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WORLDS OF

FEBRUARY 35 CENTS

SCIENCE FICTION

' IN THIS ISSUE! Frank I

THIS ISSUE! Fram< Riley’s provocative
short novel ABBR.! Also Arthur C. Clarke,
James McConnell, Bryce Walton and others

THE FIRST

ORLD OF j J

ISAAC ASIMOV • CHARLES BEAUMONT • JEROME BIXBY • JAMES BUSH
PHILIP K. DICK • MILTON LESSER • EDWARD W. LUDWIG
FRANK RILEY • ROBERT SHECKLEY and others

TO BE PUBLISHED

JANUARY 12th

See page 46 for full details

WORLDS of SCIENCE FICTION

FEBRUARY 1957
All Stories New and Complete

Editor: JAMES L. QUINN

Assist. Editor: EVE WULFF

Art Editor: MEL HUNTER

3iiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiHiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiij

[ SHORT NOVEL

| ABBR. by Frank Riley 4

[ SHORT STORIES

| NOR DUST CORRUPT by James McConnell 54

1 THE OLD GOAT by Charles L. Fontenay 67

I ULTIMATE MELODY by Arthur C. Clarke 70

1 WAR GAME by Bryce Walton 76

| THE FLOATER by Kenneth O'Hara 82

1 CRONUS OF THE D.F.C by Lloyd Biggie, Jr. 94

| THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR

| by Stephen Bartholomew 108

[ ARTICLE

| PROGNOSIS FOR TOMORROW by Alan E. Nourse, M.D. 47

FEATURES

EDITOR'S REPORT

WHAT IS YOUR SCIENCE I.Q.?

SCIENCE BRIEFS

115

HUE AND CRY

118

COVER:

The Titan Flagpole Painter by Mel Hunter

Siiiiiii

IF is published bi-monthly by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. Volume 7, No. 2.
Copyright 1956 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. Office of publication, 8 Lora Street,
Buffalo, New York. Entered as Second Class Matter at Post Office, Buffalo, New
York. Subscription $3.50 for 12 issues in U.S. and Possessions; Canada $4 for 12
issues; elsewhere $4.50. Allow four weeks for change of address. All stories appear-
ing in this ' magazine are fiction; any similarity to actual persons is coincidental.
Not responsible for unsolicited artwork or manuscripts. 35c a copy. Printed in U.S.A.

EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES, KINGSTON, NEW YORK

Next (April) issue on sale February 12th

mimmiii

With this issue, IF is five years old,
and the question that seems to have
popped up most frequently during
that time is one concerning its title.
Some folks aver that IF isn’t the
best title a science fiction magazine
could have. Others express the
opinion that it is a good title. Neu-
trals ask: “Why did you call it IF?”
At the 14th World Science Fic-
tion Convention in New York the
subject came up and one of the best
known artists in the field remarked
that IF had more science fiction
“guts” than any other title. It was
a flattering remark. Yet, with more
truth than we realized at the time.
For when you really think about it
for a while, IF is science fiction!
For instance, any science fiction
story you read is really: “What
would happen if — ?” A sound phi-
losophy, a logical extrapolation and
good writing provide the imaginary
answer. An imaginary answer, a
fictional answer — but an answer
that gives us some of the most
stimulating and entertaining read-
ing we have today, reading that

provokes thought and presents
some fascinating new concepts
about Mankind of the Future.

Thus, we always come back to if.
What would happen if — if the hu-
man lifespan was increased to 150
years, if the awesome power of
nuclear fission got out of hand, if
telepathy or electronics or seman-
tics were ever developed to the ulti-
mate, if space travel became an
everyday event, if the integration of
nationalities, languages, races,
creeds and colors became a reality
— if anyone of the myriad sciences
were projected a hundred or thou-
sand or million years into the
future?

Dr. Alan E. Nourse's PROGNOSIS
FOR TOMORROW arrived just
in time to make this issue. The
theme is “medicine at the cross-
roads” and it examines, in the light
of progress of yesterday and today,
the expectations of the future. We
found it to be completely fascinat-
ing, an article of equal interest to
members of the medical profession
as to lay readers. Don’t miss it . . .
Henry Slesar, who makes his first
appearance in these pages with
THOUGHT FOR TOMORROW,
is another who does science fiction
in his spare time. A newcomer to
the field and a young man just
under thirty, he has been earning
his living at the typewriter since
he was 17 years old. With five years
out for time in the Service, most of
it has been writing advertising copy.
At present he is vice president of a
New York advertising agency and
lives in Manhattan with his wife
and daughter, a little girl almost

two. He claims a collection of rec-
ords that would be the envy of any
jazz lover . . . Charles Fontenay
(See October issue) recently made
national news when he won first
prize at a Nashville art exhibit —
with a wipe rag for his brushes.
When I wrote him about it, he re-
plied: “It’s one of the funniest
things that ever happened to me
. . . The whole thing started when
one of those Nashville abstract
artists got control of a statewide
exhibit here early this year, and
threw out 150 of 250 paintings en-
tered, leaving in only the abstracts.
One of those thrown out was mine,
and I didn’t get my entry fee back.
I was painting something at the
time, and slapped my excess paint
on an old canvas and angrily told
my wife, ‘That’s exactly the sort of
stuff that gets blue ribbons now-
adays. I’m going to enter that in
the state fair and win first prize.’
I went through with it — and it
did! . . . The abstract artists who
infest Nashville are madder than
hops, which tickles me no end.”

Bryce Walton who has appeared
often in IF (with HAPPY
HERD, THE CHASM and
others), is one of the most prolific
writers in the general fiction field.
To date he has two books, a hun-
dred television shows, numerous
articles, and over 500 short stories,
novelettes and short novels to his
credit. He writes under his own
name (Bryce Walton) and 12 pen
names.

' Bom in a one-room farmhouse in
an isolated section of Northwest
Missouri, May 31, 1918, his only

playmates until the age of nine
were horses, cows, pigs, dogs, birds, ;
chickens and snakes. He grew up
in an imaginative world of his own
in which he fantasied the animals
as being people and vice versa.
This confusion remains with him
even today and, he says, con-
tributes to his continuation as a
writer. He does not feel that any
character he has ever seen in the
world of fiction, literary or other-
wise, has but a faint resemblance
to the people he meets in real life.
He is convinced that fictional char-
acters are created to carry out an
author’s whims and are therefore
understandable, but that real peo-
ple are beyond comprehension.

Mr. Walton attended public
school in Kansas City, where he
never succeeded in making a decent
adjustment to his schoolmates as
human beings, but always got to
imagining them as friendly and
sometimes not so friendly animals.
After graduating from High School
he stepped into the depression of
the Thirties and spent several years
bumming about the country on
freight trains, and although at this
time he had no idea of becoming a
writer, he did all the things writers
are supposed to have done — mi-
grant fruit picker in Idaho and
California, gold miner in Montana,
carpenter, sign-painter, dishwasher,
fry-cook, etc. He worked his way
through Los Angeles City College
as a school librarian for the Na-
tional Youth Administration, and
in 1941 he enlisted in the U. S.
Navy. He became a writer when he
wrote such a stirring portrait of the
( Continued on page 120)

Brevity was the new watchword.

Vrythg dgstd stht Isrcdb njyd.

Illustrated by Ed Emsh

Abbr.

BY FRANK RILEY

Walther Von Koenigsburg woke up a few mo-
ments after the earth shuttle had passed Venus.
As he gazed back at the lonely, shrouded planet, aban-
doned long ago when Man won freedom to colonize

more habitable worlds in deep
space, Walther realized that in just
a matter of minutes his long pil-
grimage would be over. Soon he
would walk down the ramp and set
foot on Earth — the almost mythi-
cal homeland of his people. Wal-
ther was young enough, and old
enough, not to be ashamed of the
sudden choking in his throat, the
moisture in his eyes.

A light touch on his shoulder
brought him back to the shuttle
ship. The pert stewardess smiled at
his start.

“Wyslgsr,” she asked pleasantly.

Or at least that’s what it sounded
like to Walther, whose ears were
still ringing from the take off at the
Cyngus III shuttleport.

“I beg your pardon,” he began.
“I’m afraid ...”

For a moment she looked star-
tled, then her full, red lips parted in
another bright smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed.
“I didn’t realize ... I just asked,
Sir, whether you had been sleep-
ing”

She spoke with the mechanical,
stilted perfection he had first noted
when transferring from the Aldeb-
aran liner at the shuttleport. He
had wondered, briefly, about the
source of the accent, but had been
too polite to ask.

The stewardess put a small pil-
low in his lap, then placed a tray
on it. The recessed compartments
of the tray held a cup of steaming
black coffee, a piece of pastry that
reminded Walther of apfelstrudel,
and a paper-covered booklet en-
titled: “Easy Earth Dictionary and
Orientation Manual”. Stamped on

the cover, in the manner of an offi-
cial seal, were the words: “Pre-
pared under the authorization of
Happy Time, Ltd.”

“Thank you,” said Walther,
then he grinned buoyantly, eager
to share these moments of excite-
ment at being so close to Earth.
“But I don’t think I’ll need the dic-
tionary!”

Tiny frown lines appeared be-
tween the stewardess’s carefully
arched eyebrows.

“Hg su’v rthsr?” she inquired
uncertainly.

“I don’t understand . . .”

The stewardess managed a pro-
fessional smile that was edged with
just the faintest touch of impa-
tience.

“That’s what I thought. What I
asked, Sir, was how long since
you’ve been on Earth?”

“This is my first visit!”

“Then you had better study the
dictionary,” she said firmly.

“Oh, no, I really don’t need it!”
Walther’s inner excitement showed
in the flush of his fair Nordic com-
plexion. He turned toward her in a
burst of confidence. “You see, my
people always kept alive their na-
tive languages. My father’s side of
the family was German . . . and
down through all the generations
they’ve managed to teach the lan-
guage to their children! It was the
same way with my mother’s family,
who were English . . .” Pride came
into his voice : “I could speak both
languages by the time I was four.”
“And you’ve never taken this
shuttle from Cyngus?”

“I’ve never been on Cyngus be-
fore— nor on Aldebaran VI — Den-

FRANK RILEY

eb II — or Arcturus IX,” explained
Walther, naming the farflung way
station across the galaxy. He add-
ed: ‘Tm on my way in from Neu-
stadt — Andromeda, you know.”

Respect replaced the hint of im-
patience in the stewardess’s smile,
which instantly became more per-
sonal. Not for generations had a
colonist from the Andromeda gal-
axy boarded this shuttle; the An-
dromeda run, across 1,500,000 light
years of space, could be made only
by special charter, at a fantastic
cost. This blonde young man with
the stubborn chin and sensitive
mouth was obviously a colonial of
tremendous wealth.

The pilot’s buzzer sounded, and
a red light flickered on the Pas-
senger Instruction panel.

“I have to go forward now,” the
stewardess said, regretfully. “We’re
entering the warp, and it’s time
to prepare for landing. Maybe
later ...”

She let the invitation trail off,
and left him with a very special
smile.

Walther understood the smile.
He was a young man, but he was
no fool. In the trading centers of
Andromeda many women smiled
at him that way when they learned
he was a Von Koenigsburg from
Neustadt.

He dunked the pastry in the
black coffee, took a generous bite
and settled back to be alone with
his thoughts. An earth woman was
not an essential part of the dream
that had taken him on this quixotic
voyage. True, there might be a
woman who would come to love
him enough so that she would leave

ABBR.

the old world culture and gracious-
ness of Earth for the colonial life
on the immense frontier of An-
dromeda. But, being of an age
where the dreams of youth are
merging with practicality, Walther
rather doubted he would find such
a woman.

He didn’t doubt that the rest of
his dream would come gloriously
to life.

While the shuttleship whirled
without motion through the void-
less void of hyper space, Walther
smiled at the prospect ahead. Six
months to immerse himself in the
wonder of Earth’s culture! Six
months to enjoy the whole of it, in-
stead of nourishing the few precious
fragments kept alive by his family
through the first centuries of co-
lonial life in the new galaxy.

Delightful evenings at the sym-
phony and the opera! Beethoven,
Verdi, Brahms, Shubert and Wag-
ner! Wagner! — Perhaps he would
even be able to attend a perform-
ance of Die Meistersinger. Walther
smiled to himself. His great, great
grandfather, who had first discov-
ered the incredibly rich mines, for-
ests and black loam of Neustadt,
had started the tradition of naming
the first son Walther, after the
whimsical Meistersinger, Walther
von der Vogelweide.

Then there would be leisurely
afternoons in the great libraries and
museums! All the great classics of
literature and art, instead of the
few faded pictures and the handful
of volumes in the high beamed li-
brary of his family castle. The in-
frequent ships that traveled be-
tween the fringes of the two gal-

axies had little room for books and
art treasures. Three years ago, on
the occasion of Walther’s twenty-
first birthday, his mother had bro-
ken down in tears as she told of try-
ing for half a decade to order a set
of Goethe as a coming of age pres-
ent for him. But after the request
had finally reached Earth, some
clerk had garbled the order and
sent a four-page booklet that ap-
parently was some kind of puzzle-
book for children.

Now he could steep himself in
Goethe, Schiller, Dickens, Maupas-
sant, Tolstoi!

And best of all the conversation!
The delicate art of communicating
mind with mind! What tales he
would have to tell when he sat
again in the family banquet hall!
How his mother V eyes would spar-
kle! How his father would roar
with delight as he recounted some
rapier-like bon mot . . .

But all this was only the small
part of the dream. The small, per-
sonal part. The dream itself was so
much bigger, as big as a dream
must be to carry over from youth
to manhood. He had first dreamed
it as a boy, sitting on the hearth
rug with his knees tucked up under
his chin, watching the great leap-
ing fire, while behind him in the
shadows his grandfather played on
the old violin. Meditation , his
grandfather had called it. By a long
ago composer of Earth, a man
strangely named Thais. His grand-
father couldn’t play very much of
it, but the fragment had lodged in
Walther’s heart and would be
there to the end of his life.

Walther’s dream was indeed a

grand dream, shaped of a melody
and leaping flames. He would not
spend his lifetime wresting more
wealth from the riches of Neustadt.
That had been done for him; the
challenge was gone. But someday he
would make the journey to Earth,
and bring back with him enough of
the beauty and culture to make
Neustadt a miniatum Earth, out on
the rim of Andromeda.

It was indeed a grand dream.
He would spend his wealth for
books and music and treasures of
art. He would try to bring back
artists and teachers, too, and from
Neustadt would spread the wonder
of the new, old culture; it would
reach out to all the colonies of the
Andromeda galaxy, giving texture
to life. And it would be there like a
shining beacon when Man made
his next great step across space,
across the millions of light years to
the Camora galaxy, and beyond . . .

The stewardess again touched his
shoulder, with a gesture that was
not entirely according to shuttle-
ship regulations.

“We’re through the warp and
are now in orbit,” she said. “We’ll
land at Uniport in three minutes.”

Uniport! The fabled entry port
of Earth! It was the new hub, the
pulsing heart of the homeland. It
was the syndrome of all Earth cul-
ture, and its stratoways reached out
like spokes of a spidery wheel to ev-
ery city of the planet.

Walther’s knees were a little
shaky as he moved down the ramp,
and the moisture in the corners of
his eyes was not caused by the
sleety December wind that whipped
across the vast landing area. He

FRANK RILEY

was on Earth. He was the first of
his people to returh to the father-
land that had cradled them and
sent them out into the universe.

When the stewardess said good-
by to him at the foot of the ramp,
she looked both puzzled and disap-
pointed. Her smile had been an in-
vitation, and she had sensed the tug
of it in his answering grin. But he
only tipped his hat, and went on
into the customs office.

He felt like a small boy suddenly
confronted by so many delights that
he knew not which to sample first.

“Destination?”

The customs officer’s blue pencil
poised over the question on the
Uniport entry form. Walther
shrugged carelessly.

“Oh, Fll look around Uniport
awhile, then visit other cities . . .
New York . . . London . . . Vienna
... I have six months, you know.”

“I know — I’m sure you’ll enjoy
your happy time. But you must
have a destination — someplace
where you can be contacted, or
leave forwarding addresses.” The
official’s voice was patient, but it
had the curious mechanical quality
Walther had noted in speech of the
pretty young stewardess.

“Can you recommend good lodg-
ing?”

“The Uniport landing provides
excellent facilities, and you’ll be
among other travelers until you
have a chance to adjust yourself to
happy time activities.”

“Oh, no! I don’t want to waste a
moment! I want to live among the
people of Earth from this very first
night!”

ABBR.

The customs officer peered at
Walther’s entry permit.

“Andromeda . . . that’s what I
thought.” He shook his head dubi-
ously. “You have your Orientation
Manual?”

Walther fumbled in the pockets
of his greatcoat.

“I must have left it on the shut-
tleship, but I don’t need it.”

The official pressed another copy
of the manual firmly into Walther’s
hands.

“It is required,” he said. “First
visitors are not allowed to leave
the Uniport landing without one.”

Walther was too happy to argue.
He shoved the manual into one of
pockets.

“If I may suggest, Sir,” said the
customs officer, his eyes widening
as he looked over Walther’s letters
of credit, “You will find the Hotel
Altair most comfortable. It’s where
all important visitors in Uniport
stay.”

The next few moments went by
so quickly they left Walther a lit-
tle dazed. A servo-robot took his
bags and led him to a monorail car,
which whisked him off to the hotel.

“Gdegr,” said the doorman, an-,
other servo-robot, in *a brilliant
scarlet uniform. Its wax-like fea-
tures were set in a perpetual smile.

Walther blinked.

“I’m sorry,” he began. “I — ”

“Thayr,” said the majestic robot,
taking Walther’s handtooled over-
night bag and motioning imperi-
ously for two bellhop robots td
bring the rest of the luggage. Si-
lent and smiling, they leaped to
obey.

The desk clerk was a human, and

greeted Walther with an efficient:

“Wemtalr.”

He offered Walther a pen and a
registration card on which ap-
peared some undecipherable com-
bination of letters,

Walther began to have a sense of
unreality about the whole thing, as
if he were still day-dreaming in the
Venus warp.

“Really,” he said, “I seem to be
quite confused — ”

With a smile of sudden compre-
hension, the clerk produced a Man-
ual and thumbed rapidly through
its pages. He pointed to a phrase
with the tip of his pen, and Walther
read:

What price room do you desire?

Opposite these words was the
phonetic jumble :

Whprumuirer?

Walther shrugged to indicate
that price was not important, but
his thoughts were spinning. And
they were still spinning when the
robot bellhop left him alone in his
suite. The possibility of a language
barrier on Earth was something he
had never considered. With only
six months planned for his visit, it
would be impossible to learn a new
language and still do all he had
dreamed of doing.

But the Von Koenigsburgs were
noted for their stubbornness. Wal-
ther’s chin set, and he opened the
Manual to learn what this was all
about.

He promptly realized that this
was a Manual only for the most ele-
mentary needs of conversation, and
that a great amount of study would
be necessary for normal discourse.
The first section of the Manual de-

voted a short chapter to each of
the basic languages of Earth. Turn-
ing from one to another, Walther
discovered that an extreme degree
of condensation had taken place in
all languages. It was as though a
form of speedwriting and short-
hand had been vocalized.

But why? What did it mean?
Walther found a partial explana-
tion in the Orientation section
which began:

“Be brief!”

“Soyez bref!”

“Mach5 es kurz!”

“Sea breze!”

In a score of languages, first-time
visitors were admonished that an
understanding of these two words
was essential to getting maximum
enjoyment out of their stay on
Earth.

“Even in an earlier age,” the in-
troduction pointed out, “the words
‘Be Brief’ expressed the essence of a
new way of life, a life in which pace
and tempo were all important.
Later, as technology and automa-
tion relieved man of the burden of
labor, he realized that tempo was
equally important to fullest enjoy-
ment of his happy time hours. You
will understand this better after a
few pleasant days on Earth.”

There was a false ring to the
words that heightened Walther’s
sense of forboding.

Under the glass top of his dress-
ing table, he saw several brightly
colored, attractively illustrated no-
tices. One in particular caught his
attention. It showed a young wom-
an with lovely and poignantly ex-
pressive features. Her hands were
outstretched, as though she were

FRANK RILEY

singing or engaged in a dramatic
scene.

With the help of his Manual,
Walther ascertained that the young
woman was named Maria Piavi,
and that she was an Italian operatic
soprano appearing currently in
Uniport with a New York com-
pany.

Walther’ s buoyancy began to re-
turn. What better way to become
acquainted with Earth’s culture
than to spend his first evening at
the opera? He removed the an-
nouncement with Maria Piavi’ s pic-
ture from under the glass and stood
it upright against die mirror.

Dinner in the hotel’s main dining
room was a confusing interlude.
The cuisine was superb, the robot
waiter faultless — although Walther
was beginning to weary of their
fixed smiles. But more irritating was
the flicker of huge, tri-dimensional
television screens on the walls of the
dining room. When he deciphered
his bill, he saw he had been taxed
for the TV entertainment.

After dinner, he showed the
opera announcement to the hotel
clerk, and asked how to get there.
The clerk wrote down the number
of the monorail car he was to take,
but when Walther learned the
opera house was only six blocks
away, he decided to walk. The clerk
was aghast at this, and followed
him all the way to the sidewalk,
waving his arms and protesting in
an hysterical jumble of consonants.

THE OPERA house itself was a
revelation. All he had dreamed
of, and more. The frescoed facade!

ABBR.

The dazzling marquee! The crowd
of elegantly dressed men and wom-
en, animatedly speaking their
strange syllables as they watched a
floor show in the lobby. When the
floor show ended, and the crowd
shifted to the far end, where a pan-
tomimist was beginning his act,
Walther had a clear view of the
life-size cutout of Maria Piavi in
the center of the lobby.

He stood in front of it, staring
with unashamed admiration. There
was and earthiness and warmth
about her that reminded him of the
young women of his own planet.
Paradoxically, there was also an air
of remoteness and rigid self-disci-
pline, a sense of emotion eternally
controlled. He wondered which was
the real Maria. Beside her picture
was the photograph of a peppery
old man whom Walther was able
to identify as Willy Fritsh. The con-
sonants under his name said he was
now a producer, and had formerly
directed for many years.

Walther purchased his ticket
without too much difficulty. The
lights blinked, and he followed the
crowd into the orchestra section.

As he sank into the luxury of
upholstered seat, Walther opened
his senses to the sounds and sights
about him, the tingling scent of the
lovely women, the ebb and flow of
indistinguishable conversation, the
strange, short bursts of music which
he found to be emanating from a
tiny, jeweled radio in the purse of
the woman who sat next to him.

His excitement and anticipation
grew still greater when he carefully
deciphered the program and dis-
covered that Maria Piavi was to

sing Gilda, in Rigoletto, this very
evening. What unbelievable good
luck! Rigoletto, to commemorate
his first evening on Earth! Walther
vaguely knew the story of the
opera, but from earliest childhood
he could remember his mother sing-
ing snatches of Caro Nome and La
donna e mobile . Now he would
hear the entire arias, the full score
of this masterpiece.

Suddenly all was quiet. The
orchestra rose swiftly into view in
front of the stage. The white-
haired leader bowed. There was an
eruption of applause, as brief as the
crack of a rocket breaking the
sound barrier. The golden baton
rose, a glorious burst of music filled
the opera house and the velvet cur-
tain zipped upward so rapidly that
the blinking of an eye would have
missed it.

The opening scene of festal enter-
tainment in the hall of the ducal
palace was a masterpiece in con-
ception, but the gay cavaliers and
ladies, the Duke’s twenty-second
condensation of the “Questa o
quella” ballata, the plotting with
Rigoletto and the mocking of Mon-
terone were all accomplished and
done with before Walther knew
what was happening.

Then he realized that he was
looking upon a tremendous revolv-
ing stage, divided into many exqui-
site sets. Each set appeared majes-
tically, established itself, often with
an almost indiscernable pause, and
then moved out of view to be re-
placed by the next.

The second scene was the de-
serted street outside Rigoletto’s cot-
tage. Rigoletto appeared and disap-

peared, Gilda and the disguised
Duke flashed through their duets,
the orchestra set up the briefest
of fanfares, and the lovely Maria
Piavi moved to the center of the
stage to sing Gilda’s immortal aria

“Caro nome che il me cor . .

The words electrified Walther to
the edge of his seat. Here were the
first naturally spoken words of the
opera, the words of Gilda as she ex-
pressed joy at learning the name of
her lover. Walther’s mother had
sung the haunting words on many
an evening as he drifted off to sleep
in his nursery. But he had never
heard them phrased so beautifully
as they came now from the lips of
Maria Piavi. After the numbing
shock of the first scene, they started
the blood throbbing in his temples
again.

But they were the last words he
understood of the aria.

Using the archaic phrase with
superb showmanship to startle her
audience, Maria swung with flaw-
less technique into a contraction of
verse and music that somehow
managed to convey the beauty of
both in the few seconds that she
held the center of the stage. It was
like passing a star just before you
entered hyperspace. You saw it for
an instant, it awed and choked you
with its wonder, and then it van-
ished into a nothingness that was
deeper than night.

There was so much beauty in the
fragment that Walther ached to
hear the rest of the aria. But Gilda
had been abducted to the Duke’s
palace, and the stage had revolved
far into Act II before Walther
could assimilate the realization that

FRANK RILEY

no more of “Caro Nome” would be
heard this evening, or any evening.

Nothing mattered after this, not
even the Duke’s half-minute con-
densation of “La donna e mobile
The stage picked up momentum,
thunder and lightning flashed, the
murdered Gilda’s body was discov-
ered by her father in the sack be-
side the river, the final curtain
swooped down over the grisly hor-
ror, the orchestra disappeared,
lights flashed on and Walther found
himself being hurried along with
the pleased audience toward the
exit, where servo-robots were pass-
ing out handbills and pointing to a
theatre across the street.

The entire opera had lasted
eleven minutes.

Stunned, his dream crumbling,
Walther stood outside the opera
house and watched the crowd dis-
appear into the theatre across the
street, or plunge into passing mon-
orail cars. The wind of the late aft-
ernoon was gone. A light snow was
falling; it melted on his cheeks and
powdered the fur collar of his great-
coat. Some of the younger couples
didn’t immediately board the mon-
orail. They walked around to the
stage exit and waited, laughing and
chattering. Walther joined them.

In a few moments members of
the cast began to appear. They
waved gaily at friends in the crowd.

Maria came out in the company
of two young men, followed closely
by the peppery, bright-eyed little
man whom Walther recognized
from the lobby poster as being
Willy Fritsh, the producer. The
young couples closed around them,

ABBR.

applauding. Walther shouldered his
way toward the center of the group.

Maria was laughing with excite-
ment. This was the warm, earthy
Maria, not the exquisite, almost
aloof, artist Walther had seen on
the stage. She was a full-lipped, gay
Italian girl who was enjoying the
plaudits of her friends. She was
bundled in a white fur, and her
teeth flashed as she tossed back a
rippling comment to one of the
young men standing near Walther.

As they started to move away,
Walther stepped forward in sudden
desperation.

“I beg pardon,” he said. “Can
you wait while I try to ask one
question?”

Maria looked startled, and one of
her escorts stepped quickly between
her and Walther.

“Whtstywt?” the young man
snapped.

Walther flushed at the tone. He
wasn’t used to being spoken to this
way, certainly not by anyone his
own age. His jaw set as he held on
to his self control, and continued
thumbing through the Manual.

Then he noticed that Maria was
being hurried along by her other es-
cort. He tried to step around the
young man blocking his path.

The young man put out his arm
and pushed against Walther’s
shoulder, as if to shove him back
into the crowd.

Out of the corner of his eye,
Walther saw Willy Fritsh hurrying
forward to intervene. But his own
reflexes were already in motion. His
left hand flashed up; the back of it
struck the young man in the chest.
Walther didn’t intend it to be a

blow, merely a warning. He even
managed to check it before it land-
ed. But, to his bewilderment, the
young man staggered back, slumped
to his knees, gasping for breath.

The other escort, though white-
faced with fear, hurled himself at
Walther.

Still trying to maintain a measure
of control, Walther merely blocked
the second escort by thrusting out
the palm of his hand. The young
man toppled backward, and the
whole scene began to take on a
never-never land quality.

Girls screamed in terror; the
crowd around Walther scrambled
out of his reach. Maria stared at
him wide-eyed, but didn’t move.

“I’m terribly sorry,” Walther
blurted.

There was a shrill whistle, a
drumbeat of running feet on the
cold sidewalk. Walther moved for-
ward to help the young men to
their feet. They shrank away from
him, and then he was surrounded
by three armed police officers,
shouting a gibberish of commands.

Finally, Willy Fritsh made him-
self heard. He pointed to Walther’s
manual, and spoke a few patient
words of explanation. When one of
the officers still seemed unsatisfied,
Willy turned to Walther with a
twinkle in his eyes:

“They want to know if you are a
professional pugilist?”

Walther felt immeasureably re-
lieved at hearing these naturally
spoken words.

“Good Lord, no!” he gasped.

He took out his entry permits, his
identification certificate and his
letters of credit, impressively drawn

up on the stationery of the Inter-
Galactic Exchange Union on Den-
eb II.

When the doubting officer saw
the amount of the credits, his hands
shook and he handed the papers
back to Walther as if they were
state documents. The officers
helped the two young men to their
feet, admonished them sharply,
tipped their hats to Walther and
hurried back to their posts.

Willy regarded Walther quizz-
ically.

“Well, young man, you seem to
have very persuasive ways!”

At home, it had been easy for
Walther to slip from English to
German. He did it now in the stress
of the moment.

“Ich kann Ihnen nicht sagen wie
leid es mir tut — ■”

He was in the middle of his apol-
ogy before he realized he was talk-
ing German. He broke off in con-
fusion. Willy’s pink cheeks crinkled
with amusement.

“1st schon gut. Ich spreche auch
das ‘alte’ Deutsch.”

Willy went on to explain :

“As a young man I translated
many of the German masters into
our modern happy time presenta-
tions. Now, what is it you wanted to
ask Miss Maria?”

Walther addressed his question to
Willy, but he looked at Maria as he
spoke:

“I ... I wanted to ask if she
would ever consider singing Rigo-
letto in its original form. I would
be happy to pay all expenses . .

“I’m sure you would,” Willy said
drily. “But Miss Maria sings only
the pure happy time essence of

FRANK RILEY

Rigoletto. Not for more than a cen-
tury has Verdi’s original version
been sung on Earth.”

Maria looked puzzled during the
interchange. Willy translated for
her, and she nodded in vigorous en-
dorsement of his words. There was
a titter of laughter from the young
couples who had crowded around
them again.

Walther drew himself very erect.

“Thank you,” he said.

He turned on his heel and
walked into the darkness beyond
the stage exit. He walked blindly
into the snow flurries, not caring
where his steps were taking him.
But he had not gone two hundred
yards before he realized he was be-
ing followed.

WALTHER STOPPED and
waited.

The footsteps behind him drew
closer. A slight shadow bulked out
of the darkness, and Walther heard
Willy Fritsh say in German:
“Don’t be alarmed, young man.”
Willy came up and linked his
arm through Walther’s.

“Keep on walking — It’s a cold
night.”

The chill air rattled in Willy’s
throat as he panted from the pace
of overtaking Walther. When he
caught his breath, he asked:

“What sort of world do you come
from? It’s quite amazing that some-
one from the Andromeda galaxy
should ask for the original Rigo-
letto!”

Walther told the old producer
something of his home and family.
Willy questioned him closely on sev-

ABBR.

eral points, and finally seemed satis-
fied.

“When they come from the
stars,” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It is nothing — just the title of
an old classic.”

At the next corner, Willy stopped.
“I leave you here.”

He stepped closer to Walther and
lowered his voice, even though
there was nothing around them but
darkness and drifting snow.

“Would you care to sample a
bit of Bohemia, my boy?”

“Well — I guess so,” Walther an-
swered doubtfully.

“Tomorrow evening then, at
eight. 1400 Avenue B, apartment
21. Can you remember that?”

“1400 Avenue B, apartment 21.”
“I must emphasize the need for
discretion on your part. There will
be important people present.”
“Why do you trust me?” Walther
challenged.

“Because I am an old fool,”
chuckled Willy Fritsh.

The chuckle emboldened Wal-
ther to ask one more question:
“Will Maria be there?”

“Now you are a fool!”

Willy took a step away, then re-
turned, flicked on his cigarette
lighter and studied Walther
thoughtfully.

“Or maybe not,” he murmured.
“Maybe not. Perhaps Maria could
be there, this once . . .”

He snapped out the lighter.

With another chuckle, Willy dis-
appeared into the darkness.

1400 Avenue B, apartment 21.
Eight o’clock tomorrow evening.
The directions whirled all night

through Walther’s fitful sleep. They
intermingled with a strange com-
pany of servo-robots, unintelligible
phrases, the dry chuckle of Willy
Fritsh and the haunting voice of
Maria Piavi, beginning an aria she
would never finish.

The next day, Walther deter-
mined to find out how the cult of
brevity had changed other fields of
Earth’s culture. He went first to the
library, where foreboding hardened
into bitter reality. Classic after clas-
sic was cut to its essence. Hamlet
was reduced to a total reading time
of seven minutes. But the old li-
brarian seemed embarrassed about
this.

By mutual reference to the Man-
ual, she managed to convey to him
that a new edition would be out
soon, and that it would be edited
down to five minutes reading time.
Did he want to sign up for a copy?

Walther gave her a stricken look,
and silently shook his head.

