Tack power drives on a sewing circle and you can needle the world into the darndest mess! "All right," I said, "what is sociology good for?" Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I meant to do it. He bit off each word with great restraint: "Sociology is the study of social institutions, Mr. Halloway." I tried to make him understand my position. "Look, it's the big-money men who are supposed to be contributing to the support...
Gordon and Harold both admitted the possibility of thinking entities other than human. But would they ever recognize the physical form of some of these beings? "Hey , Gordon!" Gordon Marlow, Ph.D., straightened up and turned in the direction of the voice, the garden trowel dangling in his dirt-stained white canvas glove. His wide mouth broke into a smile that revealed even white teeth. It was Harold Harper, an undergraduate student, who had called. "Hop over the fence and come in," Gordon invited. He dropped the trowel and, taking off his work gloves, reached into his pocket and extracted an old pipe. He filled it, the welcoming smile remaining on his lips, while Harold Harper approached, stepping carefully between the rows of carrots, cabbages, and cauliflower. Harold held a newspaper in his hand. When he reached Gordon Marlow he held it open and pointed to the headline. ROBOT ROCKET SHIP...
The problem with working wonders is they must be worked—even when they're against all common sense! None of his neighbors knew Mr. Jell's great problem. None of his neighbors, in truth, knew Mr. Jell at all. He was only an odd old man who lived alone in a little house on the riverbank. He had the usual little mail box, marked "E. Jell," set on a post in front of his house, but he never got any mail, and it was not long before people began wondering where he got the money he lived on. Not that he lived well, certainly; all he ever seemed to do was just fish, or just sit on the riverbank watching the sky, telling tall stories to small children. And none of that took any money to do. But still, he was a little odd; people sensed that. The stories he told all his...
Unfortunate castaway! Marooned far from home—with nothing to share his loneliness but humans! The other one—Charpantier, he called himself—he and I were going back up the hill to the Foundation, carrying our bags, when I happened to remark I didn't think the Veld was sane anymore. (I call myself Maurer.) Charpantier said nothing for a moment. We kept walking, up the gravel path between the unimaginatively clipped hedges. But he was frowning a little, and after a while he said in an absent way: "Now, how would one determine that?" He looked straight into my eyes, which is something that has always upset me, and challenged: "I don't think one could." I felt the shock of inadequacy. Words come out of me—perfectly accurate words, I know; but I never know how, and sometimes when asked I forget. Now I must be very lucid; I must be his kind of man,...
I admit it: I didn't know if I was coming or going—but I know that if I stuck to the old man, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner! Doc had this solemn human by the throat when I caught up with him. "Tonight," Doc was saying in his old voice that was as crackled and important as parchment, "tonight Man will reach the Moon. The golden Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. Tonight is the night when this is to happen." "Sure," the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. "No argument. Sure, up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the teeth!" I came alongside and carefully started to lever the old man loose, one finger at a time. It had to be done...
"Hello, Margy," he said bashfully when he came upon her standing beside the low, white stone wall which surrounded the schoolyard, isolating it from the carefully landscaped forest and lakes beyond. "Hello, Clyde." "How are you today, Margy?" "I'm fine, Clyde. How are you?" "I'm fine, Margy.... Mind if I sit down here?" Feeling a little flutter of unnamed fear, she cried, "Go ahead. I don't own the wall." Clyde put his hands behind him, found the top of the wall, and drew himself up until he could sit on the stones. He looked down at her, his chin level with her brown curls; he looked as if he had half expected her to turn and walk away, and when she did not, he smiled uncertainly. The fear gone, now, she tilted her head and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, once again the conscious master...
