirt left ?”
“Not even a clean shirt. Just
like—”

I finished it. “ — the first trip with
Ruth. A little different, maybe.”
Mike said slowly. “A lot differ-
ent.” I opened another beer. ‘’Any-
thing you want around here, any-
thing else to be done?” I said no.
“O.K. Let’s get this over with.
We’ll put what we need in the car.
We’ll stop at the Courville Bar be-
fore we hit the airport.”

I didn’t get it. “There’s still beer
left—”

“But no champagne.”

I got it. “O.K. I’m dumb, at
times. Let’s go.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

We loaded the machine into the
car, and the bar, left the studio keys
at the corner grocery for the real
estate company, and headed for the
airport by way of the Courville Bar.
Ruth was in California, but Joe had
champagne. We got to the airport
late.

Marrs met us in Los Angeles.
“What’s up? You’ve got Johnson
running around in circles.’’

“Did he tell you why ?’’

“Sounds crazy to me. Couple of
reporters inside. Got anything for
them ?”

“Not right now. Let’s get going.’’

In Johnson’s private office we got
a chilly reception, “This better be
good. Where do you expect to find
someone to lipread in Chinese? Or
Russian, for that matter?’’

We all sat down. “What have
you got so far?’’

“Besides a headache ?’’ He handed
me a short list.

I scanned it. “How long before
you can get them here ?’’

An explosion. “How long before
I can get them here? Am I your
errand boy ?’’

“For all practical purposes you
are. Quit the fooling. How about
it ?’’ Marrs snickered at the look on
Johnson’s face.

“What are you smirking at, you
moron ?’’ Marrs gave in and laughed
outright, and I did, too. “Go ahead
, and laugh. This isn’t funny. When
I called the S.tate School for the
Deaf they hung up. Thought I was
some practical joker. We’ll skip that.

“There’s three women and a man
on that list. They cover English,
French, Spanish, and German. Two

E f6r effort

of them are working in the East, and
I’m waiting for answers to telegrams
I sent them. One lives in Pomona
and one works for the Arizona
School for the Deaf. That’s the best
I could do.’’

We thought that over. “Get on
the phone. Talk to every state in
the union if you have to, or over-
seas.’’

Johnson kicked the desk. “And
what are you going to do with them,
if I’m that lucky?’’

“You’ll find out. Get them on
planes and fly them here, and we’ll
talk turkey when they get here. I
want a projection room, not yours,
and a good bonded court reporter.’’

He asked the world to appreciate
what a life he led.

“Get in touch with us at the Com-
modore.’’ To Marrs: “Keep the re-
porters away for a while. We’ll have
something for them later.’’ Then we
left.

Johnson never did find anyone
who could lipread Greek. None, at
least, that could speak English. The
expert on Russian he dug out of
Ambridge, in Pennsylvania, the
Flemish and Holjand Dutch expert
came from Leyden, in the Nether-
lands, and at the last minute he
stumbled upon a Korean who worked
in Seattle as an inspector for the
Chinese Government. Five women
and two men. We signed them to an
ironclad contract drawn by Samuels,
who now handled all our legal work.
I made a little speech before they
signed.

“These contracts, as far as we’ve
been able to make sure, are going to
control your personal and business

14T

life for the next year, and there’s a
clause that says we can extend that
period for another year if we so de-
sire. Let’s get this straight. You
are to live in a place of your own,
which we will provide. You will he
supplied with all necessities by our
buyers. Any attempt at unauthorized
communication will result in abro-
gation of the contract. Is that clear?

“Good. Your work will not be
difficult, but it will be tremendously
important. You will, very likely, be
finished in three months, but you
will be ready to go any place at any
time at our discretion, naturally at
our expense. Mr. Sorenson, as you
are taking this down, you realize
that this goes for you, too.” He
nodded.

“Your references, your abilities,
and your past work have been thor-
oughly checked, and you will con-
tinue under constant observation.
You will be required to verify and
notarize every page, perhaps every
line, of your transcripts, which Mr. -
Sorenson here will supply. Any
questions ?”

No questions. Each was getting a
fabulous salary, and each wanted to
appear eager to’ earn it. They all
signed.

Resourceful Johnson bought for
us a small rooming house, and we
paid an exorbitant price to a detec-
tive agenc/ to do the cooking and
cleaning and chauffeuring required.
We requested that the lipreaders re-
frain from discussing their work
among themselves, especially in
front of the house employees, and
they followed instructions very well.

One day, about a month later, we
called a conference in the projection
room of Johnson’s laboratory. We
had a single reel of film.

“What’s that for?”

“That’s the reason for all the
cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Never
mind calling your projection man.
This Tm going to run through my-
self. See what you think of it.”

They were all disgusted. “I’m get-
ting tired of all this kid stuff,” said
Kessler.

As I started for the projection
booth I heard Mike say, “You’re no
more tired of it than I am.”

From the booth I could see what
was showing on the downstairs
screen, but nothing else. I ran
through the reel, rewound, and went
back down.

