The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol V Part 2

"The unhappy genii did," Doreen told me. "Like this." She flicked the catch back. The TV picture blacked out. The sound stopped in the middle of a word. The air conditioner whispered into silence.

Then she flipped the catch the other way.

"--fouls the second ball into the screen," the announcer said. Picture okay. Air conditioner operating. Everything normal except my pulse and respiration.

"Doreen, sweetheart--" I took a step toward her--"what's in that box? What is an unhappy genii?"

"Not unhappy." You know how scornful an eight-year-old can be? Well, she was. "Unhap-pen. It makes things unhappen. Anything that works by electracity, it stops. Elmer calls it his unhappen genii. Just for fun."

"Oh, now I get it," I said brightly. "It makes electricity not work--unhappen. Like television sets and air conditioners and automobiles and bus engines."

Doreen giggled.

Marge sat bolt upright. "Doreen! You caused that traffic jam? You and that--that gadget of Elmer's?"

Doreen nodded. "It made all the automobile engines stop, just like Elmer said. Elmer's never wrong."

Marge looked at me. I looked at Marge.

"A field of some kind," I said. "A field that prevents an electric current from flowing. Meaning no combustion motor using an electric spark can operate. No electric motors. No telephones. No radio or TV."

"Is that important?" Marge asked.

"Important?" I yelled. "Think of the possibilities just as a weapon! You could blank out a whole nation's transportation, its communications, its industry--"

I got hold of myself. I smiled my best I-love-children smile. "Doreen," I said, "let me look at Elmer's unhappen genii."

The kid clutched the box.

"Elmer told me not to let anybody look at it. He said he'd statuefy me if I did. He said n.o.body would understand it anyway. He said he might show it to Mr. Einstein, but not anybody else."

"That's Elmer, all right," Marge muttered.

I found myself breathing hard. I edged toward Doreen and put my hand on the hatbox. "Just one quick look, Doreen," I said. "No one will ever know."

She didn't answer. Just pulled the box away.

I pulled it back.

She pulled.

I pulled.

"Bill--" Marge called warningly. Too late. The lid of the hatbox came off in my hands.

There was a bright flash, the smell of insulation burning, and the unhappen genii fell out and scattered all over the floor.

Doreen looked smug. "Now Elmer will be angry at you. Maybe he'll disintegrate you. Or paralalize you and statuefy you. Forever."

"He might at that, Bill," Marge shuddered. "I wouldn't put anything past him."

I wasn't listening. I was scrambling after the mess of tubes, condensers and power packs scattered over the rug. Some of them were still wired together, but most of them had broken loose. Elmer was certainly one heck of a sloppy workman. Hadn't even soldered the connections. Just twisted the wires together.

I looked at the stuff in my hands. It made as much sense as a radio run over by a truck.

"We'll take it back to Elmer," I told Doreen, speaking very carefully. "I'll give him lots of money to build another. He can come down here and use our shop. We have lots of nice equipment he'd like."

Doreen tossed her head. "I don't think he'll wanta. He'll be mad at you. Anyway, Elmer is busy working on aggravation now."

"That's for sure!" Marge said in heartfelt tones.

"Aggravation, eh?" I grinned like an idiot. "Well, well! I'll bet he's good at it. But let's go see him right away."

"Bill!" Marge signaled me to one side. "Maybe you'd better not try to see Elmer," she whispered. "I mean, if he can build a thing like this in his garage, maybe he can build a disintegrator or a paralysis ray or something. There's no use taking chances."

"You read too many comics," I laughed it off. "He's only a kid, isn't he? What do you think he is? A superman?"

"Yes," Marge said flatly.

"Look, Marge!" I said in feverish excitement. "I've got to talk to Elmer! I've got to get the rights to that TV color lens and this electricity interruptor and anything else he may have developed!"

Marge kept trying to protest, but I simply grabbed her and Doreen and hustled them out to my car. Doreen lived in a wooded, hilly section a little north of White Plains. I made it in ten minutes.

Marge had said Elmer worked in the garage. I kept going up the driveway, swung sharp around the big house--and slammed on the brakes.

Marge screamed.

We skidded to a stop with our front end hanging over what looked like a bomb crater in the middle of the driveway.

I swallowed my heart down again, while I backed away fast.

