o > $ 3 rs § K JULY 1956 35< SCIENCE FICTION DROP DEAD by Clifford D. Simak im^ '■■■:<\ '•: :.;' ;;..v> f - "- .-■■ .-■ iti ■***'ti ■ SKILLS OF XANADU by Theodore Sturgeon WELCOME TO REALITY, C-T! by Willy Ley ' ;;w v ■ ■ yone For Doomsday Not You ! Not Us ! L But it COULD happen, for anything is possible. And any- thing that is possible — and can make a good story — goes into the pages of GALAXY Science Fiction. Doomsday is only one possible future out of many: The conquest of other planets . . • Invasions of Earth . . • Other dimensions . . . Immortality . . • Strange and exciting future civilizations that have their roots right in the present . . . You'll find all these and a lot more in GALAXY, the magazine of ideas brought vividly to life! For 12 convincing issues, send $3.50 or $6.00 for 24 issues, TO GALAXY Publishing Corp. 421 Hudson Street • New York 14, N. Y. %-A X-l * / V X-l *. +. / bo\ce -tr. *-/ *, Jr., *. Each Tuesday nite on Radio! Check your local listings for the best / * stories from Galaxy forcefully its Naturally your dramatized — Best Choice for tops in adult Science Fiction. X-l=The choice from Galaxy, adapted by the tops at N. B.C * * JULY, 1956 VOL. 12, NO. 3 Galaxy SCIENCE FICTION ALL ORIGINAL STORIES » NO REPRINTS! CONTENTS NOVELETS DROP DEAD by Clifford D. Simak 6 BAD MEDICINE by Finn O'Donnevan 68 THE SKILLS OF XANADU by Theodore Sturgeon 116 SHORT STORIES GYPPED by Lloyd Biggie, Jr. 36 WRITING OF THE RAT by James Blish 54 ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE :.. by Robert Sheckley 88 HORRER HOWCE by Margaret St. Clair 103 SCIENCE DEPARTMENT FOR YOUR INFORMATION by Willy Ley 43 FEATURES EDITOR'S PAGE by H. L Gold A FORECAST 42 GALAXY'S FIVE STAR SHELF by Floyd C. Gale 99 Cover by JACK COGGINS Showing A MINIATURE INVASION ROBERT GUINN, Publisher EVELYN PAIGE, Managing Editor W. I. VAN DER POEL, Art Director H. L. GOLD, Editor WILLY LEY, Science Editor JOAN De MARIO, Production Manager GALAXY Science Fiction is published monthly by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Main offices: 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y. 35c per copy. Subscription: (12 copies) $3.50 per year in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and U.S. Possessions. Elsewhere $4.50. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office, New York, N. Y. Copyright, New York 1956, by Galaxy Publishing Corporation, Robert Guinn, president. All rights, includ- ing translation, reserved. All material submitted must be accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories printed in this magazine are fiction, and any similarity between characters and actual persons is coincidental. Printed in the U.S.A. by the Guinn Co., Inc. N. Y. 14, N. Y. Title Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. Powers to overcome sickness! Means to escape poverty! Knowledge to bring happiness and peace of mind! Skill and genius to create a civiliza- tion which we still copy today! These are only some of the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians. Above and beyond these physical achievements was the secret wisdom possessed by the Egyptian mystery schools. In these centers of learning men and women were taught the laws of life and how to master them. With this mastery they were able to shape their destinies as tbey wished them to be. It takes no greater mental effort to achieve results when you know how. Successful living is the oldest art in the world. It consists of developing initiative, foresight and the ability to combine experiences into new and workable ideas. These laws operate as unfailingly as the laws which govern the sun, moon and planets. They were dis- covered centuries ago by certain wise men of Egypt, and preserved down through the ages by the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucians (AMORC) SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, U. S. A. Time has since crumbled Egypt's walls, but it couldn't destroy this for- mula for the control of life. In your hands, this knowledge could alter the entire course of your affairs. The Rosicrucians offer to you— if you have the courage to break away from limited forms of thinking— these same simply expressed truths of life which have led thousands to a joyous method of better living. Let This FREE Book Help You Learn how you may share the pri- vate instructions of The Rosicrucians, a non-profit fraternity of men and women whose influence extends into every land. Let this be the turning point in your life! For your copy of "The Mastery of Life" use the coupon below or write to Scribe T.S.M. • i i i i i ■ i i i i i ■ i i i i i i i i i j Scribe T.S.M. The Rosicrucians (AMORC) San Jose, California, U.S.A. Please send me, without obligation, my copy of "The Mastery of Life' 9 which ex- plains how I may receive and use your in- telligent and age-old method for attaining mastership of life. s Name Address. i : LOOK! QOME months back, I issued an & intelligence report that al- lowed only one conclusion: There Are Aliens Among Us. My intent was to inform with- out alarming. Evidently I suc- ceeded, for out of the jumble of letters received, only one was in- telligible and therefore clearly from a human reader. "This is in reference to your article in the March issue of Galaxy entitled 'Look Now!' It is strange how one may brood for years over a problem and then suddenly have it brought into fo- cus by reading another's views on the subject. The similarity be- tween your conclusions and mine is, if you'll pardon the expression, astounding. "The subject is my wife. It happens that she has been a very good wife and I have no desire to alter our relationship, even if she is an alien. Good wives are not easy to find and represent a sub- stantial investment. Therefore, I am signing this with a pseudo- nym and mailing it from a false address — and request that both be kept confidential. . "Many of her statements are perfectly ordinary spoonerisms. Her reference to a 'pi at at ion horn Quoto* is an example of this. As you suggest, perhaps it is a delib- erately cultivated type of protec- tive coloration designed to draw attention away from those slips even the best of agents, human or otherwise, inevitably make. "Some of these verbal prat-falls are quite humorous, which sup- ports your theory, for humans are notoriously uncritical when laugh- ing. For instance, she doesn't care for a neighbor's home because she says she doesn't like 'overwrought iron.' "Yet a certain chilling alien viewpoint occasionally reveals it- self. Ever since my wife told me that the 'washee-pot needs cough- ing,' I have become uncomforta- ble in the presence of all pots. I keep wondering if this or that pot is a washee-pot and if it in- tends to cough. "I will give you three more ex- amples and ask you to think about them. I have tried to rea- son them out, but I always some- how get the feeling that my mind is going cross-eyed. Here they are: "'Ifs half of one and six-a- dozen of the other.' Close ques- tioning has ascertained that this is meant to indicate two equal quantities, but I challenge any (Continued on page 144) GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 1 i ■ .