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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which is *not* a competitor to the Piltdon Can Opener? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_1 | [
"International",
"Minerva Mighty Midget",
"Universal",
"Super-Opener"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which is *not* a can-opener feature that Ogden Piltdon cares about? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_2 | [
"Lightweight",
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"Speed",
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Kalvin commit to Piltdon’s unreasonable deadline? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_3 | [
"He felt challenged to develop creative solutions.",
"He didn’t want to lose his job.",
"He wanted to earn recognition.",
"He was able to hire more staff."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Kalvin hesitate to share information about the new invention? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_4 | [
"He wanted to do more research into how it works.",
"He wanted to be the one to tell Piltdon.",
"He wanted to keep the invention for himself.",
"He wanted to save his job."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Kalvin continue researching on his own at home? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_5 | [
"He wanted to be sure it was safe.",
"He needed to work extra hours to meet the deadline.",
"He wanted to patent the Super-Opener idea for himself.",
"He wanted to better understand the technology and create a solution."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was *not* a result of the “Borenchuck Incident”? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_6 | [
"A state of emergency was declared.",
"Piltdon filed a lawsuit against Kalvin.",
"Sales of helmets increased.",
"Super-Opener sales plummeted."
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | When applying for new jobs, Kalvin found that… | 60507_5EHIDPFU_7 | [
"Companies did not approve of what they heard about his previous work.",
"Companies did not have open positions.",
"Piltdon gave him a positive reference.",
"He had multiple offers."
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | The area in which Kalvin wanted to devote most of his time was: | 60507_5EHIDPFU_8 | [
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What new emotion was Kalvin experiencing after quitting Piltdon Opener Company? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_9 | [
"Cowardice",
"Anger",
"Misery",
"Submission"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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60,507 | 60507_5EHIDPFU | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was the “Piltdon Effect”? | 60507_5EHIDPFU_10 | [
"The ability to meet a tight deadline.",
"The can-opener causing the cans to disappear.",
"The deluge of cans falling from the sky.",
"Viral interest in a new product."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is the Mercury Sam’s Garden? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_1 | [
"An apartment building",
"A club",
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"A family restaurant"
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What would happen if the supply of Latonka were to be cut off? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_2 | [
"The Latonka Trust stock would increase.",
"Mercury Sam’s Garden would gain customers.",
"Demand would decrease throughout the universe.",
"Albert Peet would lose his fortune."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | After the death of Karfial Hodes… | 63875_TA3WI7DW_3 | [
"The rebels would be lost without him & disband.",
"Albert Peet would lose a lot of power.",
"The rebellion would win power.",
"Jaro Moynihan would be paid 20,000 Earth notes."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How did the Mercurians adjust to the heat? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_4 | [
"Their yellow eyes filtered the sun’s rays.",
"They mostly lived under the ground.",
"Their skin kept them cool.",
"They would sweat to cool off."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did the Latonka Trust stock start dropping? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_5 | [
"Alternatives to Latonka flooded the market.",
"Demand for Latonka was decreasing.",
"There were rumors that the Earth Congress would grant Mercurians independence.",
"People suspected the revolution would be successful."
] | 3 | 3 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Moynihan shoot Stanley? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_6 | [
"It was an accident.",
"Stanley tried to poison him.",
"Stanley was protecting Albert Peet.",
"He was hired to shoot Stanley."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which planet was considered the new frontier? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_7 | [
"Mars",
"Earth",
"Mercury",
"Jupiter"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was expressed as the time limit on Moynihan’s work? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_8 | [
"Before Karfial Hodes’ capture",
"Before the Earth Congress votes on Mercurian independence",
"Before the The Festival of the Rains",
"Before Moynihan’s return to Mars"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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63,875 | 63875_TA3WI7DW | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was the main reason Moynihan asked Miss Webb to meet him at the grog shop? | 63875_TA3WI7DW_9 | [
"He wanted her to call the police.",
"He was asking her out on a date.",
"She is a spy for the revolution.",
"He wanted to find out what she knew."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did the Treasury Department want Orison McCall to apply for a job at the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_1 | [
"To gather information about their unusual people and banking practices.",
"To do an official audit of the bank’s books.",
"To provide the bank employees with training.",
"To read text into a microphone."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Orison prefer to send her reports to Washington by mail? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_2 | [
"She preferred to put everything in writing.\n",
"She found the “pillow talk” to be improper.",
"So the reports could be done faster.",
"So the reports would be more secure."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How was Orison treated by her female co-workers? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_3 | [
"Welcoming",
"Indifferent",
"Friendly",
"Guarded"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | People around him describe Dink as a… | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_4 | [
"brute",
"ladies’ man",
"hard-working entrepreneur",
"nerd"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What did Orison do when she met Kraft Gerding? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_5 | [
"She went to visit him on the upstairs floors.",
"She typed up a dictated letter for him.",
"She set up a date with him for that evening.",
"She snapped at him and threatened to quit."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Orison think that Dink had a European background? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_6 | [
"His accent\n",
"The languages he speaks",
"His manners",
"His physique"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Orison’s introduction to Auga Vingt could best be described as... | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_7 | [
"Friendly",
"Cordial",
"Passive-aggressive",
"Heated"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was Orison’s excuse to visit the upper floors? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_8 | [
"To deliver a message from Mr. Wanji",
"To see what the Earmuffs were doing",
"To feed the Microfabridae",
"To complain about Auga Vingt"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Dink punch Kraft? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_9 | [
"Self-defense",
"He wasn’t listening",
"He insulted Dink",
"He was threatening Orison"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,081 | 61081_2UZ3B4TL | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is a likely explanation for Orison seeing Benjamin Franklin images in the Microfabridae tank? | 61081_2UZ3B4TL_10 | [
"The Microfabridae are killing people and the faces look like Benjamin franklin.",
"It was a play of the eyes.",
"The Microfabridae are being used to process $100 bills for illegal purposes.",
"Someone accidentally dropped $100 bills into the tanks."
] | 3 | 3 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why was the mission of the Pandora initially referred to as a “fool’s errand”? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_1 | [
"The original exploration party had already reported back about the planet.",
"They had already learned everything they could about the blobs.",
"They had found Hennessy’s crew.",
"The crew hadn’t found anything new or dangerous."
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why were the cadets outside alone? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_2 | [
"They were lost.",
"They were young and untrained.",
"They were on a mission.",
"They were insubordinate."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How was Hennessy’s ship found? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_3 | [
"Rain moved the haze long enough to spot it.",
"Searchers found it by walking around with metal detectors.",
"A landslide exposed its location buried in a deep gorge.",
"The crew approached the Pandora."
] | 3 | 3 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How did Gwayne subdue the alien leader? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_4 | [
"He ran over it with the Jeep.",
"He wrestled it with his hands.",
"The leader surrendered.",
"He used a spear to injure it."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Gwayne ask the alien leader about barmaids and puppies? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_5 | [
"To see if he spoke English.",
"To test if he was Hennessy.",
"To test if he was familiar with Earth culture.",
"To get him to speak so he could listen to the sound of his voice."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Who were the horde members? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_6 | [
"Angry aliens",
"Aliens pretending to be Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party",
"Lonely aliens \n",
"Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is the power of the blobs? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_7 | [
"To make creatures sleep.",
"To change creatures to adapt to a new environment.",
"To change creatures so they go insane.",
"To make creatures die."
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What lie does Gwayne plan to tell the crew? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_8 | [
"There is not enough fuel to get back to Earth.",
"The ship is broken.",
"Earth no longer exists.",
"Everyone is already infected."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is the reasoning behind Gwayne’s decision? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_9 | [
"They can take the information they learned to improve conditions on Earth.",
"Earth is struggling to find suitable colonies, so they need to rescue the people here and keep looking.",
"They can bring more people to this planet to live.",
"Earth is struggling to find suitable colonies, and this planet has proven to be livable despite the drawbacks."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,052 | 61052_GL60ZD9B | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is the future of the Pandora? | 61052_GL60ZD9B_10 | [
"It will stay on the planet forever.",
"It will return to Earth to report back on what they found.",
"It will rescue Hennessy’s crew and the exploring party.",
"It will remain in space."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How do the crew feel about “home office relatives”? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_1 | [
"It’s a waste of time and fuel to bring them back and forth.",
"It’s a chance to impress the bosses and land better positions.",
"It’s a great way to have fun and earn tips.",
"It’s a chance to go on dates with pretty girls."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is Jeffers’ opinion about taking graft? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_2 | [
"Taking extra is stealing and is wrong.",
"He takes extra in order to spend it on improvements for the crew.",
"He takes extra as part of a hazard duty pay package.",
"Taking extra is expected and nobody would notice."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What and where is Ganymede? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_3 | [
"It’s a planet close to Earth.",
"It’s a planet close to Jupiter.",
"It’s a moon close to Mercury.",
"It’s a moon close to Jupiter."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is the landscape of Ganymede like? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_4 | [
"Steaming hot and rugged",
"Riddled with volcanic puffballs",
"Frozen, cold, and dim",
"Steep mountains of rock and ice"
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did “Betty Koslow” really come to Ganymede? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_5 | [
"To investigate possible criminal behavior.",
"To learn about business management.",
"To arrest Jeffers.",
"To take a vacation and date pilots."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was the number that Betty called? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_6 | [
"To her Space Patrol colleagues",
"To the family’s private security team",
"To the Ganymede superiors",
"To Daddy’s private office at Koslow Space headquarters"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is the purpose of “touching helmets”? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_7 | [
"To communicate without using the radio.",
"To share oxygen.",
"To maintain the vacuum seal of the suits.",
"To keep the dust out."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why was the Space Patrolman surprised that Tolliver referred to Betty as "Miss Koslow"? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_8 | [
"It was a cover name, not her real name.",
"He realized that she was the boss' daughter.",
"The Space Patrolman didn’t know her name.",
"She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone who she was."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,053 | 61053_MMXHSAAV | 12 | 1,008 | Gutenberg | Tolliver's Orbit | 1958.0 | Fyfe, H. B. (Horace Bowne) | Ganymede (Satellite) -- Fiction; PS; Short stories; Science fiction; Embezzlement -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction | TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow—but it wasn't boring. And
it would get you there—as long as
you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
By H. B. FYFE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black
thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded.
"Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating
something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of
Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened
the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen
through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim
and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a
million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple—for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage
here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back
to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on
the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
"Now,
listen
! Maybe they live soft back on Earth since the mines
and the Jovian satellite colonies grew; but they were out here in the
beginning, most of them.
They
know what it's like. D'ya think they
don't expect us to make what we can on the side?"
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue
uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
"You just don't listen to
me
," he complained. "You know I took this
piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree
back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I
can't quit."
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of
his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out
whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your
account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting
his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it
that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here
on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for
hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,"
grumbled Jeffers, by now a shade more ruddy. "We'll see how long you
keep reporting. Because you're off the Callisto run as of now! Sit in
your quarters and see if the company calls
that
hazardous duty!"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous
part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him
so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Looks like a little vacation
, he thought, unperturbed.
He'll come
around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers
and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's
their risk.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday"
by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long
journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to
specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number
of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the
spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the
garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes
seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore
when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection
that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're
finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the
Javelin
."
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep
handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go
back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason
but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy
orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a
portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's
airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags
into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at
the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even
in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too
blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap
apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy
sweater, like a spacer.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," she said, sliding into the seat beside
Tolliver. "By the way, just call me Betty."
"Sure," agreed Tolliver thinking,
Ohmigod! Trying already to be just
one of the gang, instead of Lady Betty! Is her old man the treasurer,
or does he just know where bodies are buried?
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is
it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and
it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded
ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit
and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching
Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time
making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and
maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the
frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and
the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me
see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any
square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
I'll be sorry later
, he reflected,
but if Jeffers keeps me jockeying
this creeper, I'm entitled to some amusement. And Daddy's little girl
is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang.
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions
from the city to the spaceport."
"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a
mission
?"
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a
man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this
mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can
strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to
mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where
you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an
unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver
deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity,
the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of
Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up
at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come
at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it
barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If
you're in the way—well, it's just too bad!"
Say, that's pretty good!
he told himself.
What a liar you are,
Tolliver!
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite,
taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John
Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome
and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly
paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate
he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely,
edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my
pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request
that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along
as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience
prickled.
I'll get hold of her after Jeffers is through and set her straight
,
he resolved.
It isn't really funny if the sucker is too ignorant to
know better.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking
in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as
jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
"Miss Koslow!" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting.
"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all,
Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is:
your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to
show you the ropes. Did you want something else, Tolliver?"
"Never mind him, Mr. Jeffers," snapped the girl, in a tone new to
Tolliver. "We won't be working together, I'm afraid. You've already had
enough rope."
