The Little Man on the Subway

(with James MacCreigh)

 

            Subway stations are places where people usually get out, so when no one left the first car at Atlantic Avenue station, Conductor Cullen of the I.R. T. began to get worried. In fact, no one had left the first car from the time the run to Flatbush had begun-though dozens were getting on all the time.

            Odd! Very odd! It was the kind of proposition that made well-bred conductors remove their caps and scratch their heads. Conductor Cullen did so. It didn’t help, but he repeated the process at Bergen Street, the next station, where again the first car lost not one of its population. And at Grand Army Plaza, he added to the head-scratching process a few rare old Gaelic words that had passed down from father to son for hundreds of years. They ionized the surrounding atmosphere, but otherwise did not affect the situation.

            At Eastern Parkway, Cullen tried an experiment. He carefully refrained from opening the first car’s doors at all. He leaned forward eagerly, twisted his head and watched-and was treated to nothing short of a miracle. The New York subway rider is neither shy, meek, nor modest, and doors that do not open immediately or sooner are helped on their way by sundry kicks. But this time there was not a kick, not a shriek, not even a modified yell. Cullen’s eyes popped.

            He was getting angry. At Franklin Avenue, where he again contacted the Express, he flung open the doors and swore at the crowd. Every door spouted commuters of both sexes and all ages, except that terrible first car. At those doors, three men and a very young girl got on, though Cullen could plainly see the slight bulging of the walls that the already super-crowded condition of the car had caused.

            For the rest of the trip to Flatbush Avenue, Cullen ignored the first car completely, concentrating on that last stop where everyone would have to get off. Everyone! President, Church, and Beverly Road were visited and passed, and Cullen found himself counting the stations to the Flatbush terminus.

            They seemed like such a nice bunch of passengers, too. They read their newspapers, stared into the whirling blackness out the window, or at the girl’s legs across the way, or at nothing at all, quite like ordinary people. Only, they didn’t want to get out. They didn’t even want to get into the next car, where empty seats filled the place. Imagine New Yorkers resisting the impulse to pass from one car to the other, and missing the chance to leave the doors open for the benefit of the draft.

            But it was Flatbush Avenue! Cullen rubbed his hands, slammed the doors open and yelled in his best unintelligible manner, “Lasstop!” He repeated it two or three times hoarsely and several in that damned first car looked up at him. There was reproach in their eyes. Have you never heard of the Mayor’s anti-noise campaign, they seemed to say.

            The last other passenger had come out of the train, and the scattered new ones were coming in. There were a few curious looks at the jammed car, but not too many. The New Yorker considers everything he cannot understand a publicity stunt.

            Cullen fell back on his Gaelic once more and dashed up the platform toward the motorman’s booth. He needed moral assistance. The motorman should have been out of his cab, preparing for his next trip, but he wasn’t. Cullen could see him through the glass of the door, leaning on the controls and staring vacantly at the bumper-stop ahead.

            “Gus!” cried Cullen. “Come out! There’s a hell of-”

            At that point, his tongue skidded to a halt, because it wasn’t Gus. It was a little old man, who smiled politely and twiddled his fingers in greeting.

            Patrick Cullen’s Irish soul rebelled. With a yelp, he grabbed the edge of the door and tried to shove it open. He should have known that wouldn’t work. So, taking a deep breath and commending said Irish soul to God, he made for the open door and ploughed into the mass of haunted humans in that first car. Momentum carried him six feet, and then there he stuck. Behind him, those he had knocked down picked themselves up from the laps of their fellow-travelers, apologized with true New York courtesy (consisting of a growl, a grunt, and a grimace) and returned to their papers.

            Then, caught helplessly, he heard the Dispatcher’s bell. It was time for his own train to be on its way. Duty called! With a superhuman effort, he inched towards the door, but it closed before he could get there, and the train commenced to move.

            It occurred to Cullen that he had missed a report for the first time, and he said, “Damn!” After the train had travelled some fifty feet, it came to him that they were going the wrong way, and this time he said nothing.

            After all, what was there to say-even in the purest of Gaelic.

            How could a train go the wrong way at Flatbush Ave. There were no further tracks. There was no further tunnel. There was a bumper-stop to prevent eccentric motormen from trying to bore one. It was absurd. Even the Big Deal couldn’t do it.

            But there they were!

            There were stations in this new tunnel, too,-cute little small ones just large enough for one car. But that was all right, because only one car was travelling. The rest had somehow become detached, presumably to make the routine trip to Bronx Park.

            There were maybe a dozen stations on the line-with curious names. Cullen noticed only a few, because he found it difficult to keep his eyes from going out of focus. One was Archangel Boulevard; another Seraph Road; still another Cherub Plaza.

            And then, the train slid into a monster station, that looked uncommonly like a cave, and stopped. It was huge, about three hundred feet deep, and almost spherical. The tracks ran to the exact center, without trusses, and the platform at its side likewise rested comfortably upon air.

            The conductor was the only person left in the car, the rest having mostly gotten off at Hosannah Square. He hung limply from the porcelain hand-grip, staring fixedly at a lip-stick advertisement. The door of the motonnan’s cabin opened and the little man came out. He glanced at Cullen, turned away, then whirled back.

            “Hey,” he said, “who are you?”

            Cullen rotated slowly, still clutching the hand-grip. “Only the conductor. Don’t mind me. I’m quitting anyway. I don’t like the work.”

            “Oh, dear, dear, this is unexpected.” The little man waggled his head and tch-tched. “I’m Mr. Crumley,” he explained. “I steal things. People mostly. Sometimes subway cars,-but they’re such big, clumsy things, don’t you think?”

            “Mister,” groaned Cullen. “I quit thinking two hours ago. It didn’t get me anywhere. Who are you, anyway?”

            “I told you-I’m Mr. Crumley. I’m practicing to be a god.”

            “A gob?” said Cullen. “You mean a sailor?”

            “Dear, no,” frowned Mr. Crumley. “I said, ‘god,’ as in Jehovah. Look!” He pointed out the window to the wall of the cave. Where his finger pointed, the rock billowed and rose. He moved his finger and there was a neat ridge of rock describing a reversed, lower case “h.”

            “That’s my symbol,” said Crumley modestly. “Mystic, isn’t it? But that’s nothing. Wait till I really get things organized. Dear, dear, will I give them miracles!”

            Cullen’s head swivelled between the raised-rock symbol and the simpering Mr. Crumley, until he began to get dizzy, and then he stopped.

            “Listen,” he demanded hoarsely. “How did you get that car out of Flatbush Avenue? Where did that tunnel come from? Are some of them foreigners-”

            “Oh, my, no!” answered Mr. Crumley. “I made that myself and willed it so that no one would notice. It was quite difficult. It just wears the ectoplasm right out of me. Miracles with people mixed up in it are much harder than the other kind, because you have to fight their wills. Unless you have lots of Believers, you can’t do it. Now that I’ve got over a hundred thousand, I can do it, but there was a time,” he shook his head reminiscently, “when I couldn’t even have levitated a baby-or healed a leper. Oh, well, we’re wasting time. We ought to be at the nearest factory.”

            Cullen brightened. ‘Factory’ was more prosaic. “I once had a brother,” he said, “who worked in a sweater factory, but-”

            “Oh, goodness, Mr. Cullen. I’m referring to my Believers’ Factories. I have to educate people to believe in me, don’t I, and preaching is such slow work. I believe in mass production. Some day I intend to be called the Henry Ford of Utopia. Why, I’ve got twelve Factories in Brooklyn alone and when I manufacture enough Believers, I’ll just cover the world with them.”

            He sighed, “Gracious me, if I only had enough Believers. I’ve got to have a million before I can let things progress by themselves and until then I have to attend to every little detail myself. It is so boring! I even have to keep reminding my Believers who I am-even the Disciples. Incidentally, Cullen,-I read your mind, by the way, so that’s how I know your name-you want to be a Believer, of course.”

            “Well, now,” said Cullen nervously.

            “Oh, come now. Some gods would have been angry at your intrusion and done away with you,” he snapped his fingers, “like that. Not I, though, because I think killing people is messy and inconsiderate. Just the same, you’ll have to be a Believer.”

            Now Patrick Cullen was an intelligent Irishman. That is to say, he admitted the existence of banshees, leprechauns, and the Little Folk, and kept an open mind on poltergeists, werewolves, vampires and such-like foreign trash. At mere supernaturalities, he was too well educated to sneer. Still, Cullen did not intend to compromise his religion. His theology was weak, but for a mortal to claim godship smacked of heresy, not to say sacrilege and blasphemy, even to him.

            “You’re a faker,” he cried boldly, “and you’re headed straight for Hell the way you’re going.”

            Mr. Crumley clicked his tongue, “What terrible language you use. And so unnecessary! Of course you Believe in me.”

            “Oh, yeah?”

            “Well, then, if you are stubborn, I’ll pass a minor miracle. Its inconvenient, but now,” he made vague motions with his left hand, “you Believe in me.”

            “Certainly,” said Cullen, hurt. “I always did. How do I go about worshipping you? I want to do this properly.”

            “Just Believe in me, and that’s enough. Now you must go to the factories and then we’ll send you back home-they’ll never know you were gone-and you can live your life like a Believer.”

            The conductor smiled ecstatically, “Oh, happy life! I want to go to the factories.”

            “Of course you would,” replied Mr. Crumley. “You’d be a fine Crumleyite otherwise, wouldn’t you? Come!” He pointed at the door of the car, and the door slid open. They walked out and Crumley kept on pointing. Rock faded away in front, and bit down again behind. Through the wall Cullen walked, following that little figure who was his god.

            That was a god, thought Cullen. Any god that could do that was one hell of a damn good god to believe in.

            And then he was at the factory-in another cave, only smaller. Mr. Crumley seemed to like caves.

            Cullen didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings. He couldn’t see much anyway on account of the faint violet mist that blurred his vision. He got the impression of a slowly-moving conveyor belt, with men stationed at intervals along it. Disciples, he thought. And the parts being machined on that belt were probably non-Believers, or such low trash.

            There was a man watching him, smiling. A Disciple, Cullen thought, and quite naturally made the sign to him. He had never made it before, but it was easy. The Disciple replied in kind.

            “He told me you were coming,” said the Disciple. “He made a special miracle for you, he said. That’s quite a distinction. Do you want me to show you around the belt?”

            “You bet.”

            “Well, this is Factory One. It’s the nerve center of all the factories of the country. The others give preliminary treatment only; and make only Believers. We make Disciples.”

            Oh, boy, Disciples! “Am I going to be a Discipler asked Cullen eagerly.

            “After being miraculated by him. Of course! You’re a somebody, you know. There are only five other people he ever took personal charge of.”

            This was a glorious way to do things. Everything Mr. Crumley did was glorious. What a god! What a god!

            “You started that way, too.”

            “Certainly,” said the Disciple, placidly, “I’m an important fellow, too. Only I wish I were more important, even.”

            “What for?” said Cullen, in a shocked tone of voice. “ Are you murmuring against the dictates of Mr. Crumley? (may he prosper).This is sacrilege.”

            The Disciple shifted uncomfortably, “Well, I’ve got ideas, and I’d like to try them out.”

            “You’ve got ideas, huh?” muttered Cullen balefully. “Does Mr. Crumley (may he live forever) know?”

            “Well-frankly, no! But just the same,” the Disciple looked over each shoulder carefully and drew closer, “I’m not the only one. There are lots of us that think Mr. Crumley (on whom be blessings) is just a trifle old-fashioned. For instance, take the lights in this place.”

            Cullen stared upwards. The lights were the same type as those in the terminal-cave. They might have been stolen from any line of the IRT subway. Perfect copies of the stop-and-go signals and the exit markers.

            “What’s wrong?” he asked.

            The Disciple sneered, “They lack originality. You’d think a grade A god would do something new. When he takes people, he does it through the subway, and he obeys subway rules. He waits for the Dispatcher to tell him to go; he stops at every station; he uses crude electricity and so on. What we need,” the Disciple was waving his hands wildly and shouting, “is more enterprise, more git-and-go. We’ve got to speed up things and run them with efficiency and vim.”

            Cullen stared hotly, “You are a heretic,” he accused. “you are doomed to damnation.” He looked angrily about for a bell, whistle, gong, or drum wherewith to summon the great Crumley, but found nothing.

            The other blinked in quick thought. “Say,” he said, bluffly, “look at what time it is. I’m behind schedule. You better get on the belt for your first treatment.”

            Cullen was hot about the slovenly assistance Mr. Crumley was getting from this inferior Disciple, but a treatment is a treatment, so making the sign devoutly, he got on. He found it fairly comfortable despite its jerky motion. The Disciple motioned to Cullen’s first preceptor-another Disciple-standing beside a sort of blackboard. Cullen had watched others while discussing Crumley and he had noticed the question and answer procedure that had taken place. He had noticed it particularly.

            Consequently, he was surprised, when the second Disciple, instead of using his heavy pointer to indicate a question on the board, reversed it and brought it down upon his head.

            The lights went out!

 

            When he came to, he was under the belt, at the very bottom of the cave. He was tied up, and the Rebellious Disciple and three others were talking about him.

            “He couldn’t be persuaded,” the Disciple was saying. “Crumley must have given him a double treatment or something.”

            “It’s the last double treatment Crumley’ll ever give,” said the fat little man.

            “Let’s hope so. How’s it coming?”

            “Very well. Very well, indeed. We teleported ourselves to Section Four about two hours ago. It was a perfect miracle.”

            The Disciple was pleased. “Fine! How’re they doing at Four?”

            The fat little man clucked his lips. COW ell, now, not so hot. For some reason, they’re getting odd effects over there. Miracles are just happening. Even ordinary Crumleyites can pass them, and sometimes they-just happen. It’s extremely annoying.”

            “Hmm, that’s bad. If there are too many hitches, Crumley’ll get suspicious. ti he investigates there first, he can reconvert all of them in a jiffy, before he comes here and then without their support we might not be strong enough to stand up against him.”

            “Say, now,” said the fat man apprehensively, “we’re not strong enough now, you mow. None of this going off half-cocked.”

            “We’re strong enough,” pointed out the Disciple stiffly, “to weaken him long enough to get us a new god started, and after that-

            “A new god, eh?” said another. He nodded wisely.

