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CONTENTS

FEBRUARY, 1949 VOL. XLII, NO. 6

SERIAL

SEETHE .SHOCK, by Will Stewart 8

(Part One of Three Parts)

NOVELETTES

MANNA, by Peter Phillips 62

TIIE PRISONER IN THE SKULL, by Lewis Padgett . . . .100

SHORT STORIES

A PRESENT FROM JOE, by Eric Frank Rmsgetl 50

NEXT FRIDAY MORNING, by />. IT. Meredith 135

CHRISTMAS TREE, by Christopher Youd 155

ARTICLE

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS, by J. J. Coupling 85

READERS’ DEPARTMENTS

THE EDITOR’S PAGE 5

IN TIMES TO COME 384

BOOK REVIEWS 143

T 1 1 E A N AUTICAL LABORATORY 1 4 G

B K A S S T A C K S 147

Edit 07'

JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR.

W2ZGU

COVER BY ROGERS

Illustrations by Cartier, Orban and Timmins

The editorial contents have not been published before, are protected by copyright and cannot he reprinted
without publishers’ permission. All stories in this magazine arc fiction. No actual persons are designated
by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental.

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NEXT ISSUE ON SALE FEBRUARY 15, 1949

25c per Copy

RADIATION AND MUTATIONS

One of the problems of natural,
acute, and immediate interest to the
atomic scientists, medical men, and
biologists working around the
atomic piles has been the question of
radiation-induced mutations. The
problem is of scientific interest —
and also, and pressinglv, of de-
cidedly personal interest. Until re-
cently, knowledge in the field was so
sketchy that, in essence, one could
say that radiation definitely did
cause mutations, but no one could
say what the limitations were.
That is, while .1 r-units per day was
an acceptable, safe dosage so far as
the adult human being was con-
cerned, there was some fear — and
no knowledge — that mutations could
result even below that threshold.
An adult’s body tissues can. of
course, repair and replace them-
selves on a statistical basis ; an in-
dividual germinal cell, however, is
not a statistic — it’s an entity. It
seemed possible that there was no
threshold for mutation — that a ger-
minal cell altered by radiation was
altered, period.

Dr. Robley D. Evans, of M.I.T.

RADIATION AND MUTATIONS

recently gave a highly interesting
talk on this precise subject, summar-
izing the present knowledge, and
reaching some highly important con-
clusions. Briefly summarizing his
summary — (the original paper will
appear shortly, I understand, in
Nucleonics, and it’s recommended
reading), it appears that the follow-
ing general rules hold :

1. There is a threshold. Radia-
tion intensities of the order of .1 r-
units per day do. not appreciably
alter the naturally -occurring muta-
tion rate. The constant presence of
naturally caused mutations make
such studies necessarily statistical,
hut the conclusion seems to he that
no important increase in mutations
occurs, any increase, if present, be-
ing lost in the much greater mass of
“normal” mutations.

2. In experiments with mice, it
was found that, to raise the level of
radiation-induced mutations to a
level much above that natural-oc-
currence rate, it was necessary to
irradiate the sperm-producing cells
with very high levels of hard rays.
The radiation level required was so

5

high, in fact, that only the males
could be radiated effectively, since
the testes could be irradiated while
the abdominal organs were shielded
with lead. The required radiation
was well into the lethal-dosage level
if the whole body were irradiated.

3. In effect, matured sperm cells
are more susceptible than the im-
mature sperms. Mating irradiated
mice immediately after exposure
produced higher mutation levels, by
far, than did a delayed mating. Ap-
parently sperm cells which are dam-
aged before maturity are destroyed,
and have no chance of producing
zygotes with altered heredity. The
result observed is that there is a
period of temporary sterility after
irradiation, until new, whole sperms
can be produced.

4. Measurements on the rate of
mutations-per-radiation-unit show,
moreover, that the observed rate of
natural mutations can not be ac-
counted for by cosmic rays, terres-
trial radioactivity, et cetera. Natur-
ally occurring hard radiations of
these types fail to account for the
number of observed natural muta-
tions by a factor of 100 ! Evidently
there is some vastly more powerful
mutation-producing factor at work,
a factor as yet unidentified.

5. Among Nature’s little protec-
tive tricks is one which makes the
germinal cells of long-lived species
markedly more resistant to mutation
than those of short-lived animals.
The reproductive tissues of a fruit
fly are exposed to mutating influ-
ences for a total period of a month

6

or so between birth and death ; ger-
minal tissues of a human being are
exposed to all naturally occurring
mutational influences for a period
some four hundred times as long be-
fore child-bearing, very frequently.
Yet the absolute rate of natural
mutation in both the long-lived and
short-lived species is apparently
equal. Alter all, however, while a
species survives only if its individual
members have survival characteris-
tics — it survives as a species only if
the germ tissues which are its real
existence have sufficient stability to
survive unchanged, in the over-
whelming majority of cases, despite
all mutational pressures and circum-
stances. Remember that the biolo-
gist’s answer to the old saw about
which came first, the hen or the egg,
is “The egg, of course ; a hen is just
an egg’s way of making more eggs,”
expresses a basic truth. The species
survives in the eggs — and don’t
worry about the hen. Naturally,
high stability chromosomes and
genes must be evolved before a
long-individual-life species can con-
tinue existence as a species.

And — Item 6 — no new mutations
have been observed. All the
radiation-induced mutations so-far
observed have been previously re-
ported as naturally-occurring muta-
tions of the species under investiga-
tion. This corresponds with the
principle Dr. Winter expressed in his
recent story “Expedition Mercy”,
concerning diseases of human be-
ings on alien worlds. The symp-
toms of the alien-world diseases will

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

all be old, familiar symptoms, be-
cause the s)#iptoms are the human
body’s reactions to the alien stimu-
lus — and the gamut of human-body-
reactions is already known. Simi-
larly, natural mutational forces have
found more or less the full gamut of
chromosome reactions to hard- radi-
ation bombardment, and other mu-
tating influences. There are scores
of known mutational resultants
known in human beings already —
the best known to the layman be-
ing hemophilia, “bleeders’ disease”,
which isn't a disease at all.

However, you will remember that
Dr. Winter’s story ended up with
the fictional medico’s flat statement
that, the human body reactions be-
ing limited, no one could develop,
for instance, an aquamarine colora-
tion. And the inevitable appearance
of an aquamarine crewman. (The
sequel explains how it’s done, inci-
dentally ! ) Similarly, while no
hitherto unknown mutations have
been observed — mutations are sta-
tistical. The chemical binding for-
ces... that hold together the atoms

which make up the incredibly com-
plex protein molecules of a gene are
chains having certain characteristic
weakest links. Naturally, there are
much greater chances that the gene
will break at those weakest-link
spots, producing characteristic mu-
tations. But even a chain with a
weak link #37 can be broken at link
#52 if you hit #52 with a high-
velocity rifle bullet. It’s less prob-
able that #52 will break— but by
no means impossible. It’s simply
that you’ll get thousands of muta-
tions due to failure of link #37 for
every one due to failure of link #52.

The proof of that statement ?
Aside from its logical necessity, the
proof is easy. A camel and a llama
are cousins — but far, far beyond
the range of mutational variation
'within a single animal type. Evi-
dently very occasional mutations oc-
cur producing marked, new varia-
tions. Evolution proceeds slowly,
because such marked, unusual, and
favorable changes occur rarely. But
they do occur.

The Editor.

Now we’re looking for Don Evans and Gerald Clarke. Got a
check waiting for them. too. And we don’t know where they are.

RADIATION AND MUTATIONS

7

SEETEE SHOCK

BY WILL STEWART

First of Three Parts. Trouble with “ seetee — contraterrene
matter — was inevitable. But an engineer could handle that;
it was trouble with men that meant death. And this is the
story of a man already killed, yet fighting his murderers!

Illustrated by Orban

The void leered. Implacable hos-
tility flattened itself against the
frosty dark, waiting the time to
strike. Shocking danger fled away
from him into the sucking empti-
ness, and cunningly eluded him, and
ruthlessly returned. Timeless peril
watched forever, with the cruel, cold
eyes of the stars.

Nicol Jenkins, spatial engineer,
fought back silently.

The seetee bull was his weapon.
Lie rode the ugly metal bulk of it,
sealed in chafing dirigible armor,
seated astride the pile chamber. He
drove it, his lanky body crouched
against insensate enmity, his gray
eyes alert. He gripped the cold
wheel, hands stiffly numb in his
clumsy plastic gloves, and turned the
heavy machine against the baleful
disdain of unfeeling space.

“Back, little man- — better go
back !”

The only sound his ears could hear
was the faint hiss of oxygen from

the regulator valve under his jaw,
but his private hopes and terrors
turned that thin susurration into a
warning voice, whispering unceas-
ingly out of the airless, soundless
spatial night.

“Back, human being,” it jeered.
“Your place is Earth. You weren’t
designed for space. You and your
puny kind are too feeble to exist
here, and far too foolish to use the
deadly toys you’re grasping for. No
man can tread the contraterrene
drift!”

Clumsy in the bulky armor, Jen-
kins tried impatiently to shake him-
self awake. He didn’t want to listen
to that murmur of his own thoughts
in the jet, but be had been too long
in space. It was too many weary
months since he had seen the green
land and glinting seas of Earth, or
felt the wind of Earth on his face,
or heard the voice of a woman.

Once there had been a girl. For
a long time, fighting the spatial

8

ASTOUNDING SC IE NCB - FICTIO N

S E 10 T 10 B SHOCK

night, he had been able to banish
the whispering menace of it by-
thinking of her. Once the memory
of her had been & precious link to the
human world for which he strived,
but now it was hard to recall the
color of her eyes or the way her
honey-colored hair was done.

He tried to see her now —

Jane Hardin had been her name.
He met her on the long voyage out

from Earth, over two years ago.
They both were new to space. To-
gether they had felt the first jarring
shock of dark infinity, and its in-
human hostility had somehow joined
them in a vital comradeship.

They had stood together on the
observation deck, sharing the mag-
nificence of man’s challenge to the
encompassing sphere of bitter night
and cruel, far splendor around the

9

lonely atom of the liner. They had
played shuffleboard and eaten their
meals together, discovering with de-
light that they had both grown up in
the same quiet suburb of Panama
City. But then something happened.

Jenkins still didn’t know what had
gone wrong. The night before they
reached Pallasport, he had asked to
see her again. She seemed radiantly
pleased, until he mentioned that he
was going to work for Seetee, Inc.,
then she recoiled from him, white-
faced, as if he had struck her.

She seemed inexplicably hurt at
first, and then became coolly watch-
ful and aloof. Hopefully, striving
against that sudden, mistrustful re-
serve, he showed her his precious
copy of his uncle’s book. He told
her eagerly of Martin Brand’s splen-
did dream of unbounded power
from seetee. Desperately, he begged
her to tell him what was wrong.

Jane Hardin listened quietly, and
told him nothing. She wouldn’t give
him any address, and he lost her
when the liner docked. He hadn’t
seen her again — or any woman, in
the two years since he came out to
lonely Freedonia. Her bright image
had dimmed in his thoughts, and all
his wistfulness for her lost loveli-
ness could no longer stop the hissing
of his own apprehensions in the
oxygen jet.

“You’ve been too long away from
Earth,” that faint whisper mocked
him now. “Your petty kind belongs
to that little world, and you are fools
to grope for control of seetee.

10

You’re too frail and -small for space,
and the drift will only kill you if
you grasp it.”

Jenkins tried not to listen.
Crouching on the bull, he bent his
head in the bubble of his helmet,
watching the blank face of the radar-
scope in the center of the control
wheel. His lean brown jaw drew
hard, his firm lips tightened. He'
couldn’t stop the jet, or the haunting
dreads that found voice in it — but he
refused to talk to himself.

“You men weren't shaped for
space,” that thin hissing mocked
him. “Your feeble senses and your
fragile, watery bodies were designed
for a kinder environment. Your
invasion here is rashest folly, and
you’ll win no prize from the drift
but death.”

He compressed his lips, and bent
grimly to the job of collecting con-
traterrene metal for the shop on the
airless rock called Freedonia. He
had volunteered to drive the bull
because Martin Brand was his uncle
and because he might have asked
for a softer assignment. Now he
had no intention of turning back.

A white pip glowed on the scope.
He swung the bull to center it, lean-
ing clumsily to uncover the testing
gun. He waited, riding the ma-
chine toward the unseen meteor,
until the secondary pip on the dis-
tance scale reached the ten-kilometer
mark.

Now !

Tense in the confining armor, he

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

jabbed a stiff-gloved finger at the
firing key. The fragment of drift
that showed in the scope was still
too far for his eyes to see, but the
search beam trained the gun upon
it. Silently, in the soundless night,
the slender paragravity solenoid
fired the tiny testing pellet of terrene
iron.

Waiting for the flash, Jenkins
turned the bull aside. That was
always hard to do. The collector
bin in front of him was shielded
with a solid foot of lead, and he
wanted instinctively to place that
metal between his body and the flash.
But human instincts weren’t fitted
to space..

His engineering brain ' was well
aware of that. The terribly pene-
trating rays from the flash would go
through his unprotected body as
cleanly as a bullet through a pane of
glass, almost without harm. Striking
any common shielding, however,
they would multiply into showers of
softer, more lethal secondary rays.

He swung the machine, to expose
his body. Waiting, counting sec-
onds, he docked his head and flung
up his armored arm to shield his
face. An utterly useless gesture—
but he couldn’t help it. Two long
years of driving the bull and work-
ing in the shops on Freedonia had
taught him too well that men weren’t
made to work the drift.

Fury !

The testing pellet from the little
gun was only half a milligram of
terrene iron. A tiny key to the
blinding violence of the tee-seetee
SEETEE SHOCK

reaction. If it struck a contraterrene
target, it would cease to exist as
matter. Orbital electrons would col-
lide with orbital positrons. Positive
terrene nuclei would strike negative
contraterrene nuclei. Unlike charges
would cancel, merging into mon-
strous energy.

“The drift will get you, engineer,”
the jet was snarling softly." “Per-
haps you can shield your puny body
against the emptiness and the cold.
Perhaps you can manufacture oxy-
gen and water and food. But all
your feeble skill can’t protect you
from those radiations — from seetee
shock !”

That was the voice of his own
deep dread. For human bodies
weren’t designed to endure those
deadly rays from the annihilation of
clustered nuclei — and the deadlier
secondaries they struck out of any
common barrier. Men had known
the effect of such radiations ever
since Hiroshima.

And spacemen called it seetee
shock.

Jenkins waited, crouching on the
bull. He counted six seconds, and
flinched from the flash of violet light
that penetrated his closed eyelids.
The analytic spectrograph attached
to the gun clicked silently, and a
shaded green lamp glowed softly on
the recorder tape.

Awkward in the stiff fabric, Jen-
kins leaned down to read the analy-
sis. Silicon, forty-four percent.
Oxygen, aluminum, magnesium, and
a trace of iron. A silicic rock, from
the crust of the seetee Invader—

11

which collided with doomed Adonis
to form the asteroids and the meteor
drift long before the first man
dreamed of voyaging space. Price-
less fuel, if the power plant ever
ran, it was useless now. He was
after contraterrene iron and tung-
sten, that Lazarene wanted for the
machines in the special shop. He
shook his head and steered the heavy
bull away, watching the scope for
another fragment.

“Better give it up,” the jet kept
hissing. “You know you don’t
really need to do this, because now
your uncle’s rich. You ought to ask
for leave, and make him give you a
soft desk job in the Pallasport office,
and have another look for Jane Har-
din.

“Anyhow, you weren’t evolved
for space.”

Perhaps he wasn’t, but Jenkins
was a spatial engineer. Son of an-
other engineer, lost in the drift when'
Jenkins was three. Graduated with
honors from the great institute of
spatial engineering at Panama City,
he was prepared to challenge the
merciless hostility of space, with the
pride of a fine tradition three cen-
turies old.

Ziolkovsky and Oberth were
among the early names — spatial en-
gineers who never left the Earth.
Goddard and Ley. Maxim-Gore
was the one who looked into the vor-
tices of the sun to discover para-
gravity — that selective, reversible,
directable force, neither gravitation
or electromagnetism, which replaced
the rocket to lift men spaceward.

12

Later engineers, wresting the
planets from the blind and mindless
enmity of space, creating the wealth
and might of .Interplanet Corpora-
tion, also built a more enduring thing
— a high code of selfless daring to
serve the good of man. That tra-
•dition remained untarnished, for the
hard abrasion of danger kept it
bright. One of its heirs was old
Jim Drake.

An old man now, great shoulders
bent and roan hair, thinned, Drake
had set out fifty years ago to subdue
the brooding fury of the contrater-
rene drift. His first invention was
the seetee marker.

Immense spidery wheels spinning
in the unresisting vacuum, the Drake
markers were placed in close orbits
about the more massive fragments
and more dangerous swarms of the
seetee drift. Broad mirrors caught
the unsetting sun, and filtered lenses
and prisms winked out the unceasing
warnings that had saved many a
spaceman from seetee shock.

Jenkins twisted now in his cold
seat on the bull, searching the neb-
ula-dustecl night. He found the
vanishing red spark of the blinker
set to mark the meteor swarm whose
fringes he was exploring. Auto-
matically, he counted seconds.

The orange point burned four sec-
onds— warning that the mass of the
marked swarm was of the order of
ten to the fourth metric tons; ten
thousand tons of slumbering, un-
utterable violence. The blue winked
three seconds, saying that the mean,

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

diameter of the swarm was above
a thousand kilometers. The red
flamed five seconds again, to tell him
that the seetee cloud was estimated
to contain a hundred thousand dan-
gerous fragments.

“We’re going to get you, little
biped,” the jet was taunting him,
“because you’re too soft and clumsy
and slow to survive in space. You’ve
ventured too far from the warm
seas where your kind of life was
born. You need too much protec-
tion, and you weren’t evolved to
work the drift.”

Orienting himself by the blinker,
he swung the bull back toward the
outskirts of the swarm. He bent
to search the scope for another hope-
ful fragment, trying not to listen to
the restless cluttering of his fears.

“We’ll kill you, Jenkins,” growled
the jet. “We’ll freeze you hard as
iron, sometime when a heating unit
fails. Or burn you to vapor when
the pile you’re sitting on happens to
blow out. Or suck your body to a
brittle mummy, if a leak ever breaks
in your armor. Or, more likely,
we’ll get you with the drift!”

The jet made a hissing chuckle,
as the valve closed and fluttered
open.

“How do you want to die, little
engineer ?” it mocked him. “Do you
want to light up the dark like a nova,
when your terrene body reacts with
a few kilograms of the Invader?
Or do you prefer the slower death of
seetee shock?”

Jenkins watched the blankness of
the scope, and tried to guard himself

from such haunting terrors with the
magnificent tradition of the spatial
engineers. It was close to him. For
his own famous uncle, Martin
Brand, was no doubt the foremost
of them all.

“Wait, young fool!” the jet kept
jeering. “Suppose you engineers
do unlock contraterrene power —
how can you control it? How are
you going to hold it for the benefit
of man, against the whispering poli-
ticians and the cold-eyed financiers
and the men of guts and blood ?”

Jenkins shook himself uneasily,
and clung to the thought of Martin
Brand.

“Remember Hiroshima!” mocked
the jet. “Remember Interplanet and
the Spatial War. The engineers
who first cracked the atom hoped to
benefit mankind, "just as you do. But
the few who seized control of fission
power soon managed to rule the rest.
How can you stop history from re-
peating the same ugly story with the
greater power of seetee ?”

Martin Brand could find a way,
Jenkins thought. For Brand was
something more than a distinguished
engineer. He had learned how to
defeat the politicians in their smoke-
filled caucus rooms, and trim the
financiers on their own stock ex-
changes. Brand could accomplish
anything.

Jenkins searched the empty scope,
probing back into the outskirts of
the swarm. He tried to ignore the
thin sighing of the jet, but he
couldn’t stop the whispering of his
own apprehensions. That dry sibu-

SEETEE SHOCK

13

lation became the weary murmur-
ing of the dead, unknown peoples
of Adonis and the seetee Invader.

“Leave us alone, reckless stran-
ger,” that sad susurration seemed to
breathe. “Let us rest. These broken
rocks are our cold tombs. Beware
of what you find, rash engineer, if
you dare disturb our bones.”

Shivering in the cramping stiff-
ness of his armor, Jenkins sucked
a drink of bitter tea from the tube
in his helmet, and grimly tried to
shake himself awake.

“What are you seeking, little crea-
ture?” mocked the whispers. “The
secret of our death — so that you
can kill your own proud planets,
with the fury of seetee?”

Not that, Jenkins told himself res-
olutely. New life was what the
gaudy print of his uncle’s pros-
pectuses always promised the power-
famished planets, not death.

“But look around you,” warned
those sad voices in his mind. “Look
at the shattered fragments of the
dead Invader and murdered Adonis,
destroyed by the very force you
seek !”

Jenkins shrugged uncomfortably,
and crouched to watch the scope.
Of course there was danger in the
drift, but such men as Martin Brand
would be great enough to meet it.
Firmly, he set his mind upon the
brilliant career of his distinguished
uncle.

II.

The living tradition of the spatial
engineers was built of mighty

14

dreams fashioned into hard reality
by human brains and human daring,
and Martin Brand was still the
mightiest of the dreamers. Jenkins
clung to the picture of his red, raw-
boned, craggedly candid face, for a
kind of talisman against the whisper
of his secret terrors in the jet.

The brightest interludes of all his
boyhood at Panama City had been
the occasional visits of Martin
Brand. For the famous engineer
had provided generously for his
widowed sister and her son, and
now and then he came back to the
modest suburban apartment he kept
for them, to see Earth again and lay-
out his next audacious project.

Wonderful intervals those had
been, in the humdrum of school.
Brand brought thrilling gifts from
other worlds — a trained mud-deyil
in a jar from Venus, a bottle of
red sand from Mars, a rock from
lost Adonis, a rainbow-colored shard
from one of the broken Callistonian
domes.

There were always wines and
foods too rare for common days.
There were trips to the beaches or
the mountains or the Moon. There
was always a girl, usually an excit-
ing blond actress, fluttering with
apparent rapture as she clung to
the strong arm of the dashing en-
gineer from space.

And Martin Brand talked.

The talk, to Jenkins, was always
the best. A tall, gaunt, expansive
man, wide of gesture and colorful of
garb and magnificent of voice, Brand
talked of the vast projects behind

ASTOUNDING S C IE NCE -F I CTIO N

him and the grander plans ahead.
On the first visit Jenkins could re-
call, his topic had been a huge para-
gravity separation plant he was
building to refine uranium from the
seas of Venus.

“The Empire’s starved for power
metals, and I wish you could have
seen those little yellow men hiss
and blink when they saw my figures
on the uranium halide content.”
Brand’s wide shoulders lifted lightly,
splendid in brocaded Venusian silk.
“They nearly balked when they
found the installation would cost
nine billions, but I pointed out they
weren’t buying just a- plant — but
their economic freedom from Inter-
planet.”

Next time Brand came to Earth, a
few years later, Jenkins wanted to
know how the plant was working.
Genial amusement made pleasant
crinkles around the great man’s fine
gray eyes.

“The little yellow men lost their
faith in me” — proud and straight in
splendid purple-and-gold lounging
pajamas, Brand shrugged indul-
gently — “but I settled for half my
fees, and now I’m working on a
more promising project.”

Smiling at the cold fire of an
immense diamond on his lean hand,
Brand lowered his rich voice con-
fidentially.

“Don’t tell a soul, Nicky. But
I’ve got the Martian industrial trust
interested in an atomic furnace to
make synthetic terraforming dia-
monds.”

“Diamonds !” Jenkins gasped with
breathless admiration.

“An extremely ingenious proc-
ess.” Brand tossed the monstrous
gem, and caught it gracefully. “The
pressurized retorts must be heated
above the fusion point of carbon,
and cooled under the exact tempera-
ture control for five years.” .

That process must have been
profitable to Martin Brand, for he
was back on Earth again, in his
sleek new sixty-meter yacht Adonis,
a year before the retorts were to be
opened. He wore bigger diamonds
than ever, and he was already talk-
ing of his next undertaking.

“A paragravity caisson !” His
deep voice held a hypnotic confi-
dence. “To explore the surface of
Jupiter. The Russians on the Jo-
vian moons are desperate for uran-
ium and thorium, and . they’ll back
me to the limit.”

Jenkins gaped with awe.

“Do you really mean to land on
Jupiter ?”

“Not in person.” Brand chuckled
easily. “I don’t care for the feeling
of ten thousand kilometers of me-
thane and ammonia over my head —
not even with a repulsion field to
hold the pressure back. I’m a spa-
tial engineer, not a suicide.”

And it was just enough, Jenkins
thought, for lesser men to take the
chances. His uncle’s engineering
genius was too precious to be lost.
“Fifth Freedom” was proof enough
of that. For the project Brand had
diagrammed in that thin blue book,

SEETEE SHOCK

15

it always seemed to Jenkins, was
still the most splendid dream of all
those daring dreamers whose visions
had conquered space.

Martin Brand still liked to tell
the story of the book, over a drink
and a good cigar, chuckling at his
naive expectation of changing the
faces of all the planets. Jenkins
had heard it often, always awed at
his uncle’s casual greatness.

“Xotion first hit me, out in the
Mandate.” Brand Used to tilt his
lean-cheeked head in a way that
showed his distinguished profile,
smiling with amusement at the open
worship of Jenkins. “Just out of
the institute, and green to space.
But 1 met this asterite engineer, Jim
Drake, and listened to his schemes
to work the seetee drift.”

Brand used to toss back his long
dark hair, with a cool little smile of
watchful daring.

“That’s when the idea hit me, and
T came back home to work it out.”
The ringing' eloquence of his dee])
voice was always music, to the eager
ears of J . nkins. “Lived in a gloomy
hall bedroom. Finally spent all I
could borrow, to persuade a pub-
lisher to put out two thousand copies
of my little prospectus for a better
world.”

Brand used to chuckle with a wry
amusement.

“Pretty optimistic then. Meant to
head off the next Spatial War — and
make an end of most other human
misfortunes, besides. The innocent
folly of youth! That little hook
proclaimed the Fifth Freedom —

boundless free power for every man
on every planet.”

Casually, Brand had once re-
warded the breathless interest of
Jenkins with an autographed copy
of that first edition. The younger
engineer still carried that precious
volume in his space bag. He knew
the words and the momentous sym-
bols by heart — and he still shared
that innocent folly.

“The hypothesis of contraterrene
matter was first put forward by
the pioneer atomic physicists of the
twentieth century,” Brand’s epochal
preface began. “That audacious
speculation proved itself — even be-
fore men reached space— by solving
the old mystery of the cosmic rays.

“For dust from the contraterrene
drift, as well as a few larger frag-
ments, sifts continually into Earth’s
atmosphere. The energetic protons
from the tee-seetee reaction in the
upper atmosphere were man’s first
clue to the boundless power awaiting
conquest.

“The spatial drift of the asteroid
belt, now politically administered as
a mandate of the major planets, is
estimated to he twelve percent see-
tee. That reservoir of energy is
vast beyond imagination. Such spa-
tial engineers as Drake have long
envisioned that monstrous power
chained and channeled to lift the
ships and turn the wheels and ex-
pand the lives of men, and this
small hook will deal only with the
technology of seetee power transmis-
sion.

“For contraterrene energy must

1G

A ST or X DING SCIENCE-FICTION

obviously be generated far at space
— outside any trace of terrene at-
mosphere. The problem is trans-
mission. Other engineers have
dreamed of wireless power — and
stumbled over the inverse-square
law. For ordinary electromagnetic
waves, spreading with the velocity
of light, dissipate their energy to the
limits of the universe.

'‘The author tried a new approach.
Studying the paragravity fields of
the sunspots, he found a departure
from the inverse-square law. This
book sets forth the mathematical
theory of a special paragravity field
— in effect, a standing wave of en-
ergy — vast enough to inclose the
solar system.

“This power field can be main-
tained with a coefficient of loss —
due entirely to the disturbing masses
of the sun and the planets— amount-
ing to less than one percent of the
.transmitted power. Simple tripolar
receptors can draw any required
flow of power from any point in
the field, to operate a child’s toy or
a spatial liner.

“The writer hopes that a non-
profit trust can be set up immedi-
ately, to build such a transmitter.
It would cost less than the planets
spend every day preparing for an-
other war over the dwindling ura-
nium reserves — and make that war
necessary !

“The operation expense should be
negligible, since seetee fuel is abun-
dant and the equipment must be
almost altogether automatic. In fact,
the by-products of useful metals re-

fined from the terrene half of the
fuel should cover operating costs,
making the enormous power output
genuinely free.

“And power must be free !”

So the youthful idealist had writ-
ten, twenty years ago.

“What a sentimental fool I must
have been !” Martin Brand told Jen-
kins. “All I knew was engineering.
Interplanet, howev.er, soon educated
me in other fields.”

“How was that ?”

“Tnterplanet owns most of the
known uranium and thorium re-
serves,” Brand explained cheerfully.
“The'direetors lost the Spatial War,
but they won everything back with
the political victory of the High
Space Mandate. Those reserves are
worth three hundred billion — and
they mark up prices twice as fast
as the supply goes down. They just
couldn’t afford to let a fresh young
pup of a spatial engineer wreck that
tight little monopoly !”

“So what happened?”

“They taught me a lesson.” The
great man shrugged his massive
shoulders, smiling. “I haunted lob-
bies to buttonhole important men,
and gave away free copies of the
book, and talked on street corners
until the cops roughed me up — be-
cause the big boys didn’t like it.”
Fraud tossed back his flowing
hair.

“But there wasn’t any rush of
humanitarians to build a free power
plant. I learned the lesson at last,

SEETEE SHOCK

17

and gave it up. I started looking the uranium in their oceans, and
for a job — and found that Inter- sketched that separation plant on the

planet was still teaching me." back of an old envelope while I was

“Huh?" waiting to talk to the ambassador.”

“No job." Brand smiled easily. Brand chuckled genially.
“Interplanet had me on a blacklist. “That was the real beginning — ”

When I discovered that, I put my After Venus there was Mars,

lesson into practice. Walking past Brand left the Jovian Soviet just

the Venusian legation, I happened to before the tests of his paragravity

see a poster ofifering rewards for a caisson. Arriving in the High Space

uranium strike outside the Mandate. Mandate, alert for another profitable

I set down an interesting figure for project, he met old Jim Drake again.

18 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Bankrupt, the asterite engineer
was free on bond in Pallasport,
awaiting trial for violation of a
Mandate law against unlicensed ex-
periment with contraterrene matter.
Brand listened to Drake’s story, and
found his new project.

No longer the innocent idealist
who wrote “Fifth Freedom,” Brand
used his twenty years of schooling
in politics and finance. He hired a
legal expert to defeat the charges
against Drake, and pulled the neces-
sary wires to obtain a special re-
search license.

He founded Seetee, Inc.

“Back the spatial engineers!”
screamed the crimson print of his
first prospectus. “Buy a slice of the
Seetee Age! Help wake and tame
the sleeping giant of contraterrene
power — and let him lift your finan-
cial cares. Your Seetee shares are
one-way tickets to easy street !”

The great man used his lesson.
Surprisingly, all five of the Mandate
commissioners voted unanimously to
charter the corporation and approve
that alluring prospectus. The branch
manager of Interplanet bought the
first block of , .Seetee stock issued
to the public, and turned a tidy profit
on it.

III.

When Jenkins first arrived from
Earth, Martin Brand offered him a
shiny private office in the advertising
department of Seetee, Inc. Jenkins,
however, eager to set his new skills
against the hard hostility of space,
insisted on a real engineering job.

Now, astride the seetee bull, he
found another pip on the radarscope.
He drove into testing range, and
fired a terrene pellet. The flash
showed contraterrene iron and tung-
sten, metal for Lazarene’s special
shop. Eagerly he moved in to pick
it up.

Still the jet beneath his jaw was
hissing, but it didn’t bother now.
Absorbed, he had no time to listen
to the whisper of his fears. Even
with the machine designed ' for it,
collecting seetee wasn’t quite simple
or safe.

Slowing the heavy bull, he kept
the pip centered in the scope until
his eyes could find the jagged lump
of deadly stuff ahead. He nosed
toward it cautiously, watching the
little geiger on his armored vnst.

The hot spot from the testing flash
was not too hot. He didn't mis-
judge distance or velocity too badly.
He kept the spinning seetee mass
from collision with his body or any
terrene part of the bull, and ma-
neuvered it into the seetee bin ahead
of the lead shield and the bedplates
that joined the unlike parts of the
machine* Triumphantly, he looked
at the scales. Nearly two tons of
mass — only eight more to go.

He glanced at the pale green glow
of the instruments. Thirteen-two.
Mandate time. He still had six
hours. He got his bearings from the
familiar stars, careful not to blind
himself with the small hot disk of
the sun, and swung the bull back
toward the vanishing wink of the
marker.

SEETEE SHOCK

19

“Nick Jenkins!”

His lean frame stiffened in the
bulky armor. The faint susurration
of the air jet hadn’t changed, but
suddenly it seemed to speak to him
with the gentle drawl of Captain
Rob McGee.

“Get me, Nick?” he thought Mc-
Gee was whispering. “Then don’t
wait to load the bull. Come on back
— ready for trouble!”

“Trouble?”

For one startled instant, Jenkins
thought McGee had really spoken.
A loyal friend and assistant of old
Jim Drake, that s uat little asterite
ferried supplies to Freedonia from
Pallasport and Obania. Jenkins first
thought his rusty tug must be near,
his voice coming on a photophone
beam.

Hut the helmet amplifier, Jenkins
recalled, was turned off — he had got
tired of hearing the recorded drone
of the Freedonia beacon. Grinning
at himself, he leaned to watch the
scope again. He started whistling
in the helmet, tunelessly, to drown
the hissing of the jet.

“Get me?” lie thought .he heard
the urgent drawl of Rob McGee
again, and his mind could see the
square, plain- featured face of the
odd little spaceman, the squinted
eyes dark and frightened. “Come
back, Nick !”

Jenkins blinked, and whistled
louder. He had ridden the bull too
far, perhaps, and worked too long
beside the slumbering fury of the
drift. Perhaps he ought to ask for

20

leave. He didn’t like to take advan-
tage of his kinship to Martin Brand,
but seetee damanded sane men to
work it.

“This is real, Nick,” the jet in-
sisted. “Listen to me.”

Jenkins listened, uncomfortably.
Pie had heard his fellow engineers
say that Rob McGee was — different.
The short little spaceman’s parents
had both survived a disaster in the
drift, so the rumors went, their
germ-plasm altered by the radiations.
Their child, so the story went, was
not quite human.

McGee, men whispered, was a
mutant — nature’s first groping ef-
fort, possibly, to shape a new human
type to fit the new environment of
space. Jenkins had come with him
to Freedonia on the rusty Good-by
Jane, and knew he had an uncanny
grasp of time and distance and
velocity.

“We need you, Nick !” The drawl
in the jet seemed somehow heavy,
choked, slow. “For something’s
wrong. I tried to get away to space,
to call a warning to Mr. Brand, but
now I’m blacking out.”

“Huh?” Jenkins sat tense in the
cramping stiffness of his armor, and
he couldn’t stop his gasping whisper.
“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t quite know.” The faint
words seemed laborious, and very
slow. “I can feel some things that
other men can’t — a Martian psy-
chologist once told me that I’ve a
different kind of psi capacity. But
there are limits — ”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION_

Jenkins was listening desperately
now, but that vocal quality seemed to
vanish from the hissing of the jet,
as if the brain of Rob McGee were
slipping into darkness. For a time
there was only the fluttering sigh of
the regulator valve. Then, with no
change in the sound, it seemed to
speak again.

“. . . hard to see what hasn’t hap-
pened,” McGee seemed to gasp.
“And I’m already blacking out.
Can’t reach you long. Rut I get
the feel of danger — the feel of a
seetee blast, that none of us can
stop. The feel of treason ... in
a man . . . we trusted — ”

The ebbing voice was gone.

.“No !” Jenkins whispered
hoarsely. “Which one of us would
betray Freedonia?”

Rut the jet was merely sighing
now, a tiny thread of sound spun
through the silent infinity of space.
The troubled face of little Rob Mc-
Gee had vanished from , his mind,
and he saw two faint pips flash
across the scope as he turned the
bull. More metal — but the frantic
urgency of that queer warning still
, gripped him.

Cold with alarm, his armored
hands swung the bull toward where
Freedonia should be. One dim atom,
ten thousand kilometers away, the
tiny asteroid was lost in the dust of
stars. He snapped on the amplifier
and swung the photophone mirror,
searching for the beacon.

“Freedonia beam !” His search-

ing reflector caught the modulated
beam, and the recorded signal made
a hollow roaring in his helmet.
“HSM T-89-AK-44.”

Startled by that sudden blast of
sound, Jenkins moved his hand to
turn off the amplifier. For that
harsh boom had drowned the quiet
whisper of the jet, and it shattered
his conviction that McGee had really
called him. He was a spatial en-
gineer, not a parapsychologist ; he
had always doubted the rumors of
McGee’s odd gifts.

“Time to ask for leave,” he mut-
tered wearily, before he remembered
not to talk to himself. Old Jim
Drake would understand, for other
men had gone rock happy. Even
Jean Lazarene, the brilliant, emo-
tionless Earthman in charge of the
special shop, had broken months ago
and come back undisgraced.

“My turn next,” he thought.
“When the jets starts telling such
tales as that !”

His hand was on the switch.

“HSM T-89-AK-44 !” the signal
roared reassuringly. “Freed — ”

The signal stopped.

“Huh!” lie caught his breath —
for he hadn’t turned the switch.
Puzzled, he swung the mirror to
search again. Nothing. He turned
up the amplifier until the whisper
of stray starlight became throbbing
thunder in the helmet. Nothing,
still.

“So the beacon’s oil?” he mut-
tered huskily. “So there is trouble
— and somebody has turned it off,
to keep me from getting back to

SEETEE SHOCK

21

help !” He swallowed at the sudden
dry feeling in his throat. “Who is
the traitor, Captain McGee?”

But the amplifier merely rumbled
with the voiceless crash of starlight.
He snapped it off impatiently. At
first the dead silence of space seemed
absolute, and then his straining ears
caught the breathing of the jet.

“Captain McGee !” he gasped
frantically. “Can you talk—?”

But the hissing jet had no more
words.

Cold panic clutched his throat, for
he needed that beacon. McGee, he
knew, was oddly at home in space.
The rumors said he had an extra-
sensory perception for time and
mass and distance and motion. But
Jenkins was no mutant, evolved for
space. He had to rely on his awk-
ward instruments and his feeble
physical senses, and the frown of
implacable infinity frightened and
confused him now.

The diamond stars withdrew from
him, remotely cold. The friendly
constellations shattered into alien
strangeness. The cruel blue eye of
the diminished sun stared blindly
from the wrong position. Dead
ahead of the bull, where Freedonia
should have been, another Drake
blinker flashed its deadly warning.

No, the marker had to be the
same. He counted seconds, desper-
ately, as the colored points burned,
to reassure himself. Four, three,
and five. He fought his panic, and
found the guiding pattern of the
constellations. He put the sun back
where it should be, and turned the

bull away from the deadly heart of
the seetee swarm.

Freedonia was too far for the
scope to show it, too faint for his
eyes to pick it up. He thought it
ought to be somewhere north, and
he drove the bull that way, thrusting
on the wheel to turn all the silent
power of the pile into the para-
gravity drive units behind them.
Searching the frozen glitter of the
far star clouds, he envied the ru-
mored extrasensory perceptions of
little Rob McGee.

Earth-born, Jenkins was no mu-
tant spaceman. His body and his
senses were designed for a kindlier
world, but he was still a spatial en-
gineer. He tried to keep his head.
He used his clumsy instruments, and
made his feeble senses serve.

He drove the bull toward Polaris,
searching Ursa Minor, hopefully
watching the scope. Ghostly pips
shone and vanished — for Freedonia
was circled with a million deadly
moonlets ; Drake had manipulated its
paragravity field to capture clouds
of seetee meteors for a reserve of
metal and fuel and a barrier to in-
truders.

When his rough dead reckoning
told him Freedonia should be within
a few thousand kilometers, he de-
liberately slowed the bull. No, panic
screamed. Try that faint spark—
or that! But those stars, sanity
whispered, beckoning him to death.

He swung the bull in a wide slow
circle, searching. He had to find

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

22

Freedonia, because he had no sup-
plies or charts or instruments or
even power enough for a long spatial
voyage. He had to find, it. soon,
because McGee’s appeal had left him
little time for blundering. At last
he saw one pale point that crept
across the rest, but that brought him
small elation.

That moving speck might be Free-
donia, a thousand kilometers away.
More likely it was a lethal fragment '
of the drift, perilously near. His
dull senses couldn’t tell him, but he
presently found it in the scope, with
a secondary pip on the distance scale
at eight hundred kilometers.

It had to be Freedonia : he could
Jiave hailed it, then, with his own
photophone beam — if he had dared
show a light. But he had no weapon.
Not even a magazine of seetee pel-
lets for the testing gun. Surprise
would be his only advantage.

He pushed the bull to full ac-
celeration for three hundred kilo-
meters, then to full deceleration. At
two hundred kilometers he occulted
Polaris with the rock, to start pick-
ing his way through the triple shell
of satellite mines that Drake had
placed for an inner defense.

Freedonia was swelling at last,
when he came inside the mines, to a
jagged black cube of fractured iron,
rolling slowly against the blacker
void. The twin beacon lights on
their spidery towers at the two poles
were still 'extinct, and he saw r no
movement anywhere.

He found McGee’s old tug, the

Good-by Jane, standing like an up-
ended ingot of rusty steel on the
narrow spaceport. It showed no
signals. Nothing moved about the
white-painted warehouses beyond it.
He looked anxiously for the green
light that always burned above the
living-tunnel cut in a black iron cliff,
but even that was dark. Panic took
hold of him.

He didn’t try to land on the field,
for the bull was not designed for
that. He lifted it to another dark
face of the angular planetoid, and ‘
dropped it beside a slender steel
tower that .crowned a high iron
point. Carefully, he nosed it down
into . an iron-lipped fissure. The
slightest error, here, could graze ter-
rene iron with the seetee ore bin,
disastrously. The breath of Jenkins
stopped, but he kept his lean hands
steady on the wheel.

He slipped the bull at last into
its fitted berth above the seetee ore
chutes, and secured it with the para-
gravity anchor. He quenched the
pile, and fumbled with numb fingers
to unlock the clamps that held his
armor to the seat. Stiffly, he clam- :
bered off the machine.

He tried to flex his weary body,
and seized a heavy wrench from the
tool box on the machine, the handiest
weapon he could see. Clutching that
in one clumsy glove, he reached with
the other for the controls at his
waist. He drove the dirigible armor
down a dim corridor into the contra-
terrene machine shop, in search of
the unknown enemy.

SEETEE SHOCK

IV.

The shop was a cavernous gallery,
cut into the iron mass of Freedonia.
A glare of cold light from high fix-
tures fell upon an endless • row of
massive dark machines. Before the
machines was a tall barrier of steel
mesh, hung with red-lettered lumin-
ous warning signs:

Keep Off!

SEETEE!

Jenkins dropped his paragravity:
driven armor to the walk outside the
railing. He clutched his clumsy club,
peering into the shadowy vastness
beyond. He tried to listen, with an
Earthman’s reflex, and the eerie si-
lence almost frightened him.

For the shop was running.