We had almost plunged into a hole forty feet across and twenty feet deep in the middle. The hole was perfectly round, like a half section of a grapefruit.

"What's this?" I asked. "Where's the garage?"

"That's where the garage should be." Marge looked dazed. "But it's gone!"

I took another look at that hole scooped out with geometrical precision, and turned to Doreen. "What did you say Elmer was working on?"

"Agg--" she sobbed, "agg--agg--aggravation." She began to bawl in earnest. "Now he's gone. He's mad. He won't ever come back, I betcha."

"That's a fact," I muttered. "He may not have been mad, but he certainly was aggravated. Marge, listen! This is a mystery. We've just got to let it stay a mystery. We don't know anything, understand? The cops will finally decide Elmer blew himself up, and we'll leave it at that. One thing I'm pretty sure about--he's not coming back."

So that's how it was. Tom Kennedy keeps trying and trying to put Elmer's unhappen genii back together again. And every time he fails he takes it out on me because I didn't get to Elmer sooner. But you can see perfectly well he's way off base, trying to make out I could have done a thing to prevent what happened.

Is it my fault if the dumb kid didn't know enough to take the proper precautions when he decided to develop anti-gravitation--and got shot off, garage and all, someplace into outer s.p.a.ce?

What do they teach kids nowadays, anyway?

Contents

LAST RESORT.

by Stephen Bartholomew

The phenomenon of "hysterical strength" at the physical level is well known. Wonder what the equivalent phenomenon at the psychological level might do....

I inflated a rubber balloon and set it adrift. The idea was that in free fall the balloon would drift slowly in the direction of the leak. This was the first thing I did after I had discovered the trouble. I mean it was the first action I took. I had been thinking about it for some time. I had been thinking about what a great distance it was from Pacific Grove, California to Mars, and how I would never breathe the odor of eucalyptus again.

I watched the white balloon floating in the middle of the cabin. Light reflected from a spot on its surface, and it made me think of a Moonglobe I used to keep on my desk when I was in college. I had turned off the fan, and tried to hold my breath to keep from disturbing the air. The balloon drifted slowly a few feet aft, wobbled there for a minute or two, then began to drift forward again. I decided to indulge in the rare luxury of a cigarette. I lighted one, reached over, and popped the balloon. The piece of rubber hung in the air, limp and twisted. I had not expected that trick to work.

The rate of leakage was very low. It had been some thirty-six hours since I'd first noticed it. This was one of those things, of course, that were not supposed to happen in s.p.a.ce, and often did. Every precaution had been taken against it. The outer sh.e.l.l of the s.h.i.+p was tough enough to stop medium-velocity meteoroids, and inside the sh.e.l.l was a self-sealing goo, like a tubeless tire. Evidently the goo hadn't worked. Something had got through the hull and made a pinhole leak. In fact the hole was so small that it had taken me nearly thirty-five hours to compute the rate of leakage exactly. But it was big enough, it would do.

I had held the clipboard in my hand for a long time, rechecking the little black numbers on it again and again. Then I had warmed up the transmitter, raised Lunar Base, and reported what had happened. I had not reported before because I had not even been sure I had a leak. There's a normal seepage rate, of course; a certain amount of air will seep right through the molecular structure of the hull. That's what the reserve tanks are for. But I had been out a long time, and there wasn't enough left in the tanks to compensate for this. Not quite.

So I reported to Base. The operator on the other end told me to stand by for instructions. That was for my morale. Then I spent some time thinking about Pacific Grove, and the white house there, and the stand of eucalyptus. Then I blew up the balloon and popped it. As I was watching the piece of rubber hang motionless in the air the receiver began clicking. I waited till it stopped, then pulled out the tape and read it. It said, HAVE YOU INSPECTED HULL? I switched on the send key and tapped out, JUST GOING TO. STAND BY.

I opened the locker and broke out my s.p.a.cesuit. This was the first time I had put it on since lift-off. Without help, it took me nearly half an hour to get it on and then check it out. I always did hate wearing a s.p.a.cesuit, it's like a straitjacket. In theory I could have kept it on, plugged directly into the s.h.i.+p's oxygen supply, and ridden all the way back to Earth that way. The trouble with that idea was that the suit wasn't designed for it. You couldn't eat or drink through the helmet, and no one had ever thought up a satisfactory method of removing body wastes. That would be the worst way to go, I thought, poisoned slowly in my own juices.