Puzzled, she led him to the other
classics on his list. Each was a new
blow. “Great Expectations” was
cut to twenty pages, all of Thoreau
to one thin pamphlet, Henry James
to a pocket-size digest of less than
ten pages; “Leaves of Grass” to a
few lines of verse.

Walther’s sense of loss became
more than personal. He saw un-
counted generations of boys who
would never know Whitman, who
might never have time for the open
road in the Spring, the sweet
springtime of life. The road and
the poem, they were part of each
other. Without one, the other could
not live.

The fire of Walther’s dream

flamed up fiercely within him.
There was yet time for beauty in
Andromeda. Time for quiet and
thinking and true leisure. Some-
how, he must rescue the treasures of
the ages from the tomb of Earth
and let them live again, three-quar-
ters of a million light years away.

He beckoned to the old librarian,
and laboriously communicated his
question :

“The originals of these classics —
where are they?”

She frowned in bewilderment.
He pointed to the proper words
again, and gestured with his hands
to indicate a large book.

A smile of understanding re-
placed her frown. She consulted a
larger edition of his own Manual,
and wrote:

Digester’s Vaults — lower six

levels.

He wrote back :

Can I go down there?

After some delay, she encoded
the answer:

Only authorized happy time Di-
gesters are permitted in the vaults.

Walther thanked her glumly. His
spirits were so depressed that not
even the digested version of the
Bible shocked him too greatly. The
Old Testament amounted to eleven
pages, in rather large type ; the Gos-
pel of St. Mark was three para-
graphs; the Acts of the Apostles
spanned less than half a page.

Walther left the library, and the
icy wind roused him from depres-
sion. It lashed him to anger, to a
desperate, unreasoning anger that
drove him to find, somewhere on
Earth, an ember of the old culture.
Somewhere he had to find such an

FRANK RILEY

ember and bring it back to Neu-
stadt, where it would flame again.

He managed to get directions to
the Vienna stratowaycar. Surely in
Vienna he would find some trace of
the spirit left by Mozart and Hay-
den, Beethoven, Schubert and
Strauss.

Ten minutes later, when he left
the stratoway in the Platz terminal
near the Vienna Ring, his heart
beat a little faster. This was indeed
the old Vienna, as he had envis-
aged it from the few pictures he
had seen and the many stories he
had been told. The buildings on the
Ring were in good repair, and not
substantially altered. There was the
Burg Theatre, the Art and History
Museum, the buttressed facade of
the ancient Opera House, the soar-
ing twin spires of the Votive
Church. It was like seeing an old
woodcut come to life.

But, for Walther, that was all
that came to life in Vienna. The
Burg Theatre was currently pre-
senting Faust, in what was billed as
a brilliant new production scaled
down to seventeen minutes. Wal-
ther sadly recalled Goethe’s pro-
phetic line: Mein Lied ertont der
unbekaten Menge . . . My song
sounds to the unknown multitude.

Wandering outside the city itself,
into the footpaths of the Wiener-
wald, Walther tried to lose himself
among the gentle slopes and the old
trees that cut latticework into the
sky. He came suddenly upon the
village of Tullnerzing, where, from
a tiny sidewalk cafe, music of a
stringed ensemble came in short,
quick bursts. It was scherzo speeded
up a hundredfold, with not three

ABBR.

but an infinite number of quarter
notes blurred into what sounded
like a single beat.

These were the Vienna woods!
How could he ever tell his mother
and father? Heartsick, he returned
to the Platz and found the Berlin
stratoway.

In Berlin, his bitterness grew. He
had known the Unter den Linden
must have changed through the
centuries, but he was not prepared
for such a pace of life, such a frenzy
of leisure. Better not to have left
Andromeda. Better always to have
lived with a dream.

The sight of two elderly burghers
drinking beer reminded him of his
own great grandfather, and gave
him a heartening twinge of nostal-
gia. But as he stepped close to their
table, he saw that as they sipped
from their miniature steins the fin-
gers of their free hands beat out a
rhythmic accompaniment to the
convolutions of an adagio team
imaged on the table-top television
screen.

The final irony came to him
when he read the lines of Schiller,
carved over the entrance to a mu-
seum near the Brandenburg Gate.
Because they were cut deep into the
old stone, they could not be erased
or condensed. They were there to
give their ironic message to a world
that could no longer read them :
Only through the morning gate-
way of the beautiful did you enter
the land of knowledge.

And beneath them was Schiller’s
immortal warning to the artist:

Der Menschheit Wurde ist in
eure Hand gegeben ,

Bewahret sie . . .

Walther copied the entire pas-
sage on the back of his Manual.
This, at least, he could take back
with him. These words he could
preserve for the artists who would
someday create their works of
beauty on the frontier of An-
dromeda. As he copied them, Wal-
ther felt that the words were also a
personal message from Schiller to
himself:

The dignity of Mankind is placed
in your hands ,

Preserve it!

Whether it sinks or rises depends
on you .

The holy spell of poetry

Serves a wise world order;

May it guide man to that great
sea

Where harmony prevails.

The words sustained Walther’s
spirits until he left the stratoway in
Paris and went to the Louvre. He
had told himself that by this time
nothing could shock him, that he
could take any blow. But the
Louvre was a new shock all over
again.

Translating a title with the help
of his Manual and the servo-robot
guide, Walther found that the thin,
wavering line, about two inches
long, against a background of misty
blue, was the Mona Lisa.

The servo-robot explained, after
much searching among its tapes
for words:

“This is the spirit of the famous
Mona Lisa smile. The Happy Time
artist has cleverly removed all non-
essential detail so that you can get
the meaning of the picture in the
minimum amount of time.”

Walther studied the thin, waver-

ing line. This, then, was Da Vinci’s
eternal enigma of womanhood. Per-
haps it explained why he felt there
were two Marias. Could there be
one whole woman in a culture of
fragmented lives?

The portraits of Holbein were re-
duced to a few sprinkles of geo-
metric designs shot through with a
single brilliant color. The nudes of
Watteau, Rubens and Velazquez
were little more than shadow
curves.

In the east wing of the Louvre,
the servo-robot pointed to a series
of larger paintings. Each of these,
Walther learned, summarized the
entire life work of a single artist.
Here it was possible to see all of
Titian or Michaelangelo or Van
Gogh on one simplified canvas.

Where were the originals of these
classics? In the cultural vaults at
Uniport, the servo-robot explained.
Only authorized Happy Time art-
ists could work with them.

Afterwards, Walther was never
quite certain what happened to the
rest of his day. Distraught, he wan-
dered around the Earth, changing
from stratoway to stratoway, scarce-
ly paying any heed to his next des-
tination. Rome, Athens, Moscow,
Jerusalem. Everywhere the pace of
leisure was the same. Capetown,
New Delhi, Tibet, Tokyo, San
Francisco. Everywhere he saw
something that crumbled his dream
a little more: The Buddhist monk
pausing for ten seconds of medita-
tion while he counted his beads, not
one by one but in groups of twenty;
the World Government Chamber
where the Senator from the United
States filibustered a proposal to

FRANK RILEY

death by speaking for the unprece-
dented period of four minutes; the
cafe near the school where teenage
boys and girls, immense numbers of
them, danced, snapped their fingers
and shrieked ecstatically as the lat-
est popular record exploded in a
wild three-note burst of sound.

It was seven o’clock in the eve-
ning before Walther became aware
of the time. He was half the Earth
and just one hour away from his
meeting with Willy Fritsh.

1400 Avenue B, apartment 21.

A bit of Bohemia, Willy had
promised him. The words disturbed
Walther. He had been disappoint-
ed so often in his twenty-four hours
on Earth that he didn’t feel like
bracing himself for another let-
down. Nor did he feel in the mood
for a gay evening, if that was what
Willy had meant.

Would Maria be there?

Walther shook his head angrily.
He was indeed a fool if he expected
anything after this day.

1400 AVENUE B was only a few
moments by monorail from the
Hotel Altair. A gentle-faced woman
who reminded Walther of his own
mother answered his knock on the
door of Apartment 21.

“Kdftc?” she inquired politely.
Walther stared at her. Was this
all a cruel joke played by Willy
Fritsh? Certainly this elderly wom-
an, this quiet building, contained
no Bohemia to be spoken of with
discretion.

“Excuse me,” he muttered, not
even bothering to consult his Man-
ual. He bowed and backed away.

ABBR.

“I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake — ”

She stayed him with a small ges-
ture of her delicate fingers. Glanc-
ing swiftly up and down the hall,
she beckoned him inside. When the
door was closed, she smiled a bright
welcome, and spoke in the old
tongue :

“You’re the young man from An-
dromeda!”

Walther felt the tension inside
him beginning to relax. He nodded,
and she took his arm.

“Willy told us — we’ve been ex-
pecting you.”

She led him from the small foyer
into a large, tastefully furnished liv-
ing room. Walther glanced around
uncertainly, but his first impression
proved correct. There was no one
else here.

The woman urged him forward
with a light touch of her fingertips.

“We must be so careful,” she
murmured.

She guided him through the liv-
ing room, past the kitchen and one
bedroom, and then opened the door
of what appeared to be the en-
trance to a second bedroom.

This room was unexpectedly
large, and contained many people.
They were talking with great ani-
mation, but hushed abruptly as he
entered.

“The young man from An-
dromeda,” his hostess announced.

The dry voice of Willy Fritsh
came through the haze of cigarette
smoke.

“Over here, boy! Come and sit
down!”

He saw Willy and Maria sitting
on a long cushion against the far
wall. They moved over to make

room for him. Maria smiled rather
hesitantly. He sensed she was very
ill at ease.

‘‘I’ll introduce you around later,”
said Willy. “Everybody’s too keyed
up right now. We’ve just had an
unexpected surprise — really quite
startling.”

The conversation had bubbled
up again, and there was an electric
feeling of excitement in the air.
Everyone was trying to talk at the
same time. Cheeks were flushed,
eyes sparkled.

While everyone was talking to
those nearest, the most constantly
recurring focal point of attention
was the thin, balding man seated
just across the room from Walther,
on the arm of the sofa. He was
riffling the pages of a pocket-size
notebook and smiling with self-
conscious pride.

Willy nodded toward the man.
“There’s the gentleman who fur-
nished our surprise — He brought
shorthand notes on an entire chap-
ter from Don Quixote!”

After the day he had just been
through, Walther could appreciate
this. He asked wonderingly,
“Where did he get them?”

“He’s a Happy Time Digester.”
Walther studied the little man.
So this was one of the comparative
few on Earth who could get into
the deep vaults of the Uniport li-
brary! What wonders he must have
explored! What beauty and adven-
ture, what mind-stretching thoughts
he must encounter in those under-
ground catacombs. How deep into
die past he could explore, how far
into the future! Why, he could
range the universe faster than the

warp drive, out even beyond the
Andromeda galaxy!

Willy cut into his thoughts.

“He’s going to read the entire
chapter!”

Walther turned to Maria to see
if she shared his excitement. It was
the aloof, controlled Maria who
smiled faintly at him. It was obvi-
ous she had come against her will,
and was trying to be gracious about
it.

A middle-aged couple arrived.

“Dr. and Mrs. Althuss,” Willy
whispered. “He’s the famous heart
surgeon . . .”

The next arrival was a distin-
guished looking man whose fingers
shook with nervousness.

“That’s the World Government
alternate delegate from England,”
Willy whispered again. “It wouldn’t
do his reputation any good for
word to get out that he spent
an evening in this Bohemian
crowd . . .”

Their hostess moved to the cen-
ter of the room, raised her hand
and announced:

“We’re all here now. Please go
ahead, Lome.”

The room quieted instantly. The
thin little man proudly began in the
old English:

“Don Cervante at the Castle . . .”

His reading was painfully slow,
and he stumbled over the pronun-
ciation of many words. The people
in the room watched him so in-
tensely, with such absolute concen-
tration, that they gave the impres-
sion of reading his lips rather than
listening to his words. Frequently,
he would have to translate a word
or phrase into the new language,

FRANK RILEY

and there would be nods of under-
standing and relief.

Willy’s bright blue eyes sparkled
more brightly than ever. He ran his
fingers constantly through his thin
bristle of white hair. The elderly
woman on the sofa beside the Di-
gester was so flushed and breathing
so rapidly that Walther feared she
was on the verge of a stroke. Even
the urbane heart surgeon showed
the emotional impact of this ex-
perience. His long, tapered fingers
were clenched together, and he ran
his under lip constantly over the
edge of his greying mustache.

Maria seemed the only one in the
room who was not affected by the
reading. Only a slight tightening of
her lips marred her careful com-
posure.

Soon Walther lost himself in the
tingling excitement of the room,
and he forgot about watching the
others. Word by word, sentence by
sentence, the Digester led them
along with Don Cervante.

The reading, with its many
pauses for translation, took almost
two hours. When it was over, every-
one was emotionally and physically
exhausted. The little Digester was
so pale he looked ill; his high fore-
head dripped with perspiration.

Walther drew a long breath, and
brought himself reluctantly back to
reality.

Willy asked quietly:

“What do you think of our intel-
lectual underworld?”

An outbreak of almost hysterical
conversation made it useless for
Walther to answer. Maria, with a
look of reproach at Willy, moved
across the room to speak to their

ABBR.

hostess. Willy lit one of his cigars
and leaned closer to Walther.
There was a gleam of amusement
in his twinkling blue eyes.

“You look more worn out than
Don Cervante!” he chuckled.

The contrast between this eve-
ning and the disillusionment of the
day made it hard for Walther to
put his gratitude into words.

“I can’t thank you enough — ” he
began.

“Don’t try,” said Willy. “I may
have had my own devious reasons
for inviting you.” He glanced to-
ward Maria, who was making an
effort at polite conversation with
the hostess. “I’m afraid our young
diva isn’t an ardent admirer of the
unexpurgated Don Quixote”

There were many questions Wal-
ther wanted to ask about Maria,
but he tactfully inquired, instead:

“How often does this group
meet?”

“Whenever there is something to
share — a chapter of literature — a
copy of an old painting — a record-
ing. It all depends on what our few
Digester friends can manage —
They don’t have an easy time of it,
you know.”

“Is it difficult for them to take
things out of the vaults?”

“Difficult . . . and dangerous,”
Willy answered grimly.

“But why . . .?”

For reasons that make good sense,
officially at least. A culture found-
ed on brevity cannot be expected to
encourage its own demise through
the acts of its civil servants! Think
what could happen: A total work
of art, whatever its form, takes time
to appreciate! But if people spend

too long at an opera, the legitimate
theatre or the television industry
would be slighted! If they paused
too long in contemplation of a
painting, newspapers might not be
purchased! If they dawdled over
the old-style newspaper, the digest
magazines, the popular recordings,
the minute movies, the spectator
sports — the thousand and one forms
of mass recreation offered the pub-
lic— each in turn would suffer from
unrestrained competition!”

“It’s inconceivable,” Walther
protested, “that entertainment in-
terests could be strong enough to
shape a culture! Surely the produc-
tive basis of Earth’s economy . .

Willy snorted.

“My boy, work as such may still
be important in Andromeda, but
how could it possibly be so here on
Earth? Generations ago, automa-
tion, the control of the atom, the
harnessing of the sun’s energy — all
combined with many other factors
to make work a negligible part of
Man’s existence! Thus, with four-
fifths of his waking hours devoted to
leisure-time pursuits, the balance of
power shifted inevitably to the pur-
veyors of mass entertainment. Great
monopolies, operating under the
Happy Time, Ltd. cartel, seized
upon the digest trend in the old cul-
ture and made brevity the basis of
the new order. The briefer you
make a piece of entertainment, the
more pieces you can sell the public
in a given number of leisure hours!
It’s just good business,” Willy con-
cluded drily.

Walther was silent a moment,
trying to frame this picture in his
thoughts. But there were so many

missing elements.

“Your artists and writers,” he
demanded, “all your creative peo-
ple— don’t they have anything to
say about it?”

“Damn little. You see, the suc-
cessful artist — whatever his field —
is well paid by his particular mo-
nopoly. Besides, he’s been trained
in the new form! I doubt if Maria
has ever seen the original score of
an opera — let alone tried to sing an
entire aria!”

Willy took a glass of wine from a
tray offered by the hostess’s servo-
robot. He motioned to Walther to
help himself, but Walther shook his
head. Another question was trou-
bling him.

“Why do the monopolies even
bother with Digesters and the clas-
sics? Why not let modem artists
create in the new form?”

Willy’s voice grew hard.

“Because,” he snapped, “there
have been no creative artists on
Earth for over a century! Why
create when your creation is only
fed into the maw of the Digesters?
That which is not wanted dies — in
a culture as well as in the human
body! That — my young friend from
Andromeda — is the bitter tragedy
of it all!”

Maria rejoined them, and whis-
pered something to Willy. The old
producer sighed and turned to
Walther.

“Maria would like to leave now.
Will you take her back to our ho-
tel? There are some people here I
must see . . .”

“Of course!”

Yet, in spite of his eagerness to
get better acquainted with Maria,

FRANK RILEY

Walther was reluctant to leave.
There was so much more he want-
ed to ask, to learn. And deep be-
neath the surface of his thoughts a
bold idea was beginning to form.

As if reading his mind, Willy
said:

“We have no performance to-
morrow afternoon. Gome and see
me at our hotel — we’ll talk further!
Meanwhile — •” Willy’s blue eyes
sparkled again, “Meanwhile, for
the young, the evening is still
young. It should be an interesting
challenge!”

Maria said nothing until they
had left the apartment building
and started across the street to the
monorail station. Then she stopped,
drew a long breath of the wintry
air, and shook her head.

“Whtrblvng!” she exclaimed.

She smiled at his puzzled expres-
sion and tucked her arm through
his. When they were inside the sta-
tion, he handed her his Manual.
She flipped through the pages, but
could not find the exact translation
of her remark. Finally, she picked
out parts of three phrases. Put to-
gether, they read:

“What a terrible evening!”

After the first shock of her words,
Walther realized he could expect
her to feel no differently. She was
a product of her culture, and evi-
dently this had been her first visit
to Willy’s Bohemia.

It was past midnight when they
boarded the monorail, and they
were alone in the car. Fumbling in
her purse for a coin, Maria pointed
to the small screen on the back of
the seat in front of them. Walther

ABBR.

offered a handful of coins. She put
one into the slot beside the screen.
A comedy sequence appeared, last-
ing for approximately thirty sec-
onds. Much of it was lost to Wal-
ther, because he couldn’t under-
stand the dialogue. But Maria
laughed gaily. The tension lines,
the outward evidences of inner
emotional control, began to smooth
away. Her cheeks flushed ; her dark
eyes began to sparkle. This was the
Maria Walther felt he could learn
to know.

When the television screen went
dark, Maria promptly put another
coin into a slot beside a small grid.
A full-scale orchestra sounded what
might have been the first chord of
a symphony, but the piece was over
before Walther could identify it. A
third coin, dropped into the arm of
the seat, produced a small two-page
magazine, which seemed to consist
chiefly of pictures. One of the pic-
tures showed Maria herself, in op-
eratic costume. She studied it crit-
ically, then tossed the magazine into
a handy receptacle under the seat.
A fourth coin brought out a game
from the side of the monorail car.
It vaguely resembled a checker-
board, except that there were only
six squares and two magnetized
checkers. Maria guided his hand
while he made two moves. As she
completed her last move, the board
automatically folded back into the
side of the car. A fifth coin sum-
moned a miniature keyboard from
just beneath the television screen.
Maria touched the keys, producing
tinkling noises that sounded like a
tiny celeste. Then the keyboard
zipped back into its enclosure.

Maria reached for a sixth coin.
Walther closed his hand over hers,
and made a motion to indicate that
his head was already in a whirl. She
laughed, but didn’t try to remove
her hand. A moment later the mon-
orail stopped in front of their ho-
tel.

As they crossed the lobby, Wal-
ther pointed inquiringly toward the
cocktail lounge. Maria smiled and
nodded gaily.

A servo-robot waiter seated them
at a small chrome table beside a
tiny dance floor. Maria ordered
their drinks, and the waiter was
back with them in a matter of sec-
onds. The glasses seemed extremely
small to Walther, compared to the
huge mugs and steins he was accus-
tomed to on Neustadt. The liquor
tasted rather bland, more like a
sweet wine than a whiskey.

The servo-robot presented a bill
with the drinks. Money had never
meant anything to Walther, but he
could scarcely repress a start when
he deciphered the amount of the
bill. By any standard of wealth or
exchange, the drinks were fantas-
tically expensive.

A scattering of applause an-
nounced the return of the orches-
tra. Maria held out her hand in an
invitation to Walther. With some
misgivings, he led her out on the
dance floor. She turned and came
into his arms so naturally and sud-
denly that she almost took his
breath away. She danced very close
to him. Her cheek was warm, and
the faint perfume from the tip of
her ear was something he would
have liked to explore more thor-
oughly. But the moment was over

before it began. The music stopped,
the orchestra leader bowed and led
his men from the stage.

Back at the table, Walther lifted
his glass to suggest another drink.
She shook her head, explaining,
“Olndrptd.”

Spelled out with his Manual, her
explanation was:

“Only one drink is permitted.”
And, after Willy’s brief orienta-
tion, this was understandable :
Nothing could disrupt the perpet-
ual entertainment cycles more eas-
ily than excessive drinking. A tipsy
person was not a good customer for
other leisure-time activities. There-
fore, permit only one drink to a
person, and charge enough for it so
that the liquor monopoly would get
its fair share of the entertainment
expenditure. As Willy would say, it
was just good business.

Maria touched his hand to signi-
fy it was time to leave. Walther
took her up to her room on the
32nd floor, and they watched two
musical comedies en route on the
elevator pay-as-you-see television
screen.

In front of her door, Maria light-
ly touched the back of his hand
with her fingertips. She said,
“Thyfrwrdrftm.”

Walther knew she was thanking
him, but from force of newly-ac-
quired habit he reached for his
Manual.

She laughed, shook her head and
translated her own words by rais-
ing up on tiptoe and brushing his
lips with her own.

Their lips were together so brief-
ly that Walther wasn’t sure whether
he had really kissed her. He reached

out to take her in his arms and
make sure of it.

Deftly, she turned away and
closed her door behind her.

MANY THOUGHTS interfered
with Walther’s second night
of sleep on Earth, and they weren’t
only of Maria. In fact, as his idea
took form, even the scent of her
perfume and the moth-like touch
of her lips were forced temporarily
into the background of his con-
sciousness.

The next morning he waited im-
patiently for an hour after break-
fast, then went up to Willy’s room.
Willy came to the door in his dress-
ing robe, holding his glasses in one
hand and a sheet of music in the
other. He waved aside Walther’s
apology for not waiting until after-
noon.

“Nein . . . nein!” he said. “I or-
dered an extra pot of coffee — be-
cause I didn’t think you could
wait!”

Willy led Walther into his sitting
room and poured him some coffee.

“Maria was already here,” he
chuckled. “She came to . . . ah . . . .
pick up music . . . and to ask what
I know about you. I told her noth-
ing good, and nothing bad!”

He settled himself in his easy
chair with a luxurious sigh. His
bristling white hair and cherubic
cheeks gave him the appearance of
a benign old innkeeper, brought to
life from a canvas by Holbein.

“All right, tell me what you’ve
been thinking about all night!”
Walther shifted tensely to the
edge of his chair. He spilled a little

coffee in setting his cup down.

“I would like to buy copies,” he
said, “of everything your Digester
friends have ever smuggled out of
the vaults!”

“That’s a large order, my young
friend.”

“I’ll pay . . . whatever it costs!”
“So would I — if I could afford
it! But I fear it’s not that simple.
Take, for example, the chapter of
Don Quixote you heard last eve-
ning. The World Government rep-
resentative from England sent the
Digester’s notes to an aunt in Liver-
pool. She’ll read them to her Bo-
hemian friends tonight, and tomor-
row they may be in Buenos Aires or
Istanbul — who knows?”

“But what happens to them
eventually? Aren’t they kept in
some central place?”

Willy spread his short, pudgy fin-
gers in a gesture of hopelessness.

“That would mean organization
— and we’re not organized. We
wouldn’t dare to be! I’ve never
stopped to think what finally hap-
pens to these things. Perhaps they
end up among the papers of some
old dreamer like myself. It’s enough
that they have brought their mel-
low moments of happiness!”

“It’s not enough!” Walther pro-
tested fiercely. “It’s a great waste!
How will you ever improve things
that way?”

“Who’s trying to improve any-
thing? The people of Earth are
content — and those of us who are
not entirely so — well, we have our
little underworlds of pleasure.”

“Is that all you want?”

“Is there more?”

Walther jumped up angrily.

FRANK RILEY

“I believe there is — and I think
you do, too!” he said harshly. “If
you don’t, why did you take me to
that meeting last night and invite
me here today? Why did you send
me off alone with Maria?”

Willy only smiled, but under his
silk robe his round belly shook with
silent laughter.

“You are a foolish young man
. . . and sometimes not so foolish!
Sit down. Sit down . .

He leaned forward in his easy
chair, and his manner became
grave.

“Perhaps it’s difficult for an old
man to come near the end of life
fearing that the beauty he loves will
never escape from its tomb. Perhaps
it’s also difficult for an old maestro
who cherishes the talent and loveli-
ness of a young woman to know
that she may never understand
what her gift really means. Perhaps
an old man can still dream some
dreams that a young man could not
comprehend . . .”

The tight knot in Walther’s stom-
ach slowly unwound itself.

“Then you will help me,” he said
quietly.

“Yes, I will help you ... if I can
. . . and you will help me!”

At Willy’s suggestion, they de-
cided to talk first to the Digester
who had smuggled out the Don
Quixote chapter.

“He’s been most successful of all
of our friends,” said Willy. “He
might be willing to organize a group
of Digesters who could bring out
things to be duplicated, and return
them, I question, though, that you
could duplicate many things here
on Earth.”

ABBR.

“Then we’ll ship them away from
Earth! The outermost world of this
galaxy — at least to my knowledge
— is Alden IV ; it’s technically well-
developed and is a contact with our
own galaxy.”

Willy called the bald little Di-
gester, and he came over right after
lunch. But his reaction to Walther’s
proposal was not what they had ex-
pected.

“This . . . this is a terrible mis-
take!” he stammered. “It’s . . . it’s
too big — much too big! Now — by
being cautious — we can enjoy our
little evenings together. But if we
anger the Happy Time, Ltd. people
we’ll lose everything!”

Willy snapped his fingers impa-
tiently.

“What have we to lose? A chance
to be tea-cup rebels! This young
man is giving us an opportunity to
do something about what we pro-
fess to believe!”

The Digester looked pained.

“We are already doing some-
thing,” he protested. “Did I not
bring Chapter IX of Don
Quixote . . *

“You did, and we enjoyed it! But
what if we could inspire a rebirth
of art as big as a whole galaxy in-
stead of entertaining each other
with our little flings at Bohemia?”

The little Digester struggled with
the thought for a moment, then dis-
missed it with a shudder.

“It’s too big,” he repeated miser-
ably. “Please forget about it, Willy
— our own way is best.” He glared
at Walther, and his distress turned
to rage: “I warn you, young man
. . . don’t start trouble for us! If you
can’t accept the ways of Earth, go

back where you belong!”

He held out a trembling hand to
Willy.

“Goodby, Willy ... I go now.”
He hesitated, then added with the
>vistful air of a small boy waiting
to be praised: “In two weeks I will
bring another whole chapter to
read!”

When Willy only shrugged, the
little Digester turned away and sad-
ly left the room.

During the next two days, Willy
contacted several other Digester
friends. In varying degrees, he met
with refusals from each. By the end
of the week, only two of the younger
Digesters in the Bohemian set had
agreed to cooperate and even they
were careful not to promise too
much.

“At this rate,” Walther pointed
out glumly, “it will take years to
collect any real quantity of material
- — and I have only six months! Is
there no other source?”

Willy shook his head.

“None that I know of.”

“There must be!” Walther in-
sisted. “Do you mean to tell me
that in all the homes of Earth there
are no treasured heirlooms of the
past? No books? No paintings? No
recordings?”

“Oh, I’m sure they are,” Willy
agreed. “But how to reach them?
We can hardly advertise.”

He paused, hesitated, then
snapped his fingers,

“Wait — there may be a way —
even more illegal than your first
suggestion, but still a way . . .”

“What is it?”

“I used the word ‘underworld’ in
speaking of our Bohemian group

last night, but actually there is an
underworld, of a sort . . . trafficking
mostly in liquor. The cartel’s one-
drink restriction has never been too
enforceable.” Willy lifted the seat
of his piano bench and took out a
bottle. “If you can afford it, you
can always buy a bootleg supply.”
“What’s liquor got to do with
art?”

“For a price — the underworld
may be willing to traffic in art,
literature and music ... in addi-
tion to alcohol!”

Willy sent out word through a
bootlegger who supplied some of
the opera singers with their favorite
beverages. The next night, after
final curtain, a greying, bespecta-
cled and very distinguished looking
gentleman in formal dress met
Willy and Walther in a vacant
dressing room backstage. He spoke
tersely, and Willy translated:

“He says he has friends who
could be interested in your proposi-
tion, if there’s money enough in it.”
“Tell him there’s money enough,”
Walther replied grimly.

Willy digested this, and their vis-
itor smiled his scepticism.

Not accustomed to having his
financial standing questioned, Wal-
ther faced the man himself and de-
manded :

“How much money do you
want?”

The man understood Walther’s
tone, if not his words. After a brief
calculation, he named a price that
shocked Willy, who turned to
Walther with dismay:

“Ten thousand credits for every
usable piece of art that can be
bought outright. An additional de-

FRANK RILEY

posit of ten thousand if it has to be
sent away from Earth to be dupli-
cated. You are to pay all shipping
costs, as well as legal expenses if
any of their men are arrested.”

Walther accepted the terms with
a nod.

Their underworld contact stared
respectfully at Walther, took off
his suede gloves and proceeded to
get down to business. It was soon
arranged for Walther to set up let-
ters of credit in banks of all major
cities. Shipments of “tools and ma-
chinery” would be billed against
these credits, after bills of lading
had been inspected by Walther or
a designated representative. From
the level of the discussion, they
might have been transacting legal
business on a corporation scale.

Their visitor shook hands with
each of them, doffed his top hat
and left with a courteous bow.

Willy wiped shining beads of
sweat from his forehead.

“High finance,” he gasped, “is
not a part of my daily routine!”

He dug into a wardrobe trunk,
brought out a bottle and poured
two drinks. Raising his glass high
in the air, he toasted:

“To art . . . and crime! I hope
we don’t have to pay too much for
either!”

“How are you getting along with
Maria?” Willy asked a few days
later.

“Just what do you expect to ac-
complish by throwing the two of us
together so much,” Walther asked
bluntly. “Oh, I enjoy it, mind you
— hut , really, we’re worlds apart.
When I go back . • .”

ABBR.

“With the young everything is
possible — even the impossible,”
Willy answered evasively.

“Well, tell me something more
about her. Where does she come
from? Has she ever been engaged?
Married?”

Willy filtered a cloud of smoke
through his nostrils.

“Maria’s the only talented off-
spring ever produced by a rather
poor family in Naples. She still sup-
ports them — or rather, makes it
possible for them to be good Happy
Time consumers. As for her talent
. . . well, it was discovered by her
first school teacher — and from then
on her education was taken over by
the opera monopoly! Engaged?
Nothing serious that I know of.
Married?” Willy frowned. “I shud-
der to think of her marriage to one
of our mechanical young rabbits!”

Walther blinked.

“Do you mind explaining that
one?”

Willy grimaced.

“I might as well. You see, sex per
se is encouraged, with or without
the formality of marriage. Large
numbers of offspring are good for
society! We have the technology to
provide for them, and the more
there are, the more potential Happy
Time consumers! But the arts of
sex . . . the refinements of love . . .
Can’t you imagine by this time
what takes place in the boudoirs of
Earth? Sex is something to be ac-
commodated between pay-as-you
see television programs! Besides,
you’ve encountered a couple of our
young men, do you consider them
physically capable of prolonged
amour?”

Walther was finding it heavy go-
ing to picture some of the tilings
Willy was describing for him. But
the mention of the two young men
he had met outside the opera that
first night brought up a question
he’d been waiting to ask:

“What was wrong with them? I
barely touched them!”

“Participation sports — physical

activity of any kind is discouraged
as interfering with the mass enter-
tainment media. The few gifted
boys are trained to be professionals.
The others scarcely develop enough
muscle to walk against a strong
wind. In fact, they don’t walk any
more than is necessary!”

Willy paced agitatedly around his
room, and stopped in front of
Walther’s chair. He held out his
hands pleadingly:

“Be patient with Maria,” he
begged. “You promised to help me,
too . . . and this is all I ask of you!”
Walther didn’t find it unpleasant
to comply with Willy’s request. He
had nothing to do while waiting for
the first shipment to be assembled,
and so was able to attend rehearsals
as well as the performances of the
operas.

At rehearsals, he saw a serious
Maria, a perfectionist devoted to
her art, a superb technician. After
rehearsals and the opera itself, he
saw a Maria who was a product of
the alien leisure-time culture he had
found on Earth — a Maria who
flitted with tireless zest from one
activity to another, who naturally
and enthusiastically accepted the
innumerable forms of entertain-
ment offered by the Happy Time
cartel.

With growing despair, Walther
tried to find some activity they
could share. He had always enjoyed
sports, so he took her to all the
attractions at the Uniport arenas.
Each was a new disappointment.
What was billed as a fight for the
world’s heavyweight title ended
with a one-round decision. A bas-
ketball game was exciting — for
three furiously-contested minutes.
The professional tennis match con-
sisted of each player serving four
balls, which the other attempted to
return.