Beyond that dark barrier, an end-
less floor of untouchable contrater-
rene iron rested on a dim forest of
wide-flanged bedplates. At the end
of the shop, below the ore bins be-
neath the chute where he had
berthed the seetee bull, untouchable
ingots of seetee iron came glowing
from a huge automatic induction
furnace which was also untouchable.

Untouchable hammers shaped
those ingots — striking in a dead si-
lence that gave them a curious illu-
sion of unreality. Untouchable
lathes sliced off untouchable turn-
ings. Untouchable machines finished
untouchable machinings, and placed
them upon a crawling assembly line.

The assembled devices, however,

which an automatic crane lifted
from the end of the assembly line,
were not wholly untouchable. They
were new bedplates, shaped like im-
mense inverted mushrooms.

Cased with terrene iron, the cir-
cular crowns could be anchored to
terrene foundations. Interlocked
within them were terrene plates and
seetee counter-plates, unlike surfaces
with invisible clearances held apart
by surface fields of permanent nega-
tive paragravity. The upright see-
tee stalks, untouchable, could
support more contraterrene ma-
chines.

Jenkins gasped with relief, to dis-
cover the shop still running nor-
mally. Nobody was in sight from
where he stood, but these machines
were designed to run with little at-
tention. He tried to grin at his
haunting unease.

“Just rock happy, like Lazarene
was,” he muttered wearily. “Prob-
ably nothing really wrong. Maybe
that beacon just burned out, and
everybody's too busy setting up the
machines in Lazarene’s special shop
to notice the trouble. Guess I just
imagined McGee’s voice in the jet.
S’pose I had better ask Drake for
a few months off — ”

His breath caught. He was watch-
ing the automatic crane carrying the
newest bedplate from the assembly
line to its cradle on a waiting rail
car. The car, he saw, was already
loaded with twelve new bedplates
— with no room for another.

Breathless, he waited for some-
body to start the tiny electric loco-

24

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

motive and spot another car. But
nobody did. He waited, shivering,
for the crane and the whole assembly
line to stop — for the relays in the
automatic control board were set to
stop everything when a car was
loaded, until the crew had placed
another car and pressed a signal
button.

But some relay must have stuck.

Nightmarish horror fell upon Jen-
kins, when he saw r what was hap-
pening. The crane was lowering
that last bedplate toward the loaded
car. The terrene crown of it would
touch the seetee stalk of the one
beneath — and the first slight reac-
tion, warping unlike plates into con-
tact, would be a fuse to detonate all
Freedonia.

For a long heartbeat he stood
rooted, numbed with terror. Why
didn’t somebody see that cataclysm
in the making, and pull the safety
switch ? Where was everybody, any-
how ? Why didn’t — He swallowed
hard, and moved.

He snapped on his helmet photo-
phone, tilting his head to turn the
dim red monochromatic beam to-
ward the control station high at the
end of that long iron gallery, almost
above that automatic crane and its
lethal burden. Young Rick Drake,
he knew, should be on duty now.

“Rick !” he shouted hoarsely.
“Stop that crane !”

He could see the pink flicker of
the modulated beam on the dark iron
wall behind the high platform, but
no light answered him. The crane
didn’t stop.

SEETEE SHOCK

“Wake up, Rick!” he gasped.
“What’s wrong?”

But he wasn’t waiting for Rick
Drake’s answ-er. His taut fingers
gripped the studs to drive his dirig-
ible suit down the long gallery and
lift him to the railed platform.
Drake’s huge body was slumped
against the long control board, held
half upright by the stiffness of his
armor — but Jenkins had no time for
Drake.

For the crane was moving fast.

Jenkins snatched the red-lit emer-
gency switch, yanked hard. And
he was still alive. For a breathless,
shuddering second, that was all he
knew. Then he saw that the shop
was stopping.

The silent hammers ceased their
eerie rise and fall. The untouchable
tools were still, and the assembly
line ceased moving. The automatic
crane halted with its lethal burden,
suspending cataclysm.

Trembling with his own reaction,
Jenkins turned anxiously to Rick-
Drake. That tall young engineer
sagged lifelessly, supported only by
the unyielding fabric. His red-
haired head lolled inside the bubble
of the helmet, skin pale, mouth
yawning, sightless eyes dilated.

Jenkins touched him, and that top-
pled his heavy body off the little
stool. Jenkins caught him, and laid
him on the railed platform. He
lifted Drake’s helmet to touch his
own, shouting hoarsely:

“Rick, what happened to you ?”

The body sagged loosely, as if

25

still warm. He thought the white
lips moved a little, thought he heard
a sighing breath. But the lips didn’t
speak, or the blank eyes focus.

What had happened to Free-
donia ?

He laid the unconscious man back
on the platform, and straightened to
face that monstrous problem. Why
was the beacon dark? Why the
whole rock so apparently deserted?
What had struck Rick Drake down ?

Shivering, Jenkins glanced at the
bedplate beneath him, hanging from
that automatic crane. Was that near-
disaster freakish accident — or delib-
erate sabotage?

A quick examination of the maze
of cables and relays beneath the con-
trol panels showed no cut wires.
Stepping off the platform into emp-
tiness, he checked his fall with the
thrust unit behind his shoulders, and
drove silently down a dark connect-
ing tunnel into the generator room.

That room was another vast cav-
ern hidden beneath the iron crags,
and the unfinished machine inside it
was the urgent goal of all the effort
on the rock. Jenkins landed the
small ship of his armor on another
railed platform, high beside the re-
action chamber. He peered around
that gloomy chasm with puzzled,
frightened eyes.

The reaction chamber beneath him
was made in two huge hemispheres,
held together and apart by scores of
disk-shaped bedplates. The lower
half was terrene steel, cadmium-
shielded. Steel railings guarded the
bright, harmless-seeming metal of

the upper dome, and red signs
warned that it was untouchable see-
tee. Other barriers, higher, sur-
rounded the untouchable milling
machines and separators and con-
veyors and metering injectors.

For one instant, as Jenkins came
to rest on the control station, his
mind could see the generator finished
and running. Those bright machines
were operating silently, and the in-
jection fields forced a measured
stream of . refined contraterrene dust
into the reaction chamber.

Touchable terrene machines, clus-
tered around the terrene section of
the chamber beneath him, were
grinding and refining the terrene
fuel. A terrene injector jetted ter-
rene dust to meet the seetee jet and
cancel its unlike atoms into intoler-
able radiation.

Pure fury !

That reaction would be -more sav-
agely hot than the sun’s atomic fire.
No possible material could contain
it, but the spatial engineers had
forged a chain to bind its ultimate
energy. Levin, a century ago, had
first attempted to replace the heavy
shielding of .a ship’s power pile with
a paragravity field intense enough to
bend the escaping rays and particles
into harmless circles. Levin died of
radiation burns when his pile blew
up, but Dahlberg, twenty years later,
found a way to dispose safely of the
accumulating energy. He oscillated
the special field inside a coil, induc-
ing a secondary magnetic field which
converted the savage violence of de-

26

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

caving mesons and trapped photons
into useful electricity.

The Levin-Dahlberg field thus had
finally subdued the sullen power of
atomic fission. It made possible such
compact and almost safe atomic
power piles as drove the seetee bull.
And it could contain and transform
the vaster might of seetee.

For a moment Jenkins saw the
shining coils of gray- white condul-
loy already installed inside that vast
reaction chamber — the coils had to
be made of that precious supercon-
ductor, because the river of induced
energy from that conversion field
would vaporize any common metal.

His mind could see the serpentine
gleam of the condulloy cables that
would carry that monstrous current
to the Brand transmitter already half
installed above, in the thin steel
tower already built on the highest
crag of Freedonia. His engineer’s
bold imagination, for that moment,
could picture that boundless torrent
of energy flowing, building up the
power-field that would serve all the
needs of all the men who wished to
tap it anywhere.

But the moment passed.

The generator and the Brand
transmitter were not complete.
Eighty tons of condulloy were
needed, and that new alloy of rare
isotopes was worth two dollars a
gram. The cost evidently puzzled
the financial genius of Martin Brand
himself, for Jenkins knew that old
Jim Drake had asked for the metal
two months ago.

The moment passed, and Jenkins
searched the shadowy cavern before
him for any signs of trouble. The
railed machines were still. He saw
no armor moving, and saw no hint
of any sabotage. But Paul Anders,
he knew, should be at work here.

He found the studs again, to lift
his bulky suit from that high plat-
form and drop it to the terrene iron
of the floor. He found Anders
there, lying beneath the terrene cup
of the reaction chamber. A roll of
blueprints lay near his armored
hand, the wiring diagram of the
Levin-Dahlberg coils.

Jenkins moved the lean Earthman
to where the light was better. The
long body was as pallidly lifeless as
Rick Drake’s had been, the head
rolling limply in the helmet, the dis-
tended eyes unseeing.

What had struck these two men
down ?

A glance showed Jenkins that the
armor was still intact, as Drake’s
had been. Air pressure and hu-
midity and temperature were nor-
mal, oxygen and carbon dioxide and
helium readings correct. No blood
was visible, or any other sign of
sudden violence.

Was it radiation illness?

Starting to a bleak recollection of
McGee’s telepathic warning of a see-
tee blast — if that queer experience
had really been telepathy — Jenkins
bent stiffly to study the tiny geiger
on the limp man’s wrist.

The face of it flashed green once,
and again, as he peered at it, show-
ing occasional penetrating particles

SEETEE SHOCK

2T

or photons too infrequent to be
deadly. The counter needle, meas-
uring the total accumulated expo-
sure, was still on the white section of
the scale — far from the orange that
meant caution, the red that was dan-
ger, and the black that spelled death.

No, this wasn’t seetee shock.

Some epidemic, perhaps ?

Jenkins had taken four semesters
of spatial medicine, but he could
think of no disease which this might
be. The living quarters, although
somewhat cramped, were antiseptic-
ally sanitary. The two men must
have been feeling fit when they came
to work. They must have been
stricken with inexplicable quickness
— or else Rick Drake would have
stopped the seetee shop.

Poison?

When all the planets were almost
at war over the vanishing reserves
of uranium and thorium, the con-
traterrene technology might seem an
imperial prize. Jenkins could imag-
ine desperate men — agents from
Venus or Mars or the Jovian Soviet
or even Interplanet — ready enough
to murder twenty men for control
of Freedonia.

He bent again to lift the stiff-
clad arm of Anders, to peer again
into the transparent helmet. There
was no hint of rigor mortis. He
could feel no pulse through the
heavy sleeve, but the flesh seemed
warm and elastic. He saw a slow
breath-movement.

The man was still alive — but he
wouldn’t be, if that automatic crane
had finished its last trip. Shivering,

Jenkins searched the shadows be-
neath the bulging reaction chamber.
Shapeless danger peered out of the
clots of darkness there, retreating
as he strode forward. He followed
leering peril around that dim, vast
room, and upward again, beyond
those railed untouchable machines.

The dirigible suit lifted him up
out of the generator room, through
one of the wide, insulated conduits
where a condulloy cable was to run.
He found nothing moving about the
naked steel girders of the transmit-
ter tower on the summit above, and
no other victim.

Anxiously, lie started toward the
tunnel dwelling.

"Wait !” whispered terror, with
the air jet’s voice. "Try Lazarene’s
special shop — that’s where the dan-
ger is!”

His taut body felt clammy in the
armor. Sweat of fear was cold on
his face, as he soared northward
from the tower to another fractured
face of Freedonia. For he had
never liked the sallow- faced, metaT-
voiced engineer from Earth who
called himself Jean Lazarene, and he
had been appalled when old Jim
Drake told him the actual purpose
of the special shop.

"Seetee weapons !” he had gasped.
“What’s the need of them?”

"Freedonia has become a valuable
prize.” Drake’s deep voice was a
solemn rumble, and his faded eyes
were glare. “Your uncle says there
are men who would seize our plant
and misuse it for military purposes.
He feels that our efforts at secrecy

28

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

aren't enough, and he wants us to
develop a missile for defense — a
light, self-guided missile with a see-
tee war head.”

“But don’t we have the protection
of the Mandate government?” Jen-
kins ventured a respectful protest.
“Besides those clouds of drift — and
the spatial mines !”

Old Drake nodded his roan head,
wearily.

"But your uncle says that isn’t
enough. He’s afraid of spies. He
says the Mandate is a very feeble
device, that any planet could upset.
He insists that we develop a missile,
and he asked me to put you in
charge of the project.”

“Huh!” Jenkins caught his !
breath, and shook his head decis-
ively. “No,” he said, “I’m more
interested in the useful phases of

seetee. I don’t like the idea of see-
tee weapons, and I’d rather run the
bull. 1 wish you’d find another
man.”

“I don’t want any seetee war,”
Drake’s troubled voice assured him.
“We'll develop nothing larger than
we need to defend Freedonia.” The
old engineer shook his head. “Your
uncle will be disappointed.”

But Jenkins still wanted nothing
to do with seetee missiles, and he
kept his job on the bull. It was the
lean Earthman, Lazarene, just back
from leave, who was finally put in
charge of the special shop.

Now, at the bottom of the jagged
chasm that concealed the entrance to
that arsenal, Jenkins dropped into
darkness. Reluctant to betray him-
self with the helmet light, he groped
his way into the iron-walled gallery
— and stumbled over something
stiffly yielding.

He staggered back, shaken. His
groping glove found the light switch
inside the entrance. He snapped on
the lights, stooping apprehensively.
His peering eyes swept the whole
long shop, and saw no hostile move-
ment. Swallowing hard, he looked
down at what his booted feet had
struck.

Three men. armored in white.

Jenkins bent awkwardly, to see
the pale heads lolling in their hel-
mets. The stout man was Feinberg,
the blond man Hanson, the short
man Ching. They were all engineers
who had been assigned to Lazarene’s
c’'ew. Their limp bodies lav in a

30

neat row against the iron wall, as
if dragged there.

Jenkins lifted his armor to soar
on past them. Shivering, he searched
that long iron gallery again. Here
were more railed, untouchable ma-
chines, all still. He lifted himself
to the elevated control station, look-
ing for Lazarene. The railed plat-
form was empty.

Still bewildered, he saw no answer
to the silent riddle of the rock —
until he turned his flying armor back
tow-ard the doorway, and saw the
empty spaces where machines had
stood and the empty racks, against
the dark iron walls, where the fin-
ished missiles had been stored.

Empty racks !

The meaning of that caught the
back of his neck, and shook him with
a breathless weakness. He dropped
to look for other clues, and found
the discarded loading hooks that men
in powered armor had used to lift
the crated missiles. He found wide-
spaced parallel scratches, where the
flanges of a paragravity conveyor
tube had scraped the floor. Finally,
in the dark bottom of the iron chasm
outside he found a heavy missile, still
in its battered aluminum launching
tube, where hurried men had
dropped it and left it.

Jenkins straightened over that
long bright case, staring blankly at
the patch of stars visible above the
dark iron rim. The stars of splendid
Orion — -but he saw only unthinkable
disasfer.

“They can’t” — he gasped unbe-

ASTOUNDING S C I E X C E - F I C T 1 0 N

lievingly — “rob the arsenal . . .
whoever they are — ”

“But they’ve done it,” his stag-
gered awareness whispered in the
air jet. “Very neatly, too. They
must have brought a ship here,
through the mines and the drift —
with some traitor to show them the
way. They knocked out the loyal
men— somehow. Turned off the
beacon, loaded their loot, and got
away !”

“But they mustn’t — ” Jenkins
muttered.

He stiffened abruptly. Perhaps
he could stop them! For he had
seen the beacon go off, not three
hours ago — and they must have been
an hour or longer loading those
missiles and machines, even with
modern paragravity conveyors.
They couldn’t get away fast, through
the mines and the drift. Still they
might be near.

“At least,” he whispered, “I can
try !”

He hurtled out of that narrow pit,
soaring around Freedonia to the
berth where he had left the seetee
bull. That clumsy machine wasn’t
designed for a weapon, but it might
do. The scope might find the es-
caping raiders, if they were near
enough. The low-powered drive
might overtake them, if they were
slow enough. The tons of seetee
metal in the bedplates and ore bin
made a war head big enough to
smash any ship — almost, to crack a
planet.

Jenkins wasn’t anxious to die as
a suicide pilot. Perhaps he could

aim the bull like a missile, and then
slip off in his armor. But that un-
known raider mustn’t get away. Its
cargo was the end of the Mandate,
the beginning of a new Spatial War,
and ruin and oppression and death
for all the planets but one.

If his life should be the price —

That unpleasant question didn’t
need decision yet, Jenkins told him-
self hopefully. First he had to find
that departing craft, and then over-
take it. He dropped past the un-
finished transmitter tower, into the
dim gallery where the seetee bull
was berthed.

The quenched pile warmed while
he clamped his armor to the cold
metal seat. He gripped the wheel,
watching the instruments, waiting
for the wavering needles to steady.
He tried to quiet his nerves, for the
delicate task of backing out the bull.
He caught his breath, and reached to
release the anchor —

* Freedonia shuddered.

No sound struck him, for there
was no air. But the iron rock shiv-
ered, and the heavy machine
trembled under him. A terrible light
flashed against the iron lip of the
fissure above him, so bright that it
wiped away all color.

Jenkins was blinded for an instant.
The trembling of the asteroid ceased,
and there was still no sound. In a
moment he could see color— and the
color he saw was the dreadful color
of death. He saw all around him a
pale, vanishing glow of blue.

He knew the meaning of that,
even before he looked at his geiger.

31

SEETEE SHOCK

The alarm of that tiny instrument
was purring urgently against his
wrist. The face of it was flickering
with warning scarlet. He raised
his wrist stiffly, to see the counter
needle. It crept out of the red sec-
tor on the dial, even as he looked.

It crawled into the black.

“You’ve had it, Nick Jenkins,”
sighed the air jet beneath his jaw.
“You don’t have to go out looking
for any chances to barter off your
life. Because those raiders got you
— whoever they are. Because you’re
going to die, Jenkins— of seetee
shock 1”

V.

1 le was going to die. Jenkins sat
stiffly on the hard seat of the bull,
staring at that fact without belief
or understanding. It couldn’t really
he, lie tried to tell ' himself. The
flickering geiger must be lying, for
he still I'elt quite well.

“Don't try to kid yourself, Nick
Jenkins,” the air jet whispered, with
his own stunned awareness. “You
know too much spatial medicine for
that. These geigers are accurate —
and that much hard radiation kills
you as dead as a bullet through the
head.

“It only takes longer to die.”

He shook his head blankly in the
helmet, too dazed to realize any-
thing. The geiger stopped vibrating
abruptly, as the tiny alarm spring
ran down. Mechanically he wound
it again with his stiff gloves, and
set the needle back to zero.

32

“That won’t help you, Jenkins,”
jeered the jet. “You can’t turn back
the radiation sickness in you. The
men escaping in that ship have al-
ready murdered you — and Free-
donia !”

The harsh impact of that loosed
furious purpose in the blank void
Of his despair. He stiffened his
shoulders and crouched to check the
instruments and reached again to
release the anchor. For he wasn’t
dead yet.

He slipped the bulky machine out
of its berth. He backed it carefully
out of the iron-walled fissure. The
seetee bin didn’t touch anything ter-
rene, but the reset geiger on his
wrist began to purr again as the bull
rose into the open. In a moment he
saw the cause, and shivered again.

He saw a vast new crater bitten
into iron Freedonia, where the see-
tee shot had struck. The ragged
metal ridges and summits around it,
riven and twisted from the mon-
strous fury of the blast, still glowed
evilly red. The flattened floor blazed
with a white incandescence.

And the counter needle, already
climbing into the orange sector on
the face of the geiger, warned Jen-
kins that a silent storm of secondarv
radiations was raging about him.
The incalculable energy of that pri-
mary blast had formed countless
tons of radioactive isotopes in the
rock. All Freedonia was poisoned,
deadly now.

Instinctively he pushed hard on
the wheel, to drive the bull away
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

from that ugly glow of that cancer
in the rock.

“What’s your hurry, Jenkins?”
mocked the whisper of the jet. “A
few more rays can’t kill you any
deader.”

He grinned feebly at himself, and
tried to swallow the hitter dryness
in his throat. Looking back to study
that glowing pit again, he decided
the seetee shot must have come from
the south. He swung the bull to-
ward faint Octans, and bent to watch
the scope.

A white pip showed !

An object at four hundred kilo-
meters. It must be the raider — al-
ready beyond the triple shell of spa-
tial mines. He centered it in the
scope, and thrust the bull to full
acceleration. Still the pip on the
distance scale crawled farther out.

Five hundred kilometers, and
six.

Octans, Jenkins knew, marked the
safest passage through the drift
beyond the mines. The pilot of the
raider was clearly certain of his way.
Who could he be ?”

Jenkins pondered that, bitterly.
One of his twenty-odd fellow en-
gineers had obviously betrayed the
great dream of Brand and Drake —
but which could be guilty? What
manner of man could pretend to
share the perilous struggle to tame
seetee, and turn traitor to his com-
rades and their goal?

He couldn’t quite imagine.

The distance pip reached eight
hundred kilometers. He knew the

chase was hopeless, yet he kept on .
until the nausea hit him — the first
warning effect of that terrible energy
which had burned through his body.

Gray illness fell upon him. His
body tensed and shuddered. An icy
sweat dissolved his strength, and
turned his sick body clammy in the
armor. The bull seemed to rock and
pitch and drop beneath him, until he
was utterly lost in the world.

The nausea ebbed at last. ' His
knotted stomach relaxed. He tried
to swallow the choking constriction
in his throat, and straightened his
quivering body weakly. He searched
the constellations and found him-
self again — but the faint spark of
the fleeing ship in Octans had van-
ished from the scope.

Laboriously, he swung the bull
back toward the poisoned planetoid.
A black depression followed him.
The fact of his own sure death was
still remote, half unreal. The thine
that shocked and sickened him, with
a sense of loss more painful than
any personal blow, was the murder
of the dream that he had helped to
build.

For the Brand transmitter was to
have been a wondrous new heart
for human civilization, pumping out
the energy that was ultimately life.
All the planets were sick for power ;
most human ills, he thought, were
merely symptoms of that sickness.
Contraterrene energy could have
cured them.

The new crater glared at him, as
he came back to land. The heat of
it was cooling swiftly. The cragged

SEETEE SHOCK

33

rim was already black. Only the
pit still glowed, a solitary eye of
brooding, scarlet hate.

The alarm of his geiger purred
again, for those new isotopes in the
rock still glowed with more deadly
rays than heat, and they would for
months and years. All Freedonia
was forbidden, now, radiant with
, energies too powerful for human
bodies to endure.

His fellow engineers, Jenkins
knew, must have died with their
dream. For the seetee shot had
been accurately placed in the center
of a rough triangle, between the
unfinished generator and the living-
quarters and the special shop. No-
body, he thought, could have escaped
the penetrating radiations.

Y et he tried to hope.

He berthed and anchored the
seetee bull again, and undamped his
armor from the seat: The nausea

was gone. He felt almost well again,
almost hopeful, as the massive suit-
lifted him over the sinister glow of
that new crater and dropped him
outside the living tunnel.

The outer valve of the entrance
lock yawned open. Old Jim Drake
Stood just inside the chamber, lean-
ing on the long solenoid of a portable
prospecting gun. The set of his
helmet and his uplifted arms showed
such a frantic purpose that Jenkins
- called :

“Mr. Drake ! What hap — ”

Then he saw' that Drake’s thin-
haired head had dropped limply for-
ward in the helmet. Only the stiff
fabric of his armor and the acci-

dental support of the testing gun
held him upright. His seamed skin
was very pale* and his huge frame
toppled slowly when Jenkins caught
his arm.

Drake was still alive. Haying his
heavy body clown outside the little
chamber, Jenkins could feel the flex-
ibility of life. But the counter
needle of the geiger on his wrist had
moved out of the white and the
orange and the red, into the fatal
black.

Certain death was planted in him.

Jenkins straightened, gulping at
a tight ache in his throat. He picked
up the testing gun to glance at the
red glowing magazine, marked
bolcllv: SEETHE — O PEN IN

VACUUM ONLY! The ten milli-
gram pellets, intended for long-
range prospecting in the terrene
drift, made it also a formidable
weapon.

He thought lie could read a tragic
story in the presence of the gun and
the. faint hint of stunned alarm and
frantic purpose lingering on Drake’s
lax, bloodless face. He thought the
aged engineer must have discovered
the raid and started out to attack
the looters, only to he abruptly
stricken here.

Jenkins shook his head sadly. Ex-
cept perhaps for Martin Brand,
Drake had been the greatest name
in spatial engineering. The first
to attempt the taming of the seetee,
he had been the real creator of Free-
donia. If the dream must die, Jen-
kins thought soberly, perhaps it was
fitting that Drake should perish too.

34

AS TO UNDINE SCIENCE -FICTION

Weary hands numb in the armor,
Jenkins closed the outer valve. He
spun a wheel to let air scream into
the lock, anxiously watching the
gauges. Pressure and temperature
and oxygen were normal. He
started unthinkingly to take off his
helmet — and checked h i m s e 1 f
sharply.

Still sealed in the chafing fabric,
he opened the inner valve and stalked
heavily into the iron-walled dwell-
ing. The lights still burned. A blare
of mechanical music came faintly
from the recreation room. Thin
blue smoke was drifting out of the
kitchen tunnel. He found six men
in the main corridor.

They weren’t moving.

Clad only in shorts and pajamas,
they lay sprawled in a group on the
floor, near the main air duct. He
stooped clumsily over them, won-
dering what had brought them to-
gether here, and so found the slender
cylinder of stainless steel that still
lay in the lax .fingers of a man
beneath the opened grille.

Gasping, he picked up the cylin-
der.

WARNING!
AMETINE BOMB

Contents: 200 grams ametine hydrate in
odorless volatile vehicle, for use only as
last resort in disaster. Keep in plainly
marked emergency locker, accessible only
to responsible personnel.

Use: Open spray for four seconds per
one thousand cubic feet of space. Con-
centration so obtained will produce un-
consciousness without discomfort within

one hour, and reduce oxygen metabolism
eighty percent during period of coma.

Caution: Excessive inhalation will re-
sult in prolonged coma, with a possibility
of grave organic complications. Persons
rescued or discovered under ametine coma
require immediate medical aid.

Jenkins tossed the empty bomb
aside, nodding to himself. His eyes
went back to the open air duct and
the huddled, half-clad men beneath
it. Still he didn't know the traitor’s
name, but the rest of the terrifying
story seemed plain enough.

The bomb, of the standard type
designed to save lives and agony in
spatial disasters, had come from the
emergency locker, just inside the
valve. Some trusted man had sim-
ply opened the jet and placed it in
the air duct, where the ventilators
would blow its odorless spray
through the whole tunnel — probably
just a few minutes before time for
the watches to change.

That was it, he decided grimly.
The men going on duty had already
breathed enough of the vapor to fall
unconscious at their work— that had
been the fate of Rick Drake and
Anders and the rest. And the men
coming in had all inhaled too much
before they discovered the bomb.
The elder Drake must have snatched
his prospecting gun and started out
after the bomb was found, too late.

But who was the traitor ?

Which one of his fellow engineers
would have sold the dream and
promise of Freedonia to the agents
of a jealous planet? Who would
have supplied charts of the drift and

SEETEE SHOCK

AST— 2C

35

the mines to the unknown enemy?
Which of those familiar men had
been cool and false enough to place
that ametine bomb and then signal
the waiting raider — by darkening the
beacon, no doubt!

Which seeming friend —

Still sealed in his armor, Jenkins
moved stiffly to turn the heads of
those lax men sprawled in the pas-
sage, marking them off a mental list.
He stalked into the recreation room,
where three men had fallen, over
cards on a table. He found the cook
lying on the kitchen floor, and two
men huddled beside their tables in
the drafting room.

The whole staff numbered less
than two dozen men, for machines
had supplanted man power on Free-
donia. Few men cared to work the
drift, and fewer still had earned the
watchful trust of Brand and Drake.
Jenkins knew them all, and his
search of the tunnel accounted for
all but four.

He strode wearily back to the en-
trance lock, and waited for the
roaring pumps to exhaust the air
around his armor. Outside again,
under the black sky and the small
hot sun, he found two more men at
the spaceport, collapsed beside a little
electric truck on the dock, near the
valves of the rusty Good-by Jane.

Aboard the sturdy tug, he found
Captain Rob McGee in the pilot-
house, sprawled on the deck. He
was breathing quietly and slowly
in the coma of ametine, but his
square, homely face still held a look

36

of frantic urgency — the same des-
perate expression the mind of Jen-
kins had seemed to see, when he
thought McGee was calling him.

McGee made three, and the one
name left on the list was Jean
Lazarene. Jenkins shook his head,
uncertainly. Fie had never really
liked the coldly efficient Earthman,
but he couldn’t understand how -any
man so capable could betray the
tradition of the spatial engineers.

Yet it must be Lazarene. The
evidence was clear. Even that
mental breakdown must have been a
ruse, to enable him to meet his con-
federates —

“But the name doesn’t answer the
riddle,” his bitter thoughts whis-
pered in the jet. “The real puzzle is
the identity of the power behind the
traitor. Whose agents corrupted
Lazarene? Which planet sent that
ship, and g' those tools and ^ ussiles
and Lazarene’s know-how?”

The answer to that, Jenkins
thought grimly, would be revealed
by the outcome of the next Spatial
War.

Stooping clumsily in his armor,
Jenkins caught McGee’s wrist and
turned it so that he could see the
geiger of the unconscious man. The
needle was in the black. He stared
at it, trembling, his weary body
sweating and clammy in the armor.

Pity throbbed in him, and savage
anger shook him. He caught his
breath, and a ruthless purpose
stiffened his cramped body. He was
dying, and all these men — but their
dream must live !

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

VI.

Jenkins carried the stricken men
out to Obania.

That little terraformed planetoid,
outside the mines and the drift, had
been the base of supplies for Free-
donia. Jenkins had worked three
months at the Scctee branch there,
before old Jim Drake decided to
trust hint with the secrets of the
guarded laboratory. He had learned
to toe that tiny, historic rock and
its sturdy people.

Once Dtsmia had teas a tlmfving
pior.ecr center, t trice old Bruce
OTtoitou, arte long ago had staked
his Uranium claims on the took aud
hired Jim Drake to terra&an it— -
once t iUankui had beauts wealthy
and itiiluential leader of the hardy
native asterites,

Cliicct for a few momentous day.-?
at the close of the Spatial War,
Obania had been provisional capital
of the hopeful new* democracy of the
far- iking planetoids, the High Space
L'niuu. The asterites had poured
out blood and treasure to help break
the old oppression of Interplanet,
but the Treaty of Space sold their
dreams of greatness and throttled
their hopes of freedom.

The Mandate, set up to share the
mineral wealth of the asteroids
among the major planets, prohibited
the private mining of uranium and
harshly suppressed the Free Space
Party. The betrayed people of the
rocks endured a generation of
stagnation and decay.

Now, however, Seetce had*
sbe-trk shock

brought Obania a feeble glow of
prosperity. After twenty years of
bitter idleness, old Bruce O’Banion
was busy again, employed as man-
ager of the new warehouse. A new
machine shop was building and re-
pairing terrene tools for the plant
on Freedoms, and the dead street of
the rusty little* town lived again, with
o\ era'.Ied workers and the waiting
families of the engineers.

More than prosperity, the new
corporation had brought back hope.
Jenkins had seen it In the rekindled
eyes of old < t'Banion, and heard it
in the bright voices of: children play-
ing in the -street. The boundless tide
of power tips Freedouia could
sweep away the suffocating ride of
the Mandate, and bring the freedom
the allied planets had promised and
then denied.

jjft the mighty dream of Drake
a«tl Fraud had rum but that tapg
hope seemed dim and distant now.
The people of tire rocks were still
under the arbitrary law of the Man-
date, and Jenkins could feel the cold
shadow of seetce War upon them.

An hour out, Jenkins called the
( )hauiu base of the High Space
( mat'd, the military force of the
Mandate.

*‘Tug Good-by Jane requests per-
mission for emergency landing,
(.'rail: contaminated with radiation.
Carrying twenty-one men under
ametiue coma, all exposed to radia-
tion.”

“Don't approach public space-
port .' 1 That prompt reply was
sharp-voiced with concern, “We

37

are calling the Worringer Radiation
Clinic to stand by, and show you a
beacon. You are cleared to land in
the safety well at the clinic.”

Disasters with seetee were not un-
expected. Martin Brand had picked
Dr. Worringer as the finest radia-
tion specialist in the Mandate, and
built the modern clinic here as a new
outpost of spatial medicine against
the cruel ravages of hard radiations.

Landing, Jenkins almost dared to
hope.

His body was stiff from four taut
hours at the periscope, but that first
nausea was gone. A sense of tired
well-being possessed him. Perhaps,
he tried to think, his little geiger had
been out of adjustment. Or per-
haps the thick lead shield behind the
ore bin of the bull had protected his
body, leaving only his arm and the
instrument exposed.

He couldn’t believe that he was
going to die.

The clinic was a long white build-
ing, trimly new, isolated in a narrow,
iron-walled cleft beyond the sagging,
rust-reddened buildings over one of
the depleted and abandoned uranium
mines. The safety well beyond it
was a lead-walled pit — for most of
Worringer’s patients were expected
to arrive in contaminated craft, as
deadly as the Good-by Jane.

The red flicker of the clinic photo-
phone guided Jenkins to the pit. An
excited attendant was asking the
names of the victims.

“I’ll identify them,” Jenkins
promised, “but don’t call any of the

38

relatives, just yet. I’ll break the bad
news myself — but I want Dr. Wor-
ringer’s verdict, first.”

Still he was trying to hope.

He set the tug down gingerly in
the narrow well, not so skillfully as
little Rob McGee could have done.
Limp with a weary relief, he opened
the valves. Hurried attendants in
white came aboard, listening
anxiously to the warning bells of
their own wrist geigers, to carry off
the unconscious men that Jenkins
had toiled to load into the tiny cabins
and the narrow holds.

A tall, black-bearded man with
brooding, angry eyes, Dr. Worrin-
ger was waiting in the white-walled
emergency ward. Llis moodiness,
Jenkins supposed, came from the
bitterness of his own defeats in his
long private war to make men im-
mune to radiation sickness.

“So they were trying to work
seetee?” Worringer scowled at the
long row of still, sheet-covered
forms on the white beds. “Till they
ran their ship into a whiff of seetee
dust, eh? And then some panicky
fool had to open an ametine bomb ?”

Jenkins nodded slowly, saying
nothing of Lazarene and the uniden-
tified raiders and the seetee shot.
The first rumor of the truth, he
thought, could end the uncertain
truce of the Mandate. He was no
expert at dissimulation, but he
wanted to protect his uncle and the
corporation.

He identified the unconscious men
for the nurse making out their
charts, and then stood watching

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICT I OTJ

Worringer prod them impatiently
and listen, frowning, at his stetho-
scope and peer gloomily into their
dilated eyes with a bright-mirrored
ophthalmoscope. Quiet nurses were
scrubbing them for tissue tests,
drawing blood specimens, setting up
equipment for intravenous injec-
tions. Jenkins approached the
bearded man to whisper huskily :
“Will they live?”

“The lab reports will tell.” Wor-
ringer glared at him abruptly.
“How much were you exposed?”
“Geiger needle in the black.”
Jenkins licked his lips and added
hopefully : “But maybe it was

wrong. I was nauseated at first,
but now I feel pretty well.”

“Means nothing,” rapped the
bearded man. “All fifth-degree
cases feel pretty well — till decay sets
in. Strip,- and let’s have a look.”
Jenkins had no time for radiation
sickness. Not even time to die. For
the traitor Lazarene and the un-
known power behind him were al-
ready preparing to spread the deadly
venom of seetee war through the
Mandate and the planets, and he
thought the unfinished Brand trans-
mitter on poisoned Freedonia held
the only hope of stopping them.

He stood a moment, merely star-
ing at the bloodless men lying still
on the beds. He hoped Worringer
could send them back in time to com-
plete the generator and start the
transmitter — if they could find
eighty tons of costly condulloy.

If Worringer failed —

“Strip!” the bearded specialist
snapped impatiently. “And let’s see
your throat.”

Obediently, he took off his cloth-
ing and lay shivering a little under a
thin sheet on a narrow hard bed.
He let Worringer thump him and
listen at his chest and study his
throat and dazzle his eyes with a
cruel little light.

One nurse drew a syringe-full of
his dark blood. Another sponged
his chest with cold antiseptic and
swabbed on test smears of a pale
liquid that slowly changed color on
his skin. He sat up when they left
him, calling anxiously to Wor-
ringer :

“Well, doctor?”

“Lie down !” the tall specialist
barked at him. “You’ll have to wait
for the lab reports — but the smears
already show that you’ve" had
enough. I’ll order you an I. V.
That sometimes makes the-difference
— but don’t expect too much.”

Jenkins lay back again, unwill-
ingly. He felt the sting of the
needle in his arm, and lay for an
hour watching the slow drip of the
pale yellow fluid running into his
blood. It made him feel cold and
faintly nauseated. He was glad
when a nurse took the needle out
and told him he could dress again.

He put on his clothes and wan-
dered aimlessly about the beds of
the two gigantic Drakes and tall
Anders and little Rob McGee and
the other men lying in the deathly
pallor of ametine, dreading what he
would have to tell the young wives

SEETEE SHOCK

39

of Rick Drake and Anders, and the
friends of old Jim Drake and
McGee.

An aching loneliness possessed
him. A bleak wistfulness brought
him the laughing image of jane
1 lardin, the blond girl he had met
on the liner from Earth. If
nothing had happened to shatter
their first warm companionship, he
thought bitterly, Jane might have
been on Obama to meet him.

lie wondered what had chilled her
toward him — and shook his head
grimly. If Worringer’s verdict was
going to be death, it was too late to
dream of her. If it was to be life,
lie would have no time for anything
but the unfinished transmitter.

Waiting to see Worringer again,
he sat down heavily. He felt
vaguely ill from the intravenous in-
jection, and exhaustion was like a
toxin in him. He tried to plan what
he must do while Worringer was
waking his fellow engineers, but his
dull brain balked.

“Mr. Jenkins !” He must have
fallen asleep, for a nurse was jog-
gling his arm. “Doctor’ll see you
now.”

Worringer sat behind a huge
nickel desk in a glittering nickel con-
sultation room. He nodded at a
chair and laid aside his ophthalmo-
scope and stretched his gaunt body
wearily, his hollowed black eyes
peering at Jenkins with a solemn
mortuary sympathy.

“Are they going to die ?” Jenkins
40

tilted his head anxiously toward the
emergency ward. “Any of them?”.

Deliberately, the bearded spe-
cialist put on a pair of heavy-
rimmed glasses, through which he
scowled sternly at Jenkins.

“All the skin and serum tests
show radiation burns of the severity
we designate a.< the fifth degree.
That means a prognosis of death
within eight to twelve clays, depend-
ing upon the individual resistance
and response of the patient,”

Jenkins gripped the arms of his
chair.

“But you’re treating them !” he
gasped. “Won't that help?”

“Not enough.” Worringer’s
brows wrinkled to a grim profes-
sional frown. “Untreated, none of
you would last a week.”

Jenkins tried to swallow the stiff,
dry numbness in his throat.

“My . . . my own case?”

“Geigers are seldom wrong, Mr.
Jenkins. Your own tests show the
same exposure.” Worringer’s dark
eyes glared at him, as if in anger at
the folly of all men who tried to
work the seetee drift. “However,”
the gaunt man added solemnly, “you
are a little luckier than the rest. I
can offer you one chance in ten of
complete recovery.”

Leaning forward, Jenkins wet his
lips and listened desperately.

“Nothing certain, Mr. Jenkins.”
Worringer shook his dark head, im-
patiently. “But I’ve been experi-
menting with a radical counter-radi-
ation therapy — a heavy exposure
to selected hard frequencies. Oc-
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

casionally it appears to stimulate
complete regeneration of the injured
tissues. More often it merely
hastens the general decay. The
results are not so far predictable.”

Worringer scowled belligerently,
adding :

“Most fifth-degree patients are
glad to accept that gamble.”

Jenkins wet the sticky dryness of
his lips.

“But I can’t,” he- whispered
huskily, “Because I need those
eight or twelve days of time.”

Worringer glowered through the
beard, rasping harshly t

“Don’t be foolish, Mr. Jenkins.
You only risk a week of life. With
luck, you can win a normal life-
time. It will pay you to weigh the
odds.”

Jenkins straightened stiffly in his
chair, fighting a kind of roaring
numbness that tried to seize posses-
sion of him.

“I need that week,” he muttered
faintly. “Every day of it. You see,
we’ve an unfinished job on Free-
donia that has to be completed. I
must carry on, until the other engi-
neers are able to take over.”

Worringer frowned at him, for-
biddingly.

“Is any job that important, Mr.
Jenkins?”

He nodded quietly. He couldn’t
tell Worringer how desperately im-
portant it was, but he had to find
eighty tons of condulloy. If he had
that metal ready when the engineers
came out of that ametine coma, the
Brand transmitter might yet be

started before war swept the Man-
date.

He had to swallow before he
could ask :

“How . . . how much time can I
count on ?”

"To arrange your affairs ?” Wor-
ringer studied him thoughtfully.
“With the treatment you’ve already
had, you should be capable of
moderate physical activity for — say
four to six days.”

Jenkins sank heavily back in the
chair, with a mute protest on his
lips. For that was not long enough.
He sat staring at the bearded man,
numbed with a gray despair.

The theft of those missiles and
tools from Freedonia, it seemed to
his reeling brain, and the treachery
of Lazarene, were all a kind of
seetee shock that the whole human
race had suffered. Men didn’t feel
it yet, any more than his own body
did.

But dreadful death had already
struck.

Even now, he knew, at some
remote rendezvous in space, men
must he arming a secret fleet from
Venus or Mars or the Jovian Soviet
with those stolen contraterrene mis-
siles, Or was Earth herself the
guilty planet ?

Fazarene was an Earthman — but
that fact was no very useful clue,
because the silent, sallow-faced engi-
neer had asked for news of his old
instructors at Panama City when
Jenkins first arrived, with the wist-
fulness of long exile. One of the

SEETHE SHOCK

41

few top-drawer Earth-trained engi-
neers not under contract to Inter-
planet, he must have been employed
at one time or another, Jenkins
knew, by Venus and Mars and the
Jovians. Which one had bought his
final loyalty ?

Time would answer that question
— with the sudden fall of contrater-
rene death on unsuspecting and

defenseless planets. That sus-
pended peril seemed to Jenkins like
a sort of planetary seetee shock —
and the desperate treatment he
wanted to try appeared as grimly un-
certain as Worringer’s radiation
therapy.

He straightened in the big chair,
wiping absently with his hand-
kerchief at the cold wetness on his

ASTOUNDING S C IE NCE -F I C TIO N

42

forehead, and tried to listen to the
bearded man.

“» . . advise yonr return to the
clinic at the first indication of the
final degeneration,” Worringer was
rasping bleakly, “when you begin
vomiting, or notice any minor
hemorrhage. That will be too late
for any experiments with counter-
radiation, but we can at least make
the terminal period less intolerable.”
“I’ll be busy,” Jenkins said
huskily. “I don’t expect to be here.”
Worringer scowled at him im-
patiently.

“Young man, do you know what
radiation sickness means?”

“I — ” Jenkins gulped uncomfort-
ably. “I think so.”

“Blindness” — Worringer blinked
severely through the glasses — -“from
hemorrhage of the retina. Occur-
ring, in your case, in six to eight
days.”