I said, “One more thing, before
we go any further read this. It’s a
certified and notarized transcript of
what has been read from the lips of
the characters you just saw. They
weren’t, incidentally, ‘characters,’ in
that sense of the word.” I handed
the crackling sheets around, a copy
for each. “Those ‘characters’ are
real people. You’ve just seen a news-
reel. This transcript will tell you
what they were talking about. Read
it. In the trunk of the car Mike
and I have something to show you.
We’ll be back by the time you’ve
read it.”

Mike heli)ed me carry in the ma-
chine from the car. We came in the
door in time to see Kessler throw
the transcript as far as he could.
He bounced to his feet as the sheets
fluttered down.

He was furious. “What’s going

148

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

on here ?” We paid no attention to
him, nor to the excited demands of
the others until the machine had
been plugged into the nearest outlet.

Mike looked at me. “Any ideas ?”

I shook my head and told Johnson
to shut up for a minute. Mike lifted
the lid and hesitated momentarily
before he touched the dials. I
pushed Johnson into his chair and
turned off the lights myself. The
room went black. Johnson, looking
over my shoulder, gasped. I heard
Bernstein swear softly, amazed.

I turned to see what Mike had
shown them.

It was impressive, all right. He
had started just over the roof of the
laboratory and continued straight
up in the air. Up, up, up, until the
city of Los Angeles was a tiny dot
on a great ball. On the horizon were
the Rockies. Johnson grabbed my
arm. He hurt.

“What’s that? What’s that?
Stop it !’’ He was yelling. Mike
turned off the machine.

You can guess what happened
next. No one believed their eyes,
nor Mike’s patient explanation. He
had to twice turn on the machine
again, once going far back into
Kessler’s past. Then the reaction
set in.

Marrs smoked one cigarette after
another, Bernstein turned a gold
pencil over and over in his nervous
fingers, Johnson paced like a caged
tiger, and burly Kessler stared at
the machine, saying nothing at all.
Johnson was muttering as he paced.
Then he stopped and shook his fist
under Mike’s nose.

“Man ! Do you know what you’ve

got there ? Why waste time playing
around here? Can’t you see you’ve
got the world by the tail on a down-
hill pull? If I’d ever known this — ”
Mike appealed to me. “Ed, talk
to this wildman.”

I did. I can’t remember exactly
what I said, and it isn’t important.
But I did tell him how we’d started,
how we’d plotted our course, and
what we were going to do. I ended
by telling him the idea behind the
reel of film I’d run off a minute be-
fore.

He recoiled as though I were a
snake. “You can’t get away wtih
that! You’d be hung — if you
weren’t lynched first!’’

“Don’t you think we know that?
Don’t you think we’re willing to
take that chance?”

He tore his thinning hair. Marts
broke in. “Let me talk to him.”
He came over and faced us squarely.

“Is this on the level? You going
to make a picture like that and stick
your neck out? You’re going to
turn that . . . that thing over to
the people of the world ?”

I nodded. “Just that.”

"And toss over everything you’ve
got?” He was dead serious, and so
was I. He turned to the others.
“He means it!”

Bern.stein said, “Can’t be done!”
Words flew. I tried to convince
them that we had followed the only
possible path. “What kind of a
world do you want to live in? Or
don’t you want to live?”

Johnson grunted. “How long do
you think we’d live if we ever made
a picture like that? You’re crazy!

E FOR EFFORT

149

I’m not. I'm not going to put my
head in a noose.”

“Wliy do you think we’ve been so
insistent about credit and responsi-
bility for direction and production?
You’ll be doing only what we hired
yovr for. Not that we want to twist
your arm, but you’ve made a for-
tune, all of you, working for us.
Now, when the going gets heavy,
you want to back out!”

Marrs gave in. “Maybe you’re
right, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe
you’re crazy, maybe I am. I always
used to say I’d try anything once.
Bernie, you?”

Bernstein was quietly cynical.
"You saw what happened in the last
war. This might help. I don’t
know if it will. I don’t know — but
I’d hate to think I didn’t try. Count
me in!”

Kessler ?

He swiveled his head. “Kid stuff!
Who wants to live forever? Who
wants to let a chance go by?”

Johnson threw up his hands.
“Let’s hope we get a cell together.
Let’s all go crazy.” And that was
that.

We went to work in a blazing
drive of mutual hope and under-
standing. In four months the lip-
readers were through. There’s no
point in detailing here their reac-
tions to the dynamite they daily dic-
tated to Sorenson. For their own
good we kept them in the dark about
our final purpose, and when they
were through we sent them across
the border into Mexico, to a small
ranch Johnson had leased. We were
going to need them later.

TOO

While the print duplicators
worked overtime Marrs worked
harder. The press and the radio
shouted the announcement that, in
every city of the world we could
reach, there would be held the simul-
taneous premieres of our latest pic-
ture. It would be the last we
needed to make. Many wondered
aloud at our choice of the w'ord
“needed.” We whetted curiosity by
refusing any advance information
about the plot, and Johnson so well
infused their men with their own
now-fervent enthusiasm that not
much could be pried out of them
but conjecture. The day we picked
for release was Sunday. Monday,
the storm broke.

