[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Dear Ben: It breaks my heart you didn't sign on for this trip. Your replacement, who calls himself an ichthyologist, has only one talent that pertains to fish—he drinks like one. There are nine of us in the expedition, and every one of us is fed up with this joker, Cleveland, already. We've only been on the island a week, and he's gone native, complete with beard, bare feet and bone laziness. He slops around the lagoon like a beachcomber and hasn't brought in a decent specimen yet. The island is a bit of paradise, though. Wouldn't be hard to let yourself relax under the palms all day instead of collecting blisters and coral gashes out in the bright sun...
Spud, world-famous dummy, talks to Mars with surprising results. Crawford completed the rehearsal in less than an hour. He listened to the orchestra run through its selections, okayed the song the guest vocalist had chosen, then finished up with a long dialogue between Spud and himself. When it was over he checked timing with the program director, made a few script changes and conferred briefly with a Special Service Officer about the number of troops the auditorium could hold. Everything was running smoothly. It was going to be a neat, action-packed show. Backstage he looked at his watch. He had almost two hours before the regular show began and he was restless. Two hours at Harlow Field could seem like two years. Guards and restrictions all over the place. Harlow Field was the largest experimental base in the world, a veritable garden of atoms, the proving grounds for every secret...
Captain Luke Chilton counted over the five-dollar notes with a greater care than I thought was necessary, considering that there were only ten of them; and cautiously examined each separate one, as though he feared that I might be trying to pay for my passage in bad money. His show of distrust set my back up, and I came near to damning him right out for his impudence—until I reflected that a West Coast trader must pretty well divide his time between cheating people and seeing to it that he isn't cheated, and so held my tongue. Having satisfied himself that the tale was correct and that the notes were genuine, he brought out from the inside pocket of his long-tailed shore-going coat a big canvas pocket-book, into which he stowed them lengthwise; and from the glimpse I had of it I fancied that until my money got there it...
With his explanations to the reporters completed, Dr. King felt that when he pulled the switch he would automatically restore his good name and bring to a close a career of solid scientific achievement. Most of all, he would bring to an end the practice of referring to him as "Side Effect Charlie." Dr. Charles King was willing to admit that there were excellent reasons for his acquiring this hated nickname. The facts were that the bulk of his scientific achievements were made inadvertently—that is to say, his discoveries were all made through investigation of unexpected side effects of his experiments. In a career conspicuous for unusual, unanticipated side effects, two in particular stand out. The first discovery resulted in rendering the entire heat-oriented metallurgical industry obsolete, and founding upon its corpse a new industry. This was based on the extracting of metal from ore and its subsequent shaping by...
The Captain peered into the eyepiece of the telescope. He adjusted the focus quickly. "It was an atomic fission we saw, all right," he said presently. He sighed and pushed the eyepiece away. "Any of you who wants to look may do so. But it's not a pretty sight." "Let me look," Tance the archeologist said. He bent down to look, squinting. "Good Lord!" He leaped violently back, knocking against Dorle, the Chief Navigator. "Why did we come all this way, then?" Dorle asked, looking around at the other men. "There's no point even in landing. Let's go back at once." "Perhaps he's right," the biologist murmured. "But I'd like to look for myself, if I may." He pushed past Tance and peered into the sight. He saw a vast expanse, an endless surface of gray, stretching to the edge of the planet. At first he thought it was water...
Young Ron Crag fused the edge of his claim tag to the metal vein in the quartzite rock with his heat gun, then with heavy-shod fingers he tugged at the small copper disk, but it remained firmly in place. "That makes you owner according to law, Mr. Crag," he murmured. In the lonely, rugged reaches of Luna's north country a man had to talk to someone. "A real lode looks like. Richest uranium lode I've seen in many a Lunar June. Bring me a nice roll if some of those rotten claim jumpers don't—" Automatically he grasped the hilt of his gun, loosening it in the holster. He sauntered toward the catatread, parked near the southern rim of the small crater, near the mouth of the gorge. He could see several purple, nebulous space moths fluttering around the engine of his vehicle. Crag watched them as he approached the machine;...