Jenkins waited, cold and numb.
“Tissue breakdown.” Worrin-
ger’s voice seemed needlessly harsh
and loud. “The injured cells slowly
die. There is increasing hem-
orrhage — from minor cuts, from the
nose and throat. The slightest
bruise causes bleeding under the
skin. Meantime, the blood-making
cells are dying.”

Jenkins nodded feebly.

“Fever,” rapped the bearded man.
“Diarrhea. Emaciation. Baldness.
Necrosis. Dead tissues sloughing
from the mouth and throat. Death
— as sure as if your throat were cut.
That’s your outlook, Mr. Jenkins,

unless you decide to stay for treat-
ment.”

“And probably anyhow?”

“True.” Worringer’s dark shaggy
head nodded unhappily. “Counter-
radiation appears to stimulate re-
covery of a few fifth-degree cases.
Less severe cases can sometimes be
saved by the older treatments — rutin
to slow the bleeding, intravenous
feeding, synthetic plasma and proto-
hemoglobin to replace the dying
blood. The emergency intravenous
injection you just received contains
specifics, which somewhat increase
resistance and retard disintegration.
But the most we can really promise
you, Mr, Jenkins, is death without
pain.”

Worringer sighed and looked at
the clock on his desk.

“We talk of medical triumphs!”
he rasped moodily. “But that, two
centuries and a half after Hiroshima,
is the best we have accomplished.”
He cleared his throat, with a sudden
harsh sound. “I f you decide to stay,
Mr. Jenkins, we must start the
treatment at once.”

Jenkins stood up. His knees felt
shaky, but he tried not to show it.
He caught his, breath and shook his
head.

“No, doctor.” The calmness of
his own voice surprised him. “I’ll
have to carry on with our work on
Freedonia until some of the others
are able to work again. Please
arouse them from the ametine coma
as soon as you can. I imagine most
of them will decide to try your

SEE TEE SHOCK

43

VII.

radiation treatment, and surely a
few—”

Worringer checked him, with arr
angry snort.

“Nonsense, Mr. Jenkins,” the
bearded man barked sharply.
“Those panicky fools all inhaled ten
times too much ametine. It will take
them a' week to throw it off, under
the best care we can give. By that
time it will be too late to experiment
with the radiation therapy.”

He glowered through the glasses.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to do your
work alone, Mr. Jenkins,” he added
gloomily. “Or find some other help.
Because' ametine would counteract
the cell-stimulus we hope for in the
radiation therapy. There’s nothing
I can do for any of these men except
to ease their last hours. And they’ll
just about wake up in time to die.”

Jenkins sat down again, heavily.

“I . . . I see,” he whispered
huskily. A roaring darkness flowed
around him, and slowly receded.
He heard his own flat voice saying
quietly: “If you please — I’ve one
request.”

Rising, Worringer paused im-
patiently.

“Please,” Jenkins asked, “don’t
tell anybody I’m going to die.”

“I won’t talk. Worringer nodded
brusquely. “Professional ethics.”
Unexpectedly he smiled through the
beard, and came striding to grasp
the hand of Jenkins. “And I hope
you have time to get your w’ork
completed !”

44

Jenkins went out reluctantly to
break the news.

The town of Obania was a single
sleepy street of neglected, rust-
colored buildings, beneath black
cliffs of naked iron and a sky blacker
still — for the thin wisp of synthetic
atmosphere, held by the selective at-
traction of. the terrqforming field,
was too shallow to diffuse the cold
sunlight.

Jenkins found Karen Drake in
paint-stained overalls, her red hair
bound in a green handkerchief,
spraying aluminum paint on a little
house at the foot of the street. The
first glimpse of her somehow gave
him a throbbing regret that she
wasn’t Jane Hardin, waiting for
him.

But the time was far too late for
such futile thoughts as that. Pie bit
his lip and shook his head and called
to the girl across the street, as calmly
as he could. Rick Drake’s wife
stopped her spray-gun and tripped
gracefully down her stepladder to
meet him, smiling gayly.

“Why, Nick !” Her throaty voice
still had the crisp accent of Earth.
“It’s about time you had a leave !
Rick wrote me that you were trying
to burn yourself out on that mining
machine — and you do look sort of
used up. We’ll find you something
brighter to think about than your
chance of seetee shock!”

i

Jenkins shook his head miserably.
He caught his breath to speak, and
found that he couldn’t kill the light
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

in her eyes and the warmth of her
smile — not yet.

“How’s Rick?” he heard her ask-
ing. “He wrote that he’s coming
home next month,” she went on
happily. “He said the work on
Freedonia is nearly done, and now
he won’t have to be away so much.
Ann’s helping me get the house
ready — she’s inside now, painting
furniture.”

Drake’s wife turned to survey the
bright new aluminum paint, with a
smiling approval.

“Don’t you think Rick will love
it?” she inquired. “I’ve been stay-
ing with Ann, in the old Q’l.’anion
house, but she’ll need more room
when the baby comes. This was a
rusty-'looking old place, but the
metal’s still sound.” She caught his
arm. “Come in and see Ann.”

Jenkins followed dazedly, feeling
ill.

They found the youthful Mrs.
Paul Anders in the small kitchen,
her brown, intense face smudged
with the red paint she was brushing
on the chairs.

“Hello, Ann.”

Startled, Ann moved self-con-
sciously to hide her body behind the
red-painted table. Her quick gray
eyes looked at his sick face, and read
what he hadn’t been able to say.
She caught at her throat and
screamed.

“Paul !” she sobbed. “What has
happened to my Paul?”

Jenkins shivered, staring mutely
at the little can of red paint. It had
dropped from her stricken hand.

The stiff crimson liquid was spread-
ing slowly, unnoticed on the floor,
terribly like blood. Like the blood
of this girl and her child, he thought
bleakly, if seetee war struck.

“Tell me!” she gasped. “Is my
husband — dead ?”

Jenkins wet his lips. Perhaps he
should have let the clinic call them.
There wasn’t any easy way. He
tried to swallow, and heard his own
hoarse voice rasping :

“Not yet. But I brought him to
Dr. Worringer.” Karen Drake’s
face had turned so white and terribly
bleak that he could scarcely go on.
He nodded, to the dreadful question
in her staring eyes. “And Rick,” he
whispered. “And Mr. Drake and
Rob McGee and all the rest.”

The scarlet pool kept spreading on
the kitchen floor.

“Are they going to die ?” Ann was
whispering faintly.

He nodded again, turning
abruptly to keep from seeing the
flowing paint. The woman dropped
her brush and stumbled clumsily
away from the table. The red
smear across her body made him ill
again. Sharply, she was gasping :
“We must go to them.”

“There’s no rush.” Jenkins shook
his head, looking away from the dry-
eyed agony twisting her face.
“They’re all under ametine. Wor-
ringer says 'it will take a week to
wake them.” Dull-voiced, he added,
“They all have fifth-degree seetee
shock.”

Nobody would have to tell them
the meaning of that. The vomiting.

SEETEE SHOCK

45

The hemorrhages. The fever. The
blindness. The sloughing tissues.
The blooming and the ripening of
death. For they had lived, he knew,
with the fear of this, and the knowl-
edge. was cold and dread ful on their
faces. Karen’s eyes clung to him,
dark as the dilated eyes of the
stricken men, urgently imploring.
She asked very softly :

“ How did it happen ?”

Jenkins shook his head uncom-
fortably.

“I don’t know.” He trusted these
two loyal women as far as he trusted
himself, yet he dared not tell them.
For one whisper of the treachery on
Freedonia might shatter the Man-
date and his uncle’s corporation — •
and break his only hope of obtaining
that eighty tons of condulloy to
finish the Brand transmitter.

“1 was out on a mining expedition
with the seetee bull,” he said slowly.
“It happened while I was gone, and
they were all unconscious when I
found them.” Fie looked at Karen’s
bloodless face, and tried to forget
that spreading red on the floor.
“Please — ” he added hoarsely,
“won’t you tell the families of the
other men?”

She nodded quietly, and he turned
back to Ann.

“I’m going to talk to your father.”

The Seetee warehouse was a long
new building of bright sheet metal,
beside the spaceport that capped the
planetoid’s north pole. It’s cool
obscurity was filled with crated ma-
chine tools and drums of refined

4fi

oxygen and- cadmium cans of
precious enriched fuel uranium and
cartons of dehydrated food for
Freedonia. There were stacked
ingots of lead and cadmium and
copper — but Jenkins wanted con-
dulloy.

He found old Bruce O’Banion
sitting at an untidy desk in the little
corner of the warehouse' that was
partitioned off for an office. A
heavy man, the aging asterite pio-
neer was red-faced, thick-jowled,
big- featured, somehow impressive
with the white flow of his shaggy
mane. The hang of his heavy lips
showed a brooding bitterness.

For greatness had just escaped
O’Banion. An asterite leader in the
revolution, he had been provisional
president of the brief High Space
Union. The allied planets had made
him large promises, and betrayed
him with the cynical device of the
Mandate. Twenty years of defeated
futility had left an ugly print upon
him, and he seemed to feel that this
warehouse job was too small for his
abilities.

'“Hello, Mr. Jenkins.” He heaved
himself erect behind the cluttered
desk, smiling with a cordiality that
few men received from him — a
warmth really intended, Jenkins
thought, for the wealth and fame of
Martin Brand. “How’s your
uncle?”

“I’m just on my way to Pallasport
to see him,” Jenkins said. “I’ve bad
news for him — and for you.”

O’Banion sat down heavily as Jen-
kins began telling of the disaster on

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Freedonia. His sagging face turned
ashen, and gleamed with sudden
sweat. The heavy lines of weary
bitterness cut deeper when he heard
that his old associates and his
daughter’s husband were dying of
seetee shock.

“Dreadful !” he gasped. “Ann
will be prostrate.”

Yet it seemed to Jenkins that the
old asterite showed something more
than grief. His pudgy hands began
to quiver, and his breath became a

hurried rasping. His blood-shot
eyes searched Jenkins, cold with a
sudden narrowed alertness.

“So now one planet is ready for
seetee war,” Jenkins finished
hoarsely, watching the trembling
man with puzzled eyes. “And the
new owners of those missiles will
have to strike soon, to cover up their
crime.”

He had told everything, except the
irrelevant fact that he himself was
dying. For O’Banion had been a
politician and a financier. He would
understand the damage a rumor
could do, and he would know how to
help.

“Most alarming, Mr. Jenkins !”
The old man was fumbling ner-
vously with the cluttered papers on
the desk. His voice was high and
tight and breathless. “Which planet
do you suspect ?”

Bewildered, Jenkins shook his
head.

“All of them,” he muttered. “I
didn’t find a clue.”

“Most alarming,” O’ Ban ion
wheezed again — and Jenkins
thought his narrowed eyes showed
the glitter of a grim elation. “Too
bad there’s nothing we can do about
it.”

Jenkins leaned urgently over the
desk.

“But there is,” he said softly.
“We can — we must start the Brand
transmitter !”

O’Banion merely stared, stub-
bornly shaking his shaggy white
head.

“And you can help,” Jenkins

SEETEE SHOCK

47

whispered urgently. “I’m taking
off for Pallasport. I want you to
call my unde on the private beam,
and arrange for me to pick up a
shipment of metal Mr. Drake has al-
ready requisitioned— eighty tons of
condulloy.”

The heavy old man squirmed un-
comfortably in his chair. His
evasive, hostile eyes shifted toward
the doorway, as if he wanted Jen-
kins to go.

“Another thing,” Jenkins went on
grimly. “I wanLyou to find two or
three spatial engineers willing to
work a few days in those residual
radiations on Frecdonia — just in
case Drake and the others aren’t able
to help with the installation.”

And in case, Jenkins added
silently, he himself was dead.

O’Banion uttered a harsh snort-
ing sound, lurching to his feet im-
patiently.

“Don’t talk nonsense. Mr. Jen-
kins !” he. advised abruptly. “I
don’t know any spatial engineers
who want to commit suicide with
residual radiations. And I’m afraid
you won't get that condulloy.”

“Why not?” Jenkins demanded.
“Sty uncle promised — ”

“Here’s why!” ( I’Banion’s fat
fingers riftled -hastily through papers
speared untidily on a metal hook.
“Here’s Drake’s requisition— and
your uncle’s answer 1”

Jenkins t*flk the flimsy yellow
sheet, to read Brand’s hold hand-
printing :

“Sorry, Jim. Do you know con-

dullo}' costs two millions a ton ?
Suggest you think of something
cheaper. Cordial regards. M. B.”

Indignantly, Jenkins crumpled the
sheet.

“Brand promised that metal;’® he
whispered bitterly. “And there’s
nothing cheaper. Condulloy is
alloyed from isotopes of platinum
and osmium and iridium. It can’t
lie cheap — hut one gram will carry
more current than a ton of copper.
Xothing else will do.” He caught
his breath sharply. “I’m going after
that metal."

“Don't lie a tool, Jenkins."
O’Banion waddled impatiently to
open the door for him, visibly
anxious to lie rid of him. "That
drift is hell in chunks, and men will
never work it. I always told
Drake — ”

“Just a minute,” Jenkins pro-
tested. “Let me call my uncle.”

“Can’t do it now.” Slowly red-
dening with a poorly concealed an-
noyance, O’Banion shrugged at a
grimy timetable pasted pn the metal
wall. “You’d have to wait about
four hours for 1’allasport to rise into
line of sight. Got time for that?”

Jenkins shook his head, watching
the old man's relief. Frowning with
puzzlement, he checked himself in
the doorway. He wanted to know
the reason for that veiled elation and
cold suspicion and covert impatience
—he felt disturbed bv the whole atti-
tude of the sullen old a sterile. But
his life was running out. He had no
time for anything except the Brand
transmitter.

48

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“I’m going on to Pallasport,” he
said flatly. “Please call my uncle
when you can. Tell him to have
that metal ready.”

O’Banion merely snorted scorn-
fully, holding the door.

Jenkins hurried hack down that
single street of rusty buildings be-
tween the dark iron cliffs, trying to
shake off a feeling of bewildered
unease. He couldn’t understand
the veiled hostility of Bruce
O’Banion, but clearly the embittered
old pioneer didn’t mean to help.

But O’Banion didn’t matter, he
told himself hopefully. For he
could depend on his famous uncle to
find the metal — perhaps even to help
with the installation. Martin Brand,
he reminded himself, was the great-
est of the spatial engineers.

Hastening back to the ship, Jen-
kins tried to see this tiny world as
the boundless power of seetee could
make it. These cruel iron crags
could be leveled. Synthetic soil
could cover them, and manufactured
water nourish them to life.

For energy, to the engineering
mind off Jenkins, was the substance
of life. The might of seetee meant
a more splendid sort of life for men.

Perhaps it would be too late to save
the men dying in the Worringer
clinic, but soon Ann would bear her
child —

Jenkins hurried past the clinic
building without going inside. Ann
and Karen and the other wives and
relatives would be there now, he
knew, crying over the lax bodies on
the beds or standing tightly silent in
their grief, and he didn’t want to see
them.

Behind the clinic, he walked
through a crooked radiation trap
into the safety well where he had
left the drift-battered Good-by Jane.
A fluorescent sign, which the clinic
attendants must have posted on the
air lock, checked him briefly with its
reel-lettered warning:

CONTAMINATED CRAFT!

Dangerous Radiation

DO NOT APPROACH

Grinning wryly, Jenkins ripped
off the poster and tossed it aside.
Dangerous radiation didn’t matter
to him now. He closed the valves
and climbed the ladder to the pilot-
house and lifted the rusty tug
toward far-off Pallasport.

TO BE CONTINUED

*********

SEETEE SHOCK

49

A PRESENT FROM JOE

BY ERIC FRANK RUSSELL

The Martians had their oxen ways of doing things ;
they needed uranium, had none, and were quite able to
trick Earth into an unwitting, unwilling donation. . .

Illustrated by Orban

“Then,” continued Queth, with
suitable condescension, “in those
days of long ago it was estimated
that the rate of dehydration gave us
no more than four thousand years
to live. After that — the end!”

Fernith gave a shudder and
piped: “So we are going to die?”
“No, no, of course not.” Queth
paraded importantly around the huge
projection room. Here, surrounded
by the gigantic instruments of his

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE -FICTION

50

planet's science, he cut an imposing
figure ; he had majesty too great to
he worth impressing on any mere
child. But Fernith was not any
mere child. He was the only son
of the Overlord, the next in natural
succession, and Oueth’s boss-to-be.
"Wo. we shall not die,” assured
Oueth, “Our ingenuity will save
us in good time.”

“How ?”

Oueth sat down, passed a hand
across his great brow. How to ex-
plain ten centuries’ accumulation of
technicalities, briefly and clearly i
Mentally, he consigned Fernith to
perdition while outwardly he man-
aged to look profound.

“We shall migrate to another and
better planet,” he said at last,

“How ?”

“In spaceships.”

“All of us ?”

“No, not all of us. We are far
too many.” He sought for words.
“The most worthy of 11s. You and
your father and the scientists and
warriors and those we think best
fitted to live.”

“And the others will stay here and
die ?”

“I am afraid so.”

“Serves them right,” observed
Fernith, callously. “Supposing there
are people already on this other
planet ?”

“There are. We’ll keep some for
our own use, and dispose of the
others.”

“They’ll die, too?”

“Definitely,” promised Queth.
“We won’t have much choice about

it. We’ll have to push them out
of existence to make room for our-
selves. That’s as it should be. The
lower forms of life must give way
to the higher.”

“Oh, wonderful !” enthused Fer-
nitli. “Plenty of killings ! Will it
lie soon ?”

“We aren’t quite sure about that,”

“Why not? Why can’t we start
now?”

Oueth sighed, favored the pro-
jector feed-lines with a martyred
look. “Because we can’t traverse
space without spaceships — and we
haven't anv .spaceships.”

“Why not?”

Pausing to murmur something
under his mental shield, Queth re-
plied: “Because we haven’t anv
konium.”

“What's konium?”

“It's a special element of tre-
mendous explosive power. It is
the only power-source potent enough
to drive a ship through space. There
is none of it on this world, not one
little hit, not an ounce.”

“Is there some on the moons?”
Fernith persisted.

“It is doubtful,” said Queth, cau-
tiously. "There may be — but not
much.”

“Why can’t we get it from the
moons ?”

“Because, my dear Fernith, wc
must have konium even to reacli
the moons. We are in the awkward
position where we must have konium
to reach sources of konium.”

Fernith thought it over while the
other watched him covertly, then

A PRESENT FROM JOE

51

he asked: “If we haven’t got any,
how do you know that there is any
anywhere ?”

“We deduced its existence theore-
tically, worked out its properties
mathematically, and finally detected
it spectroscopically,” declared Queth.

“What’s all that mean ?”

“I suggest you ask your father,”
Queth snapped, his patience evapor-
ating. Hastily, he added, “He is a
great and clever man.” He moved
toward his desk. “Please pardon
me. I am very busy.”

With much relief, he watched
Fernith wander out. Darn the kid.
Just like his autocratic parent, nosey,
interfering, unscrupulous, blood-
thirsty.

Dismissing the child from his
mind, he applied himself to checking
the mechanical shift of the overhead
battery of huge antennas. At all
costs they had to be kept beamed
on that precise point in space, that
fateful point from which might
come salvation.

Ronsed entered in the early eve-
ning, flopped into a chair, and said :
“The checkers have just reported.
It has come off.”

"You mean — ?” Queth looked at
him.

“Yes, they’re at war again. I
offer you my congratulations.”
Ronsed settled himself lower. “The
prognosticators were wrong in time
by six years, but what are six
years ? They proved correct in the
end.” He studied Queth worriedly.
“I hope they continue to prove
52

right. Heaven help us if they
don’t P

“Always the pessimist,” said
Queth.

“Pessimism has nothing to do
with it. Rather is it a matter of not
underestimating one’s opponents.”

“Collaborators,” Queth contra-
dicted.

“Opponents,” insisted Ronsed.
“One does not slaughter collabora-
tors.”

“Not until they cease collaborat-
ing,” Queth observed, cynically.

Ronsed fidgeted in his chair and
was silent a long time. Then he
grumbled : “I have forebodings. As
long as I have known about this
scheme I have had direst forebod-
ings. The plan is faulty. It em-
bodies an arbitrary assumption that
may be the death of us yet.”

“What assumption?”

“That these creatures on the other
world lack sufficient native intelli-
gence to discover what is happen-
ing and who is doing it.”

“Pish!” exploded Queth. “What
have the checkers just told you?
What did you come here to tell me ?
That they are at war again, pre-
cisely as planned ! Millions of blind
mice — see how they run !”

“I’ll give you that. Everything
has worked out nicely to date. But
it has to keep on working right up
to zero hour.” He glanced at the
calendar. “And the sands of time
are running dOvvn. A mere six
hundred years — all that’s left out of
four thousand !”

“No matter,” scoffed Queth.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

‘‘The psycho-charts show that
they're being speeded up satisfac-
torily, and that we should be
through with the scheme in less than
one third of the time left to .us.
That time-margin makes success al-
most a certainty.”

"I’m glad you said almost."

“You have about two hundred
years of life ahead of you,” Oueth
went on. “I will gamble that we
triumph within your lifetime.
You"! live to see it.”

“Maybe.” Roused shrugged
skeptically. "And maybe not.”

'the door opened, llarna came in
saying to Oueth, “Heard the news?”
"Vys;,. Housed told me.”

I larna squatted on the edge of a
table and wrinkled his eyes at Rou-
sed. “What do you think of it,
( i loo my ?”

"It’s working all right— ‘•so far.”
"So far!” echoed Tlarna. lie
turned his attention to Oueth. “He’s
at it again, eh?”

Ronsed said, sharply, “There’s
nothing wrong with me. My glands
are as good as yours. My digestion’s
as good as yours. My imagination
is better. ’ ’

“Imagine me a few things,” in-
vited I larna. amusedly.

“We’ve developed a science so
wonderful that we’re bemused by it,
and forget that it's peculiarly our
own.” Ronsed pointed to the skv,
“I can conceive them having things
just as peculiarly their own.”

“You’d better enlarge upon that,”
Quetli put in.

A PRESENT FROM JOE

“We are telepathic wizards,”
obliged Ronsed, determinedly, “far,
far ahead of these bipeds whom we
are influencing. We can amplify,
project and receive on neural bands
common to ourselves and the bipeds.
We can even send telepathic beat
transmissions which send back
pulses. All this means that we
can examine and influence their
minds over immense distances. We
can comprehend their world and
their mode of life so far as those
tilings can he understood by our
readings of alien minds. Within
limits, we can warp them in ways
best suited to our purpose. But it
isn’t enough. Basically, their minds
are not like ours, and the difference
is dangerous because unknown.”

“But— began Hama.

“I’ve not finished yet. Do you
remember that report on conversa-
tional hiatus? It proved that the
bipeds have a nontelepathic method
of communication which even now
we do not understand. It showed
that two bipeds holding conversation
don’t necessarily broadcast thought-
responses in logical sequence. Ergo,
one of them, or both, must he com-
municating In other means some-
thing that does not correspond with
his thoughts, something false, some-
thing calculated to conceal rather
than reveal his mental flow. What
is this other means? We don’t
know! How much more don’t we
know ?”

“We know how they react to our
stimuli,” said Oueth, shrewdly.'

“We know how the mass of them

S3

react,” Ronsed retorted. “But sup-
pose that a few of their cleverest
minds get curious about the same
phenomenon ? How are we going to
pick them out and thus be warned?
We haven’t the selectivity to rake
through that telepathic uproar for a
few big-brains. Whenever we do
manage to sort out a couple of indi-
viduals we get them haphazardly, by
sheer luck.”

“I don’t see your point,” protested
Harna. “We know that they de-
tected our pulses twenty years ago,
and promptly dismissed them as
natural phenomena. That’s good
enough, isn’t it?”

“It’s good enough until some
nosey individual correlates ray-in-
tensity with hysteria, charts both,
proves a relationship, and finally
traces the beats to a common source
in space — here ! H ow do we know
someone’s not doing it now?”

“Guesswork,” sneered Harna.
“Your brains are addled. May the
Red Sun be your protector if the
Overlord hears of this !”

“What have you got to offer
against it ?”

“This,” Harna shot back. “What
we do know. That this other world
has konium in plentiful supply. That
its people are capable of building
konium-powered spaceships and
eventually would have built them
anyway, without any suggestions
from us. That, if sufficiently stim-
ulated by us, their science can be
speeded up, they can conquer space
and be induced to come here in good
time to save our skins. We know

54

that we can persuade them to build
what we cannot manufacture, to
bring us what we haven’t got. We
know that we can use them by re-
mote control, and conquer space by
proxy! Lastly, we know that since
we can influence them at this dis-
tance, we can make them our mental
slaves once we’re established on their
world. What more does anyone
want than that ?”

“Never in all my life did I more
sincerely hope that you are right
and I am wrong.” Ronsed got up,
went to the door. “But I never
take things for granted when dealing
with unknown quantities.” He
shook his head slowly from side to
side and went out.

“Much intelligence and little
faith,” Harna commented sardoni-
cally. “So sad!”

“When we start out for our new
home do you suppose that Ronsed
will be among those present ?” asked
Queth.

“No.” Harna stared blankly at
the wall. “We conquerors will have
no room in our ranks for such a
quivering fat-belly.”

As time went on the reports of
the checkers created a series of gala
days.

“The war grows and grows.”

“Frenzy-impulses have brought
them to the boil.”

“The war has extended to a world-
wide conflagration.”

“Stark demands of survival are
giving their science a tremendous
impetus.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Upon the twelfth day of the Dou-
ble Moons — and Fernith’s birthday
—came the great news, “They are
using rocket missiles.”

The Overlord announced a public
holiday. Joyously waving their
flame-bulbs, great crowds made
marches of adoration through the
streets, filled with neural bands with
such a medley of congratulatory
messages that listening checkers tem-
porarily lost touch with the other
planet.

Later, much later, the Overlord
himself made the broadcast: “They
are using konium ! In celebration,
I declare this a free day !”

The crowds were twice as great,
and the checkers lost contact for a
full planetary revolution. So great
was the telepathic uproar that some
of it seeped through the screens of
the projector room, causing Queth
to seek solace with a bottle.

The bottle’s bright green and
potent contents were halfway down
when Ronsed arrived. Queth
burped, eyed him glassily, pushed
the bottle toward him.

“Drink,” he invited. “It may
help you to withstand laughter aimed
at fools.”

“The last laugh has yet to be
heard.” Ronsed waved the bottle
away. “Now they possess konium
and rockets. Add those two items
together and you have the result you
want, the result of centuries of con-
spiracy — or have you ?”

“Why not?”

“Because .certain of them may
A PRESENT FROM JOE

have secret knowledge and secret
thoughts.”

“Rushwa!” defined Queth, unhesi-
tatingly.

“Or if they haven’t, they may ac-
quire them before they’re due here.”

“Go away,” Queth suggested.
“Go away. You tire me with your
eternal miseries.” He sucked the
bottle noisily.

“Then let me likewise tire the

Overlord.”

“lth?” Queth almost dropped the
bottle.

“I crave an interview with the
Overlord.”

“You’re drunk !” Tilting his bot-
tle, Queth emptied it, burped twice
in rapid succession, looked blearily
at the other. "Drunk as a tele-
maniac checker!” He ruminated
awhile, then added ; “About what do
you wish to see him?”

“About the salvation scheme. I
think it ought to be altered before
it’s too late.”

“Oh, you do, do you? After
many generations of careful psy-
chological planning, Ronsed comes
along and says it ought to be
changed. By the Red Sun, that
drink must be strong — it makes my
mind credit you with the craziest
thoughts.”

“You’re receiving me all right. I
think the plan is wrong. I wish to
say so to the Overlord, and explain
why, and suggest that it be changed.”

“In what way?” Queth queried.

“I believe that we should use our
telepathic projectors to reveal our-
selves openly to these bipeds, to

05

tell them of our predicament and
ask their assistance."

“You think they’ll give it?” asked
Queth, incredulously.

“I don’t know,” Roused admitted.
“But I feel that we’ll stand a better
chance meeting them squarely.”

“Nonsense! Stuff and nonsense!
We shall conquer them, completely
and absolutely, with our own wis-
dom. They will find themselves con-
fronted by a set of circumstances
impossible to foresee because, to
them, our genius is utterly alien.
Before they can realize it, we shall
have fastened them with fetters of
their own ignorance.”

“My dear Queth,” commented
Roused, “has it not occurred to you
that they may possess wisdom
equally as alien ?”

“I overlook nothing. All things
have occurred to me,” Queth
boasted, “including the fact that you
are a miserable nuisance. With your
ifs and huts and maybes you are
a menace to general morale, so much
indeed that the Overlord would have
your hide if he knew but the half
of it.” Queth studied the other dis-
dainfully. “Your application to in-
terview the Overlord is hereby re-
jected.”

“You will not permit me to see
him ?”

“Certainly not! Do you think I
crave punishment for causing his
mind to be afflicted by such thoughts
as yours?”

“May the stars grant that these
bipeds prove as dull-witted as you
expect,” prayed Ronsed. He went

slowly to the door, held it open, and
added: “If success does come,

Queth, your greatness will be recog-
nized and the Overlord will reward
you as none have been rewarded be-
fore. But if you fail, you will not
know how greatly you have failed.
You will be dead !” He closed the
door behind him.

Queth kicked the bottle across the
room, gazed irefully at the door.
Ronsed and his persistent moanings !
He directed his glare of annoyance
at the door for some time, finally
fixed the neurophone on his head,
swung its antenna until the beam
pointed at the distant Records Office.

“See that the name of Computator
Ronsed is placed upon the list of
those forbidden to migrate,” he or-
dered.

The thought- waves of Harna
came back, saying, “It will be a
pleasure. Has he been worrying
you again?”

“Yes, he spoiled my quiet hour
with a bottle.”

“Too bad,” Harna sympathized.
“I wonder that you have endured
him so long. It’s a pity that you
cannot have him transferred to the
Eastern Desert where he may nurse
his stupid apprehensions in soli-
tude.”

“That’s an idea.” Queth mulled
it over, then went on, “I shall enter
a complaint with the Overlord. He
will take action. We shall be well
rid of this prophet of despair by
tomorrow’s eve.”

“You owe me a bottle for the sug-
gestion,” said Harna, with prompt

ASTOUNDING SC I E NCE F ICTI O N

56

opportunism. “I will split it with
you the hour Ronsed departs.” He
managed to beam a mental snicker
before he cut off.

The old Overlord had passed
away and suffered his ceremonial
cremation, and Fernith had sat for
twelve long years in the seat of
power by the time the bipeds reached
their own satellite. Checkers sitting
and listening through anxious, ex-
cited watches had anticipated the
event for months, but no hint of
what was expected had been allowed
to reach the public.

When at last the news broke,
Quoth took it in person to Fernith.
Marching importantly into the
presence, he genuflected with the
minimum of reverence as became his
own high station.

A PRESENT PROM JOE

‘‘Your mightiness,” he announced,
‘‘the bipeds have hurst into space.”
“Ah !” Fernith clutched the arms
of his throue. A reddish gleam
crept into his eyes. . “They have
landed on their satellite?”

“Yes — with ten ships. They
launched twelve. Only two failed
to make it. The others are now
upon their moon,”

“That is good, extremely good!”
Fernith coiled his tentacles with
satisfaction. "Let it be known that
I declare three days of freedom.”

“It shall be announced,” Queth
promised.

“And now, what do the prognosti-
cators say?”

Queth frowned. “Your mighti-
ness, they declare that the moment
has arrived for you to call a council
to consider our strategy afresh.

There is a difficulty about which our
best psychologists are divided.”

“A difficulty?” Fernith fastened
hard eyes upon him. “What diffi-
culty can there be?”

“It is this : that the bipeds can
be motivated by us only so long as
our suggestions are not in blatant
contradiction of facts. Now their
arrival on their moon has lent im-
portance to a fact which is awkward
for us insofar as it may cause great
delay in their attempts to get here.”

“And that fact is — ?”

“That the morning star — -the
planet Sarken — is nearer to them.
We are almost twice as far away.
It is logical for them to try and
reach Sarken first.” Queth made a
gesture of disgust. "If they get
to Sarken they may waste a thou-
sand years exploring, and settling it
before they decide io come this
way — unless we can devise some
means to make them ignore Sarken
in favor of us.”

“But Sarken is uninhabited and
uninhabitable,” countered Fernith.
“We have never been able to pick a
single thought from its great blanket
of atmosphere.”

“Perhaps its atmosphere has the
faculty of screening all underlying
thoughts,” Queth ventured. “Or
possibly its life forms think in fre-
quencies far outside the range of
our receivers. But that is not the
point. The point, your mightiness,
is that we must find a way to per-
suade the bipeds to come here before
it is too late — and that will te diffi-

cult because it will be contrary to
logic.”

“Then I shall summon the coun-
cil,” Fernith decided. “A means
must be found somehow, anyhow.
It is a matter of life or death to
us.” He gave a harsh chuckle and
finished, “Life or death to these
bipeds also.”

“Yes, your mightiness,” agreed
Queth, laughing dutifully.

The council was in session all
through the night. The situation,
they agreed, created something of an
impasse. It was not until the early
hours of the morning that Alrath,
most respected expert on biped psy-
chology, ended the discussion.

“It is of no avail to stimulate yet
another world war,” he said. “The
biped tribes have united since the
last great holocaust and they need
all their unity to cope with space-
conquest now that it has reached its
present stage. If, as Werkin sug-
gests, we afflict them with a new
ideology they will divide and waste
their energies. The time for stimu-
lation by warfare has now gone by.”

“Then we are left only with that
imbecile Ronsed’s suggestion,” put
in Queth. “That we draw them
here by revealing ourselves openly.”

“Not at all,” Alrath contradicted.
“The Red Sun forbid that any of
us should listen to Ronsed. If any-
one desires partnership rather than
mastery, he is mad His challeng-
ing gaze went round the table.
“These bipeds have much curiosity
and great ambition. We know that

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

58

— for those are the psychic factors
we have manipulated successfully
for centuries. Let us continue to
manipulate them.”

“Go on,” ordered Fernith.

“Consider the situation. Do they
reach their moon with one modest
spaceship ? They do not ! They
send twelve and ten get there. Next
year, they will send fifty. The year
after they will be ready with a
hundred. Their ambitions are
equaled only by their energy.”

“So?” prompted Fernith, eagerly. 1

“So I think it will not he too hard
to obsess them with the notion of
trying to reach hath planets, Sarken
and ours. The suggestion will he
acceptable to them because it does
not contradict the logic of Sarken 's
nearness, while, at the same time,
it appeals to their ambitions- — a dou-
ble triumph rather than a single
one.”

“But surely that will halve their
efforts as far as we are concerned,”
someone objected.

Alrath gave him a look of scorn.
“Do we care whether they land fifty
ships on Sarken so long as they land
one here? One Is enough-, otic ship
capable of taking back one trained
mind-master. After that, all their
vessels will come to this world !”

A murmuring ran around the
council table until Fernith hushed
it with : “Do all agree with A 1 rath's
plan?”

“It is the best,” they said.

“Then I so order it 1" Fernith
glanced at Queth. “Direct the

A PRESENT FROM JOE

broadcasters to transmit the urge to
double-conquest, continually, with-
out cease.”

“We have to cease when we’re on
the other side of the sun,” a mind
observed, incautiously forgetting its
shield.

Catching the thought, Fernith
purpled and roared : “Do you think
I don’t know that, idiot ! Even as a
whimpering babe I learned that we
strengthen and fade as we near or
leave the bipeds" planet. Why, even
those silly* servile two-leggers can
realize — “ He paused, appalled at
where his anger was leading him.
A silence lay around the table, a
brooding. slightly fearful silence.

Roused was halfway through his
twenty-seventh year of grim exile
in the Eastern Desert. A dull red
sun lntng low in the sky and a
thin wind was stirring the dry, pink-
colored sands. Sitting at a window,
lie gazed absently at the barren, un-
inspiring scene of which he had long
grown weary.

That morning, the world-wide
1 lieu recast had announced the ration-
ing of water, first fateful sign of
the long expected end. From now
on there was to lie a fixed amount of
the precious liquid per person per
day. That world of the bipeds had
plenty of water, in fact it was more
water than land. The fact had been
known long before they’d had tele-
scopes to confirm it, for they had
garnered the information from biped
minds. One does not tend to de-
velop other-worldly types of scien-

59

tific instruments when one’s own
types are nearly as good.

Yes, nearly — but not quite as
good. The telereceivers were blind
to worlds without minds, or rather
to worlds which did not release de-
tectable thoughts — worlds like Sun-
ken, for instance. They had known
surprisingly little of Sarken or any
other nonbroadcasting planet until
they had picked telescopes and spec-
troscopes out of bipeds’ brains. Un-
doubtedly, the bipeds were supreme-
ly clever in their own Strange, alien
way — Too clever for comfort.

For generation after bloody gen-
eration the bipeds had been stirred
and stimulated with one end in view,
and those who had done it owed
them plenty. Was their cleverness
great enough to enable them to
recognize the debtor, name the debt
— and enforce payment t

Shifting uneasily in his seat, Ron-
sed reached for his netirdphone and
waited for the evening broadcast.
X ot one living creature existed
within his horizon ; the periodic
broadcasts from the cities was his
only company, his only opportunity
to listen to another mind. Such was
the least penalty of those who
blocked the path to conquest, and
he was growing tired of it, so tired
that by now he desired the greater
penalty— death !

If only Pernith and Queth had
! wen possessed of enough intelli-
gence to appeal to the bipeds, in-
stead of driving them onward with
a mental whip; if they had offered
eo operation instead of plotting

GO

mastery, there might have been some
hope. But now-—

He shrugged fatalistically. The
neurophone clicked softly within his
mind and an excited thought-form
came through.

“Six days ago eight spaceships
left the bipeds’ satellite for Sarken
and one for this planet. , None of
these vessels are visible to us, but
we have extracted data on their
progress from the minds of bipeds
who are watching through their
bigger instruments. Our vessel !§
near and due to land very soon. We
are keeping the neurocast open in
readiness for the great event.”
Roused sweated. The telepathic
carrier-wave fizzed deeply within his
brain while lie waited. He regarded
his two front tentacles as if he had
never seen them before. Their tips
vibrated, and were damp,

Aftet a long time, the mind .re-
turned with ; “The oncoming space-
ship has now been observed crossing
the orbit of onr lesser moon. A
curious feature is that We are quite
unable to receive its pilot's thoughts
in spite of the fact that anticipatory
excitement must lie causing him to
broadcast furiou-ly. .ft is thought
that the ship’s load U f kottutni must
have a blanking effect,”

“Or possibly there is no pilot on
board-— nothing but a robot,” sug-
gested .Roused to himself. He tried
to stop the quivering in bis tentacle
tips, and failed.

' Night had fallen and still he sat
there in complete darkness when the

AsrorxiHxo seiKxriM’ic'rro.x

neurocast again spoke over a hushed
and waiting world.

“This is relayed from a mobile
amplifier. The bipeds’ spaceship is
about to land at a point north of
the city of Kaltrak. It is gleaming
in brilliant sunshine. Those with
selectorphones may reset and see
the vision through my eyes.’'

Roused depressed a switch, closed
his own eyes, picked up the faraway
scene. It had the eerie, dreamlike
quality of all telepathically trans-
mitted pictures.

A huge, shining cylinder was
scudding through the sands before
the distant observer. It plowed to
a halt while a long stream of dust
settled slowly behind it. The ob-
server moved forward, neared it.
A pair of mind-masters came into
view hurrying ahead of him, ready
to take over whoever might emerge.

Though phantasmal, the scene was
very clear. Roused could perceive
the fastening clips on the back of
the nearest mind-master’s uniform,
noted that one of them was bent.

( As the picture came closer, he could
see the streaks left by space- particles
on the vessel’s metal skin, and a row
of lenses resembling scanners, and a
four-word name inscribed on the
spaceship's prow. lie strove to
comprehend those queer, angular
letters as be looked at the name.
They read :

A Present From Joe.

Ronsed stood up, opened his eyes,
lost the scene on the other side of
his world. For a moment, he stared
vaguely at the pall of darkness out-
side his window.

An instant later the entire horizon
flamed with intense white light. He
lifted his shaking tentacles to cover
his eyes. He did not succeed.

The tentacles and the eyes and
the room he was in, and all the
ground outside, in fact the whole
of the planet Mars became one vast
swirl of maddened atoms in approxi-
mately two and one-fifth seconds.

The bipeds had solved the
problem.

After their own fashion.

THE END.

A PRESENT FROM JOE

61

MANNA

BY PETER PHILLIPS

It was a wonderful food. But zchat happened
to it was considerably more remarkable. Enough
to drive a good production engineer crazy!

Illustrated by Cartier

Take best-quality synthetic pro-
tein. Bake it, break it up, steam it,
steep it in sucrose, ferment it, adcl
nut oil, piquant spices from the In-
dies, fruit juices, new flavors from
the laboratory, homogenize it, hy-
drolize it, soak it in brine ; pump in
glutamic acid, balanced proportions
of A, Bi, B», C, D, traces of calcium,
copper and- iron salts, an unadver-
tised drop of benzedrine ; dehydrate,
peptonize, irradiate, reheat in malt
vapor under pressure, compress, cut
into mouth-sized chunks, pack in liq-
uor from an earlier stage of the
process —

Miracle Meal.

Everything the Body Needs to
Sustain Life and Bounding Vital-
ity, in the Most DEEE-LISHUSSS
Food Ei’er Devised. It will Invig-
orate You, Build Muscle, Brain,
Nerve. Better than the Banquets of
Imperial Rome, Renaissance Italy,
Eighteenth Century France — All In
One Can. The Most Heavenly Taste
Thrills You Have Ever Experi-

62

cnced. , Gourmets’ Dream and
House-dives’ Delight. You Can
Live On It. Eat it for Breakfast,
Lunch, Dinner-. You’ll Never Get
Tired of MIRACLE MEAL.

Ad cuts of Zeus contemptuously
tossing a bowl of ambrosia over the
edge of MounbOlympus and making
a goggle-eyed grab for a can of
Miracle Meal.

Studio fake-ups of Lucretia Bor-
gia dropping a, phial of poison and
crying piously: “It Would Be A
Sin to Spoil Miracle Meal.”

Posters and night-signs of John
Doe — or Bill Smith, or Henri Brun,
or Hans Schmitt or Wei Lung —
balancing precariously on a pyra-
mided pile of empty M.M. cans, eyes
closed, mouth pursed in slightly in-
ane ecstasy as he finishes the last
mouthful of his hundred-thousandth
can.

You could live on it, certainly.

The publicity co-ordinator of the
Miracle Meal Corporation chose the

ASTOUNDING SC I-ENCE -FICTION

victim himself — a young man named
Arthur Adelaide from Greenwich
Village.

For a year, under the closest
medical supervision and observation,
Arthur ate nothing but Miracle
Meal.

From this Miracle Meal Mara-

thon, as it was tagged by video-print
newssheets, he emerged smiling,
twice the weight— publicity omitted
to mention that he’d been half-
starved to begin with — he’d been
trying to live off pure art and was a
bad artist — perfectly fit, and ten
thousand dollars richer.

MANNA

He was also given a commercial
art job with M.M., designing new
labels for the cans.

His abrupt death at the end of
an eighty-story drop from his office
window a week or two later received
little attention.

It would be unreasonable to blame
the cumulative effect of M.M., for
Arthur was probably a little unbal-
anced to begin with, whereas M.M.
was Perfectly Balanced — a Kitchen
in a Can.

Maybe you could get tired of it.
But not very quickly. The flavor
was the secret. It was delicious yet
strangely and tantalizingly indefin-
able. It seemed to react progres-
sively on the taste-buds so that the
taste subtly changed with each
mouthful.