            “Sure,” said the Disciple. “ A new god, created by us, can be destroyed by us. He’d be completely under our thumb and then instead of this one-man tyranny, we can have a sort of-er-council.”

            There were general grins and everyone looked pleased.

            “But we’ll discuss that further some other time,” continued the Disciple briskly. “Let’s Believe just a bit. Crumley isn’t stupid, you mow, and we don’t want him to observe any slackening. Come on, now. All together.”

            They closed their eyes, concentrated a bit, and then opened them with a sigh.

            “Well,” said the little, fat man, “that’s over. I’d better be getting back now.”

            From under the belt, Cullen watched him. He looked singularly like a chicken about to take off for a tree as he flexed his knees and stared upwards. Then he added to the resemblance not a little when he spread his arms, gave a little hop and fluttered away.

            Cullen could follow his flight only by watching the eyes of the three remaining. Those eyes turned up and up, following the fat man to the very top of the cave, it seemed. There was an air of self-satisfaction about those eyes. They were very happy over their miracles.

            Then they all went away and left Cullen to his holy indignation. He was shocked to the very core of his being at this sinful rebellion, this apostasy-this-this-There weren’t any words for it, even when he tried Gaelic.

            Imagine trying to create a god that would be under the thumbs of the creators. It was anthropomorphic heresy (where had he heard that word, now?) and struck at the roots of all religion. Was he going to lie there and watch anything strike at the roots of all religion? Was he going to submit to having MI. Crumley (may he swim through seas of ecstasy) deposed?

            Never!

            But the ropes thought otherwise, so there he stayed.

            And then there was an interruption in his thoughts. There came a low, booming sound-a sound which would have been a voice if it had not been pitched so incredibly low. There was a menace to it that got immediate attention. It got attention from Cullen, who quivered in his bonds; from the others in the cave, who quivered even harder, not being restrained by ropes; from the belt itself, which stopped dead with a jerk, and quivered mightily.

            The Rebellious Disciple dropped to his knees and quivered more than any of them.

            The voice came again, this time in a recognizable language, “WHERE IS THAT BUM, CRUMLEY?” it roared.

            There was no wait for an answer. A cloud of shadow gathered in the center of the hall and spat a black bolt at the belt. A spot of fire leaped out from where the bolt had touched and spread slowly outward. Where it passed, the belt ceased to exit. It was far from Cullen, but there were humans nearer, and among those scurrying pandemonium existed.

            Cullen wanted very much to join the flight, but unfortunately the Disciple who had trussed him up had evidently been a Boy Scout. Jerking, twisting, and writhing had no effect upon the stubborn ropes, so he fell back upon Gaelic and wishing. He wished he were flee. He wished he weren’t tied. He wished he were far away from that devouring flame. He wished lots of things, some unprintable, but mainly those.

            And with that he felt a gentle slipping pressure and down at his feet was an untidy pile of hempen fibre. Evidently the forces liberated by the rebellion were getting out of control here as well as in Section Four. What had the little fat man said? “Miracles are just happening. Even ordinary Crumleyites can pass them, and sometimes they-just happen.”

            But why waste time? He ran to the rock wall and howled a wish at it to dissolve into nothing. He howled several times with Gaelic modifications, but the wall didn’t even slightly soften. He stared wildly and then saw the hole. It was on the side of the cave, diametrically across from Cullen’s position at the bottom of the hall, and about three loops of the belt up. The upward spiral passed just below it.

            Somehow he made the leap that grabbed the lower lip of the spiral, wriggled his way onto it and jumped into a run. The fire of disintegration was behind him and plenty far away, but it was making time. Up the belt to the third loop he ran, not taking time to be dizzy from the circular trip. But when he got there, the hole, large, black and inviting, was just the tiniest bit higher than he could jump.

            He leaned against the wall panting. The spot of fire was now two spots, crawling both ways from a twenty foot break in the belt. Everyone in the cavern, some two hundred people, was in motion, and everyone made some sort of noise.

            Somehow, the sight stimulated him. It nerved him to further efforts to get into the hole. Wildly, he tried walking up the sheer wall, but this didn’t work.

            And then Mr. Crumley stuck his head out of the hole and said, “Oh, mercy me, what a perfectly terrible mess. Dear, dear! Come up here, Cullen! Why do you stay down there!”

            A great peace descended upon Cullen. “Hail, Mr. Crumley,” he cried. “May you sniff the essence of roses forever.”

            Mr. Crumley looked pleased, “Thank you, Cullen.” He waved his hand, and the conductor was beside him-a simple matter of levitation. Once again, Cullen decided in his inmost soul that here was a god.

            “And now,” said Mr. Crumley, “we must hurry, hurry, hurry. I’ve lost most of my power when the Disciples rebelled, and my subway car is stuck half-way. I’ll need your help. Hurry!”

            Cullen had no time to admire the tiny subway at the end of the tunnel. He jumped off the platform on Crumley’s heels and dashed about a hundred feet down the tube to where the car was standing idle. He wafted into the open front door with the grace of a chorusboy. Mr. Crumley took care of that.

            “Cullen,” said Mr. Crumley, “start this thing and take it back to the regular line. And be careful; he is waiting for me.”

            “Who?”

            “He, the new god. Imagine those fools-no, idiots-thinking they could create a controllable god, when the very essence of godship is uncontrollability. of course, when they made a god to destroy me, they made a Destroyer, and he’ll just destroy everything in sight that I created, including my Disciples.”

            Cullen worked quickly. He knew how to start car 30990; any conductor would. He raced to the other end of the car for the control lever, snatched it off, and returned at top speed. That was all he needed. There was power in the rail; the lights were on; and there were no stop signals between him and God’s Country.

            Mr. Crumley lay himself down on a seat, “Be very quiet. He may let you get past him. I’m going to blank myself out, and maybe he won’t notice me. At any rate, he won’t harm you-I hope. Dear, dear, since this all started in section four, things are such a mess.”

            Eight stations passed before anything happened and then came Utopia Circle station and-well, nothing really happened. It was just an impression-an impression of people all around him for a few seconds watching him closely with a virulent hostility. It wasn’t exactly people, but a person. It wasn’t exactly a person either, but just a huge eye, watching-watching-watching.

            But it passed, and almost immediately Cullen saw a black and white “Flatbush Avenue” sign at the side of the tunnel. He jammed on his brakes in a hurry, for there was a train waiting there. But the controls didn’t work the way they should have, and the car edged up until it was in contact with the cars before. With a soft click, it coupled and 30900 was just the last car of the train.

            It was Mr. Crumley’s work, of course. Mr. Crumley stood behind him, watching. “He didn’t get you, did he? No-I see he didn’t.”

            “Is there any more danger?” asked Cullen, anxiously.

            “I don’t think so,” responded Mr. Crumley sadly. “After he has destroyed all my creation, there will be nothing left for him to destroy, and, deprived of a function, he will simply cease to exist. That’s the result of this nasty, slipshod work. I’m disgusted with human beings.”

            “Don’t say that, “ said Cullen.

            “I will,” reported Mr. Crumley savagely, “Human beings aren’t fit to be god of. They’re too much trouble and worry. It would give any self-respecting god grey hairs and I suppose you think a god looks very dignified all grey. Darn all humans! They can get along without me. From now on, I’m going to go to Africa and try the chimpanzees. I’ll bet they make much better material.”

            “But wait, “ wailed Cullen. “What about me? I believe in you.”

            “Oh, dear, that would never do. Here! Return to normal.”

            Mr. Crumley’s hand caressed the air, and Cullen, once more a God-fearing Irishman, let loose a roar in the purest Gaelic and made for him.

            “Why, you blaspheming spalpeen-”

            But there was no Mr. Crumley. There was only the Dispatcher, asking very impolitely-in English-what the blankety-blank hell was the matter with him.

 

THE END

 

            Fantasy Book was a very borderline publication that lasted only eight issues. “The Little Man on the Subway” was in the sixth.

            An amusing fact about this issue of a small magazine that had to make do with what it could find among the rejects of the field was that it included “Scanners Live in Vain,.. by Cordwainer Smith. This was Smith’s first published story and he was not to publish another for eight years or so. In the 1960s, Smith (a pseudonym for a man whose real identity was not made clear until after his death) became a writer of considerable importance, and this first story of his became a classic.

 

            While working on “The Little Man on the Subway” I was also doing another “positronic robot” story, called “Liar!” In this one, my character Susan Calvin first appeared (she has been a character in ten of my stories up to the present time and I don’t eliminate the possibility that she will appear yet again).

            It was while Campbell and I were discussing this story, by the way, on December 16, 1940, that the “Three Laws of Robotics” were worked out in full. (I say it was Campbell who worked them out and he says it was I-but I know I’m right. It was he.)

            “Liar!” was accepted at once by Campbell, at the end of January, without revision, and appeared in the May 1941 issue of Astounding. It was my fourth appearance in that magazine. The fact that it appeared the month after “Reason” helped fix the “positronic robot” stories in the readers’ minds as a “series... “Liar!” eventually appeared in I, Robot.

            The sale of two “positronic robot” stories, “Reason” and “Liar!” virtually back to back put me all on fire to do more of the same. When I suggested still another story of the sort to Campbell on February 3, 1941, he approved, but he said he didn’t want me, this early in the game, tying myself down too completely into a rigid formula. He suggested I do other kinds of stories first. I was a good boy; I obeyed.

            On that very day, in fact, I decided to try fantasy again. I wrote a short one (1,500 words) called “Masks,” and heaven only knows what it was about, for I don’t. I submitted it to Campbell for Unknown on February 10, and he rejected it. It is gone; it no longer exists.

            Later that month I also wrote a short story called “The Hazing,” intended for Pohl. I submitted it to him on February 24, and he rejected it at once. Eventually I submitted it to Thrilling Wonder Stories. They requested a revision, I obliged, and they accepted it on July 29, 1941.

           

 

The Hazing

 

            The Campus of Arcturus University, on Arcturus’s second planet, Eron, is a dull place during mid-year vacations and, moreover, a hot one, so that Myron Tubal, sophomore, found life boring and uncomfortable. For the fifth time that day, he looked in at the Undergraduate Lounge in a desperate attempt at locating an acquaintance, and was at last gratified to behold Bill Sefan, a green-skinned youngster from Vega’s fifth planet.

            Sefan, like Tubal, had flunked Biosociology and was staying through vacation to study for a make-up exam. Things like that weave strong bonds between sophomore and sophomore.

            Tubal grunted a greeting, dropped his huge hairless body-he was a native of the Arcturian System itself-into the largest chair and said:

            “Have you seen the new freshmen yet?”

            “Already! It’s six weeks before the fall semester starts!”

            Tubal yawned. “These are a special breed of frosh. They’re the very first batch from the Solarian System-ten of them.”

            “Solarian System? You mean that new system that joined the Galactic Federation three-four years ago?”

            “That’s the one. Their world capital is called Earth, I think.”

            “Well, what about them?”

            “Nothing much. They’re just here, that’s all. Some of them have hair on the upper lip, and very silly it looks, too. Otherwise, they look like any of a dozen or so other breeds of Humanoids.”

            It was at this point that the door flew open and little Wri Forase ran in. He was from Deneb’s single planet, and the short, gray fuzz that covered his head and face bristled with agitation, while his large purple eyes gleamed excitedly.

            “Say,” he twittered breathlessly, “have you seen the Earthmen?”

            Sefan sighed. “Isn’t anyone ever going to change the subject? Tubal was just telling me about them.”

            “He was?” Forase seemed disappointed. “But-but did he tell you these were that abnormal race they made such a fuss over when the Solarian System entered the Federation?”

            “They looked all right to me,” said Tubal.

            “I’m not talking about them from the physical standpoint,” said the Denebian disgustedly. “It’s the mental aspect of the case. Psychology! That’s the stuff?” Forase was going to be a psychologist some day.

            “Oh, that! Well, what’s wrong with them?”

            “Their mob psychology as a race is all wrong,” babbled Forase. “Instead of becoming less emotional with numbers, as is the case with every other type of Humanoid known, they become more emotional! In groups, these Earthmen riot, panic, go crazy. The more there are, the worse it is. So help me, we even invented a new mathematical notation to handle the problem. Look!”

            He had his pocket-pad and stylus out in one rapid motion; but Tubal’s hand clamped down upon them before the stylus so much as made a mark.

            Tubal said, “Whoa! I’ve got a walloping lulu of an idea.”

            “Imagine!” murmured Sefan.

            Tubal ignored him. He smiled again, and his hand rubbed thoughtfully over his bald dome.

            “Listen,” he said, with sudden briskness. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.

 

            Albert Williams, late of Earth, stirred in his sleep and became conscious of a prodding finger exploring the space between his second and third ribs. He opened his eyes, swiveled his head, stared stupidly; then gasped, shot upright, and reached for the light switch.

            “Don’t move,” said the shadowy figure beside his bed. There was a muted click, and the Earthman found himself centered in the pearly beam of a pocket Hash.

            He blinked and said, “Who the blasted devil are you?”

            “You are going to get out of bed,” replied the apparition stolidly. “Dress, and come with me.”

            Williams grinned savagely. “Try and make me.”

            There was no answer, but the Hash beam shifted slightly and fell upon the shadow’s other hand. It held a “neuronic whip,” that pleasant little weapon that paralyzes the vocal cords and twists nerves into so many knots of agony. Williams swallowed hard, and got out of bed.

            He dressed in silence, and then said:

            “All right, what do I do now?”

            The gleaming “whip” gestured, and the Earthman moved toward the door.

            “Just walk ahead,” said the unknown.

            Williams moved out of the room, along the silent corridor, and down eight stories without daring to look back. Out upon the campus he stopped, and felt metal probe the small of his back.

            “Do you know where Obel Hall is?”

            Williams, nodding, began walking. He walked past Obel Hall, turned right at University Avenue, and after half a mile stepped off the roads and past the trees. A spaceship hulked dimly in the darkness, with ports closely curtained and only a dim light showing where the airlock opened a crack.

            “Get in!” He was shoved up a flight of stairs and into a small room.

            He blinked, looked about him and counted aloud.

            “-seven, eight, nine, and I make ten. They’ve got us all, I guess.”