I wonder how many prints of that
picture are left today. I wonder
how many escaped burning or con-
fiscation. Two World Wars we
covered, covered from the unflatter-
ing angles that, up until then, had
been represented by only a few
books hidden in the dark corners of
libraries. We showed and named
the war-makers, the cynical ones
who signed and laughed and lied,
the blatant patriots who used the
flare of headlines and the ugliness
of atrocity to hide behind their flag
while life turned to death for mil-
lions. Our own and foreign trait-
ors were there, the hidden ones with
Janus faces. Our lipreaders had
done their work well ; no guesses
these, no deduced conjectures from
the broken records of a blasted past,
but the exact words that exposed
treachery disguised as patriotism.

In foreign lands the performances
lasted barely the day. Usually, in

astounding science-fiction

etaliation for the imposed censor-
ship, the theaters were wrecked by
the raging cro^iul^ (Marrs, inci-
dently, had spent hundreds of thou-
sands bribing officials to allow the
picture to be shown without pre-
vious censorship. Many censors,
when that came out, were shot with-
out trial). In the Balkans, revolu-
tions broke out, and various embas-
sies were stormed by mobs. Where
the film was banned or destroyed
written versions spontaneously ap-
peared on the streets or in coffee-
houses. Bootlegged editions were
smuggled past customs guards, who
looked the other way. One royal
family fled to Switzerland.

Here in America it was a racing
two weeks before the Federal Gov-
ernment, prodded into action by the
raging of press and radio, in an un-
precedented move closed all per-
formances “to promote the common
welfare, insure domestic tranquil-
lity, and preserve forengn rela-
tions.’’ Murmurs — and one riot —
rumbled in the Midwest and spread
until it was realized by the powers
that be that something had to be
done, and done quickly, if every gov-
ernment in the world were not to
collapse of its own weight.

We were in Mexico, at the ranch
Johnson had rented for the lipread-
ers. While Johnson paced the
floor, jerkily fraying a cigar, we
listened to a special broadcast of
the attorney general himself ;

“. . . furthermore, this message
was today forwarded to the goverfi-
ment of the United States of Mex-
ico. I read : ‘the government of the
United States of America requests

the immediate arrest and extradi-
tion of the following :

“ ‘Edward Joseph Lefkowicz,
known as Lefko.’ ’’ First on the list.
Even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble
if he kept his mouth shut.

“ ‘Miguel Jose Zapata Laviada.’ ’’
Mike crossed one leg over the other.

“ ‘Edward Lee Johnson.’ ’’ He
threw his cigar on the floor and sank
into a chair.

“ ‘Robert Chester Marrs.’ ’’ He
lit another cigarette. His face
twitched.

“ ‘Benjamin Lionel Bernstein.’ ”
He smiled a twisted smile and
closed his eyes.

“ ‘Carl Wilhelm Kessler.’ ” A
snarl.

“These men are wanted by the
Government of the United States
of America, to stand trial on charges
ranging from criminal syndicalism,
incitement to riot, suspicion of
treason — ’’

I clicked off the radio. “Well?’’,
to ho one in particular.

Bernstein opened his eyes. “The
rurales are probably on their way.
Might as well go back and face the
music — ” We crossed the border
at Juarez. The FBI was waiting.

Every press and radio chain in
the world must have had coverage
at that trial, every radio system,
even the new and imperfect tele-
vision chain. We were allowed to
see no one but our lawyer. Samuels
flew from the West Coast and spent
a week trying to get past our guards.
He told us not to talk to reporters,
if we ever saw them.

“You haven’t seen the newspa-
pers ? Just as well — How did you

B FOB EPFOBT

161

ever get yourselves into this mess,
anyway? You ought to know bet-
ter.”

I told him.

He was stunned. “Are you all
crazy ?”

He was hard to convince. Only
the united effort and concerted
stories of all of us made him believe
that there was such a machine in
existence. (He talked to us sepa-
rately, because we were kept iso-
lated.) When he got back to me he
was unable to think coherently.

“What kind of defense do you
call that?”

I shook my head. “No. That is,
we know that we’re guilty of prac-
tically everything under the sun if
you look at it one way. If you look-
at it another — ”

He rose. “Man, you don’t need
a lawyer, you need a doctor. I’ll see
you later. I’ve got to get this fig-
ured out in my mind before I can do
a thing.”

“Sit down. What do you think
of this ?” and I outlined what I had
in mind.

“I think ... I don’t know what
I think. I don’t know. I’ll talk to
you later. Right now I want some
fresh air,” and he le’ft.

As most trials do, this one began
with the usual blackening of the de-
fendant’s character, or lack of it.
( The men we’d blackmailed at the
beginning had long since had their
money returned, and they had sense
enough to keep quiet. That might
have been becau.se they’d received
a few hints that there might still be
a negative or two lying around.

152

Compounding a felony? Sure.).
With the greatest of interest we sat
in that great columned hall and
listened to a sad tale.