Jeffers seemed to stagger standing still behind his desk. His loose
lips twitched uncertainly, and he looked questioningly to Tolliver. The
pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the
elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had
told en route from the spaceport.
"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?" Jeffers stammered.
He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver.
"Mr. Jeffers," said the girl, "I may look like just another spoiled
little blonde, but the best part of this company will be mine someday.
I was not allowed to reach twenty-two without learning something about
holding on to it."
Tolliver blinked. He had taken her for three or four years older.
Jeffers now ignored him, intent upon the girl.
"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when
he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede.
I have
some
authority, though. And you look like the source of the
trouble to me."
"You can't prove anything," declared Jeffers hoarsely.
"Oh, can't I? I've already seen certain evidence, and the rest won't
be hard to find. Where are your books, Mr. Jeffers? You're as good as
fired!"
The manager dropped heavily to his chair. He stared unbelievingly at
Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about "just landed."
After a moment, the big man came out of his daze enough to stab an
intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end
to come in without a countdown.
Tolliver, hardly thinking about it, expected the someone to be
a secretary, but it turned out to be three members of Jeffers'
headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief,
and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large
enough.
"No stupid questions!" Jeffers ordered. "Lock these two up while I
think!"
Tolliver started for the door immediately, but was blocked off.
"Where should we lock—?" the fellow paused to ask.
Tolliver brought up a snappy uppercut to the man's chin, feeling that
it was a poor time to engage Jeffers in fruitless debate.
In the gravity of Ganymede, the man was knocked off balance as much as
he was hurt, and sprawled on the floor.
"I
told
you no questions!" bawled Jeffers.
The fallen hero, upon arising, had to content himself with grabbing
Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his
desk to assist.
Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the
adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had
been spent in carrying him there.
He heard an indignant yelp, and realized that the girl had been pitched
in with him. The snapping of a lock was followed by the tramp of
departing footsteps and then by silence.
After considering the idea a few minutes, Tolliver managed to sit up.
He had his wind back. But when he fingered the swelling lump behind his
left ear, a sensation befuddled him momentarily.
"I'm sorry about that," murmured Betty.
Tolliver grunted. Sorrow would not reduce the throbbing, nor was he
in a mood to undertake an explanation of why Jeffers did not like him
anyway.
"I think perhaps you're going to have a shiner," remarked the girl.
"Thanks for letting me know in time," said Tolliver.
The skin under his right eye did feel a trifle tight, but he could see
well enough. The abandoned and empty look of the office worried him.
"What can we use to get out of here?" he mused.
"Why should we try?" asked the girl. "What can he do?"
"You'd be surprised. How did you catch on to him so soon?"
"Your paycheck," said Betty. "As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount,
it was obvious that there was gross mismanagement here. It had to be
Jeffers."
Tolliver groaned.
"Then, on the way over here, he as good as admitted everything. You
didn't hear him, I guess. Well, he seemed to be caught all unaware, and
seemed to blame you for it."
"Sure!" grumbled the pilot. "He thinks I told you he was grafting or
smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to
get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal
accident!"
"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?" asked Betty after
a startled pause.
"Nothing," retorted Tolliver. "Except that there are some. There are
rumors, and I had a halfway invitation to join in. I think he sells
things to the mining colonies and makes a double profit for himself by
claiming the stuff lost in transit. You didn't think you scared him
that bad over a little slack managing?"
The picture of Jeffers huddled with his partners in the headquarters
building, plotting the next move, brought Tolliver to his feet.
There was nothing in the unused office but an old table and half a
dozen plastic crates. He saw that the latter contained a mess of
discarded records.
"Better than nothing at all," he muttered.
He ripped out a double handful of the forms, crumpled them into a pile
at the doorway, and pulled out his cigarette lighter.
"What do you think you're up to?" asked Betty with some concern.
"This plastic is tough," said Tolliver, "but it will bend with enough
heat. If I can kick loose a hinge, maybe we can fool them yet!"
He got a little fire going, and fed it judiciously with more papers.
"You know," he reflected, "it might be better for you to stay here.
He can't do much about you, and you don't have any real proof just by
yourself."
"I'll come along with you, Tolliver," said the girl.
"No, I don't think you'd better."
"Why not?"
"Well ... after all, what would he dare do? Arranging an accident to
the daughter of the boss isn't something that he can pull off without a
lot of investigation. He'd be better off just running for it."
"Let's not argue about it," said Betty, a trifle pale but looking
determined. "I'm coming with you. Is that stuff getting soft yet?"
Tolliver kicked at the edge of the door experimentally. It seemed to
give slightly, so he knocked the burning papers aside and drove his
heel hard at the corner below the hinge.
The plastic yielded.
"That's enough already, Tolliver," whispered the girl. "We can crawl
through!"
Hardly sixty seconds later, he led her into a maze of stacked crates
in the warehouse proper. The building was not much longer than wide,
for each of the structures in the colony had its own hemispherical
emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end.
"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here," muttered
Tolliver.
"Why do you want them?"
"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a
tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks
with some good lie that will keep me from getting through."
After a brief search, he located the spacesuits. Many, evidently
intended for replacements, had never been unpacked, but there were a
dozen or so serviced and standing ready for emergencies. He showed
Betty how to climb into one, and checked her seals and valves after
donning a suit himself.
"That switch under your chin," he said, touching helmets so she could
hear him. "Leave it turned off.
Anybody
might be listening!"
He led the way out a rear door of the warehouse. With the heavy knife
that was standard suit equipment, he deliberately slashed a four-foot
square section out of the dome. He motioned to Betty to step through,
then trailed along with the plastic under his arm.
He caught up and touched helmets again.
"Just act as if you're on business," he told her. "For all anyone can
see, we might be inspecting the dome."
"Where are you going?" asked Betty.
"Right through the wall, and then head for the nearest mine. Jeffers
can't be running
everything
!"
"Is there any way to get to a TV?" asked the girl. "I ... uh ... Daddy
gave me a good number to call if I needed help."
"How good?"
"Pretty official, as a matter of fact."
"All right," Tolliver decided. "We'll try the ship you just came in on.
They might have finished refueling and left her empty."
They had to cross one open lane between buildings, and Tolliver was
very conscious of moving figures in the distance; but no one seemed to
look their way.
Reaching the foot of the main dome over the establishment, he glanced
furtively about, then plunged his knife into the transparent material.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled
gesture, but he had his work cut out for him. This was tougher than the
interior dome.
Finally, he managed to saw a ragged slit through which they could
squeeze. There was room to walk between the inner and outer layer, so
he moved along a few yards. A little dust began to blow about where
they had gone through. He touched helmets once more.
"This time," he said, "the air will really start to blow, so get
through as fast as you can. If I can slap this piece of plastic over
the rip, it may stow down the loss of pressure enough to give us quite
a lead before the alarms go off."
Through the faceplates, he saw the girl nod, wide-eyed.
As soon as he plunged the knife into the outer layer, he could see
dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's
surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through
the small opening.
Squeezing through in his turn, he left one arm inside to spread the
plastic sheet as best he could. The internal air pressure slapped it
against the inside of the dome as if glued, although it immediately
showed an alarming tendency to balloon through the ruptured spot.
They'll find it, all right
, Tolliver reminded himself.
Don't be here
when they do!
He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the
nearest outcropping of rock.
It promptly developed that she had something to learn about running on
ice in such low gravity. Until they were out of direct line of sight
from the settlement, Tolliver simply dragged her.
Then, when he decided that it was safe enough to pause and tell her
how to manage better, the sight of her outraged scowl through the
face-plate made him think better of it.
By the time we reach the ship, she'll have learned
, he consoled
himself.
It was a long mile, even at the pace human muscles could achieve on
Ganymede. They took one short rest, during which Tolliver was forced
to explain away the dangers of slides and volcanic puffballs. He
admitted to having exaggerated slightly. In the end, they reached the
spaceship.
There seemed to be no one about. The landing dome had been collapsed
and stored, and the ship's airlock port was closed.
"That's all right," Tolliver told the girl. "We can get in with no
trouble."
It was when he looked about to make sure that they were unobserved that
he caught a glimpse of motion back toward the city. He peered at the
spot through the dim light. After a moment, he definitely recognized
the outline of a tractor breasting a rise in the ground and tilting
downward again.
"In fact, we
have
to get in to stay out of trouble," he said to Betty.
He located the switch-cover in the hull, opened it and activated the
mechanism that swung open the airlock and extended the ladder.
It took him considerable scrambling to boost the girl up the ladder and
inside, but he managed. They passed through the airlock, fretting at
the time required to seal, pump air and open the inner hatch; and then
Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a
clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time.
In the control room, he shoved the girl into an acceleration seat,
glanced at the gauges and showed her how to open her helmet.
"Leave the suit on," he ordered, getting in the first word while she
was still shaking her head. "It will help a little on the takeoff."
"Takeoff!" shrilled Betty. "What do you think you're going to do? I
just want to use the radio or TV!"
"That tractor will get here in a minute or two. They might cut your
conversation kind of short. Now shut up and let me look over these
dials!"
He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the
ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an
economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments,
doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He
warned her the trip might be long.
"I told you not to come," he said at last. "Now sit back!"
He sat down and pushed a button to start the igniting process.
In a moment, he could feel the rumble of the rockets through the deck,
and then it was out of his hands for several minutes.
"That wasn't so bad," Betty admitted some time later. "Did you go in
the right direction?"
"Who knows?" retorted Tolliver. "There wasn't time to check
everything
. We'll worry about that after we make your call."
"Oh!" Betty looked helpless. "It's in my pocket."
Tolliver sighed. In their weightless state, it was no easy task to pry
her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any
further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter.
When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about
making contact.
It took only a few minutes, as if the channel had been monitored
expectantly, and the man who flickered into life on the screen wore a
uniform.
"Space Patrol?" whispered Tolliver incredulously.
"That's right," said Betty. "Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me."
Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out
of range of the scanner and microphone. As she spoke, he stared
exasperatedly at a bulkhead, marveling at the influence of a man who
could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and
wondering what was behind it all.
When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and
reporting the manager as the head of a ring of crooks, he began to
suspect. He also noticed certain peculiarities about the remarks of the
Patrolman.
For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he
never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the
request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to
go down after.
They really sent her out to nail someone
, Tolliver realized.
Of
course, she stumbled onto Jeffers by plain dumb luck. But she had an
idea of what to look for. How do I get into these things? She might
have got me killed!
"We do have one trouble," he heard Betty saying. "This tractor driver,
Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he
says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they
call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed."
Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her
sweater.
"Actually, I have a fine idea," he informed the officer coldly. "I
happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control.
If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later
on this channel."
"Miss Koslow?" repeated the spacer. "Did she tell you—well, no matter!
If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately."
He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended
than reassured at discovering his status.
"This 'Miss Koslow' business," he said suspiciously. "He sounded funny
about that."
The girl grinned.
"Relax, Tolliver," she told him. "Did you really believe Daddy would
send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever
was gypping him?"
"You ... you...?"
"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating
firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—"
"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,"
Tolliver finished for her. "I guess it's better this way," he said
meditatively a moment later.
"Oh, come
on
! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're
going?"
"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so
we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be
picked up."
He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel
necessary to make more than minor corrections to their course. Even
though the Patrol ship could easily catch the slow freighter, bringing
along enough fuel to head back would be something else again.
"We'll just have to ride it out," he said sympathetically. "The ship is
provisioned according to law, and you were probably going back anyhow."
"I didn't expect to so soon."
"Yeah, you were pretty lucky. They'll think you're a marvel to crack
the case in about three hours on Ganymede."
"Great!" muttered Betty. "What a lucky girl I am!"
"Yes," admitted Tolliver, "there
are
problems. If you like, we might
get the captain of that Patrol ship to legalize the situation by TV."
"I can see you're used to sweeping girls off their feet," she commented
sourly.
"The main problem is whether you can cook."
Betty frowned at him.
"I'm pretty good with a pistol," she offered, "or going over crooked
books. But cook? Sorry."
"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do."
"I'll think about it," promised the girl, staring thoughtfully at the
deck.
Tolliver anchored himself in a seat and grinned as he thought about it
too.
After a while
, he promised himself,
I'll explain how I cut the fuel
flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just
orbiting Ganymede!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61053//61053-h//61053-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Where was the space craft heading in the end? | 61053_MMXHSAAV_9 | [
"In orbit around Ganymede",
"To the Space Patrol ship",
"To Koslow Spaceways headquarters",
"A 6-month journey back to Earth"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | What was Brian Arthur’s claim to fame? | 20012_H0FT1P5X_1 | [
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"The author of “Complexity.”",
"A founder of modern economics.",
"A scholar of international trade who was primarily responsible for the rediscovering of increasing returns."
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,012 | 20012_H0FT1P5X | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | Krugman's Life of Brian | 1998.0 | Paul Krugman | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | Krugman's Life of Brian
Where it all started: Paul Krugman's "The Legend of Arthur."