            “It’s no guess,” growled Eric Chamberlain sourly. “It’s a certainty.”

            He was rubbing his hand. “I’ve been here an hour.”

            “What’s wrong with the mitt?” asked Williams.

            “I sprained it on the jaw of the rat that brought me here. He’s as tough as a spaceship’s hull.”

            Williams seated himself cross-legged upon the floor and rested his head against the wall.

            “Has anyone any idea as to what this is all about?”

            “Kidnaping!” said little Joey Sweeney. His teeth were chattering.

            “What the devil for?” snorted Chamberlain. “If any of us are millionaires, I hadn’t heard of it. I know I’m not!”

            Williams said, “Look, let’s not go off the deep end. Kidnaping or anything of that sort is. out. These people can’t be criminals. It stands to reason that a civilization that has developed psychology to the extent this Galactic Federation has, would be able to wipe out crime without raising a sweat.”

            “Pirates,” grunted Lawrence Marsh. “I don’t think so, but it’s just a suggestion.”

            “Nuts!” said Williams. “Piracy is a frontier phenomenon. This region of space has been civilized for tens of millennia.”

            “Just the same, they had guns,” insisted Joe, “and I don’t like it.” He had left his glasses in his room and peered about in near-sighted anxiety.

            “That doesn’t mean much,” answered Williams. “Now, I’ve been thinking. Here we are-ten newly arrived freshmen at Arcturus u. On our first night here, we’re bundled mysteriously out of our rooms and into a strange spaceship. That suggests something to me. How about it?”

 

            Sidney Morton raised his head from his arms long enough to say sleepily:

            “I’ve thought of it, too. It looks like we’re in for one hell of a hazing. Gents, I think the local sophs are just having good, clean fun.”

            “Exactly,” agreed Williams. “Anyone have any other ideas?”

            Silence. “ All right, then, so there isn’t anything to do but wait. Personally, I’ve going to catch up on my sleep. They can wake me up if they need me.”

            There was a jar at that moment and he fell off balance. “Well, we’re off-wherever we’re going.”

            Moments later, Bill Sefan hesitated just an instant before entering the control room. When he finally did, it was to face a highly excited Wri Forase.

            “How is it working?” demanded the Denebian.

            “Rotten,” responded Sefan sourly. “If they’re panicked, then I’ve damned. They’re going to sleep.”

            “Asleep! All of them? But what were they saying?”

            “How do I know? They weren’t speaking Galactic, and I can’t make head or tail out of their infernal foreign gibberish.”

            Forase threw his hands into the air in disgust.

            Tubal spoke finally. “Listen, Forase, I’m cutting a class in Biosoc.-which I can’t afford. You guaranteed the psychology of this stunt. If it turns out to be a flop, I’m not going to like it.”

            “Well, for the love of Deneb,” grated Forase desperately, “you two are a fine pair of yellow-bellies! Did you expect them to start screaming and kicking right off? Sizzling Arcturus I Wait till we get to the Spican System, will you? When we maroon them overnight-”

            He tittered suddenly. “This is going to be the fanciest trick since they tied those stink-bats to the chromatic organ on Concert Night.”

            Tubal cracked a grin, but Sefan leaned back in his chair and remarked thoughtfully.

            “What if someone-say, President Wynn-hears about this?”

            The Arcturian at the controls shrugged. “It’s only a hazing. They’ll “go easy.

            “Don’t play dumb, M. T. This isn’t kid stuff. Planet Four, Spica-the whole Spican System, in fact-is banned to Galactic ships, and you know that. It’s got a sub-Humanoid race on it. They’re supposed to develop entirely free of interference until they discover interstellar travel on their own. That’s the law, and they’re strict about it. Space! If they find out about this, we’ll be in the soup for fair.”

            Tubal turned in his seat. “How in Arcturus do you expect Prexy Wynn-damn his thick hide!-to find out about us? Now, mind you, I’m not saying the story won’t spread around the campus, because half the fun will be killed if we have to keep it to ourselves. But how will names come out? No one will squeal. You know that.”

            “Okay,” said Sefan, and shrugged.

            And then Tubal said, “Ready for hyper-space!”

            He compressed keys and there was the queer internal wrench that marked the ship’s departure from normal space.

 

            The ten Earthmen were rather the worse for wear, and looked it. Lawrence Marsh squinted at his watch again.

            “Two-thirty,” he said. “That’s thirty-six hours now. I wish they’d get this over with.”

            “This isn’t a hazing,” moaned Sweeney. “It takes too long.”

            Williams grew red. “What do you all look half-dead about? They’ve been feeding us regularly, haven’t they? They haven’t tied us up, have they? I should say it was pretty evident that they were taking good care of us.”

            “Or,” came Sidney Morton’s discontented drawl, “fattening us up for the slaughter.”

            He paused, and everyone stiffened. There was no mistaking the queer internal wrench they had felt.

            “Get that!” said Eric Chamberlain in sudden frenzy. “We’re back in normal space again, and that means we’re only an hour or two from wherever we’re going. We’ve got to do something!”

            “Hear, hear,” Williams snorted. “But what?”

            “There are ten of us, aren’t there?” shouted Chamberlain, puffing out his chest. “Well, I’ve only seen one of them so far. Next time he comes in, and we’ve got another meal due us pretty soon, we’re going to mob him.”

            Sweeney looked sick. “What about the neuronic whip he always carries?”

            “It won’t kill us. He can’t get us all before we pin him down, anyway.”

            “Eric,” said Williams bluntly, “you’re a fool.”

            Chamberlain flushed and his stub-fingered fists closed slowly.

            “I’m just in the mood for a little practice persuasion. Call me that again, will you?”

            “Sit down!” Williams scarcely bothered to look up. “ And don’t work so hard justifying my epithet. All of us are nervous and keyed-up, but that doesn’t mean we ought to go altogether crazy. Not yet, anyway. First of all, even discounting the whip, mobbing our jailer won’t be particularly successful.

            “We’ve only seen one, but that one is from the Arcturian System. He’s better than seven feet tall, and comfortably past the three-hundred-pound mark. He’d mop us up-all ten of us-with his bare fists. I thought you had one run-in with him already, Eric.”

            There was a thickish silence.

            Williams added, “ And even if we could knock him out and finish as many others as there may be in the ship, we still haven’t the slightest idea where we are or how to get back or even how to run the ship.” A pause. Then, “Well?”

            “Nuts!” Chamberlain turned away, and glowered in silence.

            The door kicked open and the giant Arcturian entered. With one hand, he emptied the bag he carried, and with the other kept his neuronic whip carefully leveled.

            “Last meal,” he grunted.

            There was a general scramble for the rolling cans, still lukewarm from recent heating. Morton glared at his with disgust.

            “Say,” he spoke stumblingly in Galactic, “can’t you give us a change? I’m tired of this rotten goulash of yours. This is the fourth can!”

            “So what? It’s your last meal,” the Arcturian snapped, and left.

            A horrified paralysis prevailed.

            “What did he mean by that?” gulped someone huskily.

            “They’re going to kill us!” Sweeney was round-eyed, the thin edge of panic in his voice.

            Williams’ mouth was dry and he felt unreasoning anger grow against Sweeney’s contagious fright. He paused-the kid was only seventeen-and said huskily, “Stow it, will you? Let’s eat.”

            It was two hours later that he felt the shuddering jar that meant the landing and end of the journey. In that time, no one had spoken, but Williams could feel the pall of fear choke tighter with the minutes.

 

            Spica had dipped crimsonly below the horizon and there was a chill wind blowing. The ten Earthmen, huddled together miserably upon the rock-strewn hilltop, watched their captors sullenly. It was the huge Arcturian, Myron Tubal, that did the talking, while the green-skinned Vegan, Bill Sefan, and the fuzzy little Denebian, Wri Forase, remained placidly in the background.

            “You’ve got your fire,” said the Arcturian gruffly, “and there’s plenty of wood about to keep it going. That will keep the beasts away. We’ll leave you a pair of whips before we go, and those will do as protection, if any of the aborigines of the planet bother you. You will have to use your own wits as far as food, water and shelter are concerned.”

            He turned away. Chamberlain let loose with a sudden roar, and leaped after the departing Arcturian. He was sent reeling back with an effortless heave of the other’s arm.

            The lock closed after the three other-world men. Almost at once, the ship lifted off the ground and shot upward. Williams finally broke the chilled silence.

            “They’ve left the whips. I’ll take one and you can have the other, Eric.”

            One by one, the Earthmen dropped into a sitting position, back to the fire, frightened, half panicky.

            Williams forced a grin. “There’s plenty of game about-the region is well-wooded. Come on, now, there are ten of us and they’ve got to come back sometime. Let’s show them we Earthmen can take it. How about it, fellows?”

            He was talking aimlessly now. Morton said listlessly.

            “Why don’t you shut up? You’re not making this any easier.”

            Williams gave up. The pit of his own stomach was turning cold.

            The twilight blackened into night, and the circle of light about the fire contracted into a little flickering area that ended in shadows. Marsh gasped suddenly, and his eyes went wide.

            “There’s some-something coming!”

            The stir that followed froze itself into attitudes of breathless attention.

            “You’re crazy,” began Williams huskily-and stopped dead at the unmistakable, slithering sound that reached his ears.

            “Grab your whip!” he screamed to Chamberlain.

            Joey Sweeney laughed suddenly-a strained, high-pitched laugh.

            And then-there was a sudden shrieking in the air, and the shades charged down upon them.

            Things were happening elsewhere, too.

            Tubal’s ship lazed outward from Spica’s fourth planet, with Bin Sefan at the controls. Tubal himself was in his own cramped quarters, polishing off a huge flagon of Denebian liquor in two gulps.

            Wri Forase watched the operation sadly.

            “It cost twenty credits a bottle,” he said, “and I only have a few left.”

            “Well, don’t let me hog it,” said Tubal magnanimously, “Match me bottle for bottle. It’s all right with me.”

            “One swig like that,” grumbled the Denebian, “and r d be out till the Fall exams:’

            Tubal paid scant attention. “This,” he began, “is going to make campus history as the hazing stunt-”

            And at this point, there was a sharp, singing pinging ping-g-g-g, scarcely muffled by intervening walls, and the lights went out.

            Wri Forase felt himself pressed hard against the wall. He struggled for breath and stuttered out in gasps.

            “B-by Space, we’re at f-full acceleration! What’s wr-rong with the equalizer?”

            “Damn the equalizer!” roared Tubal, heaving to his feet. “What’s wrong with the ship?”

 

            He stumbled out the door, into the equally dark corridor, with Forase crawling after him. When they burst into the control room, they found Sefan surrounded by the dim emergency lights, his green skin shining with perspiration.

            “Meteor,” he croaked. “It played hob with our power distributors. It’s all going into acceleration. The lights, heating units and radio are all out of commission, while the ventilators are just barely limping.” He added, “And Section Four is punctured:’

            Tubal gazed about him wildly. “Idiot! Why didn’t you keep your eye on the mass indicator?”

            “I did, you overgrown lump of putty,” howled Sefan, “but it never registered! It-never-registered! Isn’t that just what you’d expect from a second-hand jalopy, rented for two hundred credits? It went through the screen as if it were empty ether.”

            “Shut up!” Tubal flung open the suit-compartments and groaned. “They’re all Arcturian models. I should have checked up. Can you handle one of these, Sefan?”

            “Maybe.” The Vegan scratched a doubtful ear.

            In five minutes, Tubal swung into the lock and Sefan, stumbling awkwardly, followed after. It was half an hour before they returned.

            Tubal removed his head-piece. “Curtains!”

            Wri Forase gasped. “you mean-we’re through?”

            The Arcturian shook his head. “We can fix it, but it will take time. The radio is ruined for good, so we can’t get help.”

            “Get help!” Forase looked shocked. “That’s all we need. How would we explain being inside the Spican system? We might as well commit suicide as send out radio calls. As long as we can get back without help, we’re safe. Missing a few more classes won’t hurt us too much.”

            Sefan’s voice broke in dully. “But what about those panicky Earthmen back on Spica Four?”

            Forase’s mouth opened, but he didn’t say a word. It closed again, and if ever a Humanoid looked sick, Forase was that Humanoid.

            That was only the beginning.

            It took a day and a half to unscramble the space jalopy’s power lines. It took two more days to decelerate to safe turning point. It took four days to return to Spica IV. Total-eight days.

            When the ship hovered once more over the place where they had marooned the Earthmen, it was midmorning, and the Tubal’s face as he surveyed the area through the televisor was a study in length. Shortly he broke a silence that had long since become sticky.

            “I guess we’ve made every boner we could possibly have made. We landed them right outside a native village. There’s no sign of the Earthmen.”

            Sefan shook his head dolefully. “This is a bad business.”

            Tubal buried his head in his long arms clear down to the elbows.

            “That’s the finish. If they didn’t scare themselves to death, the natives got them. Violating prohibited solar systems is bad enough-but it’s just plain murder now, I guess.”

            “What we’ve got to do,” said Sefan, “is to get down there and find out if there are any still alive. We owe them that much. After that-”

            He swallowed. Forase finished in a whisper.

            “After that, it’s expulsion from the U., psycho-revision-and manual labor for life.”

            “Forget it!” barked Tubal. “We’ll face that when we have to.”

            Slowly, very slowly, the ship circled downward and came to rest on the rocky clearing where, eight days previously, ten Earthmen had been left stranded.

            “How do we handle these natives?” Tubal turned to Forase with raised eyebrow ridges (there was no hair on them, of course). “Come on, son, give with some sub-Humanoid psychology. There are only three of us and I don’t want any trouble.”

 

            Forase shrugged and his fuzzy face wrinkled in perplexity. “I’ve just been thinking about that, Tubal. I don’t know any.”

            “What!” exploded Sefan and Tubal in twin shouts.

            “No one does,” added the Denebian hurriedly. “It’s a fact. After all, we don’t let sub-Humanoids into the Federation till they’re fully civilized, and we quarantine them until then. Do you suppose we have much opportunity to study their psychology?”

            The Arcturian seated himself heavily. “This gets better and better. Think, Fuzzy-face, will you? Suggest something!”

            Forase scratched his head. “Well-uh-the best we can do is to treat them like normal Humanoids. If we approach slowly, palms spread out, make no sudden movements and keep calm, we ought to get along. Now, remember, I’m saying we ought to. I can’t be certain about this.”