^^ i . ■■■'/■* i -, h i ) \ ,,,,,. ^ ., :.■ ' ■; * - ■ / *,* ■ + . - . 1 ,n *' ... '-: * , v ■ v " \ ' II lllll . ■ " :i V ' Si ' # Announcing Bounty The new satirical i magazine treating today's events with humor and taste . . Featuring delightful articles by such popular writers as Quentin Reynolds H. Allen Smith Henry Morgan Ilka Chase Bob Cooke Leon Pearson On sale at your newsstand Read it for fun. 25c < >:-:•> ■■■■-■-.■■ > ■ ' ■■:■.' ■.- Drop Dead By CLIFFORD D. SIMAK Illustrated by EMSH THE critters were unbeliev- able. They looked like something from the maud- lin pen of a well-alcoholed car- toonist. One herd of them clustered in 6 a semicircle in front of the ship, not jittery or belligerent — just looking at us. And that was strange. Ordinarily, when a space- ship sets down on a virgin planet, it takes a week at least for any GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION Here was the perfect world — accommodating and peaceful — hut how it got that way was - less ghastly than how it that way f m . * ' .-UA^fc*. *- *■ • ;w>*^ti^- injac^tv ■ M* life that might have seen or heard it to creep out of hiding and sneak a look around. The critters were almost cow- size, but nohow as graceful as a cow. Their bodies were pushed together as if ever blessed one of them had run full-tilt into a wall. And they were just as lumpy as you'd expect from a collision like that. Their hides were splashed with large squares of DROP DEAD pastel color the kind of color one never finds on any self-re- specting animal: violet, pink, or- ange, chartreuse, to name only a few. The overall effect was of a checkerboard done by an old lady who made crazy quilts. And that, by far, was not the worst of it. From their heads and other parts of their anatomy sprouted a weird sort of vegetation, so that it appeared each animal was hid- ing, somewhat ineffectively, be- hind a skimpy thicket. To com- pound the situation and make it completely insane, fruits and vegetables — or what appeared to be fruits and vegetables grew from the vegetation. So we stood there, the critters looking at us and us looking back at them, and finally one of them walked forward until it was no more than six feet from us. It stood there for a moment, gazing at us soulfully, then dropped dead at our feet. The rest of the herd turned around and trotted awkwardly away, for all the world as if they had done what they had come to do and now could go about their business. JULIAN OLIVER, our botanist, put up a hand and rubbed his balding head with an absent- minded motion. "Another whatisit coming up!" he moaned. "Why couldn't it, for once, be something plain and sim- ple?" "It never is," I told him. "Re- member that bush out on Hamal V that spent half its life as a kind of glorified tomato and the other half as grade A poison ivy?" "I remember it," Oliver said sadly. Max Weber, our biologist, walked over to the critter, reached out a cautious foot and prodded it. "Trouble is," he said, "that Hamal tomato was Julian's baby and this one here is mine." "I wouldn't say entirely yours," Oliver retorted. "What do you call that underbrush growing out of it?" I came in fast to head off an argument. I had listened to those two quarreling for the past twelve years, across several hundred light-years and on a couple dozen planets. I couldn't stop it here, I knew, but at least I could post- pone it until they had something vital to quarrel about. "Cut it out," I said. "It's only a couple of hours till nightfall and we have to get the camp set up." "But this critter," Weber said. "We can't just leave it here." "Why not? There are millions more of them. This one will stay right here and even if it doesn't — " 8 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "But it dropped dead!" "So it was old and feeble." "It wasn't. It was right in the prime of life." "We can talk about it later," said Alfred Kemper, our bacteri- ologist. "I'm as interested as you two, but what Bob says is right. We have to get the camp set up." "Another thing," I added, look- ing hard at all of them. "No mat- ter how innocent this place may look, we observe planet rules. No eating anything. No drinking any water. No wandering off alone. No carelessness of any kind." "There's nothing here," said Weber. "Just the herds of critters. Just the endless plains. No trees, no hills, no nothing." He really didn't mean it. He knew as well as I did the reason for observing planet rules. He only wanted to argue. "All right," I said, "which is it? Do we set up camp or do we spend the night up in the ship?" That did it. w E HAD the camp set up be- fore the sun went down and by dusk we were all settled in. Carl Parsons, our ecologist, had the stove together and the supper started before the last tent peg was driven. I dug out my diet kit and mixed up my formula and all of them kidded me about it, the way they always did. It didn't bother me. Their jibes were automatic and I had auto- matic answers. It was something that had been going on for a long, long time. Maybe it was best that way, better than if they'd disregarded my enforced eating habits. I remember Carl was grilling steaks and I had to move away so I couldn't smell them. There's never a time when I wouldn't give my good right arm for a steak or, to tell the truth, any other kind of normal chow. This diet stuff keeps a man alive all right, but that's about the only thing that can be said of it. I know ulcers must sound silly and archaic. Ask any medic and he'll tell you they don't happen any more. But I have a riddled stomach and the diet kit to prove they sometimes do. I guess it's what you might call an occupa- tional ailment. There's a lot of never - ending worry playing nursemaid to planet survey gangs. After supper, we went out and dragged the critter in and had a closer look at it. It was even worse to look at close than from a distance. There was no fooling about that vegetation. It was the real McCoy and it