While traveling to and from the
various attractions, there were al-
ways the diversions offered on the
monorail and stratoway cars. Pri-
vate transportation, Walther
learned after hopefully exploring
this possibility, had been eliminated
for the obvious reason that it was
restricted in the number of recre-
ational opportunities it permitted,
and might lead to over-indulgence
in sex — from the point of view of
the time involved, rather than pro-
miscuity. And while walking was
not strictly illegal, those who tend-
ed to over-indulge were advised to
curtail their eccentricity.

# After much thought, Walther did
hit upon a possibility: It was

prompted by his recollection that
the natural beauty of such places
as the Vienna woods had not been
obscured. Since Maria was not re-
quired to be at rehearsals until two
in the afternoon, they could spend
the morning visiting some distant
beauty spots he had read or heard
about back on Neustadt. Perhaps in
some of these places the pace of
leisure would be slowed.

FRANK RILEY

Maria happily accepted his in-
itial invitation to spend a morning
in the South Sea Islands. They
boarded a stratoway car immedi-
ately after breakfasting together at
the hotel, and soon had exchanged
chilly Uniport for languorous Ta-
hiti.

The island village, the natives
and their costumes, the wet fra-
grance of the jungle and the soft
rippling of the surf were all as
Walther had pictured them since
his first reading of Stevenson’s voy-
ages to the South Seas.

However, suspecting that the
Happy Time cartel had probably
made its presence felt in the village
itself, Walther steered Maria
around it, toward a path that
wound invitingly between the tall
palms and growths of bread fruit
trees.

Maria’s hand fell easily, naturally
into his own, and she pressed a lit-
tle closer to him, as if awed by the
unaccustomed stillness.

She smiled up at him, started to
say something, but Walther put his
finger over her lips and shook his
head. Maria looked puzzled, then
took out of her handbag a minia-
turized, self-powered television set,
with its own tiny coin meter. She
popped in a coin, flicked the dial,
and the image of an actor appeared
on the screen. Walther covered it
with his hand. He took the set away
from her, and dropped it into the
pocket of his coat. Then he pointed
to her, to the shadowed trees
around them — and spread his
hands as if to ask what more any-
one could possibly want.

He wasn’t sure she understood,

ABBR.

but he put his arm around her waist
and she rested her head against his
shoulder. They continued a dozen
steps down the path, until it ended
at a silvery lagoon. Here, she
touched the radio button of her
wristwatch — rented on a weekly
basis — and the rhythm of a jazz
band filled the tropical air.

Walther took her wrist, shut off
the radio. He turned her toward
him and held her face tightly be-
tween the palms of his hands.

“No television,” he said firmly,
“No radio — no nothing — except
this ...” ~

She yielded with a faint smile.
Her eyes closed, but their lips had
scarcely touched when she tried to
draw back.

“Not that way,” Walther told
her. “This way . .

He held her face firmly teaching
her the kind of kisses that were
used in a frontier world where peo-
ple had time to make love. She
struggled away from the unnatural-
ness of his kissing, then slowly she
ceased to struggle.

Suddenly, the lagoon was lighted
by a brilliant spotlight, and a servo-
robot stepped out of the shadows.
It said pleasantly:

“Since only tourists come to this
spot, it is presumed that you come
from some distant planet. There-
fore, let me point out that all cou-
ples are limited to two minutes by
the lagoon. If you hurry, you can
catch a native dance number be-
fore the next stratoway leaves.”

In the same pleasant tone, the
servo-robot began to repeat these
words in the other ancient lan-
guages of Earth.

Maria’s breath came in short,
trembling gasps. Her lips were still
apart, and she touched them with
the tip of her tongue.

“Weil nur Touristen naeh diesem
Fleckchen Erde kommen . . ." the
servo-robot droned along in its
pleasing voice.

“Oh, shut up!” Walther growled.

He took Maria by the arm and
led her back up the path.

“Somehow,” he promised her
fervently, “Somewhere — we’re go-
ing to finish that.”

“Dthgn,” she whispered in
breathless wonder.

HE FIRST shipment of “tools
and machinery” had been as-
sembled at the Uniport landing.
Walther received a formal notice to
this effect from the local Exchange
Bank. The same evening, in a back-
stage dressing room, he and Willy
Fritsh received a rather more in-
formative report from the gentle-
man who was their contact with the
bootleg underworld. Every item in
the shipment was listed and de-
scribed with meticulous care. By
reference to a leather-bound pocket
notebook, the contact managed to
furnish additional details.

With Willy’s help, Walther was
able to judge the nature of the
haul. He was both pleased and dis-
appointed. Numerically, it had
more items than he had expected.
Qualitatively, it left much to be de-
sired. There were no complete lit-
erary works, only fragments. The
pictures were admittedly cheap
copies; the recordings were only
passages from major works. A total

of eight hundred items had been
purchased outright by underworld
agents; fourteen hundred more had
been borrowed on the security of
the huge deposit. The latter would
have to be duplicated on Alden IV
and returned to their Earth owners
as quickly as possible. Walther had
expended a huge fortune for a dubi-
ous return. But, through Willy, he
told the contact:

“Keep it up. Get everything you
can!”

Several items did look promis-
ing: From an elderly spinster in
Durban, South Africa, the first two
acts of “Othello” had been obtained
by the bootlegger who delivered her
dry sec sherry twice a month; in
New Orleans, an undertaker had
parted with a nearly complete Louis
Armstrong original — about an inch
was broken off one edge of the rec-
ord, but the bill of lading stated
that the rest was quite audible.
There was also what was reported
to be the last third of “Grime and
Punishment,” loaned by a lawyer
in Prague.

The second shipment was on a
par with the first, with the hopeful
indication that some of the new ac-
quisitions would complement others
in the first shipment. Walther stood
beside Willy at the Uniport land-
ing as the shuttleship carrying their
second shipment blasted off on the
first leg of the long route to far-off
Alden IV.

The third shipment was much
smaller, only three hundred out-
right purchases and seven hundred
and twenty items obtained against
deposit. With the bill of lading
came a warning note. Walther

FRANK RILEY

translated it himself. It was from
their contact, who wrote:

“Don’t try to get in touch with
me until further notice. Send off
this shipment as soon as possible.
The Happy Time boys know some-
thing big is going on.”

By paying a fabulous premium,
Walther was able to get the third
shipment off on the midnight shut-
tle. Afterwards he stood in the win-
dow of Willy’s hotel room, staring
up at the star-filled sky.

“Well, that may be the end of it,”
he said.

“You’ve done well,” said Willy,
joining him. “I didn’t think you’d
get that much.”

“I hope it’ll do some good. Per-
haps all this new material will at
least form the basis of a good re-
search library.”

Willy glanced, at him specula-
tively.

“I was disappointed about the
music,” he said. “Not one complete
work.”

By this time, Walther had learned
to know when Willy was maneuver-
ing toward an objective.

“Just tell me what you’ve got in
mind,” he grinned. “No prelim-
inaries.”

Willy chuckled his appreciation,
then grew serious.

“Our opera season ends this
week . . . We’re supposed to take a
month off, then start rehearsals for
the next tour. Perhaps, during this
month . . .”

Walther sensed what was coming
next, but he held his breath — wait-
ing for Willy to say it. Willy did :

“Perhaps — if you still want to
spend more money to pay them —

ABBR.

we could persuade some of our
group to record . . .”

“A full-length opera!” Walther
exclaimed. “Would they — could
they — do it?”

Willy pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“As for willingness — you’ve ob-
served that your wealth is rather
persuasive on Earth. Like most
artists, our people spend more than
they earn, and would probably try
anything for what you could pay
them. As for ability — we’d un-
doubtedly have to record in short
sessions. We might even have to
break up the arias into sections, be-
cause we’re not conditioned for sus-
tained effort.”

“I’ll pay them anything to try it,”
Walther broke in, enthusiastically.
“Where would you try it — here in
Uniport?”

“Hardly. But there’s an old inn
in North Wales where I once spent
a vacation with some of our group.
If the Happy Time agents should
be watching us now, it would be
quite natural to return to that inn.”

“Maria ... do you think she
would?”

Willy sighed, and shrugged.

“Not for the money alone . . .
she’s quite a perfectionist about her
art. But I’m hopeful that by this
time . . .” His eyes twinkled.

Walther laughed.

“What a chess player you would
make! I think you’ve been moving
me around like a pawn ever since
the first evening we met!”

“Not a pawn,” Willy corrected
him with a smile. “A knight.”

However, they decided not to tell
Maria the real purpose of the pro-
posed vacation until they were all

set up at the inn in North Wales.
Walther thought the setting sound-
ed perfect for some personal un-
finished business.

“Even I could sing an aria in
such a place,” Willy enthused.

Willy began quietly and individ-
ually contacting other members of
his company. With the kind of pay-
ment Walther authorized him to
offer, he had little difficulty get-
ting performers for the venture.
Most of them thought the project
ridiculous, but the money was more
than they would normally earn in
an entire season. Willy swore each
of them to silence. They were to
treat the trip as nothing more than
a vacation. He made arrangements
for the various pieces of recording
equipment to be shipped separately
from London, Berlin and New
York.

Willy’s pink cheeks were perpetu-
ally flushed these days, and his
bright eyes sparkled brighter than
ever. When Walther brought up
the question of which opera would
be attempted, he discovered that
the shrewd old maestro had long
ago acquired Puccini’s complete
“Madame Butterfly” and had al-
ready packed the music for ship-
ment to North Wales.

The night before they were to
leave Uniport, a familiar, distin-
guished figure appeared backstage,
threading his way between the huge
crates being packed by the servo-
robot stagehands. Willy led him im-
mediately to one of the dressing
rooms.

With admirable simplicity, the
underworld contact put a proposi-
tion before them,

The first three shipments had
pretty well exhausted the supply of
readily obtainable material. With
the Happy Time agents now
alerted, the risk of trying to get
more material wasn’t justified by
the probable results. But the un-
derworld wasn’t anxious to let go of
a good revenue source without one
big payoff.

What did they propose to do?

Willy’s voice shook as he trans-
lated:

“For — for the right — fee — they’re
willing to break into the Uniport
Library vaults!”

Walther was silent for a long
moment. Instinctively, he recoiled
from such overt action. But reason
asked: Why should he draw back
now? Everything taken from the
vaults would be duplicated and re-
turned in good condition. Was it
right to let his own personal re-
action stand in the way of some-
thing that might benefit whole ages
of Mankind?

When he had firm control of his
own voice, he nodded and asked:

“How do they propose to do it?”

The plan was a piece of profes-
sional craftsmanship. In the cen-
tury of its existence, no one had
ever attempted to enter the new
library illegally. With the absence
of any known motive for doing so,
the need for guarding against it was
routine. There were the usual doors
and time-locks, the alarm systems
and servo-robot guards, but nothing
that couldn’t be handled. They
would bring in technicians from
Vega VI to handle the time-locks.
Otherwise, barring some unsus-
pected move by the Happy Time

FRANK RILEY

security police, the job was within
the bounds of their own abilities.
Of course, there must be meticulous
attention to detail and planning.

The contact explained that, ac-
cording to preliminary surveys, they
could count on about two hours of
work after gaining entrance to the
vaults. By concentrating only on
books, for speed of handling and
packing, a reasonable sized crew
should be able to get at least twenty
thousand volumes out of the vaults
and into a waiting monorail trans-
port, where the crates would al-
ready be assembled. Previous ar-
rangements could be made for the
midnight freight shuttle to take the
crates from the Uniport landing to
Cyngus III. From there, the crates
could be dispersed throughout the
immeasurable reaches of deep
space.

“But they must be returned,”
Walther insisted. ‘Til see to that!”

Their visitor shrugged, indicating
that this detail was of no interest
to him. He named a price, and
when Walther promptly agreed to
it, Willy poured them all a drink.

“When I was a small boy,” Willy
said, in a voice that still trembled,
“I slid on the seat of my trousers
down an icy slope in the Alps. It
was good fun for the first twenty
yards; and then I realized I had
gone beyond my power to stop.
That’s the way I feel right now.
Prosit!”

As their caller started to leave,
Walther stopped him by raising his
hand. Throughout the discussion,
an irresistible compulsion had been
growing within him. Now he had to
speak:

ABBR.

“I’ve come a long way,” he told
Willy. “Granting that nothing goes
wrong, and that I’m able to leave,
I know I’ll never return to Earth
again. But there’s one selfish, per-
sonal thing I want to do before
leaving. It isn’t sensible, I know —
but neither was my dream to begin
with. I want to go with these men
into the Uniport vaults — just to see
for an hour — greater treasures than
I can ever hope to see again.”

FROM HIS room on the second
floor of the Bridge End Inn,
Walther could look down upon the
River Dee, tumbling along beside
what was still called the Shropshire
and Union Railroad Canal, al-
though the tracks of that ancient
railroad had been torn up centuries
ago. Old ways and names had a
way of persisting in North Wales,
despite the pace of modern leisure.
Walther had noted with satisfaction
that the double consonants of the
old language, with their strange
throaty pronunciation, had defied
contraction. Llangollen and Llanty-
silio were two nearby cities whose
names were still spelled out, as they
had been for a thousand years.

He glanced at his watch. Maria
should be waking from her nap just
about now. In a half hour, Willy
wanted to meet with her and ask
her cooperation in doing “Madame
Butterfly”. Walther had suggested
waiting until the next day, since
Maria was tired from the closing
night festivities in Uniport, and
from packing the rest of the night
in time to catch the morning strato-
way. But Willy opposed delay.

As he stood there by his window,
Walther had a sense of peace, for
the first time since he’d been on
Earth. The moment was all the
more to be cherished, since he knew
it could not last.

A light knock on his door jarred
the view and the peace out of focus.

“Come in,” he called, and turned,
expecting to see Willy.

But it was Maria who entered,
looking remarkably refreshed after
her short nap. She wore a sweater,
a very short skirt and open-toed
sandals. Her long, dark hair was
combed out loose.

It was the first time he had seen
her dressed so casually. She looked
more like a Welsh mountain girl
than the star of the Uniport opera.

“Hi!” he said, inadequately.

She laughed at his surprise, and
put her arms around him.

“Hi,” she answered.

Maria had not forgotten her first
lesson beside the Tahiti lagoon; and
Walther was reviewing some subse-
quent lessons when both of them
became aware of the unwelcome
fact that they were not alone.

Willy Fritsh stood in the door-
way, smiling benignly.

“Oh, hell,” said Walther.

“Believe me, I didn’t intend to
interrupt,” Willy said happily. “But
since we’re all together right now
. . . under such . . . ah . . . pro-
pitious circumstances, suppose we
talk things over.”

“Later,” said Walther.

Ignoring his protest, Willy sat
himself comfortably on the window
seat, opened a large envelope and
took out the bound libretto of
“Madame Butterfly”. He handed

it to Maria, without comment. She
stared at it curiously, but made no
move to open it until Willy mo-
tioned her to do so.

She nodded with recognition at
the title page, then as she riffled
through succeeding pages, her ex-
pression changed from surprise to
distaste. She tried to hand the li-
bretto back to Willy, but instead of
taking it, he drew her to the win-
dow seat beside him, and spoke to
her as a father might speak to his
daughter.

By this time, Walther could un-
derstand a little of what Willy was
saying and he could guess the rest
of it. Maria’s first reaction was to
stare incredulously at Willy. As the
full meaning of what he was asking
became clear to her, she looked up
at Walther. He saw scorn and anger
in her dark eyes.

When she looked back at Willy,
it was to shake her head in em-
phatic refusal.

Willy’s tone became even more
persuasive. He gazed out the win-
dow as he spoke, down at the river
pouring over the weir and ducking
under the old stone bridge. Maria
rolled the libretto into a tight scroll.
Her fingers showed white through
her unpolished nails.

Willy stopped abruptly. He looked
older, tired. Maria remained silent,
her lips compressed into a tight
line. At last she answered him, in a
voice that was tightly, coldly con-
trolled.

She stood up and walked toward
the door. Walther held out his
hand; she ignored it. He started
after her, and Willy said,

“Let her go.”

FRANK RILEY

Willy looked so depressed that
Walther felt a need to comfort him.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll
forget the whole idea.”

Willy shook his head.

“She’ll do it,” he said wearily.
“But ...”

“She’ll do it because she thinks
she owes it to me.”

Walther waited for the old
maestro to continue.

“As soon as we’re through re-
cording,” Willy went on, pushing
himself up from the window seat,
“Maria wants to be released to an-
other opera company.”

“I’ll go see her right now,”
Walther began.

“Not now,” Willy interrupted.
“She wouldn’t have anything to do
with you. She thinks your only in-
terest has been this recording.”

Willy started rehearsals early the
next morning, in the big stone barn
behind the inn. The structure’s high
roof and thick walls provided nat-
ural acoustics, while its location was
far enough from Llangollen to
avoid creating undue curiosity. Re-
cording equipment had been set up
along one side; around it, the
orchestra was grouped. The center
area was marked off for vocal re-
hearsals.

Willy handled the direction him-
self, and not for a century had any
director on Earth undertaken such
a staggering task.

From the first moments of re-
hearsal, it became evident that the
orchestra could never hope to play
an entire number in one sustained
effort. It was not so much the physi-
cal effort involved, as the difficulty

ABBR.

of maintaining an emotional crest
for so long a period. The first vio-
linist fainted halfway through the
opening sequence between Lieutenr
ant Pinkerton and the American
consul. This triggered a mass col-
lapse among the woodwinds. The
pianist wavered off an octave
through sheer fatigue, and the
drummer dropped his sticks when
Willy cued him to step up tempo.

Willy was frantic.

“We’ll have to record a few bars
at a time — until they’re more accus-
tomed to the strain,” he told Wal-
ther. “What an editing job this will
bei”

The problem with the vocalists
was even more acute. Every duet
would have to be recorded in at
least ten segments.

Maria was the only one who
stubbornly insisted on doing a com-
plete number. It was a point of
pride with her. She hated the
music; it violated every principle
she had ever learned. But the per-
fectionist in her, reinforced by her
bitterness toward Walther and her
sense of obligation to Willy, drove
her to deliver the full measure of
her promise.

In the love duet between Butter-
fly and Pinkerton, which closed Act
I, the pale and perspiring Pinker-
ton was nearly spent as he began
his final lines:

Come then,

Love, what fear holds you trem-
bling?

Have done with all misgivings . . .

His impassioned plea quavered;
he clutched Maria’s arm to steady
himself. Willy cutr the music. For
five minutes they held cold com-

presses to the singer’s wrists, while
members of the orchestra slumped,
exhausted, in their chairs. When all
were somewhat recovered, Pinker-
ton attempted the next two lines of
his wedding night rapture:

The night doth enfold us,

See the world lies sleeping . . .
And then he had to rest again.
But when Maria answered, her
dark eyes flashing defiantly, she
went through her entire eight lines
without a pause.

Her great test came with the
famous second act solo, “One Fine
Day”. It was difficult enough to
learn the strange words and music,
but to achieve and hold the emo-
tional peaks of the solo for nearly
two minutes was something she had
never before attempted.

Because she insisted on doing the
entire aria without resting, Willy
set the recording for early in the
morning, when the orchestra would
be fresh. He asked them to assem-
ble on the improvised sound stage
an hour after breakfast.

Willy limited the orchestra to a
minimum tune up period so that the
musicians could conserve their
energies for the ordeal ahead. The
violins were the last to be ready.
When the final string had been
tuned, Willy cued the engineers to
stand by and pointed the tip of his
baton toward Maria.

“Un Bel Di . . ”

The words came clear as the
notes of a silver bell, calling back
to life the beauty that had been
dead for so long. Walther felt his
stomach muscles tighten; a tingle
of wonder crept up his spine.
Standing there in the center of

the old stone bam, wearing only
sandals, shorts and a light blouse
open at die neck, Maria still man-
aged to convey the feelings of the
lonely young Japanese wife who
sang so confidently of her husband’s
return from across the sea.

This was Maria, the incompar-
able artist, using all of her tech-
nique to blend the unfamiliar words
and music.

But for the first few lines it was
only a technical tour de force. Then
Puccini’s music began to take hold
of Maria, merging the artist with
the woman, and creating yet a third
entity out of the two.

He saw Willy turn, transfixed to-
ward Maria. His hands and baton
continued to move, but not by con-
scious direction. His pink cheeks
were pale, etched with deepening
lines. His blue eyes were misted.

Even the other members of the
company seemed moved by Maria’s
performance. Yet they could not
stay with her emotionally ; they were
compelled to break the tension by
shuffling their feet and self-con-
sciously lighting cigarettes.

To a man, the orchestra played
as if hypnotized, sweeping through
measure after measure with an in-
tensity that seemed impossible to
maintain.

For an uncertain moment, near
the end of the aria, it looked as if
Maria could not finish. She swayed,
held tightly to the microphone for
support. Walther stepped forward
to catch her, but she recovered,
drawing on some inner source of
strength to finish:

“. . . This will all come to pass,
as I tell you!

FRANK RILEY

Banish your idle fears . . .

For he will return, I know it!”

As Maria finished, she tore her-
self away from the microphone. Her
lips were trembling; her eyes were
wide, like those of a woman in
shock. She half-ran out of the barn,
stopped — confused — in the bright
sunlight, and then ran on down
the path toward the Inn.

UNTIL LATE afternoon, Maria
would see no one. Then she
agreed to see Willy for a few mo-
ments.

When the old maestro left her
room, he looked deeply troubled.

“I don’t know . . .” he told Wal-
ther, shaking his head. “I don’t
know what this has done to her.”
“What did she say?”

“Right now, she says she will
never sing again. She’s going to her
home in Italy this evening.”

“Can we do anything?”

“Looks like we’ve already done
more than we should. Mixing two
cultures in one artist is dangerous
chemistry!”

Up to this moment. Walther had
deliberately avoided any decision
about Maria. She had been a con-
tinuing and delightful challenge,
especially since Tahiti, but beyond
that he had not allowed his
thoughts to go. Now there was a
responsibility he could no longer
evade. He had watched the dual
personality that was Maria being
shattered under the impact of Puc-
cini’s music. How would the pieces
fit together again? Should he stand
by and watch? Or should he try to
help? And if he could help her,

ABBR.

how would it all end? The gulf be-
tween two cultures could be wider
than the mathematics of space be-
tween two galaxies, or the bridging
power of sex.

Against Willy’s advice, Walther
decided to catch the same strato-
way with Maria, and take his
chances on what might happen.

But a phone call from Uniport
abruptly changed his plans. It was
from their underworld contact, who
informed Willy that the “Board of
Directors” was meeting that eve-
ning; if Walther wanted to attend,
he would have to take the next
stratoway to Uniport. Someone
would meet him at the station.

Uniport or Italy? Willy inter-
vened to make the decision easier.

“This will be your only chance
to get into the vaults,” he counseled.
“Besides, Maria must think some
things through for herself.”

His emotions in turmoil, Walther
boarded the next stratoway for
Uniport. As North Wales and Eng-
land blurred into the ocean beneath
him, he had the feeling that he
would never see the River Dee
country again.

A tall, thin young man, with eyes
as colorless as waxpaper, met him
at the Uniport station and hurried
him into a monorail car. Walther
tentatively began a question, but
the young man stopped him with
an opaque stare.

Four times they changed mono-
rail cars, ending up eventually at a
freight terminal, where an older
man met them and pointed silently
to one of the freight cars. Inside,
Walther saw a strange assortment
of smiling servo-robots and grim-

faced humans sitting around on
empty packing cases. The cases
were already marked for shipment
and trans-shipment throughout the
galaxy.

After quick, sharp glances of ap-
praisal, no one paid any attention
to him. He sat down beside one of
the servo-robots and forced himself
to wait as patiently as possible. For
a half hour nothing happened. The
servo-robots remained motionless;
the humans chain-smoked until the
air in the freight car was an acrid
grey smog. Nearly every human
switched constantly and nervously
from his tiny TV set to his watch-
radio. One of the men brought out
a bottle, but quickly put it away
after a staccato command from the
greying, square- jawed man who
seemed to be in charge.

At 6 o’clock, without warning,
the freight car vibrated slightly and
began to move. The servo-robots
stood up attentively; the humans
snuffed out their cigarettes. Peering
through one of the small windows,
Walther saw that twilight was
merging into night.

It was completely dark when the
car stopped at a loading platform
behind the steel-grey building that
towered above the Uniport cultural
vaults. A servo-robot guard stepped
forward challengingly.

At a gesture from the leader, one
of the servo-robots within the car
marched out on the platform and
presented a punched bill of lading.
As the guard fed the document into
its tabulator, the other stepped
closer and lightly brushed against
it. The guard stiffened, as though
from a severe shock. There was a

sound like that of a racing motor
suddenly thrown out of gear. Then
a click, and silence. The servo-
robot guard unhinged itself at the
knees and collapsed on the plat-
form.

Another signal from the leader,
and out of the car scurried the
humans and servo-robots. They ran
across the platform toward the
shadow of the building. Here, two
of the men, who Walther guessed to
be thS experts imported to Earth
for this job, traced a circle around
the door with an instrument that
resembled a small camera. Evident-
ly this was to cut off the alarm
system, for almost immediately they
relaxed and went on to open the
door without any attempt at cau-
tion.

Proceeding in single file, lighting
their way with powerful flashlights,
they passed in similar manner
through a series of inner doors to
an elevator leading down into the
vaults. A servo-robot took over its
operation, and they shot downward.
At each level, the leader stepped
off the elevator to look around. At
the sixth level, he nodded and they
followed him into the vault.

This was the book vault. Tier
upon tier, the stacks of books
reached in every direction as far as
a flashlight beam could probe.

Motioning Walther to follow
him, the leader took a piece of
chalk and began marking off
groups of books. The men rounded
up library carts for the servo-
robots, who swiftly fell to loading
the carts and trundling them back
to the elevator.

Walther soon moved ahead of
FRANK RILEY

the leader and began marking the
books himself. They had started in
the M-sections. With mounting ex-
citement, Walther chalked off
Machiavelli, Mann, Markham,
Masefield, Maugham, Maupassant,
Melville, Millay, Moliere. . .

Leaping to the next tier, he raced
through the stacks marking the
works of Nathan and Newton, O’-
Neill . . . Ovid . . . Then on to
Parker, Pater, Pepys, Plato, Poe.
. . . Racine, Rousseau. . . . Sand-
burg . . . Santayana. . . .

What an astounding haul this
would be! The masterpieces of the
ages, to be whisked across space,
from star system to star system, un-
til at last they reached his home-
land, where they would grow and
multiply a million-fold, generation
into generation, down through the
millenniums of universal time.

Back to the A-sections! Adams,
Aeschylus, Anderson, Aristotle . . .

On to the B-sections! Bacon . . .
Balzac . . . Benet . . . Bronte . . .
Byron . . .

It was like drinking a heady bur-
gundy. Each new title whetted his
taste for more.

Inevitably, the very magnitude of
the thing began to have its sobering
effect. Was it actually possible to
get so much material out of the
vaults? Off the Earth?

The leader caught up with him
in the K-sections and motioned
him not to mark off any more
books. They’d have a hard time
getting those Walther had already
chalked.

Walther rode up with the next
elevator load. On the way down, he
indicated to the servo-robot that he

wanted to go all the way to the bot-
tom level. There he stepped out of
the elevator and stood in the dark-
ness for a moment to steady himself
from the excitement of marking so
many books.

Then he swept his flashlight
beam slowly around the vault.

It was like turning on a light in
a tomb that had been sealed for
centuries. Certainly this tomb had
been sealed, to all except the Di-
gesters and the servo-robot atten-
dants.

The vault was at least two hun-
dred feet high. Walther could only
guess at the other dimensions, and
the extent of the corridors that
fanned out like the spokes of a
wheel. Sculptured figures from all
the ages of Earth loomed out of the
shadows with a quality of arrested
life that might at any moment
move again.

The figures of the Pharaohs were
here, the chiseled perfection of
Athens and Rome, the genius of
the Renaissance and the primitive
gods of the Aztecs. The armless
Venus gazed down dispassionately
on the bowed back of the Discus
Thrower, while Rodin’s Thinker
stared in eternal contemplation at
the belly of Buddha.

And then Walther looked up-
ward.

High overhead, reassembled on a
great oblong span of artificial ceil-
ing suspended from the top of the
vault, were the nine immortal
panels from the Sistine Chapel.
Tracing his beam of light through
scene by scene of Michaelangelo’s
creation of the world, lingering
among the connective figures of the

ABBR.

prophets and sibyls, the lunettes
and triangles, Walther lost all sense
of time.

When his back and neck muscles
could stand the strain no longer,
he wandered deeper into the dim
recesses of the vault, following cor-
ridor after corridor, entranced. He
was like a condemned man watch-
ing his last sunrise and trying to ab-
sorb it ail, knowing he would not
come this way again.

Walther did not realize how far
he had wandered until he came at
last to the end of a corridor and
glanced at his watch.

Ten o’clock!

He’d been gone from the group
for nearly three hours, and the en-
tire raid had been timed for two
hours.

He started running for the eleva-
tor. Corridor led into corridor, gal-
lery into gallery. It took him twenty
minutes to find his way back to the
main vault, another five minutes to
locate the right elevator. He
pressed the button and listened.
There was no sound within the
shaft.

He shouted, and there was only
the echo of his own voice rever-
berating through the ages around
him.

Fighting down a flutter of panic,
Walther turned off his light and
leaned against the elevator door to
organize his thoughts.

He was sure the others had left
on time to make shipment schedules
at the Uniport landing. They might
have delayed long enough to make
a cursory search for him, but his
safety was no part of their commit-

ment. They had successfully raided
the vaults, which was all they had
contracted to do. Before morning,
most of them undoubtedly would
have embarked on inter-planetary
cruises.

Walther’s first decision was to
try the other elevators on the off-
chance that one had been left in
operating gear.

None had.

Next, he set off to look for a
stair well, fire ladder or other
method of exit. It took him three
hours to cover the entire vault and
its corridors. No doubt of it, the
elevators were the only means of
entering and leaving.

It was now one o’clock. In eight
hours the upper level doors would
open to the Digesters. No particular
effort had been made to camou-
flage the gaps in the stacks. His one
chance was to reach the street level
before anyone noticed the missing
books. Meanwhile, he could do
nothing except spend the night as
comfortably as possible. He spread
his coat on the marble floor behind
the squat statue of a Malayan god-
dess.

Surprisingly, he did doze off to-
ward morning. He awoke shortly
after eight o’clock, and began to
punch the elevator button every
five minutes. Finally, at three min-
utes to nine, a faint hum responded
within the shaft. He retreated hast-
ily into the nearest corridor, and
waited another ten minutes before
bringing the elevator down to his
level. Then he entered it, pressed
the street-level control and shot
upward.

He lit a cigarette, and was pre-
FRANK RILEY

pared to step out nonchalantly as
soon as the door opened.

His exit was nonchalant enough,
but the servo-robot guard in front
of the elevator held out its tabula-
tor slot and said.

“Crdpls.”

Walther was shaken, but did not
freeze up. He fumbled in his pocket
for a slip of paper and tried to cram
it into the tabulator. A red light
flashed on the servo-robot’s chest;
a buzzer sounded.

Thirty yards beyond, Walther
saw the front desk and the door
open to the street. He acted with
the impulse. A sidestep took him
around the servo-robot, and then
he was racing toward the door.

Three steps later, a vise-like
grip clamped around his shoulders
and swept him off his feet. Twist-
ing, he saw that the servo-robot’s
arm had elongated, and that the
fingers had stretched to encircle his
body. He kicked hard at the arm,
and that was his last conscious act.

The next time Walther opened
his eyes, his head throbbed so vi-
olently he closed them again. When
the spinning stopped, he tried once
more.

Around him he saw four metallic
walls, and overhead a ceiling of
similar material. Except for a ven-
tilator grid, and the outlines of two
doors, there were no breaks in the
wall and no decorations. He was
lying on a low, narrow cot, and
was still fully dressed.

He felt his head. There was a
large lump above his right temple,
where he might have struck the
floor. But he was still too groggy for
much speculation. He closed his

ABBR.

eyes to ease the throbbing, and fell
into an uneasy sleep.

The creaking of the door must
have roused him, for it was closing
as he focussed on it. A tray of food
was within arm’s reach. A smaller
door behind his bed had been
opened; it led to a tiny washroom.

After freshening up and trying
the food, Walther felt much better.
He was a strong-nerved young man,
not accustomed to worry, and he
tried to weigh the facts for and
against him. If the shipments had
gone off without a hitch, things
might not be so bad. He’d been
found leaving the vaults, but no
one would suppose that he’d have
staved around after somehow dis-
posing of the books. They might
suspect him, but it would be hard
to disprove his story that he’d
taken the elevator by mistake the
day before and been trapped over-
night. Anyway, as a visitor from an-
other galaxy, he was entitled to
certain consideration.

He felt even better when the
door opened late in the afternoon
to admit Willy Fritsh and a tight-
lipped man of about forty.

“Your lawyer,” said Willy. He
looked and sounded grim.

After completing introductions,
Willy told him that he was indeed
accused of the theft, and would be
arraigned in the morning.

“They can’t prove it,” Walther
answered calmly.

“They think they can. Our Di-
gester friend — remember our Bohe-
mian evening? — has come forward
to accuse you. He’ll testify about
the offer we made him.”

“We? Will he accuse you, too?”

“Not exactly* I’m supposed to be
an innocent bystander. A friend
who was used!”

In spite of the circumstances, a
hint of the old sparkle returned to
Willy’s eyes and he smiled faintly.

“What can they do about it?”
Walther demanded. After all, he
was a Von Koenigsburg.