            “Let’s go, and damnation with certainty,” urged Sefan impatiently. “It doesn’t matter much, anyway. If I get knocked off here, I don’t have to go back home.” His face took on a hunted look. “When I think of what my family is going to say-”

            They emerged from the ship and sniffed the atmosphere of Spica’s fourth planet. The sun was at meridian, and loomed overhead like a large orange basketball. Off in the woods, a bird called once in a creaky caw. Utter silence descended.

            “Hmph!” said Tubal, arms akimbo.

            “It’s enough to make you feel sleepy. No signs of life at all. Now, which way is the villager

            There was a three-way dispute about this, but it didn’t last long. The Arcturian first, the other two tagging along, they strode down the slope and toward the straggling forest.

            A hundred feet inside, the trees came alive, as a wave of natives dropped noiselessly from the overhanging branches. Wri Forase went under at the very first of the avalanche. Bill Sefan stumbled, stood his ground momentarily, then went over backward with a grunt.

            Only huge Myron Tubal was left standing. Legs straddled wide, and whooping hoarsely, he laid about right and left. The attacking natives hit him and bounced off like drops of water from a whirling flywheel. Modeling his defense on the principle of the windmill, he backed his way against a tree.

            Here he made a mistake. On the lowest branch of that tree squatted a native at once more cautious and more brainy than his fellows. Tubal had already noticed that the natives were equipped with stout, muscular tails, and had made a mental note of the fact. Of all the races in the Galaxy, only one other, Homo Gamma Cepheus, possessed tails. What he didn’t notice, however, was that these tails were prehensile.

            This he found out almost immediately, for the native in the branch above his head looped his tail downward, Hashed it about Tubal’s neck and contracted it.

            The Arcturian threshed wildly in agony, and the tailed attacker was jerked from his tree. Suspended head-first and whirled about in huge sweeps, the native nevertheless maintained his hold and tightened that tail-grip steadily.

            The world blacked out. Tubal was unconscious before he hit the ground.

 

            Tubal came to slowly, unpleasantly aware of the stinging stiffness of his neck. He tried vainly to rub that stiffness, and it took a few seconds to realize that he was tied tightly. The fact startled him into alertness. He became aware, first, that he was lying on his stomach; second, of the horrible din about him; third, of Sefan and Forase bundled up next to him-and last, that he could not break his bonds.

            “Hey, Sefan, Forase! Can you hear me?”

            It was Sefan that answered joyfully. “you old Draconian goat! We thought you were out for good.”

            “I don’t die so easy,” grunted the Arcturian. “Where are we?”

            There was a short pause.

            “In the native village, I imagine,” Wri Forase said dully. “Did you ever hear such a noise? The drum hasn’t stopped a minute since they dumped us here.”

            “Have you seen anything of-”

            Hands were upon Tubal, and he felt himself whirled about. He was in a sitting posture now and his neck hurt worse than ever. Ramshackle huts of thatch and green logs gleamed in the early afternoon sun. In a circle about them, watching in silence, were dark-skinned, long-tailed natives. There must have been hundreds, all wearing feathered head-dresses and carrying short, wickedly barbed spears.

            Their eyes were upon the row of figures that squatted mysteriously in the foreground, and upon these Tubal turned his angry glare. It was plain that they were the leaders of the tribe. Dressed in gaudy, fringed robes of ill-tanned skins, they added further to their barbaric impressiveness by wearing tall wooden masks painted into caricatures of the human face.

            With measured steps, the masked horror nearest the Humanoids approached.

            “Hello,” it said, and the mask lifted up and off. “Back so soon?”

            For quite a long while, Tubal and Sefan said absolutely nothing, while Wri Forase went into a protracted fit of coughing.

            Finally, Tubal drew a long breath. “You’re one of the Earthmen, aren’t you?”

            “That’s right. I’m Al Williams. Just call me Al.”

            “They haven’t killed you yet?”

            Williams smiled happily. “They haven’t killed any of us. Quite the contrary. Gentlemen,” he bowed extravagantly, “meet the new tribal-er-gods.”

            “The new tribal what?” gasped Forase. He was still coughing. “-er-gods. Sorry, but I don’t know the Galactic word for a god.”

            “What do you ‘gods’ represent?”

            “We’re sort of supernatural entities-objects to be worshipped. Don’t you get it?”

            The Humanoids stared unhappily.

            “Yes, indeed,” Williams grinned, “we’re persons of great power.”

            “What are you talking about?” exclaimed Tubal indignantly. “Why should they think you were of great power? You Earth people are below average physically-well below!”

            “Its the psychology of the thing,” explained Williams. “If they see us landing in a large, gleaming vehicle that travels mysteriously through the air, and then takes off in a burst of rocket-flame-they’re bound to consider us supernatural. That’s elementary barbaric psychology.”

            Forase’s eyes seemed on the point of dropping out as Williams continued.

            “Incidentally, what detained you? We figure it was all a hazing of some sort, and it was, wasn’t it?”

            “Say,” broke in Sefan, “I think you’re feeding us a lot of bull! If they thought you people were gods, why didn’t they think we were? We had the ship, too, and-”

            “That,” said Williams, “is where we started to interfere. We explained-via pictures and sign language-that you people were devils. When you finally came back-and say, were we glad to see that ship coming down-they knew what to do.”

            “What, “ asked Forase, with a liberal dash of awe in his voice, “are ‘devils’?”

 

            Williams sighed. “Don’t you Galaxy people know anything? Tubal moved his aching neck slowly. “How about letting us up now?” he rumbled. “I’ve got a crick in my neck.”

            “What’s your hurry? After all, you were brought here to be sacrificed in our honor.”

            “Sacrificed!”

            “Sure. You’re to be carved up with knives.”

            There was a horror-laden silence. “Don’t give us any of that cometgas!” Tubal managed to grind out at last. “We’re not Earthmen who get panicky or scared, you know.”

            “Oh, we know that! I wouldn’t fool you for the world. But simple ordinary savage psychology always goes for a little human sacrifice, and-”

            Sefan writhed against his bonds and tried to throw himself in a rage at Forase.

            “I thought you said no one knew any sub-Humanoid psychology! Trying to alibi your ignorance, weren’t you, you shriveled; fuzz-covered, pop-eyed son of a half-breed Vegan lizard! A fine mess we’re in now!”

            Forase shrank away. “Now, wait! Just-”

            Williams decided the joke had gone far enough.

            “Take it easy,” he soothed. “Your clever hazing blew up right in your faces-it blew up beautifully-but we’re not going to carry it too far. I guess we’ve had enough fun out of you fellows. Sweeney is with the native chief now, explaining that we’re leaving and taking you three with us. Frankly, I’ll be glad to get going-Wait a while, Sweeney’s calling me.”

            When Williams returned two seconds later, his expression was peculiar, having turned a bit greenish. In fact, he got greener by the second.

            “It looks,” he gulped throatily, ‘‘as if our counter-haze has blown up in our faces. The native chief insists on the sacrifice!”

            Silence brooded, while the three Humanoids thought over the state of affairs. For moments, none of them could say a word

            “I’ve told Sweeney,” Williams added, glumly, “to go back and tell the chief that if he doesn’t do as we say, something terrible is going to happen to his tribe. But it’s pure bluff and he may not fall for it. Uh,-I’m sorry, fellows. I guess we went too far. If it looks really bad, we’ll cut you loose and join in the fight.”

            “Cut us loose now,” growled Tubal, his blood running cold. “Let’s get this over with!”

            “Wait!” cried Forase frantically. “Let the Earthman try some of his psychology. Go ahead, Earthman. Think hard!”

            Williams thought until his brain began to hurt.

            “You see,” he said weakly, “we’ve lost some of our godlike prestige, ever since we were unable to cure the chief’s wife. She died yesterday.” He nodded abstractedly to himself. “What we need is an impressive miracle. Er-have you fellows anything in your pockets?”

            He knelt beside them and began searching. Wri Forase had a stylus, a pocket-pad, a thin-toothed comb, some anti-itch powder, a sheaf of credits and a few odds and ends. Sefan had a collection of similar nondescript material.

            It was from Tubal’s hip pocket that Williams withdrew a small black gunlike object with a huge hand-grip and a short barrel.

            “What’s this?”

            Tubal scowled. “Is that what I’ve been sitting on all this while? It’s a weld-gun that I used to fix up a meteor puncture in our ship. It’s no good; power’s almost gone.”

            Williams’ eyes kindled. His whole body galvanized with excitement.

            “That’s what you think! You Galaxy men never could see farther than your noses. Why don’t you come down to Earth for a spell-and get a new point of view?”

            Williams was running toward his fellow conspirators now.

            “Sweeney,” he howled, “you tell that damned monkey-tailed chief that in just about one second, I’m going to get sore and pull the whole sky down over his head. Get tough!”

 

            But the chief did not wait for the message. He gestured defiance and the natives made a united rush. Tubal roared, and his muscles cracked against the bonds. The weld-gun in Williams’ hand flared into life, its feeble power beaming outward.

            The nearest native hut went up in sudden flames. Another followed-and another-and the fourth-and then the weld-gun went dead.

            But it was enough. Not a native remained standing. All were groveling on their faces, wailing and shrieking for pardon. The chief wailed and shrieked loudest of all.

            “Tell the chief,” said Williams to Sweeney, “that that’s just a little, insignificant sample of what we’re thinking of doing to him!”

            To the Humanoids, as he cut the rawhide holding them, he added complacently,

            “Just some simple, ordinary savage psychology.”

            It was only after they were back in their ship and off in space again that Forase locked up his pride.

            “But I thought Earthmen had never developed mathematical psychology! How did You know all that sub-Humanoid stuff? No one in the Galaxy has got that far yet!”

            “Well,” Williams grinned, “we have a certain amount of rule-of-thumb knowledge about the workings of the uncivilized mind. You see-we come from a world where most people, in a manner of speaking, are still uncivilized. So we have to know!”

            Forase nodded slowly. “You screwball Earthmen! At least, this little episode has taught us all one thing.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Never,” said Forase, dipping a second time into Earth slang, “get tough with a bunch of nuts. They may be nuttier than you think!”

 

THE END

 

 

            It does seem to me, though, that the story is set against a “Homo Sol” background.

 

            I had better luck with Fred Pohl with another story, “Super-Neutron,” which I wrote at the end of the same February in which I did “Masks” and “The Hazing.” I submitted it to him on March 3, 1941, and he accepted it on March 5.

            By that time, less than three years after my first submission, I was clearly becoming rather impatient with rejections. At least, the news of the acceptance of “Super-Neutron” is greeted in my diary with an “It’s about time I made a sale-five and a half weeks since the last one.”

           

 

Super-Neutron

 

            It was at the seventeenth meeting of the Honorable Society of Ananias that we got the greatest scare of our collective lives and consequently elected Gilbert Hayes to the office of Perpetual President.

            The Society is not a large one. Before the election of Hayes there were only four of us: John Sebastian, Simon Murfree, Morris Levin and myself. On the first Sunday of every month we met at luncheon, and on these monthly occasions justified our Society’s title by gambling the dinner check on our ability to lie.

            It was quite a complicated process, with strict Parliamentary rules. One member spun a yarn each meeting as his turn came up, and two conditions had to be adhered to. His story had to be an outrageous, complicated, fantastic lie; and, it had to sound like the truth. Members were allowed to-and did-attack any and every point of the story by asking questions or demanding explanations.

            Woe to the narrator who did not answer all questions immediately, or who, in answering, involved himself in a contradiction. The dinner-check was his! Financial loss was slight; but the disgrace was great.

            And then came that seventeenth meeting-and Gilbert Hayes. Hayes was one of several non-members who attended occasionally to listen to the after-dinner whopper, paying his own check, and, of course, being forbidden to participate; but on this occasion he was the only one present aside from the regular members.

            Dinner was over, I had been voted into the chair (it was my regular turn to preside), and the minutes had been read, when Hayes leaned forward and said quietly, “I’d like a chance today, gentlemen.”

            I frowned, “In the eyes of the Society you are non-existent, Mr. Hayes. It is impossible for you to take part.”

            “Then just let me make a statement, “ he rejoined. “The Solar System is coming to an end at exactly seventeen and a half minutes after two this afternoon.”

            There was a devil of a stir, and I looked at the electric clock over the television receiver. It was 1:14 P.M.

            I said hesitantly, “If you have anything to substantiate that extraordinary statement, it should be most interesting. It is Mr. Levin’s turn today, but if he is willing to waive it, and if the rest of the Society agrees-”

            Levin smiled and nodded, and the others joined in.

            I banged the gavel, “Mr. Hayes has the floor.”

 

            Hayes lit his cigar and gazed at it pensively. “I have little more than an hour, gentlemen, but I’ll start at the beginning-which is about fifteen years ago. At that time, though I’ve resigned since, I was an astrophysicist at Yerkes Observatory-young, but promising. I was hot on the trail of the solution to one of the perennial puzzles of astrophysics-the source of the cosmic rays-and full of ambition.”

            He paused, and continued in a different tone, “You know, it is strange that with all our scientific advance in the last two centuries we have never found either that mysterious source or the equally mysterious reason for the explosion of a star. They are the two eternal puzzles and we know as little about them today as we did in the days of Einstein, Eddington, and Millikan.

            “Still, as I say, I thought I had the cosmic ray by the tail, so I set out to check my ideas by observation, and for that I had to go out in space. It wasn’t, however, as easy as all that. It was in 2129, you see, just after the last war, and the Observatory was about broke-as weren’t we all?

            “I made the best of it. I hired an old second-hand ‘07 model, piled my apparatus in, and set out alone. What’s more, I had to sneak out of port without clearance papers, not wishing to go through the red tape the occupation army would have put me through. It was illegal, but I wanted my data-so I headed out at a right angle to the ecliptic, in the direction of the South Celestial Pole, approximately, and left Sol a billion miles behind me.

            “The voyage I made, and the data I collected are unimportant. I never reported one or the other. It was the planet I found that makes the story.”

            At this point, Murfree raised those bushy eyebrows of his and grunted, “I would like to warn the gentleman, Mr. Chairman. No member has yet escaped with his skin with a phony planet.”