Harper Breen sank down gingerly into the new Relaxo-Lounge. He placed twitching hands on the arm-rests and laid his head back stiffly. He closed his fluttering eyelids and clamped his mouth to keep the corner from jumping. "Just lie back, Harp," droned his sister soothingly. "Just give in and let go of everything." Harper tried to let go of everything. He gave in to the chair. And gently the chair went to work. It rocked rhythmically, it vibrated tenderly. With velvety cushions it massaged his back and arms and legs. For all of five minutes Harper stood it. Then with a frenzied lunge he escaped the embrace of the Relaxo-Lounge and fled to a gloriously stationary sofa. "Harp!" His sister, Bella, was ready to weep with exasperation. "Dr. Franz said it would be just the thing for you! Why won't you give it a trial?" Harper glared at the preposterous...
The galactic patrol cruiser Parsec was coasting—as she had been for eight months. At a speed of roughly twelve to fifteen light-minutes an hour, she had been patrolling the Pass—that vast cosmic void between the II Milky Way Supergalaxy and the I Supergalaxy of Andromeda. The Parsec was so immense that a man could die in one end and be buried in space, and those on the other end wouldn't know it until they read it in their daily Space Traveler . She was a 41.261 A.D. model, only four years old, and aside from fuel she was theoretically capable of sustaining herself in space for a thousand years—which is just what young Lt. Jim Braniff was afraid she was going to do. Lt. Stevens, his roommate, came stamping in from the sixth watch slapping his hands. "Cold outside!" He wiped the fog from his glasses. "Must be nearly freezing....
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity, though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently. "We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!" "What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton. Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared, speechless for once. In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon. Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two hands, six siphons in...
Illustrated by Kelly Freas "People are basically alike," Harding said democratically. He sat idly against the strawlike matting of the hut wall and reached for a native fruit in a nearby bowl. "They're all suckers, even the smartest of them; in fact, the ones who think they're the smartest generally wind up to be the dumbest." Carefully, he bit into the fruit which resembled an orange and, mouth full, nodded approvingly. "Say, these aren't bad. Try one." Sheckly shook his head, determined to avoid as many aspects of this culture as he could. "But these aren't people," he reminded, not happy with the thought. "They're lizards." Harding shrugged and settled back, his grinning features ruddy in the flaring torchlight. "Humanoids have no monopoly on suckerhood. When it comes to that, we're all brothers under the skin, no matter what color or how hard the skin may be." He sighed, contemplating...
Marcius Kemble stood upon the frozen surface of Pluto and swore aloud. He knew there were none to hear him but, just the same, he shouted into his plastic space helmet until his ears were ringing, cursing all the planets and their diverse inhabitants in order, most of all Earth. You see, Marcius Kemble was an example. He was an example to any others, in the year of twenty-two hundred A.D., who would strive to rule the solar system. The planets were independent states and they were to remain that way. For trying to change this, Kemble had been exiled to unexplored Pluto. Marcius raised his mailed fist toward the mighty stars and ground out curses against Earth and all those upon it, wishing that he could call upon it the wrath of Heaven and Hell, for it had been the men of Earth who had brought about his ultimate...
Colony Eight on the Damballa was a huddle of low plastic domes set in a clearing of the jungle. It was also the most welcome sight Jim Reese had seen in a month—the month since he'd quarreled with Lois and struck out into the jungle alone. He had covered close to a thousand miles—all the way to Colony Seven, the nearest of the 10 colonies Earth had planted on the jungle world. Now he was returning, hoping his month's absence had healed the wounds he and Lois had caused each other. She had had time to think things over. So had he—and he still loved her. He saw one of the natives straggling through the jungle toward him and grinned. It was drunken old Kuhli, a native who had been accidentally made a drug addict by a well-meaning Terran doctor. Kuhli lived in a murky fog and hung around Colony...