When I finally did get the thing on, I went out the air lock. If the leak had been bad enough, I would have been able to see the air spurting out through the hole, a miniature geyser. But I found no more than what I expected. I crawled around the entire circ.u.mference of the hull and found only a thin silvery haze. The air as it leaked out formed a thin atmosphere around the hull, held there by the faint gravity of the s.h.i.+p's ma.s.s. Dust motes in the air, reflecting sunlight, were enough to hide any microscopic geyser spout. Before I re-entered the air lock I looked out into s.p.a.ce, in the direction away from the sun. Out there, trailing far away, the air had formed a silver tail, I saw it faintly s.h.i.+mmering in the night. I was going to make a good comet.

I got back inside and stripped off the suit. Then I raised Lunar Base again and tapped out, HAVE INSPECTED HULL. RESULTS NEGATIVE. A few minutes later the reply came back, STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS. For my morale.

I lighted another cigarette and thought about it some more. I looked around at the interior of my expensive, ten-foot coffin. I figured I would last for about another seventy-five hours. Of course I could take cyanide and get it over with. But this wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Within seventy-five hours the last of my reserve tanks would be empty. Then I would just wait for the rest of the air to leak out of the cabin. First I would lose consciousness with anoxia. I'd hardly even notice. Then as the pressure got lower my body fluids would begin to evaporate.

Once I had seen a mummy in a museum, it was some old prospector who had been lying in the Nevada desert for a hundred years or so. I was going to look like him, dried up, yellow, my teeth protruding in a grin, perfectly preserved. With no pilot, the s.h.i.+p would go into a cometary orbit around the sun. Maybe in a hundred years or so someone would come and take me back to a museum on earth.

I began to think about my wife, Sandy. I got out a piece of paper and wrote a long letter to her. I thought, maybe she'll even get to read it some day. Writing gave me something to do. I wrote about the time we had gone up to the Sierras together and slept in a sleeping bag at the edge of a four-thousand foot cliff. And about the times we had gone out in our cabin cruiser, the time we both nearly drowned. And asked about our daughter Wendy, who would be four now. I remembered part of an old poem: Christ! That my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again!

Writing was all right, until I realized that I had begun feeling sorry for myself, and I was letting it get into the letter. I put the letter aside and wondered what else I could do to kill time. I got out some of the film plates I'd made of the surface of Mars. Of course I had transmitted them all to Lunar Base, but it would have been nice if I could have delivered the original plates. I studied them for a while but didn't find anything I hadn't seen before. Well, I had done my job at least. I had orbited Mars, I had the glory of being the first American to do that. I had dropped the instrument package and transmitted all the data I could get back to Lunar. My only failure would be in not bringing back the s.h.i.+p.

I remembered a conversation I'd had at the last International s.p.a.ce Symposium in Geneva. A buddy of mine and I had taken out one of the Soviet cosmonauts and got him drunk. He was a dignified sort of drunk, a Party member who told long, pointless Russian jokes with an unwavering, serious expression. He sat sideways on the bar stool, holding his gla.s.s of vodka between two fingers and staring straight ahead. He said one thing that I had never forgotten.

"Do you know why we are ahead of you in s.p.a.ce?" he had said, staring with dignity at the tall blonde at a nearby table. "It is because of your bourgeois sentimentality. You do not like risking men. You build a skysc.r.a.per in New York to house some insurance company. Two or three construction workers are maimed or killed on the job. One of your coal mines collapses and fifty men are trapped. Yet, look. You are afraid of losing men in s.p.a.ce because of what the people at home might think. So you are too conservative, you avoid risks. So we are ahead of you. We send out a s.h.i.+p with three men aboard when you would risk only one. We are not sentimental, that is all. That is why we are ahead of you." He ordered another drink and stared into the mirror for several minutes, letting us think that over. Then he went on.

"Yes, you are less scientific than we, less logical. Yet that is your advantage, too. You are more alert to the unprecedented, the unpredictable. You are always ready for the Wild Chance, the impossible possibility. You expect the unexpected. You hope for the hopeless. Being sentimental, you have imagination."

His words came back to me. The unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility. That was all that could save me now. But what? Maybe another meteor would come along and plug the hole the first one had made. No. I had to think my way out of this one. But what if there was no way out?