            Hayes smiled grimly, “I’ll take my chance. -To continue; it was on the eighteenth day of my trip that I first detected the planet, as a little orange disc the size of a pea. Naturally, a planet in that region of space is something of a sensation. I headed for it; and immediately discovered that I had not even scratched the surface of that planet’s queerness. To exist there at all was phenomenal-but it likewise possessed absolutely no gravitational field.”

            Levin’s wine-glass crashed to the floor. “Mr. Chairman,” he gasped, “I demand the gentleman’s immediate disqualification. No mass can exist without distorting the space in its neighborhood and thus creating a gravitational field He has made an impossible statement, and should therefore be disqualified.” His face was an angry red.

            But Hayes held his hand up, “I demand time, Mr. Chairman. The explanation will be forthcoming in due course. To make it now would only complicate things. Please, may I continue?”

            I considered, “In view of the nature of your story, I am disposed to be lenient. Delay is granted, but please remember that an explanation will be required eventually. You will lose without it.”

            “All right, “ said Hayes. “For the present, you will have to accept my statement that the planet had no gravity at all. That is definite, for I had complete astronomical equipment upon my ship, and though my instruments were very sensitive, they registered a dead zero.

            “It worked the other way around as well, for the planet was not affected by the gravity of other masses. Again, I stress the point that it was not affected at all. This I was not able to determine at the time, but subsequent observation over a period of years, showed that the planet was traveling in a straight-line orbit and at a constant speed. As it was well within the sun’s influence, the fact that its orbit was neither elliptical nor hyperbolic, and that, though approaching the sun, it was not accelerating, showed definitely that it was independent of solar gravity.”

            “Wait a while, Hayes.” Sebastian scowled till his gold premolar gleamed. “What held this wonderful planet together? Without gravity, why didn’t it break up and drift apart?”

            “Sheer inertia, for one thing!” was the immediate retort. “There was nothing to pull it apart. A collision with another body of comparable size might have done it-leaving out of consideration the possibility of the existence of some other binding force peculiar to the planet “

 

            He sighed and continued, “That doesn’t finish the properties of the body. Its red-orange color and its low reflective power, or albedo, set me on another track, and I made the astonishing discovery that the planet was entirely transparent to the whole electro-magnetic spectrum from radio waves to cosmic rays. It was only in the region of the red and yellow portion of the visible-light octave that it was reasonably opaque. Hence, its color.”

            “Why was this?” demanded Murfree.

            Hayes looked at me, “That is an unreasonable question, Mr. chairman. I maintain that I might as well be asked to explain why glass is entirely transparent to anything above or below the ultra-violet region, so that heat, light, and X-rays pass through, while it remains opaque to ultra-violet light itself. This sort of thing is a property of the substance itself and must be accepted as such without explanation.”

            I whacked my gavel, “Question declared improper!”

            “I object,” declared Murfree. “Hayes missed the point Nothing is perfectly transparent Glass of sufficient thickness will stop even cosmic rays. Do you mean to say that blue light would pass through an entire planet, or heat, for instance?”

            “Why not?” replied Hayes. “That perfect transparency does not exist in your experience does not mean it does not exist altogether. There is certainly no scientific law to that effect This planet was perfectly transparent except for one small region of the spectrum. That’s a definite fact of observation.”

            My gavel thumped again, “Explanation declared sufficient Continue, Hayes.”

            His cigar had gone out and he paused to relight Then, “In other respects, the planet was normal. It was not quite the size of Saturn-perhaps half way in diameter between it and Neptune. Subsequent experiments showed it to possess mass, though it was hard to find out how much-certainly more than twice Earth’s. With mass, it possessed the usual properties of inertia and momentum-but no gravity.”

            It was 1:35 now.

            Hayes followed my eyes and said, “Yes, only three-quarters of an hour is left. I’ll hurry!...Naturally, this queer planet set me to thinking, and that, together with the fact that I had already been evolving certain theories concerning cosmic rays and novae, led to an interesting solution.”

            He drew a deep breath, “Imagine-if you can-our cosmos as a cloud of-well, super-atoms which-”

            “I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Sebastian, rising to his feet, “are you intending to base any of your explanation on drawing analogies between stars and atoms, or between solar systems and electronic orbits?”

            “Why do you ask?” questioned Hayes, quietly. “Because if you do, I demand immediate disqualification. The belief that atoms are miniature solar systems is in a class with the Ptolemaic scheme of the universe. The idea has never been accepted by responsible scientists even at the very dawn of the atomic theory.”

            I nodded, “The gentleman is correct. No such analogy will be permitted as part of the explanation.”

            “I object,” said Hayes. “In your school course in elementary physics or chemistry, you will remember that in the study of the properties of gases, it was often pretended, for the sake of illustrating a point, that the gas molecules were tiny billiard balls. Does that mean that gas molecules are billiard balls?”

            “No,” admitted Sebastian.

            “It only means,” drove on Hayes, “that gas molecules act similarly to billiard balls in some ways. Therefore the actions of one are better visualized by studying the actions of the other. -Well, then, I am only trying to point out a phenomenon in our universe of stars, and for the sake of ease of visualization, I compare it to a similar, and better-known, phenomenon in the world of atoms. That does not mean that stars are magnified atoms.”

 

            I was won over. “The point is well-taken,” I said. “You may continue with your explanation, but if it is the judgment of the chair that the analogy becomes a false one, you will be disqualified.”

            “Good,” agreed Hayes, “but we’ll pass on to another point for a moment. Do any of you remember the first atomic power plants of a hundred and seventy years ago and how they operated?”

            “I believe,” muttered Levin, “that they used the classical uranium fission method for power. They bombarded uranium with slow neutrons and split it up into masurium, barium, gamma rays and more neutrons, thus establishing a cyclic process.”

            “That’s right! Well, imagine that the stellar universe acted in ways-mind you, this is a metaphor, and not to be taken literally-like a body composed of uranium atoms, and imagine this stellar universe to be bombarded from without by objects which might act in some ways similar to the way neutrons act on an atomic scale.

            “Such a super-neutron, hitting a sun, would cause that sun to explode into radiation and more super-neutrons. In other words, you would have a nova.” He looked around for disagreement.

            “What justification have you for that idea?” demanded Levin.

            “Two; one logical, and one observational. Logic first. Stars are essentially in matter-energy equilibrium, yet suddenly, with no observable change, either spectral or otherwise, they occasionally explode. An explosion indicates instability, but where? Not within the star, for it had been in equilibrium for millions of years. Not from a point within the universe, for novae occur in even concentration throughout the universe. Hence, by elimination, only from a point outside the universe.

            “Secondly, observation. I came across one of these super-neutrons!”

            Said Murfree indignantly: “I suppose you mean that gravitationless planet you came across?”

            “That’s right.”

            “Then what makes you think it’s a super-neutron? You can’t use your theory as proof, because you’re using the super-neutron itself to bolster the theory. We’re not allowed to argue in circles here.”

            “I know that,” declared Hayes, stiffly. “I’ll resort to logic again. The world of atoms possesses a cohesive force in the electro-magnetic charge on electrons and protons. The world of stars possesses a cohesive force in gravity. The two forces are only alike in a very general manner. For instance, there are two kinds of electrical charges, positive and negative, but only one kind of gravity-and innumerable minor differences. Still, an analogy this far seems to me to be permissible. A neutron on an atomic scale is a mass without the atomic cohesive force-electric charge. A super-neutron on a stellar scale ought to be a mass without the stellar cohesive force-gravity. Therefore, if I find a body without gravity, it seems reasonable to assume it to be a super-neutron.”

            “Do you consider that a rigorously scientific proof?” asked Sebastian sarcastically.

            “No,” admitted Hayes, “but it is logical, conflicts with no scientific fact I know of, and works out to form a consistent explanation of novae. That should be enough for our purpose at present.”

            Murfree was gazing hard at his fingernails, “And just where is this superneutron of yours heading?”

            “I see you anticipate,” said Hayes, sombrely. “It was what I asked myself at the time. At 2:09Y2 today it hits the sun square, and eight minutes later, the radiation resulting from the explosion will sweep Earth to oblivion.”

 

            “Why didn’t you report all this?” barked Sebastian.

            “Where was the use? There was nothing to be done about it. We can’t handle astronomical masses. All the power available on Earth would not have sufficed to swerve that great body from its path. There was no escape within the Solar System itself, for Neptune and Pluto will turn gaseous along with the other planets, and interstellar travel is as yet impossible. Since man cannot exist independently in space, he is doomed.

            “Why tell of all this? What would result after I had convinced them that the death warrant was signed? Suicides, crime waves, orgies, messiahs, evangelists, and everything bad and futile you could think of. And after all, is death by nova so bad? It is instantaneous and clean. At 2:17 you’re here. At 2:18 you are a mass of attenuated gas. It is so quick and easy a death, it is almost not death.”

            There was a long silence after this. I felt uneasy. There are lies and lies, but this sounded like the real thing. Hayes didn’t have that little quirk of the lip or that little gleam in the eye which marks the triumph of putting over a good one. He was deadly, deadly serious. I could see the others felt the same. Levin was gulping at his wine, hand shaking.

            Finally, Sebastian coughed loudly, “How long ago did you discover this super-neutron and where?”

            “Fifteen years ago, a billion miles or better from the sun.”

            “And all that time it has been approaching the sun?”

            “Yes; at a constant speed of two miles per second.”

            “Good, I’ve got you!” Sebastian almost laughed his relief. “Why haven’t the astronomers spotted it in all this while?”

            “My God,” responded Hayes, impatiently, “it’s clear you aren’t an astronomer. Now, what fool would look to the Southern Celestial Pole for a planet, when they’re only found in the ecliptic?”

            “But,“ pointed out Sebastian, “the region is studied just the same. It is photographed.”

            “Surely! For all I know, the super-neutron has been photographed a hundred times-a thousand times if you like-though the Southern Pole is the most poorly watched region of the sky. But what’s to differentiate it from a star? With its low albedo, it never passed eleventh magnitude in brightness. After all, it’s hard enough to detect any planets in any case. Uranus was spotted many times before Herschel realized it was a planet. Pluto took years to find even when they were looking for it. Remember also that without gravity, it causes no planetary perturbations, and that the absence of these removes the most obvious indication of its presence.”

            “But, “ insisted Sebastian, desperately, “as it approached the sun, its apparent size would increase and it would begin to show a perceptible disc through a telescope. Even if its reflected light were very faint, it would certainly obscure the stars behind it.”

            “True,” admitted Hayes. “I will not say that a really thorough mapping of the Polar Region would not have uncovered it, but such mapping has been done long ago, and the present cursory searches for novae, special spectral types, and so on are by no means thorough. Then, as the super-neutron approaches the sun, it begins to appear only in the dawn and twilight-in evening and morning star fashion-so that observation becomes much more difficult. And so, as a matter of fact, it just has not been observed-and it is what should have been expected.”

            Again a silence, and I became aware that my heart was pounding. It was two o’clock even, and we hadn’t been able to shake Hayes’ story. We had to prove it a lie fast, or r d die of sheer suspense. We were all of us watching the clock.

 

            Levin took up the fight. “It’s an awfully queer coincidence that the super-neutron should be heading straight for the sun. What are the chances against it? Remember, that would be the same thing as reciting the chances against the truth of the story.”

            I interposed, “That is an illegitimate objection, Mr. Levin. To cite improbability, however great, is not sufficient. Only outright impossibility or citation of inconsistency can serve to disqualify.”

            But Hayes waved his hand, “It’s all right. Let me answer. Taking an individual super-neutron and an individual star, the chances of collision, head on, are all but infinitely small. However, statistically, if you shoot enough super-neutrons into the universe, then, given enough time, every star ought to be hit sooner or later. Space must be swarming with super-neutrons-say one every thousand cubic parsecs-so that in spite of the vast distances between the stars and the relative minuteness of the targets, twenty novae occur in our single Galaxy every year-that is, there are twenty collisions between superneutrons and stars annually.

            “The situation is no different really from uranium being bombarded with ordinary neutrons. Only one neutron out of a hundred million may score a hit, but, given time, every nucleus is exploded eventually. If there is an outer-universe intelligence directing this bombardment-pure hypothesis, and not part of my argument, please-a year to us is probably an infinitesimal fraction of a second to them. The hits, to them, may be occurring at the rate of billions to their seconds. Energy is being developed, perhaps, to the point where the material this universe composes has become heated to the gaseous state-or whatever passes for the gaseous state there. The universe is expanding, you know-like a gas.”

            “Still, for the very first super-neutron entering our system to head straight for the sun seems-” Levin ended in a weak stammer.

            “Good Lord,” snapped Hayes, “who told you this was the first? Hundreds may have passed through the system in geologic times. One or two may have passed through in the last thousand years or so. How would we know? Even when one is headed straight for the sun, astronomers don’t find it. Perhaps this is the only one that’s passed through since the telescope was invented, and before then, of course. And never forget that, having no gravity, they can go right through the middle of the system, without affecting the planets. Only a hit on the sun registers, and then it’s too late.”

            He looked at the clock, “2:o51 We ought to see it now against the sun.” He stood up and raised the window shade. The yellow sunlight streamed in and I moved away from the dusty shaft of light. My mouth was dry as desert sand. Murfree was mopping his brow, but beads of sweat stood out all along his cheeks and neck.

            Hayes took out several slips of exposed film-negative and handed them out, “I came prepared, you see.” He held one up and squinted at the sun. “There it is,” he remarked placidly. “My calculations showed it would be in transit with respect to Earth at the time of collision. Rather convenient!”

            I was looking at the sun, too, and felt my heart skip a beat. There, quite clear against the brightness of the sun, was a little, perfectly round, black spot.

            “Why doesn’t it vaporize?” stammered Murfree. “It must be almost in the sun’s atmosphere.” I don’t think he was trying to disprove Hayes’ story. He had gone past that. He was honestly seeking information.

            “I told you,” explained Hayes, “that it is transparent to almost all solar radiation. Only the radiation it absorbs can go into heat and that’s a very small percentage of all it receives. Besides, it isn’t ordinary matter. It’s probably much more refractory than anything on Earth, and the Solar surface is only at 6,000 degrees Centrigrade.”