Me, I'm just a radio mechanic. No genius, that is. But handy with a soldering iron. If it's genius you want, take my friend Bill Marra. He's a communications engineer—telephone, radio, or what have you. He's invented enough gimmicks so he doesn't have to work any more, just potters around his basement inventing more gimmicks. Thinking them up, actually, is all he does. Give him a screwdriver and a pair of pliers and he can wreck anything in five minutes. That's where I come in. He thinks 'em up, I build 'em. He busts 'em, I fix 'em. And when he gets into a jam, I'm the guy comes to bail him out. Like, for instance, this last gadget of his. Nothing dangerous about it, but it could have got him sunk in the river with his feet in a block of cement. It all started with an amplifier. I...
Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed—for humans at any rate. Steena of the spaceways —that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I’ve tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a Lunar plant—even the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space-all. Steena was strictly background stuff and that is where she mostly spent her free hours—in the smelly smoky background corners of any stellar-port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her you could spot her—just sitting there listening to the talk—listening and remembering. She...
SO, GENERAL, I came in to tell you I've found the loneliest man in the world for the Space Force. How am I supposed to rate his loneliness for you? In Megasorrows or Kilofears? I suspect I know quite a library on the subject, but you know more about stripes and bars. Don't try to stop me this time, General. Now that you mention it, I'm not drunk. I had to have something to back me up so I stopped off at the dispensary and stole a needle. I want you to get off my back with that kind of talk. I've got enough there—it bends me over like I had bad kidneys. It isn't any of King Kong's little brothers. They over rate the stuff. It isn't the way you've been riding me either. Never mind what I'm carrying. Whatever it is—and believe me, it is —I have to...
Alice knew that Dobie was a good dog, even if he did have an alarming habit of hunting down rabbits and gophers. But one day he brought her— lice McNearby was washing breakfast dishes and looking out the kitchen window at the November sky when she first spied Dobie. The way he was sneaking up to the house she knew he had killed something. She dried her hands on her apron and tried to put down the suspicion that gnawed at the edge of her mind as she went to the door. During the past month Dobie had killed a cat, a pheasant, two rabbits and a field mouse and it seemed it would be only a question of time until he got one of the chickens or even one of the suckling pigs. That would be all Mac would need to throw one of his wild spells and...
The big man with the iron grey hair stared morosely out the quartz window and across the roofs of Greater New York. Far down the canyon streets a few motor cars still ran and over the swinging aerial bridges scattered pedestrians carefully wended their way. Their grotesque figures with the heavy metal helmets that reminded the watching man of the half-mythical sea monsters of the past or divers that used to explore wrecks were far different from the jostling crowds that had crowded the ways only a few short days ago. But that was before the plague—the plague of the whispering death. John Cortland, United Utilities Power magnate, sighed as he turned from the quiet streets below. Somberly he regarded a tiny light beam that came from the mirror of a galvanometer that trembled and danced continually. He mused over the events of the past few days and wondered at...
The previous case was a Weeper, and he lost. So the Space Zoning Commissioners were damp and irritable before I opened pleadings for my client. I tried not to squelch as I approached the bench. "Not the Flammables again, Mr. Jones?" the fat Commissioner asked nastily, sponging his suit with a sodden handkerchief. "This was last week, Your Honor." The thin dark Commissioner stared pointedly at the charred end of the bench nearest the witness seat. "Indeed it was, Mr. Jones." The middle Commissioner poised his fingers and looked at the court ceiling; moisture gleamed diamond like on his bald head. "Now let me see," he intoned. "Correct me if I err, Mr. Jones, but I seem to observe you have a habit of representing somewhat spectacular aliens. Including, in the past six months alone, the Drillers, Whirling Tombs, Fragile Glasses, Erupters, Vibrational Men, Transparent Women—and of course let us...