Letter from John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow
Letter from Ted C. Fishman
David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe
Letter from John Cassidy:
Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record.
1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government"--is "pure fiction." Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story.
2) Krugman wrote: "Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the "wreckage" of a large part of economic theory.)
3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.)
4) Krugman appears to suggest that I made up some quotes, a charge that, if it came from a more objective source, I would consider to be a serious matter. In effect, he is accusing Brian Arthur, a man he calls a "nice guy," of being a fabricator or a liar. The quotes in question came from Arthur, and they were based on his recollections of two meetings that he attended some years ago. After Krugman's article appeared, the Santa Fe professor called me to say that he still recalled the meetings in question as I described them. Krugman, as he admits, wasn't present at either of the meetings.
5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. "Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light," he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I "don't like mainstream economists" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention.
6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. "Why QWERTYUIOP?" Krugman wrote. "In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy." Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it "didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know." Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness.
--John Cassidy
Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy:
I think that David Warsh's 1994 in the Boston Globe says it all. If other journalists would do as much homework as he did, I wouldn't have had to write that article.
Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop:
Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story ("The Legend of Arthur"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre.
Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as "increasing returns." The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did.
I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph:
When Waldrop's book came out, I wrote him as politely as I could, asking exactly how he had managed to come up with his version of events. He did, to his credit, write back. He explained that while he had become aware of some other people working on increasing returns, trying to put them in would have pulled his story line out of shape. ... So what we really learn from the legend of Arthur is that some journalists like a good story too much to find out whether it is really true.
Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics; I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due.
Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again:
a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I.
b) Accordingly, I included a passage in Complexity in which Brian does indeed describe what others had done in the field--Paul Krugman among them. Elsewhere in that same chapter, I tried to make it clear that the concept of increasing returns was already well known to Brian's professors at Berkeley, where he first learned of it. Indeed, I quote Brian pointing out that increasing returns had been extensively discussed by the great English economist Alfred Marshall in 1891.
c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so.
d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.
e) Only then did I realize what had happened. After I had submitted the manuscript, my editor at Simon & Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late.
That oversight was my fault entirely, not my editor's, and certainly not Brian Arthur's. I take full responsibility, I regret it, and--if Simon & Schuster only published an errata column--I would happily correct it publicly. However, contrary to what Professor Krugman implies, it was an oversight, not a breezy disregard of facts for the sake of a good story.
--M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington
Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop:
I am truly sorry that The New Yorker has not yet established a Web presence so that we could include a link directly to the Cassidy piece. However, you can get a pretty good idea of what the piece said by reading the summary of it presented in "Tasty Bits from the Technology Front." Cassidy did not present a story about one guy among many who worked on increasing returns. On the contrary: He presented a morality play in which a lonely hero struggled to make his ideas heard against the unified opposition of a narrow-minded profession both intellectually and politically conservative. As TBTF's host--not exactly a naive reader--put it, "These ideas were anathema to mainstream economists in 1984 when Arthur first tried to publish them."
That morality play--not the question of who deserves credit--was the main point of my column, because it is a pure (and malicious) fantasy that has nonetheless become part of the story line people tell about increasing returns and its relationship to mainstream economics.
The fact, which is easily documented, is that during the years that, according to the legend, increasing returns was unacceptable in mainstream economics, papers about increasing returns were in fact being cheerfully published by all the major journals. And as I pointed out in the chronology I provided with the article, even standard reference volumes like the Handbook of International Economics (published in 1984, the year Arthur supposedly met a blank wall of resistance) have long contained chapters on increasing returns. Whatever the reason that Arthur had trouble getting his own paper published, ideological rigidity had nothing to do with it.
How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, "We know that increasing returns can't exist"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was "Oh no, not you too." And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain.
The point is that it's not just a matter of failing to cite a few more people. Your book, like the Cassidy article, didn't just tell the story of Brian Arthur; it also painted a picture of the economics profession, its intellectual bigotry and prejudice, which happens to be a complete fabrication (with some real, named people cast as villains) that somehow someone managed to sell you. I wonder who?
Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination?
Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that "I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point." Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while "heroic rebel defies orthodoxy" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: "guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him."
Thank you, Mr. Cassidy.
Letter from Kenneth J. Arrow:
Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur ("The Legend of Arthur") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was "just pissed off," not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows.
His theme is stated in his first paragraph: "Cassidy's article [in The New Yorker of Jan. 12] tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns." Cassidy, however, said nothing of the sort. The concept of increasing returns is indeed very old, and Cassidy at no point attributed that idea to Arthur. Indeed, the phrase "increasing returns" appears just once in Cassidy's article and then merely to say that Arthur had used the term while others refer to network externalities. Further, Arthur has never made any such preposterous claim at any other time. On the contrary, his papers have fully cited the history of the field and made references to the previous papers, including those of Paul Krugman. (See Arthur's papers collected in the volume Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy, especially his preface and my foreword for longer comments on Arthur's work in historic perspective. Click to see the foreword.) Hence, Krugman's whole attack is directed at a statement made neither by Arthur nor by Cassidy. Krugman has not read Cassidy's piece with any care nor has he bothered to review what Arthur has in fact said.
What Cassidy in fact did in his article was to trace a line of influence between one of Arthur's early articles and the current claims of the Department of Justice against Microsoft. It appears that Cassidy based his article on several interviews, not just one.
The point that Arthur has emphasized and which is influential in the current debates about antitrust policy is the dynamic implication of increasing returns. It is the concept of path-dependence, that small events, whether random or the result of corporate strategic choice, may have large consequences because of increasing returns of various kinds. Initial small advantages become magnified, for example, by creating a large installed base, and direct the future, possibly in an inefficient direction. Techniques of production may be locked in at an early stage. Similar considerations apply to regional development and learning.
--Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University
Letter from Ted C. Fishman:
After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in "The Legend of Arthur," I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.
--Ted C. Fishman
(For additional background on the history of "increasing returns" and Brian Arthur's standing in the field, click for David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe article on Brian Arthur)
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | Why does the author describe Charles Murray as a “publicity genius”? | 20010_9681BS4Q_1 | [
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | What is the main purpose of a “galley proof”? | 20010_9681BS4Q_2 | [
"To give editors a final version to proofread.",
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | How long did it take for damaging criticism of the book to come out? | 20010_9681BS4Q_3 | [
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | What was an effect of the delay in the book’s circulation? | 20010_9681BS4Q_4 | [
"The book didn’t reach the top of the charts.",
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | According to Murray and Herrnstein: | 20010_9681BS4Q_5 | [
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | The author of “The Bell Curve Flattened” disagrees with Murray and Herrnstein’s assertions that: | 20010_9681BS4Q_6 | [
"IQ has more predictive power on success than parental socio-economics status.",
"Education can increase opportunity.",
"There is consensus that intelligence is a meaningless concept.",
"Power and success are open to one and all on the basis of merit."
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | What is one reason the author thinks the regression analysis used by Murray and Herrstein was inadequate? | 20010_9681BS4Q_7 | [
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | Murray and Herrstein believe that _____ is not important to an individual’s success. | 20010_9681BS4Q_8 | [
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20,010 | 20010_9681BS4Q | 12 | 1,008 | Slate | The Bell Curve Flattened | 1997.0 | Nicholas Lemann | Periodicals; Specialized Magazine; Media Coverage | The Bell Curve Flattened
Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece.
Virtually all ambitious trade hardcover books are preceded by an edition of 100 to 200 flimsy "galley proofs." These are sent out to people who might generate buzz for the book: blurbists, bookers for television talk shows, editors, and--most important--book critics. There is an ethos of letting the chips fall where they may about the sending out of galleys: Now the book will begin to receive uncontrolled reaction. (For example, back in 1991, Murray somehow got hold of the galleys of my own last book, and wrote me heatedly denying that he was working on a book about black genetic intellectual inferiority, as I had asserted. I left the passage in, but softened it.)
The Bell Curve was not circulated in galleys before publication. The effect was, first, to increase the allure of the book (There must be something really hot in there!), and second, to ensure that no one inclined to be skeptical would be able to weigh in at the moment of publication. The people who had galley proofs were handpicked by Murray and his publisher. The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers having a month or two to go over the book with care did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing on the book's contents by Murray himself (Herrnstein had died very recently), just before publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but short on evidence, because nobody had had time to digest and evaluate the book carefully.
The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank.
The debate on publication day was conducted in the mass media by people with no independent ability to assess the book. Over the next few months, intellectuals took some pretty good shots at it in smaller publications like the New Republic and the New York Review of Books . It wasn't until late 1995 that the most damaging criticism of The Bell Curve began to appear, in tiny academic journals. What follows is a brief summary of that last body of work. The Bell Curve , it turns out, is full of mistakes ranging from sloppy reasoning to mis-citations of sources to outright mathematical errors. Unsurprisingly, all the mistakes are in the direction of supporting the authors' thesis.
First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an "invisible migration," from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them.
Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, "Intelligence is a bankrupt concept"--has been discredited, and that "a scholarly consensus has been reached" around their position. This consensus is "beyond significant technical dispute." Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited; and meanwhile, extremely broad claims for intelligence have the cover of "consensus."
The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single "general intelligence," there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities; that none of these abilities is important enough to obviate the role of family background and education; and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus.
The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit.
But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do "bunch up" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and .
Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances.
The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called "independent variables") in determining a final outcome (called the "dependent variable"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. "I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics," wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer.
But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows:
What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence.
Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental "socio-economic status." But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains.
Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income.
One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that "half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability." This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis ("a powerful method of statistical analysis"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: "In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not."
If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, "Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.)
The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , " Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention." (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.)
At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that "the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves." And they claim that their view of IQ tests is "squarely in the middle of the scientific road." They end by expressing the hope that we can "be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life." Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report.
In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions; not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find "encouraging," look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that "intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.
In the most famous passage in The Republic , Plato describes an underground cave where people are held prisoner in chains, unable to see anything but the shadows cast by figures passing outside; they mistake the shadows for reality. The Republic is probably the first place in history where an idea like that of Murray and Herrnstein's cognitive elite appears. Plato believed that through education, people could leave the cave and be able to see the truth instead of the shadows, thus fitting themselves to become the wise rulers of society. But he was quick to insert a cautionary note: Those who have left the cave might be tempted to think they can see perfectly clearly, while actually they would be "dazzled by excess of light." The image applies to The Bell Curve : Presented as an exact representation of reality, in opposition to the shadows of political correctness, it actually reflects the blinkered vision of one part of the American elite. It constantly tells these people that they are naturally superior, and offers lurid descriptions of aspects of national life that they know about only by rumor. Readers who accept The Bell Curve as tough-minded and realistic, and who assume that all criticism of it is ignorant and ideologically motivated, are not as far removed from Plato's cave as they might think.
: Dumb College Students
: Smart Rich People
: Education and IQ
: Socioeconomic Status
: Black-White Convergence
| https://www.anc.org/OANC/license.txt | What is the main message the author is sending by mentioning the tale of Plato’s cave? | 20010_9681BS4Q_9 | [
"Caution that people who think they see things clearly may just be blinded by what they want to be true.",
"Reminder to be careful what you read.",
"Caution against the shadows of political correctness.",
"Reminder that Plato believed in education."
] | 1 | 1 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was Piltdon most interested in? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_1 | [
"Making money",
"Being known around the world",
"Keeping Feetch on the payroll",
"Having more patents than anyone else"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What was Feetch most interested in? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_2 | [
"Making money",
"Research and development",
"Working for Piltdon",
"Being known around the world"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How did the majority of Piltdon workers feel about Feetch? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_3 | [
"They respected him",
"They thought he was too careless",
"They felt indifferent towards him",
"They thought he was only thinking about money"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why didn't Feetch show Piltdon his new invention right away? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_4 | [
"He wanted to keep the new invention to himself",
"He knew Piltdon wouldn't wait to research further",
"He was afraid he couldn't recreate it",
"He wanted a raise first"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What didn't happen because of the original Super-Opener? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_5 | [
"Feetch became famous",
"Feetch got a raise",
"People had to begin wearing hats and helmets",
"Piltdon made a lot of money"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How did Piltdon feel about Feetch throughout most of the story? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_6 | [
"He thought Feetch was brilliant",
"Feetch deserved credit for his work",
"Feetch was making more money than he deserved",
"Feetch was just another worker to control"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Feetch quit? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_7 | [
"Piltdon never appreciated or listened to him",
"Piltdon took all the credit for the Super-Opener",
"Feetch wanted to retire",
"Piltdon wouldn't give him enough money"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why were people throwing things at Feetch's house? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_8 | [
"They were jealous of Feetch's invention",
"They thought the falling cans were all his fault",
"Piltdon told them to",
"Cans were still falling on people"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What didn't Feetch discover? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_9 | [
"Where the cans were going",
"The fastest-opening can opener",
"Multiple different universes",
"How to make the cans disappear safely"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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60,507 | 60507_QOO9BH2K | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | The Super Opener | 1962.0 | Zuroy, Michael | PS; Business enterprises -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Short stories; Science fiction | THE SUPER OPENER
BY MICHAEL ZUROY
Here's why you should ask for
a "Feetch M-D" next time
you get a can opener!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Feetch!" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener
Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, "I want
results!"
Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly.
"As chief engineer you're not carrying the ball," Piltdon went on
savagely. "The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition.
Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering
that's missing the boat!"
"But Mr. Piltdon," remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's
glare, "don't you remember? I tried to...."
"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon
Can-Opener!" roared Mr. Piltdon. "Look at our competitors. The
International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds.
Universal does it in four."
"But Mr. Piltdon—"
"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home
Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a
can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you
for?"
Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. "But Mr. Piltdon,
our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has
dignity...."
"Dignity," pronounced Piltdon, "is for museums. Four months, Feetch!
In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter,
stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I
want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for
production. Otherwise, Feetch—"
Feetch's body twitched. "But Mr. Piltdon, four months is hardly time
enough for development, even with an adequate staff. I've been trying
to tell you for years that we're bound to fall behind because we don't
have enough personnel to conduct research. Our men can barely keep
up with production and maintenance. If you would let me put on a few
draftsmen and...."
"Excuses," sneered Mr. Piltdon. "Your staff is more than adequate.
I will not allow you to throw out my money. Four months, Feetch,
no more!" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an
oppressive silence.
How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer
had to dream at his board, investigate, search, build, test, compare,
discard. He had always wanted to devote all his time to research, but
Piltdon Opener had not given him that opportunity. Twenty-five years!
thought Feetch. Twenty-five years of close supervision, dead-lines,
production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had
happened, to the proud dream he once had, the dream of exploring
uncharted engineering regions, of unlimited time to investigate and
develop?
Ah, well, thought Feetch straightening his thin shoulders, he had
managed somehow to design a few good things during his twenty-five
years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction.
What now? He had to hang on to his job. Technical work was scarce.
Since the early 1980's the schools had been turning out more
technicians than industry could absorb. He was too old to compete in
the employment market. He couldn't afford to lose any money. Jenny
wasn't well.
How to meet this four month dead-line? He would get right on it
himself, of course; Hanson—good man—could work with him. He shook his
head despairingly. Something would be sure to blow up. Well, he had to
start—
"Chief," said Hanson a few weeks later as they entered the lab, "I'm
beginning to wonder if the answer is in the hand mechanical type at
all."
"Got to be," answered Feetch tiredly. "We must work along classical
can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven
types, would be too expensive for mass production."
Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the
bench. They began testing, Hanson operating the openers and Feetch
clocking. "Four point four," announced Feetch after the last test.
"Good, but not good enough. Too bulky. Appearance unsatisfactory.
Chimes tinny. We've made progress, but we've a long way to go."
The problem was tricky. It might seem that use of the proper gear
ratios would give the required velocity, but there were too many
other factors that negated this direct approach. The mechanism had to
be compact and streamlined. Gear sizes had to be kept down. Can-top
resistance, internal resistance, cutting tooth performance, handle
size and moment, the minimum strength of a woman's hand were some of
the variables that had to be balanced within rigid limits. Sector
type cutters, traversing several arcs at the same time, had seemed to
offer the answer for a while, but the adjusting mechanism necessary to
compensate for variable can sizes had been too complex to be practical.
There was the ever-present limit to production cost.
Hanson's eyes were upon him. "Chief," he said, "it's a rotten shame.
Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire
you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company
is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!"
"Well, well," said Feetch. "I drew my pay every week so I suppose I
have no complaints. Although," a wistful note crept into his voice "I
would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word,
but who has heard of Feetch? Well,"—Feetch blew his nose—"how do we
stand, Hanson?"
Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. "Piltdon ought to
be rayed," he growled. "O.K., Chief. Eleven experimental models
designed to date. Two more on the boards. Nine completed and tested,
two in work. Best performance, four point four, but model otherwise
unsatisfactory."
"Hello," said Feetch as an aproned machinist entered carrying a
glistening mechanism. "Here's another model. Let's try it." The
machinist departed and Hanson locked the opener on a can. "I hope——"
he turned the handle, and stopped abruptly, staring down open-mouthed.
A cylinder of close-packed beans rested on the bench under the opener.
The can itself had disappeared.
"Chief," said Hanson. "Chief."
"Yes," said Feetch. "I see it too. Try another can."
"Vegetable soup or spinach?" inquired Hanson dreamily.
"Spinach, I think," said Feetch. "Where did the can go, do you suppose?"
The spinach can disappeared. Likewise several corn cans, sweet potato
cans and corned-beef hash cans, leaving their contents intact. It was
rather disconcerting.
"Dear, dear," said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench.
"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen
degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear
teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and
thirty-six degree, twelve minute back rake angle. I expected that such
departures from the norm might achieve unconventional performance, but
this—Dear, dear. Where do the cans go, I wonder?"
"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the
answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and
beat the dead-line."
Feetch shook his head. "No, Hanson. We're producing something we don't
understand. What forces have we uncovered here? Where do the cans go?
What makes them disappear? Are we dealing with a kinetic or a kinematic
effect? What motions can we plot in the area of disappearance and what
are their analytical mathematical formulae? What masses may be critical
here? What transformations of energy are involved? No, Hanson, we must
learn a lot more."
"But Chief, your job."
"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon."
Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing
room and slapped Feetch heartily on the back, causing him to break a
pencil point. "Feetch!" roared Piltdon. "Is this talk that's going
around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it."
After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. "This,"
he exulted, "will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening!
Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this!
We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it."
"Mr. Piltdon—" said Feetch shakily.
Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. "What's the matter,
Feetch? The thing can be duplicated, can't it?"
"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of
further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new
type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles.
This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until
further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and
engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on
the effect."
"Feetch," bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. "Stow this hooey. I
don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our
standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the
company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year
after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want
you holding it back. We're going into production immediately."
Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it
had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day.
The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to
distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements
blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: "It's
a sell-out!" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. "Step up
production! Let 'er rip!"
The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time
they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales
climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into
peak production in three shifts, but was still unable to keep up with
the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional
plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores.
Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited
sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the
fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary.
Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations,
universities and independent investigators began to look into this new
phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they
set up their own research.
Far into the night burned the lights of countless laboratories. Noted
physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved,
spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and
analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory
explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for
any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect.
Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch:
"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting
me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year.
That's almost four dollars a week, man."
"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon." And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received
no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well,
well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his
work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing
nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect.
It had been difficult, working alone and buying his own equipment. The
oscillator and ultra microwave tracking unit had been particularly
expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when
so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could
no more keep away from it than he could stop eating.
He still didn't know where the cans went, but somehow he felt that he
was close to the answer.
When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck
incident was only hours away.
As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, "Sir, I
think I know where those cans are going. I recommend—"
"Are you still worrying about that?" Piltdon roared jovially. "Leave
that to the long-hairs. We're making money, that's all that counts, eh
Feetch?"
That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South
Dakota, sat down to their evening meal. Just as they started in on the
soup, a rain of empty tin cans clattered down, splashed into the soup,
raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a
gentle, steady klunk! klunk! klunk! and inexorably began to pile up on
the dining-room floor. They seemed to materialize from a plane just
below the ceiling. The police called the fire department and the fire
department stared helplessly and recommended the sanitation department.
The incident made headlines in the local papers.
The next day other local papers in widely scattered locations reported
similar incidents.
The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next,
and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell
outdoors and indoors, usually materializing at heights that were not
dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken,
sometimes it would stop, sometimes begin heavily again. It fell in
homes, on the streets, in theatres, trains, ships, universities and
dog-food factories. No place was immune.
People took to wearing hats indoors and out, and the sale of helmets
boomed.
All activity was seriously curtailed.
A state of national emergency was declared.
Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was
generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by
the Piltdon Super-Opener.
Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can
precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon
openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point
twenty-nine days.
Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed
there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators
accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A
Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of
bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself
in the plant, surrounded by bodyguards.
Livid with fury and apprehension, he screamed at Feetch, "This is your
doing, you vandal! I'm a ruined man!" A falling can caught him neatly
on the tip of his nose.
"But sir," trembled Feetch, dodging three spaghetti cans, "I tried to
warn you."
"You're through, Feetch!" raved Piltdon. "Fired! Get out! But before
you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it
belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created
the Super-Opener. Now, get out!"
"Yes, sir," said Feetch paling. "Then you don't want to hear about my
discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?"
Klunk! A barrage of cans hit the floor, and both men took refuge under
Piltdon's huge desk. "No!" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was
inches away. "No, I——What did you say?"
"A small design improvement sir, and the cans would disappear forever."
Klunk!
"Forever, Feetch?"
"Yes sir." Klunk! Klunk!
"You're positive, Feetch?" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's.
"Sir, I never make careless claims."
"That's true," said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. "It can be done,"
he mused. "The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old.
Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking
at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll
give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The
patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit
for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on
production, at once, Feetch."
Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. "Mr. Piltdon," he said. "I'm asking
only one favor. Let me work full time on research and development,
especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help
with production. I assure you the company will benefit in the end."
"Damn it, no!" roared Piltdon. "How many times must I tell you? You got
your job back, didn't you?"
The prospect of long years of heavy production schedules, restricted
engineering and tight supervision suddenly made Kalvin Feetch feel
very tired. Research, he thought. Development. What he had always
wanted. Over the years he had waited, thinking that there would be
opportunities later. But now he was growing older, and he felt that
there might not be a later. Somehow he would manage to get along.
Perhaps someone would give him a job working in the new field he had
pioneered. With a sense of relief he realized that he had made his
decision.
"Mr. Piltdon," Feetch said. "I—" klunk!—"resign."
Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face.
"No use," said Feetch. "Nothing you can say—" klunk! klunk!
klunk!—"will make any difference now."
"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!"
"Will remain my secret. Good day."
"Feetch!" howled Piltdon. "I order you to remain!"
Feetch almost submitted from force of habit. He hesitated for a moment,
then turned abruptly.
"Good-day," said Feetch firmly, sprinting through the falling cans to
the door.
Money, Feetch decided after a while, was a good thing to have. His
supply was running pretty low. He was not having any luck finding
another job. Although the cans had stopped falling on the fifteenth
day, as predicted by the statisticians, industry would not soon forget
the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious
to hire the man it regarded as responsible for the whole thing.
"Feetch," the personnel man would read. "Kalvin Feetch." Then, looking
up, "Not the Kalvin Feetch who—"
"Yes," Feetch would admit miserably.
"I am sorry, but—"
He did no better with research organizations. Typical was a letter
from the Van Terrel Foundation: "—cannot accept your application
inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to
profit-making denotes a lack of scientific responsibility and ethics
not desirable in a member of our organization—former employer states
the decision was yours entirely. Unfavorable reference—"
Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his
chest that he had not the experience to recognize as the beginning of a
slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it.
Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a
research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how
could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert
to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement.
No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might
grab. The anger began to mount.
But he was beginning to need money desperately. Jenny wasn't getting
any better and medical bills were running high.
The phone rang. Feetch seized it and said to the image: "Absolutely
not."
"I'll go up another ten dollars," grated the little Piltdon image.
"Do you realize, man, this is the fourteenth raise I've offered you?
A total increase of one hundred and twenty-six dollars? Be sensible,
Feetch. I know you can't find work anywhere else."
"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—"
A barrage of rocks crashed against the heavy steel screening of the
window. "What's going on!" yelled Piltdon. "Oh, I see. People throwing
rocks at your house again? Oh, I know all about that, Feetch. I know
that you're probably the most unpopular man alive to-day. I know about
the rocks, the tomatoes, the rotten eggs, the sneaking out at night,
the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and
change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and
the world will soon forget about the old one."
"No," said Feetch. "People will forget anyway—I hope."
"If you won't think of yourself, at least think of your fellow
workmen," begged Piltdon, his voice going blurry. "Do you realize that
Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your
former associates out of work? Think of Hanson, Sanchez, Forbes. They
have families too. Think of the men in the shop, the girls in the
office, the salesmen on the road. All, all unemployed because of you.
Think of that, Feetch."
Feetch blinked. This had not occurred to him.
Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. "Think it
over, Feetch."
Feetch sat, thinking it over. Was it right to let all these people lose
their jobs? Frowning, he dialed Hanson's number.
"Chief," said Hanson, "Forget it. The boys are behind you one hundred
per cent. We'll make out."
"But that's the trouble. I thought you'd feel like this, and I can't
let you."
"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that
figured the Super-Opener can solve this."
Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest
grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think,
Hanson had said. But he had. He's considered every angle, and there was
no solution.