One moment it might be omelette
au fine herbes, the next, turkey and
cranberry, then buckwheat and ma-
ple. You’d be through the Can be-
fore you could make up your mind.
So you’d buy another.

Even the can was an improve-
ment on the usual plastic self-heater
— shape of a small, shallow pie-dish,
with a pre-impressed crystalline
fracture in the plastic lid.

Press the inset button on the pre-
heating unit at one side, and when
the food was good and hot, a second-
ary chemical reaction in the unit
released a fierce little plunger just
inside the perimeter fracture. Slight
steam pressure finished the job. The
lid flipped off.

Come and get it. You Eat Right

out of the Can it Comes In. Keep
your fingers out, Johnny. Don’t
you see the hygiplast spoon in its
moisture and heat-re pellant wrapper
fixed under the lid?

The Rev. Malachi Pennyhorse did
not eat Miracle Meal. Nor was he
impressed when Mr. Stephen Sam-
son, Site Advisor to the Corpora-
tion, spoke in large dollar signs of
the indirect benefits a factory would
bring to the district.

“Why here? You already have
one factory in England. Why not
extend it ?”

“It’s our policy, Reverend — ”

“Not ‘Reverend’ young man. Call
me Vicar. Or Mr. Pennyhorse. Or
merely Pennyhorse — Go on.”

“It’s our policy, sir, to keep our
factories comparatively small, site
them in the countryside for the
health of employees, and modify the
buildings to harmonize with the pre-
vailing architecture of the district.
There is no interference with local
amenities. All ' transport of em-
ployees, raw materials, finished
product is by silent copter.”

Samson laid a triphoto on the
vicar’s desk. “What would you say
that was?”

Mr. Pennyhorse adjusted his
pince-nez, looked closely. “Byzan-
tine. Very fine. Around 500 A.D.”

“And this — ”

“Moorish. Quite typical. Fif-
teenth century.”

Samson said: “They’re our fac-
tories at Istanbul and Tunis respec-
tively. At Allahabad, India, we had

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

04

to put up big notices saying ‘This
is not a temple or place of worship’
because natives kept wandering in
and offering-up prayers to the proc-
essing machines.”

Mr. Pennyhorse glanced up
quickly. Samson kept his face
straight, added: “The report may
have been exaggerated, but — you get
the idea ?”

The vicar said : “I do. What
shape do you intend your factory
to take in this village?”

“That’s why I came to you. The
rural district council suggested that
you might advise us.”

“My inclination, of course, is to
advise you to go away and not re-
turn.”

The vicar looked out of his study
window at the sleepy, sun-washed
village street, gables of the ancient
Corn Exchange, paved market-place,
lichened spire of his own time-
kissed church ; and, beyond, rolling
Wiltshire pastures cradling the
peaceful community.

The vicar sighed : “We’ve held
out here so long — I hoped we would
remain inviolate in my time, at least.
However, I suppose we must con-
sider ourselves fortunate that your
corporation has some respect for
tradition and the feelings of the . . .
uh . . . ‘natives’.”

He pulled out a drawer in his
desk. “It might help you to un-
derstand those feelings if I show
you a passage from the very full
diary of my predecessor here, who
died fifty years ago at the age of

ninety-five — we’re a long-lived tribe,
we clergy. It’s an entry he made
one hundred years ago — sitting at
this very desk.”

Stephen Samson took the opened
volume.

The century-old handwriting was
as readable as typescript.

May 3, 1943. Long, interesting
discussion with young American
soldier, one of those who are bil-
leted in the village. They tebm
themselves G.I.’s. Told me country-
side near his home in Pennsylvania
not unlike our Wiltshire downs.
Showed him round church. Said
he was leaving soon, and added: ‘I
love this place. Nothing like my
home town in looks, but the atmos-
phere’s the same — old, and kind of
comfortable. And I guess if I came
back here a hundred years from
now, it wouldn’t have changed one
bit.’ An engaging young man. I
trust he is right.”

Samson looked up. Mr. Penny-
horse said : “That young man may
have been one of your ancestors.”

Samson gently replaced the old
diary on the desk. “He wasn’t. My
family’s Ohioan. But I see what you
mean, and respect it. That’s why
I want you to help us. You will?”

“Do you fish?” asked the vicar,
suddenly and irrelevantly.

“Yes, sir. Very fond of the
sport.”

“Thought so. You’re the type.
That’s why I like you. Take a look
at these flies. Seen anything like
them? Mhke ’em myself. One of
the finest trout streams in the

MANNA

65

country just outside the village.
Help you? Of course I will,”

“Presumption,” said Brother
James. He eased himself through
a gray-stone wall !>y twisting his
subexistential plane slightly, and
leaned reflectively against a moon-
beam - that slanted through the
branches of an oak.

A second habited and cowled fig-
ure materialized beside him. “Per-
haps so. But it does my age-,
wearied heart a strange good to
see those familiar walls again cast-
ing their shadows over the field.”

“A mockery, Brother Gregory. A
mere shell that simulates the out-
lines .of our beloved Priory. Think
you that even the stones are of that
good, gray granite that we built
with? Nay! As this cursed simu-
lacrum was a-building, I warped
two hands into the solid, laid hold
of a massy block, and by the saints,
’twas of such inconsequential weight
I might have hurled it skyward with
a finger. And within, is there aught
which we may recognize? No
chapel, no cloisters, no refectory —
only long, geometrical rooms. And
what devilries and unholy rites may
not be centered about those strange
mechanisms with which the rooms
are filled ?”

At the tirade. Brother Gregory
sighed and thrust back his cowl to
let the gracious moonbeams play on
his tonsured head. “For an Untrans-
lated One of some thousand years’
standing,” he said, “you exhibit a
mulish ignorance, Brother James.

66

You would deny men all advance-
ment. I remember well your curses
when first we saw horseless car-
riages and flying machines.”

“Idols!” James snapped. “Men
worship them. Therefore are they
evil.”

“You are so good, Brother
James,” Gregory said, with the
heaviest sarcasm. “So good, it is
ni}' constant wonderment that you
have had to wait so long for Trans-
lation Upwards. Do you think that
Dom Pennvhorse, the present in-
cumbent of Selcor — a worthy man.
with reverence for the past — would
permit evil rites within his parish?
You are a befuddled old anachron-
ism, brother.”

“That,” said James, “is quite be-
yond sufferance. For you to speak
thus of Translation, when it was
your own self-indulgent pursuit of
carnal pleasures that caused us to
be bound here through the cen-
turies !”

Brother Gregory- said coldly : “It
was not I who inveigled the
daughter of Ronald the Wry-Neck
into the kitchen garden, thus expos-
ing the weak flesh of a brother to
grievous temptation.”

There was silence for a while,
save for the whisper of a midnight
breeze through the branches of the
oak, and the muted call of a night-
bird from the far woods.

Gregory extended a tentative
hand and lightly touched the sleeve
of James’ habit. “The argument
might proceed for yet another cen-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tury and bring us no nearer Trans-
lation. Besides it is not such un-
bearable penance, my brother. Were
we not both lovers of the earth, of
this fair countryside ?”

James shrugged. Another silence.
Then he fingered his gaunt white
cheeks. “What shall we do, Brother
Gregory ? Shall we — appear to
them ?”

Gregory said: “I doubt whether
common warp manifestation would
be efficacious. As dusk fell tonight,
I overheard a conversation between
Dom Pennyhorse and a tall, young-
featured man who has been con-
cerned in the building of this simu-
lacrum. The latter spoke in one of
the dialects of the Americas; and it
was mentioned that several of the
men who will superintend the work-
ing of the machines within will also
be from the United States- — for a
time at least. It is not prudent to
haunt Americans in the normal
fashion. Their attitude towards
such matters is notoriously — un-
seemly.”

“We could polter,” suggested
Brother James.

Gregory replaced his cowl. “Let
us review the possibilities, then,” he
said, “remembering that our sub-
etheric energy is limited.”

They walked slowly together over
the meadow towards -the resusci-
tated gray walls of Selcor Prior.
Blades of grass, positively charged
by their passage, sprang suddenly
upright, relaxed slowly into limp-
ness as the charge leaked away.

They halted at the walls to adjust

their planes of incidence and degree
of tenuity, passed inside.

The new Miracle Meal machines
had had their first test run.
The bearings on the dehydrator
pumps were still warm as two black
figures, who seemed to carry with
them an air of vast and wistful lone-
liness, paced silently between rows
of upright cylinders which shone
dully in moonlight diffused through
narrow windows.

“Here,” said Gregory, the taller
of the two, softly, “did we once
walk the cloisters in evening medi-
tation.”

Brother James’ broad features
showed signs of unease. He felt
more than mere nostalgia.

“Power — what are they using?
Something upsets my bones. I am
cpieasy, as when a thunderstorm is
about to break. Yet there is no
static.”

Gregory stopped, looked at his
hand. There was a faint blue aura
at his fingertips. “Slight neutron es-
cape,” he said. “They have a small
thorium-into-233 pile somewhere.
It needs better shielding.”

“You speak riddles.”

Gregory said, with a little impa-
tience: “You have the entire science
section of the village library at your
disposal at nightfall for the effort
of a trifling polter, yet for centuries
you have read nothing but the ‘Lives
of the Saints.’ So, of course, I
speak riddles— to you. You are
even content to remain in ignorance
of the basic principles of your own

MANNA

AST— 3C

67

structure and functioning, doing
everything by traditional thought-
rote and rule of thumb. But I am
not so content ; and of my knowl-
edge, I can assure you that the radia-
tion will not harm you unless you
warp to solid and sit atop the pile
when it is in full operation.” Greg-
ory smiled. “And then, dear
brother, you would doubtless be so
uncomfortable that you would de-
warp before any harm could be done
beyond the loss of a little energy
that would be replaced in time. Let
us proceed.”

They went through three depart-
ments before Brother Gregory di-
vined the integrated purpose of the
vats, driers, conveyor-tubes, belts
and containers.

“The end product, I’m sure, is
a food of sorts,” he said, “and by
some quirk of fate, it is stored in
approximately the position that was
once occupied by our kitchen store
— if my sense of orientation has not
been bemused by these strange in-
ternal surroundings.”

The test run of the assembly had
produced a few score cans of Mir-
acle Food. They were stacked on
metal shelves which would tilt and
gravity-feed them into the shaft
leading up to the crating machine.
Crated, they would go from there
to the copter-loading bay on the
roof.

Brother James reached out to pick
up a loose can. His hand went
through it twice.

“Polt, you dolt !” said Brother
Gregory. “Or are you trying to be

68

miserly with your confounded en-
ergy ? Here, let me do it.”

The telekineticized can sprang in-
to his solid hands. He turned it
about, slightly increasing his infra-
red receptivity to read the label,
since the storeroom was in darkness.

“Miracle Meal. Press Here.”

He pressed, pressed again, and
was closely examining the can when,
after thirty seconds, the lid flipped
off, narrowly missing his chin.

Born, and living, in more enlight-
ened times, Brother Gregory’s in-
quiring mind and insatiable appetite
for facts would have made him a
research worker. He did not drop
the can. His hands were quite
steady. He chuckled. He said:
“Ingenious, very ingenious. See —
the food is hot.”

He warped his nose and back-
palate into solid and delicately in-
haled vapors. His eyes widened.
He frowned, inhaled again. A be-
atific smile spread over his thin
face.

“Brother James — warp your
nose !”

The injunction, in other circum-
stances, might have been considered
both impolite and unnecessary.
Brother Janies was no beauty, and
his big, blunt, snoutlike nose, which
had been a flaring red in life, was
the least prepossessing of his fea-
tures.

But he warped it, and sniffed.

M. M. SALES LEAFLET
NUMBER 14: It Will Sell By
Its Smell Alone.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Gregory said hesitantly : “Do you
think, Brother James, that we
might — ”

James licked his lips, from side to
side, slowly. “It would surely take
a day’s accumulation of energy to
hold digestive and alimentary in
solid for a sufficient period. But — ”
“Don’t be a miser,” said Gregory.
“There’s a spoon beneath the lid.
Get a can for yourself. And don’t
bother with digestive. Teeth, pal-
ate and throat are sufficient. It
would not digest in any case. It re-
mains virtually unchanged. But go-
ing down — ah, bliss !”

It went down. T wo cans.

“Do you remember, brother,”
said James, in a weak, reminiscing
voice, “what joy it was to eat and
be strengthened. And now to eat
is to be weakened.”

Brother Gregory’s voice was faint
but happy. “Had there been food
of this character available before
our First Translation, I doubt
whether other desires of the flesh
would have appealed to me. But
what was our daily fare set on the
refectory table : peas ; lentils ; cab-
bage soup; hard, tasteless cheese.
Year after year — -ugli!”

“Health-giving foods, murmured
Brother James, striving to be right-
eous even in his exhaustion. “Re-
member when we bribed the kitch-
ener to get extra portions. Good
trenchermen, we. Had we not died
of the plague before our Priory be-
came rich and powerful, then, by the

MANNA

Faith, our present bodies would be
of greater girth.”

“Forms, not bodies,” said Greg-
ory, insisting even in his exhaustion
on scientific exactitudes. “Variable
fields, consisting of open lattices of
energy foci resolvable into charged
particles — and thus solid matter —
when they absorb energy beyond
a certain stage. In other words,
my dear ignorant brother, when we
polt. The foci themselves — or
rather the spaces between them —
act as a limited-capacity storage
battery for the slow accretion of
this energy from cosmic sources,
which may be controlled and con-
centrated in the foci by certain
thought-patterns, ’ ’

Talking was an increasing effort
in his energy-low state.

“When we polt,” he went on
slowly, “we take up heat, air cools,
live people get cold shivers ; de-pol t,
give up heat, live people get clammy,
cold-hot feeling ; set up ’lectro-
static field, live peoples’ hair stan’s
on end” — his voice was trailing into
deep, blurred inaudibility, like a
mechanical phonograph running
down, but James wasn’t listening
anyway — “an’ then when we get
Translated Up’ards by The Power
that Is, all the energy goes back
where it came from an’ we jus’
become thought. T h a s s a 1 1.
Thought. Thought, thought,
thought, thought—”

The phonograph ran down,
stopped. There was silence in the
transit storeroom Of the Selcor Pri-

69

ory Factory branch of the Miracle
Meal Corporation.

For a while.

Then —

‘‘THOUGHT !”

The shout brought Brother James
from his uneasy, uncontrolled re-
pose at the nadir of an energy bal-
ance.

“What is it?” he grumbled. “I’m
too weak to listen to any of your
theorizing.”

“Theorizing! I have it!”

“Conserve your energies, brother,
else will you be too weak even to
twist yourself from this place.”

Both monks had permitted their
forms to relax into a corner of the

70

storeroom, supine, replete in dis-
repletion.

Brother Gregory sat up with an
effort.

“Listen, you attenuated conserve
of very nothingness, I have a way to
thwart, bemuse, mystify and irritate
these crass philistines — and nothing
so simple that a psychic investigator
could put a thumb on us. What are
we, Brother James?”

It was a rhetorical question, and
Brother James had barely formu-
lated his brief reply — “Ghosts” — be-
fore Brother Gregory, energized in
a way beyond his own understanding
by his own enthusiasm, went on :
“Fields, in effect. Mere lines of
force, in our un-polted state. What
happens if we whirl ? A star whirls.
It has mass, rate of angular rota-
tion, degree of compactness — there-
fore, gravity. Why? Because it
has a field to start with. But we
are our own fields. We need neither
mass nor an excessive rate of ro-
tation to achieve the same effect.
Last week I grounded a high-flying
wood-pigeon by whirling. It shot
down to me through the air, and
I’d have been buffeted by its pinions
had I not stood aside. It hit the
ground — not too heavily, by the
grace of St. Barbara — recovered
and flew away.”

The great nose of Brother James
glowed pinkly for a moment. “You
fuddle and further weaken me by
your prating. Get to your point, if
you have such. And explain how
we may do anything in our present
unenergized state, beyond removing
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ourselves to a nexus point for re-
cuperation.”

Brother Gregory warped his own
nose into solid in order to scratch its
tip. He felt the need of this rever-
sion to a life habit, which had once
aided him in marshaling his
thoughts.

“You think only of personal en-
ergy,” he said scornfully. “We
don’t need that, to whirl. It is an
accumulative process, yet we gain
nothing, lose nothing. Matter is
not the only thing we can warp. If
you will only listen, you woof of
unregenerate and forgotten flesh,
I will try to explain without mathe-
matics.”

He talked.

After a while, Brother James’
puzzled frown gave way to a faint
smile. “Perhaps I understand,” he
said.

“Then forgive me for implying
you were a moron,” said Gregory.
“Stand up, Brother James.”

Calls on transatlantic tight-beam
cost heavy. Anson Dewberry, Mir-
acle Meal Overseas Division head,
pointed this out to Mr. Stephen
Samson three times during their
conversation.

“Listen,” said Samson at last, des-
perately, “I’ll take no more delega-
tion of authority. In my contract,
it says I’m site adviser. That means
I’m architect and negotiator, not
detective or scientist or occulist. I
offered to stay on here to super-
vise building because I happen to
like the places I like the pubs. I

like the people. I like the fishing.
But it wasn’t in my contract. And
I’m now standing on that contract.
Building is finished to schedule,
plant installed — your tech men, inci-
dentally, jetted out of here without
waiting to catch snags after the first
runoff — and now I’m through. The
machines are running, the cans are
coming off— and if the copters don’t
collect, that’s for you and the Lon-
don office to bat your brains out over.
And the Lord forgive that mess of
terminal propositions,” he added in
lower voice. Samson was a purist
in the matter of grammar.

Anson Dewberry jerked his chair
nearer the scanner in his New York
office. His pink, round face loomed
in Samson’s screen like that of an
avenging cherub.

“Don’t you have no gendarmes
around that place ?” Mr. Dewberry
was no purist, in moments of stress.
“Get guards on, hire some militia,
check employes. Ten thousand cans
of M.M. don’t just evaporate.”

“They do,” Samson replied sadly.
“Maybe it’s the climate. And for
the seventh time, I tell you I’ve done
all that. I’ve had men packed so
tightly around the place that even
an orphan neutron couldn’t get by.
This morning I had two men from
Scotland Yard gumming around.
They looked at the machines, fol-
lowed the assemby through to the
transit storeroom, examined the elec-
trolocks and mauled their toe-caps
trying to boot a dent in the door.
Then the top one — that is, the one
who only looked half-asleep — said,

MANNA

71

“Mr. Samson, sir, do you think it’s
. . . uh . . . possible . . . that
. . . uh . . . this machine of yours
. . . uh . . . goes into reverse when
your . . . uh . . . backs are turned and
. . . uh . . . sucks the cans back
again ?’ ”

Grating noises that might have
been an incipient death rattle slid
over the tight- beam from New
York.

Samson nodded, a smirk of mock
sympathy on his tanned, humor-
wrinkled young face.

The noises ended with a gulp.
The image of Dewberry thrust up
a hesitant forefinger in interroga-
tion. “Hey! Maybe there’s some-
thing to that, at that — would it be
possible ?”

Samson groaned a little. -“I
wouldn’t really know or overmuch
care. But I have doubts. Mean-
time — ”

“Right.” Dewberry receded on
the screen. “I’ll jet a man over
tonight. The best. From Research.
Full powers. Hand over to him.
Take some of your vacation. De-
sign some more blamed mosques or
tabernacles. Go fishing.”

“A sensible suggestion,” Samson
said. “Just what I was about to do.
It’s a glorious afternoon here, sun
a little misted, grass green, stream
flowing cool and deep, fish lazing
in the pools where the willow-shad-
ows fall — ”

The screen blanked. Dewberry
was no purist, and no poet either.

. Samson made a schoolkid face.
He switched off the fluor lamps that

72

supplemented the illumination from
a narrow window in the supervisor’s
office — which, after studying the
ground-plan of the original Selcor
Priory, he had sited in the space
that was occupied centuries before
by the business sanctum o f the Prior
—got up from his desk and walked
through a Norman archway into the
sunlight.

He breathed the meadow-sweet
air deeply, with appreciation.

The Rev. Malachi Pennyhorse
was squatting with loose- jointed
ease against the wall. Two fishing
rods in brown canvas covers lay
across his lap. He was studying
one of the trout-flies nicked into
the band of his ancient hat. His
balding, brown pate was bared to
the sun. He looked up.

“What fortune, my dear
Stephen ?”

“I convinced him at last. He’s
jetting a man over tonight. He told
me to go fishing.”

“Injunction unnecessary, I should
imagine. Let’s go. We shan’t touch
a trout with the sky as clear as this,
but I have some float tackle for la-;
zier sport.” They set off across
a field. “Are you running the plant
today ?”

Samson nodded his head towards
a faint hum. “Quarter-speed.
That will give one copter-load for
the seventeen hundred hours col-
lection, and leave enough over to
go in the transit store for the night
and provide Dewberry’s man with
some data. Or rather, lack of it.”

“Where do you think it’s going?”
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“I’ve given up guessing.”

Mr. Pennyhorse paused astride a
stile and looked back at the gray bulk
of the Priory. “I could guess who’s
responsible,” he said, and chuckled.

“Uh? Who?”

Mr. Pennyhorse shook his head.
“Leave that to your investigator.”

A few moments later he mur-
mured as if to himself : “What a
haunt ! Ingenious devils.”

But when Stephen Samson looked
at him inquiringly, he added: “But
I can’t guess where your cans have
been put.”

And he would say nothing more
on the subject.

Who would deny that the pure of
heart are often simple-minded?
(The obverse of the proposition
need not be argued.) And that
cause-effect relations are sometimes
divined more readily by the intuition
of simpletons than the logic of
scholars ?

Brother Simon Simplex — Simple
Simon to later legends— looked
open-mouthed at the array of
strange objects on the stone shelves
of the kitchen storeroom. He was
not surprised — his mouth was al-
ways open, even in sleep.

He took down one of the objects
and examined it with mild curiosity.
He shook it, turned it round, thrust
a forefinger into a small depression.
Something gave slightly, but there
was no other aperture. He replaced
it on the shelf.

When his fellow-kitchener re-
turned, he would ask him the pur-

pose of the objects — if he could
remember to do so. Simon’s
memory was poor. Each time the
rota brought him onto kitchen duty
for a week, he had to be instructed
afresh in the business of serving
meals in the refectory: platter so,
napkin thus, spoon here, finger
bowls half-filled, three water
pitchers, one before the Prior, one
in the center, one at the foot of the
table — “and when you serve, tread
softly and do not breathe down the
necks of the brothers.”

Even now could he hear the
slight scrape of benches on stone as
the monks, with bowed heads, fresh-
ly-washed hands in the sleeves of
their habits, filed slowly into the
refectory and took their seats at
the long, oak table. And still his
fellow-kitchener had not returned
from the errand. Food was pre-
pared — dared he begin to serve
alone ?

It was a great problem for Simon,
brother in the small House of Sel-
cor, otherwise Selcor Priory, poor
cell-relation to the rich monastery
of the Cluniac Order at Battle, in
the year 1139, A.D.

Steam pressure in the triggered
can of Miracle Meal did its work.
The lid flipped. The aroma issued.

Simon’s mouth nearly shut as he
sniffed.

The calm and unquestioning ac-
ceptance of the impossible is another
concomittant of simplicity and
purity of heart. To the good and
simple Simon the rising of the sun
each morning and the singing of

MANNA

73

birds were recurrent miracles. Com-
pared with these, a laboratory mira-
cle of the year 2143 A.D. was as
nothing.

Here was a new style of platter,
filled with hot food, ready to serve.
Wiser minds than his had undoubt-
edly arranged matters. His fellow-
kitchener, knowing the task was
thus simplified, had left him to serve
alone.

He had merely to remove the
covers from these platters and carry
them into the refectory. To remove
the covers — cause — effect — the in-
tuition of a simple mind.

Simon carried fourteen of the
platters to the kitchen table, pressed
buttons and waited.

He was gravely tempted to sample
the food himself, but all-inclusive
Benedictine rules forbade kitcheners
to eat until their brothers had been
served.

He carried a loaded tray into the
refectory where the monks sat in
patient silence except for the lone
voice of the Reader who stood at
a raised lectern and intoned from
the “Lives of the Saints”.

Pride that he had been thought
fit to carry out the duty alone made
Simon less clumsy than usual. He
served the Prior, Dom Holland, first,
almost deftly; then the other bro-
thers, in two trips to the kitchen.

A spicy, rich, titillating fragrance
filled the refectory. The intoning of
the “Lives of the Saints” faltered
for a moment as the mouth of the
Reader filled with saliva, then he
grimly continued.

74

At Dom Holland’s signal, the
monks ate.

The Prior spooned the last drops
of gravy into his mouth. He sat
back. A murmur arose. He raised
a hand. The monks quietened.
The Reader closed his book.

. Dom Holland was a man of faith ;
but he did not accept miracles or
even the smallest departures from
routine existence without question-
ing. He had sternly debated with
himself whether he should question
the new platters and the new food
before or after eating. The aroma
decided him. He ate first.

Now he got up, beckoned to a
senior monk to follow him, and
paced with unhurried calmness to
the kitchen.

Simon had succumbed. He was
halfway through his second tin.

He stood up, licking his fingers.

“Whence comes this food, my
son ?” asked Dom Holland, in sonor-
ous Latin.

Simon’s mouth opened wider. His
knowledge of the tongue was con-
fined to prayers.

Impatiently the Prior repeated the
question in the English dialect of
the district.

Simon pointed, and led them to
the storeroom.

“I looked, and it was here,” he
said simply. The words were to
become famed.

His fellow-kitchener was sought
— he was Jound dozing in a warm
corner of the kitchen garden — and
questioned. He shook his head.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

The provisioner rather reluctantly
disclaimed credit.

Dom Holland thought deeply, then
gave instructions for a general as-
sembly. The plastic “platters” and
the hygiplast spoons were carefully
examined. There were murmurs of
wonderment at the workmanship.
The discussion lasted two hours.

Simon’s only contribution was to
repeat with pathetic insistence: “I
looked and it was there.”

He realized dimly that he had be-
come a person of some importance.

His face became a mask of puz-
zlement when the Prior summed up :

“Our simple but blessed brother,
Simon Simplex, it seems to me, has
become an instrument or vessel of
some thaumaturgical manifestation.
It would be wise, however, to await
further demonstration before the
matter is referred to higher authori-
ties.”

The storeroom was sealed and
two monks were deputed as night-
guards.

Even with the possibility of a
miracle on his hands, Dom Holland
was not prepared to abrogate the
Benedictine rule of only one main
meal a day. The storeroom wasn’t
opened until early afternoon of the
following day.

It was opened by Simon, in the
presence of the Prior, a scribe, the
provisioner, and two senior monks.

Released, a pile of Miracle Meal
cans toppled forward like a crum-
bling cliff, slithering and clattering
in noisy profusion around Simon’s

legs, sliding over the floor of the
kitchen.

Simon didn’t move. He was
either too surprised or cunningly
aware of the effectiveness of the
scene. He stood calf-deep in cans,
pointed at the jumbled stack inside
the storeroom, sloping up nearly to
the stone roof, and said his little
piece :

“I look, and it is here.”

“Kneel, my sons,” said Dom Hol-
land gravely, and knelt.

Manna.

And at a time when the Priory
was hard-pressed to maintain even
its own low standard of subsistence,
without helping the scores of dis-
possessed refugees encamped in wat-
tle shacks near its protecting walls.

The countryside was scourged by
a combination of civil and foreign
war. Stephen of Normandy against
Matilda of Anjou for the British
throne. Neither could control their
own followers. When the Flemish
mercenaries of King Stephen were
not chasing Queen Matilda’s An-
gevins back over the borders of
Wiltshire, they were plundering the
lands and possessions of nominal
supporters of Stephen. The Ange-
vins and the barons who supported
Matilda’s cause quite impartially did
the same, then pillaged each other’s
property, castle against castle, baron
against baron.

It was anarchy and free-for-all —
but nothing for the ignored serfs,
bondmen, villeins and general peas-
antry, who fled from stricken

MANNA

75

homes and roamed the countryside
in bands of starving thousands.
Some built shacks in the inviolate
shadow of churches and monas-
teries.

Selcor Priory had its quota of
barefoot, raggedly men, women and
children — twelfth century Displaced
Persons.

They were a headache to the
Prior, kindly Dom Holland — until
Simple Simon’s Miracle.

There were seventy recipients of
the first hand-out of Miracle Meal
cans from the small door in the
Priory’s walled kitchen garden.

The next day there were three
hundred, and the day after that, four
thousand. Good news doesn’t need
radio to get around fast.

Fourteen monks worked eight-
hour shifts for twenty-four hours,
hauling stocks from the capacious
storeroom, pressing buttons, handing
out steaming platters to orderly lines
of refugees.

Two monks, shifting the last few
cans from the store, were suddenly
buried almost to their necks by the
arrival of a fresh consignment,
which piled up out of thin air.

Providence, it seemed, did not
depend solely upon the intervention
of Simon Simplex. The Priory
itself and all its inhabitants were
evidently blessed.

The Abbot of Battle, Dom Hol-
land’s superior, a man of great girth
and great learning visited the Priory.
He confirmed the miracle — by study-
ing the label on the can.

After several hours’ work in the

Prior’s office, he announced to Dom
Holland :

“The script presented the greatest
difficulty. It is an extreme simplifi-
cation of letter-forms at present in
use by Anglo-Saxon scholars. The
pertinent text is a corruption — if I
may be pardoned the use of such a
term in the circumstances — of the
Latin ‘minictilttm’ compounded with
the word 'macV from our own bar-
barous tongue — so, clearly, Miracle
Meal !”

Dom Holland murmured his awe
of this learning.

The Abbot added, half to himself :
“Although why the nature of the
manifestation should be thus adver-
tised in repetitive engraving, when
it is self-evident — ” He shrugged.
“The ways of Providence are pass-
ing strange.”

Brother Gregory, reclining in the
starlight near his favorite oak, said :

“My only regret is that we cannot
see the effect of our gift — the theo-
retical impact of a modern product—
usually a weapon — on past .ages is
a well-tried topic of discussion and
speculation among historians, scien-
tists, economists and writers of fan-
tasy.”

Brother James, hunched in vague
adumbration on a wall behind, said :
“You are none of those things, else
might you explain why it is that,
if these cans have reached the period
for which, according to your ab-
struse calculations, they were
destined — an age in which we were
both alive — we cannot remember

56

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

such an event, or why it is not re-
corded in histories of the period.”
“It was a time of anarchy, dear
brother. Many records were
destroyed. And as for our memories
—well, great paradoxes of time are
involved. One might as profitably
ask how many angels may dance on
the point of a pin. Now if you
should wish to know how many
atoms might be accommodated in a
like position — "

Brother Gregory was adroit at
changing the subject. lie didn’t
wish to speculate aloud until he’d
figured out all the paradox possi-
bilities. He’d already discarded an
infinity of time-streams as intellec-
tually unsatisfying, and was toying
with the concept of recurrent
worlds—

“Dom Pennyhorse has guessed
that it is our doing.”

“What’s that?”

Brother James repeated the in-
formation smugly.

Gregory said slowly : “Well, he
is not — unsympathetic — to us.”
“Assuredly, brother, we have
naught to fear from him, nor from
the pleasant young man with whom
he goes fishing. But this young
man was today in consultation with
his superior, and an investigator is
being sent from America.”

“Psychic investigator, eh?
Phooey. We’ll tie him in knots,”
said Gregory complacently.

“I assume,” said Brother James,
with a touch of self-righteousness,
“that these vulgar colloquialisms to
which vou sometimes have recourse

are another result of your nocturnal
reading. They offend my ear.
‘Phooey,’ indeed — No, this investi-
gator is one with whom you will
undoubtedly find an affinity. I
gather that he is from a laboratory —
a scientist of sorts.”

Brother Gregory sat up and
rubbed his tonsure thoughtfully.
“That,” he admitted, “is different.”
There was a curious mixture of
alarm and eagerness in his voice.
“There are means of detecting the
field we employ.”

An elementary electroscope was
one of the means. An ionization in-
dicator and a thermometer were
others. They were all bolted firmly
on a bench just inside the storeroom.
Wires led from them under the
door to a jury-rigged panel outside.

Sandy-haired Sidney Meredith of
M.M. Research sat in front of the
panel on a folding stool, watching
dials with intense blue eyes, chin
propped in hands.

Guards had been cleared from
the factory. He was alone, on the
advice of Mr. Pennyhorse, who had
told him: “If, as I suspect, it’s the
work of two of my . . . uh . . . flock
. . . two very ancient parishioners . . ,
they are more likely to play their
tricks in the absence of a crowd.”

“I get it,” Meredith had said.
“Should be interesting.”

It was.

He poured coffee from a thermos
without taking his eyes from the
panel. The thermometer reading
was dropping slowly. Ionization

77

MANNA

was rising. From inside the store
came the faint rasp of moving ob-
jects.

Meredith smiled, sighted a thumb-
size camera, recorded the panel
readings. “This,” he said softly,
“will make a top feature in the
Journal: ‘The most intensive psychic
and poltergeist phenomena ever re-
corded. M.M.’s top tech trouble-
shooter spikes spooks.’ ”

There was a faint snap beyond
the door. Dials swooped back to
-zero. Meredith quit smiling and
daydreaming.

“Hey — play fair!” he called.

The whisper of a laugh answered
him, and a soft, hollow whine, as of
a wind cycloning into outer space.

He grabbed the door, pulled. It
resisted. It was like trying to break
a vacuum. He knelt, lit a cigarette,
held it near the bottom of the
nearly flush-fitting door. A thin
streamer of smoke curled down and
was drawn swiftly through the
barely-perceptible crack.

The soft whine continued for a
few seconds, began to die away.

Meredith yanked at the door
again. It gave, to a slight ingush of
air. He thrust his foot in the
opening, said calmly into the empty
blackness: “When you fellers have
quite finished — I’m coming in.
Don’t go away. Let’s talk.”

He slipped inside, closed the door,
stood silent for a moment. He
sniffed. Ozone. His scalp prickled.
He scratched his head, felt the hairs
standing upright. And it was cold.

He said : “Right. No point in

78

playing dumb or covering-up, boys.”
He felt curiously ashamed of the
platitudes as he uttered them. “I
must apologize for breaking in,” he
added — and meant it. “But this has
got to finish. And if you’re not
willing to — co-operate — I think I
know now how to finish it.”

Another whisper of a laugh. And
two words, faint, gently mocking:
“Do you?”

Meredith strained his eyes against
the darkness. He saw only the
nerve-patterns in his own eyes. He
shrugged.

“If you won’t play — ” He
switched on a blaze of fluor lamps.
The long steel shelves were empty.
There was only one can of Miracle
Meal left in the store.

He felt it before he saw it. It
dropped on his head, clattered to
the plastocrete floor. When he’d
retrieved his breath, he kicked it
savagely to the far end of the store
and turned to his instruments.

The main input lead had been
pulled away. The terminal had
been loosened first.

He unclamped a wide-angle infra-
red camera, waited impatiently for
the developrinter to act, pulled out
the print.

And laughed. It wasn’t a good
line-caricature of himself, but it was
recognizable, chiefly by the shock
of unruly hair.

The lines were slightly blurred,
as though written by a needlepoint
of light directly on the film. There
was a jumble of writing over and
under it.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Old English, I suppose,” he mur- contribute a negative density and
mured. He looked closer. The pressure.”

writing above the caricature was a A string of symbols followed,
de Sitter version of the Riemann- ending w'ith an equals sign and a
Christoffel tensor, followed in query mark. And another corn-
crahbed but readable modern Eng- ment : “You’ll need to take time out
lish by the words : “Why reverse the to balance this one.”
sign? Do we act like anti-parti- Meredith read the symbols, then
cles?” sat down heavily on the edge of the

Underneath the drawing was an instrument bench and groaned,
energy tensor and a comment : “You Time out. But Time was already
will notice that magnetic momenta -out,- and there was neither matter

MANNA

79

nor radiation in a de Sitter uni-
verse.

Unless —

He pulled out a notebook, started
to scribble.

An hour, later Mr. Pennyhorse
and Stephen Samson came in.

Mr. Pennyhorse said : “My dear
young fellow, we were quite con-
cerned. We thought — ”

He stopped. Meredith’s blue eyes
were slightly out of focus. There
were beads of sweat on his brow
despite the coolness of the store-
room. Leaves from his notebook
and cigarette stubs littered the floor
around his feet.

He jumped like a pricked frog
when the vicar gently tapped his
shoulder, and uttered a vehement
cuss- word that startled even the
broad-minded cleric.

Samson tutted.

Meredith muttered : “Sorry sir.
But I think I nearly had it.”

“What, my son?”

Meredith looked like a ruffle-
haired schoolboy. His eyes came
back into focus. “A crossword puz-
zle clue,” he said. “Set by a spook
with a super-I.Q. Two quite irre-
concilable systems of mathematics
lumped together, the signs in an ex-
tended energy tensor reversed,
merry hell played with a temporal
factor — and yet it was beginning to
make sense.”

He smiled wryly. “A ghost who
unscrews terminals before he breaks
connections and who can make my
brain boil is a ghost worth meeting.”

so

Mr. Pennyhorse eased his pince-
nez. “Uh . . . yes. Now, don’t
you think it’s time you came to
bed? It’s four a.m. My house-
keeper has made up a comfortable
place on the divan in the sitting
room.” He took Meredith’s arm
and steered him from the store.

As they walked across the dewy
meadows towards the vicarage, with
the first pale streaks of dawn show-
ing in the sky, Samson said : “How
about the cans ?”

“Time,” replied Meredith vaguely,
“will tell.”

“And the guards ?”

“Pay them off. Send them away.
Keep the plant rolling. Fill the
transit store tonight. And I want
a freighter copter to take me to
London University this afternoon.”

Back in the transit store, the dis-
carded leaves from Meredith’s note-
book fluttered gently upwards in
the still air and disappeared.

Brother James said: “He is alone
again.”

They looked down on the sandy
head of Sidney Meredith from the
vantage point of a dehydrating
tower.

“So I perceive. And I fear this
may be our last uh . . . consignment
to our erstwhile brothers,” said
Gregory thoughtfully.

“Why?”

“You will see. In giving him the
clue to what we were doing, I gave
him the clue to what we are,
essentially.”

ASTOUNDING SC IE XCE -FICTION

They drifted down towards the
transit store.

“After you. Brother James,” said
Brother Gregory with excessive
politeness.

James adjusted his plane of inci-
dence, started through the wall,
and —

Shot backwards with a voiceless
scream of agony.

Brother Gregory laughed. “I’m
sorry. But that’s why it will be our
last consignment. Heterodyning is
painful. He is a very intelligent
fellow. The next time, he will take
care to screen both his idtra-short
generator and controls so that I
cannot touch them.”

Brother James recovered. “You
. . . you use me as a confounded
guinea pig! By the saints, you
appear to have more sympathy with
the man than with me !”

“Not more sympathy, my beloved
brother, but certainly much more in
common,” Brother Gregory replied
frankly. “Wait.”.

He drifted behind Meredith’s back
and poltered the tip of one finger
to flick a lightly-soldered wire from
a terminal behind a switch. Mere-
dith felt his scalp tingle. A pilot
light on his panel blinked out.

Meredith got up from his stool,
stretched lazily, grinned into the
empty air. He said aloud : “Right.
Help yourselves. But I warn you —
once you’re in, you don’t come out
until you agree to talk. I have a
duplicate set and a built-in circuit-
tester. The only way you can spike

them is by busting tubes. And I’ve
a hunch you wouldn’t do that.”

“No,” James muttered. “You
wouldn’t. Let us go.”

“No,” Gregory answered. “In-
side quickly — and whirl. After-
wards I shall speak with him. He
is a youth of acute sensibilities and
gentleness, whose word is his bond.”
Gregory urged his fellow-monk
to the wall. They passed within.

Meredith heard nothing, until a
faint whine began in the store. He
waited until it died away, then
knocked on the door. It seemed,
crazily, the correct thing to do.

He went into the darkness. “You
there ?”

A low and pleasant voice, direc-
tionless: “Yes. Why didn’t you

switch on your duplicate generator ?”
Meredith breathed deep. “I
didn’t think it would be necessary.
I feel we understand each other.
My name is Sidney Meredith.”
“Mine is Gregory of Ramsbury.”
“And your — friend?”

“James Brasenose. I may say
that he disapproves highly of this
conversation.”

“I can understand that. It is un-
usual. But then, you’re a very un-
usual . . . urn—”.

“ ‘Ghost’ is the common term, Mr.
Meredith. Rather inadequate, I
think, for supranormal phenomena
which are, nevertheless, subject to
known laws. Most Untranslated
spirits remain quite ignorant of
their own powers before final Trans-
lation. It was only by intensive
reading and thought that I deter-

MANNA

81

mined the principles and potentiali-
ties of my construction.”
“Anti-particles ?”

“According to de Sitter,” said
Brother Gregory, “that is what we
should be. But we are not mere
mathematical expressions. I prefer
the term ‘energy foci’. From a peru-
sal of the notes you left behind
yesterday morning — and, of course,
from your use of ultra-short waves
tonight — it seems you struck the
correct train of deduction immedi-
ately. Incidentally, where did you
obtain the apparatus at such short
notice ?”

“London University.”

Brother Gregory sighed. “I
should like to visit their laboratories.
But we are bound to this area by a
form of moral compulsion that I
cannot define or overcome. Only
vicariously, through the achieve-
ments of others, may I experience
the thrill of research.”

“You don’t do so badly,” Mere-
dith said. He was mildly surprised
that he felt quite so sane and at
ease, except for the darkness.
“Would you mind if we had a
light ?”

“I must be semipolted — or warped
— to speak with you. It’s not a
pleasant sight — floating lungs,
larynx, palate, tongue and lips. I’d
feel uncomfortable for you. We
might appear for you later, if you
wish.”

“Right. But keep talking. Give
me the how and the why. I want
this for my professional journal.”
“Will you see that the issue con-

taining your paper is placed in the
local library?”

“Surely,” Meredith said, “Two
copies.”

“Brother James is not interested.
Brother James, will you kindly stop
whispering nonsense and remove
yourself to a nexus point for a
while. I intend to converse with
Mr. Meredith. Thank you.”

The voice of Brother Gregory
came nearer, took on a slightly pro-
fessorial tone. “Any massive and
rotating body assumes the qualities
of magnetism — or rather, gravitic,
one-way flux — by virtue of its rota-
tion, and the two quantities of mag-
netic momentum and angular mo-
mentum are always proportional to
one another, as you doubtless know.”

Meredith smiled inwardly. A
lecture on elementary physics from
a ghost. Well — maybe not so ele-
mentary. He remembered the fig-
ures that he’d sweated over. But
he could almost envisage the voice of
Brother Gregory emanating from a
black-gowned instructor in front of
a classroom board.

“Take a star,” the voice continued^
“Say 78 Virginis — from whose
flaming promontories the effect was
first deduced a hundred years ago —
and put her against a counter-
whirling star of similar mass. What
happens ? Energy warp, of the kind
we use every time we polt. But
something else happens — did you
infer it from my incomplete expres-
sion ?”

82

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Meredith grinned. He said : “Yes.
Temporal warp.”

“Oh.” There was a trace of dis-
appointment in the voice..

Meredith added quickly: “But it
certainly gave me a headache figur-
ing it out.”

Gregory was evidently mollified
by the admission. “Solids through
time,” he went on. “Some weeks
ago, calculating that my inherent
field was as great in certain respects
as that of 78 Virginis, I whirled
against a longitudinal line, and
forced a stone back a few days — -
the nearest I could get to laboratory
confirmation. Knowing there would
be a logical extension of the effect
if I whirled against a field as strong
as my own, I persuaded Brother
James to co-operate with me — and
you know the result.”