Willy’s smile vanished.

“Our legal friend here says ten
years would be a light sentence.”

They discussed the case for an
hour, while the lawyer took meti-
culous notes. Then, through Willy,
the attorney began questioning
Walther about his financial status.
Even in the language of consonants,
his voice was suave.

The lawyer’s precise little sym-
bols wavered as Walther briefly
outlined his family circumstances,
but a servo-robot opened the door
before further questions could be
asked.

Willy started to shake hands with
Walther, then impulsively put his
arms around him. There were tears
in the corners of his blue eyes. He
tried to say something, but gave it
up and hurried out the door behind
the attorney.

“Wait.” Walther called after
him. “Have you heard anything
from Maria?”

Willy sadly shook his head.

“No. Nothing.”

Walther had scarcely finished
breakfast next morning when a
servo-robot came to take him to
court. The robot linked thumb and
forefinger around Walther’s wrist
with the grip of a handcuff.

There were no spectators in the
courtroom; perhaps, Walther

thought glumly, because it was a
free attraction that would interfere
with the consumption of happy
time entertainment. Willy joined
him at the defendants table.

“Still the loyal, misguided
friend,” Willy murmured. “I volun-
teered to be your interpreter.”

The Judge was a human, but all
clerks and bailiffs were servo-
robots. As soon as the court was
gaveled into session, the Prosecutor
presented a twenty-second digest of
the case against Walther, and called
the little Digester as a substantiat-
ing witness.

Walther didn’t need any transla-
tion to understand what the witness
was saying. Shifting unhappily in
his chair, and avoiding Willy’s eyes,
the little Digester answered pre-
liminary questions in a scarcely
audible voice. But when he pointed
his finger at Walther, his voice be-
came shrill and he reddened to the
top of his bald head.

“Now he’ll be afraid to attend
one of our meetings,” Willy mur-
mured. “That’s what he’s really
blaming you for.”

When the Digester left the stand,
a portly man, with a perpetual tick
in his left cheek, arose to address
the court. He was at the Prosecu-
tor’s table, and until this moment
had seemed to take very little in-
terest in the proceedings. But now
he spoke in a steel-edged voice that
was in surprising contrast to his
slow, heavy movements.

“He’s speaking as a friend of the
court,” Willy whispered. “His office
is legal representative of the Happy
Time cartel in Uniport. He’s tell-
ing the court what a terrible of-

FRANK RILEY

fense you committed — but is willing
— in the public interest not to press
charges if you’ll return the books
at once. Otherwise, he demands
you be held for trial without bail.”

Walther’s lawyer conferred brief-
ly with Willy. The Judge and Pro-
secutor also conferred, and both
spoke with obvious deference to the
Happy Time attorney.

With a bow to all three, Wal-
ther’s lawyer addressed the court.
His smooth voice rippled lightly
over the harsh consonants, and his
thin lips parted often in a swift,
mirthless smile. He spoke for almost
a minute, and the Judge began to
toy with his gavel, watching the
Happy Time attorney for a cue to
his feelings. The attorney had
slumped back in his chair, eyes
drooping. But the tick in his cheek
worked furiously.

Then Walth^’s lawyer turned
toward the Happy Time lawyer
and paused dramatically.

“He’s talking about your family,”
Willy whispered again. “I think
he’s exaggerating a bit, but he says
they own an entire planet twice the
size of Earth.”

When the lawyer continued, the
smoothness was gone from his
voice. His words came hard, crisp,
brief. The elderly Judge sagged
back in his chair, the Prosecutor
blinked and the Happy Time at-
torney allowed his eyes to close
completely.

“I hope you approve,” Willy
said in a shaky whisper. “You’ve
just offered to deposit a hundred
million credits with the Happy
Time cartel as assurance the books
will be returned.”

“What? — I don’t even admit tak-
ing them!”

“Neither does your lawyer. But,
as he puts it, if anyone acting in
your behalf, but without your di-
rect knowledge, should have seized
these books and shipped them off
the Earth, you will assume respon-
sibility for their return. Otherwise,
they may be turned loose among
the people of Earth to plant seeds
of future trouble.”

Walther’s lawyer emphasized one
brief phrase, and sat down. Even
Walther recognized the words:
One hundred million credits.

The Happy Time attorney slowly
opened his eyes and heaved himself
to his feet. He spread out both
pudgy hands to the Judge, and
shrugged his bulking shoulders. He
spoke briefly, and the steel-edge
was gone from his voice.

“He suggests that the court in
its wisdom, temper justice with
mercy,” Willy translated excitedly.

After this it was a matter of de-
tail, with the Prosecutor insisting
only that Walther be kept in cus-
tody and deported immediately
after the deposit had been ar-
ranged.

The strain of the whole affair
had been too much for Willy, but
as the smiling servo-robot led Wal-
ther out of the courtroom, he called
after him:

“I’ll be at the landing!”

Walther knew he should be hap-
py. He had found what he wanted
on Earth. Not in the way he had
hoped, but the final reckoning was
the same. Still, there was an empti-
ness to it all, an emptiness and an
aching.

ABBR.

When he cleared customs, and
was released by his servo-robot
guard, Walther saw Willy Fritsh
waiting beside the Cyngus III shut-
tleship. A half dozen of his musi-
cians were with him.

Willy said with simple direct-
ness:

“If you want us, we’d like to go
with you.”

Of all the things that had hap-
pened to him in the last twenty-
four hours, this took Walther most
completely by surprise. He stared,
speechless, from Willy to the musi-
cians, most of them older men.

“These few came to me,” Willy
said. “They don’t want to go back
to our own music — Neither do I!”
His voice broke, and he continued,
pleading: “We can help hring your
dream to life in the few years left
to us.”

Walther enveloped the old mae-

stro in a bear-hug that crushed the
breath out of him.

“Want you?” he cried. “Now,
who’s a fool?”

“You are,” gasped Willy, “if you
thought I’d leave part of my heart
behind!”

Walther looked around quickly.

At the top of the shuttleship
ramp stood a young woman with
half a smile and half a question on
her lips. There was doubt in that
smile, and fear. There was loneli-
ness and wonder, and hope. It was
a promise and a warning of all that
lay ahead for them, out there be-
yond the stars.

Humbly, more knowing that he
had yet been in his short life, Wal-
ther held out his hands and walked
up the ramp toward her — toward
a dream that was over, and a real-
ity that could be more bitter, more
sweet, than any dream. • • •

ij Coming January 12th!

THE FIRST WORLD OF if

!; TWENTY of the most outstanding short stories published dur-
![ ing the first five years of IF Magazine! Selected by the editors to
!; include as many variations as possible, you will find something
! ! different in every story — an exciting variety of mood, idea, theme
' ! and pace. Here you will find Isaac Asimov, Charles Beaumont,
s Jerome Bixby, James Blish, Philip K. Dick, Frank Riley, Robert
;! Sheckley and others — in a book chock full of the best in 'science
fiction entertainment.

1 1 The edition is small and many places will not receive copies.

\\ However, if your local news dealer cannot get you a copy, send
j! 50 cents to IF Magazine, Kingston, New York, and a copy will
;! be mailed to you at once.

Is Man on the way to perfect health and

longevity? Will tomorrow’s citizens be
free of plagues, disease and deformity?

PROGNOSIS

FOR TOMORROW

BY ALAN E. NOURSE, M. D.

THERE are a number of people in medicine these
days who seem to feel that we are now in the midst
of the Golden Age of medical discovery, and I don’t
believe a word of it.

“But look at what we’ve accomplished in the last half
century!” they will cry indignantly. “We’ve routed in-
fectious diseases with the use of antibiotic drugs. We’ve
given life and hope to diabetics. We’ve solved the riddle
of poliomyelitis. We have proved that the human heart
can be opened by the surgeon’s knife and closed again
with impunity. Give us enough money, enough workers,

and enough education and we
could wipe malaria from the face
of the Earth in fourteen days flat.
We’ve made more progress in diag-
nosis, treatment, and cure of human
illness in the past fifty years than
in the preceding fifty centuries! If
this isn’t the Golden Age, then
what is? Why shouldn’t we expect
to continue at this pace until all
human illness has fallen to the
blade?”

Well, why shouldn’t we?

There is a very simple and fun-
damental reason why we shouldn’t
expect to, and won’t, continue
medical progress at the same wild
gallop that has characterized the
past fifty years of work. We have
come within sight of discoveries that
will make the achievements of the
past half century look pale by com-
parison— only to find the road
blocked off by a great barrier. Noth-
ing we have done in the past will
help us to surmount that barrier,
but we have reached a point where
no other road will do. Far from
rushing untrammeled through a
Golden Age, medical research has
reached the crossroads, and must
find some fundamental answers be-
fore it can go on.

In essence, medical workers in
the past fifty years have been go-
ing about the countryside slaying
all the little dragons they could
find. They have been commend-
ably successful — so much so, in-
deed, that there aren’t very many
little dragons left to slay. But it
just happens that there are some big
dragons around that we haven’t
even touched yet. We don’t even
know for sure what they look like,

much less how to go about slaying
them. And these dragons are kill-
ers— the group of disorders gener-
ally known as the degenerative dis-
eases, responsible among themselves
for the vast majority of human
death :

Arteriosclerosis and heart disease.
Hypertension. Cancer. We have
names for them. That’s about all
that we have.

Of course, there are certain
things we do know about these dis-
eases— important things to con-
sider in thinking about the future
of our attempts to track them
down. First, none of these diseases
can be expected to yield to medi-
cal research in the abrupt, dramatic
manner of past medical triumphs.
The reason lies in the peculiar na-
ture of these disorders.

With the infectious' diseases, or
poliomyelitis, we were dealing with
specific micro-organisms, vulner-
able to specific drugs, medications,
or antibodies capable of slowing or
stopping their growth. With dia-
betes mellitus a specific enzyme
system was found to be at fault, for
which a key enzyme could be sup-
plied artificially once it was dis-
covered and identified. But the de-
generative diseases are not specific
disorders of any organ or enzyme
system. They are generalized dis-
eases involving multiple organ sys-
tems. In each of them we are deal-
ing not with a sick kidney or a sick
liver, but with a sick human body,
suffering from a widespread mal-
function of the fundamental physio-
logical and biochemical processes
of life.

We can see, then, why no specific,
ALAN E. NOURSE, M.D.

simple, encapsulated answer is like-
ly to be found for any of these
vicious disorders. We’ve tried that
already, and failed. Physicians have,
for example, run the whole gamut
of drugs which should, theoretically,
bring down high blood pressure —
but their patients continue to die of
hypertensive cardiovascular dis-
ease. We have tried everything
imaginable to stop the wild, erratic
growth of malignant cancer cells —
but the cancers keep right on grow-
ing. We have even resorted to sur-
gery to try to replace the sclerotic
blood vessels in human hearts — but
we haven’t found any way to stop
the steady march of arteriosclerosis
in the aging human body.

Gradually it has become appar-
ent that the answers we need so
desperately will never be found
this way. These diseases will be
stopped only when we understand
what they are and why they hap-
pen; to reach this goal it will be
necessary for men to ferret out a
complete basic understanding of the
physiological and biochemical na-
ture of life itself.

This, then, is the great barrier
to the Golden Age of medicine. It
will not be surmounted in the next
decade, nor even the next. We may
well stand on the brink of a “bar-
ren age” of medical progress — fifty
or sixty years, maybe a hundred, of
futile searching — before this great
barrier begins to crumble. It will
cost us stupendous sums of money
and the finest minds we can pos-
sibly recruit from the present and
future generations, for we will find
the answers only if we can develop
and sustain the greatest concerted

PROGNOSIS FOR TOMORROW

search in the history of mankind.

But the reward will be far greater
than the mere ability to prevent or
cure a group of human ailments.
The knowledge we acquire in such
a search will give us the weapons
we need to fight the last enemy —
Death — on his own grounds. It will
place relative immortality within
our reach : a useful, productive hu-
man life-span measured in centuries
rather than in decades.

This will be the Golden Age of
medicine. It could come in our
time.

I CERTAINLY DON’T wish to
suggest, from the above, that I
anticipate a Mexican stand-off in
medicine for the next fifty years or
so. There will be progress of one
sort or another, and plenty of it.
For one thing, all the little dragons
aren’t slain yet by any means. A
few of them that remain are quite
unpleasant enough to deserve the
continued attention of medical re-
searchers for many years to come.
Some, indeed, have never been
truly dead, but continue to twitch
their tails from time to time in a
most annoying fashion. Others, only
recently discovered, are drawing
much attention to themselves — such
nasty customers as the disease
called lupus erythematosus, first
recognized in the early 1930’s, a
country cousin of rheumatic fever
and rheumatoid arthritis, but dis-
tinguished by its proclivity for kill-
ing teen-aged girls and young wom-
en. For another thing, and perhaps
more important, many research pro-
grams now under way show great

promise of providing at least some
hope of palliation until the final
answers are found.

But if the answers coming from
the laboratories and clinics in the
next half century are not as star-
tling and revolutionary as those
in the past, we can anticipate that
certain social and economic changes
directly related to medicine will be.
Some of these changes have al-
ready begun, and their endpoint
can be foreseen; others haven’t
started yet, but are as logical as
they are inevitable.

First, we will see the emergence
of greater and greater degrees of
specialization and super-specializa-
tion among practitioners of medi-
cine. The sheer bulk of information
and knowledge needed for success-
ful diagnosis and treatment of ill-
ness will force this trend to continue
and grow. As a result, the concept
of the “GP” and the “family doc-
tor” will vanish completely, grieved
for a while but soon forgotten. In
its place clinic groups of trained
specialists will burgeon, offering a
far higher quality of medical care
for far more people than the general
practitioner could hope to supply.
As an unfortunate but inevitable
corollary, medical education will
take longer and cost more in a time
when more and more medically
trained men and women are des-
perately needed.

Side by side with the trend to-
ward super-specialization (have you
ever heard of a pituitary osmore-
ceptorologist? A specialist in the
function of Paccinian Corpuscle?
You haven’t? We’ve got ’em!) an-
other phenomenon, already present,

will develop and expand rapidly:
the consolidation of medical clinics
and research laboratories into huge,
centralized medical centers. Al-
though such centers will grow up
chiefly because of economic pres-
sures, they will offer tremendous
advantages to medical researchers.
Diagnostic and research equipment^,
as it becomes more refined, also be-
comes more expensive. X-ray and
fluoroscopic equipment, clinical
laboratory facilities, electron micro-
scopes, radioactive isotope facilities
— all can be shared by many groups
of workers in a centralized location,
whereas their cost would be pro-
hibitive in smaller installations.
What is more, a large, consolidated
medical center could effectively use
another tool to ease the almost in-
surmountable task of following cur-
rent medical literature: electronic
memory storage and computer
mechanisms could be maintained,
with trained crews to summarize
medical journal material, catalogue
it, store it, and make it quickly
available to save researchers the
days, weeks and months of almost
totally unproductive reading they
are so often forced to do just to
keep up to date.

Naturally, such installations will
cost money, and lots of it. They
will become not only research cen-
ters but centers for diagnosis, treat-
ment, and hospitalization of hun-
dreds of thousands of patients an-
nually. Medical insurance programs
will help foot some small part of the
bill, but sooner or later government
support to help allay the costs of
medical care and research will be-
come mandatory. When that hap-

ALAN E. NOURSE, M.D.

pens it will come, paradoxically,
without political control over the
use of the money. This idea of pay-
ing the Piper without any say about
the tune to be played may well be
revolting to a national government
— just about as revolting as the very
thought of government subsidy is to
the medical profession — but stark
necessity will force an uneasy truce.
Medical work, with its basically
humanitarian aims and goals, must
not be allowed to become a political
issue — witness the grisly example
of Dr. Salk’s vaccine — and yet the
search for the answers we must
have will be too costly for private
support. A truce will have to be
made, and the resulting compro-
mise may well be unique in the
3000-year history of high finance!

We will see other strange bed-
fellows appearing. Already the
radiologist is hard put to tell
whether he is a physicist specializ-
ing in medicine or a medical doctor
specializing in physics. There was a
time when the biochemist and the
physiologist would have laughed
at the suggestion that the electronic
engineer might be able to offer
them help; now they seek him out
to build diagnostic and research
machines for them. Lions and
lambs, together they go, and the
result is a broader scope for each,
and perhaps a greater hope that the
answers will, finally, be reached.

THIS IS ALL very nice, you may
say, but it doesn’t help Granny
with her rheumatism very much
right now. There is every reason to
believe that within a few decades

PROGNOSIS FOR TOMORROW

we will have answers that will put
an end to Granny’s rheumatism
once and for all — but what about
the meantime? Unfortunately we
don’t have those answers yet, and
we do have Granny. It will hardly
do to stand by and wring our hands
as we wait, so to speak, for Arma-
geddon.

So the search goes on for answers
applicable to human diseases and
disorders here and now — palliative
answers perhaps, almost always in-
complete and tentative answers, but
some kind of approach at least.
This, then, will be the area of vis-
ible progress in the forthcoming
“barren age” of medicine.

Again, we will see developments
in two regions: the refinement of
diagnostic and therapeutic tech-
niques already known; and the
search for techniques and methods
not yet discovered. In the first cate-
gory, it seems very likely that we
will see massive enlargement and
refinement of the gawky, imprac-
tical present day mass-screening
techniques for the early detection
of such diseases as pulmonary tuber-
culosis, cancer, gastro-intestinal
ulcer, hypertension and kidney dis-
ease. Such mass-screenings have al-
ready been undertaken in certain of
our cities — massive programs of
chest X-rays to “screen” significant
segments of the population for pul-
monary tuberculosis, to cite a sin-
gle example. Such programs have
invariably been considered imprac-
tical for wider use — but with our
backs to the wall, any technique
that offers hope of earlier diagnosis
of cancer, for example, must be ex-
amined most carefully. Ways can

be found to surmount the monu-
mental cost of such programs; in-
deed, another decade or so may see
mass-screenings as a basic annual
requirement of all hospitalization
and life insurance contracts.

In the past quarter century we
have seen surgery come into its own
with the development of techniques
once thought 10 be either impossible
or recklessly dangerous. Cardiac
surgery, for instance, is now refined
to such a degree that surgery of the
heart is commonplace, and greater
and greater daring is paying big
dividends. But at best surgery of to-
day is a pretty coarse proposition —
excision of large masses or diseased
organs, repair of large faults, in-
cision and drainage of wounds and
abscesses. Surgery has always been
limited by the necessity of main-
taining natural circulation of blood
to the vital organs while the oper-
ation goes on. But the next quarter
century will see great progress in
overcoming this barrier to surgical
activity. Artificial kidneys and
heart-lung machines will become
part of every surgical armamentari-
um. Artificial liver circulation sys-
tems may even be developed. With
such devices, in conjunction with
hypo-thermic anaesthesia methods
and drugs capable of slowing met-
abolic processes throughout the
body, micro-surgical techniques
would be feasible. Tiny instruments,
remotely controlled under micro-
scopic visualization could be used,
for instance, to separate cancer cells
from surrounding normal tissue on
a cell-by-cell basis, or for repair or
replacement of tiny, deep-seated
blood vessels in vital organs. At-

tempts have already been made to
“seed” new coronary blood vessels
into human hearts to replace dis-
eased vessels, without significant
success; micro-techniques would al-
low implanting and grafting of
tiny, healthy vessels deep in heart
muscle to replace the old, sclerotic
vessels. Portions of liver or kidney*
could be excised or repaired with-
out damage to surrounding healthy
cells. Technically impossible today,
such procedures may become com-
monplace as soon as the proper
tools are made. Here again the
medical researcher and the engineer
will work cheek by jowl to do a job
neither can do by himself.

Cancer is, of course, the target
of concerted attack from all sides
in medicine today. The many faces
it shows, its inexorable march to
fatality once started, the very alien
nature of its growth within the hu-
man body, all make it a fearful
enemy to human life. Yet, para-
doxically, the very nature of can-
cerous growth — wild, disordered,
spreading to any type of tissue
within the body, even surviving
transplantation from body to body
— may provide another weapon
against the diseases of degenera-
tion: the artificial culturing and
transplanting of whole prosthetic
organs to replace old, dying ones.
Again, an exciting challenge, tech-
nically impossible today, which may
come within the realm of reason to-
morrow.

As for new drugs, the parade con-
tinues, often to the exhaustion of
our patience. But along with the
new drugs, new concepts of drug
usage are slowly emerging. The

ALAN E. NOURSE, M.D.

strange behavior of the adrenal cor-
tical steroids and other hormonal
substances are suggesting tantaliz-
ing new possibilities to medical re-
searchers. Imagine a drug which
gives the best therapeutic effect
when it is taken by the doctor
rather than the patient! Yet this
is exactly the way the lysergic acid
derivatives are being used in deal-
ing with schizophrenia. Gradually
the classical uses of drugs are be-
ing reinforced by unknown and un-
tried methods of use.

IN THE foregoing I have deliber-
ately avoided much comment on
the future attack on mental ill-
ness, chiefly because I cannot
find a good, solid, logical jumping-
off place from which to start specu-
lating. Speculation might be inter-
esting, but it would necessarily be
wild, and right now I’m trying to
keep my feet within kicking distance
of the ground.

But in speculating on any future
development in medicine or allied
fields we must recognize the pres-
ence of another factor at work — a
factor so staggeringly important
that it is perhaps the single greatest
shaper of the future, yet so unpre-
dictable that it utterly defies specu-
lation. This factor has been called
the principle of serendipity . In his
essays Horace Walpole described
the journeys of three hypothetical
Princes of Serendib (an ancient
name for Ceylon) who traveled in
quest of things they never succeeded
in finding, but discovered along
the way many things which turned
out to be better than what they

PROGNOSIS FOR TOMORROW

were looking for. The lucky coin-
cidences that occur and lead to the
great medical discoveries, the un-
predictable variables that make any
speculation seem timid and con-
servative— this factor of serendipity
exercises an overwhelming influence
on the direction of medical progress.
Penicillin was discovered by grace
of serendipity: the spores of peni-
cillium notatum which blew in
Fleming’s window were nothing
more than an annoying contami-
nant of his bacteria cultures, and it
took him twelve years to realize
what had actually happened ,to
him — but it changed history when
he finally woke up. Practically every
medical discovery in history has
had some degree of serendipity in-
volved. It is a process which is con-
stantly at work — erratic, undepend-
able, upsetting orderly experiments
in the most annoying fashion, yet
opening doors we never even
dreamed existed before.

So speculation is only of limited
value even when based on the firm-
est ground. Nevertheless, I feel sure
that one thing is clear: medicine
today stands at the crossroads. We
are emerging, only now, from a
great darkness, and ahead we can
see the barest glimmer of light. The
Golden Age of medicine, when it
arrives, will bring problems of un-
imaginable proportions; the social
and economic implications of physi-
cal immortality are stupendous. It
will bring the potential for wisdom,
or for cataclysm. It will bring the
stars within reach. We stand on the
brink of discovery — we will live to
see it, to participate in it. • • •

Burial on Earth was the dream of every person in the galaxy.

And Krieg was certainly rich enough to. buy his way in.

Valhalla was his. But he changed his mind. . .

Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

lor Dost Corrupt

THE ROOM seemed more a mausoleum than an office,
but that was as had been intended. Perhaps thirty feet
high, fifty feet wide, it stretched a good hundred feet in
length. It was paneled entirely in jet black onyx, which
gave a sense of infinity to it. The floor was a thick lawn of
heavy black pile carpeting. Only two areas of the room of-
fered mitigation to this oppressive gloom. Just past the mid-
dle, bathed in a haze of light, was placed a large black desk,

and behind it sat a man. At the far
end of the room, slightly elevated,
was an alabaster statue, an abstrac-
tion of incredible beauty and poign-
ancy. The statue too was wrapped
in a soft nimbus. Few visitors to
this room ever had to be told the
title of this work of art, for its
meaning was apparent in its every
line — Bereavement .

The man behind the big black
desk belonged to the room as much
as did the onyx walls, the thick car-
pet or the alabaster statue. Without
the presence of this man the cham-
ber seemed strangely empty,
strangely morbid, and few of the
man’s associates cared to remain in
the room when he was not there.
Somehow the warm air of benevo-
lence to be found in his fair, pink-
ish face softened the harsh somber-
ness of the appointments, while the
gentle strength in his dark and
mournful eyes gave amelioration to
the atmosphere of despair. His job
was to be a Janus, looking from the
cheery rubric of today towards the
unknown but dimmer colors of to-
morrow— to be a bridge between
present pleasures and future fears.
There was no better man for the
task in all the Galaxy than Consola-
tor Steen.

At the moment Consolator Steen
sat waiting, thinking, planning.
Soon through the huge doors fac-
ing him would come a man, one
Joseph Krieg by name, who sought
Steen’s assistance. The fact that
Krieg was one of the richest men in
all the known universe made the
impending interview a most impor-
tant one, for Consolator Steen’s as-
sistance depended entirely upon the

price that could be paid.

Steen’s fingers flicked over the
set of hidden controls on his desk.
Everything was in readiness. “And
another innocent fish gets hooked,”
he muttered to himself. He sighed
once, shortly, then touched an in-
visible button. will see Joseph
Krieg now.” In ther outer office
Steen’s aide-de-camp, Assistant
Consolator Braun, sprang to an at-
titude of proper deference as the
huge bronze doors swung open.
Braun bowed slightly as Joseph
Krieg strode past him and into the
onyx chamber.

Steen’s eyes narrowed in admira-
tion as he examined the man walk-
ing towards him. Joseph Krieg was
a huge person, just past middle age
but still retaining the hardened ap-
pearance of late youth. His face*
had a chiseled squareness to it, and
his manner indicated not so much
wealth as it did an obvious deter-
mination to succeed. This would
be an interesting fish to play with
indeed, Steen thought.

About half-way to the desk Krieg
stumbled slightly, but recovered his
pace with the cumbersome grace of
some massive animal. A smile flick-
ered briefly over Steen’s face. The
thickness of the carpet had more
purposes than one. When Krieg
was almost upon him, Steen stood
up.

Krieg stopped in front of the
desk, facing Steen, as if waiting for
some signal. Steen, who knew the
value of silence, remained absolute-
ly still. After a few seconds,
obviously perplexed, Krieg smiled
nervously. “Consolator Steen?”

james McConnell

“Welcome to Earth, Joseph
Krieg. Welcome to the Heart of
the Galaxy.” Steen’s voice was rich,
mellifluous, and the words fell from
his mouth like benedictions. He ex-
tended a hand. “Won’t you please
be seated?”

The chair received Krieg’s body
as if it were the most precious bur-
den it had ever held. It's soft con-
tours almost demanded that he re-
lax, yield the tenseness of his mus-
cles to its smooth and welcoming
shape. Its surface closed around
him as if it were a second skin, then
began to tingle in gentle caress. Jo-
seph Krieg had never felt so com-
forted in his life.

Consolator Steen seated himself
behind his desk, then waited until
his assistant, Braun, had taken a
chair some feet away. He smiled
paternally. “May I ask you one
favor? Would it seem presump-
tuous if I called you Joseph? Per-
haps you would feel it an imperti-
nence on my part, but . . .” Con-
solator Steen gestured slightly with
both his hands, as if to implore
forgiveness.

Joseph Krieg smiled, nodded his
head. “Of course I won’t mind if
you use my first name. It would be
an honor, Sir.” The smile contin-
ued on his face, but his eyes nar-
rowed as if fie were attempting to
puzzle out the figure behind the
desk.

“You will excuse me too if I say
that you’ve come too soon, Joseph,”
the Consolator said.

“Too soon?” Krieg replied quizz-
ically. “I don’t think I . . .”

Steen smiled warmly. “I only
mean that you look still so young,

NOR DUST CORRUPT

so strong and vibrant with life. And
yet, perhaps you are the wiser to
come now, still in the vigor of liv-
ing. It shows an honesty with your-
self, an ability to face the facts,
which is much to be admired.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Krieg replied.
He continued to stare at the Con-
solator.

Steen knew full well the turmoil
that was stirring within the man.
The entire interview had been psy-
chologically planned to evoke dark
and dormant emotions which, when
released, would destroy Krieg’s nor-
mal ability to judge situations im-
passively. Proof that things were
going as intended came from
Krieg’s continual use of the word
“Sir.” Krieg’s commercial empires
spanned the Universe; from per-
fume to starships, from food to fer-
tilizers, he was king. And yet he
would never understand that it was
Steen’s quiet paternal power, the
fact that he wore wise sorrow
wrapped around him the way some
men wear a cloak, that called
forth this unfamiliar reverence.
The psychological survey done on
Krieg had cost the Consolator a
small fortune, and he didn’t intend
to waste it.

“You must realize, Joseph, that
the things which you have come to
discuss are matters of the deepest
concern for all of us here on
Earth.” Steen gesticulated towards
Braun as if Braun represented
somehow all the other billions on
Earth. “The problem is one that
touches deep within all of us, and
we are anxious to be of whatever
service possible. But more than any-
thing else, we want you to know

that we understand ”

“Thank you, Sir,” Krieg repeat-
ed. He frowned for a moment, then
seemed to smile. “But if you don’t
mind, maybe we could begin our
discussion of terms.”

Steen raised one eyebrow slightly.
The man showed a remarkable lack
of sentimentality. Corrections would
have to be made in the ap-
proach ♦ . .

“Of course. I am delighted to get
on with things. And I must say, I
find your attitude extraordinarily
sane. The problem is, really, a sim-
ple one best met head on. You are
here because you know that as it
come to all men, death must come
to you too. And you feel the neces-
sity to make certain that when your
time comes, you will be-brought to
Earth to your final rest. You are a
son of Earth. This is your great an-
cestral home.”

Krieg started slightly, then re-
laxed almost in reverie. Steen
smiled inwardly at the power of
words, repeated, to invoke long for-
gotten memories. For Steen knew
that when Krieg had been no more
than a toddling child, learning to
read, learning to respond to affec-
tion, his simple-syllabled books had
spoken in reverent tones of “The
Great Ancestral Home.” In later
years, all of Krieg’ s studies had had
hidden at their core an emotional
dependence upon Earth. No place
was finer, more beauitful, more im-
portant. No, not all the rest of the
stars put together. He had been
told it a million times until it had
become an inseparable part of his
very personality, just so the words
would have the desired effect at

this moment. The Great Ancestral
Home .

“You are so fortunate, my son,”
the Consolator continued. “So very
few of Earth’s teeming children will
ever ha^e the opportunity that lies
within your' grasp. You must make
the most of it.”

As Steen watched, Krieg seemed
to shake some of the feelihg of awe
from him. “I intend to make the
most of it, Sir,” he said, offering
Steen his most charming smile. “It
just depends on how hard a bargain
you want to drive.”

Consolator Steen gave Krieg a
look of mild reproach. “There is
no ‘bargaining’ to be done, Joseph.
The monetary considerations are
set by law, and we have no choice
in the matter. All that we can do is
to explain the services which we are
prepared to extend to you, and
then help you as best we can to ar-
rive at the most suitable decision.
Our position is simply that of cater-
ing to your individual wants as best
we can.”

“My wants are simple,” Krieg re-
plied, and it seemed to Steen that
far too much of the man’s usual
forcefulness was returning to his
voice. “I wish to be buried on
Earth when I die, and I want you
to arrange this for m£.”

“Of course, of course, my son,”
Steen said, letting just a glint of
steel appear in his eyes. “But what
do we mean by burial? We have
such different problems here on
Earth than you do elsewhere in the
Galaxy. You must understand that.
We are forced to such strange so-
lutions to these problems. But per-
haps if I merely show you the vari-

james McConnell

ons types of burial which we under-
take, then you will understand.”
Steen laughed to himself. The fish
appeared fat and hungry, and now
it was time to drop in the bait.

The Consolator touched a hid-
den switch atop his desk and one of
the black onyx walls rippled and
seemed to dissolve in mist. A rep-
lica of Earth swam through the
haze and into view. “Earth. Such
an incredibly small planet, Joseph.
But the heart of the Galaxy none
the less.” The replica seemed to
swell in size and geographical de-
tails became apparent. “Earth.
Once a world of gentle, rolling
plains, winding rivers, thick forests,
wide oceans and soaring mountains.
Just like any other habitable planet.
And now look at it. One solid mass
of buildings and machines, Joseph.
We’ve drained the oceans and filled
in their beds with metal. We’ve de-
stroyed the forests and the rolling
plains and planted the land for
milefc above and below with throb-
bing inorganic monsters. We’ve hol-
lowed out the very mountains to
make more space. Space for nine
hundred billion people, Joseph.
And still we are cramped almost
beyond belief. We need to expand
a hundredfold. But we cannot.
There simply is no room left.

“No room for the living, Joseph,
and this means no more room for
the dead, either. Here, let me show
you.” The scene changed, showing
first a huge building, and then, the
bottom floor of the edifice. “This
is one of our larger buildings, Jo-
seph. It is more than fifty miles
long and one hundred miles wide.

NOR DUST CORRUPT

The bottom floor alone is more
than one quarter mile high. This
huge space is completely filled with
cubes two inches square. Each cube
holds the ashes of one human being
who wished to find his final resting
place on Earth.”

Consolator Steen made a motion
of resignation. “Notice that I said
‘on Earth,’ Joseph, and not ‘in
Earth.’ This is our ‘pauper’s field,’
the burial ground of those devoted
souls who could not afford to be
buried in the Earth itself.”