The ship lay at a crazy angle on the stark whiteness of the pumice plain. The rocket nozzles were a fused lump of slag; the fire-darkened hull crumpled and warped by the impact of landing. And there was silence ... complete and utter silence. There could be no return. Thurmon realized this. At first the thought had brought panic, but, as the scope of his achievement dawned on him, the fear retreated. Bruised, giddy, half-crazed ... the certainty of death held no terrors. Not yet. And it was worth it! Fame ... immortality ! Glory ... in return for the last few years of a blighted, embittered, over-shadowed life. Yes, it was well worth it. And, except for the crash-landing and the certainty of no return, it had all come to pass just as he had planned it for so long. On his knees he caressed the gritty soil. He...
The chubby woman glared at the android and dropped her suitcase on the floor. She turned to her husband and said in an angry, unsteady voice, "I'm leaving." Her double chin trembled. "I can't stand the sight of that thing another second." Raymond Golden gripped his empty glass with both hands, leaned forward tensely in the chair, and tried to find the right words. "Paula," he began helplessly. "Please wait. I'll get it fixed, or sell it, or trade it in. I'll do something." Mrs. Golden pointed a shaky, pudgy finger. "I'll never come back as long as that is here." She bent to pick up her suitcase. The android approached silently and stared at her posterior. "Madam," the android said, "you are getting quite fat." Paula's back snapped upward. Her face was red and there were dark shadows under her eyes. "I can't stand it!" she shrieked. "I can't!...
What I wanted was a good night's sleep. What I got was visitation rights with the most exasperating pack of sleepwalkers in history. A fried egg came floating up through the stone steps of the Medical Center and broke on my shoe. According to my watch, it was time for the breakfast I didn't have that morning, so I waited a moment for the usual two rashers of bacon. When they materialized, I hopped aside to avoid them and went back into the building, where the elevator took me straight up to the psychiatric floor, without asking. "Your blood pressure, salts, minerals, vitamins, basal metabolism, brain pattern, nervous reflexes and skin temperature control are within accepted tolerances," it droned, opening the doors to let me off. "You have no clinical organic disorders; you weigh a hundred and fifty-two pounds, Earth, measure six feet one inch, and have a clear pallid...
The golden guardians denied mankind the stars. They were irresistible in their might ... and they were something more! "Why did you come creeping into the house last night like a thief?" Mrs. Sanchez asked her son. Lithe, dark Roberto set down his breakfast coffee and smiled up at her. "Ah, Mama, you are the owl. I was certain I moved quiet as moonlight." "I always hear the sounds of my children. Even the little one when he stirs in his grave. It is the way of a mother." She drew a cup of coffee and sat with them at the table in the small kitchen patio. "The hour was late," Roberto said, "and I did not wish to disturb you with greetings that would keep until morning. You sleep little enough as it is. Though the hard days are gone, the sun still rises after you." Roberto's father looked...
Roby Morrison fidgeted. Walking in the tropical heat he heard the wet thunder of waves on the shore. There was a green silence on Orthopedic Island. It was the year 1997, but Roby did not care. All around him was the garden where he prowled, all ten years of him. This was Meditation Hour. Beyond the garden wall, to the north, were the High I.Q. Cubicles where he and the other boys slept in special beds. With morning they popped up like bottle-corks, dashed into showers, gulped food, and were sucked down vacuum-tubes half across the island to Semantics School. Then to Physiology. After Physiology he was blown back underground and released through a seal in the great garden wall to spend this silly hour of meditative frustration, as prescribed by the island Psychologists. Roby had his opinion of it. "Damned silly." Today, he was in furious rebellion. He glared...
They were like any other boys sporting in their old swimming hole—in the depths of space! I was a little bit worried when I saw Captain Hannah again. I thought he might have decided he wanted his elephants back, and I'd grown sort of attached to them. Although I couldn't break the baby of the habit of nibbling on Gasha leaves, in spite of the fact that they're not good for him. A few months earlier, Captain Hannah had conned me into taking the elephants off his hands and out of his tramp spaceship. He had suffered from intellectual terrestrial zoological insufficiency—or in other words, he hadn't known whales are mammals, and had delivered the multi-ton Beulah instead, to the Prinkip of Penguin, as an adult sample of Earth's largest mammal. The Prinkip had quite properly refused delivery, and Hannah had stuck me with her and her incipient progeny. I...