was part and par- cel of the critter. But it seemed that it only grew out of certain of the color blocks, in the critter's body. DROP DEAD We found another thing that practically had Weber frothing at the mouth. One of the color blocks had holes in it — it looked almost exactly like one of those peg sets that children use as toys. When Weber took out his jack- knife and poked into one of the holes, he pried out an insect that looked something like a bee. He couldn't quite believe it, so he did some more probing and in another one of the holes he found another bee. Both of the bees were dead. He and Oliver wanted to start dissection then and there, but the rest of us managed to talk them out of it. We pulled straws to see who would stand first guard and, with my usual luck, I pulled the short- est straw. Actually there wasn't much real reason for standing guard, with the alarm system set to protect the camp, but it was regulation — there had to be a guard. I got a gun and the others said good night and went to their tents, but I could hear them talk- ing for a long time afterward. No matter how hardened you may get to this survey business, no matter how blase, you hardly ever get much sleep the first night on any planet. ■ I SAT on a chair at one side of the camp table, on which burned a lantern in lieu of the campfire we would have had on any other planet. But here we couldn't have a fire because there wasn't any wood. I sat at one side of the table, with the dead critter lying on the other side of it and I did some worrying, although it wasn't time for me to start worrying yet. I'm an agricultural economist and I don't begin my worrying until at least the first reports are in. But sitting just across the ta- ble from where it lay, I couldn't help but do some wondering about that mixed-up critter. I didn't get anywhere except go around in circles and I was sort of glad when Talbott Fullerton, the Double Eye, came out and sat down beside me. Sort of, I said. No one cared too much for Fullerton. I have yet to see the Double Eye I or anybody else ever cared much about. "Too excited to sleep?" I asked him. He nodded vaguely, staring off into the darkness beyond the lan- tern's light. "Wondering," he said. "Won- dering if this could be the plan- et." "It won't be," I told him. "You're chasing an El Dorado, hunting down a fable." "They found it once before," Fullerton argued stubbornly. "It's all there in the records." 10 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "So was the Gilded Man. And the Empire of Prester John. At- lantis and all the rest of it. So was the old Northwest Passage back on ancient Earth. So were the Seven Cities. But nobody ever found any of those places because they weren't there." He sat with the lamplight in his face and he had that wild look - in his eyes and his hands were knotting into fists, then straight- ening out again. "Sutter," he said unhappily, "I don't know why you do this — this mocking of yours. Some- where in this universe there is immortality. Somewhere, some- how, it has been accomplished. And the human race must find it. We have the space for it now — all the space there is — millions of planets and eventually other galaxies. We don't have to keep making room for new generations, the way we would if we were 6tuck on a single world or a sin- gle solar system. Immortality, I tell you, is the next step for hu- manity!" "Forget it," I said curtly, but once a Double Eye gets going, you can't shut him up. "Look at this planet," he said. "An almost perfect Earth-type planet. Main-sequence sun. Good soil, good climate, plenty of wa- ter — an ideal place for a colony. How many years, do you think, before Man will settle here?" "A thousand. Five thousand. Maybe more." "That's right. And there are countless other planets like it, planets crying to be settled. But we won't settle them, because we keep dying off. And that's not all of it . . ." ATIENTLY, I listened to all the rest — the terrible waste of dying — and I knew every bit of it by heart. Before Fullerton, we'd been saddled by one Double Eye fanatic and, before him, yet another. It was regulation. Every planet-checking team, no matter what its purpose or its destina- tion, was required to carry as supercargo an agent of Immor- tality Institute. But this kid seemed just a lit- tle worse than the usual run of * them. It was his first trip out and he was all steamed up with ideal- ism. In all of them, though, burned the same intense dedica- tion to the proposition that Man must live forever and an equally unyielding belief that immortal- ity could and would be found. For had not a lost spaceship found the answer centuries be- fore — an unnamed spaceship on an unknown planet in a long- forgotten year! It was a myth, of course. It had all the hallmarks of one and all the fierce loyalty that a myth can muster. It was kept alive by Im- DROP DEAD 11 mortality Institute, operating un- der a government grant and bil- lions of bequests and gifts from hopeful rich and poor — all of whom, of course, had died or would die in spite of their gener- osity. "What are you looking for?" I asked Fullerton, just a little wear- ily, for I was bored with it. "A plant? An animal? A people?" And he replied, solemn as a judge: "That's something I can't tell you." As if I gave a damn! But I went on needling him. Maybe it was just something to while away my time. That and the fact that I disliked the fellow. Fanatics annoy me. They won't get off your ear. "Would you know it if you found it?" He didn't answer that one, but he turned haunted eyes on me. I cut out the needling. Any more of it and I'd have had him bawling. We sat around a while longer, but we did no talking. He fished a toothpick out of his pocket and put it in his mouth and rolled it around, chewing at it moodily. I would have liked to reach out and slug him, for he chewed toothpicks all the time and it was an irritating habit that set me unreasonably on edge. I guess I was jumpy, too. Finally he spit out the man- gled toothpick and slouched off to bed. I sat alone, looking up at the ship, and the lantern light was just bright enough for me to make out the legend lettered on it: Caph VII — Ag Survey 286, which was enough to identify us anywhere in the Galaxy. For everyone knew Caph VII, the agricultural experimental planet, just as they would have known Aldebaran XII, the medi-* cal research planet, or Capella IX, the university planet, or any of the other special departmental planets. APH VII is a massive opera- tion and the hundreds of survey teams like