“How far back?”

“According to my mathematics,
the Twelfth Century, at a time when
we were -alive. I would appreciate
your views on the paradoxes in-
volved.”

Meredith said : “Certainly. Let's
go over your math together first.
If it fits in with what I’ve already
figured, perhaps I’ll have a sugges-
tion to make. You appreciate, of
course, that I can’t let you have any
more cans ?”

“Quite. I must congratulate your
company on manufacturing a most
delicious comestible. If you will
hand me the roll of infrared film
from your camera, I can make my
calculations visible to you on the
emulsion in the darkness. Thank

you. It is a pity,” Gregory mur-
mured, “that we could not see with
our own eyes what disposal they
made of your product in the days
of our Priory.”

When, on the morning of a certain
bright summer day in 1139, the
daily consignment of Miracle Meal
failed to arrive at Selcor Priory,
thousands of disappointed refugees
went hungry.

The Prior, Dom Holland — who,
fortunately for his sanity or at least
his peace of mind, was not in a posi-
tion to separate cause from effect-
attributed the failure of supply to
the lamentable departure from grace
and moral standards of two of the
monks.

By disgracing themselves in the
kitchen garden with a female refu-
gee, he said, they had obviously
rendered the Priory unfit to receive
any further miraculous bounty.

The abject monks, Brother Greg-
ory and Brother James, were
severely chastised and warned in
drastic theological terms that it
would probably he many centuries
before they had sufficiently expiated
their sins to attain blessedness.

On the morning of another bright
summer day, the Rev. Malachi Pen-
nyhorse and Stephen Samson w r ere
waiting for Sidney Meredith in the
vicar’s comfortable study.

Meredith came in, sank into a
century-old leather easy-chair,
stretched his shoes, damp with dew r
from the meadow grass, towards the

MANN. A

AST— 4C

83

flames. He accepted a glass, of
whiskey gratefully, sipped it.

He said : “The cans are there.
And from now on, they stay in the
transit store until the copters col-
lect.”

There was an odd note of regret
in his voice.

Samson said : “Fine. Now maybe
you’ll tell us what happened yes-
terday.”

Mr. Pennyliorse said: “You . . .
uh . . . liked my parishioners, then?”

Meredith combined a smile and a
sigh. “I surely did. That Brother
Gregory had the most intense and
dispassionate intellectual curiosity of
anyone I ever met. He nearly
grounded me on some aspects of
energy mathematics. I could have
used him in my department. He’d
have made a great research man.
Brother James wasn’t a bad old guy,
either. They appeared for me — ”

“How did you get rid of them?”
Samson interrupted.

“They got rid of themselves.
Gregory told me how, by whirling
against each other with gravitic
fields cutting, they drew the cans
into a vortex of negated time that
threw them way back to the twelfth
century. After we’d been through
his math, I suggested they whirl
together.”

“What — and throw the cans
ahead?”

“No. Themselves, in a sense, since
they precipitated a future, hoped-for
state. Gregory had an idea what
would happen. So did I. He’d

only discovered the effect recently.
Curiosity got the better of him. He
had to try it out straight away. They
whirled together. The fields rein-
forced, instead of negated. Enough
in-going energy was generated to
whoop their own charges well above
capacity and equilibrium. They
just — went. As Gregory would put
it — they were Translated.”

“Upwards, I trust,” said Mr.
Pennyhorse gently.

“Amen to that," said Samson.

Upwards —

Pure thought, unbound, Earth-rid,
roaming free amid the wild bright
stars —

Thought to Thought, over galactic
vastnesses, wordless, yet swift and
clear, before egos faded —

“Why didn’t I think of this be-
fore? We might have Translated
ourselves centuries ago.”

“But then we would never have
tasted Miracle Meal.”

“That is a consideration,” agreed
the Thought that had been Brother
Gregory,

“Rememl er our third can came
the Thought that had been Brother
James.

But there was no reply. Some-
thing of far greater urgency and
interest than memories of Miracle
Meal had occurred to the Thought
that had been Brother Gregory.

With eager curiosity, it was spiral-
ing down into the heart of a star to
observe the integration of helium
at first hand.

THE END

84

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS

BY J. I. COUPLING

The most acute problem in the design of a robot, a
thinking machine , or any of the self-serving devices of
science-fiction is memory. We can make the robot's body,
its sensory equipment, its muscles and limbs. But thinking
requires association of remembered data; memory is the
essential key. So we present the Little Blue Cells!

Most of the robots I have met
have been either man-sized androids
with positronic brains to match, or
huge block-square piles of assorted
electrical junk. The small, self-
portable models I admire from a
distance, but I feel no temptation to
speculate about their inner secrets.
The workings of the big thinking
machines have intrigued me, how-
ever. It used to be that I didn’t
know whether to believe in them or
not. Now, the Bell Laboratories
relay computer, the various IBM
machines and the Eniac are actually
grinding through computations in a
manner at once superhuman and
subhuman. With the other readers
of Astounding I’ve had a sort of
conducted tour through the brain
cases of these monsters in “Modern
Computing Devices,” by E. L.
Locke. I’m pretty much convinced.
It’s beginning to look as if we’ll

know the first robot well long before
he’s born.

Perhaps some readers of science
fiction can look back to the old, un-
enlightened days and remember a
prophetic story called, I believe,
“The Thinking Machine.” The in-
ventor of that epoch had first to
devise an “electronic language” be-
fore he could build his electrical
cogitator. The modern thinking ma-
chine of the digital computer type
comes equipped with a special elec-
tronic alphabet and vocabulary if not
with a complete language. The al-
phabet has the characters off and on,
or O and 1, the digits of the binary
system of enumeration, and words
must certainly be of the form 1001-
110 — and so on. We may take it
from Mr. Locke that somewhere in
the works of our thinking machine
information will be transformed
into such a series of binary digits,

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS

85

whether it be fed in on paper tape
or picked up by an electronic eye or
ear. The machine’s most abstruse
thought, or its fondest recollection —
if such machines eventually come to
have emotions — will be stored away
as off’s and on’s in the multitudinous
blue cells of the device’s memory.

I’m sure that I’m right in describ-
ing the memory cells of the machine
as multitudinous and little — that is,
if it’s a machine of any capabilities
at all. To describe them as blue is
perhaps guessing against consider-
able odds, but there are reasons even
for this seemingly unlikely prognos-
tication.

The multitudinous part is, I think,
obvious. The more memory cells the
machine has, the more the machine
can store away — learn — the more
tables and material it. can have on
hand, and the more complicated
routines it can remember and follow.
The human brain, for instance, has
around ten billion nerve cells. It
may be that each of these can do
.more than store a single binary digit
— a single off or on, or 0 or 1. Even,
if each nerve cell stored only one
digit, that would still make the brain
a lot bigger than any computing ma-
chine contemplated at present. Pres-
ent plans for machines actually to
be built call for one hundred thou-
sand or so binary digits, or, for only
a hundred-thousandth as many stor-
age cells as the brain has nerve cells.
Mathematicians like to talk about
machines to store one to ten million
binary digits, which would still fall
short of the least estimated size of

86

the brain by a factor of one thousand
to ten thousand. But, if one hun-
dred thousand and ten million are
both small numbers as far as the
human brain is concerned, they’re
big numbers when it comes to build-
ing a machine, as we can readily
see. It is because of the size of such
numbers that we know that the
memory cells of our thinking ma-
chine will have to be small, and, we
might-add, cheap.

For instance, some present-day
computers use relays as memory
cells. Now, a good and reliable
relay, one good enough to avoid fre-
quent failure even when many thou-
sands of relays are used, costs per-
haps two dollars. If we wanted a
million cells', the cost of the relays
would thus be two million dollars,
and this is an unpleasant thought to
start with. Further, one would prob-
ably mount about a thousand relays
on one relay rack, and so there
would be a thousand relay racks.
These could perhaps be packed into
a space of about six thousand square
feet — around eighty by eighty feet.
Then, there would have to be quite
a lot of associated equipment, for
more relays would be needed to
make a connection to a given mem-
ory cell and to utilize the informa-
tion in it. This would increase the
cost and the space occupied a good
deal. The thing isn’t physically im-
possible, but it seems an unpromis-
ing start if we wish to advance fur-
ther - , toward the at least ten thou-
sand-fold greater complexity of the
human brain.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

INSULATING STORAGE SURFACE

Figure 1. A cross-section view of the selectron. Information is
stored as a voltage on the inner side of the insulating storage sur-
face. The voltageJs established by electron streams flowing through
the “windows” formed by the bars and rings of the selectron grid.
Such electron streams are also used in reading the information off.

Fortunately, at just the time it
was needed, something better than
the relay has come along. That
something, the possessor of the little
blue cells, is the selectron. It is a
vacuum tube which can serve in the
place of several thousand relays. It
promises to be reliable, small and,
eventually, at least, cheaper than re-
lays, and in addition it is very much
faster — perhaps a thousand-fold.
The selectron was invented by dn
RCA engineer, Dr. Jan A. Rajch-
man — pronounced Rikeman — -f o r
the purpose of making an improved
computer, and so its appearance at
just the right time is, after all, no

THE LITTLE BLCE CELLS

accident. Instead, it is a tribute to
Dr. Rajchman’s great inventive abil-
ity. Lots of people who worked on
computers knew what the problem
was, but only he thought of the se-
lectron.

You might wonder how to go
about inventing just what is needed,
and if Dr. Rajchman’s career can
cast any light on this, it’s certainly
worth looking into. -Did he, for
instance, think about computers
from his earliest technical infancy?
The answer is that he certainly
didn’t. I have a copy of his doctoral
thesis? “Le C our ant Residuel dans
Les Multiplicateurs D’ Electrons

87

Figure 2. A perspective view ‘
showing the arrangement of bars
and rings forming the selectron
grid and its windows.

£.lectrostatiques,” which tells me that
he was born in London in 1911, that
he took his degree at Le fieole Poly-
technique Federate, at Zurich and
thereafter did research on a radically
new type of electrically focused
photo-multiplier — see “Universes to
Order,” in Astounding for Febru-
ary, 1944. I am not sure how many
different problems he has worked on
since, but during the war he did do
some very high-powered theoretical
work on the betatron, as well as
some experimental work on the same

88

device. It would seem that the best
preparation for inventing is just
to become thoroughly competent in
things allied to the field in which
something new is needed.

What was needed in connection
with computers was, as we have
said, a memory cell, or, rather, lots
of them. What do these cells have
to do ? First of all, one must be able
to locate a given cell in the memory,
so as to put information into it or
take information out. Then, one
must be able to put into the cell
the equivalent of a 0 or a 1. One
must have this stay there indefinitely,
Until it is deliberately changed. Fi-
nally, one must be able to read off
what is stored in the cell; one must
be able to tell whether it signifies 0
or 1 without altering what is in the
cell. The selectron has these fea-
tures.

You might be interested in some
of the earlier suggestions for using
an electron tube as a memory in a
computing machine. The electron
beam of a cathode ray tube sounds
like just the thing for locating a
piece of information, for instance.
One has merely to deflect it the
right amount horizontally and ver-
tically to reach a given spot on the
screen of the tube. One .wishes,
however, to store a particular piece
of information in a particular place
and then to find that same place
again and retrieve that same piece of
information. This would mean re-
producing the exact voltages used
on the deflecting plates when the in-
formation was stored, and that is

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

by no means easy. Further, if the
accelerating voltage applied to the
tube changes, the deflecting voltage
needed to deflect the beam to a given
place changes, and this adds diffi-
culty. When we realize further that
our memory simply must not make
mistakes, we see that there are real
objections to locating and relocating
a given spot by simply deflecting
an electron beam to it. The selectron
has a radically different means for
getting electrons to a selected spot —
the selectron grid.

The features of the selectron
which Dr. Rajchman holds in his
hand — page 163 — are illustrated

simply in Figure 1. There is a
central cathode and around it a con-
centric accelerating grid. When this
grid is made positive with respect to
the cathode, a stream of electrons
floods the entire selectron grid, the
next element beyond the accelerating
grid. The selectron grid, is made up
of a number of thin bars located in a
circular array, pointing radially out-
ward, and a number of thin rings,
spaced the same distance apart as are
the bars. Figure 2 shows a portion
of the selectron grid formed by the
rings and bars. The rings and bars
together form a number of little
rectangular openings or windows.

Now, in operation each bar and
ring of the selectron grid is held
either several hundred volts positive
with respect to the cathode, or else
a little negative with respect to the
cathode. After a definite pattern of
voltages has been established on the

selectron grid, the accelerating grid
is made positive and the selectron
grid is flooded with electrons. What
happens? Let us consider first the
bars of the selectron grid. Figure
3 tells the story. I f two neighboring
bars are negative, the approaching
electrons are simply repelled and
turned back. If an electron enters
the space between a positive bar and
a negative bar, it is so strongly at-
tracted toward the positive bar that
it strikes it and is lost. Only if
the bars on both sides of the space
which the electron enters are posi-
tive does the electron get through.
At the rings, the story is the same ;
an electron can pass between two
rings only if both are positive; it is
stopped if either one or both are neg-
ative. Thus we conclude that elec-
trons can pass through a little
window formed by two bars and
two rings only if both bars and both
rings are positive. I f both bars and
both rings forming a window are

Figure 3. Electrons can pass be-
tween two bars or rings only if
both are positive. If both are
negative, the electron is turned
back. If one is negative, the
electron is deflected and lost on
the positive bar or ring.

THE JLITTLE BLUE CELLS

89

held positive, the window is open;
if one or more of the bars or rings
are negative, the window is closed.
Thus, we have a means for letting
electrons through one window at a
time.

In the early model selectrons there
were sixty-four apertures between
bars around the tube, and sixty-four
apertures lengthwise, giving four
thousand ninety-six windows in all,
and any one of these .gould be se-
lected for the passage of electrons
by applying proper voltages to the
bars and rings. Does this mean
that we must have one hundred
twenty-eight leads into the tube for
this alone, one for each bar and one
for each ring? The tube would
certainly work if it had one hundred
twenty-eight leads to the selectron
grid, but Dr. Rajchman’s ingenuity
has cut this down instead to thirty-
two, a saving by a factor of four.
How is this done? The table of
Figure 4 tells the story. Here we
have in the top row the numbers
of the bars, in order, sixty-four in
all. These bars are connected to two
sets of eight leads. The second and
third rows show to which lead of a
given set a bar is connected. Thus,
Bar 1 is connected to Lead 1 of Set I.
Bar 2 is connected to Lead 1 of Set
II, while Bar 64 is connected to
Lead 8 of Set II. To save*space,
some of the bars have been omitted
from the table.

You will observe that if we make
Lead 7 of Set I positive, and all
the rest of the leads of Set I nega-
tive, Bars /j, 29, 45 and 61 will be

90

positive. Then, if we make Lead
2 of Set II positive and all the
other leads of Set II negative, Bars
4, 8, 12 and 16 will be positive. All
the bars which do not appear in
either of the above listings will be
negative. Now, the only adjacent
bars listed are 12 and /j, which have
been written in italics. Hence, when
Lead 7 of Set I and Lead 2 of Set
II are made positive and all the other
leads negative, electrons can pass
between the two adjacent positive
bars 12 and 13, but not between any
other bars.' Thus, by selecting one
lead from Set I and one lead from
Set II, we can select any of the
sixty- four spaces between bars.

The thoughtful reader will have
noticed, by the way, that there are
only sixty-three spaces between
sixty-four bars. This, however,
omits the space out to infinity from
Bar 1 and back from infinity to Bar
64. We can in effect shorten this
. space by adding an extra bar beyond
the sixty-fourth and connecting it
to Bar 1.

The same sort of connection used
with the bars is made to the rings,
so that by selecting and making posi-
tive one lead each in two sets of
eight leads we can select any of the
sixty-four spaces between rings.
Thus, in the end we have four sets
of eight leads each, two sets for
the bars and two for the rings. We
make positive one wire in each set
at a time. The number of possible
combinations we can get this way
is four thousand ninety-six, and
each allows electrons to go through
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

8ARS

D

i

a

a

0

B

B

B

B

1

n

1

i

i

s

1

B

U2

13

ii

1

n

i

■03uU

0

■

■

B

■

B

B

■

i

B

a

■

1

K

b

a

■

ESa

■

0

i

a

B

■

D

B

m

■

m

■

II

■

|

II

■

B

■

B

Figure 4. The sixty-four bars are connected to two sets of eight
leads in the fashion shown. By making one lead of each set positive
and the others negative, it is possible to make any pair of adjacent
bars positive and at the same time have no other adjacent pair

positive.

just one window out of the four
thousand ninety-six formed by the
bars and rings of the selectron grid.
The action is entirely positive. A
given window is physically located
in a given place. Small fluctuations
in the voltages applied to the bars
and rings will not interfere with the
desired operation. This is a lot
different from trying to locate a
given spot by waving an electron
beam around.

The selectron grid and its action
are, of course, only a part of the
mysteries of the selectron. They
provide a means for directing a
stream of electrons through one of
several thousand little apertures at
will. But, how can this stream of
electrons be used in storing a signal
and then in reading it off again?
Part of the answer is not new. For
some time electronic experts have
been thinking of storing a signal on
an insulating surface as an electric
charge deposited on the surface by
means of an electron stream. Thus,
by putting electrons on a sheet of
mica, for instance, we can make the
surface negative, and by taking them

off we can make it positive. It is
easy enough to do either of these
things, as we shall see in a moment.

There are two very serious diffi-
culties with such a scheme, however.
First, how shall we keep the positive
or negative charge on the insulating
surface indefinitely? It will inevi-
tably tend to leak off. Second, how
can we determine whether the sur-
face is charged positively or nega-
tively without disturbing the charge?
The logical exploring tool is an elec-
tron beam, but won’t the beam drain
the charge off in the very act of ex-
ploration? Both of these difficulties
are overcome in the selectron. To
understand how, we must know a
little about secondary emission.

Beyond the accelerating and se-
lectron grids of the selectron, as
shown in Figure 1, there is a sheet
of mica indicated as “storage sur-
face.” This has a conducting back-
ing. We are interested in what
happens when electrons pass
through an open window in the se-
lectron grid — one made up of four
positive bars and rings — and strike
the mica. The essential ingredients
of the situation are illustrated in the

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS

91

simplified drawing of Figure 5.
Here the accelerating grid and the
selectron grid are lumped together
and shown as positive with respect
to the cathode. Electrons are ac-
celerated from the cathode, pass
through the accelerating grid and the
open window of the selectron grid,
and shoot toward the mica storage
surface. What happens? That de-
pends on the potential of the storage
surface with respect to the cathode.

In Figure 6 the current reaching
the part of the storage surface be-
hind an open window is plotted vs.
the potential of that part of the
storage surface with respect to the
cathode. Potential is negative with
respect to the cathode to the left
of the vertical axis and positive with
respect to the cathode to the right
of the vertical axis. Current to the
storage surface is negative— elec-
trons reaching the surface and stick-
ing — below the horizontal axis and
positive — more electrons leaving the
surface than reaching it — above the
horizontal axis. The curve shows
how current to the surface varies
as the potential of the surface is
varied.

If the surface is negative with re-
spect to the cathode, the electrons
shot toward it are turned back
before they reach it and the current
to the surface is zero. If the sur-
face is just a little positive, the elec-
trons shot toward it are slowed down
by the retarding field between the
very positive selectron grid and the
much less positive storage surface,
and. they strike the surface feebly
!>2

and stick, constituting a negative
current flow to the surface, and
tending to make the surface more
negative. If the potential of the
storage surface is a little more posi-
tive with respect to the cathode, the
electrons reach it with enough
energy to knock a few electrons out
of it. These are whisked away to
the more positive selectron grid.
These negative electrons leaving the
surface are equivalent to a positive
current to the surface. There are
now as many electrons striking as
before, but there are also some leav-
ing, and there is less net negative
current to the surface. Finally, at
some potential labeled V 0 in Figure
6, one secondary electron is driven
from the surface for each primary
electron which strikes it, and the net
current to the surface is zero. If the
potential of the storage surface is
higher than V„, each primary elec-
tron releases more than one second-
ary and there is a net flow of
electrons away from the surface,
equivalent to a positive current to
the surface. This tends to make the
storage surface more positive.

As the potential of the storage
surface rises further above V 0 , the
current for a time becomes more and
more positive. Then, abruptly in
the neighborhood of the potential V B
of the selectron grid itself, the cur-
rent becomes negative again and
stays negative. Why is this? The
primary electrons still strike the
storage surface energetically and
drive out more than one electron
each. The fact is that these sec-

A8TODNDING SCIEXCE-FICTION

ondary electrons leave the surface Thus, the current to the storage sur-
with very little speed. When the face is again negative,
storage surface is more positive than Our mechanism for holding the
the selectron grid, there is a retard- storage surface positive or negative

ing field at the storage surface which is immediately apparent from Fig-

tends to turn the secondaries back ure 6. If the surface is more posi-

toward the storage surface. Hence, five than V„ the current to it is

there is still, a flow of primaries— a negative and its potential will tend

negative current — to the surface, but to fall. If the surface lias a potential

the secondaries are turned back be- between V 0 and V s , the current to

fore reaching the selectron grid and it is positive and its potential will

fall on the storage surface again, tend to rise. Hence, if the storage

ACCELERATING AND
SELECTRON GRIDS

INSULATING STORAGE
SURFACE

CONDUCTING BACKING

Figure 5. When a window in the selectron^ grid is open — the bars
and rings on all sides positive— electrons shoot through it toward
the storage surface. What happens to the electrons depends on the
potential of the storage surface with respect to the cathode. The
potential of the storage surface is controlled both by the flow of
electrons to and from it, and by the potential of the conducting

backing plate.

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS

93

POTENTIAL OF SURFACE

Figure 6. If the storage surface is negative with respect to the
cathode, no electrons reach it — 0 current. If it is a little positive,
electrons reach it but few leave — negative current, if it is more
positive, secondary electrons leave, and if it is more positive than
some potential V„, more secondaries leave than primaries strike —
positive current. If the storage surface is at a higher potential than
V s , the potential of the selectron grid, the secondaries which leave
are turned back — negative current to the storage surface.

surface initially has any potential
higher than V 0 , current will flow to
it in such a way as to tend to make
its potential V s , the potential of the
selectron grid. If, on the other
hand, the potential is between O and
V 0 , the current to the surface will
be negative and the potential of the
surface will tend to fall to O. If
the potential of the surface is nega-
tive with respect to the cathode —
less than O — there is no current to
it from the electron stream and
hence no tendency for the potential
94

to rise and fall. Actually, some
leakage would probably result in a
very slight tendency for the poten-
tial to rise.

We see, then, that when it is
bombarded by electrons, a part of
the storage surface tends naturally
to assume one of two potentials, V a
or O. If it has initially any other
potential, it tends to come back to
one of these. Which potential it
assumes is determined by whether
the initial potential is greater or less

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

than V 0 . Thus, if we store informa-
tion on the part of the storage sur-
face behind a particular window by
making this area have a potential V s
with respect to the cathode — mean-
ing, say, 1— or O — meaning, O —
and if this potential changes a little
through electrical leakage, perhaps
to adjacent portions at a different
potential, we can recover or regen-
erate the original potential merely
by opening the window of the se-
lectron grid and flooding the area
with electrons. In fact, we can peri-
odically regenerate the potentials
behind all windows by opening all
windows at once and flooding the
whole surface with electrons. This
is what is done in the operation of
the selectron, and this regenerative
feature, which makes it possible to
retain the stored information in-
definitely despite electrical leakage,
is one of the most ingenious and
important features of the selectron.

How do we get the information on
the portions of the storage surface
behind the various windows? That
is, how do we initially bring some
portions of the surface to the poten-
tial V 3 and others to the potential
V 0 ? In this process of writing in-
formation into the tube, we first
open the particular one of the
four thousand ninety-six windows
behind which we wish to store a
particular piece of information, thus
flooding a little portion of the sur-
face with electrons. Then, to the
terminals T of Figure 5, between the
cathode. and the conducting backing
of the storage surface, we apply a
THE LITTLE BLT’E CELLS

very sharply rising positive pulse,
shown as the dashed line of Figure
7. Because of the capacitance be-
tween this backing plate and the
front of the storage surface, where
the electrons fall, this drives the
front of the storage surface positive.
Then the pulse applied to the con-
ducting backing falls slowly to zero,
as shown. However, the action of
the electrons falling on the surface
tends to make it assume the potential
V s , and so if the pulse falls off
slowly enough the portion of the
surface on which electrons fall is
left at the potential V s , as shown by
the solid line of Figure 7. Applica-
tion of the pulse will leave the por-
tion of the storage surface behind
the open window at the potential V s
regardless of whether its initial po-
tential is V s or O, and the pulse
will not affect portions of the sur-
face behind closed windows, because
no electrons reach them.

This tells us how we can bring any
selected area of the storage surface
to the potential V s which, we can
say, corresponds to writing 1 in a
particular cell of this memory tube.
By flooding a given area or cell with
electrons and applying a sharply fall-
ing, negative pulse, which rises again
gradually toward O— the dashed
pulse of Figure 7 upside down — we
can bring any selected area of the
storage surface to O potential, and
thus write O in any selected cell of
„the memory.

Thus, each little area of the stor-
age surface behind each window of
the selectron grid is a cell of our

95

memory. By opening a particular
window — through making one lead
of each of the four sets of eight
selectron grid leads positive — and
pulsing the conducting backing posi-
tive or negative, we can make the
little area of the storage surface be-
hind that window assume a potential
V 3 or a potential O, and so can, in
effect, write 1 or 0 in that particular
memory cell. By opening all win-
dows periodically and flooding all
areas with electrons, we can peri-
odically bring all little areas back to
their proper potentials, either V s or
O, despite leakage of electrons to
or away from the little areas. We
can, that is, put thousands of pieces
of information into the selectron and
keep them there. What about read-
ing? How can we get this informa-
tion out?

. Imagine that the entire inner stor-
age surface is covered with a phos-
phor or fluorescent material like that
used on cathode-ray tube screens
or inside of fluorescent lights. Now,
suppose we open one window of the
selectron, shooting electrons at a
particular area of the surface. If
that area has a potential O, the elec-
trons will'be repelled from it. But,
if that area has a potential V s , cor-
responding to 1, the electrons will
strike the fluorescent surface vig-
orously, emitting a glow of blue
light. Suppose we let this light fall
on a photo-multiplier, of the type
Dr. Rajchman worked on earlier
in his career. Then, when we open
a given window of the selectron, if
the potential of the surface behind

the window is O, we get nothing out
of the multiplier. But, if the po-
tential is V s , there is a flash of light,
and a pulse of current from the
multiplier. And so, we can not only
write a O or a 1 in each little
memory cell of the selectron, we can
not only keep this information there
indefinitely, but we can also read it
off at will.

Dr. Rajchman has devised other
ways for reading the stored infor-
mation in the selectron, but the use
of a phosphor-coated storage surface
together with a photo-multiplier has
been one of the preferred methods.
I have spoken of the phosphor as
one giving blue light. This is be-
cause the photo-multiplier is more
sensitive to blue light than to other
colors. And so, I predicted that the
memory cells of the thinking ma-
chines will be not only multitudinous
and small, but also blue.

Of course the selectron provides
only a part of the thinking machine
— that is, the memory. Associated
with it there must be circuits in
tubes to seek put stored information,
to make use of it to obtain new in-
formation, to write in that new in-
formation, and to make use of the
new information in turn. All this
is a field apart. Sill, there is one
wrinkle which is so intimately con-
nected with the use of the selectron
that it deserves mention here. I
have referred to the O or 1 which
a cell of the selectron can store as
a binary digit or, alternately, as a
letter of the electronic alphabet

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

which the machine understands.
Now, usually we don't want to store
isolated digits or letters ; we want to
store complete numbers or words —
combinations of 1 and O, as, 10011.
This is 19 in binary notation, and
might in some instance stand for the
nineteenth word in a dictionary.
When we look up a number or a
word, we want it all at once, not
piecemeal.

When we want to write many
multi-digit numbers in a book, as,

in a table of logarithms, for in-
stance, we usually assign a vertical
column for each digit 'to be stored,
and write each digit of a given num-
ber in a different column, along the
same row. Thus, entries in a log table
appear as in Figure 8. Suppose
that in using the selectron we assign
a different tube to each binary digit
of the numbers to be stored. If
we wish to store twenty-digit num-
bers, we will need twenty tubes.
Each tube will, in effect, be a given

TIME

Figure 7. To make an element of the storage surface assume a
potential V its window is opened, it is flooded with electrons, and
a sharp pulse is applied to the conducting backing. This drives the
surface positive through capacitive coupling. The pulse is allowed
to fall gradually to 0 — dashed curve. The surface at first falls with
the pulse, but the action of the electron stream tends to hold it at a
potential V s . A sharp negative pulse will leave the surface at 0

potential.

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS

97

column of our storage space. The
different cells in a tube will repre-
sent different rows. Thus, Cell 1
of Tube 1 will be Row 1 Column 1,
Cell 1 of Tube 2 will be Row 1 Col-
umn 2, while Cell 10 of Tube 1
will be Row 10 Column 1, et cetera.

We want to look up all the digits
in a given row at once. This means
that we want to open corresponding
windows in all the tubes at once,
and so we can connect the corre-
sponding selectron grid leads of all

Figure 8. In storing multi-digit
numbers in a table, we write the
different digits of a given num-
ber in different columns, so that
all of a given number will lie
along a single horizontal row, as
in the log table above. In stor-
ing binary digits of multi-digit
binary numbers using electrons,
a separate selectron is provided
to represent each column. The
rows are represented by the dif-
ferent windows. Thus, the first
window of the first selectron is
Row 1 Column 1, while the first
window of the second selectron
is Row 1 Column 2, et cetera.

twenty tubes together. Thus, if we
want to store a number in Row 1,
we apply voltages to the selectron
grid leads which will open Window
1 in all tubes. We are then ready
to read the number in Row 1 or to
write a new number in. The twenty
photo-multipliers which read the
twenty selectrons are not connected
in parallel, but are connected sepa-
rately to carry off the twenty digits
of the number in Row 1 to their
proper destinations. Perhaps these
twenty leads from the twenty photo-
multipliers may go to the twenty
backing plates of another twenty
selectrons to which it is desired to
transfer the number. We see, thus,
how a whole table of numbers can
be stored in twenty selectrons. The
windows 1, 2, 3 et cetera, can repre-
sent. for instance, the angle of which
we want the sine. The first selectron
can store the first digits of all the
sines, the second selectron can store
all the second digits, et cetera.
The twenty digits of the sine of any
angle — any window number — can be
read off simultaneously from the
photo multiplier- of the twenty se-
lectrons.

The selectron isn’t perfect by any
means. Perhaps it’s not even the
final answer. At the moment, in its
early form, it may be almost as
expensive as relays, but that’s partly
because it’s new. It’s certainly a
great deal more compact than re-
lays, a very great deal faster, and
probably more reliable as well. It
represents a first huge stride in the
electronics of the thinking machine.
astounding science-fiction

08

Just how far it takes us is up to a
lot of mathematicians, a lot of cir-
cuit gadgeteers, and, especially, to

Dr. Jan A. Rajchman and RCA,
to whom we must look for smaller,
cheaper and better selectrons.

THE END

YOU'LL BE SEEING TITANIUM!

Very few metallic elements are present in the Earth's crust in really large
quantity ; of those few, only iron, magnesium and aluminum have been useful as
structural metals. Copper, lead, zinc, silver, tungsten, gold, platinum, cobalt, nickel —
all are, actually rare contaminants in the planet’s rocks. The common metallic
elements include the big three, plus calcium, sodium, potassium, all familiar materials,
and— titanium.

Titanium is not easy to refine from its ores — plentiful ores though they are — and
nobody saw any particular reason for trying to refine it. But they do now, and
they've developed mass-production techniques that will rapidly bring down the price
of the metal. It turns out that titanium is one of the hottest metal discoveries of
all time ! Titanium is tough, very strong, halfway between aluminum and steel in
weight, almost one hundred percent immune to corrosive atmospheres, and plenti-
fully available in ore form. It is at least as strong as steel, even now when practi-
cally nothing is known of titanium’s metallurgy, and its alloy possibilities, and so
immune to corrosion, even in a brine-spray test, that it will make painting of
structural parts of marine equipment unnecessary. It’s a silvery-white metal, density
4.S vs. 7.85 for iron and 2.70 for aluminum. Both steel and useful aluminum alloys
corrode rapidly in brine-spray tests.

Titanium became of interest in one field after another in the last decade. First
was the use of titanium dioxide as a white pigment for paints ; it’s whiter than white
lead, and will not darken in sulphur-laden air. Then titanium dioxide was discovered
by the electronics industries — see Locke's article on dielectrics in the August 1948
Astounding.

And now jewelers are going after titanium dioxide. A new discovery has been
made; titanium dioxide, although plentiful in nature, does not occur as large clear
crystals as do the oxides of zirconium (zircons), .aluminum (ruby, sapphire, emerald)
and beryllium (beryls). But synthetic crystals of TiCt. have now been produced
in sizes up to 80 carats or more — and they're astonishing jewels. They ard water-
white, blue-white, or any rainbow tint you wish by the inclusion of traces., of im-
purities. And — the index of refraction is 2.70.

The importance of that statistic is this; diamond, the most brilliant of jewels, is
brilliant because of its very high index of refraction, which breaks up and shatters
the light rays striking the faceted crystal. But diamond has an index of only 2.4—
titanium dioxide is apprecibaly more brilliant than the most brilliant of all heretofore
known jewels!

You’ll be hearing from titanium; space ships are very apt to be made of it. It has
a high melting point, great strength and toughness (all of which aluminum and its
alloys lack) and low weight plus resistance to corrosion which steel lacks.

THE LITTLE BLUE CELLS

AST— 5C

99

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

BY LEWIS PADGETT

It isn’t often a man gets hold of a slave like that! But John Fowler
was just the man to use him hard, and to the last hit of his
strength. Which, under the circumstances, was 'only justice. . .

Illustrated by Cartier

He felt cold and weak, strangely,
intolerably, inhumanly zveak with a
weakness of the blood and bone, of
the mind and soul He sazv his sur-
roundings dimly, but he saw — other
things — with a swimming clarity
that had no meaning to him. He
saw causes and effects as tangible
before him as he had once seen trees
and grass. Bat remote , indifferent,
part of another world.

Somehoiv there was a door before
him. He reached vaguely —

It was almost ivholly a reflex ■
gesture that moved his finger toward
the doorbell.

The chimes played three soft
notes.

John Fowler was staring at a
toggle switch. He felt baffled. The
thing had suddenly spat at him and
died. Ten minutes ago he had
thrown the main switch, unscrewed
the wall plate and made hopeful
gestures with a screwdriver, but the
only result was a growing suspicion
that this switch would never work

again. Like the house itself, it was
architecturally extreme, and the
wires were sealed in so that the
whole unit had to he replaced if it
went bad.

Minor irritations bothered Fowler
unreasonably today. He wanted the
house in perfect running order for
the guest he was expecting. He had
been chasing Veronica Wood for a
long time, and he had an idea this
particular argument might tip the
balance in the right direction.

He made a note to keep a supply
of spare toggle switches handy. The
chimes were still echoing softly as
Fowder went into the hall and
opened the front door, preparing a
smile. But it wasn’t Veronica Wood
on the doorstep. It was a blank
man.

That was Fowler’s curious im-
pression, and it was to recur to him
often in the year to come. Now he
stood staring at the strange empti-
ness of the face that returned his
stare without really seeming to see
him. The man’s features were so

100

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

typical they might have been a nothing here. Some erasure, some

matrix, without the variatiqps that expunging, had wiped out all trace

combine to make up the recogniz- of character and personality,
able individual. But Fowler thought Empty.

that even if he had known those And empty of strength, too-?- for
features, it would be hard to recog- the visitant lurched forward and fell
nize a man behind such utter empti- into Fowler’s arms,
ness. You can’t recognize a man Fowler caught him automatically,
who isn’t there. And there was rather horrified at the lightness of

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

101

the body he found himself support-
ing. “Hey,” he said, and, realizing
the inadequacy of that remark,
added a few pertinent questions.
But there was no answer. Syncope
had taken over.

Fowler grimaced and looked hope-
fully up and down the road. He
saw nobody. So he lifted his guest
across the threshold and carried him
easily to a couch. Fine, he thought.
Veronica due any minute, and this
paper weight barging in.

Brandy seemed to help. It
brought no color to the pale cheeks,
but it pried the eyelids open to show
a blank, wondering look.

“O. K. now?” Fowler asked,
wanting to add, “Then go home.”

. There was only the questioning
stare. Fowler stood up with some
vague intention of calling a doctor,
and then remembered that the tele-
visor instrument hadn’t yet been
delivered. For this was a day when
artificial shortages had begun to sup-
plant real ones, when raw material
was plentiful but consumers were
wary, and were, therefore, put on a
starvation diet to build their ap-
petites and loosen their purse
strings. The televisor would be
delivered when the company thought
Fowler had waited long enough.

Luckily he was versatile. As long
as the electricity was on he could
jury-rig anything else he needed, in-
cluding facilities for first aid. He
gave his patient the routine treat-
ment, with satisfying results. Until,
that is, the brandy suddenly hit cer-
102

tain nerve centers and emesis
resulted.

Fowler lugged his guest back
from the bathroom and left him on
the bed in the room with the
broken light switch to recuperate.
Convalescence was rapid. Soon the
man sat up, but all he did was look
at Fowler hopefully. Questions
brought no answer.

Ten minutes later the blank man
was still sitting there, looking blank.

The door chimes sang again.
Fowler, assured that his guest w'asn’t
in arficitlo mortis, began to feel ir-
ritation. Why the devil did the guy
have to barge in now, at this par-
ticular crucial moment? In fact,
where had he come from? It was a
mile to the nearest highway, along
a dirt road, and there was no dust on
the man’s shoes. Moreover, there
was something indefinably disturb-
ing about the — lack in his appear-
ance. There was no other word that
fitted so neatly. Village idiots are
popularly termed “’wanting,” and,
while there was no question of
idiocy here, the man did seem —

What?

For no reason at all Fowler
shivered. The door chimes re-
minded him of Veronica. He said:
“Wait here. You'll be all right.
Just wait. I’ll be back — ”

There was a question in the soul-
less eyes.

Fowler looked around. “There’re
some books on the shelf. Or fix
this — ” He pointed to the wall
switch. “If you want anything, call

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

me.” On that note of haphazard
solicitude he went out, carefully
closing the door. After all, he
wasn’t his brother’s keeper. And
he hadn’t spent days getting the
new house in shape to have his
demonstration go haywire because
of an unforeseen interruption.

Veronica was waiting on the
threshold. “Hello,” Fowler said.
“Have any trouble finding the place?
Come in.”

“It sticks up like a sore thumb,”
she informed him. “Hello. So this
is the dream house, is it?”

“Right. After I figure out the
right method of dream-analysis, it’ll
be perfect.” He took her coat, led
her into the livingroom, which was
shaped like a fat comma and walled
with triple-seal glass, and decided
not to kiss her. Veronica seemed
withdrawn. That was regrettable.
He suggested a drink.

“Perhaps I’d better have one,” she
said, “before I look the joint over.”

Fowler began battling with a
functional bar. It should have
poured and mixed drinks at the spin
of a dial, but instead there came a
tinkle of breaking glass. Fowler
finally gave up and went back to the
old-fashioned method. “Highball?
Well, theoretically, this is a perfect
machine for living. But the archi-
tect wasn’t as perfect as his theoreti-
cal ideas. Methods of construction
have to catch up with ideas, you
know.”

“This room’s nice,” Veronica ack-
nowledged, relaxing ' on airfoam.
With a glass in her hand, she seemed

more cheerful. “Almost every-
thing’s curved, isn’t it? And I like
the windows.”

“It’s the little things that go
wrong. If a fuse blows, a whole
unit goes out. The windows— I in-
sisted on those.”

“Not much of a view.”

“Unimproved. Building restric-
tions, you know, I wanted to build
on the top of a hill a few miles away,
but the township laws wouldn’t allow
it. This house is unorthodox. Not
very, but enough. I might as well
have tried to put up a Wright house
in Williamsburg. This place is func-
tional and convenient — ”

“Except when you want a drink ?”

“Trivia,” Fowler said airily. “A
house is complicated. You expect
a few things to go wrong at first.
I’ll fix ’em as they come up. I’m a
jerk of all trades. Want to look
around ?”

“Why not?” Veronica said. It
wasn’t quite the enthusiastic reaction
for which Fowler had hoped, but he
made the best of it. Pie showed her
the house. It was larger than it had
seemed from the outside. There was
nothing super about it, but it was
— theoretically — a functional unit,
breaking away completely from the
hidebound traditions that had made
attics, cellars, and conventional bath-
rooms and kitchens as vestigially
unfunetiorial as the vermiform ap-
pendix. “Anyway,” Fowler said,
“statistics show most accidents hap-
pen in kitchens and bathrooms.
They can’t happen here.”

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

103

“What’s this?” Veronica asked,
opening a door. Fowler grimaced,
“The guest room,” he said. “That
was the single mistake. I’ll use it
for storage or something. The room
hasn’t any windows.”

“The light doesn’t work — ”

“Oh, I forgot. I turned off the
main switch. Be right back.” He
hurried to the closet that held the
house controls, flipped the switch,
and returned. Veronica was looking
into a room that was pleasantly
furnished as a bedroom, and,
with tinted, concealed fluorescents,
seemed light and airy despite the
lack of windows.

“I called you,” she said. “Didn’t
you hear me ?”

Fowler smiled and touched a wall.
“Sound-absorbent. The whole house
is that way. The architect did a
good job, but this room—”

“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing — unless you’re inside
and the door should get stuck. I’ve
a touch of claustrophobia.”

“You should face these fears,”
said Veronica, who had read it some-
where. Fowler repressed a slight
irritation. There were times when
he had felt an impulse to slap Ve-
ronica across the chops, but her gor-
geousness entirely outweighed any
weakness she might have in other
directions.

“Air conditioning, too,” he said,
touching another switch. ' “Fresh as
a spring breeze. Which reminds me.
Does your drink want freshening?”
“Yes,” Veronica said, and they
returned to the comma-shaped room.

It was appreciably darker. The girl
went to the window and stared
through the immense, wall-long
pane.

“Storm coming up,” she said.
“The car radio said it’ll be a bad one.
I’d better go, Johnny.”

“Must you? You just got here.”

“I have a date. Anyway, I’ve got
to work early tomorrow.” She was
a Korys model, much in demand.

Fowler turned from the recalci-
trant bar and reached for her hand.

“I wanted to ask you to marry
me,” he said.

There was silence, while leaden
grayness pressed down beyond the
window, and yellow hills rippled un-
der the gusts of unfelt wind. Ve-
ronica met his gaze steadily.

“I know you did. I mean — I’ve
been expecting you to.”

“Well?”

She moved her shoulders uneasily.

“Not now.”

“But— Veronica. Why not?

We’ve known each other for a couple
of years — ”

“The truth is— I’m not sure about
you, Johnny. Sometimes I think I
love you. But sometimes I’m not
sure I even like you.”

He frowned. “I don’t get that.”

“Well, I can’t explain it. It’s just
that I think you could be either a
very nice guy or a very nasty one.
And I’d like to be quite certain first.
Now I’ve got to go. It’s starting to
rain.”