His name was Mikel Skot. He was thirty-four, five-feet-ten and lean, with decent features and all his hair and quite nice brown eyes. But somehow he always seemed to give the impression of being of indeterminate age, and slightly dusty. He lived alone, he gravitated between his job and his lodgings, and since the age of fourteen he had never known a girl well enough to call her by her first name. For twelve years, ever since 2827, he had sold tickets at one of the windows of Time Travel Tours, Unlimited. If raises hadn't been automatic, he would never have had one, though he was punctual, faithful, honest, quick and accurate. Even the other ticket-sellers still called him Citizen Skot. He had never budged from his cozy era—even though, as an employee, he was entitled to take any tour he wished, on his semi-annual vacation, at no cost to...
George Washington was the father of his country. I am not George Washington. My name is Andrew Jones, and it is because of me there will be no more Joneses in the world. There will be, in fact, no more anybody. This is the end of the world. It did not come through fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper, from solar catastrophe or man's suicidal mis-use of atomic power or any of the other fearful possibilities with which the Sunday-supplement writers once terrified us. It came through the exposure of an age-old conspiracy. I did it. My excuse is the eternal excuse of the scientist: I sought the truth. How it was used was not my concern. But that it should have led to the depopulation of the Earth concerns me, as it must concern every man, and I have an unshakable feeling of guilt. Perhaps I...
Every planet is badly in need of family men, naturally—but the same one on all of them? You might say Garrity brought it on himself. The way I put it, Garrity was the architect of his own disasters. It's a nicely put phrase, I think. Anyway, a lot of people tried to tell him what might happen. I did, for one, though I'd never have thought it would happen in just that way. What I would have predicted for Garrity would be trouble, but just ordinary trouble: jail, or getting his Space Engineer's ticket suspended, or something like that. Not the kind of trouble he's got. I remember distinctly the first time I heard Garrity explaining his theory. It wasn't a new theory, but the way Garrity talked about it, you'd think he'd invented it personally. We were sitting in the messroom in the Aloha —that was the old Aloha...
The face of Brian Wargan, chief of the Solar Bureau of Investigation, was gray with strain and fatigue. "This Corvo North business," he said. "It's almost a myth by now, but it's our only chance. We might as well face that." His features and that of the younger man across the desk from him might have formed a study in contrasts. Roger Kay was keen, alert. There were signs of weariness about his eyes, but the firm set of his jaw revealed a tendency to action rather than introspection. "Then, sir," he urged, "let's take that chance. The department has located him, I believe? I haven't seen the reports." The S.B.I. chief nodded. "His laboratory is right here on Gany." He indicated a spot on the global map of Ganymede, some distance from the spaceport. "That's the mining district," Kay observed. "Yes. He's been doing some research for the Inter-Planetary...
It was Orley Mattup's killing of the old lab technician that really made us hate him. Mattup was a guard at the reactor installation at Bayless, Kentucky, where my friend Danny Hern and I were part of the staff when the Outsiders took everything over. In what god-forsaken mountain hole they had found Mattup, and how they got him to sell out to them, I don't know. He was an authentic human, though. You can tell an Outsider. Mattup and Danny and I were playing high-low-jack the night Uncle Pete was killed, sitting on the widewalk where Mattup had a view of the part of the station he was responsible for. High-low-jack is a back-country card game; Danny had learned it in northern Pennsylvania, where he came from, and Mattup loved the game, and they had taught it to me because the game is better three-handed. The evening sessions had...
Nearer and nearer toward strange and unexplored regions, higher and higher sailed the Wonderful Elephant, borne along by the great silken balloon. Harold and Ione, the Prince and the little Princess slept peacefully. It was midnight by the hands of the clock, but the boundless aerial space through which they sped was lighted by myriads upon myriads of twinkling stars. On and still on through diamond-specked space the Elephant floated safely. Above, below, to right, to left, and round about in all directions, flashing, glittering globes of light were to be seen and of such dazzling hues and colors as had never been dreamed of by earth-bound mortals. The planet Neptune was wrapped in a bluish-green vapor; Uranus seemed a blinding white; Saturn emitted a yellow light; Jupiter shone like a glorious, crimson jewel; Mars blazed forth fiery red beams, while Mercury seemed bathed in a metallic green color. Our...
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home! Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura. Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning.... It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos, were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born. For it was June...