            He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, “It’s 2:09½, gentlemen. The super-neutron has struck and death is on its way. We have eight minutes.”

            We were dumb with something that was just simply unbearable terror. I remember Hayes’ voice, quite matter-of-fact, saying, “Mercury just went?” then a few minutes later, “Venus has gone!” and lastly, “Thirty seconds left, gentlemen!”

            The seconds crawled, but passed at last, and another thirty seconds, and still another....

 

            And on Hayes’ face, a look of astonishment grew and spread. He lifted the clock and stared at it, then peered through his film at the sun once more.

            “It’s gone?” He turned and faced us, “It’s unbelievable. I had thought of it, but I dared not draw the atomic analogy too far. You know that not all atomic nuclei explode on being hit by a neutron. Some, cadmium, for instance, absorb them one after the other like sponges do water. I-”

            He paused again, drew a deep breath, and continued musingly, “Even the purest block of uranium contains traces of all other elements. And in a universe of trillions of stars acting like uranium, what does a paltry million of cadmium-like stars amount to-nothing! Yet the sun is one of them! Mankind never deserved that!”

            He kept on talking, but relief had finally penetrated and we listened no longer. In half-hysterical fashion, we elected Gilbert Hayes to the office of Perpetual President by enthusiastic acclamation, and voted the story the whoppingest lie ever told.

            But there’s one thing that bothers me. Hayes fills his post well; the Society is more successful than ever-but I think he should have been disqualified after all. His story fulfilled the second condition; it sounded like the truth. But I don’t think it fulfilled the first condition.

            I think it was the truth!

 

THE END

 

            By the time I was writing “Super-Neutron,” in February of 1941, I had heard of uranium fission and had even discussed it in some detail with Campbell. I managed to refer to it in the course of the story as “the classical uranium fission method for power.” I also spoke of the metal cadmium as a neutron absorber. It wasn’t bad for a story that appeared in 1941, and I sometimes quote it in public to create an impression.

            Notice, though, that in the same paragraph in which I mention fission, I also talk of “masurium.” Actually, masurium was the name given to element ~43 in 1926, but that discovery had proven a false alarm. The element was really discovered in 1937 and was given the now-accepted name of “technetium.” It seems, then, that I could look years into the future and see uranium fission as a practical power source, but I couldn’t look a few years into the past and see the correct name for element #43.

 

            This brings us to March 17, 1941, and one of the key turning points of my literary career.

            By that day, I had written thirty-one stories. Of these I had already sold seventeen and was yet to sell four more. Of all these stories, three perhaps, and no more, were to turn out to be of more than ephemeral value, and those were the three “positronic robots” stories I had so far written: “Robbie,”

            “Reason,” and “Liar!”

            Looking back on my first three years as a writer, then, I can judge myself to be nothing more than a steady and (perhaps) hopeful third-rater. What’s more, that’s all I considered myself then, too. Nor did anyone else, at that time, seriously consider me as a potential first-magnitude star in the science fiction heavens-except, maybe, Campbell.

            What are the odds, then, that on March 17, 1941, I would sit down and write something that for thirty years now has been considered by a surprising number of people to be the outstanding short classic of magazine science fiction? It was one of those things that couldn’t possibly happen-yet it did.

            It began when I walked into Campbell’s office that day and, as usual, suggested an idea. What it was I don’t remember, but whatever it was he turned it down instantly, not because it was such a bad idea but because he had something he wanted to show me that crowded everything else out of his mind. He had come across a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson that went: “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God!” [Does anyone know in what essay, and in what connection, Emerson says this? Every once in a while I make a desultory search through quotation books or through a collection of Emerson but haven’t found it yet. I hope it exists and that the quote is given correctly. ]

            Campbell asked me what I thought would happen if the stars would appear at only very long intervals. I had nothing intelligent to suggest.

            “I think men would go mad,” he said thoughtfully.

            We talked about that notion for quite a while, and I went home to write a story on the subject, one that Campbell and I decided from the start was to be called “Nightfall”

            I began it that night. I can remember the details exactly: my parents’ apartment on Windsor Place in Brooklyn, across the street from the candy store; my own room, just next to the living room, is clear in my mind, with the position of my bed, my desk, my typewriter-and myself getting started.

            In years to come, fans would occasionally vote in polls designed to decide the best science fiction short stories of all time. Quite frequently, “Nightfall” would finish in first place. Just a couple of years ago, the Science Fiction Writers of America polled their membership to decide the best science fiction short stories ever published, for inclusion in a Hall of Fame anthology. “Nightfall” finished in first place by a sizable margin. And, of course, it has been anthologized a dozen times so far.

            With all this, one might argue that “Nightfall” is the best (or at least the most popular) short science fiction story ever to appear in the magazines. Well, I often wonder, with a shudder, what might have happened on the evening of March 17, 1941, if some angelic spirit had whispered in my ear, “Isaac, you are about to start writing the best short science fiction story of our time.”

            I would undoubtedly have frozen solid. I wouldn’t have been able to type a word.

            But we don’t know the future, and I tapped away blissfully, writing the story and completing it by April 9, 1941. That day, I submitted it to Campbell. He asked for a small revision. I took care of that, and on April 24, 1941, he bought the story.

            It set several records for me. It was the longest story I had yet sold, a little over thirteen thousand words. Since Campbell paid me a bonus (my first one), the word rate was one and a quarter cents a word, and the total check was for $166, more than twice as large as any single payment I had ever before received.  [“Black Friar of the Flame” was three thousand words longer than “Nightfall,” but the former was not to be sold for another half year, and since it earned merely one cent a word, it brought in only $161. Of course, first-time earnings are not the whole story, either. “Nightfall” has earned me some thousands of dollars since 1941 and will yet earn me more; “Black Friar of the Flame” has not yet earned me one cent over the original check-till its appearance in this book. ]

            Then, too, “Nightfall” appeared in the September 1941 issue of Astounding as the lead novelette. For the first time, I made the cover of that magazine, with “Nightfall, by Isaac Asimov” in large, bold letters.

            Most important of all, the appearance of “Nightfall” graduated me by common consent (three years after I had begun my career) into the list of first-rank science fiction writers.

            Alas, the story is not included here. It appears (of course) in Nightfall and Other Stories. [In telling the story, in that collection, of how “Nightfall” came to be written, I mentioned that I had received $150 for it, quoting from memory. Once again, I must confess fallibility. The records say $166. It is a small point, and perhaps not worth noting, but I know my readers. By explaining this now, I fend off dozens of letters that will mention the discrepancy and demand an explanation. ]

            The excitement of writing “Nightfall” and Campbell’s hearty and unqualified praise of it ought, one might think, to have set me furiously to work at the typewriter, but it didn’t. Spring 1941 was a bad time for me.

            I could at any time that half year have left Columbia with a master’s degree, but that would have done me no good. I had no job to go to, so I could only mark time and try to raise my value to some prospective employer by going on to the big one, the doctorate.

            But that meant I had to take a series of elaborate, interminable “qualifying examinations,” which I had to pass in order to be allowed to begin the research without which I could not get the Ph.D. Passing was difficult and I didn’t feel prepared at all, but I had to try it sometime, and besides, if I didn’t fall short by too far, I would be allowed to continue taking courses and to repeat the qualifying examinations at some future date.

            So in May I absented myself from the typewriter, studied earnestly for my qualifyings, took them-and didn’t pass. I did well enough to earn the option of a future repeat, and I also received my M.A. as a kind of consolation prize, but I was badly disheartened all the same.

            (And in the larger world outside, though Great Britain had survived air bombardment, Hitler still seemed unstoppable. He invaded the Balkans and was again winning spectacular victories, and that was disheartening, too.)

            It was not till May 24. 1941, that I could bring myself to go back to my writing. I turned out “Not Final!” which I submitted to Campbell on June z. It was accepted on the sixth, but without a bonus.

           

 

Not Final!

 

            Nicholas Orloff inserted a monocle in his left eye with all the incorruptible Briticism of a Russian educated at Oxford and said reproachfully, “But, my dear Mr. Secretary! Half a billion dollars!”

            Leo Birnam shrugged his shoulders wearily and allowed his lank body to cramp up still farther in the chair, “The appropriation must go through, commissioner. The Dominion government here at Ganymede is becoming desperate. So far, I’ve been holding them off, but as secretary of scientific affairs, my powers are small.”

            “I know, but-” and Orloff spread his hands helplessly. “I suppose so,” agreed Birnam. “The Empire government finds it easier to look the other way. They’ve done it consistently up to now. I’ve tried for a year now to have them understand the nature of the danger that hangs over the entire System, but it seems that it can’t be done. But I’m appealing to you, Mr. Commissioner. You’re new in your post and can approach this Jovian affair with an unjaundiced eye.”

            Orloff coughed and eyed the tips of his boots. In the three months since he had succeeded Gridley as colonial commissioner he had tabled unread everything relating to “those damned Jovian D.T.’s.” That had been according to the established cabinet policy which had labeled the Jovian affair as “deadwood” long before he had entered office.

            But now that Ganymede was becoming nasty, he found himself sent out to Jovopolis with instructions to hold the “blasted provincials” down. It was a nasty spot.

            Birnam was speaking, “The Dominion government has reached the point where it needs the money so badly, in fact, that if they don’t get it, they’re going to publicize everything.”

            Orloff’s phlegm broke completely, and he snatched at the monocle as it dropped, “My dear fellow!”

            “I know what it would mean. I’ve advised against it, but they’re justified. Once the inside of the Jovian affair is out; once the people know about it; the Empire government won’t stay in power a week. And when the Technocrats come in, they’ll give us whatever we ask. Public opinion will see to that.”

            “But you’ll also create a panic and hysteria-”

            “Surely! That is why we hesitate. But you might call this an ultimatum. We want secrecy, we need secrecy; but we need money more.”

            “I see.” Orloff was thinking rapidly, and the conclusions he came to were not pleasant. “In that case, it would be advisable to investigate the case further. If you have the papers concerning the communications with the planet Jupiter-”

            “I have them,” replied Birnam, dryly, “and so has the Empire government at Washington. That won’t do, commissioner. It’s the same cud that’s been chewed by Earth officials for the last year, and it’s gotten us nowhere. I want you to come to Ether Station with me.”

            The Ganymedan had risen from his chair, and he glowered down upon Orloff from his six and a half feet of height.

            Orloff flushed, “ Are you ordering me?”

            “In a way, yes. I tell you there is no time. If you intend acting, you must act quickly or not at all.” Birnam paused, then added, “You don’t mind walking, I hope. Power vehicles aren’t allowed to approach Ether Station, ordinarily, and I can use the walk to explain a few of the facts. It’s only two miles off.”

            “I’ll walk,” was the brusque reply.

 

            The trip upward to subground level was made in silence, which was broken by Orloff when they stepped into the dimly lit anteroom.

            “It’s chilly here.”

            “I know. It’s difficult to keep the temperature up to norm this near the surface. But it will be colder outside. Here!”

            Birnam had kicked open a closet door and was indicating the garments suspended from the ceiling. “Put them on. You’ll need them.”

            Orloff fingered them doubtfully, “Are they heavy enough?”

            Birnam was pouring into his own costume as he spoke. “They’re electrically heated. You’ll find them plenty warm. That’s it! Tuck the trouser legs inside the boots and lace them tight.”

            He turned then and, with a grunt, brought out a double compressed-gas cylinder from its rack in one corner of the closet. He glanced at the dial reading; and then turned the stopcock. There was a thin wheeze of escaping gas, at which Birnam sniffed with satisfaction.

            “Do you know how to work one of these?” he asked, as he screwed onto the jet a flexible tube of metal mesh, at the other end of which was a curiously curved object of thick, clear glass.

            “What is it?”

            “Oxygen nosepiece! What there is of Ganymede’s atmosphere is argon and nitrogen, just about half and half. It isn’t particularly breathable.” He heaved the double cylinder into position, and tightened it in its harness on Orloff’s back.

            Orloff staggered, “It’s heavy. I can’t walk two miles with this.”

            “It won’t be heavy out there,” Birnam nodded carelessly upward and lowered the glass nosepiece over Orloff’s head. “Just remember to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, and you won’t have any trouble. By the way, did you eat recently?”

            “I lunched before I came to your place.”

            Birnam sniffed dubiously, “Well, that’s a little awkward.” He drew a small metal container from one of his pockets and tossed it to the commissioner. “put one of those pills in your mouth and keep sucking on it.”

            Orloff worked clumsily with gloved fingers and finally managed to get a brown spheriod out of the tin and into his mouth. He followed Birnam up a gently sloped ramp. The blind-alley ending of the corridor slid aside smoothly when they reached it and there was a faint soughing as air slipped out into the thinner atmosphere of Ganymede.

            Birnam caught the other’s elbow, and fairly dragged him out.

            “I’ve turned your air tank on full,” he shouted. “Breathe deeply and keep sucking at that pill.”

            Gravity had flicked to Ganymedan normality as they crossed the threshold and Orloff after one horrible moment of apparent levitation, felt his stomach turn a somersault and explode.

            He gagged, and fumbled the pill with his tongue in a desperate attempt at self-control. The oxygen-rich mixture from the air cylinders burned his throat, and gradually Ganymede steadied. His stomach shuddered back into place. He tried walking.

            “Take it easy, now,” came Birnam’s soothing voice. “It gets you that way the first few times you change gravity fields quickly. Walk slowly and get the rhythm, or you’ll take a tumble. That’s right, you’re getting it “

            The ground seemed resilient Orloff could feel the pressure of the other’s arm holding him down at each step to keep him from springing too high. Steps were longer now-and flatter, as he got the rhythm. Birnam continued speaking, a voice a little muffled from behind the leather flap drawn loosely across mouth and chin.

            “Each to his own world,” he grinned. “I visited Earth a few years back, with my wife, and had a hell of a time. I couldn’t get myself to learn to walk on a planet’s surface without a nosepiece. I kept choking-I really did. The sunlight was too bright and the sky was too blue and the grass was too green. And the buildings were right out on the surface. I’ll never forget the time they tried to get me to sleep in a room twenty stories up in the air, with the window wide open and the moon shining in.

            “I went back on the first spaceship going my way and don’t ever intend returning. How are you feeling now?”