We had, with malice afore-
thought, libeled beyond repair great
and unselfish men who had made a
career of devotion to the public
weal, imperiled needlessly relations
traditionally friendly by falsely re-
porting mythical events, mocked the
courageous sacrifices of those who
had dtilcc ct gloria mori, and com-
pletely unset everyone’s peace of
mind. Every new accusation, every
verbal lance drew solemn agreement
from the dignitary-packed hall.
Against someone’s better judgment,
the trial had been transferred from
the regular courtroom to the Hall of
Justice. Packed with influence,
lirass, and pompous legates from
over the world, only the congress-
men from the biggest states, or with
the biggest votes- were able to crowd
the newly installed seats. So you
can see it was a hostile audience that
faced Samuels when the defense
had its say. We had spent the pre-
vious night together in the guarded
suite to which we had been trans-
ferred for the duration of the trial,
perfecting, as far as we could, our
planned defense. Samuels has the
arrogant sense of humor that usually
goes with supreme self-confidence,
and I’m sure he enjoyed standing
there among all those bemedaled and
bejowled bigwigs, knowing the bomb-
shell he was going to hurl. He made
a ^ood grenadier. Like this:

“We believe there is only one de-
fense possible, we believe there is
only one defense necessary. We have

ASTOUNDING SCIMNCE-FICTION

gladly waived, without prejudice, our
inalienable right of trial by jury. We
shall speak plainly 4ind bluntly, to the
point.

“You have seen the picture in
question. You have remarked, pos-
siby, upon what has been called the
startling resemblance of the actors in
that picture to the characters named
and portrayed. You have remarked,
ix)ssibly, upon the apparent verisi-
militude to reality. That I will men-
tion again. The first witness will, I
believe, establish the trend of our re-
buttal of the allegations of the pros-
ecution.” He called the first witness.
“Your name, please?”

“Mercedes Maria Gomez."

“A little louder, please.”
“Mercedes Afaria Gomez."

“Your occupation ?”

“Until last March I was a teacher
at the Arizona School for the
Deaf. Then I asked for and ob-
tained a leave of'ab.sence. At pres-

ent I am under personal contract to '
Mr. Lefko.”

“If you see Mr. Lefko in this
courtroom, Miss . . . Mrs. — ”

“Miss.”

“Thank you. If Mr. Lefko is in
this court will you point him out?
Thank you. Will you tell us the
extent of your duties at the Arizona
School?”

“I taught children born totally
deaf to speak. And to read lips.”

“You read lips yourself, Miss
Gomez ?”

“I have been totally deaf since I
was fifteen.”

“In English only?”

“English and Spanish. We have
. . . had many children of Mexican
descent.”

Samuels asked for a designated
Spanish-speaking interpreter. An
officer- in the back immediately vol-
unteered. He was identified by his
ambassador, who was present.

“Will you take this book to the

F, FOU KFFORT

rear of the courtroom, sir?” To the
Court : “I f the prosecution wishes to
(examine that book, they will find that
it is a Spanish edition of the Bible.”
The prosecution didn’t wish to ex-
amine it.

“Will the officer open the Bible at
random and read aloud ?” He opened
the Bible at the center and read. In
dead silence the Court strained to
hear. Nothing could be heard the
length o^f that enormous hall.

Samuels : “Miss Gomez. Will you
take these binoculars and repeat, to
the Court, just what the officer is
reading at the other end of the
room ?”

She took the binoculars and fo-
cused them expertly on the officer,
who had stopped reading and was
watching alertly. “I am ready.”,

Samuels: “Will you please read,
sir ?”

He did, and the Gomez woman re-
peated aloud, quickly and easily, a
section that sounded as though it
might be anything at all. I can’t
speak Spanish. The officer continued
to read for a minute or two.

Samuels: “Thank you, sir. And
thank you. Miss Gomez. Your par-
don, sir, but since there are several
who have been known to memorize
the Bible, will you tell the Court if
you have anything on your person
that is written, anything that Miss
Gomez has had no chance of view-
ing?” Yes, the officer had. “Will
you read that as before ? Will you.
Miss Gomez — ”

She read that, too. Then the offi-
cer came to the front to listeifto the
court reporter read Miss Gomez’
words.

134

“That’s what I read,” he affirmed.

Samuels turned her over to the
prosecution, who made more experi-
ments that served only to convince
that she was equally good as an
interpreter and lipreader in either
language.

In rapid succession -Samuels put
the rest of the lipreaders on the
stand. In rapid succession they
proved themselves as able and as
capable as Miss Gomez, in their own
linguistic specialty. The Russian
from Ambridge generously offered
to translate into his broken English
any other Slavic language handy, and
drew scattered grins from the press
box. The Court was convinced, but
failed to see the purpose of the ex-
hibition. Samuels, glowing with
satisfaction and confidence, faced the
Court.

“Thanks to the indulgence of the
Court, and despite the efforts of the
distingui.shed prosecution, we have
proved the almcjst amazing accuracy
of lipreading in general, and these
lipreaders in particular.” One Jus-
tice absently nodded in agreement.
“Therefore, our defense will be based
on that premise, and on one other
which we have had until now found
necessary to keep hidden — the pic-
ture in question was and is definitely
not a fictional representation of
events of questionable authenticity.
Every scene in that film contained,
not polished professional actors, but
the original person named and por-
trayed. Every foot, every inch of
film was not the result of an elabo-
rate studio reconstruction but an ac-
tual collection of pictures, an actual

A.STOtlXniNG .s n IK. VOK -FICTION

collection of newsreels — if they can
be called that — edited and assembled
in story form !”