us were just a part of it. But we were the spearheads who went out to new worlds, some of them uncharted, some just barely charted, looking for plants and animals that might be developed on the experimental tracts. Not that our team had found a great deal. We had discovered some grasses that did well on one of the Eltanian worlds, but by and large we hadn't done any- thing that could be called dis- tinguished. Our luck just seemed to run bad — like that Hamal poison ivy business. We worked as hard as any of the rest of them, but a lot of good that did. Sometimes it was tough to take 12 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION when all the other teams brought in stuff that got them written up and earned them bo- nuses, while we came creeping in with a few piddling grasses or maybe not a thing at all. It's a tough life and don't let anyone tell you different. Some of the planets turn out to be a fairly rugged business. At times, the boys come back pretty much the worse for wear and there are times when they don't come back at all. But right now it looked as though we'd hit it lucky — a peaceful planet, good climate, easy terrain, no hostile inhabit- ants and no dangerous fauna. Weber took his time relieving me at guard, but finally he showed up. I could see he still was goggle- eyed about the critter. He walked around it several times, looking it over. "That's the most fantastic case of symbiosis I have ever seen," he said. "If it weren't lying over there, I'd say it was impossible. Usually you associate symbiosis with the lower, more simple forms of life." "You mean that brush grow- ing out of it?" He nodded. "And the bees?" He gagged over the bees. "How are you so sure it's sym- biosis?" He almost wrung his hands. "I cfon'r know," he admitted. T GAVE him the rifle and went ■*■ to the tent I shared with Kemper. The bacteriologist was awake when I came in. "That you, Bob?" "It's me. Everything's all right." "I've been lying here and think- ing," he said. "This is a screwy place." "The critters?" "No, not the critters. The plan- et itself. Never saw one like it. It's positively naked. No trees. No flowers. Nothing. It's just a sea of grass." "Why not?" I asked. "Where does it say you can't find a pas- ture planet?" "It's too simple," he protested. "Too simplified. Too neat and packaged. Almost as if someone had said let's make a simple planet, let's cut out all the frills, let's skip all the biological experi- ments and get right down to bas- ics. Just one form of life and the grass for it to eat." "You're way out on a limb," I told him. "How do you know all this? There may be other life- forms. There may be complexi- ties we can't suspect. Sure, all we've seen are the critters, but maybe that's because there are so many of them " "To hell with you," he said and turned over on his cot. DROP DEAD 13 Now there's a guy I liked. We'd been tent partners ever since he'd joined the team better than ten years before and we got along fine. Often I had wished the rest could get along as well. But it was too much to expect. The fighting started right after breakfast, when Oliver and Web- er insisted on using the camp ta- ble for dissecting. Parsons, who doubled as cook, jumped straight down their throats. Why he did it, I don't know. He knew before he said a word that he was licked, hands down. The same thing had happened many times before and he knew, no matter what he did or said, they would use the table. But he put up a good battle. "You guys go and find some other place to do your butcher- ing! Who wants to eat on a table that's all slopped up?" "But, Carl, where can we do it? We'll use only one end of the ta- ble." Which was a laugh, because in half an hour they'd be sprawled all over it. "Spread out a canvas," Parsons snapped back. "You can't dissect on a canvas. You got to have — " "Another thing. How long do you figure it will take? In a day or two, that critter is going to get ripe." It went on like that for quite a while, but by the time I started up the ladder to get the animals, Oliver and Weber had flung the critter on the table and were at work on it. UNSHIPPING the animals is something not exactly in my line of duty, but over the years I'd taken on the job of get- ting them unloaded, so they'd be there and waiting when Weber or some of the others needed them to run off a batch of tests. I went down into the compart- ment where we kept them in their cages. The rats started squeaking at me and the zartyls from Centauri started screeching at me and the punkins from Po- laris made an unholy racket, be- cause the punkins are hungry all the time. You just can't give them enough to eat. Turn them loose with food and they'd eat them- I selves to death. It was quite a job to get them all lugged up to the port and to rig up a sling and lower them to the ground, but I finally finished it without busting a single cage. That was an accomplishment. Usually I smashed a cage or two and some of the animals escaped and then Weber would froth around for days about my care- lessness. I had the cages all set out in rows and was puttering with can- vas flies to protect them from 14 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION the weather when Kemper came along and stood watching me. "I have been wandering around," he announced. From the way he said it, I could see he had the wind up. But I didn't ask him, for then he'd never have told me. You had to wait for Kemper to make up his mind to talk. "Peaceful place," I said and it was all of that. It was a bright, clear day and the sun was not too warm. There was a little breeze and you could see a long way off. And it was quiet. Really quiet. There wasn't any noise at all. "It's a lonesome place," said Kemper. "I don't get you," I answered patiently. "Remember what I said last night? About this planet being too simplified?" He stood watching me put up the canvas, as if he might be con- sidering how much more to tell me. I waited. Finally, he blurted it. "Bob, there are no insects!" "What have insects » "You know what I mean," he said. "You go out on Earth or any Earthlike planet and lie down in the grass and watch. You'll see the insects. Some of them on the ground and others on the grass. There'll be all kinds of them." "And there aren't any here?" He shook his head. "None that I could see. I wandered around and lay down and looked in a dozen different places. Stands to reason a man should find some insects if he looked all morning. It isn't natural, Bob." KEPT on with my canvas and I don't know why it was, but I got a little