I had to admire this little guy's courage. Fradin, his name was—James Arthur Fradin, with a string of letters after it that even the alphabet agencies down at Washington could not have unscrambled. The letters represented honorary degrees conferred on him by half a dozen different colleges, and they should have entitled him to be heard with respectful consideration, but they weren't. The assembled scientists of the Institute of Radio Engineers were giving him merry hell. "What you are saying, Fradin," one of the scientists interrupted hotly, "is gross nonsense." "It is absolutely impossible," another shouted. "Faker!" somebody yelled, and a dozen voices took it up until the room echoed with the sound. I sat back and grinned to myself. If this meeting ended in a free-for-all fight, which was what looked like was due to happen, I would be able to make a swell human interest humorous yarn out...
George Everson descended hastily from the air liner, and the flying steps of a street escalator carried him up into the Star Building, but not before the crowd surging behind the fence a hundred yards away had caught sight of him. How they recognized him in the growing dusk he didn't know. His gray hair and mustache, the sensitive lines of his face were unobtrusive, anonymous—but recognize him they did. Probably hate had sharpened their vision, for the chorus of yells that overtook him was fierce. It was clear enough that they didn't like traitors. He smiled wearily, knowing, without pausing to make sure, that his hand-picked guards were keeping them in check, and dropped wearily into a convenient desk chair. As it headed for his office, he switched on the visor, and his secretary's anxious face met his eyes. "We've been expecting you, Mr. Everson." "Any messages?" "A great...
This could be a Christmas story. If it is, it shows one way peace on Earth can be attained! He was a tall, hard man with skin the color of very old iodine. When he climbed up out of the vertical shaft of his small gold mine, The Lousy Disappointment , he could have been taken for an Indian, he was that dark. Except, of course, that Indians didn't exist any more in 1982. His name was Tom Gannett and he was about forty years old and he didn't realize his own uniqueness. When he made it to his feet, the first thing he did was to squint up at the sun. The second was to sneeze, and the third to blow his nose. "Hey, you old sun!" he growled. "You old crummy sun, you look sicker'n a dog." Which was literally true, for the sun seemed to be pretty...
Planetfall. Here the forest was green and cool. A soft, damp wind promised rain. The colonists moved down the ramp, staring at the crew members piling crates of supplies in the meadow beyond. Frowns. Then whispers. Saxon glanced up. His nostrils flared. "Hurry," he told the crewmen, and came forward, beaming. He was tired. It showed in his feverish, too-bright smile as he said, "Afraid Engineering's a little behind schedule. They'll be here tomorrow morning to erect your city. Tonight you'll have to rough it." Reactions varied. The women murmured and moved closer to their men. Some smiled. One man thoughtfully eyed the mounting pyramid of supplies. "You're getting a choice world, Jarl," Saxon said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Survey spent thirty years here, balancing the ecology, wiping out the bugs and carnivores. Eden." Saxon tasted the word like wine. Jarl Madsen's face was stone. "Aren't they all named...
Let the dead past bury its dead? Not while I am alive, it won't! It surely was all right for me to let myself do it now. I couldn't have been more safe. In the window of the radio store a color television set was enjoying a quiz by itself and creased in my pocket was the newspaper account of the failure of a monumental human adventure in the blooming extinction of a huge rocket. The boys on the corner seemed hardly human, scowling anthropoids in walrus-skin coats. It was my own time. Anybody could see I was safe, and I could risk doing what I ached to do. I turned the corner. The breaks were against me from the start. It didn't come as any surprise. I could never get away with it. I knew that all along. There was a Packard parked just beyond the fire plug. The...