Feetch walked into the kitchen and carefully poured himself a drink of
water. He drank the water slowly and placed the glass on the washstand
with a tiny click. It was the tiny click that did it. Something about
it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have
punched him in the nose. The twenty-five years. The tricks. The threats.
Think? He'd figured the solution long ago, only he hadn't allowed
himself to see it. Not lack of brains, lack of guts. Well, he thought
grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now.
"Piltdon!" he barked. "Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's
all." He hung up.
In the same grim mood the following morning, he placed a few more calls.
In the same mood that afternoon he stood in the middle of his
living-room and looked at his visitors: Piltdon, Williams, the
Government man; Billings from the Van Terrel Foundation; Steiner of
Westchester University; the members of the press.
"Gentlemen," he said. "I'll make it brief." He waved the papers in his
hand. "Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect,
including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener.
All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this
information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing
one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon." He stared at Piltdon. "In short,
I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener."
Piltdon leaped from his chair. "Outrageous!" He roared. "Ridiculous!"
"Fifty-one percent," said Feetch firmly. "Don't bother with any
counterproposals or the interview is at an end."
"Gentlemen!" squawked Piltdon, "I appeal to you—"
"Stop bluffing," said Feetch coldly. "There's no other way out for
you. Otherwise you're ruined. Here, sign this agreement."
Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: "Gentlemen, will you
be a party to this?"
"Well," murmured the Government man, "I never did think Feetch got a
fair shake."
"This information is important to science," said the Van Terrel man.
After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed.
Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read,
in part: "The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear
proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor
effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge
in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the
involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the
Alpha multi-dimensional screen. The can, being metallic, dropped
through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was
instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen.
"Beyond the screen is what I call Alpha space, a space apparently quite
as extensive as our own universe. Unfortunately, as my investigations
indicated, Alpha space seems to be thickly inhabited. These
inhabitants, the nature of whom I have not yet ascertained, obviously
resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting
the screen from their side, and hurled the cans back at us.
"However, I have established the existence of other spaces up to Mu
space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is
also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New
Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen.
Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans.
"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the
threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that
possibly an infinite number of universes exist in a type of laminated
block separated by screens.
"Therefore, might it not be that an infinite number of laminated blocks
exist—?"
"Mr Feetch—" said Piltdon.
Feetch looked up from his desk in the newly constructed Feetch
Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company.
"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem."
"But Mr. Feetch—"
"Get out," said Feetch.
Piltdon blanched and left.
"As I was saying, Hanson—" continued Feetch.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/0/5/0/60507//60507-h//60507-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What didn't Feetch get at the end of the story? | 60507_QOO9BH2K_10 | [
"Money to pay for his wife's medical bills",
"Credit for his discoveries",
"The job he wanted",
"Piltdon's job"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What isn't true of the red-headed girl? | 63875_B507K45X_1 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What doesn't describe Jaro? | 63875_B507K45X_2 | [
"he's curious",
"he's a murderer",
"he'll do anything for money",
"he's well-known on many planets"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which isn't true about the Mercurians? | 63875_B507K45X_3 | [
"they're peaceful people",
"most want a revolution",
"they can handle extreme heat ",
"they can see well in the day"
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which isn't true about Stanley? | 63875_B507K45X_4 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Jaro sneak out of his hostelry? | 63875_B507K45X_5 | [
"he wanted his money from Mr. Peet",
"he wanted to meet Joan",
"he was in need of more Latonka",
"he wanted to figure out the mystery"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What does Peet seem to care about the most? | 63875_B507K45X_6 | [
"keeping all of his power and money",
"the safety of all citizens on Mercury",
"getting off of Mercury",
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What words best describe Miss Webb? | 63875_B507K45X_7 | [
"secretive and manipulative",
"annoyed and rude",
"witty and sarcastic",
"careful and cautious"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Jaro ask to meet Miss Webb? | 63875_B507K45X_8 | [
"He doesn't have anyone else to talk to",
"He wants to know what's really going on",
"He wants her to be an assassin",
"He found her attractive"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Who wanted Jaro dead? | 63875_B507K45X_9 | [
"Karfial Hodes",
"Miss Mikhail and Miss Webb",
"the Martian rebellion",
"Stanley and Mr. Peet"
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63,875 | 63875_B507K45X | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Red Witch of Mercury | 1956.0 | McDowell, Robert Emmett | PS; Science fiction; Revolutions -- Fiction; Mercury (Planet) -- Fiction; Adventure stories | Red Witch of Mercury
By EMMETT McDOWELL
Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and
every planet had known his touch. But now, on
Mercury, he was selling his guns into the
weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life
against the soft touch of a woman's lips.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
On the stage of
Mercury Sam's Garden
, a tight-frocked, limber-hipped,
red-head was singing "
The Lady from Mars
." The song was a rollicking,
ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots
and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with
such gusto that the audience burst into a roar of applause.
She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell
down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and
temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened.
The man, who had accompanied the singer on the piano, sat at the foot
of the stage, his back to the crowded tables. He did not look up at
the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while
his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled
down the back of his neck, plastered his white coat to his back.
Without looking up, he said: "Have you spotted him?" His voice was
pitched to reach the singer alone.
The girl, with an almost imperceptible gesture, shook her head.
The night was very hot; but then it is always hot on Mercury, the
newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced
about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the
men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the
pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic,
yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't
sweat at all.
Up on the stage the singer was about to begin another number when she
stiffened.
"Here he is," she said to the pianist without moving her lips.
The pianist swung around on his stool, lifted his black eyes to the
gate leading to the street.
Just within the entrance, a tall, thin man was standing. He looked like
a gaunt gray wolf loitering in the doorway. His white duraloes suit
hung faultlessly. His black hair was close-cropped, his nose thin and
aquiline. For a moment he studied the crowded garden before making his
way to a vacant table.
"Go on," said the pianist in a flat voice.
The red-head shivered. Stepping from the stage she picked her way
through the tables until she came to the one occupied by the newcomer.
"May I join you?" she asked in a low voice.
The man arose. "Of course. I was expecting you. Here, sit down." He
pulled out a chair, motioned for the waiter. The Mercurian, his yellow
incurious eyes like two round topazes, sidled up. "Bring us a bottle
of Latonka from the Veederman region, well iced." The waiter slipped
away.
"So," said the red-head; "you have come. I did not think you would be
in time." Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white.
The man said nothing.
"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan." It was the first time
she had used his name. "You have the reputation of being unpredictable.
I don't trust you, but since...."
She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured
the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass.
"Here's to the revolution," he said. His low voice carried an odd,
compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his
brown face.
The girl drew in her breath.
"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are
engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against
it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The
revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If
it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate
them. We haven't but a handful of troops."
Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb
handkerchief. "I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here."
The girl ignored the interruption. "There is one man; he is the leader,
the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will
do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel,
Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill
Karfial Hodes."
Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome
in a gaunt fashion. Only his eyes were different. They were flat and
a trifle oblique with straight brows. The pupils were a pale and
penetrating blue that could probe like a surgeon's knife. Now he caught
the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish.
"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman
at the piano rub Hodes out?"
The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: "We can't
locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me.
I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you.
You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury."
"Who's putting up the money?"
"I can't tell you."
"Ah," said Jaro Moynahan; "so that's the way it is."
"That's the way it is."
"There isn't much time," he said after a moment. "The Rains are due any
day now."
"No," the girl replied. "But we think he's here in the city."
"Why? What makes you think that?"
"He was seen," she began, then stopped with a gasp.
The lights had gone out.
It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was
glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the
revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about
the walls slowed audibly and stopped. It grew hotter, closer.
Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush
his sleeve. Somewhere a girl giggled.
"What's coming off here?" growled a petulant male voice. Other voices
took up the plaint.
Across the table from Jaro there was the feel of movement; he could
sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been
clamped over the girl's mouth.
"Red!" said Jaro in a low voice.
There was no answer.
"Red!" he repeated, louder.
Unexpectedly, the deep, ringing voice of Mercury Sam boomed out from
the stage.
"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a
moment."
On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night
upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring.
Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So
was the pianist.
Jaro Moynahan sat quietly back down and poured himself another glass of
Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste.
It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot,
teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge.
He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood
to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough.
Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there
was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe.
And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If
so, he suspected that they had caught a tartar. The Red Witch had the
reputation of being able to take care of herself.
He beckoned a waiter, paid his bill. As the Mercurian started to leave,
a thought struck Jaro. These yellow-eyed Mercurians could see as well
in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived
most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the
sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their
trades. He peeled off a bill, put it in the waiter's hands.
"What became of the red-headed singer?"
The Mercurian glanced at the bill, then back at the Earthman. There was
no expression in his yellow eyes.
"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out
the gate to the street."
Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much
information from the waiter, but he was not a man to overlook any
possibility. If the girl had been abducted, only Mercurians could have
engineered it in the dark; and the Mercurians were a clannish lot.
Back on the narrow alley-like street Jaro Moynahan headed for his
hostelry. By stretching out his arms he could touch the buildings on
either side: buildings with walls four feet thick to keep out the
heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of
rooms and passages. Somewhere in those rat-runs was Karfial Hodes, the
revolutionist, and the girl.
At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a
faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps
when he thought he detected a footfall behind him. It was only the
whisper of a sound, but as he passed beyond the circle of radiation, he
flattened himself in a doorway. Nothing stirred. There was no further
sound. Again he started forward, but now he was conscious of shadows
following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there
came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked
earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting
alley, faded into a doorway. Immediately all sounds of pursuit stopped.
But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In
the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the
cat-eyed Mercurians.
Jaro Moynahan
In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection
of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set
out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the
followers.
Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes,
unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun,
stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face
and marked with innumerable scars. There were small round puckered
scars and long thin ones, and his left shoulder bore the unmistakable
brownish patch of a ray burn. Stepping out of the shower, he dried,
rebuckled on the shoulder holster, slipped into pajamas. The pajamas
were blue with wide gaudy stripes. Next he lit a cigarette and
stretching out on the bed began to contemplate his toes with singular
interest.
He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in
the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the
Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as
dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there
was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this
business of hunting a man through the rat-runs beneath the city was out
of his line.
Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up.
The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years.
Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them
self-government, should they stage a revolution?
A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further
speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood
up and ground out his cigarette. Before he could reach the door the
rapping came again.
Throwing off the latch, he stepped back, balancing on the balls of his
feet.
"Come in," he called.
The door swung open. A heavy set man entered, shut and locked the door,
then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his
lips.
"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe." His voice was
high, almost feminine. "I'm Albert Peet." He held out a fat pink hand.
Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat.
Mr. Peet licked his lips again. "I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter
of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this
matter. I preferred to remain behind the scenes, but the disappearance
of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand." He paused.
Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer,
whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases.
He doubted that even she remembered her right name.
"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?" Albert Peet's voice was tight.
"Yes," said Jaro.
"You accepted?"
"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance."
Mr. Peet licked his lips. "But you will, surely you will. Unless
Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising
all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't
realize the seriousness of the situation."
"Then I was right; it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth
notes."
"Not entirely," said Peet uncomfortably. "There are many of us
here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We
have—ah—pooled our resources."
"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?"
"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It
is—ah—lucrative."
Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. "Why
beat about the bush," he asked with a sudden grin. "Mr. Peet, you've
gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control
of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps
the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run
Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time
self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in
blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere.
I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution."
Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "Fifteen
thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I
can go."
Jaro laughed. "How did you know Red had been kidnapped?"
"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss
Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact."
Jaro raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps then you know where she is?"
Mr. Peet shook his head. "No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her."
A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went
to the door, opened it. The pianist at the gardens was framed in the
entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His
white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt.
"They told me Mr. Peet was here," he said.
"It's for you," said Jaro over his shoulder.
Mr. Peet came to the door. "Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you?
Where's Miss Mikail?"
"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone."
Albert Peet said, "Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?" He licked his
lips. "I'll just step out into the hall a moment." He went out, drawing
the door shut after him.
Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the
room, his bare feet making no noise. He sat down on the edge of the
bed. He got up and ground out the cigarette. He went to the door, but
did not open it. Instead, he took another turn about the room. Again he
came to a halt before the door, pressed his ear against the panel. For
a long time he listened but could distinguish no murmur of voices. With
an oath he threw open the door. The hall was empty.
II
Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into
his suit. He tested the slug gun. It was a flat, ugly weapon which
hurled a slug the size of a quarter. He preferred it because, though he
seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof.
He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't
stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out
into the hall.
At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were
none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the
incline to the underground. Above the clerk's head a newsograph was
reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro
read:
"
Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending
investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to
Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought.
"
Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served
as streets during the flaming days. Here in the basements and
sub-basements were located the shops and dram houses where the
Mercurians sat around little tables drinking silently of the pale green
Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the
cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the
strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter
of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes,
and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng.
Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read:
"LATONKA TRUST"
He pushed through the door into a rich carpeted reception room. At the
far end was a second door beside which sat a desk, door and desk being
railed off from the rest of the office. The door into Albert Peet's
inner sanctum was ajar. Jaro could distinguish voices; then quite
clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone:
"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you
follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?"
The reply was unintelligible. Then the pale-faced young man came
through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro
Moynahan he froze.
"What're you sneaking around here for?"
Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the
youth.
"Let's get this straight," he said mildly. "I've known your kind
before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to
step on you as I might a spider."
The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His
hands began to creep upward.
"You dirty ..." he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him
in the shoulder.
The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The
big slug, smacked the gunman's shoulder with a resounding thwack,
hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him
of two poisoned needle guns.
"I'll get you for this," said Stanley, his mouth twisted in pain.
"You've broken my shoulder. I'll kill you."
The door to the inner sanctum swung open.
"What's happened?" cried Albert Peet in distress. "What's wrong with
you, Stanley?"
"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder."
"But how badly?" Peet was wringing his hands.
"Nothing serious," said Jaro. "He'll have his arm in a sling for a
while. That's all."
"Stanley," said Mr. Peet. "You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why
can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you
hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has
anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb!
That girl. Miss Webb!"
Stanley climbed to his feet, swayed a moment drunkenly, then wobbled
out a door on the left just as a tall brunette hurried in from the
right. She had straight black hair which hung not quite to her
shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb
Jaro's attention.
"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the
carpet.
Joan Webb
"There's been an—ah—accident," said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips.
"Call a doctor, Miss Webb."
Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she
had tuned in the prim starched figure of a nurse seated at a desk.
"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident."
"Rush over where?" said the girl in the visoscreen. "These gadgets
aren't telepathic, honey."
"Oh," said Miss Webb, "the offices of the Latonka Trust."
The girl in the visoscreen thawed like ice cream in the sun. "I'm sure
Dr. Baer can come. He'll be there in a moment."
"Thank you," said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added:
"You trollop."
Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress.
"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't
that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I
had a job for him."
"Oh," cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. "Did you shoot that
poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?"
"Poor boy?" said Jaro mildly. "Venomous little rattlesnake. I took
these toys away from him." He held out the poisoned dart guns. "You
take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go
off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough."
Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might
explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought
better of it, glanced around helplessly.
"Here, Miss Webb," he said, "do something with these. Put them in my
desk."
Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. "I wouldn't touch one of those
nasty little contraptions for all the Latonka on Mercury."
"Here, I'll take them," said Stanley coming back into the room. He had
staunched the flow of blood. His face was even whiter, if possible.
Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart
guns back into their holsters.
"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next
time."
"Now, Mr. Moynahan." Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. "Stanley, go
into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may
go home. I'll have no more work for you today."
Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were
alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said:
"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in
the first grog shop you come to."
Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. "What's this? A new technique?"
"Look," began Jaro annoyed.
"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now," she interrupted.
"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to
Earth." She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk
drawer.
"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is...."
"How disappointing."
Jaro began again patiently. "Wait for me in the first grog shop.
There's something I must know. It's important." He cleared his throat.
"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps
you've become accustomed to it."
Mr. Peet came back into the room.
"Why, no, I mean yes," replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her
eyes.
"Goodbye, Miss Webb," said Mr. Peet firmly.
Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room.
As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said:
"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires
some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit
of news." He paused.
Jaro said nothing.
"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe.
Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe."
Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly.
"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize
that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay
you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth
notes?"
"That's fair enough," replied Jaro.
Albert Peet sighed. "I have the check made out."
"Only," continued Jaro coldly, "I'm not ready to be bought off. I think
I'll deal myself a hand in this game."
Mr. Peet's face fell. "You won't reconsider?"
"Sorry," said Jaro; "but I've got a date. I'm late now." He started to
leave.
"Stanley!" called Albert Peet.
The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his
good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun
as he fell. There was a tiny plop like a cap exploding. He heard the
whisper of the poisoned dart as it passed overhead. Then he fired from
the floor. The pale-faced young man crumpled like an empty sack.
Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees.
"You've killed him," said Peet. "If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would
be on the next liner back to Earth."
Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room.
Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps.
Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the
first basement grog shop he turned in. His eyes swept the chamber, then
he grinned.
At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb.
Her hat was still on backwards, and she was perched on the edge of her
chair as if ready to spring up and away like a startled faun.
"
Bang!
" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger
in the small of her back.
Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted
over one eye. She regarded him balefully from beneath the brim.
"Never a dull moment," she gritted.
Still grinning, Jaro sat down. "I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think
Albert Peet forgot to introduce us. There's some skullduggery going on
here that I'm particularly anxious to get to the bottom of. I thought
you might be able to help me."
"Yes," replied Miss Webb sweetly.
A native waiter, attracted no doubt by her scream, came over and took
Jaro's order.
"All right," Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl
thoughtfully. "I'll have to confide certain facts which might be
dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?"
"Since we're going to be so chummy," she replied; "you might begin by
calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient."
"Well then," he said. "In the first place, I just killed that
baby-faced gunman your boss had in his office."
"
Awk!
" said Joan, choking on the Latonka.
"It was self-defense," he hastened to assure her. "He took a pot shot
at me with that poisoned dart gun."
"But the police!" she cried, as she caught her breath.
"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I
was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead
I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the
revolution."
"What revolution? I'm going around in circles."
"The Mercurians, of course."
"I don't believe it," said the girl. "The Mercurians are the most
peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom,
yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could
induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert
Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control
of the Latonka trade."
"Score one," breathed Jaro, "I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah,
Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you
happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?"
"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust
is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor."
Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.
"Albert Peet," she continued, "has been trying to sell out but nobody
will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is
going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the
first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka
Trust."
"What about this Karfial Hodes?" said Jaro. "I've heard that he's
inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about
the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to
return to Earth."
"It's not true," Joan flared. "It's all a pack of lies invented by the
Latonka Trust. I know."
"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock."
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/3/8/7/63875//63875-h//63875-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What's really happening on Mercury? | 63875_B507K45X_10 | [
"The Mercurians are rebelling against Peet and will do what it takes to get their freedom.",
"Peet wants to sell his Lotonka Trust and get back to Earth.",
"Karfial Hodes is taking hostages to win his battle against Terrestrials.",
"Peet is lying to stop Earth from granting Mercurians their freedom."
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | How did Orison feel on the first day of her job? | 61081_9X59TFEH_1 | [
"confused about her job duties",
"frustrated with the other women that worked there",
"excited about such a large raise",
"in love with the quirkiness of the employees"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Would Orison be able to go out until midnight? | 61081_9X59TFEH_2 | [
"No - she needed to be in her bed before then",
"No - she works too early in the morning to be out so late",
"Yes - she has no curfew",
"Yes - Mr. Gerding will probably take her dancing far later"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Who seems to be the only person that Orison seems to trust at the bank? | 61081_9X59TFEH_3 | [
"Dink Gerding",
"Kraft Gerding",
"no one - they all seem suspicious",
"Auga Vingt"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which best describes Orison's personality? | 61081_9X59TFEH_4 | [
"smart and bossy",
"patient and polite",
"kind and innocent",
"curious and confident"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why did Orison say that she quit? | 61081_9X59TFEH_5 | [
"She was frustrated with her visitors",
"She didn't understand her job",
"She didn't like reading every day",
"Kraft was being rude to her"
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What is Orison's main reason for going to floor seven? | 61081_9X59TFEH_6 | [
"To figure out what escudo green meant",
"To have a good reason to get fired",
"To find out what else is happening at the bank",
"To give Dink a message"
] | 3 | 3 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What are Microfabridae? | 61081_9X59TFEH_7 | [
"tiny crustaceans that eat calcium and metals",
"tiny crustaceans that they're breeding for profit",
"tiny spiders that eat people",
"tiny spiders that create tiny webs"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,081 | 61081_9X59TFEH | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Cinderella Story | 1958.0 | Lang, Allen Kim | Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Science fiction; PS; Banks and banking -- Fiction | CINDERELLA STORY
By ALLEN KIM LANG
What a bank! The First Vice-President
was a cool cat—the elevator and the
money operators all wore earmuffs—was
just as phony as a three-dollar bill!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
The First Vice-President of the William Howard Taft National Bank and
Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying
for a job, was not at all the public picture of a banker. His suit of
hound's-tooth checks, the scarlet vest peeping above the vee of his
jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious
bank indeed. "I gotta say, chick, these references of yours really
swing," said the Vice-President, Mr. Wanji. "Your last boss says you
come on real cool in the secretary-bit."
"He was a very kind employer," Orison said. She tried to keep from
staring at the most remarkable item of Mr. Wanji's costume, a pair of
furry green earmuffs. It was not cold.
Mr. Wanji returned to Orison her letters of reference. "What color
bread you got eyes for taking down, baby?" he asked.
"Beg pardon?"
"What kinda salary you bucking for?" he translated, bouncing up and
down on the toes of his rough-leather desert boots.
"I was making one-twenty a week in my last position," Miss McCall said.
"You're worth more'n that, just to jazz up the decor," Mr. Wanji said.
"What you say we pass you a cee-and-a-half a week. Okay?" He caught
Orison's look of bewilderment. "One each, a Franklin and a Grant," he
explained further. She still looked blank. "Sister, you gonna work
in a bank, you gotta know who's picture's on the paper. That's a
hunnerd-fifty a week, doll."
"That will be most satisfactory, Mr. Wanji," Orison said. It was indeed.
"Crazy!" Mr. Wanji grabbed Orison's right hand and shook it with
athletic vigor. "You just now joined up with our herd. I wanna tell
you, chick, it's none too soon we got some decent scenery around
this tomb, girlwise." He took her arm and led her toward the bank of
elevators. The uniformed operator nodded to Mr. Wanji, bowed slightly
to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal
than Mr. Wanji's, being midnight blue in color. "Lift us to five, Mac,"
Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison,
"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor
and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron
Curtain Country far's you're concerned. Dig, baby?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs,
now that she'd become an employee of this most peculiar bank.
The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to
hold a single desk and two chairs. On the desk were a telephone and
a microphone. Beside them was a double-decked "In" and "Out" basket.
"Here's where you'll do your nine-to-five, honey," Mr. Wanji said.
"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?" Orison asked.
The Vice-President pointed to the newspaper folded in the "In" basket.
"Flip on the microphone and read the paper to it," he said. "When you
get done reading the paper, someone will run you up something new to
read. Okay?"
"It seems a rather peculiar job," Orison said. "After all, I'm a
secretary. Is reading the newspaper aloud supposed to familiarize me
with the Bank's operation?"
"Don't bug me, kid," Mr. Wanji said. "All you gotta do is read that
there paper into this here microphone. Can do?"
"Yes, sir," Orison said. "While you're here, Mr. Wanji, I'd like to
ask you about my withholding tax, social security, credit union,
coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take
care of these details now? Or would you—"
"You just take care of that chicken-flickin' kinda stuff any way seems
best to you, kid," Mr. Wanji said.
"Yes, sir," Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's
might explain why she'd been selected from the Treasury Department's
secretarial pool to apply for work here, she thought. Orison McCall,
girl Government spy. She picked up the newspaper from the "In" basket,
unfolded it to discover the day's
Wall Street Journal
, and began at
the top of column one to read it aloud. Wanji stood before the desk,
nodding his head as he listened. "You blowing real good, kid," he said.
"The boss is gonna dig you the most."
Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the
one into the other. Mr. Wanji flicked his fingers in a good-by, then
took off upstairs in the elevator.
By lunchtime Orison had finished the
Wall Street Journal
and had
begun reading a book an earmuffed page had brought her. The book was a
fantastic novel of some sort, named
The Hobbit
. Reading this peculiar
fare into the microphone before her, Miss McCall was more certain than
ever that the Taft Bank was, as her boss in Washington had told her,
the front for some highly irregular goings-on. An odd business for a
Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a
microphone for an invisible audience.
Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the
book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was
a new man, ears concealed behind scarlet earmuffs. In the car, coming
down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with
briefcases. As though they were members of a ballet-troupe, these
gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped
aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his
heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment
of their gesture, and got off in the lobby vowing never to put a penny
into this curiousest of banks.
Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude.
Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together,
eyed Orison with the coolness due so attractive a competitor, and
favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed,
finished her tuna salad on whole-wheat, then went back upstairs to her
lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book,
reading rapidly and becoming despite herself engrossed in the saga of
Bilbo Baggins, Hobbit. She switched off the microphone, put on her
light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed,
silent, hat-clasping gentlemen.
What I need, Orison thought, walking rapidly to the busline, is a
double Scotch, followed by a double Scotch. And what the William Howard
Taft National Bank and Trust Company needs is a joint raid by forces of
the U.S. Treasury Department and the American Psychiatric Association.