chilled about there not being any insects. Not that I care a hoot for insects, but as Kemper said, it was un- natural, although you come to expect the so-called unnatural in this planet-checking business. "There are the bees," I said. "What bees?" "The ones that are in the crit- ters. Didn't you see any?" "None," he said. "I didn't get close to any critter herds. Maybe the bees don't travel very far." "Any birds?" "I didn't see a one," he said. "But I was wrong about the flow- ers. The grass has tiny flowers." "For the bees to work on." Kemper's face went stony. "That's right. Don't you see the pattern of it, the planned — " "I see it," I told him. He helped me with the canvas and we didn't say much more. When we had it done, we walked into camp. Parsons was cooking lunch and grumbling at Oliver and Weber, DROP DEAD 15 but they weren't paying much at- tention to him. They had the ta- ble littered with different parts they'd carved out of the critter and they were looking slightly numb. "No brain," Weber said to us accusingly, as if we might have made off with it when he wasn't looking. "We can't find a brain and there's no nervous system." "It's impossible," declared Oli- ver. "How can a highly organized, complex animal exist without a brain or nervous system?" "Look at that butcher shop!" Parsons yelled wrathfully from the stove. "You guys will have to eat standing up!" "Butcher shop is right," Weber agreed. "As near as we can figure out, there are at least a dozen different kinds of flesh — some fish, some fowl, some good red meat. Maybe a little lizard, even." "An all-purpose animal," said Kemper. "Maybe we found some- thing finally." "If it's edible," Oliver added. "If it doesn't poison you. If it doesn't grow hair all over you." "That's up to you," I told him. "I got the cages down and all lined up. You can start killing off the little cusses to your heart's content." Weber looked ruefully at the mess on the table. "We did just a rough explora- tory job," he explained. "We ought to start another one from scratch. You'll have to get in on that next one, Kemper." Kemper nodded glumly. Weber looked at me. "Think you can get us one?" "Sure," I said. "No trouble." It wasn't. Right after lunch, a lone crit- ter came walking up, as if to visit us. It stopped about six feet from where we sat, gazed at us soulfully, then obligingly dropped dead. TOURING the next few da}'s, *-* Oliver and Weber barely took time out to eat and sleep. They sliced and probed. They couldn't believe half the things they found. They argued. They waved their scalpels in the air to emphasize their anguish. They almost broke down and wept. Kemper filled box after box with slides and sat hunched, half pet- rified, above his microscope. Parsons and I wandered around while the others worked. He dug up some soil samples and tried to classify the grasses and failed, because there weren't any grasses — there was just one type of grass. He made notes on the weather and ran an analysis of the air and tried to pull together an ecological report without a lot to go on. I looked for insects and I didn't find any except the bees and I 16 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION never saw those unless I was near a critter herd. I watched for birds and there were none. I spent two days investigating a creek, lying on my belly and staring down into the water, and there were no signs of life. I hunted up a sugar sack and put a hoop in the mouth of it and spent another two days seining. I didn't catch a thing — not a fish, not even a crawdad, not a single thing. By that time, I was ready to admit that Kemper had guessed right. Fullerton walked around, too, but we paid no attention to him. All the Double Eyes, every one of them, always were looking for something no one else could see. After a while, you got pretty tired of them. I'd spent twenty years getting tired of them. The last day I went seining, FulJerton stumbled onto me late in the afternoon. He stood up on the bank and watched me work- ing in a pool. When I looked up, I had the feeling he'd been watch- ing me for quite a little while. "There's nothing there" he said. The way he said it, he made it sound as if he'd known all along there was nothing there and that I was a fool for looking. But that wasn't the only reason I got sore. Sticking out of his face, in- stead of the usual toothpick, was a stem of grass and he was rolling it around in his lips and chewing it the way he chewed the tooth- picks. "Spit out that grass!" I shouted at him. "You fool, spit it out!" H IS eyes grew startled and he spit out the grass. "It's hard to remember," he mumbled. "You see, it's my first trip out and — " "It could be ycur last one, too," I told him brutally. "Ask Weber sometime, when you have a mo- ment, what happened to the guy who pulled a leaf and chewed it. Absent-minded, sure. Habit, cer- tainly. He was just as dead as if he'd committed suicide." Fullerton stiffened up. "I'll keep it in mind," he said. I stood there, looking up at him, feeling a little sorry that I'd been so tough with him. But I had to be. There were so many absent-minded, well-in- tentioned ways a man could kill himself. "You find anything?" I asked. "I've been watching the crit- ters," he said. "There was some- thing funny that I couldn't quite make out at first . . ." "I can list you a hundred funny things." "That's not what I mean, Sut- ter. Not the patchwork color or the bushes growing out of them. There was something else. I fi- DROP DEAD 17 nally got it figured out. There aren't any young." Fullerton was right, of course. I realized it now, after he had told me. There weren't any calves or whatever you might call them. All we'd seen were adults. And yet that didn't necessarily mean there weren't any calves. It just meant we hadn't seen them. And the same, I knew, applied as well to insects, birds and fish. They all might be on the planet, but we just hadn't managed to find them yet. And then, belatedly, I got it — the inference, the hope, the half- crazy fantasy behind this thing that Fullerton had found, or im- agined he'd found. "You're downright loopy," I said flatly. He stared back at me and his eyes were shining like a kid's at Christmas. He said: "It had to happen sometime, Sutter, somewhere." I climbed up the bank and stood beside him. I looked at the net I still held in my hands and threw it back into the creek and watched it sink. "Be sensible," I warned him. "You have no evidence. Immor- tality wouldn't work that way. It couldn't. That way, it would be nothing but a dead end. Don't