When you took pot luck with this kitchen scientist, not even the poor pot was lucky! Bonnie came home from school and found her brother in the kitchen, doing something important at the sink. She knew it was important because he was making a mess and talking to himself. The sink drain was loaded down with open soda bottles, a sack of flour, corn meal, dog biscuits, molasses, Bromo-Seltzer, a tin of sardines and a box of soap chips. The floor was covered with drippings and every cupboard in the kitchen was open. At the moment, Bonnie's brother was putting all his energy into shaking a plastic juicer that was half-filled with an ominous-looking, frothy mixture. Bonnie waited for a moment, keeping well out of range, and then said, "Hi, Bob." "Lo," he answered, without looking up. "Where's Mom?" "Shopping." Bonnie inched a little closer. "What are you doing, Bob?"...
rom inside the dome, the night sky is a beautiful thing, even though Deimos and Phobos are nothing to brag about. If you walk outside, maybe as far as the rocket field, you notice a difference. Past the narrow developed strip around the dome, the desert land lies as chilled and brittle as it did for eons before Earthmen reached Mars. The sky is suddenly raw and cruel. You pull your furs around your nose and check your oxygen mask, and wish you were inside something, even a thin wall of clear plastic. I like to stand here, though, and look out at it, just thinking about how far those ships grope out into the dark nowadays, and about the men who have gone out there on a few jets and a lot of guts. I knew a bunch of them ... some still out there, I guess. There was...
Marsden had filled a basin with well water and began to lather his hands and face with soap when Marie entered their cabin. He looked up and clucked his tongue in disapproval. "Lord," he said. "Look at yourself." Marie scowled at him as she removed her bandanna and shook loose her short-cropped hair. "How do you expect me to look?" Her plain but pretty face was sweat-streaked. She wore a simple tunic which fell halfway down her thighs and almost matched her sturdy, sun-darkened legs in color, although sweat darkened the back of the garment and left rings of white under the armpits where it had evaporated. "I know how I'd like you to look." "Harry Marsden, just what do you mean by that?" He had felt it for some time now, this smouldering resentment which had wedged its way between them after only two years of marriage. He couldn't...
In the year 2200 A.D., Solar News Company became the biggest corporation in the nine planets. In the year 2220, Solar built the Heptagon, so called not because it was seven-sided but because it covered seven solid blocks, housed seven hundred thousand employees, and on its seventieth floor had a spacefield big enough to handle a fair-sized interplanetary patrol boat. In the early part of the Twenty-Third Century, war had been eliminated for so long that international affairs no longer had the deep significance they had had in the Twentieth Century. Controls were so rigid there had not been any startling development in economics or science for over a century, with the single exception of time-travel. People everywhere on Earth had finally resigned themselves to taking it easy, and so Solar News was just about on the rocks when along came time-travel, and Smullen, the sharp-eyed vice-president of Solar, foresaw...
"Fidwell," I said, "why don't you go lose yourself!" He stared at me uncomprehendingly for a full three seconds. Then a glimmer of understanding leaped into his beady little eyes and he got up from the chair before my desk and started happily toward the outer door of the office. "Okay, Mr. Nelson," he said over a thin shoulder. "Just whatever you say." "Better still," I amended, tapping the glass top of my desk with manicured nails, "go shoot yourself." He nodded blithely. "Just as you say, T. J. Just as you say." He always called me T. J. when he felt that I was giving him a measure of attention. "Wait," I said, as he reached the door. "Do you by any chance own a gun?" He turned, a frown spreading between his mousy brows. "No," he said, slowly, "I don't." Then he brightened. "But I could purchase one!"...
It was a tremendous house. And they were newlyweds. And were still a mite flighty. And for a while that accounted for the whole thing. At the moment, it seemed to Ernie Lane that in a house which even the real estate agent said had "either" eleven or twelve rooms, it was quite conceivable that he and Melinee had overlooked that extra room. After all, they had only been living at 1312 Cedar Lane for four days and had hardly had time to make a complete survey of the place. Now it was quite different. For Ernie Lane had stopped walking hurriedly past that extra door, had stopped giving it only casual curiosity, had even stopped wondering afterward. This night he had come home a bit tired, gone directly to greet his loving wife, and then decided to put a stop to the gnawing question. While Melinee fried the chicken,...