Through the startled spurt of
astonishment we heard one of the
prosecution; “That’s ridiculous ! No
newsreel — ”

Samuels ignored the objections
and the tumult to put me on the
stand. Beyond the usual preliminary
questions I was allowed to say things
my own way. At first hostile, the
Court became interested enough to
overrule the repeated objections that
flew from the table devoted to the
prosecution. I felt that at least two
of the Court, if not outright favor-
able, were friendly. As far as I can
remember, I went over the maneu-
vers of the past years, and ended
something like this :

“As to why we arranged tire cards
to fall as they did ; both Mr. Laviada
and myself were unable to face the
prospect of destroying his discovery,
because of the inevitable penalizing
of needed research. We were, and
we are, unwilling to better ourselves
or a limited group, by the use and
maintenance of secrecy, if secrecy
were possible. As to the only other
alternative,” and I directed this
straight at Judge Bronson, the well-
known liberal on the bench, “since
the last war all atomic research and
activity has been under the direction
of a Board nominally civilian, but
actually under the ‘protection and
direction’ of the Army and Navy.
This ‘direction and protection,’ as
any competent physicist will gladly
attest, has proved to be nothing but
a smothering blanket serving to con-
ceal hidebound antiquated reasoning,

E FOR EFFORT

abysmal ignorance, and inestimable
amounts of fumbling. As of right
now, this country, or any country
that w’as foolish enough to place any
confidence in the rigid regime of the
military mind is years behind what
would otherwise be the natural
course of discovery and progress in
nuclear and related fields.

“We were, and we are, firmly con-
vinced that even the slightest hint of
the inherent possibilities and scope
of Mr. Laviada’s discovery would
have meant, under the present re-
gime, instant and mandatory confis-
cation of even a supposedly secure
patent. Mr. Laviada has never ap-
plied for a patent, and never will.
We both feel that such a discovery
belongs not to an individual, a group,
a corporation, or even to a nation,
but to the world and those who live
in it.

“We know, and are eager and will-
ing to prove, that the domestic and
external affairs of not only this
nation, but of every nation are in-
fluenced, sometimes controlled, by
esoteric groups warping political the-
ories and human lives to suit their
own ends.” The court was smoth-
ered in sullen silence, thick and acid
with hate and disbelief.

“Secret treaties, for example, and
vicious, lying propaganda have too
long controlled human passions and
made mon hate ; honored thieves
have too long rotted secretly in un-
deserved high places. The machine
can make treachery and untruth im-
ix)ssible. It must, if atomic war is
not to sear the face and fate of the
world.

“Our pictures were all made with

ISQ

that end in view. We needed, first,
the wealth and prominence to present
to an international audience what we
knew to be the truth. We have done
as much as we can. From now on,
this Court takes over the burden we
have carried. We are guilty of no
treachery, guilty of no deceit, guilty
of nothing but deep and true human-
ity. Mr. Laviada wishes me to tell
the Court and the world that he has
been unable till now to give his dis-
coverv to the world, free to use as
it wills.”

The Court stared at me. Every
foreign representative was on the
edge of his seat waiting for the Jus-
tices to order us shot without further
ado, the sparkling uniforms were
seething, and the pressmen were
racing their pencils against time.
The tension dried my throat.
The speech that Samuels and I had
rehearsed the previous night was
strong medicine. Now what?

Samuels filled the breach smooth-
ly. “I f the Court pleases ; Mr. Lefko
has made some startling statements.
Startling, but certainly sincere, and
certainly either provable or disprov-
able. And proof it shall be!”

He strode to the door of the con-
ference room that had been alloted
us. As the hundreds of eyes fol-
lowed him it was easy for me to slip
down from the witness stand, and
wait, ready. From the conference
room Samuels rolled the machine,
and Mike rose. The whispers that
curdled the air seemed disappointed,
unimpressed. Right in front of the
Bench he trundled it.

He moved unobtrusively to one

156

side as the television men trained
their long-snouted cameras. “Mr.
Laviada and Mr. Lefko will show
you ... I trust there will be no ob-
jection from the prosecution?” He
was daring them.

One of the prosecution was al-
ready on his feet. He opened his
mouth hesitantly, but thought better,
and sat down. Heads went together
in conference as he did. Samuels w'as
w’atching the Court with one eye,
and the courtroom wdth the other.

“If the Court pleases, we will need
a cleared space. If the bailiff will
. . . thank you, sir.” The long tables
were moved back, with a raw scrap-
ing. He stood there, with every eye
in the courtroom glued on him. For
two long breaths he stood there, then
he spun and went to his table. “Mr.
Lefko,” and he bowed formally. He
sat.

The eyes swung to me, to Mike,
as he moved to his machine and
stood there silently. I cleared my
throat and spoke to the Bench as
though I did not see the directional
microphones trained at my lips.
“Justice Bronson.”