On that note she went out, leaving
Fowler with a sour taste in his
mouth. He mixed himself another

104

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

drink and wandered over to his
drawing board, where some sketches
were sheafed up in a disorderly
fashion. Nuts. He was making
good dough at commercial art, he’d
even got himself a rather special
house —

One of the drawings caught his
eye. It was a background detail, in-
tended for incorporation later in a
larger picture. It showed a gargoyle,
drawn with painstaking care, and a
certain quality of vivid precision that
was very faintly unpleasant. Ve-
ronica —

Fowler suddenly remembered his
guest and hastily set down his drink.
He had avoided that room during the
tour of inspection, managing to put
the man completely out of his mind.
That was too bad. He could have
asked Veronica to send out a doctor
from the village.

But the guest didn’t seem to need
a doctor. He was working on the
wall-switch, at some danger, Fowler
thought, of electrocuting himself.
“Look out!” Fowler said sharply.
“It’s hot!” But the man merely
gave him a mild, blank stare and
passed his hand downward before
the panel.

The light went out.

It came on again, to show the man
finishing an upward gesture.

No toggle switch stub protruded
from the slot in the center of the
plate. Fowler blinked. “What — ■?”
he said.

Gesture. Blackout, Another ges-
ture.

“What did you do to that?” Fow-

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

ler asked, but there was no audible
reply.

Fowler drove south through the
storm, muttering about ham electri-
cians. Beside him the guest sat, smil-
ing vacantly. The one thing Fowler
wanted was to get the guy off his
hands. A doctor, or a cop, in the
village, would solve that particular
problem. Or, rather, that would
have been the solution, if a minor
landslide hadn’t covered the road at
a crucial point.

With difficulty Fowler turned the
car around and drove back home,
cursing gently.

The blank man sat obediently at
his side.

They were marooned for three
days. Luckily the larder was well-
stocked, and the power lines, which
ran underground, weren’t cut by the
storm. The water-purifying unit
turned the muddy stream from out-
side into crystalline nectar, the FM
set wasn’t much bothered by atmos-
pheric disturbances, and Fowler had
plenty of assignments to keep him
busy at his drawing board. But he
did no drawing. He was exploring
a fascinating, though unbelievable,
•development.

The light switch his guest had
rigged was unique. Fowler dis-
covered that when he took the gadget
apart. The sealed plastic had been
broken open, and a couple of wires
had been rewound in an odd fashion.
The wiring didn’t make much sense
to Fowler. There was no photo-

105

electric hookup that would have ex-
plained it. But the fact remained
that he could turn on the lights in
that room by moving his hand up-
ward in frbnt of the switch plate,
and reverse the process with a down-
ward gesture.

He made tests. It seemed as
though an invisible fourteen-inch
beam extended directly outward
from the switch. At any rate, ges-
tures, no matter how emphatic, made
beyond that fourteen-inch distance
had no effect on the lights at all.

Curious, he asked his guest to rig
up another switch in the same
fashion. Presently all the switches
in the house were converted, but
Fowler was no wiser. He could
duplicate the hookup, but he didn’t
understand the principle. He felt a
little frightened.

Locked in the house for three
days, he had time to wonder and
worry. He fed his guest — who had
forgotten the use of knife and fork,
if he had ever known it — and he
tried to make the man talk. Not too
successfully. 5

Once the man said : “Forgotten
. . . forgotten — ”

“You haven’t forgotten how to be
an electrician. Where did you come
f rom ?”

The blank face turned to him.
"Where?” A pause. And then —

“When ? Time . . . time — ”

Once he picked up a newspaper
and pointed questioningly at the date
line — the year.

“That’s right,” Fowler said, his
106

stomach crawling. “What year did
you think it was ?”

“Wrong — ” the man said. “For-
gotten—”

Fowler stared. On impulse, he
got up to search his guest’s pockets.
But there were no pockets. The
suit was ordinary, though slightly
strange in cut, but it had no pockets.

“What’s your name?”

No answer.

“Where did you come from ? An-
other — time?’ 1

Still no answer.

Fowler thought of robots. He
thought of a soulless world of the
future peopled by automatons. But
he knew neither was the right an-
swer. The man sitting before him
was horribly normal. And empty,
somehow— drained. Normal?

The norm? That non-existant,
figurative symbol which would be
monstrous if it actually appeared?
The closer an individual approaches
the norm, the more colorless he is.
Just as a contracting line becomes a
point, which has few, if any, dis-
tinguishing characteristics. One
point is exactly like another point.
As though humans, in some un-
pleasant age to come, had been re-
duced to the lowest common de-
nominator.

The norm.

“All right,” Fowler said. “I’ll
call you Norman, till you remember
your right rame. But you can’t be
a . . . point. You’re no moron.
You’ve got a talent for electricity,
anyhow.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Norman had other talents, too, as
Fowler was to discover soon. He
grew tired of looking through the
window at the gray, pouring rain,
pounding down over a drenched and
dreary landscape, and when he tried
to close the built-in Venetian shut-
ters, of course they failed to work.
“May that architect be forced to live
in one of his own houses,” Fowler
said, and, noticing Norman made ex-
planatory gestures toward the win-
dow.

Norman smiled blankly.

“The view,” Fowler said. “I don’t
like to see all that rain. The shutters
won’t work. See if you can fix
them. The view — ” He explained
patiently, and presently Norman
went out to the unit nominally called
a kitchen, though it was far more
efficient. Fowler shrugged and sat
down at his drawing board. He
looked up, some while later, in time
to see Norman finish up with a few
swabs of a cloth. Apparently he had
been painting the window with
water.

Fowler snorted. “I didn’t ask you
to wash it,” he remarked. “It was
the shutters — ”

Norman laid a nearly empty basin
on a table and smiled expectantly.
Fowler suffered a slight reorienta-
tion. “Time-traveling, ha,” he said.
“You probably crashed out of some
booby hatch. The sooner I can get
you back there the better I’ll like it.
If it’d only stop raining ... I won-
der if you could rig up the televisor ?
No, I forgot. We don’t even have
one yet. And I suspect you couldn’t
THE PRISONER IN THE SKFLI

do it. That light switch business
was a fluke.”

He looked out at the rain and
thought of Veronica. Then she was
there before him, dark and slender,
smiling a little.

“Wha — ” Fowler said throatily.

He blinked. Hallucinations ? He
looked again, and she was still there,
three-dimensionally, outside the win-
dow —

Norman smiled and nodded. He
pointed to the apparition.

“Do you see it too ?” Fowler asked
madly. “It can’t be. She’s outside.
She’ll get wet. What in the name
of—”

But it was only Fowler who got
wet, dashing out bareheaded in the
drenching rain. There was no one
outside. He looked through the
window and saw the familiar room,
and Norman.-

He came back. “Did you paint
her 'on the window?” he asked.
“But you’ve never seen Veronica.
Besides, she’s moving— three-dimen-
sional. Oh, it can’t be. My mind’s
snapping. I need peace and quiet.
A green thought in a green shade.”.
He focused on a green thought, and
Veronica faded out slowly. A cool,
quiet, ..woodland glade was visible
through the window.

After a while Fowler figured it
out. His window made thoughts
visible.

It wasn’t as simple as that, natu-
rally. He had to experiment and
brood for quite some time. Norman
was no help. But the fact finally
emerged that whenever Fowler

107

looked at the window and visualized
something with strong emphasis, an
image of that thought appeared —
a projective screen, so to speak.

It was like throwing a stone into
calm water. The ripples moved out
for a while, and then slowly quieted.
The woodland scene wasn’t static;
there was a breeze there, and the
leaves glittered and the branches
swayed. Clouds moved softly across
a blue sky. It was a scene Fowler
finally recognized, a Vermont wood-
land he had seen years ago. Yet
when did sequoias ever grow in
Vermont?

A composite, then. And the orig-
inal impetus of his thoughts set the
scene into action along normal lines.
When he visualized the forest, he
had known that there would be a
wind, and that the branches would
move. So they moved.- But slower
and slower — though it took a long
while for the action to run down.

He tried again. This time Chi-

cago’s lake shore. Cars rushed along
the drive. He tried to make them
run backwards, but got a sharp
headache and a sense of watching a
jerky film. Possibly he could re-
verse the normal course of events,
but his mind wasn’t geared to handle
film running backward. Then he
thought hard and watched a seascape
appear through the glass. This time
he waited to see how long it would
take the image to vanish. The action
stopped in an hour, but the picture
did not fade completely for another
hour.

Only then did the possibilities
strike him with an impact as violent
as lightning.

Considerable poetry has been writ-
ten about what happens when love
rejected turns to hate. Psychology
could explain the cause as well as the
effect — the mechanism of displace-
ment. Energy has to go somewhere,
and if one channel is blocked, an-
other will be found. Not that Ve-
ronica had definitely rejected Fow-
ler, and certainly his emotion for
the girl had not suffered an alchemic
transformation, unless one wishes to
delve into the abysses of psychology
in which love is merely the other face
of hatred — but on those levels of
semantic confusion you can easily
prove anything.

Call it reorientation. Fowler had
never quite let himself believe that
Veronica wouldn’t fall into his arms.
His ego was damaged. Conse-
quently it had to find some other
justification, some assurance — and

108

ASTOUNDING SCIE NCE -F ICTIO N

it was unfortunate for Norman that
the displacement had to occur when
he was available as scapegoat. For
the moment Fowler began to see the
commercial possibilities of the magic
windowpane, Norman was doomed.

Not at once ; in the beginning,
Fowler would have been shocked
and horrified had he seen the end
result of his plan. He was no vil-
lain, for there are no villains. There
is a check -and-balance system, as
inevitable in nature and mind as in
politics, and the balance was begin-
ning to tip when Fowler locked Nor-
man in the windowless room for
safekeeping and drove to New York
to see a patent attorney. He was
careful at first. He knew the for-
mula for the telepathicallyTeceptive
window paint by now, but he merely
arranged to patent the light-switch
gadget that was operated by a ges-
ture. Afterwards, he regretted his
ignorance, for clever infringements
appeared on the heels of his own
device. He hadn’t known enough
about the matter to protect himself
thoroughly in the patent.

By a miracle, he had kept the se-
cret of the telepathic paint to him-
self. All this took time, naturally,
and meanwhile Norman, urged on
by his host, had made little repairs
and improvements around the house.
Some of them were impractical, but
others were decidedly worth using
— short-cuts, conveniences, clever
methods of bridging difficulties that
would be worth money in the open
market. Norman’s way of thinking
seemed curiously alien. Given a

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

problem, he could solve it, but he
had no initiative on his own. He
seemed satisfied to stay in the
house —

Well, satisfied was scarcely the
word. He was satisfied in the same
sense that a jellyfish is satisfied to
remain in its pool. If there were
quivers of volition, slight directional
stirrings, they were very feeble in-
deed. There were times when
Fowler, studying his guest, decided
that Norman was in a psychotic
state — catatonic stupor seemed the
most appropriate label. The man’s
will was submerged, if, indeed, he
had ever had any.

No one has ever detailed the prob-
able reactions of the man who owned
the goose who laid the golden eggs.
He brooded over a mystery, and
presently took empirical steps, after-
wards regretted. Fowler had a more
analytical mind, and suspected that
Norman might be pbised at a pre-
carious state of balance, during
which — and only during which — he
laid golden eggs. Metal can be pli-
able until pressure is used, after
which it may become work-hardened
and inflexible. “Fowler was afraid
of applying too much pressure. But
he was equally afraid of not finding
out all he could about the goose’s
unusual oviparity.

So he studied Norman. It was
like watching a shadow. Norman
seemed to have none of the higher
reflexes ; his activities were little
more than tropism. Ego-conscious-
ness was present, certainly, but —
where had he come from? What

109

sort of place or time had it been?
Or was Norman simply a freak, a
lunatic, a mutation ? All that seemed
certain was that part of his brain
didn’t know its own function. With-
out conscious will or volition, it was
useless. Fowler had to supply the
volition ; he had to give orders. Be-
tween orders, Norman simply sat,
occasionally quivering slightly.

It was bewildering. It was fas-
cinating.

Also, it might be a little danger-
ous. Fowler had no intention of let-
ting his captive escape if he could
help it, but vague recollections of
peonage disturbed him sometimes.
Probably this was illegal. Norman
ought to be in an institution, under
medical car°. But then, Norman
had such unusual talents !

Fowler, to salve his uneasiness,
ceased to lock the door of the win-
dowless room. , By now he had dis-
covered it was unnecessary, anyhow.
Norman was like a subject in deep
hypnosis. Fie would obey when told
not to leave the room. Fowler, with
a layman’s knowledge of law,
thought that probably gave him an
out. Fie pictured himself in the
dock blandly stating that Norman
had never been a prisoner, had al-
ways been free to leave the house if
he chose.

Actually, only hunger would rouse
Norman to disobey Fowler’s com-
mands to stay in his room. He
would have to be almost famished,
even then, before he would go to the
kitchen and eat whatever he found,
no

without discrimination and appar-
ently without taste.

Time went by. Fowler was re-
orienting, though he scarcely knew
it yet, toward a whole new set of
values. He let his illustrating dwin-
dle away until he almost ceased to
accept orders. This was after an
abortive experiment with Norman
in which he tried to work out on
paper an equivalent of the telepathic
pictures on glass. If he could simply
sit and think his drawings onto bris-
tol board —

That was, however, one of Nor-
man’s failures.

It wasn’t easy to refrain from
sharing this wonderful new secret
with Veronica. Fowler found him-
self time and again shutting his lips
over the information just in time.
He didn’t invite her out to the house
any more; Norman was too often
working at odd jobs around the
premises. Beautiful visions of the
future were building up elaborately
in Fowler’s mind — -Veronica
wrapped in mink and pearls, himself
commanding financial empires all
based on Norman’s extraordinary
talents and Norman’s truly extraor-
dinary willingness to obey.

That was because of his physical
weakness, Fowler felt sure. It
seemed to take so much of Norman’s
energy simply to breathe and eat
that nothing remained. And after
the solution of a problem, a complete
fatigue overcame him. He was use-
less for a day or two between jobs,
recovering from the utter exhaus-
tion that work seemed to induce.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Fowler was quite willing to accept
that. It made him even surer of his
— guest. The worst thing that could
happen, of course, would be Nor-
man’s recovery, his return to nor-
mal —

Money began to come in very
satisfactorily, although Fowler
wasn’t really a good business man.
In fact, he was a remarkably poor
one. It didn’t matter much. There
was always more where the first had
come from.

With some of the money Fowler
started cautious inquiries about miss-
ing persons. 1 fe wanted to be sure
no indignant relatives would turn up
and demand an accounting of all
this money. He questioned Norman
futilely.

Norman simply could not talk.
His mind was too empty for coher-
ence. He could produce words, but
he could not connect them. And
this was a thing that seemed to give
him his only real trouble. For he
wanted desperately sometimes to
speak. There was something he
seemed frantic to tell Fowler, in the
intervals when his strength was at
its peak.

Fowler didn’t want to know it.
Usually when Norman reached this
pitch he set him another exhausting
problem. Fowler wondered for
awhile just why he dreaded hearing
the message. Presently he faced the
answer.

Norman might be trying to ex-
plain how he could be cured.

Eventually, Fowler had to face an
even more unwelcome truth. Nor-
man did seem in spite of everything
to be growing stronger.

He was working one day on a vi-
bratory headset gimmick later to be
known as a Hed-D-Acher, when
suddenly he threw down his tools
and faced Fowler over the table with
a look that bordered on animation —
for Norman.

“Sick—” he said painfully. “I
. . . know . . . work!” It was an
anathema. He made a defiant ges-
ture and pushed the tools away.

Fowler, with a sinking sensation,
frowned at the rebellious nonentity.

“All right, Norman,” he said
soothingly. “All right. You can
rest when you finish this job. You
must finish it first, though. You must
finish this job, Norman. Do you
understand that? You must fin-
ish—”

It was sheer accident, of course —
or almost accident — that the job
turned out to be much more compli-
cated than Fowler had expected.
Norman, obedient to the slow, re-
peated commands, worked very late
and very hard.

The end of the job found him so
completely exhausted he couldn’t
speak or move for three days.

As a matter of fact it was the
Hed-D-Acher that turned out to be
an important milestone in Fowler’s
progress. He couldn't recognize it
at the time, but when he looked back,
years later, he saw the occasion of
his first serious mistake. His first.

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

111

that is, unless you count the moment
when he lifted Norman across his
threshold at the very start of the
thing.

Fowler had to go to Washington
to defend himself in some question
of patent infringement. A large
firm had found out about the Hed-D-
Acher and jumped in on the grounds
of similar wiring — at least that was
Fowler’s impression. He was no
technician. The main point was that
the Hed-D-Acher couldn’t be pat-
ented in its present form, and Fow-
ler’s rivals were trying to squeeze
through a similar — and stolen — ■
Hed-D-Acher of their own.

Fowler phoned the Ivorys Agency.
Long distance television was not on
the market yet and he was not aide
to see Veronica’s face, but he knew
what expression must be visible on
it when he told her what he wanted.

“But I’m going out on a job, John.
I can’t just drop everything and rush
out to your house.”

“Listen, Veronica, there may be a
hundred thousand bucks in it. I . . .
there’s no one else I can trust.” He
didn’t add his chief .reason for trust-
ing her— -the fact that she wasn’t
over-bright.

In the end, she went. Dramatic
situations appealed to her, and he
dropped dark hints of corporation
espionage and bloody doings on Cap-
itol Hill. He told her where to find
the key and she hung up, leaving
Fowler to gnaw his nails inter-
mittently and try to liipit himself to
one whiskey-soda every half hour.

112

He was paged, it seemed to him,
some years later.

“Hello, Veronica?”

“Right. I’m at the house. The
key was where you said. Now
what?”

Fowler had had time to work out
a plan. He put pencil and note pad
on the jutting shelf before him and
frowned slightly. This might be a
risk, but—

But he intended to marry Ver-
onica, so it was ho great risk. And
she wasn’t smart enough to figure
out the real answers.

He told her about the windowless
room. “That’s my houseboy’s —
Norman. He’s slightly half-witted,
but a good hoy on mechanical stuff.
Only lie’s a little deaf, and you’ve
got to tell him a thing three times
before he understands it.”

“I think I’d better get out of
here,” Veronica remarked. “Next
you’ll he telling me he’s a homicidal
maniac.”

Fowler laughed heartily. “There’s
a box in the kitchen — it’s in that red
cupboard with the blue handle. It’s
pretty heavy. But see if you can
manage it. Take it in to Norman
and tell him to make another Hed-
D-Acher with a different wiring
circuit.”

“Are you drunk ?”

Fowler repressed an impulse to
bite the mouthpiece off the telephone..
His nerves were crawling under his
skin. “This isn’t a gag, Veronica.
I told you how important it is. A
hundred thousand bucks isn’t funny.
Look, got a pencil? Write this

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

down.” Tie dictated some technical
instructions he had gleaned by ask-
ing the right questions. “Tell that
to Norman. He’ll find all the ma-
terials and tools he needs in the box.”
“If this is a gag — ” V eronica said,
and there was a pause. “Well, hang
on.”

Silence drew on. Fowler tried to
hear what was happening so many
miles away. He caught a few vague
sounds, but they were meaningless.
Then voices rose in loud debate.

“Veronica!” Fowler shouted.
“Veronica !” There was no answer.

After that, voices again, but
softer. And presently :

“Johnny,” Veronica said, “if you
ever pull a trick like that on me
again — ”

“What happened ?”

“Hiding a gibbering idiot in your
house — ” She was breathing fast.

“He’s . . . what did he do? What
happened?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.
Except when I opened the door your
houseboy walked out and began run-
ning around the house like a ... a
bat. He was trying to talk — Johnny,
he scared me !” She was plaintive.
“Where is he now ?”

“Back in his room. I ... I was
afraid of him. But I was trying
not to show it. I thought if I could
get him back in and lock the door —
I spoke to him, and he swung around
at me so fast I guess I let out a yell.
And then he kept trying to say some-
thing—”

“What ?”

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

“How should I know? He's in
his room, but I couldn’t find- a key
to it. . I’m not staying here a minute
longer. I . . . here he comes!”

“Veronica ! Tell him to go back
to his room. Loud and — like you
mean it !”

She obeyed. Fowler could hear
her saying it. She said it several
times.

“It doesn’t work. He’s going
out—”

“Stop him !”

“I won’t! I had enough trouble
coaxing him back the first time — ”

“Let me talk to him,” Fowler said
suddenly. “He’ll obey me. Hold
the phone to his ear. Get him to
listen to me.” He raised his voice to
a shout. “Norman! Come here!
Listen to me!” Outside the booth
people were turning to stare, but he
ignored them.

He heard a faint mumble and
recognized it.

“Norman,” he said, more quietly,
but with equal firmness. “Do ex-
actly what I tell you to do. Don’t
leave the house. Don’t leave the
house. Don’t leave the house. Do
you understand ?”

Mumble. Then words: “Can’t
get out . . . can’t — ”

“Don’t leave the house. Build
another Hed-D-Acher. Do it now.
Get the equipment you need and
build it in the living room, on the
table where the telephone is. Do it
now.”

A pause, and then Veronica said ,
shakily : “He’s gone back to his

113

room. Johnny, I . . . he’s coming
back ! With that box of stuff — ”

“Let me talk to him again. Get
yourself a drink. A couple of ’em.”
He needed Veronica as his interpre-
ter, and the best way to keep her
there would be with the aid of Dutch
courage.

“Well— here he is.”

Norman mumbled.

Fowler referred to his notes. He
gave firm, incisive, detailed direc-
tions. He told Norman exactly
what he wanted. He repeated his
orders several times.

And it ended with Norman build-
ing a Hed-D-Acher, with a different
type of . circuit, while Veronica
watched, made measurements as
Fowler commanded, and relayed the
information across the wire. By the
time she got slightly high, matters
were progressing more smoothly.
There was the danger that she might
make inaccurate measurements, but
Fowler insisted on check and double-
check of each detail.

Occasionally he spoke to Norman.
Each time the man’s voice was
weaker. The dangerous surge of
initiative was passing as energy
drained out of Norman while his
swift fingers flew.

In the end, Fowler had his infor-
mation, and Norman, completely
exhausted, was ordered back to his
room. According to Veronica, he
went there obediently and fell flat
on the floor.

"I’ll buy you a mink coat,” Fowler
said. “See you later.”

“But—”

“I’ve got to hurry. Tell you all
about it when*! see you.”

He got the patent, by the skin of
his teeth. There was instant liti-
gation, which was why he didn’t
clean up on the gadget immediately.
He was willing to wait. The goose
still laid golden eggs.

But he was fully aware of the dan-
ger now. He had to keep Norman
busy. For unless the man’s strength
remained at a minimum, initiative
would return. And there would be
nothing to stop Norman from walk-
ing out of the house, or—

Or even worse. For Fowler
could, after all, keep the doors
locked. But he knew that locks
wouldn’t imprison Norman long
once the man discovered how to pose
a problem to himself. Once Norman
thought : Problem how to escape —
then his clever hands would con-
struct a wall-melter or a matter-
transmitter, and that would be the
end for Fowler.

Norman had one specialized tal-
ent. To keep that operating effi-
ciently — for Fowler’s purpose — all
Norman’s other faculties had to be
cut down to minimum operation
speed.

The rosy light in the high-backed
booth fell flatteringly upon Ve-
ronica’s face. She twirled her mar-
tini glass on the table and said : “But
John, I don’t think I want to marry
you.” The martini glass shot pin-
points of soft light in his face as she
turned it. She looked remarkably
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

114

pretty, even for a Korys model.
Fowler felt like strangling her.

“Why not?” he demanded.

She shrugged. She had been
blowing hot. and cold, so far as
Fowler was concerned, ever since the
day she had seen Norman. Fowler
had been able to buy her back, at
intervals, with gifts or moods that
appealed to her, but the general drift
had been toward estrangement. She
wasn’t intelligent, but she did have
sensitivity of a sort, and it served its
purpose. It was stopping her from
marrying John Fowler.

“Maybe we’re too much alike,
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

Johnny,” she said reflectively. “I
don’t know. I . . . how’s that mis-
erable house-boy of yours ?”

“Is that still bothering you ?” His
voice was impatient. She had been
showing too much concern over Nor-
man. It had probably been a mis-
take to call her in at all, but what
else could he have done? “I wish
you’d forget about Norman. He’s
all right.”

“Johnny, I honestly do think he
ought to be under a doctor’s care.
He didn’t look at all well that day.
Are you sure — ”

“Of course I’m sure ! What do :

115 J

you take me for? As a matter of
fact, he is under a doctor's care.
Norman’s just feeble-minded. “I’ve
told you that a dozen times, Ve-
ronica. I wish you’d take my word
for it. He ... lie sees a -doctor
regularly. It was just having you
. there that upset him. Strangers
throw him off his balance. He’s fine
now. Let’s forget about Norman.
We were talking about getting mar-
ried, remember ?”

“You were. Not me. No, Johnny,
I'm afraid it wouldn’t work.” She
looked at him in the soft light, her
face clouded with doubt and — was
it suspicion ? With a woman of Ve-
ronica’s mentality, you never knew
just where you stood. Fowler
could reason her out of every ob-
jection she offered to him, but be-
cause reason meant so little to her,
the solid substratum of her convic-
tions remained unchanged.

“You’ll marry me,” he said, his
voice confident,

“No.” She gave him an uneasy
look and then drew a deep breath
and said: “You may as well know
this now, Johnny — I’ve just about
decided to marry somebody else.”
“Who ?” He wanted to shout the
question, but he forced himself to
be calm.

“No one you know. Ray Barnaby.

I . . . I’ve pretty well made up my
mind about it, John.”

“I don’t know the man,” Fowler
told her evenly, “but I’ll make it my
business to find out all I can.”

“Now John, let’s not quarrel.
I—”

“You're going to marry me or no-
body, Veronica.” Fowler was as-
tonished at die sudden violence of
his own reaction. "Do you under-
stand that?”

“Don’t be silly, John. You don't
own me.”

"I’m not being silly ! I’m just tell-
ing you.”

“John, I’ll do exactly as I please.
Now, let’s not quarrel about it.”

Until now', until this moment of
icy rage, he had never cpiite -ealized
what an obsession Veronica had be-
come. Fowler had got out of the
habit of being thwarted. His abso-
lute power over one individual and
one unchanging situation was giving
him a taste for tyranny. He sat
looking at Veronica in the pink dim-
ness of the booth, grinding his teeth
together in an effort not to shout at
her.

“If you go through with this, Ve-
ronica, I’ll make it my business to-
see you regret it as long as you live,”
he told her in a harsh, low voice.

She pushed her half-emptied glass
aside with sudden violence that
matched his. “Don’t get me started,
John Fowler!” she said angrily.
“I’ve got a temper, too ! I’ve
always known there was something
I didn’t like about you.”

“There’ll be a lot more you don’t
like if you — ”

“That’s enough, John !” She got
up abruptly, clutching at her slipping
handbag. Even in this soft light he
could see the sudden hardening of
her face, the lines of anger pinching ■

lie

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

downward along her nose and
mouth. A perverse triumph filled
him because at this moment she was
ugly in her rage, but it did not
swerve his determination.

“You’re going to marry me,” he
told her harshly. “Sit down. You’re
going to marry me if I have to — ”
He paused.

“To what ?” Her voice was goad-
ing. He shook his head. He
couldn’t finish the threat aloud.

Norman zvill help me, he was
thinking in cold triumph. Norman
mil find a way.

He smiled thinly after her as she
stalked in a fury out of the bar.

For a week Fowler heard no more
from her. He made inquiries about
the man Barnaby and was not sur-
prised to learn that Veronica’s in-
tended — if she had really been
serious about the fellow, after all —
was a young broker of adequate in-
come and average stupidity. A non-
entity. Fowler told himsel f savagely
that they were two of a kind and no
doubt deserved each other. But’ his
obsession still ruled him, and he was
determined that no one but himself
should marry Veronica.

Short of hypnosis, there seemed
no immediate way to change her
mind. But perhaps he could change
Barnaby ’s. He believed he could,
given enough time. Norman was at
work on a rather ingenious little de-
vice involving the use of a trick
lighting system. Fowler had been
impressed, on consideration, by the
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

effect of the rosy light in the bar on
Veronica’s appearance.

Another week passed, with no
news about Veronica. Fowler told
himself he could afford to remain
aloof. He had the means to control
her very nearly within his grasp. He
would watch her, and wait his time
in patience.

He was very busy, too, with other
things. Two more devices were
ready for patenting — the Magic
Latch keyed to fingerprint patterns,
and the Haircut Helmet that could
be set for any sort of hair trimming
and would probably wreak havoc
among barbers. But litigation on
the Hed-D-Acher was threatening
to be expensive, and Fowler had
learned already to live beyond his
means. Far beyond. It seemed
ridiculous to spend only what he
took in each day, when such fortunes
in royalties were just around the
corner.

Twice he had to take Norman off
the lighting device to perform small
tasks in other directions. And Nor-
man was in himself a problem.

The work exhausted hint. It had
to exhaust him. That was necessary.
An unpleasant necessity, of course,
but there it was. Sometimes the ex-
haustion in Norman’s eyes made one
uncomfortable. Certainly Norman
suffered. But because he was sel-
dom able to show it plainly, Fowler
could tell himself that perhaps he
imagined the worst part of it.
Casuistry,, used to good purpose,
helped him to ignore what he pre-
ferred not to see.

117

By the end of the second week,
Fowler decided not to wait on Ve-
ronica any longer. He bought a
dazzling solitaire diamond whose
cost faintly alarmed even himself,
and a wedding hand that was a full
circle of emerald-cut diamonds to
complement it. With ten thousand
dollars worth of jewelry in his
pocket, he went into the city to pay
her a call.

Barnaby answered the door.

Stupidly Fowler heard himself
saying: “Miss Wood here?”

Barnaby, grinning, shook his head
and started to answer. Fowler knew
perfectly well what he was about to
say. The fatuous grin would have
told him even i f some accurate sixth
sense had not already made it clear.
But he wouldn’t let Barnaby say it.
He thrust the startled bridegroom
aside and shouldered angrily into the
apartment, calling : “Veronica ! Ve-
ronica, where are you ?”

She came out of the kitchen in a
ruffled apron, apprehension and de-
fiance on her face.

“You can just get right out of
here, John Fowler,” she said firmly.
Barnaby came up from behind him
and began a blustering remonstrance,
but she slipped past Fowler and
linked her arm with Barnaby’s,
quieting him with a touch.

“We were married day before yes-
terday, John,” she said.

Fowler was astonished to discover
that the cliche about a red swimming
haze of rage was perfectly true. The
room and the bridal couple shim-
mered before him for an instant.

118

He could hardly breathe in the suffo-
cating fury that swam in his-brain.

He took out the • white velvet
box, snapped it open and waved it
under Veronica’s nose. Liquid fire
quivered in the myriad cut surfaces
of the jewels and for an instant pure
greed made Veronica’s face as hard
as the diamonds.

Barnaby said : “I think you’d bet-
ter go, Fowler.”

In silence, Fowler went.

The little light-device wouldn’t do
now. He would need something
more powerful for his revenge.
Norman put the completed gadget
aside and began to work on some-
thing new. There would be a use
for the thing later. Already plans
were spinning themselves out in
Fowler’s mind.

They would be expensive plans.
Fowler took council with himself
and decided that the moment had
come to put the magic window on the
market.

Until now he had field this in re-
serve. Perhaps he had even been a
little afraid of possible repercus-
sions. He was artist enough to
know that a whole new art- form
might result from a practical tele-
pathic projector. There were so
many possibilities —

But the magic window failed.

Not wholly, of course. It w'as a
miracle, and men always will buy
miracles. But it wasn’t the instant,
overwhelming financial Success
Fowler had felt certain it would be.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE DICTION

For one thing, perhaps this was too
much of a miracle. Inventions can’t
become popular until the culture
is ready for them. Talking films
were made in Paris by Melies
around 1890, but perhaps because
that was a double miracle, nobody
took to the idea. As for a telepathic
screen —

It was a specialized luxury item.
And it wasn’t as easy or as safe to
enjoy as one might suppose. For
one thing, few minds turned out to
be disciplined enough to maintain a
picture they deliberately set out to
evoke. As a mass entertaining me-
dium it suffered from the same
faults as family motion pictures —
other peoples’ memories and dreams
are notoriously boring unless one
sees oneself in them.

Besides, this was too close to pure
telepathy to be safe. Fowler had
lived alone too long to remember the
perils of exposing one’s thoughts to
a group. Whatever he wanted to
project on his private window, he
projected. But in the average family
it wouldn’t do. It simply wouldn’t
do.

Some Hollywood companies and
some millionaires leased windows —
Fowler refused to sell them outright.
A film studio photographed a batch
of projected ideations and cut them
into a dream sequence for a modern
Cinderella story. But trick photog-
raphy had already done work so sim-
ilar that it made no sensation what-
ever. Even Disney had done some
of the stuff better. Until trained
imaginative projective artists could

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

be developed, the windows were
simply not going to be a commercial
success.

One ethnological group tried to
use a window to project the memo-
ries of oldsters in an attempt to re-
capture everyday living customs of
the recent past, but the results were
blurred and inaccurate, full of ana-
chronisms. They all had to be win-
nowed and checked so completely
that little of value remained. The
fact stood out that the ordinary mind
is too undisciplined to be worth any-
thing as a projector. Except as a
toy, the window was useless.

It was useless commercially. But
for Fowler it had one intrinsic use-
fulness more valuable than money —

One of the wedding presents Ve-
ronica and Barnaby received was
a telepathic window. It came
anonymously. Their suspicions
should have been roused. Per-
haps they were, but they kept the
window. After all, in her modeling
work Veronica had met many
wealthy people, and Barnaby also
had moneyed friends, any of whom
might in a generous mood have taken
a window-lease for them as a good-
will gesture. Also, possession of a
magic window was a social distinc-
tion. They did not allow themselves^
to look the gift-horse too closely in
the mouth. They kept the window.

They could not have known—
though they might have guessed —
that this was a rather special sort of
window. Norman had been at work
on it through long, exhausting hours,
while Fowler stood over him with

118

the goading repetitious commands
that kept him at his labor.

Fowler was not too disappointed
at the commercial failure of the
thing. There were other ways of
making money. So long as Norman
remained his to command the natural
laws of supply and demand did not
really affect him. He had by now
almost entirely ceased to think in
terms of the conventional mores.
Why should he ? They no longer ap-
plied to him. His supply of money
and resources was limitless. He
never really had to suffer for a fail-
ure. It would always be Norman,
not Fowler, who suffered.

There was unfortunately no im-
mediate way in which he could check
how well his magic window was
working. To do that you would
have to be an invisible third person
in the honeymoon apartment. But
Fowler, knowing Veronica as he did,
could guess.

The window was based on the
principle that if you give a child a
jackknife he'll probably cut himself.

Fowler’s first thought had been to
create a window on which he could
project his own thoughts, disguised
as those of the bride or groom. But
he had realized almost immediately
that a far more dangerous tool lay
ready-made in the minds of the two
whose marriage he meant to under-
mine.

“It isn’t as if they wouldn’t break
up anyhow, in a year or two,” he
told himself as he speculated on the
possibilities of his magic window,
120

He was not justifying his intent^
He didn’t need to, any more. Her
was simply considering possibilities.
“They’re both stupid, they’re both
selfish. They’re not material you
could make a good marriage of.
This ought to be almost too easy — ”

Every man, he reasoned, has a
lawless devil in his head. What fil-
ters through the censor-band front
the unconscious mind is controllable.
But the lower levels of the brain are
utterly without morals.

Norman produced a telepathic
window that would at times project
images from the unconscious mind.

It was remotely controlled, of
course; most of the time it operated
on the usual principles of the magic
window. But whenever Fowler
chose he could throw a switch that
made the glass twenty miles away
hypersensitive.

Before he threw it for the first
time, he televised Veronica. It was
evening. When tie picture dawned
in the television screen he could see
the magic window set up in its ele-
gant frame within range of the tele-
visor, so that everyone who called
might be aware of the Barnaby’s
distinction.

Luckily it was Veronica who an-
swered, though Barnaby was visible
in the background, turning toward
the ’visor an interested glance that
darkened when Fowler’s face
dawned upon the screen. Veronica’s
politely expectant look turned sul-
len as she recognized the caller.

“Well ?”

Fowler grinned. “Oh, nothing."

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE -FICTION

Just wondered how you were getting
along.”

“Beautifully, thanks. Is that all?”

Fowler shrugged. “If that’s the .
way you feel, yes.”

“Good-by,” Veronica said firmly,
and flicked the switch. The screen
before Fowler went blank. He
grinned. All he had wanted to do
was remind her of himself. He
touched the stud that would activate
that magic window he had just seen,
and settled down to wait.

What would happen now he didn’t
know. Something would. He
hoped the sight of him had re-
minded Veronica of the dazzling
jewelry he had carried when they
last met. He hoped that upon the
window now would be dawning a
covetous image of those diamonds,
clear as dark water and quivering
with fiery light. The sight should
be enough to rouse resentment in
Barnaby’s mind, and when two
people quarrel wholeheartedly, there
are impulses toward mayhem in
even the most civilized mind. It
should shock the bride and groom to
see on a window that reflected their
innermost thoughts . a picture of
hatred and wishful violence. Would
Veronica see herself being strangled
in effigy in the big wall-frame?
Would Barnaby see himself bleed-
ing from the deep scratches his
bride would be yearning to score
across his face?

Fowler sat back comfortably,
luxuriating in speculation.

It might take a long time. It

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

might take years. He was willing
to wait.

It took even longer than Fowler
had expected. Slowly the poison
built up in the Barnaby household,
very slowly. And in that time a
different sort of toxicity developed
in Fowler’s. He scarcely realized it.
He was too close.

He never recognized the moment
when his emotional balance shifted
and he began actively to hate Nor-
man.

The owner of the golden goose
must have lived under considerable
strain. Every day when he went out
to look in the nest he must have felt a
quaking wonder whether- this time
the egg would be white, and valuable
only for omelets or hatching. Also,
he must have -had to stay very close
to home, living daily with the night-
mare of losing his treasure —

Norman was a prisoner — but a
prisoner handcuffed to his jailer.
Both men were chained. If Fowler
left him alone for too long, Norman
might recover. It was the inevitable
menace that made travel impossible.
Fowler could keep no servants; he
lived alone with his prisoner. Oc-
casionally he thought of Norman as
a venomous snake whose poison
fangs had to be removed each time
they were renewed. He dared not
cut out the poison sacs themselves,
for there was no way to do that with-
out killing the golden goose. The
mixed metaphors were indicative of
the state of Fowler’s mind by then.

And he was almost as much a

121

prisoner in the house as Norman
was.

Constantly now he had to set Nor-
man problems to solve simply as a
safety measure, whether or not they
had commercial value. For Norman
was slowly regaining his strength.
He was never completely coherent,
but he could talk a little more, and
he managed to put across quite defi-
nitely his tremendous urge to give
Fowler certain obscure information.

Fowler knew', of course, what it
probably was. The cure. And Nor-
man seemed to have a strangely
touching confidence that if he could
only frame his message intelligibly,
Fowler would make arrangements
for the mysterious cure.

Once Fowler might -have been
touched by the confidence. Not now.
Because he was exploiting Norman
so ruthlessly, he had to hate either
Norman or himself. By a familiar
process he was projecting his own
fault upon his prisoner and punish-
ing Norman for it. Fie no longer
speculated upon Norman’s myster-

ious origin or the source of his
equally mysterious powers. There
was obviously something in that
clouded mind that gave forth flashes
of a certain peculiar genius. Fowder
accepted the fact and used it.

There was probably some set of
rules, that would govern what Nor-
man could and could not do, but
Fowler did not discover — until it
w r as too late — what the rules were.
Norman could produce inconceiv-
ably intricate successes, and then fail
dismally at the simplest tasks.

Curiously, he turned out to be an
almost infallible finder of lost arti-
cles, so long as they were lost in the
confines of the house, Fowler dis-
covered this by accident, and was
gratified to learn that for some rea-
son that kind of search was the most
exhausting task he could set for his
prisoner. When all else failed, and
Norman still seemed too coherent or
too strong for safekeeping, Fowler
had only to remember that he had
misplaced his wristwatch or a book
or screwdriver, and to send Norman
after it.

Then something very odd hap-
pened, and after that he stopped the
practice, feeling bewildered and in-
secure. He had ordered Norman to
find a lost folder of rather important
papers. Norman had gone into his
own room and closed the door. He
was missing for a long time. Even-
tually Fowler’s impatience built up
enough to make him call off the
search, and he shouted to Norman to
come out.

There was no answer. When he

122

ASTOUNDING S C IE N CE -F I CT I O N

had called a third time in vain, Fow-
ler opened the door and looked in.
The room was empty. There were
no windows. The door was the only
exit, and Fowler could have sworn
Norman had not come out of it.

In a rising panic he ransacked the
room, calling futilely. He went
through the rest of the house in a
fury of haste and growing terror.
Norman was not in the kitchen or
the living room or the cellar or any-
where in sight outside.

Fowler was on the verge of a ner-
vous collapse when Norman’s door
opened and the missing man
emerged, staggering a little, his face
white and blank with exhaustion,
and the folder of papers in his hand.

He slept for three days after-
ward. And Fowler never again used
that method of keeping his prisoner
in check.

After six uneventful months had
passed Fowler put Norman to work
on a supplementary device that might
augment the Barnaby magic win-
dow. He was receiving reports from
a bribed daily maid, and he took
pains to hear all the gossip mutual
friends were happy to pass on. The
Barnaby marriage appeared to suffer
from a higher than normal percent-
age of spats and disagreements, but
so far it still held. The magic win-
dow was not enough.

Norman turned out a little gadget
that produced supersonics guaran-
teed to evoke irritability and nervous
tension. The maid smuggled it into
the apartment. Thereafter, the re-
THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

ports Fowler received were more
satisfactory, from his point of view.

All in all, it took three years.

And the thing that finally turned
the trick was the lighting gadget
which Fowler had conceived in that
bar interlude when Veronica first
told him about Barnaby.

Norman, worked on the fixtures
for some time. They were subtle.
The exact tinting involved a care-
ful study of Veronica’s skin tones,
the colors of the apartment, the win-
dow placement. Norman had a scale
model of the rooms where the
Bamabys were working out their
squabbles toward divorce. He took a
long time to choose just what angles
of lighting he would need to produce
the worst possible result. And of
course it all had to be done with con-
siderable care because the existing
light fixtures couldn't be changed
noticeably.

With the help of the maid, the job
was finally done. And thereafter,
Veronica in her own home was —
ugly.

The lights made her look haggard.
They brought out every line of fa-
tigue and ill-nature that lurked any-
where in her face. They made her
sallow. They caused Barnaby in-
creasingly to wonder why he had
ever thought the girl attractive.

“It’s your fault !” Veronica said
hysterically. “It’s all your fault and
you know it !”

“How could it be my fault?”
Fowler demanded in a smug voice,
trying hard to iron out the smile that

123

Icept palling up the corners of his
mouth.

The television screen was between
them like a window. Veronica
leaned toward it, the cords in her
neck standing out as she shouted at
him. He had never seen that -par-
ticular phenomenon before. Prob-
ably she had acquired much practice
in angry shouting in the past three
years. There were thin vertical
creases between her brows that were
new to him, too. He had seen her
face to face only a few times in the
years of her marriage. It had been
safer and pleasanter to create her in
the magic window when he felt the
need of seeing her.

This was a different face, almost
a different woman. He wondered
briefly if he was watching the effect
of his own disenchanting lighting
system, but a glimpse beyond her
head of a crowded drugstore assured
him that he was not. This was real,
not illusory. This was a Ve-
ronica he and Norman had, in effect
created.