I pushed myself to the aft bulkhead, turned and looked forward to the instrument panel. I picked out the smallest meter face. I could just read the numbers on it. I told myself: When I can't read the numbers any more I'll know my vision is blurring from the beginning of anoxia. I thought: When that happens I'll key in the transmitter and tap out, TELL SANDY GOOD-BY.

It would be dramatic anyhow.

A withered mummy in a flying tomb.

The receiver began clicking again. They're still worried about my morale, I thought. I went over and pulled out the tape. It said: BRONSON HERE. SUGGEST YOU TRY LAST RESORT.

Dr. Bronson was the project director. It was a moment before I realized what he meant. When I did I hesitated for several minutes. Then I shrugged and tapped out, O.K.

I knew what had been happening down there. They had fed all the data I could give them through a computer, and the computer had said no dice. There was no solution to the problem, at least none that a computer could think of with the data available. There was still the Last Resort.

I wondered if cyanide might not be more pleasant. Well, the exects would have scientific interest anyway. The Last Resort was still Top Secret. And highly experimental. It was a new drug with a name a foot long, called LRXD for short. It had come out of the old experiments with lysergic acid and mescalin. I had never heard of its existence until a few hours before lift-off from Lunar Base. Then Dr. Bronson had given me a single ampule of the stuff. He had held it up to the light, looking through it. He said, "This is called LRXD. No one knows exactly what it will do. The lab boys say the 'LR' stands for Last Resort."

What it was supposed to do was increase mental efficiency in human beings. Sometimes it did. They had given it to one volunteer and then shown him an equation which it had taken a computer ten minutes to solve. He wrote down the answer at once, apparently having gone through the entire process in his head instantaneously.

Dr. Bronson told me, "It isn't just a matter of I.Q. It increases the total level of consciousness. Ordinarily the human brain screens out thousands of irrelevant stimuli. You're not aware of your watch ticking, or the fly on the wall, or your own body odor. You just don't notice them. But under LRXD, the brain becomes aware of everything simultaneously. Nothing is screened out. Furthermore, the subject is capable of correlating everything. The human brain becomes as efficient as a Mark 60 computer, with the advantage of imagination and intuition. We don't know how it works yet, or exactly what it does. I hate to say this. But there's even some evidence that the drug increases telepathic ability."

But then again, three of the volunteers had gone insane after taking the drug. Two had died. On some of the others there was no apparent effect at all.

"We don't even know whether the effects are permanent or temporary," Bronson had added.

So now I was supposed to take this Last Resort and then try to think of a way out of my predicament, with my I.Q. boosted up to a thousand or so. It made me think of my college days, when I had stayed up all night on benzedrine, writing term papers. I remembered Bronson's description of one of the volunteers who had gone insane, and shuddered. Well, I had nothing to lose.

"It is what its name implies," Bronson had said. "To be used only in extreme emergency. Only when you have nothing to lose."

I had put the ampule away in the medicine locker and deliberately forgotten about it. Now I got it out again and held it up to the light as Bronson had done. Milky, white. I strapped myself to the acceleration couch, filled a syringe, and swabbed my arm. I looked at the letter I had started and probably would never finish. I rammed the needle in.

The hallucinations began within five minutes. This was normal, Bronson had said. I waited, gripping the armrests of the couch, hoping I would not begin believing in what I saw.

First there was the meter face directly in front of me. It was blue-green. I had never really seen before what color it was. It was like a round, bright flame. I stared at it, becoming hypnotized. Finally I couldn't stand it any more, I reached over and switched off the panel lights. Then the meter face became the blackest darkness I had ever seen, it was no longer a flat disk, but the entrance to a long, black tunnel, endless and narrow. I wanted to enter the tunnel and--Quickly I s.h.i.+fted my gaze. A gas tube rectifier caught my attention. This was like the meter face, only worse. A cloud of intense blue, flickering, s.h.i.+mmering--As I stared at it the cloud seemed to be expanding, growing, forever flickering and s.h.i.+mmering until it became vast, it filled the universe, pulsating with energy, it was a kind of blue I had never seen before.... I had never seen color before. There was a red plastic safety guard over one of the toggle switches. Suddenly it seemed alive, rather the red was alive, the color was no longer part of the object, it was an ent.i.ty in itself, blazing like flame, liberated from matter, it was a living drop of blood, afire.