Joseph Krieg frowned. “But sure-
ly underneath the building . . .”
“Underneath the bottom floor
of that building are the bodies of
many millions more, Joseph, just
as there are bodies under all of
our buildings. Bodies of those
wealthy few who could afford to
escape cremation and find surcease
of life in the loamy substance of
the Earth itself. I shudder to tell
you how tightly packed they are, of
the skin-tight coffins which we had
to devise, of the geometrical tricks
involved in jamming as many
bodies as possible in the least
amount of space. And yet, it is
burial, and it is in the Earth itself.
No granite monuments, of course,
no vases of flowers, no green grass.
Just a perpetual flame burning in
the main lobby of the building, and
a micro-film file available some-
where listing the vital statistics of
all those souls whose remains lie in
the basement — or below.”

Krieg’ s face was furrowed with
a heavy frown. Steen’s words had
been as shocking to the man as
Steen had hoped they would be.
“But the Parks . . .”

“Ah, yes, Joseph. The Parks . . ”
Consolator Steen leaned forward
slightly. The fish was sniffing at the
bait quite properly now. “Our
Parks, which are the one remaining
link with the past. Those green arjl
grassy meadows in the midst of our
metallic forests. The last places on
Earth where you can be buried out
in the open, with flowers over your
head and birds singing above. You
want to be buried in one of the
Parks, don’t you Joseph?” When
the man nodded briefly, Steen con-
tinued. “Which Park, Joseph?”

“Manhattan . .

Steen drew himself up with S
sudden, silent movement. The fish
had taken a good look at the bait.
Now to remove it from sight for
a while. Steen closed his eyes brief-
ly, then raised a hand as if to brush
away a sudden tear. “I’m sorry, Joe.
Very sorry indeed. I was afraid that
was what you wanted, and yet, there
was always . . .” He blinked his
eyes. “Manhattan Park is impos-
sible, Joe. Confucius Park in Hong
Kong, perhaps. I think there are
still same plots available in Frog-
ner Park in Oslo. I’m certain that
we could get you into Amundsen
Park at the South Pole. But Man-
hattan . . . No, Joe. That’s one
dream I’m afraid you’ll just have to
give up.”

“Why?” Joseph Krieg asked
quietly but determinedly.

“Have you ever seen it, Joe? I
thought not. It’s perhaps the most
beautiful part of this most beautiful
planet in the Galaxy. Would you
like to see Manhattan?”

Manhattan . Steen was quite
aware that to Joseph Krieg this was

a word of a hundred thousand as-
sociations, each of them connected
with love, security, devotion and
repose. It was like asking a starv-
ing man if he would care for some-
thing to eat.

Steen did not even wait for a re-
ply./T think it could be managed,
as a special favor. Permission to en-
ter Manhattan Park is difficult to
get, you know, but I think this once
. . .” Steen turned to Braun. “Put a
call through to the President’s of-
fice . . .”

ATOP GRASSY knolls, supple
willows trailed languid branches
to the ground. Silver-throated birds
sang secret melodies while *^>ees
hummed a scarcely audible back-
ground. Narrow graveled paths
wound through this gentle land-
scape, now hugging the edge of a
tinkling stream, now plunging
through carpets of gorgeous flow-
ers. The three men sat silent on a
rough stone bench observing the
pastoral scene.

Finally Consolator Steen spoke
softly. “I understand how you feel,
Joe. The first time any of us sees
it, we are afflicted with silence. Its
beauty is almost painful, the memo-
ries it invokes almost beyond bear-
ing. Lincoln is buried there, just be-
yond that hillock; Landowski not
far from him. Shakespeare’s grave
is there to the right, and close by is
the body of Sharon, the poet of t^ie
Galaxy. Einstein’s final resting place
is a mile or so away, and near to it
you’ll find Chi Wan, who gave us
Stardrive. Humanity’s Valhalla,
Joe”

james McConnell

Joseph Krieg had not cried open-
ly since childhood, and yet now
there were tears in his eyes. “This
has always been my dream . . .”
Consolator Steen placed a friend-
ly arm around the man’s shoulders.
“Yes, now you have seen it. Your
dream has come true.” He paused
for just a moment, then said, “And
now, Joe, perhaps we had better
g°-

Joseph Krieg turned towards the
man with an abrupt motion. “Go?
Why should we go? We’ve been
here scarcely ten minutes.”

“Because the longer you stay, the
harder it will be for you to leave,
Joe. And the less attractive the
ether parks will seem to you. So,
I’d like for us to leave at once.” His
voice became businesslike. “First,
I’d like to show you Hong Kong,
and then . .

“I don’t want to see Hong Kong,
or any place else. This is where I
want to be buried, Steen. Whatever
the price is, I’ll pay.”

Consolator Steen sighed deeply.
“I don’t think you understand, Joe.
It isn’t a matter of price. Manhat-
tan is simply not available to you,
for the reason that it is not for
sale. I know that you have heard
otherwise; I am sure that rumors
have reached your ears that burial
in Manhattan could be effected for
a mere trillion credits. But these
fantastic tales are incorrect — for
two reasons.

“The first reason, Joe, is a finan-
cial one. To the average man, a
mere million credits is such a gigan-
tic, unobtainable sum that he is
sure anything in the Galaxy could
be obtained for a trillion. This is

not so, as you and I both know.
Why, a million credits will scarcely
get you a burial in a two-inch-
square cube in the bottom floor of
one of our huge buildings. Remem-
ber? I called those huge bargain
basements ‘pauper’s fields.’ And
that they are — available to those
poor jpeople throughout the Uni-
verse who have only a few millions
to their names. Incredible, isn’t it?

“A trillion credits? Why, it takes
a hundred billion to make you eligi-
ble for burial under one of the
buildings, where you’re packed in
like a sardine with millions of other
bodies. And how many people in
the Galaxy can lay their hands on a
hundred billion credits? The an-
swer, Joe, is too many people in-
deed. Some of them have so much
more money than that, they can ac-
tually afford to be buried in one of
the Parks.

“A trillion credits? Yes, that will
get you buried in Hong Kong Park,
or in Frogner, or Amundsen. But
not for long. You can rent a tem-
porary grave in Hong Kong, for
example, for a mere billion credits
a day. At that rate, for a trillion
credits, you’d stay buried on Earth
for less than three years, and then
your body would have to be moved
elsewhere. Very few people can
afford to purchase a permanent
plot in one of these parks. But they
are available — at a cost of some-
thing like one quadrillion credits.
And just how many men in the
Galaxy have a quadrillion credits
or so?”

Consolator Steen knew the an-
swer to this question exactly — he
also knew that Joseph Krieg was

NOR DUST CORRUPT

one of these men. Krieg could have
afforded a quadrillion credits, but it
would have exhausted his fortune.
Steen waited until he was tjre that
the other man was deep in mental
turmoil and then he continued, Iris
voice now softer, less commercial
sounding. “And having given you
‘the prices,’ so to speak, of the lesser
treasures, I will now surprise you by
saying that the entry ticket to Man-
hattan Park is free.”

Joseph Krieg looked at the man
intently, a curious fire of hope in his
eyes. “Free?”

Steen nodded. “And because it is
free, it is unobtainable. It is not
generally known, Joe, but the only
way one can be buried in Manhat-
tan Park is by permission of the
Galactic Congress. Only certified
heroes are so honored, and they are
few and far between. Remember
the great bacteriologist Manuel de
Artega? It took the Galactic Con-
gress more than fifty years of de-
bate after he died to decide
to let him in — but after all, the
only claim to fame he had was
that he saved a few trillion lives
from the Green Plague. He was
buried here some thirteen years ago.
There has been no one since, and
no one in sight.”

Steen patted the man on the
shoulder. “Now, come along, Joe. I
want you to take a look at Amund-
sen Park before you make up your
mind. It’s not at all cold at
the Pole these days — lovely flowers,
trees . . .”

“No!” Joseph Krieg cried, stand-
ing up. Steen and Braun both rose
too. “There must be a way!”

The Consolator smiled inwardly.

The fish was responding magnifi-
cently, Now to push the bait just a
little closer . . .

“Now, now, Joe. You mustn’t get
upset about this. The other Parks
are just as fine, I assure you,” Steen
murmured in consolation.

Krieg shook his head. “You can’t
tell me that sometime or other
someone didn’t buy his way into
Manhattan. It stands to reason . . .”

“Now, Joe. You’re taking this
much too hard . .

“I tell you, I know people. And
that’s aK-the Galactic Congress is
made up of — people. Tell me the
truth, Steen. Has anyone ever
bribed his way into this Park?”

Steen frowned and turned his
head slightly away from the man.
Just a flick or two more of the
line . . .

“I wish you wouldn’t ask me
questions like that, Joe. When I say
that it’s impossible, I mean just
that. You’ll just excite yourself
needlessly by listening to foolish
rumors . . .”

Krieg pounced on the word jubi-
lantly. “What do you mean, ru-
mors? Then there has been some-
one who bought his way in! Who
was it, Steen? I swear, if you don’t
tell me, I’ll move heaven and earth
to find out.”

Consolator Steen seemed to con-
sider for a moment, then sighed.
Hooked . “All right, Joe. But believe
me, you’ll wish you hadn’t asked.
For what happened to ... to this
other person is unattainable to
you.”

“Who was it?” Krieg asked excit-
edly.

james McConnell

“Who was the richest man who
ever lived, Joe?”

“You mean . . .”

“Who was it that founded the
University you went to, the hos-
pital in which you were born? Who
gave a magnificent library to every
city in the known universe, who
was it . . .”

Krieg interrupted. “Old C. T.
himself . .

Steen nodded. “Yes, old C. T.
Anderman himself. Years ago, Joe,
he faced the same problem you face
now, and he reacted the same way
you have. So he set out on a cam-
paign to get into Manhattan the
only way he knew how — with
money. There was one difference,
Joe. Where you are fabulously
wealthy, C. T. Anderman was
wealthy beyond all dreams. Do you
know that he gave away more than
one quintillion credits — gave it
away ! Just to make his name uni-
versally known. ‘The Philanthro-
pist of the Galaxy,’ they called him.
One quintillion credits! No wonder
they voted him a hero’s grave. But
what the press and the public never
knew is that it cost him more than
twice that much — for he had to
spend another one quintillion
credits for bribes and influence. It
took him fifty years, Joe, to pack
the Galactic Congress with enough
of his men to swing the trick. But
he finally did it.”

There was a short silence, then
Steen continued. “Now you see why
I didn’t want to tell you, Joe — to
raise false hopes. Only one man in
the Galaxy was ever wealthy enough
to buy his way into Manhattan.
And he had to give up his entire

NOR DUST CORRUPT

fortune to do it. I’m afraid that
you’ll never make the grade, Joe.”

Krieg stood stunned. Steen was
aware that two quintillion credits
was beyond Krieg’ s wildest dreams,
for Steen knew that Joseph Krieg
had come to Earth determined to
purchase his burial lot and then re-
tire from the business world.

Steen pulled lightly at Krieg’s
arm. “Now, come along, Joe. Let’s
go take a look at Hong Kong.”
The three men started off down the
path, but before they had gone ten
feet, a robot scurried out of the
bushes and dashed over to the
bench they had been sitting on. It
clucked softly to itself, put forth
several arms, and in a matter of
seconds had completely washed and
disinfected the bench.

Joseph Krieg, an empty and
numb look on his face, stopped to
watch the process. He stared for a
few seconds, then asked hoarsely,
“What’s that?”

Consolator Steen smiled. “One of
the Guardians, Joe. Superb— and
completely incorruptible. Within
minutes after we leave, every ves-
tige of our visit will be gone — each
piece of gravel we tread on will be
scrubbed clean or replaced, each
piece of grass we touch uprooted
and destroyed, even the very air we
breathe will be sterilized to remove
our traces. We have our problem
of vandals too, you know,” Steen
said, a wisp of a smile playing about
the corners of his mouth. “But these
are vandals who want to get in and
leave something, not like those of
ancient times on Earth who broke
into burial grounds to loot and de-
stroy. Yes, Joe, we found long ago

that the only safe method was to
employ mechanical devices to guard
against clandestine burials. So even
the gardeners who keep this Park
in blossom are mechanical. See,
there’s another one over there, hard
at work.”

Joseph Krieg turned and saw to
one side, by a large bed of red
flowers, another robot with dozens
of visible appendages. It purred an
almost silent tune as it clipped and
pruned, dug and spaded, trimmed
and cleaned the beds, occasionally
sprinkling a rich fertilizer dust here
and there.

“The Guardians of Valhalla, Joe.
They were set into motion centuries
ago, and not even the President
knows how to change their orders.
They can’t be bribed, even if their
human masters can be.”

Joseph Krieg stooped down be-
side the bed of flowers. He reached
out and picked up a handful of the
fine dirt and let it slip pensively
through his fingers. “Dust unto
dust,” he said slowly. “Man was
created from the soil of Earth, and
to dust he returneth.” There was a
long silence as Steen let the emo-
tion run its course. Then he touched
Krieg lightly on the arm and the
man stood up again. They started
off down the path, ignoring the
machine that skittered along behind
them, cleansing each bit of gravel
they stepped upon.

To Steen, this was always the
most important part of the inter-
view. While the fish was masticat-
ing the bait, he had to prattle on
to keep the hook from becoming
too visible. “Some day I must tell
you of all the ways people have

tried to get themselves buried on
Earth without paying for the privi-
lege, Joe. It makes a fascinating
story. We’re in a difficult position
here, you know, for we have to im-
port every single bit of food we eat,
every machine we use, each piece of
clothing that we wear. But every
single item that we import is care-
fully scanned to make sure that no
one has concealed so much as a
single human hair in the process.”
Steen watched Krieg’s face closely
as they walked. The man should
be going through hell just now, but
not too much of it showed on his
face. Steen continued his prattle, a
little puzzled.

“Oh, it’s incredible the ways that
people have tried to cheat. Some of
the methods used are too ugly to
relate, some of them humorous be-
yond belief. But this is why we’ve
resorted to mechanical guards all
the way round — to maintain our
incorruptibility. Even Anderman
with all of his quintillions could not
have bribed his way past our ma-
chines.” Steen’s voice betrayed none
of the anxiety that he felt. For
Joseph Krieg was almost smiling
now, was apparently feeling none
of the great confusion that Steen
had counted upon.

They reached the gates. “Well,
Joe. I think we’ll head straight for
Hong Kong, if you don’t mind. It
will be early morning there by now,
and that’s the best time . . .”

Joseph Krieg turned to face the
man. “Thank you very much, Con-
solator, but I don’t think that will
be necessary. You see, I’ve changed
my mind.”

Steen repressed a frown.

james McConnell

“Changed your mind?” he asked
blandly.

“Yes. After giving it due con-
sideration, I think that it would be
foolish to squander all of my for-
tune on a burial on Earth. My fam-
ily would be cheated out of its in-
heritance if I did, and after all, if
my sons carry on in their father’s
tradition, that’s enough for me.”
Krieg extended his hand. “I wish
to thank you, Steen, for your kind-
ness. I regret that I have troubled
you for nothing.”

Steen shook the man’s hand
warmly, using his free hand to grasp
Krieg’s arm in friendly fashion. “It
was no trouble at all, I assure you.
But please understand, Joseph, if
I can ever be of service to you in
any way, if I can ever be of assist-
ance in any manner whatsoever,
please do not hesitate to call upon
me. After all, even Anderman had
certain problems which . . .” Steen
smiled knowingly.

Krieg returned the smile. “I
think I understand. And I appreci-
ate your offer, although I must tell
you that there is little likelihood
that I will be forced to take it up.
Again my thanks. And now, good-
bye.” Krieg turned and strode
through the gates.

CONSOLATOR STEEN and his
assistant, Braun, stood watching
the man as he disappeared into the
distance. Then Steen turned and
walked oyer to one of the benches
in the Park near to the gates. He
sat down wearily.

“Braun,” he said. “I don’t like it.
Not at all. He should have been be-

side himself with worry, he should
have pumped me for more informa-
tion, he should have done a thou-
sand other things. But he didn’t. He
just turned and left. I tell you, I
don’t like it at all.”

Braun frowned. “He seemed to
take the bait, Sir.”

“And then, after sniffing it over
carefully, he turned and spat it
right back in our faces. We can’t
afford mistakes like this, Braun.
Earth needs the money too badly.
It’s our only means of support, and
we can’t let a fish like Krieg get off
the hook.”

“There are other fish around.
Sir.”

Steen’s face took on an angry
look. “Of course there are. But
none with the potentialities that
Krieg showed. Don’t you realize
that ever since that sad day when
Earth realized that she was a has-
been, she’s had to take advantage
of every single opportunity offered
her, just to keep alive? Oh, they
were clever, those ancient ones who
realized that if a civilization is to
be kept together, it must have a
myth. And so they gave our civiliza-
tion its myth — that of Earth, the
Great Ancestral Home. Just acci-
dentally, it also offered Earth a
means of retaining at least a part
of her power.”

Steen waved his hands in the air.
“From an economic viewpoint it
was nice too. Only the very wealthy
'could afford an Earth burial, and
so it became a means of hidden,
graduated taxation — Earth soaked
the rich and ignored the poor, and
cut her overt taxes while doing so.
Burial became so costly that it

NOR DUST CORRUPT

helped break up the huge Estates,
it helped leaven out the wealth.
Our propaganda was sharpened to
the point where we could take a
man like Anderman and drive him
all of his life towards an almost un-
attainable goal, force him to ex-
pend his tremendous energies in the
accumulation of great wealth4'' ex-
tending the frontiers of the Galaxy
as he did so, building up our civili-
zation’s strength in the process, and
then, in the end, make him turn all
of his wealth over to Earth in one
form or another. Oh, I tell you,
Braun, those ancient ones were
clever.”

The tirade halted. The air hung
silent for a moment, and the twit-
tering of a near-by bird could be
heard.

“They were very, very clever.
They gave us all the tools, and
somehow we’ve failed to use them
correctly. What was it, Braun?
What did we do, or fail to do, that
let Krieg get away from us?”

Braun frowned. “I don’t know,
Sir. Perhaps he just changed his
mind about Earth.”

Steen snorted. “Impossible! He’s
had too many years’ exposure to
our propaganda for that. He can
no more give up his dream of burial
in Manhattan than he can give up
his very personality. No, Braun, I
think we just underestimated the
man. Somewhere along the line he
had an idea, he saw something that
we failed to see.

Braun shrugged his shoulders.
“But what are we going to do
about it?”

Gonsolator Steen pursed his lips.
“I tell you what I’m going to do

about it. I’m going straight back
to the office and sit and think, and
think, and then think some more.
Krieg’ s got a good fifty years ahead
of him yet, and that means I’ve got
exactly that long to guess what’s on
his mind. I’ll get that quintillion
credits if it’s the last thing I do.”

They had no more than reached
the gate when one of the mechani-
cal Guardians appeared from be-
hind a bush, chortled to itself and
scurried over to the bench. It
cleansed the rough-hewn stone,
then washed the path the two men
had taken. Then, its exceptional
chores accomplished, it went back
to its normal pursuits.

It approached a bed of begonias
nearby. One appendage extended
itself and began digging up the dirt
around the plants. Meanwhile, in-
side the machine, other appendages
ripped open a small bag and spilled
the fine dust inside the bag into a
small trough. The empty bag was
rolled up and stuck in a disposal
bin along with several other bags,
all with identical markings:

JOSEPH KRIEG AND SONS,

BY APPOINTMENT,
PURVEYORS OF FINE
FERTILIZERS

TO THE GALACTIC GOVERN-
MENT ON EARTH

The machine clucked quietly to
itself as it sprinkled the dust evenly
over the black, yielding earth. It
patted the fertilizer gently into the
rich soil, making sure that each
plant got its fair share. Then it
scurried off silently to tend to a bed
of calla lilies nearby. • • •

It’s been said that the soul is the

form that makes the body — which may

just possibly explain what happened

on that fatal day at Ivy College . . .

THE OLD GOAT

BY CHARLES L. FONTENAY

DR. ANGSTROM was known to his stu-
dents and many of his colleagues on the
faculty as “The Old Goat.” Very appropriate,
that name. He had the disposition of a goat
with dyspepsia, he had the cold blue eyes
of a goat, he had the waggling whiskers of a
goat. Perhaps it’s in memory of Dr. Angstrom
that Ivy College has a goat for its mascot
now.

Dr. Angstrom was even more goatish than
usual that day last summer when half a
dozen top scientists in the field gathered to

see his preview experiment on mat-
ter transmission of a live animal.
He had been working4 Jiard for
weeks on the transmitter and keep-
ing up classes at the same time,
which did not improve his disposi-
tion. Besides, he had a real goat for
an experimental animal, and goats
are notoriously hard on the nervous
system.

This particular animal, at the
moment the scientists entered, was
straining at his rope, trying to get a
mouthful of a tablecloth which
graced a nearby table full of jars
and retorts. Failing this, the goat
exhibited that typical lack of dis-
crimination in matters edible and
began to chew on his rope.

I felt a little out of place among
all these giant brains. My reason
for being there was that I"had been
serving, during my college career,
as sort of a factotum and fetch-and-
carry man for Dr. Angstrom, and I
was to take notes for him. I had
acquired considerable affection for
The Old Goat. Maybe that’s one
reason I hate to see his great scien-
tific work kept under wraps because
people still insist it’s dangerous.

“I have proved to my own satis-
faction that the matter transmitter
works,” Dr. Angstrom told the as-
sembled scientists. “I have made a
number of transmissions of inani-
mate matter. In theory, it should
work just as well for animate ob-
jects and I have invited you to be
present at the first test of this
theory.

“I need not go into detail with
you about the basic theory of mat-
ter transmission. The transmitter
itself picks up the atomic and elec-

tronic ‘image’ of the object inside
it, much as a television scanner
picks up a scene, except that it is
done in three dimensions instead of
two. This is made possible by the
four-dimensional element which is
the heart of the apparatus and was
made available to us through recent
intra-atomic research.

“The receiver picks up the image
as a television receiver does, except
again in three dimensions. The mat-
ter is not duplicated because the
transmitter strips down the object
within it as it transmits.

“Now the question that has been
raised by some scientists about the
transmission of animate objects is
whether the ‘soul’ or ‘life force’ can
be transmitted. I consider this ques-
tion ridiculous, and will prove it so.
It is my contention that such ‘life
force’ is not a thing apart from the
physical shell.”

The matter transmitter was a
large closed cylinder on one side
of the room. The receiver was a
similar cylinder on the other. Both
were raised slightly from the floor.

As sort of hors d’ oeuvre, Dr. Ang-
strom transmitted a large chunk of
lead across the room, then a glass
jar. In each case, the object was
placed in the transmitter and a
moment later removed from the
receiver across the room. There was
no possible way for it to have been
moved across the intervening space
except by broadcast transmission.

“As you see,” said Dr. Angstrom,
“I have eliminated the necessity
for a switch by building the switch
into the door of the transmitter. As
soon as the door is closed, transmis-
( Continued on page 113)

‘ ~ — ■;

What Is Your Science I. Q.?

HERE’S ANOTHER quiz to test your knowledge of the sci-

entific facts you often read about in science fiction. Count 5 for

each correct answer. You should score 50. Over 65 makes you a <!

whiz. Answers on page 113.

1. The phenomenon of an element or a compound in two or
more forms is called : ^

2. The Beaufort scale is used to measure 1 .

3. A sphenic number is one with unequal factors.

4. How many pairs of nerves connect Man’s spinal cord with
the main body cavities and the response organs? Y

5. Hysteretic loss is £ loss of energy due to molecular change
manifest in

6. How many coulombs are equal to one faraday?

7. What are the growth stimulating hormones in plants called?

8. What have axons, cytons and dendrites in common? ' . ^

9. Which archeological age is known as “The Age of Reptiles”? j1

10. The response of plants to touch stimuli is called . 1

11. The technical term for the ultimate heat death of the uni- |

verse is v

12. The human embryo begins existence with a — ~ cham- ^

bered heart. '

13. The inequality of the moon’s motion in orbit due to the |
attraction of the sun is called an

14. An alloy combining mercury and almost any other metal is * j
called — v - ^

15. Marble is a form of — — — rock. f >

16. A Nicol Prism is used in the — of light, u'

17. Chemically pH is used to indicate the concentration ^

of a substance.

18. The Baume scale is used to determine .

19. The type of nutrition in which an organism lives on dead

organic matter is called .

20. A Wheatstone Bridge is an especially devised current for !
measuring W'.v"-'fin a conductor.

Illustrated by Paul Orban

You know how a tune can dominate the mind.

Imagine the effect of the perfect melody!

BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

ff^HARLIE,” Harry Purvis began, quietly enough.

VJ “That darn tune you’re whistling is driving me mad.
I’ve heard it every time I’ve switched on the radio for the
last week.”

There was a sniff from John Christopher.

“You ought to stay tuned to the Third Programme. Then
you’d be safe.”

“Some of us,” retorted Harry, “don’t care for an ex-
clusive diet of Elizabethan madrigals. But don’t let’s quarrel
about that , for heaven’s sake. Has it ever occurred to you
that there’s something rather — fundamental — about hit

tunes?”

“What do you mean?”
“Well, they come along out
of nowhere, and then for weeks
everybody’s humming them,
just as Charlie did then. The
good ones grab hold of you so
thoroughly that you just can’t
get them out of your head —
they go round and round for
days. And then, suddenly,
they’ve vanished again.”

“I know what you mean,”
said Art Vincent. “There are
some melodies that you can
take or leave, but others that
stick like treacle, whether you
want them or not.”

“Precisely. I got saddled that
way for a whole week with the
big theme from the finale of
Sibelius Two — even went to
sleep with it running round inside my head. Then there’s
that “Third Man” piece — da di da di daa, di da, di daa . . .
look what that did to everybody.”

Harry had to pause for a moment until his audience had
stopped zithering. When the last “Plonk!” had died away
he continued:

“Precisely! You all felt the same way. Now what is there
about these tunes that has this effect? Some of them are
great music — others just banal, but they’ve obviously got
something in common.”

“Go on,” said Charlie. “We’re waiting.”

“I don’t know what the answer is,” replied Harry.

“And what’s more, I don’t want to.
For I know a man who f~und out.”

Automatically, someone handed
him a beer, so that the tenor of his
tale would not be disturbed. It al-
ways annoyed a lot of people when
he had to stop in mid-flight for a
refill.

“I don’t know why it is,” said
Harry Purvis, “that most scientists
are interested in music, but it’s an
undeniable fact. I’ve known several
large labs that had their own
amateur symphony orchestras —
some of them quite good, too. As
far as the mathematicians are con-
cerned, one can think of obvious
reasons for this fondness: music,
particularly classical music, has a
form which is almost mathematical.
And then, of course, there’s the un-
derlying theory — harmonic rela-
tions, wave analysis, frequency
distribution, and so on. It’s a
fascinating study in itself, and one
that appeals strongly to the scien-
tific mind. Moreover, it doesn’t —
as some people might think — pre-
clude a purely aesthetic apprecia-
tion of music for its own sake.

“However, I must confess that
Gilbert Lister’s interest in music
was purely cerebral. He was, pri-
marily, a physiologist, specializing
in the study of the brain. So when
I said that his interest was cerebral,
I meant it quite literally. Alexan-
der’s Ragtime Band and the Choral
Symphony were all the same to
him. He wasn’t concerned with the
sounds themselves, but only what
happened when they got past the
ears and started doing things to the
brain.

“In an audience as well edu-

cated as this:” said Harry, with an
emphasis that made it sound posi-
tively insulting, “there will be no-
one who’s unaware of the fact that
much of the brain’s activity is elec-
trical. There are, in fact, steady
pulsing rhythms going on all the
time, and they can be detected and
analysed by modern instruments.
This was Gilbert Lister’s territory.
He could stick electrodes on your
scalp and his amplifiers would draw
your brain waves on yards of tape.
Then he could examine them and
tell you all sorts of interesting things
about yourself. Ultimately, he
claimed, it would be possible to
identify anyone from their enceph-
alogram— to use the correct term —
more positively than by finger-
prints. A man might get a surgeon
to change his skin, but if we ever
got to the stage when surgery could
change your brain — well, you’d
have turned into somebody else,
anyway, so the system still wouldn’t
have failed.

“It was while he was studying
the alpha, beta and other rhythms
in the brain that Gilbert got in-
terested in music. He was sure that
there must be some connection be-
tween musical and mental rhythms.
He’d play music at various tempos
to his subjects and see what effect
it had on their normal brain fre-
quencies. As you might expect, it
had a lot, and the discoveries he
made led Gilbert on into more
philosophical fields.

“I only had one good talk with
him about his theories. It was not
that he was at all secretive — I’ve
never met a scientist who was, come
to think of it — but he didn’t like to

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

talk about his work until he knew
where it was leading. However,
what he told me was enough to
prove that he’d opened up a very
interesting line, and thereafter I
made rather a point of cultivating
him. My firm supplied some of his
equipment, but I wasn’t averse to
picking up a little profit on the
side. It occurred to me that if
Gilbert’s ideas worked out, he’d
need a business manager before you
could whistle the opening bar of
the Fifth Symphony . . .

“For what Gilbert was trying to
do was to lay a scientific founda-
tion for the theory of hit-tunes. Of
course, he didn’t think of it that
way: he regarded it as a pure re-
search project, and didn’t look any
further ahead than a paper in the
Proceedings of the Physical Society .
But I spotted its financial implica-
tions at once. They were quite
breath-taking.

“Gilbert was sure that a great
melody, or a hit tune, made its im-
pression on the mind because in
some way it fitted in with the fun-
damental electrical rhythms going
on in the brain. One analogy he
used was “It’s like a Yale key
going into a lock — the two patterns
have got to fit before anything hap-
pens.”

“He tackled the problem from
two angles. In the first place, he
took hundreds of the really famous
tunes in classical and popular music
and analysed their structure — their
morphology, as he put it. This was
done automatically, in a big har-
monic analyser that sorted out all
the frequencies. Of course, there
was a lot more to it than this, but

ULTIMATE MELODY

I’m sure you’ve got the basic idea.

“At the same time, he tried to
see how the resutling patterns of
waves agreed with the natural elec-
trical vibrations of the brain. Be-
cause it was Gilbert’s theory — and
this is where we get into rather
deep philosophical waters — that all
existing tunes were merely crude
approximations to one fundamental
melody. Musicians had been grop-
ing for it down the centuries, but
they didn’t know what they were
doing, because they were ignorant
of the relation between music and
mind. Now that this had been un-
ravelled, it should be possible to
discover the Ultimate Melody.”

“Huh!” said John Christopher.
“It’s only a rehash of Plato’s theory
of ideals. You know — all the ob-
jects of our material world are
merely crude copies of the ideal
chair or table or what-have-you. So
your friend was after the ideal
melody. And did he find it?”

“I’ll tell you,” continued Harry
imperturbably. “It took Gilbert
about a year to complete his analy-
sis, and then he started on the syn-
thesis. To put it crudely, he built a
machine that would automatically
construct patterns of sound accord-
ing to the laws that he’d uncovered.
He had banks of oscillators and
mixers — in fact, he modified an or-
dinary electronic organ for this part
of the apparatus — which were con-
trolled by his composing machine.
In the rather childish way that
scientists like to name their off-
spring, Gilbert had called this de-
vice Ludwig.

“Maybe it helps to understand
how Ludwig operated if you think

of him as a kind of kaleidoscope,
working with sound rather than
light. But he was a kaleidoscope set
to obey certain laws, and those laws
— so Gilbert believed — were based
on the fundamental structure of the
human mind. If he could get the
adjustments correct, Ludwig would
be bound, sooner or later, to arrive
at the Ultimate Melody as he
searched through all the possible
patterns of music.

“I had one opportunity of hear-
ing Ludwig at work, and it was un-
canny. The equipment was the
usual nondescript mess of elec-
tronics which one meets in any lab :
it might have been a mock-up of a
new computer, a radar gun-sight, a
traffic control system, or a ham
radio. It was very hard to believe
that, if it worked, it would put ev-
ery composer in the world out of
business. Or would it? Perhaps not:
Ludwig might be able to deliver the
raw material, but surely it would
still have to be orchestrated.

‘‘Then the sound started to come
from the speaker. At first it seemed
to me that I was listening to the
five-finger exercises of an accurate
but completely uninspired pupil.
Most of the themes were quite
banal : the machine would play
one, then ring the changes on it
bar after bar until it had exhausted
all the possibilities before going on
to the next. Occasionally a quite
striking phrase would come up, but
on the whole I was not at all im-
pressed.

“However, Gilbert explained that
this was only a trial run and that
the main circuits had not yet been

set up. When they were, Ludwig
would be far more selective : at the
moment, he was playing everything
that came along — he had no sense
of discrimination. When he had ac-
quired that, then the possibilities
were limitless.

“That was the last time I ever
saw Gilbert Lister. I had arranged
to meet him at the lab about a week
later, when he expected to have
made substantial progress. As it
happened, I was about an hour late
for my appointment. And that was
very lucky for me . . .

“When I got there, they had just
taken Gilbert away. His lab assist-
ant, an old man who’d been with
him for years, was sitting distraught
and disconsolate among the tangled
wiring of Ludwig. It took me a long
time to discover what had hap-
pened, and longer still to work out
the explanation.

“There was no doubt of one
thing. Ludwig had finally worked.
The assistant had gone off to lunch
while Gilbert was making the final
adjustments, and when he came
back an hour later the laboratory
was pulsing with one long and very
complex melodic phrase. Either the
machine had stopped automatically
at that point, or Gilbert had
switched it over to REPEAT. At
any rate, he had been listening, for
several hundred times at least, to
that same melody. When his assist-
ant found him, he seemed to be in a
trance. His eyes were open yet un-
seeing, his limbs rigid. Even when
Ludwig was switched off, it made
no difference. Gilbert was beyond
help.