“You did it!” Veronica said, ac-
cusingly. “I don’t know how, but
you did it.”

Fowler glanced down at the morn-
ing paper he had just been reading,
folded back to the gossip column
that announced last night’s spectacu-
lar public quarrel between a popular
Korys model and her broker hus-
band.

“What really happened ?” Fowler
asked mildly.

“None of your business,” Ve-
ronica told him with fine illogic.

124

“You ought to know! You were
behind it— you know you were !
You and that half-wit of yours, that
Norman. You think I don’t know?
With all those fool inventions you
two work out, I know perfectly well
you must have done something — ”
“Veronica, you’re raving.”

She was, of course. It was sheer
hysteria, plus her normal conviction
that no unpleasant thing that hap-
pened to her could possibly be her
own fault. By pure accident she had
hit upon the truth, but that was be-
side the point.

“Has he left you? Is that it?”
Fowler demanded.

She gave him a look of hatred.
But she nodded. “It’s your fault
and you’ve got to help me. I need
money. I — ”

“All right, all right ! You’re
hysterical, but I’ll help you. Where
are you ? I’ll pick you up and we’ll
have a drink and talk things over.
You’re better off than you know,
baby. He never was the man for
you. You haven’t got a thing to
worry about. I’ll be there in half an
hour and we can pick up where we
left off three years ago.”

Part of what he implied was true
enough, he reflected as he switched
off the television screen. Curiously,
he still meant to marry her. The
changed face with its querulous lines
and corded throat repelled him, but
you don’t argue with an obsession.
He had worked three years toward
this moment, and he still meant to
marry Veronica Barnaby as he had
originally meant to marry Veronica

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Wood. Afterward — well, things

might be different.

One thing frightened him. She
was not quite as stupid as he had
gambled on that day years ago when
he had been forced to call on her for
help with Norman. She had seen
too much, deduced too much — -re-
membered much too much. She
might be dangerous. He would have
to find out just what she thought
she knew about him and Norman.

It might be necessary to silence
her, in one way or another.

Norman said with painful dis-
tinctness: “Must tell you . . .
must — ”

“No, Norman.” Fowler spoke
hastily. “We have a job to do.
There isn’t time now to discuss — ”

“Can’t work,” Norman said. “No
. . . must tell you — ” He paused,
lifted a shaking hand to his eyes,
grimacing against his own palm with
a look of '•errible effort and en-
treaty. The strength that was mys-
teriously returning to him at inter-
vals now had made him almost a
human being again. The blankness
of his face flooded sometimes with
almost recognizable individuality.

“Not yet, Norman!” Fowler
heard the alarm in his own voice.
“I need you. Later we’ll work out
whatever it is you’re trying to say.
Not now. I . . . look, we’ve got
to reverse that lighting system we
made for Veronica. I want a set of
lights that will flatter her. I need it
in a hurry, Norman. You’ll have to
get to work on it right away.”

Norman looked at him with hollow
eyes. Fowler didn’t like it. He
would not meet the look. He fo-
cused on Norman’s forehead as he
repeated his instructions in a patient
voice.

Behind that colorless forehead the
being that was Norman must be
hammering against its prison walls
of bone, striving hard to escape.
Fowler shook off the fanciful idea
in distaste, repeated his orders once
more and left the house in some
haste. Veronica would be waiting.

But the look in Norman’s eyes
haunted him all the way into the city.
Dark, hollow, desperate. The pris-
oner in the skull, shut into a claus-
trophobic cell out of which no sound
could carry. He was getting danger-
ously strong, that prisoner. It
would be a mercy in the long run if
some task were set to exhaust him,
throw him back into that catatonic
state in which he no longer knew
he was in prison.

Veronica was not there. He
waited for an hour in the bar. Then
be called her apartment, and got no
answer. He tried his own house,
and no one seemed to be there either.
With unreasonably mounting un-
easiness, he went home at last.

She met him at the door.

“Veronica ! I waited for an hour !
What’s the idea?”

She only smiled at him. There
was an almost frightening triumph
in the smile, but she did not speak a
word.

Fowler pushed past her, fighting

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

125

his own sinking sensation of alarm.
He called for Norman almost auto-
matically, as if his unconscious mind
recognized before the conscious
knew just what the worst danger
might be. For Veronica might be
stupid but he had perhaps forgotten
how cunning the stupid sometimes
are. Veronica could put two and
two together very well. She could
reason from cause to effect quite ef-
ficiently, when her own welfare was
at stake.

She bad reasoned extremely well
today.

Norman lay on the bed in his win-
dowless room, his face as blank as
paper. Some effort of the mind and
will had exhausted him out of all
semblance to a rational being. Some
new, some overwhelming task, set
him by — Veronica? Not by Fowler.
The job he had been working on an
hour ago was no such killing job as
this.

But would Norman obey anyone
except Fowler? He had defied Ve-
ronica on that other occasion when
she tried to give him orders. He had
almost escaped lie Fore Fowler’s com-
manding voice ordered him back.
Wait, though — she had coaxed him.
Fowler remembered now. She could
not command, but she had coaxed
the blank creature into obedience.
So there was a way. And she knew
it.

But what had the task been ?

With long strides Fowler went
back into the drop-shaped living
room. Veronica stood in the door-

126

way where he had left her. She was
waiting.

“What did you do?” he de-
manded.

She smiled. She said nothing at
all.

“What happened?” Fowler cried
urgently. “Veronica, answer me!
What did you do ?”

“I talked to Norman,” she said.
“I . . . got him to do a little job for
me. That was all. Good-by, John.”

“Wait! You can’t leave like that.
Fve got to know what happened.
I—”

“You’ll find out,” Veronica said.
She gave him that thin smile again
and then the door closed behind her.
He heard her heels click once or
twice on the walk and she was gone.
There was nothing he could do
about it.

He didn’t know what she had ac-
complished. That was the terrifying
thing. She had talked to Norman—
And Norman had been in an almost
coherent mood today. If she asked
the right questions, she could have
learned — almost anything. About
the magic window and the super-
sonics and the lighting. About Nor-
man himself. About — even about
a weapon she could use against Fow-
ler. Norman would make one if he
were told to. He was an automaton.
He could not reason ; he could only
comply.

Perhaps she had a weapon, then.
But what? Fowler knew nothing
at all of Veronica’s mind. He had
no idea what sort of revenge she
might take i f she had a field as limit-

ASTODNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

less as Norman's talents offered her.
Fowler had never been interested in
Veronica’s mind at all. He had no
idea what sort of being crouched
there behind her forehead as the
prisoner crouched behind Norman’s.
He only knew that it would have a
thin smile and that it hated him.

“You’ll find out,” Veronica had
said. But it was several days before
he did, and even then he could not
be sure. So many things could have
been accidental. Although he tried
desperately he could not find Ve-
ronica anywhere in the city. But he
kept thinking her eyes were on him,
that if he could turn quickly enough
he would catch her staring.

“That’s what makes voodoo magic
work,” he told himself savagely. “A
man can scare himself to death, once
he knows he’s been threatened — ”

Death, of course, had nothing to
do with it. Clearly it was no part of
her plan that her enemy should die —
and escape her. She knew what
Fowler would hate most — ridicule.

Perhaps the things that kept hap-
pening were accidents. The time he
tripped over nothing and did a fool-
ishly clownish fall for the amuse-
ment of a long line of people waiting
before a ticket window. His ears
burned whenever lie remembered
that. Or the time he had three em-
barrassing slips of the tongue in a
row when he was trying to make a
good impression on a congressman
and his pompous wife in connection
with a patent. Or the time in the
Biltmore dining room when he

dropped every dish or glass he
touched, until the whole room was
•staring at him and the headwaiter
was clearly of two minds about
throwing him out.

It was like a perpetual time bomb.
He never knew what would happen
next, or when or where. And it
was certainly sheer imagination that
made him think he could hear Ve-
ronica’s clear, high, ironic laughter
' whenever his own body betrayed
him into one of these ridiculous se-
ries of slips.

He tried shaking the truth out of
Norman.

“What did you do?” he demanded
of the blank, speechless face. “What
did she make you do? Is there
something wrong with my synapses
now? Did you rig up something
that would throw me out of control
whenever she wants me to? What
did you do, NonmuiF’

But Norman could not tell him.

On the third day she televised the
house. Fowler went limp with re-
lief when he saw her features taking
shape in the screen. But before he
could speak she said sharply : “All
right, John. I only have a minute to
waste on you. 1 just wanted you
to know I’m really going to start to
work on you beginning next week.
That’s all, John. Good-bv.’ ?

The screen would not make her.
face form again no matter how
sharply he rapped on it. -no matter
how furiously he jabbed the buttons
to call her back. After awhile he
relaxed limply in his chair and sat

THE PRISONER IN THE SKI’LL

127

staring' blankly, at the wall. And
now he began to be afraid —

It had been a long time since
Fowler faced a crisis in which he
could not turn to Norman for help.
And Norman was no use to him now.
He 'could not or would not produce
a device that Fowler could use as
protection against the nameless
threat. He could give him no ink-
ling of what weapon he had put in
Veronica’s hand.

It might be a bluff. Fowler could
not risk it. He had changed a great
deal in three years, far more than he
had realized until this crisis arose.
There had been a time when his
mind was flexible enough to assess
dangers coolly and resourceful
enough to produce alternative pleas-
ures to meet them. But not any
more. He had depended too long
•on Norman to solve all his problems
for him. Now he was helpless. Un-
less — ■

He glanced again at that stunning
alternative and then glanced men-
tally away, impatient, knowing it for
an impossibility. He had thought of
it often in the past week, but" of
course it couldn’t be done. Of
course —

He got up and went into the win-
dowless room where Norman sat
quietly, staring at nothing. lie
leaned against the door frame and
.. looked at Norman. There in that
shuttered skull lay a secret more
precious than any miracle Norman
had yet produced. The brain, the
mind, the source. The mysterious
quirk that brought forth golden eggs.
128

“There’s a part of your brain in
use that normal brains don’t have,”
Fowler said thoughtfully aloud.
Norman did not stir. “Maybe
you’re a freak. Maybe you’re a
mutation. But there’s something
like a thermostat in your head.
When it’s activated, your mind’s ac-
tivated, too. You don’t use the same
brain-centers I do. You’re an idling
motor. When the supercharger
cuts in something begins to work
along lines of logic I don't under-
stand. I see the result, but I don’t
know what the method is. If I could
know that — ”

He paused and stared piercingly
at the bent head. “If I could only
get that secret out of you, Norman !
It’s np good to you. But there isn’t
any limit to what I could do with it
if I had your secret and my own
brain.”

If Norman heard he made no mo-
tion to show it. But some impulse
suddenly goaded Fowler to action.
“I’ll do it!” he declared. “I’ll try
it! What have I got to lose, any-
how ? I’m a prisoner here as long
as this goes on, and Norman’s no
good to me the way things stand.
It’s worth a try.”

He shook the silent man by the
s h o u 1 d e r. “Norman, wake up.
Wake up, wake up, wake up. Nor-
man, do you hear me? Wake up,
Norman, we have work to do.”

Slowly, out of infinite distances,
the prisoner returned to his cell,
crept forward in the bone cage of the
skull and looked dully at Fowler out
of deep sockets.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

And Fowler was seized with a
sudden, immense astonishment that
until now he had never really consid-
ered this most obvious of courses.
Norman could do it. He was quite
confident qf that, suddenly. Norman
could and must do it. This was the
point toward which they had both
been moving ever since Norman
first rang the doorbell years ago. It
had taken Veronica and a crisis
to make the thing real. But now
was the time — time and past time for
the final miracle.

Fowler was going to become suf-
ficient unto himself.

“You’re going to get a nice long
rest, Norman,” he said kindly.
“You’re going to help me learn to
... to think the way you think. Do
you understand, Norman? Do you
know what it is that makes your
brain work the way it does ? I want
you to help my brain think that way,
too. Afterward, you can rest, Nor-
man. A nice, long rest. I won’t be
needing you any more after that,
Norman.”

Norman worked for twenty-four
hours without a break. Watching
him, forcing down the rising excite-
ment in his mind, Fowler thought
the blank man too seemed over-
wrought at this last and perhaps
greatest of all his tasks. He mum-
bled a good deal over the intricate
wiring of the thing he was twisting
together. It looked rather like a
tesseract, an open, interlocking
framework which Norman handled
with great care. From time to time

he looked up and seemed to want to
talk, to protest. Fowler ordered him
sternly back to his task.

When it was finished it looked a
little like the sort of turban a sultan
might wear. It even had a jewel set
in the front, like a headlight, except
that this jewel really was light. All
the wires came together there, and
out of nowhere the bluish radiance
sprang, shimmering softly in its little
nest of wiring just above the fore-
head. It made Fowler think of an
eye gently opening and closing. A
thoughtful eye that looked up at him
from between Norman’s hands.

At the last moment Norman hesi-
tated. His face was gray with ex-
haustion as he bent above Fowler,
holding out the turban. Like Char-
lemagne, Fowler reached impatiently
for the thing and set it on his own
head. Norman bent reluctantly to
adjust it.

There was a singing moment of
anticipation —

The turban was feather-light on
his head, but wherever it touched it
made his scalp ache a bit, as if every
hair had been pulled the wrong way.
The aching grew. It wasn’t only
the hair that was going the wrong
way, he realized suddenly —

It wasn’t only his hair, but his
mind —

It wasn’t only —

Out of the wrenching blur that
swallowed up the room he saw Nor-
man’s anxious face take shape, lean-
ing close. He felt the crown of wire
lifted from his head. Through a

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

129

violent, blinding ache he watched
Norman grimace with bewilderment.

“No,” Norman said. “No . . .
wrong . . . you . . . wrong —

“I’m wrong?” Fowler shook his
head a little and the pain subsided,
but not the feeling of singing an-
ticipation, nor the impatient disap-
pointment at this delay. . Any
moment now might bring some
interruption, might even bring some
new, unguessable threat from Ve-
ronica that could ruin -everything.

“What’s wrong?” he asked,
schooling himself to patience. “Me ?
How am I wrong, Norman ? Didn’t
anything happen ?”

“No. Wrong . . . you — •”

“Wait, now.” Fowler had had
to help work out problems like this
before. “O.K., I’m wrong. How?”
He glanced around the room.
“Wrong room?” he suggested at
random. “Wrong chair? Wrong
wiring ? Do I have to co-operate
somehow ?” The last question
seemed to strike a response. “Co-
operate how? Do you need help
with the wiring? Do I have to do
something after the helmet’s on ?”
“Think!” Norman said violently.
“I have to think ?”

“No. Wrong, wrong. Think
wrong.”

“I’m thinking wrong?”

Norman made a gesture of de-
spair and turned away toward his
room, carrying the wire turban with
him.

Fowler, rubbing his forehead
where the wires had pressed, won-
dered dizzily what had happened.

130

Think wrong. It didn’t make sense.
He looked at himself, in the tele-
vision screen, which was a mirror
when not in use, fingered the red
line of the turban’s pressure, and
murmured, “Thinking, something to
do with thinking. What ?” Ap-
parently the turban was designed to
alter his patterns of thought, to open
up some dazzling door through
which he could perceive the new
causalities that guided Norman’s
mind.

He thought that in some way it
was probably connected with that
moment when the helmet had seemed
to wrench first his hair and then
his skull and then his innermost
thoughts in the wrong direction. But
he couldn’t work it out. He was too
tired. All the emotional strain of
the past days, the menace still hang-
ing over him, the tremulous excite-
ment of what lay in the immediate
future — no, he couldn’t be expected
to reason things through very clearly
just now. It was Norman’s job.
Norman would have to solve that
problem -for them both.

Norman c’.id. He came out of his
room in a few minutes, carrying the
turban, twisted now into a higher,
rounder shape, the gem of light
glowing bluer than before. He ap-
proached Fowler with a firm step.

“You . . . thinking wrong,” he
said with great distinctness. “Too
. . . too old. Can’t change. Think
wrong!”

He stared anxiously at Fowler
and Fowler stared back, searching
the deep-set eyes for some clue to

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

the meaning hidden in the locked
chambers of the skull behind them.

“Thinking wrong.” Fowler
echoed. “Too . . . old ? I don’t
understand. Or — do I ? You mean
my mind isn’t flexible enough
any more?” He remembered the
wrenching moment when every men-
tal process had tried vainly to turn
sidewise in his head. “But then it
won’t work at all!”

“Oh, yes,” Norman said confi-
dently.

“But if I’m too old — ” It wasn’t
age, really. Fowler was not old in
years. But the grooves of his
thinking had worn themselves deep
in the past years since Norman
came. He had fixed inflexibly in
the paths of his own self-indulgence
and now his mind could not accept

the answer the wire turban offered.
“I can’t change,” he told Norman
despairingly. “If I’d only made you
do this when you first came, before
my mind set in its pattern—”

Norman held out the turban, re-
versed so that the blue light bathed
his face in blinking radiance. “This
— wifi work,” he said confidently.

Belated caution made Fowler
dodge back a little. “Now wait. I
want to know more before we . . .
how can it work? You can’t make
me any younger, and I don’t want
any random tampering with my
brain. I — ”

Norman was not listening. With
a swift, sure gesture he pressed the
wired wreath down on Fowler’s
head.

There was the wrenching of hair

THE PRISONER IN THE SKUEL

AST— 6C

131

and scalp, skull and brain. This first
—and then very swiftly the shadows
moved upon the floor, the sun
gleamed for one moment through the
eastern windows and the world dark-
ened outside. The darkness winked
and was purple, was dull red, was
daylight —

Fowler could not stir. He tried
furiously to snatch the turban from
his head, but no impulse from his
brain made any connection with the
motionless limbs. He still stood fac-
ing the mirror, the blue light still
winked thoughtfully back at him,
but everything moved so fast he had
no time to comprehend light or dark
for what they were, or the blurred
motions reflected in the glass, or
what was happening to him.

This was yesterday, and the week
before, and the year before, but he
did not clearly know it. You can’t
make me any younger. Very dimly
he remembered having said that to
Norman at some remote interval of
time. His -thoughts moved slug-
gishly somewhere at the very core of
his brain, whose outer layers were
being peeled off one by one, hour by
hour, day by day. But Norman
could make him younger. Norman
was making him younger. Norman
was whisking him back and back to-
ward the moment when his brain
would regain flexibility enough for
the magical turban to open that door
to genius.

Those blurs in the mirror were
people moving at normal time-speed
— himself, Norman, Veronica going
forward in time as he slipped back-

132

ward through it, neither perceiving
the other. But twice he saw Nor-
man moving through the room at a
speed that matched his own, walking
slowly and looking for something.
He saw him search behind a chair-
cushion and pull out a creased folder,
legal size — the folder he had last
sent Norman to find, on that day
when he vanished from his closed
room !

Norman, then, had traveled in
time before. Norman’s powers must
be more far-reaching, more dazzling,
than he had ever guessed. As his
own powers would be, when his
mind cleared again and this blinding
flicker stopped.

Night and day went by like the
flapping of a black wing. That was
the way Wells had put it. That was
the way it looked. A hypnotic flap-
ping. It left him dazed and dull —

Norman, holding the folder, lifted
his head and for one instant looked
Fowler in the face in the glass.
Then he turned and went away
through time to another meeting in
another interval that would lead
backward again to this meeting, and
on and on around a closing spiral
which no mind could fully compre-
hend. It didn’t matter. Only one
thing really mattered. Fowler
stood there shocked for an instant
into almost total wakefulness, star-
ing at his own face in the mirror,
remembering Norman’s face.

For one timeless moment, while
night and day flapped around him,
he stood helpless, motionless, staring
appalled at his reflection in the gray

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

that was the blending of time — and
he knew who Norman was.

Then mercifully the hypnosis took
over again and he knew nothing at
all.

There are centers in the brain
never meant for man’s use today.
Not until the race has evolved the
strength to handle them. A man of
today might learn the secret that
would unlock those centers, and if he
were a fool he might even turn the
key that would let the door swing
open.

But after that he would do
nothing at all of his own volition.

For modern man is still too weak
to handle the terrible energy that
must pour forth to activate those
centers. The' grossly overloaded
physical and mental connections
could hold for only a fraction of a
second. Then the energy flooding
into the newly unlocked brain-center
never meant for use until perhaps a
thousand more years have remodeled
mankind, would collapse the chan-
nels, fuse the connections, make
every synapse falter in the moment
when the gates of the mind swing
wide.

On Fowler’s head the turban of
wires glowed incandescent and van-
ished. The thing that had once hap-
pened to Norman happened now to
him. The dazzling revelation— the
draining, the atrophy —

He had recognized Norman’s face
reflected in the mirror beside his
own, both white with exhaustion,
both stunned and empty. He knew

THE PRISONER IN THE SKULL

who Norman was, what motives
moved him, what corroding irony
had made his punishing of Norman
just. But by the time he knew, it
was already far too late to alter the
future or the past.

Time flapped its wings more
slowly. That moment of times gone
swung round again as the circle
came to its close. Memories flick-
ered more and more dimly in Fow-
ler’s mind, like day and night, like
the vague, shapeless world which
was all he could perceive now. He
felt cold and weak, strangely, intoler-
ably, inhumanly weak with a weak-
ness of the blood and bone, of the
mind and soul. He saw his sur-
roundings dimly, but he saw — other
things — with a swimming clarity
that had no meaning to him. He saw
causes and effects as tangible before
him as he had once seen trees and
grass. But remote, indifferent, part
of another world.

Help was what he needed. There
was something he must remember.
Something of terrible import. He
must find help, to focus his mind
upon the things that would work his
cure. Cure was possible; he knew
it — he knew it. But he needed help.

Somehow there was a door before
him. He reached vaguely, moving
his hand almost by reflex toward his
pocket. But he had no pocket.
This was a suit of the new fashion,
sleek in fabric, cut without pockets.
He would have to knock, to ring.
He remembered —

The face he had seen in the mir-

133

ror. His own face? But even then
it had been changing, as a cloud be-
fore the sun drains life and color and
soul from a landscape. The ex-
punging amnesia wiped across its
mind had had its parallel physically,
too ; the traumatic shock of moving
through time — the dark iving flap-
ping — had sponged the recognizable
characteristics from his face, leaving
the matrix, the characterless basic.
This was not his face. He had no
face; he had no memory. He knew

only that this familiar door before
him was the door to the help he must
have to save himself from a circling
eternity.

It was almost wholly a reflex ges-
ture that moved his finger toward the
doorbell. The last dregs of memory
and initiative drained from him with
the motion.

Again the chimes played three soft
notes. Again the circle closed.

Again the blank man waited for
John Fowler to open the door.

THE END

IN TIMES TO COME

Next month’s cover will be another symbolic cover by, Alejandro. Rather an
interesting idea, done simply and boldly. I believe you'll like it. And I know you’ll
like Wilmar Shiras’ second story, “Opening Doors,” a sequel to “In Hiding.” Tim
was lucky; he succeeded in adjusting, and the particular'natUre of his grandmother,
and her way of instruction, was such as to actually show him the path to adjustment.
Tim made it. But you know, it wouldn’t be easy for the kids like Tim to make that
adjustment ; some; (if them must have been “spoiled in the making.” And there
would, indeed, He work for Dr. Peter Welles* psychiatric services. And there, too,
lies the story of “Opening Doors.”

Also coming up is a Story by Hal Clement called "Fireproof.” This yarn involves
a very simple little principle of spaceship operation and space-conditions which has
been completely overlooked by all the years of science-fiction writing. It’s a simple,
but beautiful idea — beautifully logical, and overlooked because of its simplicity. The
saboteur trained in the art missed the point too : — with fatal results. Good yarn,
as well as a good idea, of course ; Hal Clement hasn’t appeared as often as we wish,
but his stories are worth while.

Clement, by the way, was a bomber pilot during the war; I was amused to
discover, on meeting him again after VJ Day, that Hal couldn’t drive a car— he’d
never learned how. He was having trouble learning too — when he saw an obstruction
ahead he had a tendency to pull back on the wheel and try to soar over. Two
dimensions cramped his style, after learning manipulation of strictly three-dimen-
sional motor vehicles first !

The Editor.

ASTOUNDING science-ftction

NEXT FRIDAY MORNING

BY D. W. MEREDITH

Which really has to do mainly with the
peculiar fate of a common kitchen utensil.

Illustrated by Orban

The phone — it was an old-fash-
ioned, strictly, utilitarian model
without so much as a vision screen
to call its own — lacked any resem-
blance to an instrument of doom.
There is something horrible about a

machine that turns on its creators —
the ship gliding with studied indif-
ference toward the barely sub-
merged reef, the aircraft suddenly
wreathed with flames, the radio that
hesitates in the middle of a com-

NEXT FRIDAY MORNING

135

mercial and blurts out a message of
disaster. It is even worse when the
pattern is so obscure that the buried
instinct has no warning, no reason to
cry: “I knew it! I knew it!”
Professor John Harley was in
bed, deep in the symbolic algebra of
Hogben’s genetics equations, when
the phone rang just before midnight.
With a resigned sigh he placed his
boqk: on a night table and put the in-
strument to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hello ! Professor Harley f’
The voice cracked with excitement.
“This is Walter Symonds. We’ve
done it. professor, we’ve done it!”
“That’s very interesting, Walter,”
the professor answered dryly, “and
I’m extremely glad to hear it. How-
ever, if it isn’t asking too much, just
what have you done, and is your
‘we’ editorial, or are you still work-
ing with your collaborator ?”

“We’ve effected a temporal dis-
placement of mass, Ortega and I.”
Symond’s voice was lower, hut still
jerky and strained in marked con-
trast to his usual calm. “It’s ab-
solutely clean-cut! We sent ten
cubic centimeters of silver fifteen
seconds into the future, and stood
there and watched it materialize
when the time had elapsed. Or-
tega’s math was right after all. Pro-
fessor, can you come over?”

“Well, Walter, I’m in bed — ”
“Come on, professor, you can
dress in five minutes, and drive over
in an hour. This is bit 7 . The Berk-
eley gang will have to eat crow now,
and no mistake.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,
Walter,” the professor said, and
hung up. Time-travel, he thought
incredulously. His rickety heart
kept pace with his mounting excite-
ment, and he forced himself to relax
for a few minutes. * Then he dressed
slowly, got out his car, and drove
through Berkeley toward the San
Francisco Tunnel. As the miles
dropped away he reviewed with hon-
est admiration the professional ca-
reers of the two remarkable men he
was about to see.

Walter Symonds was a product of
M.I.T. At independent research he
lit no enduring fires, but once given
a set 'of rough specifications, and
material with which to work, results
were his forte. His achievements
with General Electric were legend
wherever electronics or atomic en-
gineers foregathered. When the
American Atomic Authority fi-
nanced construction of the neutrino
laboratory at Berkeley in 1960, Sy-
monds had no competitors for the
snperintendency. He was tops, in
his field.

At Berkeley he met Joseph Or-
tega, who was variously acclaimed
as a genius and denounced as a
quack. Ortega’s father was a day
laborer, and Joe had got most of his
early education on Main Street in
Los Angeles. Back in the clays be-
fore World War II he entered a
trade school for a course in aircraft
template layout, with a view to ac-
quiring a position paying the mu-
nificent wage of fifty cents an hour.
To his utter horror, he found that

136

ASTOUNDING SCIE N CE - FI CT I O N

he was supposed to have a working
knowledge of a thing called trigo-
nometry. Completely unaware of
his latent mathematical ability, he
bought a textbook in a secondhand
store, and mastered the fundamen-
tals in a week. That started it. He
knew trigonometry before he stud-
ied geometry. Then, in rapid suc-
cession, came algebra, calculus, Car-
tesian equations, logarithms — all the
basics. Techniques that the average
university student takes for granted
were to him a never ending source
of wonder. In 1941 he innocently
took to the printer a manuscript en-
titled : “A Statistical Analysis of
Nuclear Cross Sections.” Of
course, it was promptly censored out
of existence, but not before it
brought him to the attention of the
Manhattan Project, where he did
valuable work on resonance me-
chanics. In 1959 he published the
Ortega S-Field Equations, which
provoked a storm of controversy.
In 1960 came the historic meeting
with Symonds and a year later the
two of them, working in the Marin
County Laboratory, isolated the
graviton. A pair of very smart boys.

i

It was after one o’clock when
Professor Harley parked his car in
the driveway and walked past Sy-
monds’ neat little ranch-type home
toward the cement block laboratory.
The lights of Mill Valley shone in
the lower distance, and the night air
was heavy with the scent of flowers.

At his knock the door was flung
open by a short, little man resem-

NEXT FRIDAY MORNING

bling a cross between a dynamo and
a French poodle. Professor Harley
found himself clasped in a fervent
embrace and inundated by a torrent
of words.

“Welcome, John, welcome, my
Juano. Ah, come in, come in ! Why
were you not here ? It was glorious.
History we have made tonight ! His-
tory! — and you in bed, dreaming of
a procession of generations.”

This was Ortega. Behind him,
big, blond Symonds was choking
with laughter. The professor gently
disengaged himself.

“Are you sure you and Walt
haven’t been dreaming, Joe? I want
to see an example of temporal dis-
placement before I commit myself.
Proof before applause, you know.”

“Proof my Juano, proof? You
shall have it in full measure, pressed
down, and overflowing. When
we — ”

. Still smiling, Symonds inter-
rupted. “In about one minute, Joe,
you’re going to be pressed down.
We’ll give you a demonstration, pro-
fessor. As for applause, I know I’m
going to be too busy finding out
things about all the time-travel para-
doxes that have been plaguing the
theory boys.”

“Like slipping ahead fifty years to
see if your grandson makes Phi
Beta Kappa?”

“That’s it. Or next year’s Derby
winner, say. Well, come on and be
convinced.”

He led the way across the room.
The professor followed and Ortega
skipped happily along in the rear.

137

The mechanism was deceptively
simple. Professor Harley looked at
the innocuous assortment of tubes
and condensers and wiring, at the
everyday power leads, at the little
insulated dais with the crystal loop
around it.

“It doesn’t look very involved.’’
he said doubtfully.

Ortega let out a screech. “In-
volved! Involved? All, Juano, if
you but knew — ”

“There was nothing uncompli-
cated about the math.” Symonds’
voice was a coo! shower. “The
principle is simple, though. Dunnes’
hunch was right, the old slit-in-time
idea. Watch.”

Unhurriedly, he took from his
pocket a little plush jeweler’s box
and from the box a tiny silver cube.
He placed the cube on the dais,
glanced at the dials on the little
instrument panel, and flipped a
switch. Professor Harley’s eyes
were riveted on the silver cube.

“Takes a minute to warm up,”
.said Symonds quietly.

.The crystal loop was shimmering,
with violet light. Then, briefly, the
silver had an aura of its own. The
cube was wavering, flickering. It
vanished.

Professor Harley’s hands were
clenched and his heart was thump- .
ing in an alarming way, but he
didn’t notice.

“It’s still set for fifteen seconds,”
said Symonds detachedly. “There !”

The cube was back. Symonds
switched off the power.

“Now it’s parallel with the slit

through which we observe — our
‘now’,” he said. “Later, I'll make
the jump myself, see things from the
viewpoint of a different ‘now’. Pley,
pal, relax. It’s bad enough to nurse
Joe through periodic hysterics with-
out you folding up. Take it easy.”

The professor smiled and lit a
cigarette.

“It was just a little overwhelming,
Walt.”

“You’re not just kidding. It got
me that way the first time, and you
should have seen poor Joe. He all
but tried to walk up the wall.”

“1 don't blame him,” said Profes-
sor Harley. “What’s your present
limit on this thing?”

“Half a minute, but it'll he more
tomorrow. I can increase the wind-
ings on the coil that produces the
primary field and get a limit of seven
or eight days for a kilogram or so
of mass.”

The professor was frowning.
“Walt, the material actually exists
in a real future ?’’

“Yes.”

“What if someone interferes with
it?”

Symonds chuckled. “There’s a
very neat answer to that. The field
exists four-dimensionally, and the
temporally displaced object is still in
it. Any disturbance causes a poten-
tial drop that actuates a relay right
here — ‘now’ — that brings it back in
a hurry. It’s foolproof.”

“Clever,” said the professor ad-
miringly.

“Applause noted,” said Symonds.
He yawned. “I’m hushed. We’ve

138

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

been working: pretty steadily for
three days. How; about a bite ro eat
before l crawl into bed and die:”

The professor agreed. .Half an
hour later the; three tiers were
seated around a. card table; and dis-
posing of scrambled eggs and toast
while .coffee bubbled in the per-
colator on the lab hot plate,

They finished the meal and lit cig-
arettes before anyone spoke. Sy-
uiorwls started the- cenyersation..

- ‘'Weil, professor, -what news from,
the: outside- wirld ?*’

Professor I larky studied Ms;
glowing ctgarettfc w Thert*s,a I’an-
Amsrtesm mmfmmm o:t soil erosion
being: planned,. They’re holding it at
Kin. Interested

“The ecwtnvv of the con i'e fence
table nramifaeturef/’ laughed Sy-
mwids,. 0: wondte our f orests are

dbstppearhsg, What itself*

‘iDonhie talk about a general
strike in fefew York Sometime next
month/*

Symonds frowned. “That'll mean
the isidional i.iuard and the indus-
trial Mobili/.aui.m Corps will be
throwing their Weight around. How
lovely. Well, there’s 'nothing we can
do except sign; petitions', (.'outinue.”
"One more thing,’ - said the pro-
fesswy “Washington announced last
night that, on the fourteenth — next
.Friday morning- — the Army will fire
a space torpedo with a fennium war
head into the center of Kwadjelein
atoll.”

He was surprised at the reaction;,
S?n:i©nds turned white and stared

incredulously'. -Ortega made a noise
between, a screech and a moan, and
then hurst into speech,

‘‘Juano, nod It may be — who
knowyH-the finish, I have made
figures • there i# danger. Cannot:
they tell? Fools I Idiots !'*

The; professor cut him off. “(hi
.sfowrer,. Joe. 'fry to make sense:;”
l ie furred to Symonds. ‘ ‘What’s he
■ talktag about F*

Syir.oiids s! took his head. “It's
his department, not mir.e.” He
caught ( )rtega by the shoulder,
"'Take it easy, Joe, for Pete's sake,
Fretend you’re speaking to the Iter-
keley faculty. al:

Ortega subsided a little, S, I liava
separated seme; term-urn — that's
101 l-AlAll — with the trtass spectro-
graph. Juano, you know what is: the
k- factor:?* 1

The. professor shook his head.

*T! one hundred free neutrons in
an atoniie reaction produce fissions
causing one hundred one f ree neu •
trnns, there will he a chain reaction.
K will equal one point oh. one. You
understand? If the K factor is,
greater thaw unity, the reaction is
telf propagating : if lessy it damps
out, In fermiitm. my Juano, it is
too high t o take chances. So if the
mass; difierencej one of the basic"
terms, of the Einstein formula that
lie,§ hark pf it ail. It is dear now?”
The professor looked doubtful,
“Well . , . yes, in a general way. I’m
sorry if 1 don't scent too bright,
hut-

“Alt, no Juano/* protested Or-
tega. -Atomies is not your field.

XEXT W'tia® MOItXING

139

Do I know how many spotted pigs
come from a white grandma and a
brown grandpa? I do not, nor do
I care. But this bomb. That I
know. That I fear.”

“But Joe, surely the A. A. A.
would know if there’s any chances
of starting that . . . er . . . carbon
nitrogen cycle.” Now where did I
get that, he thought.

“The Bethe-Weizsacker reaction?
Poof ! Any reaction bomb can do
that. It damps out. This could
start a reaction in the crust of the
planet. Finish.”

“Pie’s probably right,” said Sy-
monds, with gloomy pride. “He
juggles gram calories and mass units
back and forth the way most people
handle feet and inches. Better, in
fact.” He smiled somberly. “Just
last week I overheard some woman
insisting that two-eights make a six-
teenth.”

“Well,” said the professor help-
lessly, “what do we do to get a
postponement of the test? Write
our congressmen ? That sounds
silly, hut I can’t think of a thing.”

“Not enough time anyway,” said
Symonds. “This is Wednesday
night — I mean Thursday morning.
Hey 1 I’ve got it !” He gulped.
“Professor, wasn’t President How-
ard in one of your classes when he
was attending the University? Yes?
O.K. ! He’s known to be approach-
able by old friends, and you’ll just
have to qualify. Come morning call
him long distance. Get that test
delayed !”

Professor Harley blinked. “I

140

couldn’t do that. Anyway, I’m a
geneticist. Why don’t you do it?
You’ve got ample prestige in the
field,”

“Sure I have and my mother’s
name was Simkhovich, too. Think
what the Subversive Activities Com-
mittee would do with that. Profes-
sor, you’ve got to do it.”

“All right, Walter,” said Profes-
sor Harley quietly. “You win, I
yield. But after all, I’ll have to tell
the President that my information
comes from you and Joe. And now,
hadn’t we better get some sleep?
Morning isn’t far away.”

Symonds and Ortega waited si-
lently. They could hear the mur-
mur of the proEessor’s voice inside,
though the words were indistin-
guishable. It seemed a long time be-
fore he came out, beaming, and an-
swered the unspoken question.

“The President will ask the Mili-
tary Affairs Committee to hold up
the test for a recheck of the known
data. There will he an announce-
ment later today,” he said.

Symonds and Ortega looked at
him and than at each other, and
suddenly the tension was gone.

'Tie spoke highly of you.'-- both
of you,” the professor added.
“Have I earned my breakfast?”

It was generally acknowledged
that he had, and they ate in the
shaded little patio. Joan Symonds,
Walter’s dark and attractive wife,
served them grapefruit, a mushroom
omelette, toast, and coffee, and
chaffed them indiscriminately.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION

“This levity," said Symonds with
mock severity. “Have you no re-
spect for your distinguished guest?”
The professor raised his hand in
a restraining gesture. “After that
breakfast, Walt, she’s entitled to
throw rocks at us if she wants.”
Joan curtsied. “Thank you, sir.
Don’t let Walter fool you. He often
says nice things to me, really. ‘Gee,
Joan, that’s good cake’, or ‘you made
the bed nicely, dear’, or, ‘vou made
the bed’.”

She fled with an armful of dishes
before Symonds could frame a re-
tort. He smiled fondly after her.

The day passed quietly. At three
o'clock a special deliver} - package
arrived — parts built to specifications
for the little machine in the lab. Sy-
monds disappeared with his bundle,
declining offers of help. The pro-
fessor and Ortega chatted in the
cool, little patio. They tacitly
avoided the subject of atomics.

The battered press car pulled into
the drive just before dusk. Ortega
noted the lettering on the car door
—“San Francisco CHRONICLE ”
— and sighed. Fie rose to his feet
as two men piled out and hurried
toward the patio, one of them a
dark, slender youngster, slightly in
advance of the other. The second
man carried a camera,

“Yes, gentlemen?” said Ortega.
“You’re Ortega, aren't you?” said
the youngster. Fie went on almost
without hesitation as Ortega nodded.
“It’ll be on the air any minute now,
but I’ll give it to you straight. The
House Military Affairs Committee

has protested against postponement
of the fermium bomb test, and the
Subversive Activities Committee
wants you and Mr. Symonds and
Professor Harley to attend a Wash-
ington hearing next week. The test
will be Held tomorrow, Mr. Ortega.
Would you mind stating if it is true
that your father was a revolutionary
in Mexico ?”

Ortega swelled with rage. “He
was a picker of sugar beets and a
simple man, never a politician.” He
flinched as a flash bulb exploded al-
most in his face.

“It is true that you have advo-
cated nationalization of steel, rail-
roads, and mines P* said the Chron-
icle reporter.

“And if so, what of it?” asked
Symond’s tired voice. He had ap-
proached unheard.

".Mr. Symonds, I’d like to ask you
something. No offense intended.
Was your mother’s maiden name
Simkhovich, and did you at M.I.T.
room with a chap named Igor Pro-
tipoff?”

Before Symonds could answer an-
other car pulled in. '‘Examiner”
said the lettering on the door. Sy-
monds blinked.

“Might as well wait for the others
and have a press conference,” he
said.

They held a forum of their own
after the newspapermen left.

“You can thank Cartwright for
this upset,” said Symonds savagely.

“Cartwright?” queried the pro-
fessor.

NEXT FRIDAY MORNING

141

“Sorry,” Symonds answered. *‘1
forgot that you hoys aren’t 'liter -
ested in politics. . It’s plain that
Cartwright and Corning — Congres-
sional buddies got together and is-
sued a blast, and the President bad
to backtrack.”’

“Walter,” said Ortega, quietly,
“are you going to tell Joan about
the possible result of the fermium

bomb?”

“No, I’m not,” said Symonds.
“If we go out with a loud bang, fine.
If not, why worry her. No, let’s
just keep on ottr path for thfe time
being,. Come on out to the, lab and
watch time, if not tide, perform for
us.”

He manages it rather well, the
professor noted. That surface care-
lessness. Ortega says nothing, and
they both hope that their attitude
will reassure me. How foolish, yet
how kind. I’ve lived my span.

The lab lights were blinding at
first. After his eyes became accus-
tomed to the glare, he examined the
time machine. The changes seemed
minor. Two more of the curious
little vacuum tubes had been wired
into a circuit. Another coil had been
added to amplify the field. Other-
wise, it was no different.

“Let’s try something heavier this
time,” said Symonds. He opened
a drawer, and peered inside. “Ah t”
Joan’s kitchen thermometer. I
should return my borrowings really.
But, not right now.”

He placed the thermometer on the

THE

142

crystal looped dais and switched on
the power. Once again the violet
haze flickered. Suddenly the dais
was empty. Professor Harley drew
a deep breath.

“How far, Walter?”

“A week, professor, Hope you’re
here to see it materialize.”

Ortega coughed, and Symonds
went on, hurriedly, embarrassedly :
“I mean, if you’re not lecturing or
something.”

The phone punctuated his sen-
tence and he picked up the receiver
with visible relief.

“Yes? Joan? , , . Your ther-
mometer ? Well, I can get it back if
you must have it . . . Fat for French
fries? Test it with your finger . . .
Well, just a minute.” Carefully he
altered the settings. “Rather a short-
lived experiment, that one. We’ll
bring back her kitchen appliance and
use: something else.” He consulted
his watch and checked the dials on
the machine, first with puzzlement
on his face, then urgency, “Strange,
it should be hack now.”

“Some possible future interfer-
ence?” hazarded the professor. Or-
tega did not speak. j.

“No, that would . bring it back
automatically, remember,” said Sy-
monds, “unless . . . unless-—”

“If there is no future — ” said
Ortega, in choked tones.

Realization, sudden and complete,
stood tangibly in the room. Pro-
fessor Harley found himself wind-
ing his watch, his fingers stiff, his
whole being numb and detached.

END.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

BOOK REVIEWS

“The Key to the Great Gate,” by

Hinko Gottlieb, Simon & Schus-
ter, New York. $2.75

Science-fiction readers whose
souls hunger only for the clatter of
space axes or buxom futurean Jane
Russells struggling in the grip of
nine-armed monsters can get off here
and take the next rocket going the
other way. Hinko Gottlieb’s tale of
four prisoners of the Nazi regime
in Vienna during the recent war is
no space opera, indeed it is not
strictly science fiction. Neverthe-
less, the exploits of that imperturb-
able fellow Tarnapolski during his
four days in the cramped little six by
twelve cell are almost sure to startle
and interest the more mature sci-
ence-fiction fan as much as they did
Tarnopolski’s three cell mates.