            “Fine! Splendid!” Now that the first discomfort had gone. Orloff found the low gravity exhilarating. He looked about him. The broken, hilly ground, bathed in a drenching yellow light, was covered with ground-hugging broad-leaved shrubs that showed the orderly arrangement of careful cultivation.

            Birnam answered the unspoken question, “There’s enough carbon dioxide in the air to keep the plants alive, and they all have the power to fix atmospheric nitrogen. That’s what makes agriculture Ganymede’s greatest industry. Those plants are worth their weight in gold as fertilizers back on Earth and worth double or triple that as sources for half a hundred alkaloids that can’t be gotten anywhere else in the System. And, of course, everyone knows that Ganymedan green-leaf has Terrestrial tobacco beat hollow.”

            There was the drone of a strato-rocket overhead, shrill in the thin atmosphere, and Orloff looked up.

            He stopped-stopped dead-and forgot to breathe!

            It was his first glimpse of Jupiter in the sky.

 

            It is one thing to see Jupiter, coldly harsh, against the ebon backdrop of space. At six hundred thousand miles, it is majestic enough. But on Ganymede, barely topping the hills, its outlines softened and ever so faintly hazed by the thin atmosphere; shining mellowly from a purple sky in which only a few fugitive stars dare compete with the Jovian giant-it can be described by no conceivable combination of words.

            At first, Orloff absorbed the gibbous disk in silence. It was gigantic, thirty-two times the apparent diameter of the Sun as seen from Earth. Its stripes stood out in faint washes of color against the yellowness beneath and the Great Red Spot was an oval splotch of orange near the western rim.

            And finally Orloff murmured weakly, “It’s beautiful!”

            Leo Birnam stared, too, but there was no awe in his eyes. There was the mechanical weariness of viewing a sight often seen, and besides that an expression of sick revulsion. The chin flap hid his twitching smile, but his grasp upon Orloff’s arm left bruises through the tough fabric of the surface suit.

            He said slowly, “It’s the most horrible sight in the System.”

            Orloff turned reluctant attention to his companion, “Eh?” Then, disagreeably, “Oh, yes, those mysterious Jovians.”

            At that, the Ganymedan turned away angrily and broke into swinging, fifteen-foot strides. Orloff followed clumsily after, keeping his balance with difficulty.

            “Here, now,” he gasped.

            But Birnam wasn’t listening. He was speaking coldly, bitterly, “You on Earth can afford to ignore Jupiter. You know nothing of it. It’s a little pin prick in your sky, a little flyspeck. You don’t live here on Ganymede, watching that damned colossus gloating over you. Up and over fifteen hours-hiding God knows what on its surface. Hiding something that’s waiting and waiting and trying to get out. Like a giant bomb just waiting to explode!”

            “Nonsense!” Orloff managed to jerk out. “Will you slow down. I can’t keep up.”

            Birnam cut his strides in half and said tensely, “Everyone knows that Jupiter is inhabited, but practically no one ever stops to realize what that means. I tell you that those Jovians, whatever they are, are born to the purple. They are the natural rulers of the Solar System.”

            “Pure hysteria,” muttered Orloff. “The Empire government has been hearing nothing else from your Dominion for a year.”

            “And you’ve shrugged it oil. Well, listen! Jupiter, discounting the thickness of its colossal atmosphere, is eighty thousand miles in diameter. That means it possesses a surface one hundred times that of Earth, and more than fifty times that of the entire Terrestrial Empire. Its population, its resources. its war potential are in proportion.”

            “Mere numbers-“

            “I know what you mean,” Birnam drove on, passionately. “Wars are not fought with numbers, but with science and with organization. The Jovians have both. In the quarter of a century during which we have communicated with them, we’ve learned a bit. They have atomic power and they have radio. And in a world of ammonia under great pressure-a world in other words in which almost none of the metals can exist as metals for any length of time because of the tendency to form soluble ammonia complexes-they have managed to build up a complicated civilization. That means they have had to work through plastics, glasses, silicates and synthetic building materials of one sort or another. That means a chemistry developed just as far as ours is, and r d put odds on its having developed further.”

            Orloff waited long before answering. And then, “But how certain are you people about the Jovians’ last message. We on Earth are inclined to doubt that the Jovians can possibly be as unreasonably belligerent as they have been described.”

            The Ganymedan laughed shortly. “They broke oil all communication after that last message, didn’t they? That doesn’t sound friendly on their part, does it? I assure you that we’ve all but stood on our ears trying to contact them.

            “Here now. don’t talk. Let me explain something to you. For twenty-five years here on Ganymede a little group of men have worked their hearts out trying to make sense out of a static-ridden, gravity-distorted set of variable clicks in our radio apparatus. for those clicks were our only connection with living intelligence upon Jupiter. It was a job for a world of scientists, but we never had more than two dozen at the Station at anyone time. I was one of them from the very beginning and, as a philologist, did my part in helping construct and interpret the code that developed between ourselves and the Jovians, so that you can see I am speaking from the real inside.

            “It was a devil of a heartbreaking job. It was five years before we got past the elementary clicks of arithmetic: three and four are seven; the square root of twenty-five is five; factorial six is seven hundred and twenty. After that, months sometimes passed before we could work out and check by further communication a single new fragment of thought.

            “But-and this is the point-by the time the Jovians broke off relations, we understood them thoroughly. There was no more chance of a mistake in comprehension, than there was of Ganymede suddenly cutting loose from Jupiter. And their last message was a threat, and a promise of destruction. Oh, there’s no doubt-there’s no doubt!”

 

            They were walking through a shallow pass in which the yellow Jupiter light gave way to a clammy darkness.

            Orloff was disturbed. He had never had the case presented to him in this fashion before. He said, “But the reason, man. What reason did we give them-”

            “No reason! It was simply this: the Jovians had finally discovered from our messages-just where and how I don’t know-that we were not Jovians.”

            “Well, of course.”

            “It wasn’t ‘of course’ to them. In their experiences they had never come across intelligences that were not Jovian. Why should they make an exception in favor of those from outer space?”

            “You say they were scientists.” Orloff’s voice had assumed a wary frigidity. ‘Wouldn’t they realize that alien environments would breed alien life? We knew it. We never thought the Jovians were Earthmen though we had never met intelligences other than those of Earth.”

            They were back in the drenching wash of Jupiter light again, and a spreading region of ice glimmered amberly in a depression to the right.

            Birnam answered, “I said they were chemists and physicists-but I never said they were astronomers. Jupiter, my dear commissioner, has an atmosphere three thousand miles or more thick, and those miles of gas block off everything but the Sun and the four largest of Jupiter’s moons. The Jovians know nothing of alien environments.”

            Orloff considered. “And so they decided we were aliens. What next?”

            “If we weren’t Jovians, then, in their eyes, we weren’t people. It turned out that a non-Jovian was ‘vermin’ by definition.”

            Orloff’s automatic protest was cut off short by Birnam, ‘In their eyes, I said, vermin we were; and vermin we are. Moreover, we were vermin with the peculiar audacity of having dared to attempt to treat with Jovians-with human beings. Their last message was this, word for word-’Jovians are the masters. There is no room for vermin. We will destroy you immediately.’ I doubt if there was any animosity in that message-simply a cold statement of fact. But they meant it. “

            “But why?”

            “Why did man exterminate the housefly?”

            “Come, sir. You’re not seriously presenting an analogy of that nature.”

            “Why not, since it is certain that the Jovian considers us a sort of housefly-an insufferable type of housefly that dares aspire to intelligence.”

            Orloff made a last attempt. “But truly, Mr. Secretary, it seems impossible for intelligent life to adopt such an attitude.”

            “Do you possess much of an acquaintance with any other type of intelligent life than our own?” came with immediate sarcasm. “Do you feel competent to pass on Jovian psychology? Do you know just how alien Jovians must be physically? Just think of their world with its gravity at two and one half Earth normal; with its ammonia oceans-oceans that you might throw all Earth into without raising a respectable splash; with its three-thousand-mile atmosphere, dragged down by the colossal gravity into densities and pressures in its surface layers that make the sea bottoms of Earth resemble a medium-thick vacuum. I tell you we’ve tried to figure out what sort of life could exist under those conditions and we’ve given up. It’s thoroughly incomprehensible. Do you expect their mentality, then, to be any more understandable? Never! Accept it as it is. They intend destroying us. That’s all we know and all we need to know.”

            He lifted a gloved hand as he finished and one finger pointed. “There’s Ether Station just ahead.”

            Orloff’s head swiveled, “Underground?”

            “Certainly! All except the Observatory. That’s that steel and quartz dome to the right-the small one.”

            They had stopped before two large boulders that flanked an earthy embankment, and from behind either one a nosepieced, suited soldier in Ganymedan orange, with blasters ready, advanced upon the two.

            Birnam lifted his face into Jupiter’s light and the soldiers saluted and stepped aside. A short word was barked into the wrist mike of one of them and the camouflaged opening between the boulders fell into two and Orloff followed the secretary into the yawning air lock. The Earthman caught one last glimpse of sprawling Jupiter before the closing door cut off the surface altogether.

            It was no longer beautiful!

 

            Orloff did not quite feel normal again until he had seated himself in the overstuffed chair in Dr. Edward Prosser’s private office. With a sigh of utter relaxation, he propped his monocle under his eyebrow.

            “Would Dr. Prosser mind if I smoked in here, while we’re waiting?” he asked.

            “Go ahead, “ replied Birnam, carelessly. “My own idea would be to drag Prosser away from whatever he’s fooling with just now, but he’s a queer chap. We’ll get more out of him if we wait until he’s ready for us.” He withdrew a gnarled stick of greenish tobacco from its case, and bit off the edge viciously.

            Orloff smiled through the smoke of his own cigarette, “I don’t mind waiting. I still have something to say. You see, for the moment, Mr. Secretary, you gave me the jitters, but, after all, granted that the Jovians intend mischief once they get at us, it remains a fact, “ and here he spaced his words emphatically, “that they can’t get at us.”

            “A bomb without a fuse, hey?”

            “Exactly! It’s simplicity itself, and not really worth discussing. You will admit, I suppose, that under no circumstances call the Jovians get away from Jupiter.”

            “Under no circumstances?” There was a quizzical tinge in Birnam’s slow reply. “Shall we analyze that?”

            He stared hard at the purple flame of his cigar. “It’s an old trite saying that the Jovians can’t leave Jupiter. The fact has been highly publicized by the sensation mongers of Earth and Ganymede and a great deal of sentiment has been driveled about the unfortunate intelligences who are irrevocably surface-bound, and must forever stare into the Universe without, watching, watching, wondering, and never attaining.

            “But, after all, what holds the Jovians to their planet? Two factors! That’s all! The first is the immense gravity field of the planet. Two and a half Earth normal.”

            Orloff nodded. “Pretty bad!” he agreed.

            “And Jupiter’s gravitational potential is even worse, for because of its greater diameter the intensity of its gravitational field decreases with distance only one tenth as rapidly as Earth’s field does. It’s a terrible problem-but it’ s been solved.”

            “Hey?” Orloff straightened.

            “They’ve got atomic power. Gravity-even Jupiter’s-means nothing once you’ve put unstable atomic nuclei to work for you.”

            Orloff crushed his cigarette to extinction with a nervous gesture. “But their atmosphere-”

            “Yes, that’s what’s stopping them. They’re living at the bottom of a three-thousand-mile-deep ocean of it, where the hydrogen of which it is composed is collapsed by sheer pressure to something approaching the density of solid hydrogen. It stays a gas because the temperature of Jupiter is above the critical point of hydrogen, but you just try to figure out the pressure that can make hydrogen gas half as heavy as water. You’ll be surprised at the number of zeros you’ll have to put down.

            “No spaceship of metal or of any kind of matter can stand that pressure. No Terrestrial spaceship can land on Jupiter without smashing like an eggshell, and no Jovian spaceship can leave Jupiter without exploding like a soap bubble. That problem has not yet been solved, but it will be some day. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not for a hundred years, or a thousand. We don’t know, but when it is solved, the Jovians will be on top of us. And it can be solved in a specific way.”

            “I don’t see how-“

            “Force fields! We’ve got them now, you know.”

            “Force fields!” Orloff seemed genuinely astonished, and he chewed the word over and over to himself for a few moments. “They’re used as meteor shields for ships in the asteroid zone-but I don’t see the application to the Jovian problem.”

 

            “The ordinary force field,” explained Birnam, “is a feeble rarefied zone of energy extending over a hundred miles or more outside the ship. It’ll stop meteors but it’s just so much empty ether to an object like a gas molecule. But what if you took that same zone of energy and compressed it to a thickness of a tenth of an inch. Molecules would bounce off it like this-ping-g-g-g! And if you used stronger generators, and compressed the field to a hundredth of an inch, molecules would bounce off even when driven by the unthinkable pressure of Jupiter’s atmosphere-and then if you build a ship inside-” He left the sentence dangling.

            Orloff was pale. “You’re not saying it can be done?”

            “I’ll bet you anything you like that the Jovians are trying to do it. And we’re trying to do it right here at Ether Station.”

            The colonial commissioner jerked his chair closer to Birnam and grabbed the Ganymedan’s wrist. “Why can’t we bombard Jupiter with atomic bombs. Give it a thorough going-over, I mean! With her gravity, and her surface area, we can’t miss.”

            Birnam smiled faintly, “We’ve thought of that. But atomic bombs would merely tear holes in the atmosphere. And even if you could penetrate, just divide the surface of Jupiter by the area of damage of a single bomb and find how many years we must bombard Jupiter at the rate of a bomb a minute before we begin to do significant damage. Jupiter’s big! Don’t ever forget that!”

            His cigar had gone out, but he did not pause to relight. He continued in a low, tense voice. “No, we can’t attack the Jovians as long as they’re on Jupiter. We must wait for them to come out-and once they do, they’re going to have the edge on us in numbers. A terrific, heart-breaking edge-so we’ll just have to have the edge on them in science...

            “But,” Orloff broke in, and there was a note of fascinated horror in his voice, “how can we tell in advance what they’ll have?”