“What had happened? Well, I
ARTHUR C. CLARKE

suppose we should have thought of
it, but it’s so easy to be wise after
the event. It’s just as I said at the
beginning. If a composer, working
merely by rule of thumb, can pro-
duce a melody which can dominate
your mind for days on end, imagine
the effect of the Ultimate Melody
for which Gilbert was searching!
Supposing it existed — and I’m not
admitting that it does — it would
form an endless ring in the memory
circuits of the mind. It would go
round and round forever, obliterat-
ing all other thoughts. All the cloy-
ing melodies of the past would be
mere ephemerae compared to it.

“They’ve tried shock therapy —
everything. But it’s no good; the
pattern has been set, and it can’t be
broken. He’s lost all consciousness
of the outer world, and has to be
fed intravenously. He never moves
or reacts to external stimuli, but
sometimes, they tell me, he twitches
in a peculiar way as if he is beating
time . . .

“I’m afraid there’s no hope for
him. Yet I’m not sure if his fate is
a horrible one, or whether he
should be envied. Perhaps, in a
sense, he’s found the ultimate real-
ity that philosophers like Plato are
always talking about. I really don’t
know. And sometimes I find myself
wondering just what that infernal
melody was like, and almost wish-
ing that I’d been able to hear it
perhaps once. But there’ll never be
a chance now, of course.”

“I was waiting for this,” said
Charles Willis nastily. “I suppose
the apparatus blew up, or some-
thing, so that as usual there’s no

way of checking your story.”

Harry gave him his best more-in-
sorrow-than-in-anger look.

“What happened next was one of
those completely maddening things
for which I shall never stop blam-
ing myself. You see, I’d been too
interested in Gilbert’s experiment to
look after my firm’s business in the
way that I should. I’m afraid he’d
fallen badly behind with his pay-
ments, and when the Accounts De-
partment discovered what had hap-
pened to him they acted quickly. I
was only off for a couple of days on
another job, and when I got back,
do you know what had happened?
They’d pushed through a court or-
der, and had seized all their prop-
erty. Of course that had meant dis-
mantling Ludwig: when I saw him
next he was just a pile of useless
junk. It made me weep.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Eric Maine.
“But you’ve forgotten Loose End
Number Two. What about Gilbert’s
assistant ? He went into the lab
while the gadget was going full
blast. Why didn’t it get him, too?”
H. Purvis, Esquire, paused to
drain the last drops from his glass
and to hand it across to Drew.

“Really!” he said. “Is this a
cross-examination? I didn’t men-
tion the point because it was rather
trivial. You see, Gilbert’s assistant
was a first-rate lab technician, but
he’d never been able to help much
with the adjustments to Ludwig.
For he was one of those people who
are completely tone-deaf. To him,
the Ultimate Melody meant no
more than a couple of cats on a
garden wall.” • • •

^ULTIMATE MELODY

B Y

BRYCE

WALTON

WAR GAME

THE MINISTER of Peace asked the United States
President if he had heard from the Secretary of State.
“Yes/’ the President said. “I heard from Mr. Thompson
only a few minutes ago.”

“How’s their final conference coming, Mr. President?”
“Inevitably. Operation Push Button within the hour.”
The Minister of Peace blinked out the window at
Washington, D.G. “So they’re going to blow up the
world?”

“Inevitably.”

“Shall we watch it?” asked the Minister of Peace.
The President nodded, spoke to master control through
the intercom box on his desk, and switched on the TV
screen. They had a special pipe-line into the United Na-
tions Cellar. They sat back, had martinis, and watched
the interior of the Cellar come to life on the screen.

Three thousand miles from New Washington, under
a natural camouflage of tundra and wintry hills, the
U.N. Cellar was thought by its occupants to be thorough-
ly resistant to any offensive weapons. It was three miles
underground, protected by lead, concrete and steel. Its
location was known only to the UN Security Division

The playing of war games should not be forbidden;
but rather viewed as a natural outlet for emotion-
al tensions. — dr. l. m. stoltz, Stanford university.

Illustrated by Ed Emsh
77

that was supposed to be strictly
neutral in international affairs, or
so the Cellar occupants assumed.
The engineers and workmen who
had planned and constructed the
Cellar were supposed to have been
brainwashed and therefore had no
memory of the great project. An oc-
casional caribou drifted over the
Cellar with the North Wind, and
wolves that always follow the cari-
bou.

In his suite, Chandler Thomp-
son, Secretary of State, prepared
himself for the global diplomacy
game’s final hand in which it is
never so important what hand you
play, as the way you play it. After
years of negotiation, full agreement
on Operation Push Button had
been attained, and Thompson took
some pride in having played a lead-
ing role in the ingenious idea.

Morten, his valet, finished shav-
ing Thompson’s pale face, helped
him dress in striped trousers, cut-
away, and white gardenia.

“Thank you, Morten,” said the
Secretary of State.

“You seem calm enough, sir.
Frankly, I’m ill at ease.”

“You may leave the Cellar if you
wish,” Thompson said, skimming
through his notes. “You’ve served
graciously. I appreciate it. But it
is your privilege to return to your
family outside now. I might remind
you that your chance of survival if
you remain here is practically 100
percent.”

“It isn’t that, sir. It just seems
incredible that so many must die.”
He felt of his wallet, the pictures
of his family in it.

“It’s hardly a matter of princi-

ple,” Thompson said. “Nor a ques-
tion of ideology. It’s simply a ques-
tion of firmness and realistic prac-
ticality, and getting the job done
once and for all. That has been my
stand from the beginning and na-
turally it cannot be changed.”

“But billions of people dying — ”

“Death before dishonor, Mor-
ten.”

“Yes, sir.” Morten knew that in
every suite in the Cellar every
diplomat was saying practically the
same thing. Thompson looked up
from his neat notes. “People,
Morten, have been properly pre-
pared for violent death. Indeed
there has been a feeling of security
in numbers. The Ministry of Edu-
cation working with the War De-
partment has done such a splendid
job. Now every child has grown up
fully prepared to die in the holo-
caust. And every individual still a
child regards violent death as
casually as a game of marbles. The
required attitude has been thor-
oughly conditioned in the populace.
The idea was to make violence,
savagery, and sudden death, an
every day affair. And we have done
it. Sad, but a necessary task.”

Morten said nothing. Thompson
looked at the neon map corusca-
ting on the wall. “Our country is
not unique in this, Morten. Anni-
hilation will come as a shock only
to the misinformed anywhere in the
world.”

Morten sat down. He remem-
bered how his kids used to come
home from school laughingly play-
ing war games, manipulating toy
atomic cannons and the like. They
received additional marks in school

BRYCE WALTON

for being good and cooperative
during atomic bomb drills and
preparations for thermonuclear
disasters. They had been so proud
of their dogtags that came with
boxes of cereal. In the evenings out
back they used to have bury-the-
dead games.

Thompson was saying, “Remem-
ber juvenile delinquency? It was
necessary. Millions had to be con-
ditioned psychologically for Opera-
tion Killer. An insensitive, fatal-
istic attitude had to be engendered.
For their own good.”

Morten flicked a speck of lint
from Thompson’s stooped shoulder.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Maybe it
will be humane, in the long run.”

“One must face the hard, ma-
terialistic facts,” Thompson said.
“Oh, that reminds me.” He went to
his private switchboard and got a
secret outside line to the Office of
Civilian Defense. “Hello, Donnel-
son. Yes, I’m fine. I haven’t talked
with you for some time now, and I
was wondering about that sugges-
tion of mine. Yes, the household
pets thing. That’s right, particular-
ly dogs. They’re big morale factors
in the lives of children and there
may be some survivors. Well, then,
issue another bulletin on that im-
mediately. Things are reaching a
head here in the Cellar. Yes, dogs
should be lashed firmly to heavy
pieces of furniture, away from win-
dows. Put water where they can
reach it. Hysteria under the bomb-
ing attacks can be avoided by giv-
ing sodium bromide tablets to the
dogs. That’s right. Survivors will
need pets. Morale . . .”

After Thompson was through

WAR GAME

talking to Donnelson, Morten said.
“You know, sir, the end will be a
relief to some people. They’ve been
blitzed by a non-stop barrage of
fear bombs so long, I think they’ll
be glad to get it over with.”

“Very perceptive, Morten. That
has been one of Psychological War-
fare’s primary aims in preparation.”
Thompson got another outside line.
Dawson, Civilian Defense. As he
waited for Dawson to come in, he
said to Morten. “Get the dueling
pistols out of the cabinet, please.”
Morten nodded.

“Hello, Dawson. Fine, fine,
things coming to a head here. How
much distribution did you manage
on the shrouds? Eighty percent?
Excellent. I haven’t heard from
Harry on the details for quite a
while. Wanted to check personally.
As you say, I’ve never really lost
my touch with the grass-roots. My
feeling from the start was that mil-
lions of wooden coffins would be
out of the question. The olive drab
plastic sheets seemed to be the only
practical recourse from the start.
The psychological importance of
getting bodies out of sight as rapid-
ly as possible cannot be overempha-
sized. Oh, Dawson, one moment
. . . yes, I know about the public
parks, playgrounds and vacant
tracts in the suburbs. But what
about New York City? The only
way is to send the bodies up the
Hudson River using piers as
morgues. The problem of where to
put so many bodies, particularly
when they will all appear for dis-
posal at the same time, is a consid-
erable one. Allowing for three-by-
six grave-sites, with three feet for

aisles, the whole problem of ade-,
quate disposal acreage is primary.”
Thompson switched off the connec-
tion.

Thompson moved his fingers
over the .38 caliber dueling pistols
in the velvet-lined case. His eyes
mellowed with nostalgia. “Gift
from the old Secretary of War. My
boy, Don, learned to shoot with this
one when he was only six years old.
If he had lived to be an adult, he
would have been a tough fighter.
But hti was killed by a rival delin-
quent gang when he was twelve.
He only got there a little sooner. He
had just finished reading Niebuhr,
so he knew the tragic irony of his-
tory.”

Thompson balanced one of the
pistols in his hand. He looked at his
watch. “It’s time,” he said reli-
giously.

As Thompson entered the Hall of
Ministers, the representatives of
five balance of power nations arose
at once in deference to the sixth.
Morten sat unobtrusively in a far
corner, holding the case of dueling
pistols on his knees.

Thompson sat down. The min-
utes of the last conference were
read by a mechanical secretary. A
summation of their final agreement
on Operation Push Button was
briefly reviewed by the automatic
translating secretary. No changes
were suggested.

The surface of the huge confer-
ence table was somewhat like a gi-
gantic topographical map of the
world. It covered perhaps a thou-
sand square feet and had been con-
structed by brain-washed artisans
and engineers and scientists in per-

fect electronic detail. It was so real-
istic that it radiated a sort of sen-
tience, seeming almost to breathe
in astonishing precision with the
respiration of important strategical-
ly located cities, ports, commynica-
tion and manufacturing centers.
Before each Minister was a"console
containing several buttons.

Each Minister arose, made a
speech concerning the sovereign
rights of the particular nation or
bloc of nations he represented. In
each case, the speeches seemed the
same to Morten. He knew that if
merely the name of the country or
bloc in each speech was changed,
the rest would be the same, and
sound something like:

“Gentlemen, a free such-and-
such people can no longer tolerate
a militant rearming so-and-so. Ev-
ery other possibility has been dis-
cussed and rejected. I must say now
that at this moment a state of war
must of necessity exist between
such-and-such and so-and-so.”

Morten had been hearing vari-
ations of it for years. He knew it all
by heart. As each Minister made
this implacable statement, he sat
down, and without further cere-
mony, pushed a button or buttons
on his private console. On the topo-
graphical map, as a button was
pushed, some important section of
the map, an area, a city, a port,
some significant transportation,
communication, or manufacturing
industrial center, would shoot out
realistic sparks, smoke, and then
crumble into lifeless debris.

Morten tried to control the
flinching and twitching of his mus-
cles. An intricate network of elec-

BRYCE WALTON

tronic relays connected with ther-
monuclear bombs went out all over
the world, and were hooked in to
the map on the conference table.
Millions of people were just blown
up somewhere, Morten thought.

Another Minister finished his
speech, sat down, pressed buttons.
More smoke and flashes shot up.
Millions of others out there some-
where have just been annihilated,
Morten thought. It doesn’t seem
possible, he thought then. It’s not
possible. It’s some kind of final
madness. But it’s happening.

It had been decided that this was
the simple direct way, avoiding
long, time-wasting programs of
mobilization and warfare. If the
conclusion was foregone, had been
the question, then why not go di-
rectly to it by the shortest and most
efficient route? And the answer was
as inevitable as the question.

More Ministers stood up, made
their final declarations, and pushed
buttons. Little puffballs and clouds
of smoke drifted over the confer-
ence table, obscuring distinctive
facial outlines and turning the min-
isters into shadow shapes as Mor-
ten watched.

Only two of the Ministers had
not yet pressed their buttons. Only
two sectors of the world remain
alive, Morten thought. He coughed
as acrid smoke swirled about the
room. He felt a kind of blessed
numbed paralysis. He could almost
feel the whole world turning into a
radioactive hell all around him,
mushrooms of, gigantic size sprout-
ing fast and furiously in the last
big aftermath of rain. Yet he could
scarcely imagine how it really was

WAR GAME

now, outside the Cellar. He thought
vaguely about the dogs, wondering
how many of them had avoided
hysteria by having been tied to
heavy pieces of furniture and given
sodium bromide tablets. The kids
who survived would need pets.

Morten sat there, trying to see
through the thickening smoke. He
tried to feel grateful for having
been in the Cellar. But in a few
more seconds America might also
be destroyed. What then? And
what if only America remained —
would that be any better?

He had resisted such speculation,
but how could he resist it any
longer? The Ministers had their
wives, families, lovers in the Cel-
lar, and supplies enough to last in-
definitely. But Morten’s family was
outside. In a few seconds they
might be dead. After that nothing.
Nothing at all.

He heard Thompson say in a
calm voice. “Morten, the pistols.”

He also heard the other Minis-
ter say in Russian that he wanted
his pistol. Morten had to respect
the secret agreement that Thomp-
son and the Russian Minister had
made yesterday. After the other
Ministers pushed their buttons,
Thompson and the Russian would
fight a duel then the survivor of the
duel would push his button.

“Someone should win,” Thomp-
son and the Russian had agreed.
“This way, one will be the absolute
victor.”

If the other Ministers knew what
this secret agreement was they
either did not care, or did not care
enough now. They got up from the
(Continued on page 114)

BY KENNETH O’HARA

Barton was unique — an absolutely self-sufficient human being.
The biggest problem he had in space was holding on to his san-
ity. And he solved it by altering time itself to suit his needs . . .

THE FLOATER

AS A WATCHMAN in a man-made kind
of observational meteor floating millions
of miles from nowhere out among the planets,
Barton had two main duties. To keep his sanity
and to keep the watch. The second was simple.
The gadgets all took care of themselves. All
Barton did was send in a report in case an
alarm went off indicating something was wrong
with some gadget or other.

Staying sane was supposed to be a watcher’s
big problem. Barton couldn’t figure out why
they were so concerned, especially the neuro-
psychologist or whatever he was, Von Ulrich,
who was always coming around in his clinical
space boat, studying Barton, asking him ques-
tions, giving him all kinds of tests.

Illustrated by Paul Orban

Once something glinted like a mote in sun-
light past the observation port and Von Ulrich
said. “That’s Collins out there. Collins was
here only a week and he put on a pressure suit
and jumped into space. He’s still rotating
round and round out there.”

“Poor devil,” Barton said.

“Most of them don’t even last a week out
here, Barton. Six months is the maximum.

You’ve been here almost a year and you’re
liable to start cracking any minute. I don’t like
the way things look.”

“I feel fine, sir.”

Several months later, Von Ulrich
dropped by again. “How are things
going, Barton?”

“Great, sir. Just swell.”

“You feel comfortable, no anx-
iety?”

“I feel fine.”

“You’ve done a fine job, Barton
— so far.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You manage to keep occupied?”
“I just take it easy, sir.”

“I see.”

A few months later, Von Ulrich
was back, watching Barton mould-
ing something out of clay, a sort
of human shape without a face.
There were other self-amusement
gimmicks, wood-working, soap-
carving, movies and the like, but
Barton preferred moulding things
haphazardly out of clay, and some-
times reading one of the books he
wasn’t supposed to have brought
along because books were no longer
popular.

“What were you thinking about
when you moulded this thing?”
Von Ulrich asked.

“Nothing much, sir.”

“You must have been thinking
of something?”

“I guess I was thinking of a man
sleeping beside a river in green
grass with nobody for miles around.
Something like that.”

“You weren’t by any chance
thinking about a dead man?”

“I don’t like death much.”

Later on sometime, Von Ulrich
dropped around again on his thera-
peutic tour of basketballs, and Mar-
tian bases, and other bases even

more remote. Barton wondered how
anyone could find the basketball
drifting in all that blackness. Just
a little ragged spheroid like a piece
of dead slag, something like a cork
bobbing in a black ocean too big
even to bother thinking about.
If no one ever found the basket-
ball Barton would have been hap-
pier, because the basketball was
self-sustaining and could go on and
on for years without supplies or any
human contact.

“Getting a little lonely maybe?”
Von Ulrich asked.

“No sir.”

“Don’t miss having people
around. Your wife, your son?”

Barton wanted to laugh.

“Well, I’ll be back to see you,
Barton. I may be gone a year this
time.”

“Happy New Year,” Barton said.

But it didn’t seem like a year
when Von Ulrich came back in his
sleek little space-hopping clinic. It
didn’t seem like much of anything.

“You don’t find the absence of
women irritating, Barton?”

“I can take them or leave them,
sir.

“Not here. There simply aren’t
any at all.”

“I like something, but then if it
isn’t there, I don’t miss it.”

“All right, Barton,” Von Ulrich
would say after giving Barton more
brain-wave tests, word-association
tests and making him look at ink-
blots until his eyes turned red. “See
you in a few months.”

“See you, sir,” Barton said.

And sure enough, as though he
had never really been away, Von
Ulrich would show up again, with

KENNETH O'HARA

his testing devices, his cages of mice
and guinea pigs, and his intense
searching eyes. He had a folder of
pictures and after ink-blot tests, he
had Barton look at the pictures,
like the one of a man in deep shad-
ow standing over a sleeping kid.

“What do you see there, Bar-
ton?”

“A guy standing over a kid.”
“What’s he doing there?”

“I haven’t any idea.”

“Is the child sleeping?”

“Maybe it’s just pretending.”
“Pretending what?”

“Or maybe it’s dead.”

Von Ulrich’s thin face frowned
intensely. “Is the child pretending
to be asleep, or is it dead?”

“Maybe it isn’t a real kid. Maybe
it’s a dummy.”

Von Ulrich’s face reddened.
“What’s the man thinking?”

“How should I know, sir.”

“You don’t care?”

“No, why should I give a damn
what he’s thinking?”

“You tell me. Why shouldn’t
you?”

“Because it’s none of my busi-
ness.”

Then there was another time,
during some visit or other, when
Von Ulrich pulled another word
asssociation test.

“Love.”

“It makes the world go round.”
“Blackness.”

“Sleep.”

“Alone.”

“Quiet.”

It went on for hours. Von Ulrich
always seemed to be angrier be-
cause Barton didn’t crack up, or

THE FLOATER

because he insisted on turning in a
perfect service record in the basket-
ball.

“Barton, for God’s sake, don’t
you realize how important this
watch is? This valuable information
gathered by these recorders. Think
what it would mean if that data fell
into the hands of the Asians! What
if you missed an alarm, or fouled
up in some way, and one of these
recorders destroyed all the data?”
“Haven’t I been alert all the
time, sir?”

“Yes! But you’ve been out here
now for three years! Three years.
No one can possibly stand it longer
than six months. And the fact that
you’ve been here for three years
only means some absolutely cata-
strophic crack-up is being pro-
longed, built up inside.”

“I don’t feel a bit different, sir.”
“There are subtle ways of crack-
ing up.”

“You want me to have some sort
of symptom or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

IT MUST have been at least an-
other year before Von Ulrich
came back to Barton’s basketball,
triumphantly equipped with new
devices, and waving a spacegram
in Barton’s sleepy face. Barton read
it, shrugged, and let it drift to the
floor. Von Ulrich tried to control a
look almost of fear.

“As soon as the minimum time
allowed, she married again,” Von
Ulrich said. “And you pretend it
means nothing?”

“She never did mean much of
anything, sir. I mean, she was an

interfering kind of woman. She
wouldn’t let a man live.”

“All right, Barton. What about
this? She was committing adulter-
ous acts with this fellow, this Major
General Woods. She was having an
affair with him for two years be-
fore you volunteered for duty in
the basketball.”

“I figured she was playing
around.”

“You what?”

“It figured.”

“You still pretend it meant noth-
ing, that it means nothing now?”

“I don’t know what it means.
What’s it got to do with me now?
It was all right, I guess. I could
have gone on with it. But this is
better.”

He dimly remembered Jean
bitching all the time of an evening
because Barton kept forgetting to
take his officer’s exam, and how
she had to skimp along on an
NCO’s lousy salary, and so on and
so forth. Very much the nagging
kind. She wouldn’t let him read
either. He would tell her he was
just sort of stupid, and had always
been a drifter anyway, and just sort
of fell into marriage and that he
never had had any ambition partic-
ularly, and anyway big brass got
ulcers and heart conditions. And
then she would drag little Joey, the
big-headed little brat into it, and
talk about how little Joey didn’t
have the right kind of idealized
image to assure him a respectable
future, and little Joey would stand
there and nod his oversized head.

“What about little Joey’s fu-
ture?” Jean would say. “You want
him to be just another stupid

NCO? And what about his teeth?
He’s got to have his teeth straight-
ened. They tease him at school, call
him The Squirrel.”

“Yeah, Dad. You want me to be
personable and saleable and high
on the success potential scale? What
about my teeth protruding?”

And when Barton went into the
bathroom and came back out, Jean
was throwing all those books he’d
had such a hard time finding into
the incinerator. Barton volunteered
the next day for basketball duty.

It didn’t even seem long ago to
Barton. It was oddly like a dream
that might have been in the past, or
the future, or never at all.

Von Ulrich grabbed up the
spacegram and walked stiffly erect
out of the basketball.

At some time in the future, Von
Ulrich showed up again with even
more complicated tests and ques-
tions. Barton wasn’t sure, but it
seemed longer than usual that Von
Ulrich was away these days. Time
didn’t mean much. It didn’t have
any particular use to Barton now.

“Yes, yes, you have a perfect
service record, Barton. Never have
missed turning in an alarm with
alacrity. And we’re so damned short
of men capable of taking this kind
of duty that I can’t pull you out of
here until you make an error — or
crack up. Just the same you’re not
fooling me much longer, and you
won’t be able to fool yourself
either.”

Sometime later there was the
business about Barton’s mother.
Von Ulrich had files on Barton go-
ing clear back to pre-natal, and
maybe even before that.

KENNETH O'HARA

“All right, Barton, you were an
only child, and you lived with your
mother for 10 years after your
father died. Then you married.
What about the fact that Jean was
a replacement for your mother?”
“If she was, it never seemed that
way to me.”

“You expected your wife to take
care of you the way your mother
did. And not demand anything of
you. You expected to escape all re-
sponsibility and — Barton, do you
consider this basketball to be your
mother?”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Deafness can be psychosomatic
too, don’t forget that. I said — but
you heard me, answer me.”

“Doctor Von Ulrich, maybe I’m
not normal, but — ”

“Then you admit the regression.
That this basketball floating in
space is a substitute for your moth-
er’s womb. You admit it!”

“Why, sir, I didn’t—”

“But you know it’s true don’t
you?”

“I didn’t say anything about it.
You said it.”

“I said it because it’s a summa-
tion of years of careful diagnosis.
Look at the etiology. A man who
never matured, never was able to
accept responsibility as a mature
adult. Always just drifting along,
into one job, out of it, into another
job, out of that, never establishing
roots anywhere, always floating
about. Unable to accept any re-
sponsibility for your marriage,
wanting to escape it. Never able to
get close, get involved with others,
only wanting to receive, never give.
What does it add up to? A fix, a

THE FLOATER

freeze in the pre-natal stage where
you were floating free and com-
pletely irresponsible in your moth-
er’s amniotic fluid. That’s why
you’re here in the basketball.”

Von Ulrich’s intense eyes seemed
to reach out like arms to enfold
Barton, then recoiled as Barton
shrugged and said : “So, it’s like my
Ma’s womb. What difference does
it make what you call it as long as
I’m happy in it and do my job?”
Von Ulrich’s lips moved sound-
lessly and then he pointed a finger
into Barton’s nose. “It makes a
helluva lot of difference what you
call it. You may be doing an effi-
cient job here, but for the wrong
reasons. I wish I could recommend,
on the basis of my diagnosis, that
you agree to a month’s checkup in
the Martian Clinic but — ”

Barton interrupted. “I’m glad
you can’t. I wouldn’t like that as
much as this. Maybe your reports
won’t cut much ice as long as I
keep up the perfect service record.”
Von Ulrich’s jaws were ridged.
“Damn the military system! Damn
a system that says a man has to stay
up here till he’s dead or crazy or
makes a mistake!”

“But Doc, I like it. I’m happier
here, I think. Maybe I wasn’t nor-
mal on Earth. Maybe I’m not nor-
mal here, or maybe being abnormal
on Earth makes me normal here.
I’m happy and I do my work.”
Von Ulrich backed away a few
steps, then turned and ran out and
slammed the sliding panel. He
didn’t say goodbye to Barton this
time, or that he would be back. But
Barton took no hope from Von
Ulrich’s lack of ceremony.

Von Ulrich did come back, sev-
eral times. Barton was sleeping a
great deal now. He didn’t putter
with the gimmicks much, not even
the clay, and he’d about read the
books out. He slept a lot and yet
there was a funny heavy feeling as
though he never did quite sleep or
never quite woke up either. But it
was a good feeling because when a
man was too sound asleep he didn’t
enjoy it because he didn’t know
anything about it. This was sort of
in-between, and Barton loved it.
Sometimes he would blink his eyes
and see Von Ulrich standing there,
probably with some new testing de-
vice, or with a notebook open, or
with a helmet with wires to attach
to Barton’s skull to record some-
thing.

Another time he thought some
stranger was there and then he
realized that Von Ulrich’s face was
sagging and wrinkled and that his
hair was thinner and gray.

“Why not have groups of watch-
ers if you’re so worried about one
being alone?”

“We tried that, it was worse,
Barton. They killed one another.”
“Well, sir, my being alone is a
good thing then, in that respect.”
“Have you ever thought that you
would kill yourself?”

“Why no, sir. Why should I?”
“Because you hate yourself. In a
society, people can externalize their
self-hate. They can hate society,
other people. You can only turn
your hate inward, on yourself.”
“But I don’t hate anything, sir.”
“You do!”

“But, sir, I don’t.”

“Barton, I said you hate yourself.

It’s in all the charts, everything. We
all hate ourselves to some extent,
why should you be different from
everybody else?”

“Why not, sir?”

Von Ulrich pressed his hand over
his eyes, and walked out.

IT WAS like a dream with a shad-
ow drifting in and out and in
again, and it was Von Ulrich, look-
ing so much older this time. “It’s
been almost fifteen years, Barton.
Fifteen years.”

“So? Fifteen years earth time.
What does that mean here to me,
sir?” Barton smiled, closed his eyes.
“What does time matter in your
mother’s womb?”

“You’ve developed a definite
measurable syndrome, Barton. Ex-
cessive lethargy and a sleeping com-
pulsion. Eventually it will destroy
your efficiency as a watcher if it
hasn’t already.”

Von Ulrich set off an alarm and
in less than four seconds Barton
was over there sending a report out
to the authorities, a report Von Ul-
rich immediately canceled as being
false.

Von Ulrich seemed to dissolve
in a haze of fading light.

“Is that you, Von Ulrich, sir?”
' “I’m afraid so, Barton. Back
again.”

Von Ulrich sat down in the con-
tour chair and filled a pipe.

“Remember, Barton when you
took your test for basketball duty?
The dead man’s float?”

“I sort of remember it, sir. It was
fun.”

Von Ulrich flinched. “Fun? I’ve
KENNETH O'HARA

gone over that report on your test.
Barton. It doesn’t make sense.
What the hell are you anyway? A
damned freak, a mutation, an alien
in disguise?”

The dead man’s float had been
pleasant for Barton, that was all he
could remember about it. They had
taken off all Barton’s clothes so that
nothing touched Barton’s body but
a blacked-out head-mask through
which to get air. He had been put
in a tank of water at body tempera-
ture upside down and floated there.
There was no sensation. It had been
one of the happiest times of his life.
Like floating on air. Hearing noth-
ing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing
except his own existence. Not even
able to tell which was right side up,
or right side down, cross-wise or
whatnot. He had been told to
keep still, but nobody had needed
to tell him to do that.

“The first two or three hours of
that dead man’s float is a good test
for basketball duty, Barton. It’s a
kind of final isolation of the human
organism. Normal human beings
can take a couple of hours of it
usually. They like it. Every human
being to some extent likes to return
to the womb. But after a couple of
hours most human beings start go-
ing to pieces, short-circuiting. The
reason is the deprivation of any
outside stimuli. Something has to
feed in through some source — some
reception source — the skin, ears,
nose, the eyes. These things feeding
in, they orient a person, tells him
when he’s thinking, feeling, gives
him stimuli for additional thinking.
With all these turned off, a person
is simply left with a closed circuit.

THE FLOATER

This begins to go round and round
and distorts and magnifies and rup-
tures the whole thinking process.
The floater becomes anxious, then
very anxious, then he begins having
hallucinations, finally becomes com-
pletely disoriented. All this happens
to a normal human being inside, at
the most, three or four hours. No
human being should be able to re-
main sane after four hours of the
dead man’s float. Barton. But re-
member how long you lay there in
that tank?”

“I didn’t care how long it was.”

“Three days,” Von Ulrich said.
“The neurophysiologist in charge
there kept checking your reaction
and finally he had to take you out
of the tank, not because you were
short-circuiting, but because he was.
The impression was that you would
have been delighted with the pros-
pect of doing the dead man’s float
forever.”

“I don’t remember it being any
special time. It was like a dream,
sir, you know.”

“I don’t know, but I’m trying to
find out.” Von Ulrich sighed and
looked through the spaceport at
blackness. “Out here I sometimes
find myself wondering what nor-
malcy really is. Things sometimes
veer toward the dangerously rel-
ativistic.” He sat there in the pure
one hundred percent silence of the
basketball while it accumulated.
“There’s one thing we’ve always in-
sisted no human being could toler-
ate, Barton. Isolation. Sullivan said
that a single minute of complete
isolation would kill a human being.
And you’ve been in a dead man’s
float for almost twenty-two years.”

“Twenty-two years, sir?”
“Doesn’t mean a thing to you
does it?”

“Well, sir, it doesn’t seem to have
had any time in it. I was just here.”

There was another time, like all
the other times, except that Von
Ulrich seemed much older, his hair
thinner and now all of it gray.
There seemed to be something tired
about him, except for the bright-
ness coming from behind his in-
tense questioning eyes.

Suddenly he asked, “Barton,
what time is it?”

Barton glanced at the chrono.
“Quarter of four, sir.”

“Keep looking.”

After a while Barton said, “Still
quarter of four.”

“That chrono hasn’t been work-
ing for three years. I stopped it
three years ago. You haven’t even
noticed it, have you?”

“I guess not, sir.”

“Take a long look out there,
Barton. Nothing to see but black-
ness. No feeling of distance. Imag-
ine your mind going out there, ex-
ploring, trying to fit in somewhere.
You look out there, you project
your thoughts out there, nothing
comes back. So what time is it?
Where are you in all this? There
was nothing out here until you
came along, not even any meaning-
ful kind of time out here. But there
has to he some feeling of time ,
Barton !”

Barton felt a tinge of uneasiness.
He looked out. It looked cold.
“What time is it, Barton?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Your body has to know. Your

body works on a timetable doesn’t
it? Your lungs, expanding, contrac-
ting regularly. Your heart beating
so many times regularly — every
minute . Your blood circulating reg-
ularly. Look here, Barton. You’re
a product of a specific environment,
on a big scale, call it Earth, the
Solar System. You claim it means
nothing, time means nothing. But
your heart beats regularly so many
times every minute and that’s why
you’re alive. Where did the ar-
bitrary rhythm of that beat come
from, Barton? You were born with
it. It isn’t anything you control, or
had anything to do with develop-
ing, is it? What’s a minute? On
Earth, it has meaning. Sixty sec-
onds part of a minute. Sixty min-
utes make up an hour. What’s an
hour but a segment of a 24 hour
day. Where does that figure come
from? The Earth, Barton. It rotates
on its axis approximately every 24
hours. 24 hours make a day, seven
days a week, so many weeks in a
month, twelve months make up a
year. A year, Barton, the Earth ro-
tates around the sun once a year.”

For the first time in the basket-
ball, Barton began to feel some dis-
comfort. He closed his eyes and
while they were closed he became
acutely aware of his heart beating,
and the expanding and contracting
of his lungs.

“You claim there is no Earth any
more, Barton. No Earth rotating
on its axis, no Earth rotating
around the sun. No sun, no moon,
no time. Why should your heart
go on beating regularly so many
times a minute — when there’s noth-
ing out here that gives a minute

KENNETH O'HARA

any meaning? Has time stopped
here? Is there any time here, Bar-
ton, when there’s nothing here to
turn time into measurable seg-
ments? How can your heart beat so
many times a minute, a year, a life-
time if there’s no such thing here
any more?”