mention it to anyone. They'd ride you without mercy all the way back home." DON'T know why I wasted time on him. He stared back at me stubbornly, but still with that awful light of hope and tri- umph on his face. "I'll keep my mouth shut," I told him curtly. "I won't say a word." "Thanks, Sutter," he answered. "I appreciate it a lot." I knew from the way he said it that he could murder me with gusto. We trudged back to camp. The camp was all slicked up. The dissecting mess had been cleared away and the table had been scrubbed so hard that it gleamed. Parsons was cooking supper and singing one of his ob- scene ditties. The other three sat around in their camp chairs and they had broken out some liquor and were human once again. "All buttoned up?" I asked, but Oliver shook his head. They poured a drink for Ful- lerton and he accepted it, a bit ungraciously, but he did take it. That was some improvement on the usual Double Eye. They didn't offer me any. They knew I couldn't drink it. ■ "What have we got?" I asked. "It could be something good," said Oliver. "It's a walking menu. It's an all-purpose animal, for sure. It lays eggs, gives milk, makes honey. It has six different kinds of red meat, two of fowl, 18 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION ' one of fish and a couple of others we can't identify." "Lays eggs," I said. "Gives milk. Then it reproduces." "Certainly," said Weber. "What did you think?" "There aren't any young." Weber grunted. "Could be they have nursery areas. Certain places instinctively set aside in which to rear their young." "Or they might have instinctive birth control," suggested Oliver. i "That would fit in with the per- fectly balanced ecology Kemper talks about." Weber snorted. "Ridiculous!" "Not so ridiculous," Kemper re- torted. "Not half so ridiculous as some other things we found. Not one-tenth as ridiculous as no brain or nervous system. Not any more ridiculous than my bacteria." "Your bacteria!" Weber said. He drank down half a glass of liquor in a single gulp to make his ■ disdain emphatic. "The critters swarm with them," Kemper went on. "You find them everywhere throughout the entire animal. Not just in the bloodstream, not in restricted areas, but in the entire organism. And all of them the same. Nor- mally it takes a hundred different kinds of bacteria to make a me- tabolism work, but here there's only one. And that one, by defini- tion, must be general purpose — it must do all the work that the hundred other species do." He grinned at Weber. "I wouldn't doubt but right there are your brains and nervous systems ■the bacteria doubling in brass for both systems." ARSONS came over from the stove and stood with his fists planted on his hips, a steak fork grasped in one hand and sticking out at a tangent from his body. "If you ask me," he announced, "there ain't no such animal. The critters are all wrong. They can't be made that way." "But they are," said Kemper. "It doesn't make sense! One kind of life. One kind of grass for it to eat. I'll bet that if we could make a census, we'd find the crit- ter population is at exact capac- ity — just so many of them to the acre, figured down precisely to the last mouthful of grass. Just enough for them to eat and no more. Just enough so the grass won't be overgrazed. Or under- grazed, for that matter." "What's wrong with that?" I asked, just to needle him. I thought for a minute he'd take the steak fork to me. "What's wrong with it?" he thundered. "Nature's never static, never standing still. But here it's standing still. Where's the com- petition? Where's the evolution?" "That's not the point," said Kemper quietly. "The fact is that DROP DEAD 1? that's the way it is. The point is why? How did it happen? How was it planned? Why was it planned?" "Nothing's planned," Weber told him sourly. "You know bet- ter than to talk like that." Parsons went back to his cook- ing. Fullerton had wandered off somewhere. Maybe he was dis- couraged from hearing about the eggs and milk. For a time, the four of us just sat. Finally Weber said: "The first night we were here, I came out to relieve Bob at guard and I said to him . . ." He looked at me. "You remem- ber, Bob?" "Sure. You said symbiosis." "And now?" asked Kemper. "I don't know. It simply couldn't happen. But if I did — if it could — this critter would be the most beautifully logical ex- ample of symbiosis you could dream up. Symbiosis carried to its logical conclusion. Like, long ago, all the life-forms said let's quit this feuding, let's get togeth- er, let's cooperate. All the plants and animals and fish and bacteria got together "It's far-fetched, of course, said Kemper. "But, by and large, it's not anything unheard of, merely carried further, that's all. Symbiosis is a recognized way of life and there's nothing- V Parsons let out a bellow for them to come and get it, and I went to my tent and broke out my diet kit and mixed up a mess of goo. It was a relief to eat in private, without the others mak- ing cracks about the stuff I had t to choke down. » FOUND a thin sheaf of work- ing notes on the small wood- en crate I'd set up for a desk. I thumbed through them while I ate. They were fairly -sketchy and sometimes hard to read, being smeared with blood and other gook from the dissecting table. But I was used to that. I worked with notes like that all the blessed time. So I was able to decipher them. The whole picture wasn't there, of course, but there was enough to bear out what they'd told me and a good deal more as well. For examples, the color squares that gave the critters their crazy- quiltish look were separate kinds of meat or fish or fowl or unknown food, whatever it might be. Almost as if each square was the present- day survivor of each ancient sym- biont — if, in fact, there was any basis to this talk of symbiosis. The egg-laying apparatus was described in some biologic detail, but there seemed to be no evi- dence of recent egg production. The same was true of the lacta- tion system. 