Earmuffs, indeed. Fairy-tales read into a microphone. A Vice-President
with the vocabulary of a racetrack tout. And what goes on in those
upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment
house—the Windsor Arms—and ordered a meal and a single Martini. Her
boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft
Bank from within, might prove dangerous. Indeed it was, she thought.
She was in danger of becoming a solitary drinker.
Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's
observations in order. Presumably Washington would call tonight for
her initial report. Item: some of the men at the Bank wore earmuffs,
several didn't. Item: the Vice-President's name was Mr. Wanji:
Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed
to be off-limits to all personnel not wearing earmuffs. Item: she was
being employed at a very respectable salary to read newsprint and
nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she
thought.
In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven
o'clock. Washington should be calling soon, inquiring after the results
of her first day's spying.
No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock
was set; the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her?
Perhaps, she thought, the Department had discovered that the Earmuffs
had her phone tapped.
"Testing," a baritone voice muttered.
Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. "Beg pardon?" she
said.
"Testing," the male voice repeated. "One, two, three; three, two, one.
Do you read me? Over."
Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax,
she reached for the light cord with her free hand and tugged at it.
The room was empty.
"Testing," the voice repeated.
"What you're testing," Orison said in a firm voice, "is my patience.
Who are you?"
"Department of Treasury Monitor J-12," the male voice said. "Do you
have anything to report, Miss McCall?"
"Where are you, Monitor?" she demanded.
"That's classified information," the voice said. "Please speak directly
to your pillow, Miss McCall."
Orison lay down cautiously. "All right," she whispered to her pillow.
"Over here," the voice instructed her, coming from the unruffled pillow
beside her.
Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. "A radio?" she
asked.
"Of a sort," Monitor J-12 agreed. "We have to maintain communications
security. Have you anything to report?"
"I got the job," Orison said. "Are you ... in that pillow ... all the
time?"
"No, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Only at report times. Shall we
establish our rendezvous here at eleven-fifteen, Central Standard Time,
every day?"
"You make it sound so improper," Orison said.
"I'm far enough away to do you no harm, Miss McCall," the monitor said.
"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today."
Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a
microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft
National Bank and Trust Company. "That's about it, so far," she said.
"Good report," J-12 said from the pillow. "Sounds like you've dropped
into a real snakepit, beautiful."
"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?" Orison asked.
"Native optimism," the voice said. "Good night." J-12 signed off with
a peculiar electronic pop that puzzled Orison for a moment. Then she
placed the sound: J-12 had kissed his microphone.
Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved
to write Washington for permission to make her future reports by
registered mail.
II
At ten o'clock the next morning, reading page four of the current
Wall Street Journal
, Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair
of leather heels. The gentleman whose heels had just slammed together
was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not
wearing earmuffs. "My name," the stranger said, "is Dink Gerding. I am
President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our
little family."
"I'm Orison McCall," she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight?
So tall. Could he ever be interested in a girl just five-foot-three?
Maybe higher heels?
"We're pleased with your work, Miss McCall," Dink Gerding said. He took
the chair to the right of her desk.
"It's nothing," Orison said, switching off the microphone.
"On the contrary, Miss McCall. Your duties are most important," he said.
"Reading papers and fairy-tales into this microphone is nothing any
reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well," Orison said.
"You'll be reading silently before long," Mr. Gerding said. He smiled,
as though this explained everything. "By the way, your official
designation is Confidential Secretary. It's me whose confidences you're
to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here
and dictate it?"
"Please do," Orison said. This bank president, for all his grace and
presence, was obviously as kookie as his bank.
"Have you ever worked in a bank before, Miss McCall?" Mr. Gerding
asked, as though following her train of thought.
"No, sir," she said. "Though I've been associated with a rather large
financial organization."
"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used
to them," he said. "Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense
with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy
your using it."
"Dink?" she asked. "And I suppose you're to call me Orison?"
"That's the drill," he said. "One more question, Orison. Dinner this
evening?"
Direct, she thought. Perhaps that's why he's president of a bank, and
still so young. "We've hardly met," she said.
"But we're on a first-name basis already," he pointed out. "Dance?"
"I'd love to," Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march,
playing, from the elevator.
"Then I'll pick you up at seven. Windsor Arms, if I remember your
personnel form correctly." He stood, lean, all bone and muscle,
and bowed slightly. West Point? Hardly. His manners were European.
Sandhurst, perhaps, or Saint Cyr. Was she supposed to reply with a
curtsy? Orison wondered.
"Thank you," she said.
He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders
stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome,
to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink,
saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but
not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them.
Small bows, true; just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding.
Orison finished the
Wall Street Journal
by early afternoon. A
page came up a moment later with fresh reading-matter: a copy of
yesterday's
Congressional Record
. She launched into the
Record
,
thinking as she read of meeting again this evening that handsome
madman, that splendid lunatic, that unlikely bank-president. "You read
so
well
, darling," someone said across the desk.
Orison looked up. "Oh, hello," she said. "I didn't hear you come up."
"I walk ever so lightly," the woman said, standing hip-shot in front
of the desk, "and pounce ever so hard." She smiled. Opulent, Orison
thought. Built like a burlesque queen. No, she thought, I don't like
her. Can't. Wouldn't if I could. Never cared for cats.
"I'm Orison McCall," she said, and tried to smile back without showing
teeth.
"Delighted," the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. "I'm
Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends."
"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?"
"So kind of you, darling," Auga Vingt said, "but I shan't have time to
visit. I just wanted to stop and welcome you as a Taft Bank co-worker.
One for all, all for one. Yea, Team. You know."
"Thanks," Orison said.
"Common courtesy," Miss Vingt explained. "Also, darling, I'd like to
draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the
shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should
you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little
eyes scratched out. Word to the wise,
n'est-ce pas
?"
"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly," Orison said, rolling her
Wall
Street Journal
into a club and standing. "Darling."
"So remember, Tiny, Dink Gerding is mine. You're all alone up here.
You could get broken nails, fall down the elevator shaft, all sorts of
annoyance. Understand me, darling?"
"You make it very clear," Orison said. "Now you'd best hurry back to
your stanchion, Bossy, before the hay's all gone."
"Isn't it lovely, the way you and I reached an understanding right
off?" Auga asked. "Well, ta-ta." She turned and walked to the elevator,
displaying, Orison thought, a disgraceful amount of ungirdled rhumba
motion.
The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male,
stepped off. "Good morning, Mr. Gerding," Miss Vingt said, bowing.
"Carry on, Colonel," the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed,
he stepped up to Orison's desk. "Good morning. Miss McCall," he said.
"What is this?" Orison demanded. "Visiting-day at the zoo?" She paused
and shook her head. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "It's just that ...
Vingt thing...."
"Auga is rather intense," the new Mr. Gerding said.
"Yeah, intense," Orison said. "Like a kidney-stone."
"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank
and Trust Company family, Miss McCall," he said. "I'm Kraft Gerding,
Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already."
"Yes, sir," Orison said. The hair of this new Mr. Gerding was cropped
even closer than Dink's. His mustache was gray-tipped, like a patch
of frosted furze; and his eyes, like Dink's, were cobalt blue. The
head, Orison mused, would look quite at home in one of Kaiser Bill's
spike-topped
Pickelhauben
; but the ears were in evidence, and seemed
normal. Mr. Kraft Gerding bowed—what continental manners these bankers
had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up
paper she still clutched and plant a kiss on it.
Instead, Kraft Gerding smiled a smile as frosty as his mustache and
said, "I understand that my younger brother has been talking with you,
Miss McCall. Quite proper, I know. But I must warn you against mixing
business with pleasure."
Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. "I quit!" she
shouted. "You can take this crazy bank ... into bankruptcy, for all I
care. I'm not going to perch up here, target for every uncaged idiot in
finance, and listen to another word."
"Dearest lady, my humblest pardon," Kraft Gerding said, bowing again,
a bit lower. "Your work is splendid; your presence is Taft Bank's most
charming asset; my only wish is to serve and protect you. To this end,
dear lady, I feel it my duty to warn you against my brother. A word to
the wise...."
"
N'est-ce pas?
" Orison said. "Well, Buster, here's a word to the
foolish. Get lost."
Kraft Gerding bowed and flashed his gelid smile. "Until we meet again?"
"I'll hold my breath," Orison promised. "The elevator is just behind
you. Push a button, will you? And
bon voyage
."
Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with
a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above
fifth floor.
First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding.
Surely, Orison thought, recovering the
Wall Street Journal
from her
wastebasket and smoothing it, no one would convert a major Midwestern
bank into a lunatic asylum. How else, though, could the behavior
of the Earmuffs be explained? Could madmen run a bank? Why not, she
thought. History is rich in examples of madmen running nations, banks
and all. She began again to read the paper into the microphone. If she
finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits
upper floors.
Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the
sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. "
Wanji e-Kal, Datto.
Dink ger-Dink d'summa.
"
Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before
replying, "I'm a local girl. Try me in English."
"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall," the voice said. "Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda
clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see
him, tell him the escudo green is pale. Got that, doll?"
"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding." Orison clicked the phone down.
What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language
Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by
tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle
it out. Meanwhile, she thought, scooting her chair back from her desk,
she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could
only fire her.
Orison folded the paper and put it in the "Out" basket. Someone would
be here in a moment with something new to read. She'd best get going.
The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her
off the upstairs floors.
But the building had a stairway.
III
The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to
seven. The glass of the door there was painted black on the inside, and
the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There
was a curious sound. The buzzing of a million bees, barely within the
fringes of her hearing. Somehow, a very pleasant sound.
She opened her eyes and tried the knob. The door opened.
Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room
extended through the entire seventh floor, its windows boarded shut,
its ceiling a mass of fluorescent lamps. Set about the floor were
galvanized steel tanks, rectangular and a little bigger than bathtubs.
Orison counted the rows of tanks. Twelve rows, nine tiers. One hundred
and eight tanks. She walked closer. The tubs were laced together by
strands of angel-hair, delicate white lattices scintillating with
pink. She walked to the nearest of the tubs and looked in. It was half
full of a greenish fluid, seething with tiny pink bubbles. For a moment
Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the
liquid. Then she screamed.
The pink bubbles, the tiny flesh-colored flecks glinting light from
the spun-sugar bridges between the tanks, were spiders. Millions
upon millions of spiders, each the size of a mustard-seed; crawling,
leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison
put her hands over her ears and screamed again, backing toward the
stairway door.
Into a pair of arms.
"I had hoped you'd be happy here, Miss McCall," Kraft Gerding said.
Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have
her wrists seized by two Earmuffs that had appeared with the elder
Gerding. "It seems that our Pandora doesn't care for spiders," he
said. "Really, Miss McCall, our little pets are quite harmless. Were
we to toss you into one of these tanks...." Orison struggled against
her two
sumo
-sized captors, whose combined weights exceeded hers by
some quarter-ton, without doing more than lifting her feet from the
floor. "... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted
all around you. Our Microfabridae are petrovorous, Miss McCall. Of
course, once they discovered your teeth, and through them a skeleton of
calcium, a delicacy they find most toothsome, you'd be filleted within
minutes."
"Elder Compassion wouldn't like your harming the girl, Sire," one of
the earmuffed
sumo
-wrestlers protested.
"Elder Compassion has no rank," Kraft Gerding said. "Miss McCall, you
must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders."
"Dink ... Dink!" Orison shouted.
"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of
damsels in distress," Kraft said. "Someone, after all, has to mind the
bank."
"I came to bring a message to Dink," Orison said. "Let me go, you
acromegalic apes!"
"The message?" Kraft Gerding demanded.
"Something about escudo green. Put me down!"
Suddenly she was dropped. Her mountainous keepers were on the floor as
though struck by lightning, their arms thrown out before them, their
faces abject against the floor. Kraft Gerding was slowly lowering
himself to one knee. Dink had entered the spider-room. Without
questions, he strode between the shiko-ing Earmuffs and put his arms
around Orison.
"They can't harm you," he said. She turned to press her face against
his chest. "You're all right, child. Breathe deep, swallow, and turn
your brain back on. All right, now?"
"All right," she said, still trembling. "They were going to throw me to
the spiders."
"Kraft told you that?" Dink Gerding released her and turned to the
kneeling man. "Stand up, Elder Brother."
"I...."
Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's
jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor.
"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to
recover your dignity without regard for the difference in our rank."
Kraft struggled to one knee and remained kneeling, gazing up at Dink
through half-closed eyes. "No? Then get out of here, all of you.
Samma!
"
Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with
the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator.
"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison," Dink said. "Why did you do
it?"
"Have you read the story of Bluebeard?" Orison asked. She stood close
to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. "I had to see
what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was
forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for
you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you
that the escudo green is pale."
"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless," Dink said. "Now, what
is this thing you have about spiders?"
"I've always been terrified of them," Orison said. "When I was a little
girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a
spider hanging from his thread in the stairway. I waited until Dad came
home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite
for supper."