Barton slowly opened his eyes.
His hands felt wet.

“This basketball doesn’t rotate,
Barton. Doesn’t move toward, away
from, or around anything. It’s mov-
ing with the Galaxy but that can’t
mean anything to you can it? Lis-
ten, Barton, your body operates
largely on an unconscious level, but
what if unconsciously your heart,
your lungs, your bodily functions
start to lose their conditioned mem-
ory of the Earth’s rotation, the reg-
ularity of its movement on its axis
and around the Sun that gave your
birth? What will happen then, Bar-
ton? What happens to your heart-
beat if your heart begins to forget
how long a minute is?”

Von Ulrich leaned down close to
Barton’s damp face.

“What time is it, Barton?”

Barton started to look out the
spaceport again, but jerked his
head in the other direction. He
didn’t want to look out. Von Ulrich
waited, but Barton didn’t say any-
thing. Finally, with a tight smile on
his face, Von Ulrich got up and
went to the door.

“I’ll see you again, Barton. Some
time.”

Barton started. “Wait — don’t
go,” he started to say. But some-
thing constricted in his throat and
he hardly even moved his lips, and
no sound came out at all.

He saw the cold streak flash past
the view port. It was Von Ulrich’s
clinic. Quickly he looked toward
the wall. The chrono was gone.
Von Ulrich had taken it with him.
There was a watch, a wrist watch.
Barton ran around looking for the
wrist watch, but he couldn’t find it.

When he lay down again and
closed his eyes, he couldn’t rest. He
couldn’t sleep. His heart beat got
louder, and after a while that was
all he could hear, and when he
tried to figure out how many times
a minute his heart was, or was not,
beating, he couldn’t.

What time was it?

HE WAR in which all of
Earth’s outposts were involved,
lasted thirty years. The basketballs
were forgotten for a long time, and
when they were remembered again,
a special search was rewarded by
finding only two of them. In the
first basketball there was no trace
of the watchman who had been
abandoned in it almost half a cen-
tury before, and no indication of
what had happened to him.

In the second one, Von Ulrich
found Barton still lying peacefully
on the couch, looking hardly any
different than when Von Ulrich
had walked out and left him there.

^ Von Ulrich, who had been re-
tired for a long time and who was
unable to get about except in a
wheel-chair, had requested inclu-
sion among the search boat’s per-
sonnel. No one had figured out why
because even if they found any
basketballs, it was certain that no
one would be alive on any of them,

THE FLOATER

let alone anyone needing Von Ul-
rich’s specialized talents.

Von Ulrich had hoped that
Barton’s basketball would be found
and when it was found, he insisted
on being carried through the inter-
connecting airlock into the spheroid
that looked on the outside like a
dead piece of slag.

The ship’s medical officer, a man
young and rather stiff, was shocked
at first to see Barton lying there,
but he had a ready explanation as
he used his stethescope. “Must have
sprung a leak and let in preserving
frigidity.”

“But then how did the leak re-
pair itself and the temperature re-
turn to normal?”* Von Ulrich asked
as he studied Barton’s smooth, un-
aged face.

“Dead,” the medical officer said,
and he dropped the stethescope
back into his case.

Von Ulrich gripped the husks of
his hands together to keep them
from rattling, and he smiled slowly.
“Barton didn’t like death much.”

Zeiger the medical officer looked
puzzled. “You know this man?”

“A little. I tried to know him bet-
ter but a war intervened. His name
is Harry Barton and he was as-
signed to duty in this basketball
fifty- three years and about four
months ago.”

Zeiger turned away as though to
hide an embarrassed reaction.

“You think I speak out of some
mental senility, Zeiger? You know
this man isn’t dead.”

“He has to be dead.”

“Not Barton. He would hardly
approve of your diagnosis. He
never cared much for diagnosis

anyway. This is Harry Barton, and
I’ve preserved — for personal rea-
sons— his file. I have it with me.
You want to check his fingerprints?
You’ll find it’s the same man who
was assigned to duty here fifty-three
years ago.”

“There’s no heart-beat,” Zeiger
insisted, but not very enthusiasti-
cally.

“Better give Barton a more thor-
ough check,” Von Ulrich said.

Barton’s heart was beating all
right. Once every thirty-seven hours
and fourteen seconds. Regularly,
strongly, very slowly, but without a
tremor. The electroencephalograph
registered brain waves of regular
rhythm, but of quite low ampli-
tude. But with a frequency slowed
to a point so far below normalcy
that it took a week to establish
recognizable delta, theta, alpha and
higher frequency wave-forms.
Using the electronic stroboscope to
induce changes in brain-wave reac-
tion by flicker got results. But the
frequency didn’t change. When
they forced Barton’s eyes open and
used the stroboscope, a slight
change in theta rhythm signified
some irritation, but it was mild.

“Barton never hated anybody,”
Von Ulrich said.

It was slow work though, testing
Barton’s reactions. It was five days
after the stroboscopic stimulation
before the termination of the brain
reactive crescendo. Another week
before theta rhythm returned to
normal.

“. . . so I finally decided,” Von
Ulrich told Zeiger, “that Barton
was unique — he was the impossible.

KENNETH O'HARA

The absolutely self-sufficient hu-
man being, needing nothing but
himself. I was getting older and I
figured there was a chance I might
not get back and the war threat
and so forth. I was worried about
leaving Barton. But only for one
reason.”

Von Ulrich explained his con-
cern about what might have hap-
pened if Barton’s autonomic
nervous system had lost its identifi-
cation with the time factor that
had conditioned it.

“I figured Barton was absolutely
self-sufficient, except for the time
factor. He had to have something
outside himself relatively to which
his organs could function in a nec-
essary regularity.”

Zeiger poured himself another
shot of rum and drank it quickly.

“So he’s still here,” Zeiger said.
“We’ll have to take him to the
Martian Base for observation.”
“Why not, leave him here? Bar-
ton has a perfect service record.
He’s never missed an alarm.”

“But in this condition — ”

“Let’s see.” Von Ulrich set off an
alarm. Barton moved, but it took
him almost a week to move a few
inches.

“That’s too slow,” Zeiger in-
sisted.

Von Ulrich said, “I’ll turn in a
complete report on Barton. If the
authorities want to have him re-
moved, all right. But maybe they
won’t. Maybe they’ll decide they
have a laboratory here for the study

of a human being that’s more im-
portant than whatever’s being ab-
sorbed by those recorders. Barton
is the thing to watch. I call him the
‘Adaptable,’ because I believe he
can adapt to anything, fit himself
into any situation, any kind of en-
vironmental circumstance, if he’s
not interfered with too much, if
he’s given even a slight chance. You
see he altered his metabolism in or-
der to relate to a different, highly
personalized time. And he hasn’t
aged much either. God knows how
long he will live, Zeiger, with such
a slowed metabolism. And not only
that — who knows what unique kind
of personalized time he’s develop-
ing there inside himself? Who
knows if we can even make a hu-
man comparison?”

“But how did he set this new
arbitrary time of his? The heart
beating every thirty-seven hours
and fourteen seconds?”

Von Ulrich looked through the
spaceport, and then pointed when
the pressure suit drifted past with
the long-dead Collins perfectly pre-
served in it and still looking out
through the face plate.

“That way,” Von Ulrich said.
“Collins is our little human satel-
lite out there, and he rotates around
the basketball once every thirty-
seven hours and fourteen seconds.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Zeiger
said.

“Of our time, that is,” Von Ul-
rich said. “But our time doesn’t
mean anything to Barton now.”

• # •

Don’t miss THE FIRST WORLD OF IF!

THE FLOATER

She was wonderful and Forsdon was in love. But he’d seen the

future and knew that in five days she was slated for murder!

CRONUS

OF THE D. F. C.

BY LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.

A BRIGHT, SUNNY day in May,
and a new job for me. I found
the room in the basement of police
headquarters — a big room, with
freshly stenciled letters D F G on
the door, and an unholy conglom-
eration of tubes, wires and dials
bulking large in one corner.

A bright young police cadet sat
at a desk in the center of the room.
“Are you Mr. Forsdon?”

I nodded, and dumped my bag
beside the desk.

“Captain Marks is waiting for
you,” he said and jerked his head
toward a door to the rear.

Captain Marks had his office in
a cubbyhole off the main room. It
was quite a comedown from the
quarters he’d occupied upstairs as
captain of detectives. He’d held
onto that job past his retirement
age and, when they were about to
throw him out on his ear, D. F. C.

Illustrated by Paul Orban

came along and he jumped at it.
The Captain was not the retiring
type.

His door was open, and he
waved me in. “Sit down, Forsdon,”

he said. “Welcome to the Depart-
ment of Future Crime.”

I sat down, and he looked me
over. A lean, hard face, closely
cropped white hair, and steely grey

eyes that looked through a man,
rather than at him. Small — five feet
seven, a hundred and forty pounds.
You looked at him and wondered
how he’d ever gotten on the force
in the first place, until you saw his
eyes. I’d never felt comfortable in
his presence.

“Do you know what we have
here, Forsdon?” he said.

“Not exactly.”

“I don’t either — exactly. The
brass upstairs thinks it’s an expen-
sive toy. It is. But they’ve given us a
trial budget to see if it works, and
now it’s up to us.”

I nodded, and waited for him to
go on. He packed his pipe, lit it,
and then leaned back and let the
smoke go out.

“We have an invention,” he said,
“which I don’t pretend to under-
stand. You saw the thing?”

“Yes,” I said. It wasn’t easy to
overlook.

“Walker calls it Cronus — for the
Greek God of Time. It gives us
random glances around the city on
what looks like a large TV screen
— random glances into the future !”
He paused for dramatic effect, and
I probably disappointed him. I al-
ready knew that much. “The pic-
ture is hazy,” he went on, “and
sometimes we have a hell of a time
figuring out the location of what-
ever it is we’re looking at. We also
have trouble pinpointing the time
of an event. But we can’t deny the
potential. We’ve been in operation
for three weeks, and already we’ve
seen half a dozen holdups days be-
fore they happened.”

“At least it’s an ideal we’ve al-
ways worked for,” I offered. “I

mean, to prevent crime, rather than
just catch the criminal.”

“Oh!” he said, and went to work
on his pipe again. “Maybe I didn’t
make myself clear. We saw the
holdups on that screen, but we
couldn’t prevent a single one. All
we managed to do was catch the
criminal a few minutes after he had
committed the crime. So it raises
an interesting question: Is it pos-
sible to change the future?”

“Why not?” I said.

Captain Marks thought a mo-
ment. “It isn’t too critical, where
the holdups are concerned. The
criminal is caught immediately, the
loot is recovered, and the victim
goes his way thinking kind thoughts
about the efficiency of the police
force. But what about assault, or
rape, or murder? Apprehending
the criminal ten minutes later won’t
be much comfort to the victim.
But now that you’re here to follow
up the leads given us by Cronus —
well, we’ll see what we can do.
Come on. I want you to meet
Walker. And Cronus!”

Walker — Dr. Howard F. Walker
— was huddled over his creation.
There was no doubt about it being
his baby, as you could see from the
way his hands caressed the dials.
He was a gangling-looking man, six
feet one, maybe 170 pounds, fifty-
odd years old. He had a long neck,
an overly pronounced Adam’s ap-
ple, and thinning hair. He wore
thick glasses, his face was gentle
and dignified, and he looked like a
very tired university professor.

He didn’t hear us come up, and
the Old Man waited quietly until
he noticed us.

LLOYD BIGGLE. JR.

“Walker,” the Old Man said,
“this is Forsdon, our new detec-
tive.”

He nodded at me. “Cronus has
something,” he said. “If I can find
it again . .

He turned to his dials.

“That’s one of our problems,”
Captain Marks said. “Once we
focus on a crime, it’s sometimes
hard to locate it again. The time
interval between the present and
the time the crime is committed
keeps getting less. It takes a differ-
ent adjustment each time . . .”

His voice trailed away, and I
looked from Walker to the six-
foot-square screen above his head.
Shadows flitted about on the
screen. A female shadow walking
along the street holding a child
shadow by the hand. Shadow air-
cars moving along jerkily. A row of
male shadows grotesquely posed
along a bar, their glasses making
bright blotches in the picture. A
room, and a female shadow moving
around a table. The future re-
vealed by Cronus was a shadow
world and the only way you could
tell male from female was by their
dress.

The scene kept shifting. A park,
with trees, and lounging adults, and
running children. A room with peo-
ple seated around a table, a read-
ing room, perhaps at the public li-
brary. A large living room, with an
old-fashioned fireplace, and a
bright blotch that was the fire. An-
other smaller room, a female shad-
ow . . .

“That’s it!” Walker said sudden-
ly. He moved a motion picture
camera into position, and pressed a

CRONUS OF THE D. F. C.

button. It whirred softly as we
watched.

A nondescript living room. A fe-
male shadow. She threw up her
hands and stood transfixed for a
horrible moment or two. A male
shadow bounded into the picture —
a giant male shadow. She turned to
run, and he caught her from be-
hind. His hand moved upward.
Something glittered in it, and he
brought it down. He struck twice,
and the female crumpled to the
floor. He whirled, ran toward us,
and disappeared. The camera
ground on, recording the image of
that shapeless shadow on the floor.

Abruptly the scene changed. A
restaurant, with crowded tables and
jerkily moving robot-servers. Walk-
er swore softly and turned off the
camera.

“That’s all I got before,” he said.
“If I could come on it from a dif-
ferent angle, maybe we could lo-
cate the place.”

“When?” the Captain asked.

“Seven to twelve days.”

It hit me, then, like a solid wal-
lop on the jaw. I’d been looking
into the future.

“Plenty of time,” the Captain
said. “But not much to go on.” He
looked at me. “What do you
think?”

“Might be able to identify the
man,” I said. “He’ll be well over
six feet — wouldn’t surprise me if he
were six-eight or nine. He’ll have
the build of a male gorilla. And he
limps slightly with his right foot.”

“Not bad. Anything else?”

“It’s an apartment or a hotel
room,” I said. “I’d guess an apart-

ment. The scanner screen by the
door means it’s either relatively
new, or it’s been remodeled. The
living room has a comer location,
with windows on two sides. It’s
hard to say for certain, but I be-
lieve there’s an old-fashioned sofa
— one of those with a back on it —
along the far wall.”

Walker slumped into a chair.
“You make me feel better,” he
said. “I thought there was next to
nothing to go on.”

Captain Marks nodded. “But you
missed one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Our assailant is left-handed.
Also — the limp may be something
temporary. All right, Forsdon, it’s
all yours. Seven to twelve days, and
you’d better plan on -seven.”

He went back to his office, and I
looked at Walker. “Can you give
me any idea at all as to the loca-
tion?”

“I can draw you a circle on the
map, but it’s only about fifty-fifty
that you’ll find the place inside the
circle.”

“That’s better than nothing.”
“There is one thing,” Walker
said. “I’d like to have you wear
this. Everywhere.”

A band of elastic, with what
looked like dark beads placed on it
at intervals.

“It’s an arm band,” Walker said.
“Cronus picks up these beads as
bright spots. So I’ll be able to iden-
tify you if you show up on the
screen.”

I hesitated, and he said, “The
Captain wears one. We know it
works, because Cronus has picked
him up twice.”

I took the arm band, and slipped
it on.

I sat down with the map and a
directory and worked until a tech-
nician came back with the devel-
oped film. Walker was still perspir-
ing in front of Cronus. He hadn’t
been able to focus on the crime a
third time. The Captain’s door
was closed, and his nasal voice was
rattling the door as he bellowed
into his telephone. I pulled the cur-
tains to darken one corner of the
room, and fed the film into a pro-
jection machine.

I ran the film ten times without
coming up with anything new. I
couldn’t make out the number on
the door. I also couldn’t decide
whether the assailant was a chance
prowler or someone known to the
victim. I stopped the camera, and
made a sketch of the room from
what I could make out in the way
of furnishings.

The Captain came barging out of
his office, took a quick look at my
sketch, and nodded approval.
“We’ll find the apartment,” he
said. “Then our troubles will really
start.”

I couldn’t see that, and I told
him so. I figured our troubles
would be nearly over if we found
the apartment.

“You think it’s possible to pre-
vent this crime,” he said. “I don’t.
Even if we find the apartment and
identify the man and woman, the
crime is still going to happen.”

“Why?” I said.

“Look at it this way. If we pre-
vent the crime, it’s not going to
happen. Right?”

“Right.”

LLOYD BIGGLE# JR.

“And if it’s not going to happen,
Cronus wouldn’t show it to us. All
you see on that screen is what will
happen. As far $s Cronus is con-
cerned, it already has happened.
Preventing it is like trying to
change the past.”

“We can try,” I said.

“Yes, we can try. The regular
force will help us on this one. A
team of detectives is waiting out-
side. Tell them what you want
done.”

I wanted an apartment living
room with a corner location and a
door scanner. It wasn’t as bad as it
sounded — the scanner was a new
gadget at that time. Not many
apartment buildings would have it.
There was always the chance, of
course, that an individual had had
one installed on his own, but that
was a worry I could postpone.

I put in a hectic day of trudging
through apartment buildings and
squabbling with superintendents,
but we found it the next morning,
in a stubby little seven-story build-
ing on South Central. It was one
of those apartment buildings that
went up way back in 1990, when
the city decided it couldn’t afford
the luxury of open spaces and
opened part of old Central Park
to apartment buildings. This one
was a midget among the other
buildings in that development, but
it had been remodeled recently. It
had scanner screens.

After the usual protests, the su-
perintendent showed me around.
Most of the occupants weren’t
home. He let me into a rear apart-
ment on the sixth floor, and I took
one look and caught my breath.

CRONUS OF THE D. F. C.

I pulled out my sketch, though
I had it memorized by this time,
and moved across the room to get
the right angle. The sofa was there
— it was an old-fashioned job with
a back. What had been a bright
blotch in the picture turned out to
be a mirror. A blur by the sofa was
a low table. A chair was in the
wrong place, but that could have
been moved. What was I thinking
about? It was going to be moved .
Every detail checked.

“Stella Emerson,” the superin-
tendent said. “Miss Stella Emerson
— I think. She never gave me no
trouble. Something wrong?”

“Not a thing,” I said. “I want
some information from her.”

“I dunno when she’s home.”

Her next-door neighbor did. I
went back to headquarters and
picked up the loose ends on the at-
tempt to identify our assailant-to-
be. No luck.

And at six o’clock that evening,
I was having a cup of coffee with
Miss Stella Emerson.

She was the sort of person it’s al-
ways a joy to interview. Alert, un-
derstanding, cooperative — none of
that petty, temperamental business
about invasion of privacy. She was
brunette and twenty-six or twenty-
seven, maybe five feet four, a hun-
dred and ten pounds. The pounds
were well distributed, and she was
darned nice looking.

She served the coffee on the low
table by the sofa, and sat back with
her cup in her hand.

“You wanted information?” she
said.

I fingered my own cup, but I
didn’t lift it. “I’d like to have you

think carefully/’ I said, “and see if
you’ve ever known a man who
matches this description. He’s big,
really big. Heavy set. Maybe six
feet eight or nine. He’s left handed.
He might walk with a slight limp
in his right foot . .

She set her cup down with a
bang. “Why, that sounds like Mike
— Mike Gregory. I haven’t seen
him for years. Not since . .

I took a deep breath, and wrote
“Mike Gregory” in my notebook.

“Where was he when you saw
him last?”

“On Mars. I was there for two
years with Civil Service. Mike was
a sort of general handyman around
the administration building.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“As far as I know, he’s still on
Mars!”

My coffee was scalding hot, but
I didn’t notice as I gulped it down.
“I’d like to know everything you
can tell me about this Mike Greg-
ory,” I said. “May I take you to
dinner?”

As my dad used to say, there’s
nothing like mixing business with
pleasure.

She suggested the place — a queer
little restaurant in the basement of
a nearby apartment building. There
were lighted candles on the tables —
the first candles I’d seen since
I was a child. The waitresses wore
odd costumes with handkerchiefs
wrapped around their heads. An
old man sat off in one corner scrap-
ing on a violin. It was almost weird.

But the food was good, and
Stella Emerson was good company.
Unfortunately, her mind was on
Mike Gregory.

100

“Is Mike in trouble?” she said.
“He always seemed like such a gen-
tle, considerate person.”

I thought of the knife- wielding
shadow, and shuddered. “How well
did you know him?” I said.

“Not too well — he stopped to
talk with me now and then. I never
saw him except at work.”

“Was he — interested in you?”
She blushed. It was also the first
blush I had seen in so long I
couldn’t remember when. I had
heard it said that the blush went
out when women did away with
their two-piece bathing suits and
started wearing trunks like the men.
I’m telling you, you can’t have any
idea about what’s wrong with our
scientific civilization until you’ve
seen a girl blush by candlelight.

“I suppose he was,” she said. “He
kept asking me to go places with
him. I felt sorry for him — he
seemed such a grotesque person —
but I didn’t want to encourage
him.”

“You’re certain about the limp?”
“Oh, yes. It was very noticeable.”
“And about his being left-hand-
ed?”

She thought for a moment. “No.
I’m not certain about that. He
could have been, I suppose, but I
don’t think I ever noticed.”

“Is there anything else you re-
member about him?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not
much, I’m afraid. He was just a
person who came through the office
now and then. He had an odd way
of talking. He spoke very slowly.
He separated his words, just . . .
like . . . this. Most of the girls
laughed at him, and when they did

LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.

he’d turn around and walk away
without saying anything. And — oh,
yes, sometimes he’d talk about Cali-
fornia. I guess that was where he
was from. I never found out any-
thing about his personal life.”

“But you didn’t laugh at him?”
“No. I couldn’t laugh at him. He
was just too — pathetic.”

“Have you heard from him since
you came back?”

“He sent me a Christmas card
once. He didn’t know my address
on Earth, so he sent it to the office
on Mars so it would be forwarded.
It didn’t reach me until July!”
“How long ago was that?”

“It must be four years ago. It
was a couple of years after I left
Mars.”

I dropped Mike Gregory, and
tried to learn something about
Stella Emerson.

She was twenty-eight. She’d
worked for two years on Mars, and
then she came back and got a job
as private secretary with a small
firm manufacturing plastic textiles.
She made enough money for her
own needs, and was able to save a
little. She liked having a place of
her own. She had a sister in Boston,
and an aunt over in Newark, and
they visited her occasionally. She
led a quiet life, with books, and
visits to the art institutes, and work-
ing with her hobby, which was pho-
tography.

It all sounded wonderful to me.
The quiet life. A detective gets
enough excitement on the job. If
he can’t relax at home, he’s going
to be a blight on the mortality
tables.

We were on our second cup of
CRONUS OF THE D. F. C.

coffee, by then, and I motioned the
old fiddler over to our table.

His bloodshot eyes peered out
over a two- week growth of beard. I
slipped him a dollar bill. “How
about giving us a melody.”

He gave us a clumsy serenade
and Stella reacted just as I’d hoped
she would. She blushed furiously,
and kept right on blushing, and I
just leaned back and enjoyed it.

I took her back to her apartment,
and said a friendly farewell at her
door. We shook hands!

And she didn’t invite me to
spend the night with her, which
was just as refreshing.

I rode the elevator with chiming
bells and a wisp of the old man’s
music floating through my mind. I
stepped out on the ground level,
walked dreamily out the door and
hailed an aircab with my pocket
signal.

And just as I was about to step
in, it stabbed me like the flickering
knife on Cronus’s screen. She was a
wonderful girl, and I was falling
for her, and in seven to twelve days
— no, nearer five to ten days, now —
she was going to be murdered.

“Something wrong?” the driver
said.

I flashed my credentials. “Police
Headquarters,” I said. “Use the
emergency altitude.”

WALKER was crouched in
front of Cronus, perspiring, as
usual, but looking infinitely more
tired. No matter what time I came
in, he always seemed to be there,
or there was a note saying he was
down in his lab in the sub-basement.

101

“I haven’t found it again,” he
said.

‘That’s all right. We can manage
with what we have.”

He frowned irritably. “It’s im-
portant, confound it. This is just an
experimental model, and it’s mad-
deningly inefficient. With money
and research facilities, we could
produce one that would really
work, but we can’t get that kind of
support by predicting a few pid-
dling holdups. But a murder, now
— that would make someone sit up
and take notice.”

“Stop worrying about your
dratted Cronus,” I snapped. “I
don’t give a damn about that pile
of junk. There’s a girl’s life to be
saved.”

It was unfair, but he didn’t ob-
ject. “Yes, of course,” he said. “The
girl’s life — but if I can’t get more
information . . .”

“I’ve found the apartment,” 1
told him, “and I’ve found the girl.
But the man is supposed to be on
Mars. It doesn’t figure, but it’s
something to work on.”

I called the Captain, and gave
him my report. If he resented my
bothering him at home, he didn’t
show it. Any wheel I could get my
fingers on I set turning, and then I
went home. I won’t pretend that I
slept.

By morning we had a complete
report from the colonial adminis-
tration on Michael Rolland Greg-
ory. Fingerprints, photos, detailed
description, complete with limp and
left-handedness. The works. Also,
the added information that he’d re-
signed his civil service job eight
months before »and had left im-

102

mediately for Earth, on a Dawn
Liner scheduled to land at San
Francisco.

I swore savagely, got off an ur-
gent message to San Francisco, and
left for a dinner date with Stella
Emerson. And another handshake
at her apartment door.

San Francisco did a thorough
job, but it took time — two more
days. Michael Rolland Gregory had
hung around for a while, living in
run-down rooming houses, and
holding a series of odd jobs. Two
months before he had disappeared.

“He could be anywhere by now,”
I told the Captain.

“Including here in New York,”
the Captain said dryly.

Two to seven days.

I took Stella back to her apart-
ment after our dinner date, and in
front of the door I said, “Stella, I
like you.”

She blushed wonderfully. “I like
you too, Jim.”

“Then do me a favor — a very
special favor.”

Her blush deepened, with an
overlay of panic. “I’d — like to, Jim.
Because I — like you. But I can’t.
It’s hard to explain, but I’ve always
told myself that unless I marry a
man . . .”

I leaned against the wall and
laughed helplessly while her eyes
widened in amazement. Then I dis-
pensed with the handshaking. She
clung to me, and it might have
been her first kiss. In fact, it was.

“I don’t just like you, darling,” I
said. “I love you. And that wasn’t
the favor I was going to ask. You
said you have an aunt over in New-
ark. I want you to stay with her

LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.

for a while — for a week or so.”

“But — why?”

“Will you trust me? I can’t tell
you anything except that you’re in
danger here.”

“You mean — Mike?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“It’s hard to believe that Mike
would want to harm me. But if you
think it’s important . . .”

“I do. Will you call your aunt,
now, and make the arrangements?
I’ll take you over tonight.”

She packed some things, and I
took her to Newark in an aircab.
Her aunt was hospitable and co-
operative, albeit a little confused. I
checked her apartment thoroughly.
I was taking no chances that the
aunt’s living room could be the po-
tential scene of the crime. It wasn’t
— no similarity.

“Promise me,” I said, “that you
won’t go back to your apartment
for any reason until I tell you it’s
all right.”

“I promise. But I may need some
more things.”

“Make a list, and I’ll have a po-
lice woman pick them up for you.”

“All right.”

I arranged with the superintend-
ent of her apartment building to
have the lights in her apartment
turned on each evening, and turned
off at an appropriate time. I put a
stakeout on her apartment build-
ing, and on her aunt’s. I got a de-
tective assigned to shadow her,
though she didn’t know it, of
course. Then it was zero to five
days, and I was quietly going nuts.

Zero to four days. I walked into
the D. F. C. room, and Walker
swarmed all over me. “I found it

again,” he said.

“Anything new?”

“No. Just the same thing. Exact-
ly the same.”

“When?”

“Two to three days.”

I sat down wearily, and stared at
Cronus. The screen was blank.
“How did you manage to invent
that thing?” I said.

“I didn’t really invent it. I just
— discovered it. I was tinkering
with a TV set, and I changed some
circuits and added a lot of gadgets,
just for the hell of it. The pictures
I got were darned poor, but they
didn’t seem to be coming from any
known station — or combination of
stations, since they kept changing.
That was interesting, so I kept
working on it. Then one day the
screen showed me a big aircar
smashup. There were about ten
units involved, and I told myself,
‘Boy, these Class D pictures are
really overdoing it.’ About a week
later I opened my morning paper,
and there was the same smashup on
page one. It took a long time to get
anybody interested.”

He stopped suddenly as the Cap-
tain came charging out of his office.

“Brooklyn,” he called. “Gregory
was living in a rooming house in
Brooklyn. He left three weeks ago.”

A LEAD with a dead end. No one
knew where he’d gone. It
proved that he was somewhere in
the vicinity of New York City, but
I don’t think any of us ever doubt-
ed that.

“One thing is interesting,” the
Captain said. “He’s using his own

CRONUS OF THE D. F. C.

103

name. No reason why he shouldn’t,
of course. He’s not a criminal — but
he is a potential criminal, and he
doesn’t know that’’

I saw, suddenly, that we had a
double problem. We had to protect
Stella from Gregory, but we also
had to protect Gregory from him-
self. If we could find him.

“There’s not much we can do,” I
said, “but keep on looking.”

It was what Walker called the
Critical Period. Something had to
happen on this day or the next, or
Cronus was a monkey’s dutch
uncle.

“If we could only pick Gregory
up and hold him for a couple of
days, maybe we could beat this,” I
told the Captain. “We’ve eliminated
Stella Emerson, we’ve locked the
apartment, and caging Gregory
should snap the last thread.”

He laughed sarcastically. “You
think that would solve the prob-
lem? Listen. We spotted a holdup,
and I recognized the crook. He had
a long record. I had him picked up,
and he was carrying a gun so we
slapped him in jail on a concealed
weapons charge. He escaped, got
another gun, and committed the
holdup right on schedule. I’m tell-
ing you, Cronus shows exactly how
the future is. We can’t change it.
I’m working as hard as anyone else
to prevent this, but I know for a
certainty that sometime today or to-
morrow the girl and Gregory are
going to meet in that apartment —
or in one exactly like it.”

“We’re going to change it this
time,” I said. On my way out I
stopped for a good look at Cronus.
Nothing but a monster would give

you a murderer, and a victim, and
the place and approximate time,
and make you completely helpless
to do anything about it. I felt like
giving Cronus a firm kick in a vital
part of its anatomy.

I called off my dinner date with
Stella and prowled around Man-
hattan looking for a big man with
a pronounced limp. One speck of
dust among the millions. I noticed
with satisfaction that I was not
alone in my search. Aircars were
swooping in low for a quick look at
pedestrians. Foot patrolmen were
scrutinizing every passerby. And de-
tectives would be making the
rounds of the rooming houses and
hotels with photographs. Cab and
bus drivers would be alerted.

For a man who had no reason to
hide, Michael Holland Gregory was
doing an expert job of keeping out
of sight.

I radioed police headquarters at
10:00 P.M., and the Captain’s voice
exploded at me. “Where the hell
have you been? The stakeout at the
girl’s apartment got Gregory.
They’re bringing him in.”

I cut off without any of the for-
malities, and sprinted. I tore down
the corridor to the D. F. C. room,
and burst in on what might have
been a funeral celebration. Walker
sat with his face in his hands, and
the Captain was pacing in a tight
circle.

“He got away,” the Captain
snarled. “Snapped the handcuffs
like toothpicks, beat up his escort
and ran. The man must have the
strength of a utility robot.”

“How did they happen to pick
him up?” I wanted to know.

LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.

104

“He came strolling down the
street and started to go into the
apartment building. Completely in-
nocent about the whole thing, of
course. He didn’t have any idea we
were looking for him.”

“He has now,” I said. “It’s going
to be great sport locating him
again.”

We had a small army loose in
the area where Gregory escaped,
but for all they found he might
have burrowed into the pavement.
I called Stella and asked her to stay
home from work the next day. I
got the stakeout on her aunt’s
apartment doubled.

I was up at dawn, prowling the
streets, riding in patrolling aircars,
and I suppose generally making a
nuisance of myself with calls to
headquarters. We put in a miser-
able day, and Gregory might have
been hiding on Mars, for all the
luck we had.

I had my evening meal at a lit-
tle sandwich shop, and did a leis-
urely foot patrol along the street by
Stella’s apartment building. The
stakeout was on the job, and the su-
perintendent had Stella’s lights on.
I stood for a moment in the door-
way, watching the few pedestrians,
and then I signaled an aircab.

“I’d like to circle around here a
bit,” I said.

“Sure thing,” the cabbie said.

We crisscrossed back and forth
above the streets, and I squinted at
pedestrians and watched the thin
traffic pattern. Fifteen minutes
later we were- back by the apart-
ment building.

“Circle low around the build-
ing,” I said.

CRONUS OF THE D. F. C.

“Oh, no! Want me to lose my
license? I can’t go out of the air
lanes.”

“You can this time,” I said. “Po-
lice.”

He looked at my credentials, and ,
grunted. “Why didn’t you say so?”

There was a narrow strip of lawn
behind the building, with a couple
of trees, and then a dimly-lit alley.
The cabbie handed me a pair of
binoculars, and I strained my eyes
on the sprawling shadows. I
couldn’t see anything suspicious,
but I decided it might be worth a
trip on foot.

The third time around I glanced
at Stella’s lighted windows — the
rear ones — and gasped. A dark
shadow clung to the side of the
building, edging slowly along the
ledge towards her window. Greg-
ory.

“See that?” I said to the cabbie.

As we watched, he got the win-
dow open, and disappeared into the
apartment.