20 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION There were, the notes said in Oliver's crabbed writing, five kinds of fruit and three kinds of vegetables to be derived from the plants growing from the critters. I shoved the notes to one side and sat back on my chair, gloat- ing just a little. Here was diversified farming with a vengeance! You had meat and dairy herds, fish pond, aviary, poultry yard, orchard and garden rolled into one, all in the body of a single animal that was a com- plete farm in itself! I went through the notes hur- riedly again and found what I was looking for. The food product seemed high in relation to the gross weight pf the animal. Very little would be lost in dressing out. That is the kind of thing an ag economist has to consider. But that isn't all of it, by any means. What if a man couldn't eat the critter? Suppose the critters couldn't be moved off the planet because they died if you took them from their range? I recalled how they'd just walked up and died; that in itself was another headache to be filed for future worry. What if they could only eat the grass that grew on this one planet? And if so, could the grass be grown elsewhere? What kind of tolerance would the critter show to different kinds of cli- mate? What was the rate of re- production? If it was slow, as was indicated, could it be stepped up? What was the rate of growth? I got up and walked out of the tent and stood tor a while, out- side. The little breeze that had - been blowing had died down at sunset and the place was quiet. Quiet because there was nothing but the critters to make any noise and we had yet to hear them make a single sound. The stars blazed overhead and there were so many of them that they lighted up the countryside as if there were a moon. I walked over to where the rest of the men were sitting. "It looks like we'll be here for a while," I said. "Tomorrow we might as well get the ship un- loaded." O ONE answered me, but in the silence I could sense the half-hidden satisfaction and the triumph. At last we'd hit the jackpot! We'd be going home with something that would make those other teams look pallid. We'd be the ones who got the notices and bonuses. Oliver finally broke the silence. "Some of our animals aren't in good shape. I went down this aft- ernoon to have a look at them. A couple of the pigs and several of the rats." He looked at me accusingly. DROP DEAD 21 I flared up at him. "Don't look at me! I'm not their keeper. I just take care of them until you're ready to use them." Kemper butted in to head off an argument. "Before we do any feeding, we'll need another crit- ter." "I'll lay you a bet," said Weber. Kemper didn't take him up. It was just as well he didn't, for a critter came in, right after breakfast, and died with a savoir faire that was positively marvel- ous. They went to work on it im- mediately. Parsons and I started unload- ing the supplies. We put in a busy day. We moved all the food ex- cept the emergency rations we left in the ship. We slung down a refrigerating unit Weber had been yelling for, to keep the critter products fresh. We unloaded a lot of equipment and some silly odds and ends that I knew we'd have no use for, but that some of the others wanted broken out. We put up tents and we lugged and pushed and hauled all day. Late in the afternoon, we had it all stacked up and under canvas and were completely bushed. Kemper went back to his bac- teria. Weber spent hours with the animals. Oliver dug up a bunch of grass and gave the grass the works. Parsons went out on field trips, mumbling and fretting. Of all of us, Parsons had the job that was most infuriating. Or- dinarily the ecology of even the simplest of planets is a compli- cated business and there's a lot of work to do. But here was almost nothing. There was no competi- tion for survival. There was no dog eat dog. There were just crit- ters cropping grass. I started to pull my report to- gether, knowing that it would have to be revised and rewritten again and again. But I was anx- ious to get going. I fairly itched to see the pieces fall together — although I knew from the very start some of them wouldn't fit. They almost never do. Things went well. Too well, it sometimes seemed to me. There were incidents, of course, like when the punkins somehow chewed their way out of their cage and disappeared. Weber was almost beside him- self. "They'll come back," said Kem- per. "With that appetite of theirs, they won't stay away for long." A ND he was right about that ■^*- part of it. The punkins were the hungriest creatures in the Galaxy. You could never feed them enough to satisfy them. And they'd eat anything. It made no difference to them, just so there was a lot of it. And it was that very factor in their metabolism that made them 22 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION invaluable as research animals. The other animals thrived on the critter diet. The carnivorous ones ate the critter-meat and the vegetarians chomped on critter- fruit and critter-vegetables. They all grew sleek and sassy. They seemed in better health than the control animals, which continued their regular diet. Even the pigs and rats that had been sick got well again and as fat and happy as any of the others. Kemper told us, "This critter stuff is more than just a food. It's a medicine. I can see the signs: 'Eat Critter and Keep Well!'" Weber grunted at him. He was never one for joking and I think he was a worried man. A thorough man, he'd found too many things that violated all the tenets he'd accepted as the truth. No brain or nervous system. The ability to die at will. The lingering hint of wholesale symbiosis. And the bacteria. The bacteria, I think, must have seemed to him the worst of all. There was, it now appeared, only one type involved. Kemper had hunted frantically and had discovered no others. Oliver found it in the grass. Parsons found it in the soil and water. The air, strangely enough, seemed to be free of it. But Weber wasn't the only one who worried. Kemper worried, too. He unloaded most of it just before our bedtime, sitting on the edge of his cot and trying to talk the worry out of himself while I worked on my reports. And he'd picked the craziest point imaginable to pin his worry on. tfATOU can ex P lain lt all >" he -*- said, "if you are only will- ing to concede on certain points. You can explain the critters if you're willing to believe in a sym- biotic arrangement carried out on a planetary basis. You can believe in the utter simplicity of the ecol- ogy ^ you're willing to assume that, given space and time enough, anything can happen within the bounds of logic. "You can visualize how the bac- teria might take the place of brains and nervous systems if you're ready to say this is a bac- terial world and not a critter world. And you can even envision the bacteria — all of them, every single one of them — as forming one gigantic linked intelligence. And if you accept that theory, then the voluntary deaths become understandable, because there's no -actual death involved — it's just like you or me trimming off a hangnail. And if this is true, then