Short Stories by Robert A. Heinlein Vol 2 Part 64

Despite inefficiencies the deKalb receptors should work every time, all the time, without failure. He went happily about finding out why they did not.

He had suspected some obvious - obvious to him - defect in manufacture.

But the inoperative deKalbs which Stevens had delivered to him refused to give up their secret. He X-rayed them, measured them with micrometer and interferometer, subjected them to all the usual tests and some that were quite unusual and peculiarly Waldo-ish. They would not perform.

He built a deKalb in his shop, using one of the inoperative ones as a model and using the reworked metal of another of the same design, also inoperative, as the raw material, he used his finest scanners to see with and his smallest waldoes -tiny pixy hands, an inch across - for manipulation in the final stages. He created a deKalb which was as nearly identical with its model as technology and incredible skill could produce.

It worked beautifully.

Its elder twin still refused to work. He was not discouraged by this.

On the contrary, he was elated. He had proved, proved with certainty, that the failure of the deKalbs was not a failure of workmans.h.i.+p, but a basic failure in theory. The problem was real.

Stevens had reported to him the scandalous performance of the deKalbs in McLeod's skycar, but he had not yet given his attention to the matter.

Presently, in proper order, when he got around to it, he would look into the matter. In the meantime he tabled the matter. The smooth apes were an hysterical lot; there was probably nothing to the story.

Writhing like Medusa's locks, indeed!

He gave fully half his time to Grimes's problem.

He was forced to admit that the biological sciences - if you could call them science! - were more fascinating than he had thought. He had shunned them, more or less; the failure of expensive 'experts' to do anything for his condition when he was a child had made him contemptuous of such studies. Old wives nostrums dressed up in fancy terminology! Grimes he liked and even respected, but Grimes was a special case.

Grimes's data had convinced Waldo that the old man had a case. Why, this was serious! The figures were incomplete, but nevertheless convincing. The curve of the third decrement, extrapolated not too unreasonably, indicated that in twenty years there would not be a man left with strength enough to work in the heavy industries. b.u.t.ton pus.h.i.+ng would be all they would be good for.

It did not occur to him that all he was good for was b.u.t.ton pus.h.i.+ng; he regarded weakness in the smooth apes as an old-style farmer might regard weakness in a draft animal. The farmer did not expect to pull the plough - that was the horse's job.

Grimes's medical colleagues must be utter fools.

Nevertheless, he sent for the best physiologists, neurologists, brain surgeons, and anatomists he could locate, ordering them as one might order goods from a catalogue. He must understand this matter.

He was considerably annoyed when he found that he could not make arrangements, by any means, to perform vivisection on human beings.

He was convinced by this time that the damage done by ultra short-wave radiation was damage to the neurological system, and that the whole matter should be treated from the standpoint of electromagnetic theory.

He wanted to perform certain delicate manipulations in which human beings would be hooked up directly to apparatus of his own design to find out in what manner nerve impulses differed from electrical current.

He felt that if he could disconnect portions of a man's nervous circuit, replace it in part with electrical hookups, and examine the whole matter in situ, he might make illuminating discoveries. True, the man might not be much use to himself afterwards.

But the authorities were stuffy about it; he was forced to content himself with cadavers and with animals.

Nevertheless, he made progress. Extreme short-wave radiation had a definite effect on the nervous system - a double effect: it produced

'ghost' pulsations in the neurons, Insufficient to accomplish muscular motor response, but, he suspected, strong enough to keep the body in a continual state of inhibited nervous excitation; and, secondly, a living specimen which had been subjected to this process for any length of time showed a definite, small but measurable, lowering in the efficiency of its neural impulses. If it had been an electrical circuit, he would have described the second effect as a decrease in insulating efficiency.

The sum of these two effects on the subject individual was a condition of mild tiredness, somewhat similar to the malaise of the early stages of pulmonary tuberculosis. The victim did not feel sick; he simply lacked pep.

Strenuous bodily activity was not impossible; it was simply distasteful; it required too much effort, too much willpower.

But an orthodox pathologist would have been forced to report that the victim was in perfect health - a little run-down, perhaps, but nothing wrong with him. Too sedentary a life, probably. What he needed was fresh air, suns.h.i.+ne, and healthy exercise.

Doc Grimes alone had guessed that the present, general, marked preference for a sedentary life was the effect and not the cause of the prevailing lack of vigour. The change had been slow, at least as slow as the increase in radiation in the air. The individuals concerned had noticed it, if at all, simply as an indication that they were growing a little bit older,'slowing down, not so young as I used to be'. And they were content to slow down; it was more comfortable than exertion.

Grimes had first begun to be concerned about it when he began to notice that all of his younger patients were 'the bookish type'. It was all very well for a kid to like to read books, he felt, but a normal boy ought to be out doing a little h.e.l.l raising too. What had become of the sand-lot football games, the games of scrub, the clothes-tearing activity that had characterized his own boyhood?

d.a.m.n it, a kid ought not to spend all his time poring over a stamp collection.

Waldo was beginning to find the answer.

The nerve network of the body was not dissimilar to antennae. Like antennae, it could and did pick up electromagnetic waves. But the pickup was evidenced not as induced electrical current, but as nerve pulsation - impulses which were maddeningly similar to, but distinctly different from, electrical current.

Electromotive force could be used in place of nerve impulses to activate muscle tissue, but emf was not nerve impulse. For one thing they travelled at vastly different rates of speed. Electrical current travcls at a speed approaching that of light; neural impulse is measured in feet per second.

Waldo felt that somewhere in this matter of speed lay the key to the problem.

He was not permitted to ignore the matter of McLeod's fantastic skycar as long as he had intended to. Dr Rambeau called him up. Waldo accepted the call, since it was routed from the laboratories of NAPA. 'Who are you and what do you want?' he demanded of the image.

Rambeau looked around cautiously. 'Sss.h.!.+ Not so loud,' he whispered. 'They might be listening.'

'Who might be? And who are you?'

'"They" are the ones who are doing it. Lock your doors at night. I'm Dr

Rambeau.'

'Dr Rambeau? Oh yes. Well, Doctor, what is the meaning of this intrusion?'

The doctor leaned forward until he appeared about to fall out of the stereo picture. 'I've learned how to do it,' he said tensely.

'How to do what?'

'Make the deKalbs work. The dear, dear deKalbs.' He suddenly thrust his hands at Waldo, while clutching frantically with his fingers. 'They go like this: Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!'

Waldo felt a normal impulse to cut the man off, but it was overruled by a fascination as to what he would say next. Rambeau continued, 'Do you know why? Do you? Riddle me that.'

'Why?'

Rambeau placed a finger beside his nose and smiled roguishly. 'Wouldn't you like to know? Wouldn't you give a pretty to know? But I'll tell you!'

'Tell me, then.'

Rambeau suddenly looked terrified. 'Perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps they are listening. But I will, I will! Listen carefully:

Nothing is certain.

'Is that all?' inquired Waldo, now definitely amused by the man's antics.

'"Is that all?" Isn't that enough? Hens will crow and c.o.c.ks will lay. You are here and I am there. Or maybe not. Nothing is certain. Nothing, nothing,