He looked steadily at me and then
glanced at Mike. “Yes, Mr. Lefko?”
“Your freedom from bias is well
known.” The corners of his mouth
went down as he frowned. “Will
you be willing to be used as proof
that there can be no trickery?”
He thought that over, then nodded
slowly. The prosecution objected,
and was waved down. “Will you
tell me exactly where you were at
any given time? Any place where
you are absolutely certain and can

ASTOUNDING SCIENCU-FICTION

verify that there were no concealed
catneras or observers ?”

He thought. Seconds. Minutes.
The tension twanged, and I swal-
lowed dust. He spoke quietly. “1918.
November 11th.”

Mike whispered to me. I said,
“Any particular time ?”

Justice Bronson looked at Mike.
“Exactly eleven. Armistice time.”
He paused, then went on. “Niagara
Falls. Niagara Falls, New York.”

I heard the dials tick in the still-
ness, and Mike whispered again. I
said, “The lights should be off.” The
bailiff rose. “Will you please watch
the left wall, or in that direction? I
think tliat if Justice Kassel will turn
a little ... we are ready.”

Bronson looked at me, and at the
left wall. “Ready.”

The lights flicked out overhead
and I heard the television crews mut-
ter. I touched Mike on the shoul-
der. “Show them, Mike !”

We’re all showmen at heart, and
Mike is no exception. Suddenly out
of nowhere and into the depths
poured a frozen torrent. Niagara
Falls. Fve mentioned, I think, that
Fve never got over my fear of
heights. Few people ever do. I
heard long, shuddery gasps as we
started straight down. Down, until
we stopped at the brink of the silent
cataract, weird in its frozen majesty.
Mike had stopped time at exactly
eleven, I knew. Fie shifted to the
American bank. Slowly he moved
along. There were a few tourists
standing in almost comic attitudes.
There was snow on the ground,
flakes in the air. Time stood still,
and hearts slowed in sympathy.

Bronson snapped, “Stop!”

A couple, young. Long skirts,
high-buttoned army collar, dragging
army overcoat, facing, arms about
each other. Mike’s sleeve rustled in
the darkness and they moved. She
was sobbing and the soldier was
smiling. She turned away her head,
and he turned it back. Another
couple seized them gayly, and tlrey
twirled breathlessly.

Bronson’s voice was harsh.
“That’s enough !” The view blurred
for seconds.

Washington. The White House.
The President. Someone coughed
like a small explosion. The President
was watching a television screen.
He jerked erect suddenly, startled.)
Mike spoke for the first time in|
court.

“That is the President of the
United States. He is watching the
trial that is being broadcast and tele-
vised from this courtroom. He is
listening to what I am saying right
now, and he is watching, in his tele-
vision screen, as I use my machine
to show him what he was doing one
second ago.”

The President heard those fateful
words. Stiffly he threw an uncon-
scious glance around his room at
nothing and looked back at his screen
in time to see himself do what he just
had done, one second ago. Slowly,
as if against his will, his hand started
toward the switch of his set.

“Mr. President, don’t turn off that
set.” Mike’s voice was curt, almost
rude. “You must hear this, you of
all people in the world. You must
understand !

“This is not what we wanted to

E FOR EFFORT

167

do, but we have no recourse left but
to appeal to you, and to the people of
this twisted world.” The President
might have been cast in iron. “You
must see, you must understand that
you have in your hands the power to
make it impossible for greed-born
war to be bred in secrecy and rob
man of his youth or his old age or
whatever he prizes.” His voice soft-
ened, pleaded. “That is all we have
to say. That is all we want. That
is all anyone could want, ever.” The
President, unmoving, faded into
blackness. “The lights, please,” and
almost immediately the Court ad-
journed. That was over a month
ago.

Mike’s machine has been taken
from us, and we are under military
guard. Probably it’s just as well
we’re guarded. We understand there
have been lynching parties, broken
up only as far as a block or two
away. Last week we watched a white-
haired fanatic scream about us, on
the street below. We couldn’t catch
what he was shrieking, but we did
catch a few air-borne epithets.

“Devils! Anti-Christs! Violation
of the Bible ! Violations of this and
that!”* Some, right here in the city,
I suppose, would be glad to build a
bonhre to cook us right back to the
flames from which we’ve sprung. I
wonder what the various religious
groups are going to do now that the
truth can be seen. Who can read
lips in Aramaic, or Latin, or Cop-
tic? And is a mechanical miracle a
miracle ?

This changes everything. We’ve
Ijeen moved. Where, I don’t know,

luS

except that the weather is warm, and
we’re on some type of military reser-
vation, by the lack of civilians. Now
we know what we're up against.
What started out to be just a time-
killing occupation, Joe, has turned
out to be a necessary preface to what
Pm going to ask you to do. Finish
this, and then move fast ! W’e won’t
be able to get this to you for a while
yet, so I’ll go on for a bit the way
I started, to kill time. I.ike our
clippings :

TABLOID:

. . . Such a weapon cannot, must
not be loosed in unscrupulous hands.
The last professional production of
the infamous pair proves what dis-
tortions can be wrested from iso-
lated and misunderstood events. In
the hands of perpetrators of hereti-
cal isms, no property, no business
deal, no personal life could be sacro-
sanct, no foreign policy could be . .
TIMES:

. . . colonies stand with us firmly . . .
liquidation of the Empire . . . white
man’s burden . . .