Dr. Strauss, the prominent Vien-
nese attorney, finds it necessary to
caution the new arrival about his
language within thirty seconds after
Weichselbraun, the saturnine Nazi
floor supervisor, delivers Tarnopol-
ski into the already overcrowded Cell
84, and from there on the events of
this absorbing story proceed along a
course at least as surprising to his
fellow prisoners as it shortly be-
comes to the Nazi authorities.

BO;OK REVIEWS

There is, for instance, Tarno-
polski’s habit of producing from his
pocket all sorts of objects definitely
not on the list permitted Jewish in-
mates of a Nazi prison in war time.
This alone is enough to insure a
most unpleasant amount of attention
from the floor supervisor, and even-
tually from the lieutenant, and even
the prison commandant, especially
since the “objects” include, among
other things, a radio, a live rooster,
and a grand piano.

Then too, there is the strange and
electrifying fate of Dov Tarnopol-
ski’s shoe, which achieves a really
astonishing velocity during the night,
and is promoted to the dignity of a
British bomb by the prison authori-
ties, as they try to account for cer-
tain damage to the building. And,
of course, the drinking bout in the
cell, carried on with the aid of li-
queur which the prisoners clearly
could not possibly obtain, has a most
depressing effect on Weichselbraun,
whose intelligence is not exactly
overpowering.

Aside from the events stemming
from the unusual powers of that
peculiar man Tarnopolski, the reader
will doubtless find the majestic ar-
guments between Dr. Strauss and
the chief rabbi of Salonika, the third

143

inmate, both amusing and stimulat-
ing, particularly since both men play
chess with an equal lack of skill.
And as for Tarnopolski’s habit of
singing loudly or conducting lectures
on science in the middle of the night
— But exploration of these enter-
taining sidelights will be more re-
warding to the reader who discovers
them for himself.

Practically all the action takes
place in the prisoners’ cramped
cell, even to their visit to Tarnopol-
ski’s house, yet one could hardly
call this a static narrative, or one
devoid of breadth, for the prisoners’
fund of experience and imagination
more than makes up for their re-
stricted physical domain. As to how
they accomplish a visit to Tarnopol-
ski’s home and workshop without
leaving Cell 84, it would be cheating
the reader of a deserved pleasure to
explain in too much detail. Suffice
it to say that the means employed
will not strain the bounds of plausi-
bility for regular Astounding
readers.

The tale unfolds under the telling
of the fourth prisoner, who is
enough of a physicist to follow the
dissertations of Dov Tarnopolski,
although not without limping at in-
tervals, especially when that worthy
chooses the sleepiest period of the
night for his more involved explana-
tions. The narrator and his two
fellow victims of Nazi terror, Dr.
Strauss and the chief rabbi, have al-
ready occupied Cell 84 some weary
months when the new prisoner is
thrust among them by the brutal

144

Weichselbraun, but it is safe to say
that the ensuing four days before
the unaccountable disappearance of
Tarnopolski are more crowded with
events than all the time that passed
before.

It soon becomes known that Tar-
nopolski is searching for some one
who befriended him in Poland while
he was doing the work which was to
result in his peculiar powers, but it
seems likely that this search is ter-
minated by the same Coslnic dis-
turbance which apparently has
something to clo with the disappear-
ance. At any rate, the final outcome
of the hunt never becomes known
in the story, which however doesn’t
interfere in the slightest with the
reader’s enjoyment.

It is a story blessed with some of
the most skillful character drawing
this reviewer has seen in recent fic-
tion, a good deal of potent ethical
and philosophical ideology, leavened
with more humor than can be found
in an entire issue of a slick magazine,
and enough action and surprises to
appeal to even those who yawn over
the merely intellectual appeal. Also,
the sidelights on minor characters
such as the trusty Haberstock, a pro-
fessional chicken thief known to his
fellow prisoners for good and suf-
ficient reasons as The Bishop, and
the illuminating insights into the
psychology of prisons and prisoners
add their share of interest to this
rewarding story.

It would be unfair to conclude a
review of this book without some
discussion of the author, whose

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

knowledge of Nazi prisons was
gained at first hand. Hinko Gottlieb
is a Croatian author and lawyer,
who grew up in Zagreb, and in his
sixty-one years has seen and taken
part in many of the violent social
and political dislocations which have
harassed the peoples of that part of
Southern Europe. He was impris-
oned by the Gestapo when the Nazis
occupied Yugoslavia, was later
moved to an Italian concentration
camp, and eventually found his way
into the Yugoslav underground.

It was during this time with the
partisans that his manuscript for
“The Key To The Great Gate” was
destroyed by the Germans, who
found it cached in a cave. The story
had been written during a previous
interval of escape and freedom, and
was reconstructed from memory a
year later in Italy. Written origi-
nally in Serbo-Croat, it was trans-
lated by the author into German,
from which language it was ren-
dered into English with notable skill
and taste by Fred Bolman and Ruth
Morris for Simon and Schuster.

No review of this book would be
complete without proper apprecia-
tion of the excellent illustrations of
Sam Fischer, who has caught the
flavor of the whole work to perfec-
tion. The picture of the four pris-
oners, the toilet, and Tarnopolski’s
mysterious grand piano crowded
into Cell 84 is by itself fully as
amusing as the pinheaded Nazi lieu-
tenant’s search for the hidden spring
which he firmly believes will cause
it to fold up and disappear. There is

a definite and unmistakable Euro-
pean flavor about the. whole" book
reminiscent of Schweik, “The Good
Soldier,” as indeed there is in the
author’s masterly portrayal of the
cruelty and stupidity of the Nazi
tyranny.

It would be pleasant to record as
a final note that the author has at
last been able to settle in some tran-
quil place to enjoy his declining
years, perhaps in turning out still
other semifantastic tales, but the
facts seem imbued with yet another
touch of the most exquisite irony.
Mr. Gottlieb now lives in Palestine.

L. Jerome Stanton

“Beyond This Horizon,” by Robert
A. Heinlein. Fantasy Press,
Reading, Pennsylvania. 242 pp.
111. $3.00.

The gadget story, with a routine
plot hung from some more or less
scientific quirk, has rightly lost its
lead in science fiction, or at least has
become more sophisticated. How-
ever, in one respect it is still with
us in an increasing number of stories
in which the jigger is not physical
but an imagined variant of human
society, This is Utopia without the
preaching, probably the oldest and
most respectable form of science
fiction, and Robert Heinlein is
among its most adept exponents.

“Beyond This Horizon,” which
appeared here in 1942, is Heinlein’s
first novel in book form with the

BOOK REVIEWS

145

exception of the juvenile, “Rocket
Ship Galileo” — Scribner, $2.00. It
should be the first of many, for
there are even better yarns in the
hopper. It introduces us to an oddly
advanced, oddly archaic society of
planned economy and side arms,
somewhere in our future, in which
geneticists are strenuously and art-
fully using their science to tailor-
make the best of all possible human
strains. Its hero, Hamilton Felix,
is their masterpiece and a far from
standardized one; his failure to see
any reason for carrying on the proc-
ess of directed matings provides

one element of the plot, which fur-
ther involves an underground rev-
olution and the personal problems
of one or two of his closer associates.
But in true Heinlein manner the
basic theme of the book smashes
through the screen of action only in
the closing pages.

The book, as usual with Fantasy
Press, is superior typographically.
A new artist, Robert Breck, has
done the illustrations and A. J.
Donnell has contributed one of his
best jacket designs.

P. Schuyler Miller

THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY

Wilmar H. Shiras sent in her first ScieuccYfiction story, “In Hiding.” I liked it,
and bought it at once. Evidently I was not alone in liking it : it has made an excep-
tional showing in the Lab, here — the sort of showing, in fact, that Bob Heinlein,
A. E. van Vogt, and Lewis Padgett made with their first yarns. I have reason to
believe we’ve found a new front-rank author. Incidentally, there's a sequel to
‘In Hiding” coming up in the March issue.

But the Lab this month shows the following figures, on the November issue:

Place

Story

Author

Points

1.

In Hiding

Wilmar H. Shiras

1.54

2.

Players of A (Part II)

A. E. van Vogt

2.35

3.

Expedition Mercy

J. A. Winter

3.32

4 & 5

Tied:

Period Piece

J. J. Coupling

3.60

Love Of Heaven

Theodore Sturgeon

3.60

The Editor,

146

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

BRASS

Pan fried!

Dear Sir:

When I happen to have a spare
quarter do you think that I buy nail-
polish with it? Do you believe that
I buy candy, or go to a movie — a
cheap one— -or that I even indulge
in a long, exciting trolley ca. ride?
No, with that quarter I usually get
a science fiction magazine, and I
have been spending quarters on your
magazine for a countless number
of years. I have risked my reputa-
tion in college by defending science-
fiction in English class as belonging
to great literature, and I have es-
tablished a reputation among my
friends as being an expert on rocket-
ships, time travel, and probability
measurements.

And so, dear sir, I feel that I have
the right to criticize the latest issue
of Astounding — October 1948 — for
it left me speechless with ire and
indignation.

From the cover to page 153 the

TACKS

magazine offered nothing but the
most mediocre stories, ideas, and en-
tertainment in general. But let us
not be hasty. I shall tell you in de-
tail what I mean, so that in the
future you will know what “the little
average woman-on-the-street” wants
out of her science fiction.

I think that men are lovely, but
I don’t think that they belong on the
cover of a magazine dressed in
nothing but B.V.D.’s. And on top
of that looking like a hamy actor
about to start reciting a resounding,
heroic ballad.

Then, in my own opinion, the
serial “The Players of A” is an
incoherent, silly story, fit to be put
before a ten-year-old adventure fan,
but you can’t fool the connoisseurs.
First of all, it lacks dramatic unity in
its development, which presupposes
knowledge of Mr. van Vogt’s earlier
story, which was rightly panned by
all critics the very moment it hit
the book shops. But why go on ? I
hate wasting more time on it.

BRASS TACKS

147

“Unite and Conquer” was all right
compared to other stories in that
issue, but, of course, it, lacked be-
lievability, being set so close to our
own age, thus enabling the reader
to say, “Aha, the fellow is just mak-
ing make-believe,” and settling back
with that idea.

All the short stories were abso-
lutely, but absolutely my dear editor,
to put it bluntly, terrible. “The
Hero” is th kind of story that was
written many times before, and all
that is new about it are the names
of the heroes, and a little twist here
and there in the juvenile plot.

The same goes for “School for the
Stars,” the only thing different about
this story is that the plot is even
weaker and the artistry is even less
apparent than in the above-panned
story.

“Muten” was cute. That is the
word for it, cute. Now, that kind
of story does not belong to a serious
science fiction magazine. I read
about a lot of talking horses, and the
idea that a talking horse may be a
''‘■Qiuten” is really quite clever, and
has a lot of possibilities, but what
did Mr. Muu.ro do? He tried to
knock off a story in a few minutes,
it seems, and dished out a kinder-
garten tale to hard-boiled fans.

“Tiger Ride” also has a clever plot
structure, but it is not developed,
and it seems that toward the end the
author is eager to rush back to his
game of golf. No, pardon me, the
collaborating authors were probably
eager to rush back to their game of
■ golf. Besides, what is wrong with

148

Oil

a belt-servant? I could use one
myself, and being freed of all the
worries of making a living to get
quarters to get your magazine I
could just order that belt to make me
happy by writing the most scientific
science fiction story of them all, and
in the meantime let the world go to
pot. I assure the authors that I
won’t mind going to pot in that
pleasant way.

I won’t discuss the article, be-
cause I never read them and con-
sider them a blasphemy in a fiction
magazine anyway.

So here is my gripe. Here is part
of my martyrdom being expressed
in puny words which will never be
able to convey to you, most illus-
trious editor, all the sorrow that I
suffered after spending my last
quarter. And so here is a warning :
after this letter, which explained to
you the faults that I found, I ex-
pect you to turn out a better sort
of magazine or else 1 will shower
your office with stories of my own
creation, and will spend my spare
time reading my own diary.—
(Mrs.) Ursula C. Whitt, 3120AV.
Clifford Street, Philadelphia, Penn-
sylvania.

“In Hiding ” zvas zvidely and highly
praised. We’ll hear further from
Shir as!

My dear Mr. Campbell :

I have just finished reading two of
the most human stories I have ever
had the pleasure to read. Both were

ASTOUNDING S C I E N C E - F I C X I O N

contained in the November issue of
ASF. Both had one quality, their
humanity was the result of an un-
human — or nonhuman — theme.
Both showed, in words better than
can be employed by any psychologist
or sociologist, some of the under-
lying failings of the human race.

The first was “The Love of
Heaven,” by one of the past masters.
In my opinion, its charm lay in the
original slip made by the being when
he said, “I am— regret.” I had the
feeling that Sturgeon wanted us to
feel that he zms Regret, personified.

The other was “In Hiding.” I
herewith nominate this tale to the
Scientifiction Hall of Fame. I will
never be able to say quite enough for

this story. Of itself, it is worth a
year’s subscription. I know that I
lived the parts of both the psychia-
trist and the child. And I am glad
that I elected to read that story last,
for there is nothing now which can
dull the sheer ecstasy which filled
me.

I f I wax flowery and verbose, you
can blame Mr. Shiras for creating a
classic. Thank you, Mr. Campbell,
for this wonderful treat.

I have a coUple of suggestions to
improve the magazine. They are
not fundamental, for there is no
fundamental fault. But it might not
be a bad idea to get a little type
which will handle the mathematical
and scientific symbols used in the

FANTASTIC FICTION FOR SALE

PART I — FANTASTIC FICTION IN BOOKS

All 5 for
$14.50
Copies Auto-
graphed by
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3.001 All 3 for $8
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A. E.
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8. Death’s Deputy — Hubbard..

9. World of A

10. Book of Ptath 3.00 }■

11. Out of the Unknown 2.50)

12. Who Goes There 3.00 J

13. Mightiest Machine 3.00 )

14. Legion of Space 3.00 '

15. Darker Than You Think. . 3.00

*16. Lest Darkness Fall 3.00

17. Cornelian Cube 3.00

18. Divide and Rule and Stolen

Dormouse 3.00

19. Land of Unreason 2.50

20. Wheels of IF 3.00

21. Without Sorcery — Sturgeon $3.00

PART II — FANTASTIC

1. Astounding — 1931-1937 $2.00 each

1938-1948 1.00 each

2. Unknowns — 1941-1943 1.00 each

3. Amazing Monthlies — 1929-1940 1.00 each

1941-1948 50 each

PART III — Choice of Any Item Below Free With Your Order of $5 and Over

1. Ifloon Pool— -Merritt i 4. Rhode Island on Lovecraft

2. Conquest of Moon Pool — Merritt V F. N. Version 5. Purple Cloud — M. P. Shiel

3. Ship of Ishtar — Merritt S 6. Star of the Unborn — Werfel

22. Beyond This Horizon — Heiniein $3.00

23. Methusalem’s Children — Heiniein 3.00

24. The Torch — Bechdolt 2.50

25. Checklist of Fantastic Literature 6.00

26. Sunken World — Coblentz 3,00

27. Venus Equilateral — Smith 3.00

28. Black Wheel — Merritt 4.00

29. Fox Woman — Merritt 4.00

30. Sinister Barriers — Russell 3.00

31. Black Flame — Weinbaum 3.00

32. Forbidden Garden — Taine 3.00

33. Skullface & Others — Howard 5.00

34. Of Worlds Beyond — Ed. by Eshbach... 2.00

35. Burroughs — Martian-Venus Series ...ea. 1.00

36. Edison’s Conquest of Mars — Serviss.... 3.50

*37. Sidewise in Time — Leinster 3.(ftr

38. The Fourth Book of Jorkens — Lord Dunsany 3.00

39. Genius Luci and Other Tales — C. A. Smith 3.00
*40. X E Luchia and Others — M. P. Shiel.. 3.00

*41. Selected Letters — Lovecraft 6.50

*42. Radio Man — Farley 3.00

* Ready soon. ** Especially autographed.

Any book from combinations may be purchased
separately.

FICTION IN MAGAZINES

4. Amazing Quarterlies — 1928-1934 2.00 each

5. Wonders — 1929-1940 1.00 each

1941-1948 50 each

6. Wonders Quarterlies — 1929-1933 2.00 each

7. Famous Fantastic Mysteries — 1939-1948 1.00 each

JULIUS UNGER

Box 35, Brooklyn 4, New York

BRASS TACKS

149

articles and stories. For example :
angular velocity in radians per sec-
ond is given by a lower case omega,
not an upper case W. And angular
momentum is a lower case mu, not
U. It is unimportant, but I think it
would enhance the appearance of the
articles.

And I think that it would be a
good idea if you were to change An
Lab policy somewhat. Do not in-
clude the serials in the monthly re-
ports, but make them an annual job,
in which you report, say in January,
all the serials completed in the previ-
ous years. Many, I know, are like
me, and do not read the serial until
it is complete. Many others do not
like to report on the serial until it
is done. This throws the odds off
on the final issue.

And here is the November An
Lab Report :

1. In Hiding

2. The Love of Heaven

3. Period Piece — really ties for
second.

4. Expedition Mercy — an excel-
lent story, but outclassed by the

"olhers in this issue.

And can’t “Probability Zero”
come out of hiding now that the war
is so far in the past?

And give us Unknoum. From
Unknown Worlds just whetted our
appetites.

Thanks again for the best issue
since Hector was a pup. — Michael
J. Keenan, 116 S. Atrisco Road,
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
rw>

We’ve got some good stuff coming

too!

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Your issues are getting better and
better.

That statement may sound old,
coming from me, but nevertheless
1 can n.ot think of anything to say
that would fit the case more ac-
curately.

“Dreadful Sanctuary” — this end-
ing was compelling and thought-
provoking.

“The Monster” — best Van Vogt
in a long time — even better than
“The Rull"

(Now the deciding gets tough.)

“Time Trap” — more interesting
characters.

"Smaller Than You Think”.

“Dawn Of Nothing” — even the
last is a darn good story by a good
writer.

Front cover: excellent. Interior
artist : Cartier, Orban, Timmins — ■
as listed on the contents page. —
Rosco E. Wright, Route 2, Box 264,
Springfield, Oregon.

Rhine’s careful mark seems to dem-
onstrate something — though even
he doesn’t claim to know just
what. As such it is legitimate
background for science fiction.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Something for the Complaint De-
partment: van Vogt’s “Monster,”
although an enjoyable story, -.is part
of a regrettable trend toward magic

ASTOUNDING S Cl E NCE -FICTIO N

in what you claim to be science fic-
tion. I don’t like to use harsh
words about one of your best writ-
ers, but this seems to me rather a
cheap way to do business.

Proper science fiction, I’ve always
understood — for about twenty years
— is based on reasonable extrapola-
tion of present knowledge. (It
should therefore not try to peer too
far into the future.) Writers lately
tend to go hog-wild, blithely ca-
vorting in a make-a-wish fairy
world. I submit that Rhine’s dubi-
ous experiments form inadequate
basis for all this fantasy.

An occasional such cotton-candy
story may be agreeable, • but it
doesn’t take much to sicken one.
How about a more wholesome diet.
Doc?

And how about some more from
that promising new writer, Wilkin-
son- — this time without the mys-
ticism? — R. C. W. Ettinger, 4231
Monterey, Detroit 4, Michigan.

Note: Bob Heinlein has promised
us a yarn soon!

Dear John:

At last technological development
has caught up with the science-fic-
tion artists and illustrators. I am
not referring to anything else but
Paul Orban’s spaceships. Note illos
for “The Rull,” et cetera. Also the
filler cut of the multi-windowed ship
you use frequently.

The only sad thing about this de-

velopment is that evidence lends
support to the extra-mundane origin
theories of Charles Fort and other
dubious adherents, among them
members of our own genre of stf
authors — needless to say, with the
recent crop of wacky theories.

First came the “flying saucers”,
or “disks”. Perhaps Phil Nowlan
and Dick Calkins could be credited
with the idea and cartooned version
of the flying disk much, much ear-
lier in the P>uck Rogers strip. Well,
Kenneth Arnold of Boise brought
science-fiction up-to-date with the
first observation of the flying disks.

And finally, stf has been caught
up with in the form of Orban’s
ubiquitous, eternal spaceship.

On Saturday, July 24th, two
EAL pilots, Captain Clarence Chiles
and Co-pilot John Whitted, on the
Houston-to-Atlanta-to-Boston flight,
at 2:45 a.tn. (CST), in their DC-3,
reported a wingless aircraft that
passed them at tremendous speed.

They were flying at five thousand
feet in the regulation CAA desig-
nated airway when they spotted tb*
aircraft, it being almost in them
line of flight, headed in the opposite
direction, towards Mobile and New
Orleans. The DC-3 was about
twenty miles southwest of Mont-
gomery, Alabama.

Captain Chiles related: “I hate
to say this, but it looked just like a
Buck Rogers rocket ship. If I see
anything else like this, I think I’ll
have to quit flying. We were. flying
along on the regular airway when
we saw ahead and slightly above and

BRASS TACKS

Ml;

to our right what appeared to be
a tremendous jet of flame. It
flashed down and we veered to the
left and it veered to its left, and
passed us about seven hundred feet
to our right and about seven
hundred feet above us. Then as if
the .pilot wanted to avoid us, it
pulled up with a tremendous burst
of flame out of its rear and zoomed
up into the clouds, Its prop-wash
or jet- wash or rocket-wash, take
your pick, rocked our DC-3.” TJie
pilots describe the ship as about
one hundred feet in length, and
about four times the circumference
of a B-29 fuselage. It had no wings.
A twenty-five-to-flfty foot red flame
was shooting from the rear, and
there was a blue, fluorescent glow
under the whole length of the fuse-
lage. Captain Chiles further re-
lated, “It had two rows of square
windows, apparently from an upper
and lower deck, and the interior
was brilliantly lighted. We saw no
occupants. I’d say it was going be-
tween five hundred and seven
hundred miles an hour.”

The following Sunday morning
the story appeared in - various
■Georgia papers, the Atlanta Con-
stitution carrying sketches of the
ship by both men. The singularly
remarkable thing about the incident,
is that the sketches were remarkably
similar to Orban’s ships.

Well, these things happen every
day so to speak. The alarming fact
is that no matter what the theory
that explains the phenomenon, as
infinite numbers of theories do as

152

long as it is a workable theory, the
PHENOMENON STILL RE-
MAINS.

I guess I’ll have to go back
through Charles Fort again.

As for the contents of the August
issue.

The cover takes my breath.
Canedo is too. too utterly para-, or
hyper-symbolic. And no story titles
to mar the front either. I guess you
have finally decided that ASF sells
itself on its own merits rather than
having to resort to standard pulp
tactics. Psycho-dynamics applied
to the masses.

Your editorial — simply superb.
Let’s have one tying in Xon-New-
tonian system of action-by-contact,
and the standing confused contro-
versies over quantum mechanics in
giving us readers the low-down on
latest discovered subatomic particles
and their relation to our present
systems, with probable effect on the
classical set-up.

Oh well, such an evaluation would
be quite a thesis for graduate work
much less asking it for the price of
two-bits.

Oh yes — the stories. “The Mon-
ster” takes first place with the tag
van Vogt placed well before the de-
nouement — “This race has dis-
covered the secrets of its nervous
system.”

“Time Trap” grabbed second, I
like Harness’ new words — Hard-
times (sterechronia).

“Dreadful Sanctuary” has to
show. I just couldn’t resist his de-
scription of the rockets’ lifting for

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

their maiden voyage. Thank you
Eric and John. After all, every-
one didn’t get to see the lift of a
V-2 at White Sands. Or maybe I’m
just a dreamy-eyed fool. (I'll bet
I have company on this one.)

“Smaller Than You Think” was
fourth, with “Dawn of Nothing”
hitting fifth. Quite an issue. The
liquor ads have been bounced and
the fans are now happy with the
new program of the Fan-ad.

When do we get some of the un-
written Future History series or
does Bob like three to five cents a
word better than honor and tradi-
tion? However, ya’ gotta eat!

To A. E. van Vogt— -“Let’s have
an Asimov-type yarn concerning

corruption of the Galaxy with the
unique system of Null-A.”

Time for a Kuttner serial.
Unknown. Unknown. UN-
KNOWN. — W. H. Entrekin Jr.,
Americus, Georgia

Sorry, but we can’t help Canadian
science- fictioncers. It’s against

their lavas for us to accept any
Canadian-bound subscriptions,
even as gifts from Americans.

Dear Editor :

From front to back, the Septem-
ber issue of Astounding rates high.
But the reasons are somewhat differ-

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BRASS TACKS

153

cut this time, and I thought maybe
you’d like to hear why.

Couple of days ago I got hungry
enough for science-fiction to hike
down to the only secondhand book-
store I know of in Cleveland that
sells back copies of magazines to see
if I could find something to read.
I had remembered that years hack
when I first started reading SF, a
fellow could cull many a good issue
among the hundreds of back issues
available. Hut when I got there, I
could find only a few back issues of
Astounding mostly late ’47 and early
’48 issues — which 1 had at home
anyway— and about forty copies of
competing magazines, mostly early
’48. Well, I bought five magazines
and came home to read.

I don’t want to go into all the bar-
rowing details. Tt seems sufficient
to say that when I received the Sep-
tember issue yesterday, the compari-
son was ridiculous. Astounding
surely has come a long way in the
past ten years.

The cover was appealing except
N^or the fact that it took me quite a
time to discover what it represented.
..Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed it
so much but for (lie fact that my
wife asked me what that round
thing on the cover was. I told her
that I thought the explanation would
he on the contents page, and of
course, when we looked, it wasn’t
there. Hiding it at the tail end of
the Richardson article seemed il-
logical to us.

In order of preference, the stories
rate as follows :

154

1. “The Catspaw”

2. “Dreams Are Sacred” and
“The Great Air Monopoly” tied for
second place. “Dreams” would have
been better than a tie if it hadn’t
dragged in an author to provide the
humor. Not that I have anything
against authors per se, but rather
that I seem to have read a number
of variations on the theme.

3. “The Gorgons” : A nice short

4. “Dance of a New World”:
Average SF

5. “Inheritance” : An incident ex-
panded. Failed to entertain. And
besides, I have read Dunne.

The article was as good as usual.
I find that this particular section of
the magazine fulfills a very definite
craving on my part to know more
about what is being done in the
world of theoretical science.

One of the things I enjoyed most
in this issue was the Brass Tacks
section. The letters seemed unusu-
ally clea-r, concise, and interesting ;
particularly Philip Good’s finely ba-
lanced letter concerning Kor/.yhski
and liis work. Any mention of the
Non-Aristotelian system has the im-
mediate effect of bringing me up
sharply to attention. I still re-
member the absolute feeling of awe
that fell over me the first time I
read “Science and Sanity” by the
good Count.

Isn’t there any way these guys in
Canada can get copies of ASF,
legally, that is? As a Christmas
gift, for instance? — John W. Down-
ing, 11601 Kelton Avenue, Cleve-
land 6, Ohio.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

CHRISTMAS TREE

BY CHRISTOPHER YOUD

The pitcher too often to the well doesn’t return — and
the man too often to the Moon may he marooned there.

And then a tree can be a precious, hitter thing —

Illustrated by Timmins

The skipper cushioned us in a boat like the Arkhmd that was
nicely. I had my eyes on the dial good ; I’ve known a had pilot to
the whole time and the needle never touch seven G’s on an Earth landing,
got above four and a half G’s. With All the same T didn’t feel so hot.

155

CHRISTMAS TREE

Young Stenway was out of his
cradle before the tremors * had
stopped. I lay still a moment while
he stood over me, grinning :

“Break it up, Joe. Dreaming of
a pension?”

I got up with a bounce and landed
him a playful clip that rocked him
back into his own cradle. There
was normal gravity underneath us ;
the feeling of rightness you know
in your bones and muscles no matter
how long you’ve been away. It was
good to feel myself tough still.

“So this is Washington. What
day is it ?** Stenway asked.

“You revert to type quick, kid.
How should I know what day it is?
I’m only a visitor.”

He grinned, flushing a little, and
went over to the multiple calendar.
I saw him fingering it, his face
screwed up.

“Friday. Say, Joe, if we take
more than fourteen days on the turn-
round, we’ll make Christmas here.”

“If we take more than ten days
on the turn-round,” I shot back, “the
whole Board of Directors will com-
mit gory suicide. What’s worrying

He grinned lopsidedly, and went
out in a hurry. I was a bit sorry
for him. He’d done less than a year
in the Service. Things weren’t the
right pattern for him yet. He prob-
ably thought some of us were tough
eggs. But we had to ride him down
now and then for his own good.

I went along to see Louis. He’d
been in space only a couple of years

less than I had, and we’d both been
with the Arkland since she was com-
missioned eight years before. But
we didn’t see each other much,
working on different shifts and
pretty nearly at opposite ends of
the boat. I found him in the mess,
sprucing up. He called out:

“Hello, Joe. You still with us?”
“Why not?”

“Borrowed time — just borrowed
time.”

“Louis. Do me a favor.”

“Sure, Joe. Any little thing.”

He put down a hairbrush and
started powdering his face, overlay-
ing the finely raveled seams of red
that told he’d been out in vacuum,
I couldn’t understand that myself.
It made you a bit unusual on Earth,
it stamped you as a spaceman, but
who’d be ashamed of that? Still,
I’ve never been branded myself, so
maybe I shouldn’t talk.

“You handling the loading for the
next trip, Louie?”

He pressed the powder in with
his fingertips, and nodded.

“I want to get something on
board.”

“How big?” Louie asked.

I shrugged lightly. “About five
feet long. Maybe two feet across,
at it widest- — when it’s tied up.”
Louie jutted his chin out and
flicked a patch of black velvet across
his face. He spoke through his
teeth :

“What about the Pentagon Build-
ing, if you want a souvenir?”

“What would I do with the Penta-
gon Building?”

150

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Louie turned round. “Look, Joe,
you know how things are. You know
the cost of space-freighting. There
isn’t a quarter-ounce of cargo weight
that isn't accounted for. What do
you want to fit in, anyway?”

“This is for old Llans. I thought
of taking him a Christmas tree.”
Louie didn’t say anything for a
moment. He had brushed the pow-
der well in, hut you could still see
the crimson network underneath.
At last he said :

“O.K. Get it up here the night
before we blast. I’ll fix it for you.”
“Thanks, Louie. When will that
be, by the way? Have they told
you ?”

“Nineteenth. Now go and raise
hell for nine days. But don’t forget
the Medical tomorrow.”

I looked at him sharply, but he
was brushing in another layer of
powder. Medical- was a routine, al-
ways taken between eighteen and
twenty-four hours after cushioning.
The doctors knew why, or said they
did. It wasn’t the sort of thing
you’d forget. But it wasn’t worth
taking him up on it.

The Arkland touched at Washing-
ton every fifth trip. I knew quite
a few numbers and had my usual
haunts. There was a somber mo-
ment once when one of the girls re-
laxed and the wrinkles stood out,
but it passed. There’s always the
younger generation. I let it get
round to the day before blasting
before I dropped in on the com-
pany’s office. They’ve got a block
of masonry on Roosevelt Boulevard

CHRISTMAS TREE

that’s bigger than Luna City. Wel-
fare in on Floor 32. It makes me
airsick to look out of their window's.

There was a cute little blonde at
the desk and it occurred to me that
next time I might contact Welfare at
the beginning of a furlough. She
looked as though she could get
through my hack-pay as well as any,

I said: “You can help me out.

I want to buy a Christmas tree.”

She looked surprised and rather
disapipointed, hut she u'as business-
like. She waded through a pile of
directories like a terrier after rats.

“Christmas trees,” she said,
“Your best bet is the Leecliff Nur-
series. Mr. Cliff. About fifteen
miles out. You can pick up a gyro
on the roof.”

“Don’t tell me there’s a roof on
this thing,” I said.

She just smiled very nicely.

“Keep a w'eek free next Novem-
ber,” I told her as I turned to leave,
“i'll he back.”

The gyro did the trip in just over
ten minutes. Where it put me down
you wouldn’t guess such a place as
Washington existed. One wav then*
were a lot of low sheds and a few
glasshouses. The other w3y there
were just fields and fields of plants
growing. I realized that it was more
than ten years since I’d been out-
side a city on an Earth furlough.
You get into habits. For the first
time it occurred to me that I might
have been missing something.

They had phoned Mr. Cliff I was:
coming; “Good Service” is the Com-

157

pany’s motto. He was waiting when
the gyro touched. A little round
fellow, with a look as though some-
thing had surprised him. He said :
“Major Davies, I’m delighted to
see you. We don't see many space-
men. Come and see my roses.”

He seemed eager and I let him
take me. I wasn't breaking my neck
to get hack into town.

He had a glasshouse full of roses.
I hesitated in the doorway. Mr.
Cliff said: ‘‘Well?”

“I’d forgotten they smelled like
that,” I told him.

He said proudly, “It’s cpiite a
showing. A week before Christmas
and a showing like that. Look at
this Frau Karl Druschki.”

It was a white rose, very nicely
shaped and scented like spring. The
roses had me. I crawled round after
Mr. Cliff, seeing roses, feeling roses,
breathing roses. I looked at my
watch when it began to get dark.

“I came to buy a Christmas, tree,
Mr. Cliff.”

We left the rose house reluctantly.
“Christmas on Earth for a change,
Major Davies?”

“No — Luna City. It's for some-
one there.”

He waited for me to go on.

“A guy called Hans,” I said.
“He's been nearly forty years in
Luna City. He was born in a little
village in Austria. Halfway up a
mountain, with pines all round and
snow on them in winter. You know.
He gets homesick.”

“Why doesn’t he come back, Ma-
jor Davies?”

159

It’s always a shock when people
show how little they know about the
life you lead, though I suppose you
can’t blame them. The exciting
parts are news — space wrecks and
crashes and mad orbits 1 — but the
routine’s dull. I suppose there are
some things the company doesn’t
pass on to Publicity. Not that there’s
anything they’re ashamed of — they
just don’t talk about such things.

“Mr. Cliff,” I said, “the doctors
have it all tabbed. It’s what they
call cumulative stress. You can’t
bring a boat in or push her off
without an initial strain. It varies
with the planets, of course. For
Earth, with an average sized vessel,
the peak’s about five or six gravities.”

1 flexed my shoulders back,
breathing this different air.

“You’ve got to he tough physi-
cally,” I went on, “but even so it
tells. It’s the heart chiefly. They
give you a warning when it begins
to flicker ; you can drop out then
with a pension. Of course there are
some who can carry on. They’re
used to the life, and — ”

“And — ?” prompted Mr. Cliff.

“There’s a final warning as well.
They check up on you after each
trip ; vet you for the next. Then one
time it’s just plain No. You can
argue, but the answer’s No. An-
other, take-off would finish you. So
they say. There’s no way of testing
it; they just don’t let you on a boat
after that.”

“They’re very considerate, Major
Davies.”

I laughed. “Oh, very. The only

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

thing is — they check you each land-
fall. Hans got his final warning at
Luna City.”

“Oh.” Mr. Cliff bent his head to
smell the red rose in his coat. “How
long ago did you say ?”

“Hans is an old man. Over sev-
enty. Generally you get your first
warning when you are about thirty.”
“And how big is this Luna City ?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “It’s in the
guide books. A couple of blocks
long by a block wide. It goes under-
ground a bit as well.”

“That’s terrible. Major Davies.
Forty years like that. Ho trees, no
birds — - And young men know that
and still take the risk ? I can’t be-
lieve it.”

It was an old story but I’d never
felt myself getting so mad about it
before. I reined myself in. He was
a nice old guy.

“You don't understand, Mr. Cliff.
There’s something in the life. And
sometimes there’s more than five
years between first and final warn-
ings. One guy went ten. There’s
always one more trip that’s worth
making before you settle down for
good. They don’t recruit spacemen
who give up easily. And you may
always strike lucky and get your
ticket at this end.”

“When did you get your first
warning, Major Davies?"

I flushed. “Three years ago. So
what? Now this matter of the
Christmas tree, Mr. Cliff — ”

“I’ll show you. The Christmas
tree is on me. Please.”

He led me away to show me the

CHRISTMAS THEE

fir trees, and the scent of roses gave
way to a rich piney smell that made
me remember being a kid, and holi-
days up in the lakes. Mr. Cliff
finally broke the silence :

“I’ve been thinking, Major Da-
vies. I’ve got a proposition that may
interest you—”

1 didn’t see Louie when the tree
went on board ; one of his boys han-
dled it. There wasn’t a sign of any
of the company police around, and
I guessed Louie was distracting
them with a friendly game of poker.
Skinning ’em too, if I knew Louie.

I didn’t see him until the end of
my second shift on the trip. The
radar screen was a beautiful blank;,
it was a clear season for meteors.
Louie was lolling in front of it read-
ing a book.

“Louie, I always knew I slipped
up when I majored in Nav. Do they
pay you for this ?”

Sometimes there’s ill feeling about
the large stretches of easy time
radar-ops manage to corner, but
Louie knew I’d been in space too
long for that. Until the automatic
relays smarten up a lot there’s got
to be a man on the screen. And the
company doesn’t give time away;
the radar section handle the quarter-
mastering, too. Every third fur-
lough they lose two days,

Louie grinned. “I’ve got a weak
heart. Didn’t you know?”

I tossed him a cigarette. “Thanks
for getting baby on board. What
did you throw out — gold bars ?”

He shook his head. “Just my own

tw

brand of math. If that orbit you’ve
laid us turns out bad enough, we’ll
hit the sun approximately ten min-
utes sooner than we would other-
wise. And I’ve got to pep my
meteor deflection up by three thou-
sandths of a second. It’s a big risk.”
“My orbit’s good,” I said. “I’ll
never lay one better. Next trip I’m
going to lay the tightest Moon-Earth
orbit since Christiansen came in on
the Leonids. After that you needn’t
worry about my failing eyes, Louie.”
“I’m glad, Joe. I always knew you
had sense. I’m dropping out the
moment they give me a hint. It’s
not worth it.”

“Yes, Louie, I’m really going.”
“You’ll miss it, Joe, but you’ll
get over that. You’d have to any-
way before long.”

“It’s out in the country, Louie. A
nursery. Growing plants, all kinds
of plants. Fir trees and chrysan-
themums and daffodils — and roses
at Christmas. And the moon’s no
more than something you plant by.
I shan’t miss anything.”

“You’re lucky, Joe. That’s what
it is — you’re lucky.”

We cushioned at three G’s and I
felt it again ; a long ache inside my
chest as though my heart and lungs
were tied up with strings and some-
one was twisting them nice and
slowly. It was all right after a few
minutes and I got up, light and ac-
tive under Moon gravity. I wasted
no time getting through the main
lock. I looked for old Hans amongst
those who stood by, but there was no
160

sign of him. I called Portugese,
who runs the grog shop.

“Portugese ! Where’s Hans ? I’ve
got something for him.”

He came waddling over. With a
bulk like his I could almost under-
stand why he had chosen Luna City.
He shrugged, lifting everything —
hands, shoulders and eyebrows.

“Too late now,” he said. “He
died just after nightfall. We’re
taking him out in a few hours.”

In Luna City there are no extras.
You don’t waste anything that has to
be freighted a quarter of a million
miles ; and that includes oxygen.
When men die there, their bodies
are kept until nightfall when, for
three hundred and thirty-six hours,
darkness freezes into rime the last
traces of the Moon’s atmosphere.
Some time during the night the body
is taken out in a caterpillar and com-
mitted, with duly economical rites,
to some cleft in the antique rocks.
With the sunrise the thin air melts,
the gray lichen runs like a sickness
along the crater bottoms, and in that
microscopic jungle the minute lunar
insects awaken to fight battles as
real as Tyrannosaurus ever knew.
Long before the crater shadows
lengthen towards sunset the cleft is
empty again. No flesh, no hair, no
scrap of bone escapes them.

Portugese drove the caterpillar
out through the air lock. Louie and
I sat behind him with old Hans’
body, covered by a sheet, on the floor
between us. We were silent while
the little truck jolted on its metal

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tracks across granite and pumice and
frozen lava. And I don’t think it
was the death inside that silenced us ;
we had liked old Hans but he had
had his time, and was released now
to infinity from the narrow confines
of Luna City. It was the death, out-
side that quieted us, as it quiets any
man who goes out among those age-
old crests and pinnacles, under those
glaring stars.

Portugese halted the caterpillar on
the crest of a rise about midway be-
tween Luna City and Kelly’s Crater.
It was the usual burial ground ; the
planet’s surface here was cross-
hatched in deep grooves by some
age-old catastrophe. We clamped
down the visors on our suits and got
out. Portugese and I carried old

Hans easily between us, his frail
body fantastically light against lunar
gravity. We put him down care-
fully in a wide, deep cleft, and I
turned round towards the truck.
Louie walked towards us, carrying
the Christmas tree. There had been
moisture on it which had frozen
instantly into sparkling frost. It
looked like a centerpiece out of a
store window. It had seemed a good
idea back in Luna City, but now itf
didn’t seem appropriate.

We wedged it in with rocks, Por-
tugese read a prayer, and we walked
back to the caterpillar, glad to be
able , to let our visors down again
and light up cigarettes. We stayed
there while we smoked, looking
through the front screen. The tree

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CHRISTMAS TREE

stood up green and white against
the sullen, hunching blackness of
Kelly’s Crater. Right overhead was
the Earth, glowing with daylight.
I could make out Italy, clear and un-
smudged, but farther north Hans’
beloved Austria was hidden under
blotching December cloud.

We didn’t say anything. Portu-
gese squeezed out his cigarette and
started the caterpillar up, turning
her round a~ain towards Luna City.
We ran into B lock, and Portugese
stabled the truck and came out again
to join us. He put his fat arms
around our shoulders.

“Come on, boys. Always a drink
on the house after a burying party.”
“Medical first, Portugese,” Louie
said. “We’ll look in afterwards.
Keep the rum hot for us.”

We saw him glide away, and
turned back ourselves towards the
Administration Building. The
others had been through the Medical
while we were out, and we had a doc-
tor each without any waiting. We
sat in the anteroom afterwards, wait-
ing for them to write our cards up
before we could collect them. At last
the call came through on the
Speaker :

“Major Davies. Lieutenant En-
derby. Cards ready now.”

Louie got his first. He looked at
the big blue stamp on the front —
FIRST WARNING. He grinned.

“We’ll go out in harness, Joe.
Any chance of a third partnership
in that flower business?”

I didn’t say anything. I could

THE

see my card before the doctor gave it
to me. I saw the red star splashed
on it, and I’d seen too many of them
not to know what it meant. It was
the mark of the exile, the outlaw
who had waited too long to get out.
It was the beginning of such a story
as the one whose end, forty years
later, I had witnessed in the lee
of Kelley’s Crater under the mock-
ing globe of Earth.

“This is my last trip,” I told the
doctor. “When we hit Antwerp I’m
retiring.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if it’s a million-to-
one chance, Doc. I’ll take it ; and
no hard feelings if it doesn’t come
off. I'll sign any disclaimer the
company wants.”

“It’s no good, major. You know
the regulations. These things are
too foolproof now. We’re not al-
lowed to let you commit suicide.”

I knew it was no good, too. Louie
had gone. vr e all knew better than
to stick around when someone got
the red star. I had time to look at
the doctor. He was very young and
didn’t look very happy. I guessed
he hadn’t handed out a star before.

“It could be worse, major. It
could have been Phobos.”

From the top level in Luna City
you can see the sky; at night the
stars and the softly glowing Earth.
Down to the west Sirius blazes over
Kelly’s Crater. I’ve been up here
for hours watching them.

I keep thinking I can smell roses.

END

162

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Dr. Jan A. Rajchman of RCA holding the selectron, the
"little blue cell" with an electronic memory — a possible
answer to the most desperate problem of the electronic
calculating machines: number storage.

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