"Strange," Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked
one of the tiny pink creatures from a web-bridge. "This is no spider,
Orison," he said.
She backed away from Dink Gerding and the minuscule creature he cupped
in the palm of his hand. "These are Microfabridae, more nearly related
to shellfish than to spiders," he said. "They're stone-and-metal
eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison." He
extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature,
flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around
the bowl of his hand. "Pretty little fellow, isn't he?" Dink asked.
"Here. You hold him."
"I'd rather not," she protested.
"I'd be happier if you did," Dink said.
Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the
Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like
a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and
unfolded it, to hold it over Orison's palm.
"He's like a baby crawdad," Orison said.
"A sort of crustacean," Dink agreed. "We use them in a commercial
process we're developing. That's why we keep this floor closed off and
secret. We don't have a patent on the use of Microfabridae, you see."
"What do they do?" Orison asked.
"That's still a secret," Dink said, smiling. "I can't tell even you
that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary."
"What's he doing now?" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus,
perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching
against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae.
"They like gold," Dink explained, peering across her shoulder,
comfortably close. "They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as
children are attracted to candy. Toss him back into his tank, Orison.
We'd better get you down where you belong."
Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest
tank, where he joined the busy boil of his fellows. She felt her ring.
It was pitted where the Microfabridus had been nibbling. "Strange,
using crawdads in a bank," she said. She stood silent for a moment. "I
thought I heard music," she said. "I heard it when I came in. Something
like the sighing of wind in winter trees."
"That's the hymn of the Microfabridae," Dink said. "They all sing
together while they work, a chorus of some twenty million voices." He
took her arm. "If you listen very carefully, you'll find the song these
little workers sing the most beautiful music in the world."
Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to
the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness,
storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace
and harbor. She heard the wash of giant waves in the song, the crash
of breakers against granite, cold and insatiable. And behind this, the
quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked.
"It's an ancient song," Dink said. "The Microfabridae have been
singing it for a million years." He released her, and opened a
wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside.
"Hold out your hands," he told Orison. He filled them with the sand.
"Throw our singers some supper for their song," he said.
Orison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the
mineral fishfood around inside it. The Microfabridae leaped from the
liquid like miniature porpoises, seizing the grains of sand in mid-air.
"They're so very strange," Orison said. At the bottom of the tank she
thought she saw Ben Franklin again, winking at her through the bubbling
life. Nonsense, she thought, brushing her hands.
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/8/61081//61081-h//61081-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Does Orison know what is taking place at the bank? | 61081_9X59TFEH_8 | [
"Yes - Dink is very open and honest with her",
"No - there are many secrets and oddities",
"Yes - she's a very smart woman",
"No - no one will tell her anything"
] | 2 | 2 | [
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61,052 | 61052_JUGXNC33 | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | In the beginning, how does the author try to make you feel about this world? | 61052_JUGXNC33_1 | [
"skeptical but optimistic",
"curious and interested",
"like it's uninhabited and scary",
"like it's a place unworthy of going to"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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61,052 | 61052_JUGXNC33 | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Why were they getting the jeeps out? | 61052_JUGXNC33_2 | [
"to tour the planet",
"to attack the natives",
"to find the lost crew",
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61,052 | 61052_JUGXNC33 | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which words best describe the mob of creatures? | 61052_JUGXNC33_3 | [
"ugly, hairy, and clever",
"monstrous, large, and foolish",
"slow, strong, and mean",
"tall, thick, and caring"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,052 | 61052_JUGXNC33 | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | Which word doesn't describe the cadets? | 61052_JUGXNC33_4 | [
"cautious",
"naïve",
"embellishers",
"young"
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61,052 | 61052_JUGXNC33 | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What isn't a reason that it was foolish for Gwayne to leave the ship in such a hurry? | 61052_JUGXNC33_5 | [
"the air is dangerous for him to breathe",
"he forgot to bring the radio",
"they didn't know for sure what was out there",
"he was outnumbered"
] | 1 | 1 | [
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61,052 | 61052_JUGXNC33 | 12 | 1,009 | Gutenberg | Spawning Ground | 1954.0 | Del Rey, Lester | PS; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Outer space -- Exploration -- Fiction | Spawning Ground
By LESTER DEL REY
They weren't human. They were something
more—and something less—they were,
in short, humanity's hopes for survival!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Starship
Pandora
creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled
unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to
be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from
the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed
through her hallways.
Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was
a big, rawboned man, barely forty; but ten years of responsibility
had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his
reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies
were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the
control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity.
Lieutenant Jane Corey looked up, nodding a blonde head at him as he
moved toward the ever-waiting pot of murky coffee. "Morning, Bob. You
need a shave."
"Yeah." He swallowed the hot coffee without tasting it, then ran a
hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. "Anything new
during the night?"
"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways
north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the
clouds." The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody
knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have
an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. "And
our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them
in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back."
Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen
in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training
as cadets on their twelfth birthday. The two he'd drawn, Kaufman and
Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution.
Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't
seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous
and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of
their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each
on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts.
But
something
had happened to the exploration party fifteen years
back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check
up.
He turned to the port to stare out at the planet. The Sol-type sun
must be rising, since there was a dim light. But the thick clouds that
wrapped the entire world diffused its rays into a haze. For a change,
it wasn't raining, though the ground was covered by thick swirls of
fog. In the distance, the tops of shrubs that made a scrub forest
glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding
animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the
deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was
completely hidden by the fog.
There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals
now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute,
trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them....
But there was no time.
Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of
deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign
of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed
already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened
to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to
report back.
He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough
of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by
luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors
originally.
"Bob!" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. "Bob, there are
the kids!"
Before he could swing to follow her pointing finger, movement caught
his eye.
The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic
speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that
moved there.
He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just
beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist.
Whatever was making the fog swirl must have reached higher ground.
Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but
Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets.
They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them.
Young Kaufman grabbed at Pinelli, and they swung around together.
Then the mists cleared.
Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets.
Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost
eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited
cadets. Some of the horde were carrying spears or sticks. There was a
momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the
others forward.
"Get the jeeps out!" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of
the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was
agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door
back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in
confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The
jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and
Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back.
There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was
irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to
the seat, to see that the driver was Doctor Barker. At a gesture, the
jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked
up speed. The other two followed.
There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them;
surrounded by the menacing horde. Seen from here, the things looked
horrible in a travesty of manhood.
The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were
racing toward him. He made a fantastic leap backwards. Others swung
about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty
miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in
spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived
downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists.
"Follow the blobs," Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to
leave his suit; the radio would have let him keep in contact with the
kids. But it was too late to go back.
The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into
a gorge. Somewhere the man had learned to drive superlatively; but he
had to slow as the fog thickened lower down.
Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own
trail to confuse the pursuers.
There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a
glimpse of five-foot bodies tumbling out of the way. Monstrously coarse
faces were half hidden by thick hair. A spear crunched against the
windshield from behind, and Gwayne caught it before it could foul the
steering wheel. It had a wickedly beautiful point of stone.
The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The
other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late
to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or
the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog.
A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne.
He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature
seemed to pass around it. It lifted a few inches and drifted off.
Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward
against the windshield, just as he made out the form of the eight-foot
leader. The thing was standing directly ahead of him, a cadet on each
shoulder.
The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature
leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving
for the figure. It dropped the boys with a surprised grunt.
The arms were thin and grotesque below the massively distorted
shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his
hands locked on the thick throat. A stench of alien flesh was in his
nose as the thing fell backwards. Doc Barker had hit it seconds after
the captain's attack. Its head hit rocky ground with a dull, heavy
sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no
further move, though it was still breathing.
Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli
was either laughing or crying, and Kaufman was trying to break free to
kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded
onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster
on another before heading back.
"No sign of skull fracture. My God, what a tough brute!" Barker shook
his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing.
"I hope so," Gwayne told him. "I want that thing to live—and you're
detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign
language or draw pictures. I want to know what happened to Hennessy
and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the
answer."
Barker nodded grimly. "I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien
metabolism." He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat
sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. "Bob, it still
makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was
no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some."
"Troglodytes, maybe," Gwayne guessed. "Anyhow, send for me when you get
anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying
our time here already."
The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been
picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were
busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon
as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less
informative with retelling.
If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save
time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That
was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed
to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had
been overcome by the aliens.
It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the
primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its
fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told
these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a
little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship
cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work.
Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find
something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make
remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction.
The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons
into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to
prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found
a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life
there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own.
But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had
finally proved that the sun was going to go nova.
It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would
render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive,
man had to colonize.
And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The
explorers went out in desperation to find what they could; the
terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships
began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve
space.
Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and
four more months back.
In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the
footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some
of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none
would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was
precious as a haven for the race.
If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as
it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here.
Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to
strip them of their world, but the first law was survival.
But how could primitives do what these must have done?
He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of
cemented bits of smaller wood from the scrub growth, skillfully
laminated. The point was of delicately chipped flint, done as no human
hand had been able to do for centuries.
"Beautiful primitive work," he muttered.
Jane pulled the coffee cup away from her lips and snorted. "You can
see a lot more of it out there," she suggested.
He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were
squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship.
They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what?
For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the
ship to them?
Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. "How's the captive coming?"
Barker's voice sounded odd.
"Physically fine. You can see him. But—"
Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore
at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not
checking up sooner. Then he stopped at the sound of voices.
There was the end of a question from Barker and a thick, harsh growling
sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker
seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in.
The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The
thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make
some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up
unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap.
"Haarroo, Cabbaan!" the thing said.
"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?"
Barker said. There was a grin on the doctor's lips, but his face was
taut with strain.
The creature nodded slowly and drew something from the thick hair on
its head. It was the golden comet of a captain.
"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them," Barker cut in
quickly. "I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very
well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds
fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it
gets easier as you listen. It's Hennessy, all right. I'm certain."
Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize
on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little
English, maybe. But Hennessy had been his friend.
"How many barmaids in the Cheshire Cat? How many pups did your oldest
kid's dog have? How many were brown?"
The lips contorted into something vaguely like a smile, and the
curiously shaped fingers that could handle no human-designed equipment
spread out.
Three. Seven. Zero.
The answers were right.
By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the
twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a
long time telling.
When it was finished, Gwayne and Barker sat for long minutes in
silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. "Is it
possible, Doc?"
"No," Barker said flatly. He spread his hands and grimaced. "No. Not
by what I know. But it happened. I've looked at a few tissues under
the microscope. The changes are there. It's hard to believe about
their kids. Adults in eight years, but they stay shorter. It can't be
a hereditary change—the things that affect the body don't change the
germ plasm. But in this case, what changed Hennessy is real, so maybe
the fact that the change is passed on is as real as he claims."
Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped
down to touch the monstrous man, then leaped up again. The crowd of
monsters began moving forward toward their leader. A few were almost as
tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high.
The kids of the exploring party....
Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers,
set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle
as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the
ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the
ship again.
He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had
time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept,
however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off
giving the gist of it to Jane.
"It was the blobs," he summarized it. "They seem to be amused by men.
They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy
doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came,
all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen.
"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the
hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth
food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper
this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony
where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never
know."
Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight
years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth
tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed.
Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new
eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world.
She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must
now be her home. Then she sighed. "You'll need practice, but the others
don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll
believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been
changed yet, have we?"
"No," he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. "No.
They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back."
She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only
puzzlement in her face. "Why?"
And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the
same answer he had found for himself. "The spawning ground!"
It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her
seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve
that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were
becoming uncertain.
Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of
men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange
children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back
to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps
some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next
rise to culture a better one.
"We're needed here," he told her, his voice pleading for the
understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. "These people need
as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength.
The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with
a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or
accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here."
She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. "Be
fruitful," she whispered. "Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an
earth."
"No," he told her. "Replenish the stars."
But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait.
Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes
again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they
could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them
through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond
numbering.
Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the
children of men!
| http://aleph.gutenberg.org/6/1/0/5/61052//61052-h//61052-h.htm | This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you’ll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Please refer to https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html for the detailed license. | What isn't a reason for bringing the creature back to the ship? | 61052_JUGXNC33_6 | [
"they want to learn more about him",
"they want to know why the ship had been hidden",
"they want to know what happened to Hennessy's group",
"they want revenge for what it did to the cadets"
] | 4 | 4 | [
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"untimed_eval2_context": 1
}
] | [
{
"speed_annotator_id": "0006",
"speed_answer": 3
},
{
"speed_annotator_id": "0020",
"speed_answer": 4
},
{
"speed_annotator_id": "0015",
"speed_answer": 3
},
{
"speed_annotator_id": "0021",
"speed_answer": 1
},
{
"speed_annotator_id": "0041",
"speed_answer": 4
}
] | 1 |