            “We can’t. We’ve got to scrape up everything we can lay our hands on and hope for the best. But there’s one thing we do know they’ll have, and that’s force fields. They can’t get out without them. And if they have them, we must, too, and that’s the problem we’re trying to solve here. They will not insure us victory, but without them, we will suffer certain defeat. And now you know why we need money-and more than that. We want Earth itself to get to work. It’s got to start a drive for scientific armaments and subordinate everything to that. You seer

            Orloff was on his feet. “Birnam, I’m with you-a hundred percent with you. You can count on me back in Washington.”

            There was no mistaking his sincerity. Birnam gripped the hand outstretched toward him and wrung it-and at the moment, the door flew open and a little pixie of a man hurtled in.

 

            The newcomer spoke in rapid jerks, and exclusively to Birnam. “Where’d you come from? Been trying to get in touch with you. Secretary said you weren’t in. Then five minutes later you show up on your own. Can’t understand it.” He busied himself furiously at his desk.

            Birnam grinned. “If you’ll take time out, doc, you might say hello to Colonial Commissioner Orloff...

            Dr. Edward Prosser turned on his toe like a ballet dancer and looked the Earthman up and down twice. “The new un, hey? We getting any money? We ought to. Been working on a shoestring ever since. At that, we might not be needing any. It depends.” He was back at the desk.

            Orloff seemed a trifle disconcerted, but Birnam winked impressively, and he contented himself with a glassy stare through the monocle.

            Prosser pounced upon a black leather booklet in the recesses of a pigeonhole, threw himself into his swivel chair and wheeled about.

            “Glad you came, Birnam,” he said, leafing through the booklet. “Got something to show you. Commissioner Orloff, too.”

            “What were you keeping us waiting for?” demanded Birnam. “Where were you?”

            “Busy! Busy as a pig! No sleep for three nights.” He looked up, and his small puckered face fairly Hushed with delight. “Everything fell into place of a sudden. Like a jig-saw puzzle. Never saw anything like it. Kept us hopping, I tell you.”

            “You’ve gotten the dense force fields you’re after?” asked Orloff in sudden excitement.

            Prosser seemed annoyed. “No, not that. Something else. Come on.” He glared at his watch and jumped out of his seat. “We’ve got half an hour. Let’s go.”

            An electric-motored flivver waited outside and Prosser spoke excitedly as he sped the purring vehicle down the ramps into the depths of the Station.

            “Theory!” he said. “Theory! Damned important, that. You set a technician on a problem. He’ll fool around. Waste lifetimes. Get nowhere. Just putter about at random. A true scientist works with theory. Lets math solve his problems.” He overflowed with self-satisfaction.

            The flivver stopped on a dime before a huge double door and Prosser tumbled out, followed by the other two at a more leisurely pace.

            “Through here! Through here!” he said. He shoved the door open and led them down the corridor and up a narrow flight of stairs onto a wall-hugging passageway that circled a huge three-level room. Orloff recognized the gleaming quartz-and-steel pipe-sprouting ellipsoid two levels below as an atomic generator.

            He adjusted his monocle and watched the scurrying activity below. An earphoned man on a high stool before a control board studded with dials looked up and waved. Prosser waved back and grinned.

            Orloff said, “You create your force fields here?”

            “That’s right! Ever see one?”

            “No.” The commissioner smiled, ruefully. “I don’t even know what one is, except that it can be used as a meteor shield.”

            Prosser said, “It’s very simple. Elementary matter. All matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are held together by interatomic forces. Take away atoms. Leave interatomic forces behind. That’s a force field.”

            Orloff looked blank, and Birnam chuckled deep in his throat and scratched the back of his ear.

            “That explanation reminds me of our Ganymedan method of suspending an egg a mile high in the air. It goes like this. You find a mountain just a mile high and put the egg on top. Then, keeping the egg where it is, you take the mountain away. That’s all.”

            The colonial commissioner threw his head back to laugh, and the irascible Dr. Prosser puckered his lips in a pursed symbol of disapproval.

            “Come, come. No joke, you know. Force fields most important. Got to be ready for the Jovians when they come:’

 

            A sudden rasping bur from below sent Prosser back from the railing.

            “Get behind screen here,” he babbled. “The twenty-millimeter field is going up. Bad radiation.”

            The bur muted almost into silence, and the three walked out onto the passageway again. There was no apparent change, but Prosser shoved his hand out over the railing and said, “Feel!”

            Orloff extended a cautious finger, gasped, and slapped out with the palm of his hand. It was like pushing against very soft sponge rubber or superresilient steel springs.

            Birnam tried, too. “That’s better than anything we’ve done yet, isn’t it?” He explained to Orloff, “ A twenty-millimeter screen is one that can hold an atmosphere of a pressure of twenty millimeters of mercury against a vacuum without appreciable leakage.”

            The commissioner nodded, “I see! You’ d need a seven-hundred-sixty-millimeter screen to hold Earth’s atmosphere then.”

            “Yes! That would be a unit atmosphere screen. Well, Prosser, is this what got you excited?”

            “This twenty-millimeter screen? Of course not. I can go up to two hundred fifty millimeters using the activated vanadium pentasulphide in the praseodymium breakdown. But it’s not necessary. Technician would do it and blow up the place. Scientist checks on theory and goes slow.” He winked. ‘We’re hardening the field now. Watch!”

            “Shall we get behind the screen?”

            “Not necessary now. Radiation bad only at beginning...

            The burring waxed again, but not as loudly as before. Prosser shouted to the man at the control board, and a spreading wave of the hand was the only reply.

            Then the control man waved a clenched fist and Prosser cried, “We’ve passed fifty millimeters! Feel the field!”

            Orloff extended his hand and poked it curiously. The sponge rubber had hardened! He tried to pinch it between finger and thumb so perfect was the illusion, but here the “rubber.. faded to unresisting air.

            Prosser tch-tched impatiently. “No resistance at right angles to force. Elementary mechanics, that is...

            The control man was gesturing again. “Past seventy,” explained Prosser. “We’re slowing down now. Critical point is 83.42.”

            He hung over the railing and kicked out with his feet at the other two. “Stay away! Dangerous!”

            And then he yelled, “Careful! The generator’s bucking!”

            The bur had risen to a hoarse rnaximum and the control man worked frantically at his switches. From within the quartz heart of the central atomic generator, the sullen red glow of the bursting atoms had brightened dangerously.

            There was a break in the bur, a reverberant roar, and a blast of air that threw Orloff hard against the wall.

            Prosser dashed up. There was a cut over his eye. “Hurt? No? Good, good! I was expecting something of the sort. Should have warned you. Let’s go down. Where’s Birnam?”

            The tall Ganymedan picked herself up off the floor and brushed at his clothes. “Here I am. What blew up?”

            “Nothing blew up. Something buckled. Come on, down we go.” He debbed at his forehead with a handkerchief and led the way downward.

            The control man removed his earphones as he approached and got off his stool. He looked tired, and his dirt-smeared face was greasy with perspiration.

            “The damn thing started going at 82.8, boss. It almost caught me.”

            “It did, did it?” growled Prosser. “Within limits of error, isn’t it? How’s the generator? Hey, Stoddard!”

            The technician addressed replied from his station at the generator, “Tube 5 died. It’ll take two days to replace.”

            Prosser turned in satisfaction and said, “It worked. Went exactly as presumed. Problem solved, gentlemen. Trouble over. Let’s get back to my office. I want to eat. And then I want to sleep.”

 

            He did not refer to the subject again until once more behind the desk in his office, and then he spoke between huge bites of a liver-and-onion sandwich.

            He addressed Birnam, “Remember the work on space strain last June. It Hopped, but we kept at it. Finch got a lead last week and I developed it. Everything fell into place. Slick as goose grease. Never saw anything like it.”

            “Go ahead,” said Birnam, calmly. He knew Prosser sufficiently well to avoid showing impatience.

            “You saw what happened. When a field tops 83.42 millimeters, it becomes unstable. Space won’t stand the strain. It buckles and the field blows. Boom/”

            Birnam’s mouth dropped open and the arms of Orloff’s chair creaked under sudden pressure. Silence for a while, and then Birnam said unsteadily, “You mean force fields stronger than that are impossible?”

            “They’re possible. You can create them. But the denser they are, the more unstable they are. If I had turned on the two-hundred-and-fifty-millimeter field, it would have lasted one tenth of a second. Then, blooie! Would have blown up the Station! And myself! Technician would have done it. Scientist is warned by theory. Works carefully, the way I did. No harm done.”

            Orloff tucked his monocle into his vest pocket and said tremulously, “But if a force field is the same thing as interatomic forces, why is it that steel has such a strong interatomic binding force without bucking space? There’s a Haw there.”

            Prosser eyed him in annoyance. “No Haw. Critical strength depends on number of generators. In steel, each atom is a force-field generator. That means about three hundred billion trillion generators for every ounce of matter. If we could use that many-As it is, one hundred generators would be the practical limit. That only raises the critical point to ninety-seven or thereabout.”

            He got to his feet and continued with sudden fervor, “No. Problem’s over, I tell you. Absolutely impossible to create a force field capable of holding Earth’s atmosphere for more than a hundredth of a second. Jovian atmosphere entirely out of question. Cold figures say that; backed by experiment. Space won’t stand it!

            “Let the Jovians do their damnedest. They can’t get out! That’s final! That’s final! That’s final!”

            Orloff said, “Mr. Secretary, can I send a spacegram anywhere in the Station? I want to tell Earth that I’m returning by the next ship and that the Jovian problem is liquidated-entirely and for good.”

            Birnam said nothing, but the relief of his face as he shook hands with the colonial commissioner, transfigured the gaunt homeliness of it unbelievably.

            And Dr. Prosser repeated, with a birdlike jerk of his head, “That’s final!”

 

            Hal Tuttle looked up as Captain Everett of the spaceship Transparent, newest ship of the Comet Space Lines, entered his private observation room in the nose of the ship.

            The captain said, “ A spacegram has just reached me from the home offices at Tucson. We’re to pick up Colonial Commissioner Orloff at Jovopolis, Ganymede, and take him back to Earth.”

            “Good. We haven’t sighted any ships?”

            “No, no! We’re way off the regular space lanes. The first the System will know of us will be the landing of the Transparent on Ganymede. It will be the greatest thing in space travel since the first trip to the Moon.” His voice softened suddenly, “What’s wrong, Hal? This is your triumph, after all:’

            Hal Tuttle looked up and out into the blackness of space. “I suppose it is. Ten years of work, Sam. I lost an arm and an eye in that first explosion, but I don’t regret them. It’s the reaction that’s got me. The problem is solved; my lifework is finished. “

            “So is every steel-hulled ship in the System.”

            Tuttle smiled. “Yes. It’s hard to realize, isn’t it?” He gestured outward. “You see the stars? Part of the time, there’s nothing between them and us. It gives me a queazy feeling.” His voice brooded, “Nine years I worked for nothing. I wasn’t a theoretician, and never really knew where I was headed-just tried everything. I tried a little too hard and space wouldn’t stand it. I paid an arm and an eye and started fresh.”

            Captain Everett balled his fist and pounded the hull-the hull through which the stars shone unobstructed. There was the muffled thud of flesh striking an unyielding surface-but no response whatever from the invisible wall.

            Tuttle nodded, “It’s solid enough, now-though it flicks on and off eight hundred thousand times a second. I got the idea from the stroboscopic lamp. You know them-they flash on and off so rapidly that it gives all the impression of steady illumination.

            “And so it is with the hull. It’s not on long enough to buckle space. It’s not off long enough to allow appreciable leakage of the atmosphere. And the net effect is a strength better than steel.”

            He paused and added slowly, “And there’s no telling how far we can go. Speed up the intermission effect. Have the field flick off and on millions of times per second-billions of times. You can get fields strong enough to hold an atomic explosion. My lifework!”

            Captain Everett pounded the other’s shoulder. “Snap out of it, man. Think of the landing on Ganymede. The devil! It will be great publicity. Think of Orloff’s face, for instance, when he finds he is to be the first passenger in history ever to travel in a spaceship with a force-field hull. How do you suppose he’ll feel?”

            Hal Tuttle shrugged. “I imagine he’ll be rather pleased.”

 

THE END

 

            Still, you can see that there was nothing in that financial record to lead me to think that writing was a possible way of making a living-especially since I had no dream of ever writing anything but magazine science fiction.

 

            On June 10, 1941, in the course of a talk with Fred Pohl, I mentioned my frustration at not being able to make a sale to Unknown. Fred said he had a good idea for a fantasy, and from that it was a short step to an agreement to go halfies. We’ d talk the idea over, I would write it, and we’d split the sale, if any, fifty-fifty.

            Fred must have been willing because (as I found out three days later) his magazines were doing poorly and he was being relieved of his editorial position.

            It was too bad, of course, but not an irredeemable catastrophe. Pohl had had nearly two years of valuable editorial experience, and the time would come when this would stand him in good stead in a much more important and longer-enduring role as editor of Galaxy, which during the 1950s and 1960s was to compete with Astounding for leadership in the field.

            As for myself, I could scarcely complain. Pohl had accepted eight of my stories (over a quarter of those I had written and nearly half of those I had sold up to then).of these, six had already been published and one (“Super-Neutron”) was safely slated for publication in the forthcoming issue of Astonishing. That left the ninth, “Christmas on Ganymede.” It was not yet paid for, nor had it actually been set in type, and, regretfully, Pohl had to return it. However, I sold it within two weeks to Thrilling Wonder Stories for a little more than Pohl would have been able to pay me, so no harm was done even there.-and though I regretted the loss of a market, Pohl had safely seen me through the period during which I developed to the point where Campbell and Astounding itself could become my major market.

            At first, when “Christmas on Ganymede” was returned, I thought it was because the Pohl magazines had been suspended altogether. If the publishers had intended that, they changed their minds. Astonishing continued a couple of years, until it was killed by the World War II paper shortage. Super Science Stories survived World War II and even a little past the 1940s, and was yet to publish one more story of mine.

            But back to June 10-Taking Fred’s fantasy idea, I wrote the story entirely on my own, calling it “Legal Rights.” Once again, though, a collaboration didn’t succeed. On July 8, Campbell rejected it, the first rejection I had received from him in half a year.

            By that time, though, Fred was agenting again. I gave him the story, rather shamefacedly, and forgot about it. He changed the name to “Legal Rites” (much better) and rewrote it quite a bit. Seven years later, he actually sold it.