LE MATIN:

. . . rightful place . . . restore proud
France . . .

PRAVDA:

. . . democratic imperialist plot . . .
our glorious scientist ready to an-
nounce .. . .

NICHI-NICHI:

. . . incontrovertibly prove divine
descent ...

LA PRENSA:

. . . oil concessions . . . dollar
diplomacy . . .

DETROIT JOURNAL:

. . . under our noses in a sinister

ASTOUNDING S (M n.\<- 1: - F I CT I O N

fortress on East Warren . . . under
close Federal supervision . . . per-
fection by our production-trained
technicians a mighty aid to law-
enforcement agencies . . . tirades
against politicians and business com-
mon-sense carried too far . . . to-
morrow revelations by . . .

L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO:
Council of Cardinals . . . announce-
ment expected hourly , . .

JACKSON STAR-CXARION :

. . . proper handling will prove the
fallacy of race equality . . .

Almost unanimously the press
screamed; Pegler frothed, Winchell
leered. We got the surface side of
the situation from the press. But a
military guard is composed of indi-
viduals, hotel room must be swept
by maids, waiters must serve food,
and a chain is as strong — We got

what we think the truth from those
who work for a living.

There are meetings on street cor-
ners, and homes, two great veteran’s
groups have arbitrarily fired their
officials, seven governors have re-
signed, three senators and over a
dozen repre.sentatives have retired
with “ill health,” and the general
temper is ugly. International travel-
ers report the same of Europe, Asia
is bubbling, and transport planes
with motors running stud the air-
ports of South America. A general
whisper is that a Constitutional
Amendment is being rammed
through to forbid the use of any
similar instrument by any individ-
ual, with the manufacture and leas-
ing by the Federal government to
law-enforcement agencies or finan-
cially-responsible corporations sug-

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SHIKTS

PANTS Relionce Monufacturing Co.. 212 W. Monroe Sf.,' Chicago 6

E FOE EFFOBT

ise

gested; it is whispered that motor
caravans are forming throughout the
country for a Washington march
to demand a decision by the Court
on the truth of our charges; it is
generally suspected that all news dis-
seminating services are under direct
Federal — Anny — control ; wires are
supposed to be sizzling with petitions
and demands to Congress, which are
seldom delivered.

One day the chambermaid said:
“And the whole hotel might as well
close up shop. The whole floor is
blocked off, there’re MP’s at every
door, and they’re clearing out all the
other guests as fast as they can be
moved. The whole place wouldn’t
be big enough to hold the letters and
wires addressed to you, or the ones
that are trying to get in to see you.
Fat chance they have,’ she added
grimly. “The joint is lousy with
brass.’’

Mike glanced at me and I Cleared
my throat. “What’s your idea of
the whole thing?”

Expertly she spanked and reversed
a pillow. “I saw your last picture
Ijcfore they shut it down. I saw all
your pictures. When I wasn’t work-
ing I listened to your trial. I heard
you tell them off. I never got mar-
ried because my boy friend never
came back from Burma. Ask him
what he thinks,” and she jerked her
head at the young private that was
supposed to keep her from talking.
“Ask him if he wants some bunch of
stinkers to start him shooting at some
other poor chump. See what he says,
and then ask me if I want an atom
bomb dropped down my neck just
because some chiselers want more

160

■ than they got.” She left suddenly,
and the soldier left with her. Mike
and I had a beer and went to bed.
Next week the papers- had headilnes
a mile high.

U. S. KEEPS MIRACLE RAY
CONSTITUTION
• AMENDMENT
AWAITS STATES OKAY
LAVIADA-LEFKO FREED
We were freed all right, Bronson
and the President being responsible
for that. But the President and
Bronson don’t know. I’m sure, that
we were rearrested immediately. W e
were told that we’ll be held in “pro-
tective custody” until enough states
have ratified the proposed constitu-
tional amendment. The Man With-
out a Country was in what you
might call “protective custody,” too.
We’ll likely be released the same way
he was.

We’re allowed no newspapers,
no radio, allowed no communication
coming or going, and we’re given
no reason, as if that were necessary.
They’ll never, never let us go, and
they’d be fools if they did. They
think that if we can’t communicate,
or if we can’t build another ma-
chine, our fangs are drawn, and
when the excitement dies, we fall
into oblivion, 'six feet of it. Well,
we caa’t build another machine. But,
communicate ?

Look at it this way. A soldier is
a soldier because he wants to serve
his country. A soldier doesn’t want
to die unless his country is at war.
Even then death is only a last resort.
And war isn’t necessary any more,
not with our machine. In the dark ?