I tried to radio the men on the
stakeout, and couldn’t rouse them.

I called headquarters. Both Walker
and Captain Marks were out. They
would be back in a few minutes.
But I didn’t have minutes left.

“Skip it,” I said. I snapped out a
description of the situation, and cut
off.

“Can you get close enough to get
me through that window?” I asked
the cabbie.

“I can try,” he said. “But watch
your step, fellow. It’s a long drop.”

He hovered close, and I grabbed
the edge of the window and pulled
myself through. Gregory faced me
across the living room, a bewil-

105

dered, panicky look on his huge,
child-like face. I was thinking, how
stupid can we get? From the way
he came into Cronus’s picture we
should have known he didn’t come
through the door. Stella had come
through the door, and we just as-
sumed he was already in the room.
But who would have thought Greg-
ory could make like a human fly?

“All right, Gregory,” I said.
“You’re under arrest.”

Tears streaked his face. His jaw
moved, but no sound came out.
Suddenly I saw how we had blun-
dered. This grotesquely oversized
child meant no harm to anyone.
Stella was the only person he’d ever
known who treated him like a hu-
man being, and he wanted to see
her again. For some reason he
couldn’t understand, the police
were trying to prevent that. Sud-
denly the entire universe was
against him, even Stella, and he
was frightened.

And dangerous.

He lunged at me like a pile
driver, and forced me back towards
the open window. I got my gun
out, and he just casually knocked
it out of my hand. He had me on
the window ledge, forcing me back
and all I could see were the stars
out in space.

Then the apartment door opened
and closed and Gregory glanced
back over his shoulder.

I screamed. “Run, Stella!
Run—”

Then the night air was whistling
past me. I bounced off an awning,
crashed into the branches of a tree,
struggled frantically for a hold, and
fell through. From the window

106

above came a piercing scream . • .

THE DOCTOR had a face like
an owl, and he bent over me,
making funny clucking noises with
his tongue. “There we are,” he said,
when he saw my eyes open. “Not
bad at all.”

“What’s good about it?” I said.
“Young man, you fell six stories,
and all you have is a broken leg
and assorted bruises. You ask me
what’s good about it?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I
said. “Beat it.” Stella’s scream still
rang in my ears. I twisted, and felt
the heavy cast on my left leg. My
mood merged and blended with the
dull grey of the hospital room.

A nurse came tiptoing in, and
smiled blandly when she saw I was
awake. “You have some visitors,”
she said. “Do you want to see
them?”

I knew it was the Captain. I
hated to face him, but I said, “Let’s
get it over with.”

The Captain loomed in the door-
way, backed away, and came in
again. And ahead of him walked
Stella.

A different Stella — face pale and
distorted, eyes registering shock and
grief, but alive. But very much
alive.

I started to get up, and the nurse
placed a firm hand on each shoul-
der and held me to the bed. “Not
so fast, sonny boy,” she said.

Captain Marks moved up a chair
for Stella. “Jim,” she said. Her
voice broke.

“I’ll tell him,” the Captain said.
“It seems that Miss Emerson has a

LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.

sister living in Boston. She didn’t
know anything about our problem,
and she came down this evening
for a visit. She had a key to Miss
Emerson’s apartment, and she
walked in just at the right time to
play a leading role in Cronus’s
drama.”

“Was she—”

“No. Thankfully, no. Her condi-
tion is serious but she’ll be all right
again. The knife missed a vital spot
by a fraction.”

I relaxed. “What happened to
Gregory?”

“He tried to go out the way he
came in. There wasn’t any tree to
break his fall. And one other thing.
I have an urgent message for you
from Walker.”

I glanced at the slip of paper.
“Jim — for God’s sake, stay out of
aircars!”

“Cronus showed us your fall half
an hour before it happened. From
our angle, it looked as if you fell
out of the aircab that was hovering
over the building. Some time in the
next twenty-four hours, Walker cal-
culated, but we couldn’t reach
you.”

“It wouldn’t have made any dif-
ference,” I said. “You know your-
self . . .”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

His voice rambled on, while my
eyes met Stella’s. “So Cronus can
show us the future,” I heard him
say, “but he can’t change it, and
neither can we.”

“Cronus changed mine,” I said,

still looking at Stella.

The Captain took the hint, and
left.

Five minutes later the phone
rang, and I reached around Stella
to answer it. It was Walker, and
Stella held her face close to mine
and listened.

“Just called to offer my congratu-
lations,” Walker said.

“Congratulations for what?”
“For your wedding. Cronus just
spotted it.”

I swore, but I kept it under my
breath. “I haven’t even asked the
girl,” I said, “and don’t tell me I’m
wearing that stupid arm band at
my wedding, because I’m not.”
“No, you’re on crutches. But the
Captain is standing up with you,
and he’s wearing his.”

“All right,” I said. “When is this
glad event going to take place?”
“Four to eight days.”

I slammed down the receiver,
and kissed Stella’s blushing face.
“Cronus says we’re getting married
in four to eight days, and this is
one time that monstrosity’s going to
be wrong. We’ll get married to-
morrow.”

“All right, Jim, if you want to.
But . . .”

“But what?”

“This is May twenty-eighth, and
I want to be a June bride.”

We were married five days later,
and we went to Arizona on our
honeymoon. I’d done some check-
ing, and I knew Arizona was well
outside of Cronus’s range. • • •

Ask your news dealer right now to reserve you a copy of THE FIRST
WORLD OF IF — Published January 12th!

CRONUS OF THE D. F. C.

107

THE RUMBLE

The noise was too much for him.
He wanted quiet — at any price .

BY STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW

108

Illustrated by Ed Emsh

WHEN JOSEPH got to the of-
fice his ears were aching from
the noise of the copter and from
his earplugs. Lately, every little
thing seemed to make him irritable.
He supposed it was because his
drafting department was behind
schedule on the latest Defense con-
tract. His ears were sore and his
stomach writhed with dyspepsia,
and his feet hurt.

Walking through the clerical of-
fice usually made him feel better.
The constant clatter of typewriters
and office machines gave him a
sense of efficiency, of stability, an
all-is-well-with- the- world feeling.

He waved to a few of the more fa-
miliar employees and smiled, but
of course you couldn’t say hello
with the continual racket.

AND THE

This morning, somehow, it didn’t
make him feel better. He supposed
it was because of the song they
were playing over the speakers,
“Slam Bang Boom,” the latest Top
Hit. He hated that song.

Of course the National Mental
Health people said constant music
had a beneficial effect on office

workers, so Joseph was no one to
object, even though he did wonder
if anyone could ever actually listen
to it over the other noise.

In his own office the steady din
was hardly diminished despite
soundproofing, and since he was
next to an outside wall he was sub-
jected also to the noises of the city.
He stood staring out of the huge
window for awhile, watching the
cars on the freeway and listening to
the homogeneous rumble and
scream of turbines.

Something’s wrong with me, he
thought. 1 shouldn’t he feeling this
way. Nerves. Nerves.

He turned around and got his
private secretary on the viewer. She
simpered at him, trying to be
friendly with her dull, sunken eyes.

“Betty,” he told her, “I want you
to make an appointment with my
therapist for me this afternoon.
Tell him it’s just a case of nerves,
though.”

“Yes sir. Anything else?” Her
voice, like every one’s, was a high
pitched screech trying to be heard
above the noise.

ROAR

109

Joseph winced. “Anybody want
to see me this morning?”

“Well, Mr. Wills says he has the
first model of his invention ready to
show you.”

“Let him in whenever he’s ready.
Otherwise, if nothing important
comes up, I want you to leave me
alone.”

“Yes sir, certainly.” She smiled
again, a mechanical, automatic
smile that seemed to want to be
something more.

Joseph switched off.

That was a damn funny way of
saying it, he thought. “1 want you
to leave me alone ” As if somebody
were after me”

He spent about an hour on rou-
tine paperwork and then Bob Wills
showed up so Joseph switched off
his dictograph and let him in.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to make
it brief, Bob,” he grinned. “I’ve a
whale of a lot of work to do, and I
seem to be developing a splitting
headache. Nerves, you know.”

“Sure, Mister Partch. I won’t
take a minute; I just thought you’d
like to have a look at the first model
of our widget and get clued in on
our progress so far . . .”

“Yes, yes, just go ahead. How
does the thing work?”

Bob smiled and set the grey steel
chassis on Partch’ s desk, sat down
in front of it, and began tracing the
wiring for Joseph.

It was an interesting problem, or
at any rate should have been. It
was one that had been harassing
cities, industry, and particularly air-
fields, for many years. Of course,
every one wore earplugs — and that
helped a little. And some firms had

110

partially solved the problem by us-
ing personnel that were totally deaf,
because such persons were the only
ones who could stand the terrific
noise levels that a technological
civilization forced everyone to en-
dure. The noise from a commercial
rocket motor on the ground had
been known to drive men mad, and
sometimes kill them. There had
never seemed to be any wholly
satisfactory solution.

But now Bob Wills apparently
had the beginnings of a real an-
swer. A device that would use the
principle of interference to cancel
out sound waves, leaving behind
only heat.

It should have been fascinating
to Partch, but somehow he couldn’t
make himself get interested in it.

“The really big problem is the
power requirement,” Wills was
saying. “We’ve got to use a lot of
energy to cancel out big sound
waves, but we’ve got several pos-
sible answers in mind and we’re
working on all of them.”

He caressed the crackle-finish
box fondly.

“The basic gimmick works fine,
though. Yesterday I took it down to
a static test stand over in building
90 and had them turn on a pretty
fair-sized steering rocket for one of
the big moon-ships. Reduced the
noise-level by about 25 per cent, it
did. Of course, I still needed my
plugs.”

Joseph nodded approvingly and
stared vacantly into the maze of
transistors and tubes.

“I’ve built it to work on ordinary
60 cycle house current,” Wills told
him. “In case you should want to

STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEW

demonstrate it to anybody.”

Partch became brusque. He liked
Bob, but he had work to do.

“Yes, I probably shall, Bob. I tell
you what, why don’t you just leave
it here in my office and I’ll look it
over later, hm?”

“Okay, Mr. Partch.”

Joseph ushered him out of the
office, complimenting him profuse-
ly on the good work he was doing.
Only after he was gone and Joseph
was alone again behind the closed
door, did he realize that he had a
sudden yearning for company, for
someone to talk to.

Partch had Betty send him in a
light lunch and he sat behind his
desk nibbling the tasteless stuff
without much enthusiasm. He won-
dered if he was getting an ulcer.

Yes, he decided, he was going to
have to have a long talk with Dr.
Coles that afternoon. Be a pleasure
to get it all off his chest, his feeling
of melancholia, his latent sense of
doom. Be good just to talk about it.

Oh, everything was getting to
him these days. He was in a rut,
that was it. A rut.

He spat a sesame seed against the
far wall and the low whir of the
automatic vacuum cleaner rose and
fell briefly.

Joseph winced. The speakers
were playing “Slam Bang Boom”
again.

His mind turned away from the
grating melody in self defense, to
look inward on himself.

Of what, after all, did Joseph
Partch’s life consist? He licked his
fingers and thought about it.

What would he do this evening

THE RUMBLE AND THE ROAR

after work, for instance?

Why, he’d stuff his earplugs back
in his inflamed ears and board the
commuter’s copter and ride for half
an hour listening to the drumming
of the rotors and the pleading of
the various canned commercials
played on the copter’s speakers loud
enough to be heard over the engine
noise and through the plugs.

And then when he got home,
there would be the continuous yam-
mer of his wife added to the Tri-Di
set going full blast and the dull
food from the automatic kitchen.
And synthetic coffee and one stale
cigaret. Perhaps a glass of brandy
to steady his nerves if Dr. Coles ap-
proved.

Partch brooded. The sense of
foreboding had been submerged in
the day’s work, but it was still
there. It was as if, any moment, a
hydrogen bomb were going to be
dropped down the chimney, and
you had no way of knowing when.

And what would there be to do
after he had finished dinner that
night? Why, the same things he had
been doing every night for the past
fifteen years. There would be Tri-
Di first of all. The loud comedians,
and the musical commercials, and
the loud bands, and the commer-
cials, and the loud songs . . .

And every twenty minutes or so,
the viewer would jangle with one
of Felicia’s friends calling up, and
more yammering from Felicia.

Perhaps there would be company
that night, to play cards and sip
drinks and talk and talk and talk,
and never say a thing at all.

There would be aircraft shaking
the house now and then, and the

111

cry of the monorail horn at inter-
vals.

And then, at last, it would be
time to go to bed, and the murmur
of the somnolearner orating him on
the Theory of Groups all through
the long night.

And in the morning, he would be
shocked into awareness with the
clangor of the alarm clock and
whatever disc jockey the clock ra-
dio happened to tune in on.

Joseph Partch’s world was made
up of sounds and noises, he decid-
ed. Dimly, he wondered of what
civilization itself would be con-
structed if all the sounds were once
taken away. Why, after all, was the
world of Man so noisy? It was al-
most as if — as if everybody were
making as much noise as they could
to conceal the fact that there was
something lacking. Or something
they were afraid of.

Like a little boy whistling loudly
as he walks by a cemetery at night.

Partch got out of his chair and
stared out the window again. There
was a fire over on the East Side, a
bad one by the smoke. The fire en-
gines went screaming through the
streets like wounded dragons.
Sirens, bells. Police whistles.

All at once, Partch realized that
never in his life had he experienced
real quiet or solitude. That actual-
ly, he had no conception of what an
absence of thunder and wailing
would be like. A total absence of
sound and noise.

Almost, it was like trying to
imagine what a negation of space
would be like.

And then he turned, and his eyes
fell on Bob Wills’ machine. It could

reduce the noise level of a rocket
motor by 25 per cent, Wills had
said. Here in the office, the sound
level was less than that of a rocket
motor.

And the machine worked on or-
dinary house current, Bob had said.

Partch had an almost horrifying
idea. Suppose . . .

But what would Dr. Coles say
about this, Partch wondered. Oh,
he had to get a grip on himself.
This was silly, childish . . .

But looking down, he found that
he had already plugged in the line
cord. An almost erotic excitement
began to shake Joseph’s body. The
sense of disaster had surged up
anew, but he didn’t recognize it yet.

An absence of sound ? No! Silly!

Then a fire engine came tearing
around the comer just below the
window, filling the office with an
ocean of noise.

Joseph’s hand jerked and flicked
the switch.

And then the dream came back
to him, the nightmare of the night
before that had precipitated, un-
known to him, his mood of fore-
boding. It came back to him with
stark realism and flooded him with
unadorned fear.

In the dream, he had been in a
forest. Not just the city park, but a
real forest, one thousands of miles
and centuries away from human
civilization. A wood in which the
foot of Man had never trod.

It was dark there, and the trees
were thick and tall. There was no
wind, the leaves were soft under-
foot. And Joseph Partch was all
alone, completely alone.

And it was — quiet.

112

Doctor Coles looked at the pa-
tient on the white cot sadly.

“I’ve only seen a case like it once
before in my entire career, Dr.
Leeds.”

Leeds nodded.

“It is rather rare. Look at him —
total catatonia. He’s curled into a
perfect foetal position. Never be
the same again, I’m afraid.”

“The shock must have been tre-
mendous. An awful psychic blow,
especially to a person as emotion-
ally disturbed as Mr. Partch was.”
“Yes, that machine of Mr. Wills’

THE OLD GOAT

(Continued from page 68)

sion occurs. Now we shall send our
animate object.”

He untied the goat and, with
some difficulty, hauled the animal
by its collar to the transmitter.
There the goat balked and Dr.
Angstrom, having got its head
through the door, got behind it and
shoved heartily, hanging onto the
edge of the door so he could shut
it quickly when the goat was inside.

As goats will, the goat suddenly
changed its mind and leaped into
the transmitter. Caught off balance,
Dr. Angstrom fell in after it — and
the door, given a last frantic jerk,
slammed on them both.

There were gasps of horror and

is extremely dangerous. What
amazes me is that it didn’t kill
Partch altogether. Good thing we
got to him when we did.”

Dr. Coles rubbed his jaw.

“Yes, you know it is incredible
how much the human mind can
sometimes take, actually. As you
say, it’s a wonder it didn’t kill him.”
He shook his head.

“Perfectly horrible. How could
any modern human stand it? Two
hours, he was alone with that ma-
chine. Imagine — two hours of total
silence!” • • •

alarm from the scientists, but I held
up my hand to calm them.

“There’s no danger, gentlemen,”
I said. “It’s just as well this way.
I happen to know that Dr. Ang-
strom’s next step, after proving to
you with the goat that animate ob-
jects could be transmitted, was to
prove that human beings also could
be transmitted. He planned to be
his own first subject.”

With serene confidence, I went
to the receiver and threw open the
door. Just as I had anticipated, the
goat leaped out, unharmed, fol-
lowed by Dr. Angstrom.

“I told you animate objects could
be transmitted successfully,” said
the goat triumphantly.

“Baa!” said Dr. Angstrom, and
began eating the tablecloth. • • •

WHAT IS YOUR SCIENCE I.Q.?

ANSWERS: 1 — Allotropy. 2 — Wind velocity. 3 — 3. 4 — 31. 5 — Heat. 6 —
96,500. 7 — Auxins. 8 — All part of a neuron. 9 — Mesozoic. 10 — Thigmot-
ropism. 11 — Maximum entropy. 12 — 2. 13 — Evection. 14 — Amalgam.
15 — Metamorphic. 16 — Polarization. 17 — Hydrogen-ion. 18 — Specific
gravity. 19 — Saphrophytism. 20— Electrical resistance.

113

WAR GAME

(Continued from page 81)

conference table and drifted out of
the big spheroid room to their fam-
ilies, wives — wherever they wanted
to go.

Now only Thompson and the
Russian remained in the room.
They walked ten paces away from
one another in the classic tradition
of honorable dueling, turned, and
fired. They fell almost at the same
time. Morten rushed over to
Thompson was was already dead,
having died instantly with a bullet
in his heart. Morten saw that the
Russian had a bullet hole just above
his left eye.

Thompson, foreseeing this pos-
sible situation, had gotten a promise
from Morten that he would press
the button that would annihilate
Russia, in case Thompson was dead
or incapacitated. That would leave
the United States the sole victor in
the last great global struggle to es-
tablish once and for all, world wide,
the true faith.

Morten fought a brief struggle
with his conscience, then ran out of
the room, leaving the console un-
touched. The United States and
Russia still survived. Morten’s fam-
ily was still safe. He ran toward
the bank of elevators to get out of
the Cellar. He hadn’t been out of
the Cellar for a long, long time.

The President of the United
States switched off the T.V., and
poured another martini. “You want
another?” he asked the Minister of
Peace. “No, sir, Mr. President.” v

For a while they said nothing as
they looked out the window at the
peaceful sunshine, and watched
birds settle in the trees.

“They ran their own course,” the
Minister of Peace said. “Just the
same, it was an unpleasant thing to
see.”

“Inevitable,” said the President.
“There wasn’t any other possible
way to handle them.”

Psychiatry would never have al-
tered their rigid mold, he knew. It
was a strangely funny thing, that
spontaneous rebellion all over the
world. The people putting a stop
to the whole damn vicious histori-
cal show. But they had done it.
The lie had been given to all the
historical pessimists like Spencer
and Toynbee and Marx and all the
others who had said the same
things, whether they really had ad-
mitted it or not. The people, acting
out of intuitive realization that they
faced annihilation, had reacted en
masse and taken things over for
themselves. Now you couldn’t find
even a water pistol anywhere in the
world.

The U.N. Cellar had been walled
off, turned into a kind of sani-
tarium. Its occupants had never
known the truth about the outside.
Thompson and that absurd Rus-
sian were dead. But what about the
others in the Cellar, living there
still and believing they were the
only few survivors left in the world?

Poor bastards, the President
thought. And then he thought of
that statement by Sartre. The one
about hell being a restaurant where
you served yourself • • •

114

The army is looking for a throw-
away engine to power its light-
weight combat vehicles, hoping to
find an engine cheaper to abandon
when it breaks down than to repair.
The need for such an engine, to-
gether with faster and lighter vehi-
cles, has been brought about by
changes in modern warfare. Em-
phasis today is on getting troops
where needed in a hurry. An ideal
engine would be a super powerplant
giving one horsepower per cubic
inch of displacement, one horse-
power per pound of weight, and
costing less than one dollar per
horsepower. The answer to the
military problem lies in the engine
that could be “factory tested,
sealed, issued and written off”. A
promising engine for the future is
the small gas turbine, operating on
regenerative cycles.

Rice fields of the future may look
like stagnant ditches. Use of algae,
the lowly forms of plant life that
fix nitrogen from the air, to trans-
mit food to rice plants and other
crops of economic value is advo-
cated by Dr. Mary Belle Allen of
the University of California. She
has succeeded in cultivating a group
of nitrogen-fixing organisms known
as blue-green algae. Under green-

house conditions, these organisms
can promote growth of rice plants
that would not thrive without
them. Tests show that rice plants
grown in sand and nutrient chemi-
cals will not grow without the
photosynthetic help of the blue-
green algae. The possibility of im-
proving rice crops by flooding the
paddies with the algae would aid
the world’s production immeasur-
ably and certainly reduce starvation
statistics in critical areas.

Amateur radio operators or hams
can help track the earth satellite
to be launched during the Inter-
national Geophysical Years starting
July 1. The signal sent out at 108
megacycles by the moonlet’s three-
pound transmitter should be de-
tectable over much of the United
States, and amateurs could make a
real contribution by setting up
equipment to listen in. Such a ham
network would not only back up the
main system of Minitrack antennas,
but would also allow nearly vertical
observations of the satellite at some
station during each orbit. Calibra-
tion of the tracking system is ex-
pected to be the most difficult job.
For the amateur tracking installa-
tion, two antennas would be set up
500 to 1000 feet apart on an east-
west line in a field remote from
population centers, industrial
plants, busy highways and other
sources of radio noise. By compar-
ing the path length from the satel-
lite’s transmitter to one station
with a path length to a second
antenna, the satellite’s position in
its earth-girdling orbit can be
found.

115

A monkey's bone marrow may
some day be used to save the life
of a person doomed by fatal disease
or atomic radiation. Monkey bone
marrow, transplanted or injected
into the body, will go on function-
ing as a blood cell factory, produc-
ing monkey blood cells to circulate
through the human arteries and
veins. While human application is
in the future, at the A.E.C. Oak
Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee, the
bone marrow of a rat has saved the
life of a mouse. From this experi-
ment may come the knowledge of
the genesis of radiation-caused leu-
kemia. The bone marrow treat-
ment will prevent this leukemia in
mice if given right after the radia-
tion. The day of the crucial experi-
ment of putting marrow from ani-
mal into a human may be far dis-
tant, but when the problem of
which animal to use as a source of
supply is solved, the method may
be used to treat victims of bone
marrow disease and perhaps to al-
low larger, more effective doses of
X-rays or other radiation treatment.

Scientists have taken a long look
into the future and come up with
this picture of tomorrow’s mer-
chant fleet: Fishing vessels will be
floating factories remaining at sea
all year. Finished products will go
straight from ship to market. Min-
ing ships will drill for oil on con-
tinental shelves far from their
sources of fuel and supplies. Rough
weather will not cause seasickness
on tomorrow’s atomic vessel. Ships
will simply submerge beneath the
waves into undisturbed waters. Ice-
breakers will be able to smash

through Arctic ice packs and re-
main locked in frozen waters all
winter if necessary, because space
which would be used for fuel today
can be used for food tomorrow.
These predictions are based on
known advantages of atomic power.

Patients of the future may have
their drugs built to order. One such
drug has already been synthesized
and found to reduce blood pressure
in patients with hypertension. The
drug named BAS is related to sero-
tonin, a natural body chemical
found in blood serum, and was de-
vised to block serotonin’s action in
the body. In the designing of the
drug, researchers had to make it
effective when taken by mouth,
with a low inhibition index and not
reversible in its action, and lacking
effect on the central nervous sys-
tem. Future man-designed drugs
may have many other such features
planned right into them before pro-
duction begins.

Atomic energy may turn the Ant-
arctic into a seventh habitable con-
tinent. Sir Raymond Priestly, who
accompanied Shackleton to the
Antarctic in 1908, foresees that
frozen mass as the world’s surplus
food locker as well as a great min-
ing area. It would provide a ver-
min-free store for periodical food
surpluses, where they could be pre-
served against the need of future
generations. Once mineral deposits
are found, the entire mining opera-
tion could be moved underground.
Atomic power could be used to
maintain populations. Antarctic
gales might also be harnessed as

SCIENCE BRIEFS

116

another source of power; making it
practically self sufficient.

A solid fuel, neither coal nor as-
phalt, may soon be on the market.
Latest mining and transportation
methods are put to use in a new
processing plant, to be completed
in the near future, which will make
high purity coke out of an unusual
geological formation found near
Salt Lake City. The formation,
known as Uintaite, is of hydro-
carbon origin. Black, like coal, it
contains more resin and less sulphur
than asphalt. Petroleum-like by-
products, similar to those from oil
shale, are expected to be recovered
in the coking process. Several com-
panies have joined together to
adapt the hydrocarbon mineral to
fuel use. They have renamed it
Gilsonite.

Tornados will warn of their ap-
proach with a scream on a loud-
speaker if plans of the U.S.
Weather Bureau are successful. The
technique, known as Doppler radar,
spots the target by its relative speed
and the output of such radar is in
the audible range. One aim is to
spot the tornado before its swoop-
ing funnel, so lethal where it
sweeps the ground, is formed. Its
high winds, thought to whirl at
speeds up to 300 miles per hour,
would contrast with those of the
surrounding air to produce the
audible sound on Doppler radar.
Moisture carried by the winds
would reflect the radar waves. A
simplified model is now being
tested, using two 30-inch antennas
with an output of five watts. This

SCIENCE BRIEFS

device has scanned the clouds and,
when conditions are good, has
shown turbulent motion within
them. Their design will be im-
proved for an operational instru-
ment that will soon be field tested.

By 1980 the world’s scheduled air-
lines will be flying 480,000,000,000
passenger miles annually. This thir-
teenfold increase over today’s mile-
age will come about through the
use of atomic freighters flying non-
stop between any two points on the
earth’s surface at supersonic speeds
of 1,000 miles per hour. Passenger
planes will be capable of traveling
600 miles per hour, carrying 150
passengers on non-stop flights of up
to 4,000 miles. And civil transport
aircraft, weighing upward of
1,000,000 pounds and powered by
the atom, will be in regular service.

NEVER,
EVER BEFORE,
ANYWHERE!

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fiction books and back-issue
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under what they've cost you
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7055 K Shannon Road
Verona, Pennsylvania

117

Sir:

I am writing in reference to the
letter of Mr. S. Earl Cohen, printed
in the October issue, and concern-
ing the proposed earth satellite. I
would like to remark that Mr.
Cohen has decreased the force of
his argument in favor of a spherical
satellite by one-quarter, due to a
25% error in his volumetric calcu-
lations. I quote : “. . . the satellite
announced by the department of
defense, having a diameter of
about feet would have an

easily computable volume of
10602.873000 plus, cubic inches.
. My computations follow:

1) Vol. of sphere =4^ ir r1 2 3 * *

2) Simplifying:

V = 4^x r* 4 x d3 3 = ir d8

3 3 2 6

3) _x O. 523598776 (value taken from a

set of standard engineering tables)

4) d*» (2.5 ft)*= (30 in)* *27000 in*

5) Substituting:

x d» - (0.523598776) 27000*

14,187.166952 in.*

The percent discrepancy between my
calculations and those of Mr. Cohen
may then be computed:

% error* 14, 137. 166952 -10, 602873000V1AA
14137. 166952 A W

=25.01 %

This is rather a large error.
Sincerely,

Neil L. Coleman
University of Chicago

Dear Mr. Quinn:

Gathering the abnormal usage of
abbreviation in letters to your office
indicates concern for time and
space, I will follow suit:

As for your mag. going bi.-mo..
What the H? How many of your
buyers are in a big hurry to eat
steak the day after Thanksgiving?
I’m all for the extra time to digest
your mag. cov-to-cov. Most publ.
I’ve read fall between cotton candy
and hot dogs. “IF” is Thanksgiv-
ing!

— R.L.S.

Upland, California

Dear Mr. Quinn :

I’m impelled to submit a rejoin-
der to Mr. Zwicky’s interesting
views on evolution in the October
Hue and Cry section.

He asks, “If we have < evolved
physically, why hasn’t something
been found reasonably close to our
present shape?”

One theory was advanced by an-
thropologist Ruth Moore at a lec-
ture I was privileged to attend at
the University of Illinois. She spoke

118

of experiments on rats and monkeys
in which it was discovered that if
an incision were made to prevent
the further growth of the jaw
early in life, in compensation for
the reduced weight of the jaw, the
characteristic brow ridge would
disappear. An additional compen-
sation for this modified jaw struc-
ture (in monkeys) would be an
increased ability to hold the head
erect, thus giving greater mobility
to the “hands”. Only one gene
change would be necessary to effect
this state of affairs — a single muta-
tion which would eventually result
in greater cranial capacity, which
is Man’s distinguishing trademark.
Hence there is small cause for won-
der that the transformation from
ape to Man was so swift and that
there is such scant visible record.

His second question concerns the
intelligence of Homo Sapiens,
which to his way of thinking, has
undergone no appreciable improve-
ments since the dawn of the race.
How does one account for the fact
^hat they used Sanskrit, a tremen-
dously complex language? Or that
the oldest extant writings show no
less intelligence than that present-
ly current?

We know that language has been
evolving toward greater simplicity.
What point is there in using a
dozen words when one will do? Is a
more complicated language more
efficient? Does it make communica-
tion easier? I question the supposi-
tion that the writers are as intelli-
gent as ourselves because they
wrote in a more complex way.

I would not suggest that we close
our minds to all but the evolution-

ary theory; but before we dismiss
its validity let us have reasonable
grounds for doing so.

— Anne Bartlett
Chester Springs, Pa.

Editor:

Mr. Ryder, in a public letter in
Hue and Cry, made it clear that he
objects to the humanists proclaim-
ing the liberal arts as the only valid
guides for man and to their blaming
the scientists for Man’s social ills.

You followed his letter with the
comment that what he said had all
the earmarks of a £ood controversy.

I say no controversy exists other
than that between what the human-
ists proclaim and what they do.
They proclaim the liberal arts and
yet join all of us in wanting more
of the fruits which stem from sci-
entific method rather than from
the liberal arts.

Concerning the humanists blam-
ing the scientists for the social ills,
such have been the tactics of ob-
solescent social leaders down
through the ages when cultural evo-
lution demanded new qualifications
in the social leaders. Unable to
meet the new qualifications, the
traditional leaders condemn the po-
tential of the emerging leaders
who are qualified.

The humanists are a fading facet
of Man’s society. They represent
the classical Greek in a culture that
uses Schenectady Greek. They are
the horses in an automotive age.
They are cultural survivals no long-
er of importance, but neither they
nor the majority of the populace
know it; therefore the humanists
continue to maintain their social

119

position on the precarious founda-
tion of ignorance. Let them be
happy while they can; they will
soon be obsolete.

— G. W. Meek
Beaumont, Texas

Dear Mr. Quinn:

Happy Herd is nearly a classic
on the conformist theme. Could
author Walton be persuaded to de-
velop this story to novel length for
the paperback trade? Elsewhere in
your October issue are more good
stories than usqal; unfortunately
you have a weakness for stories
with a shocking downbeat ending
— they may be very well written
but do not leave a good taste and
are seldom chosen for re-reading. I
wouldn’t doubt that this fact pre-
vents IF from rating higher than it
otherwise might.

A gripe: Corbow’s Theory . . .
somebody should tell author Wallot
about high school physics. Spinning
a bullet doesn’t increase muzzle
velocity in the slightest, decreases
it by friction, in fact. Spin merely
helps accuracy and helps maintain
velocity by diminishing the ten-
dency to “tumble” end-over-end.

Re Hue and Cry: certainly you
can square “c” or cube it or what-
ever you want, and convert your
units to make the results consistent.
C-squared, however, is not a ve-
locity in any units, any more than
distance squared is still distance;
whether in miles or microns, once
you square it, it’s area.

Just let those boring dictators
rest, and I’ll remain

— F. M. Busby

Seattle, Washington

EDITOR'S REPORT

( Continued from page 3)
Captain for the ship’s paper that
they gave him a job as Combat
Correspondent. He was transferred
to Leatherneck Magazine as a staff-
writer and later received a citation
from Admiral Nimitz for his cover-
age of the Iwo Jima and Okinawan
campaigns. In 1945 he took up fic-
tion writing full time and has been
writing full time ever since.

He insists he is not a big produc-
tion writer, but that he turns out so
much material only because he
spends practically all of his time
over an electric typewriter. He en-
joys writing so much, and spends
so much time with it, he says, be-
cause his fictional worlds and char-
acters are the only ones he really
feels comfortable with, or who
make any kind of sense, and if they
don’t make any sense, they always
make logical nonsense.

At present, he is living with his
wife in Manhattan, and working on
a third novel while trying to dig up
some original ideas for science fic-
tion. “If someone could write about
reality the way it really is,” he says,
“that would be the end of science-
fiction. It would be more horrible
than 1984 and at the same time
more beautiful than the young
H. G. Wells’ dreams of Utopia.”

And don't forget THE FIRST
WORLD OF IF! The edition is
rather limited, and if your news
dealer doesn’t get copies be sure to
write for yours. On page 46 you’ll
find more details about this exciting
science fiction treat. — jiq

120

the REPORT on

UNIDENTIFIED I
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