ASTOUNDING SCIBNCE-FICTTO-N

Try to plan or plot in absolute dark-
ness, which is what would be needed.
Try to plot or carry on a war with-
out putting things in writing. O.K.
Now —

The Anny has Mike’s machine.
The Army has Mike. They call it
military expediency, I suppose.
Bosh ! Anyone beyond the grade of
moron can see that to keep that ma-
chine, to liide it, is to invite the world
to attack, and attack in self-defense.
If every nation, or if every man, had
a machine, each would be equally
open, or equally protected. But if
only one’ nation, or only one man
can see, the rest will not long be
blind. Mavbe we did this all wrong.
God knows that we thought about it
often. God knows we did our best
to make an effort at keeping man out
of his own trap.

There isn’t much time left. One
of the soldiers guarding us will get
this to you, I hope, in time.

A long time ago we gave you a
key, and hoped we would never have
to ask you to use it. But now is the
time. That key fits a box at the De-
troit Savings Bank. In that box are
letters. Mail them, not all at once, or
in the same place. They’ll go all
over the world, to men we know,
and have watched well : clever, hon-
est, and capable of following the
plans we’ve enclosed.

But you’ve got to hurry ! One of
these bright days someone is going
to wonder if we’ve made more than
one machine. We haven’t, of course.
That would have been foolish. But
if some smart young lieutenant gets
hold of that machine long enough to
start tracing back our movements

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■ LEWIS HOTEL TRAINING SCHOOL
> ROOM LD-1261, WASHINGTON 7, D.C. N# 1

I Send me your Free Book. I w’ant to know
I how to qualify for a well-paid position.

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they’ll line! that safety deposit box,
with the plans and letters ready to
be scattered broadside. You can see
the need for haste — if the rest of
the. world, or any particular nation,
wants that machine bad enough,
they’ll fight for it. And they will!
They must! Later on, when the
Army gets used to the machine and
its capabilities, it will become obvi-
ous to everyone, as it- already has to
Mike and me, that, with every plan
open to inspection as soon as it’s
made, no nation or group of nations
would have a chance in open war-
fare. So if there is to be an attack,
it will have to be deadly, and fast,
and sure. Please God that we haven’t
shoved the world into a war we tried
to make impossible. With all the
atom Irombs and rockets that have
been made in the past few years —
Joe, you’ve got to hurry!

('Jig TO 9TH ATTK GRP

Rei)ort report report report report
report report report report report

CMDR 9TH ATTK GRP TO GHQ

BEGINS: No other manuscript
found. Searched body of Lefko im-
!iiediately upon landing. According
to ])lan Building Three untouched.
Survivors insist both were moved
from Building Seven previous day
defective plumbing. Body of Laviada
identified definitely through finger-
jirints. Request further instructions.
ENDS

GHQ TO CMDR 32ND
.SHIELDED RGT

BEGINS : Seal area Detroit Sav-'
ings Bank. Advise immediately con-
dition safety deposit boxes. Afford
coming technical unit complete co-
operation. ENDS

LT. COL. TEMP. ATT.

.32ND SHIELDED RGT.

BEGINS: .\rea Detroit .Savings
Bank vaporized direct hit. Radio-
activity lethal. Impossible boxes or
any contents survive. Repeat, direct
hit. Request permission- proceed
Washington Area. ENDS.

GHQ. TO LT. COL. TEMP. ATT.

32ND SHIELDED RGT

BEGINS : Request denied. Sift
ashes if necessary regardless cost.
Repeat, regardless cost. ENDS

GHQ. TO ALL UNITS REPEAT
ALL UNITS

BEGINS: Lack of enemy re.sist-
ance explained misdirected atom
rocket seventeen miles .SSE Wash-
ington. Lone survivor completely
destroyed special train claims all top
officials left enemy capital two hours
preceding attack. Notify local gov-
ernments wdiere found necessary and
obvious cessation hostilities. Occupy
present areas Plan Two. Further or-
ders follow. ENDS

THE END.

1U2

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AUDELS Carpenters
and Builders Guides

vols.^6

Inside Trade Information On;

Insido Trade Information

for Carpenters. Builders* Join-
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all Woodworkers. These
Guides give you the short-cut
instructions that you want-~
including new methods, ideas,
solutions, plans, systems and
money saving suggestions. An
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practical daily helper and
Quick Reference for the master
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as a Helping Hand to Easier
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in and mail the FREE COU^
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How to use the steel square — How to file and set
saws — How to build furniture — How to use a
mitre box — How to use the chalk line — How to use
rules and scales — How to make joints — Carpenters
arithmetic— Solving mensuration problems^Es-
timating strength of timbers — How to set girders
and sills- — How to frame houses and roofs — How to
estimate costs^-How to build houses, barns, gar*
ages, bungalows, etc. — How to read and draw
plans — Drawing up specifications — How to ex*
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THEO. AUDEL & CO., 49 W. 23rd $t.. New York City

Mail Audels Carpentem and Builders Guides, 4 vols., on 7 days* free trial. If O.R.
1 will remit $1 in 7 days, and $l monthly until $6 is paid. Otherwise I will return them
No obligation unless 1 am satisfied.

Name

Address.

Occupation. > •

Reference-

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