Fullerton has found immor- tality, although it's not the kind he was looking for and it won't do him or us a single bit of good. DROP DEAD 23 "But the thing that worries me," he went on, his face all knot- ted up with worry, "is the seeming lack of anything resembling a de- fense mechanism. Even assuming that the critters are no more than fronting for a bacterial world, the mechanism should be there as a simple matter of precaution. Ev- ery living thing we know of has some sort of way to defend itself or to escape potential enemies. It either fights or runs and hides to preserve its life." He was right, of course. Not only did the critters have no de- fense, they even saved one the trouble of going out to kill them. "Maybe we are wrong," Kem- per concluded. "Maybe life, after all, is not as valuable as we think it is. Maybe it's not a thing to cling to. Maybe it's not worth fighting for. Maybe the critters, in their dying, are closer to the truth than we." It would go on like that, night after night, with Kemper talking around in circles and never get- ting anywhere. I think most of the time he wasn't talking to me, but talking to himself, trying by the very process of putting it in words to work out some final an- swer. And long after we had turned out the lights and gone to bed, I'd lie on my cot and think about all that Kemper said and I thought in circles, too. I wondered why all the critters that came in and died were in the prime of life. Was the dying a privilege that was ac- corded only to the fit? Or were all the critters in the prime of life? Was there really some cause to believe they might be immortal? I asked a lot of questions, but there weren't any answers. We continued with our work. Weber killed some of his animals and examined them and there were no signs of ill effect from the critter diet. There were traces of critter bacteria in their blood, but no sickness, reaction or antibody formation. Kemper kept on with his bacterial work. Oliver started a whole series of experiments with the grass. Parsons just gave up. The punkins didn't come back and Parsons and Fullerton went out and hunted for them, but without success. 1 WORKED on my report and the pieces fell together better than I had hoped they would. It began to look as though we had the situation well nailed down. We all were feeling pretty good. We could almost taste that bonus. But I think that, in the back of our minds, all of us were wonder- ing if we could get away scot free. I know I had mental fingers crossed. It just didn't seem quite 24 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION possible that something wouldn't happen. And, of course, it did. We were sitting around after supper, with the lantern lighted, when we heard the sound. I real- ized afterward that we had been hearing it for some time before we paid attention to it. It started so soft and so far away that it crept upon us without alarming us. At first, it sounded like a sigh- ing, as if a gentle wind were blow- ing through a little tree, and then it changed into a rumble, but a far-off rumble that had no men- ace in it. I was just getting ready to say something about thunder and wondering if our stretch of weather was about to break when Kemper jumped up and yelled. I don't know what he yelled. Maybe it wasn't a word at all. But the way he yelled brought us to our feet and sent us at a dead run for the safety of the ship. Even before we got there, in the few seconds it took to reach the ladder, the character of the sound had changed and there was no mistaking what it was — the drumming of hoofs heading straight for camp. They were almost on top of us when we reached the ladder and there wasn't time or room for all of use to use it. I was the last in line and I saw I'd never make it and a dozen possible es- cape plans flickered through my mind. But I knew they wouldn't work fast enough. Then I saw the rope, hanging where I'd left it after the unloading job, and I made a jump for it. I'm no rope- climbing expert, but I shinnied up it with plenty of speed. And right behind me came Weber, who was no rope-climber, either, but who was doing rather well. I thought of how lucky it had been that I hadn't found the time to take down the rig and how Weber had ridden me unmerci- fully about not doing it. I wanted to shout down and point it out to him, but I didn't have the breath. We reached the port and tum- bled into it. Below us, the stam- peding critters went grinding through the camp. There seemed to be millions of them. One of the terrifying things about it was how silently they ran. They made no outcry of any kind; all you could hear was the sound of their hoofs pounding on the ground. It seemed almost as if they ran in some blind fury that was too deep for outcry. HEY spread for miles, as far as one could see on the star- lit plains, but the spaceship di- vided them and they flowed to either side of it and then flowed back again, and beyond the space- ship there was a little sector that they never touched. I thought DROP DEAD 25 how we could have been safe staying on the ground and hud- dling in that sector, but that's one of the things a man never can foresee. The stampede lasted for al- most an hour. When it was all over, we came down and sur- veyed the damage. The animals in their cages, lined up between the ship and the camp, were safe. All but one of the sleeping tents were standing. The lantern still burned brightly on the table. But everything else was gone. Our food supply was trampled in the ground. Much of the equipment was lost and wrecked. On either side of the camp, the ground was churned up like a half-plowed field. The whole thing was a mess. It looked as if we were licked. The tent Kemper and I used for sleeping still stood, so our notes were safe. The animals were all right. But that was all we had — the notes and animals. "I need three more weeks," said Weber. "Give me just three weeks to complete the tests." "We haven't got three weeks," I answered. "All our food is gone." "The emergency rations in the ship?" "That's for going home." "We can go a little hungry." He glared at us — at each of us in turn — challenging us to do a little starving. "I can go three weeks," he said, "without any food at all." "We could eat critter," suggest- ed Parsons. "We could take a chance." Weber shook his head. "Not yet. In three weeks, when the tests are finished, then maybe we will know. Maybe we won't need those rations for going home. Maybe we can stock up on crit- ters and eat our heads off all the way to Caph." I looked around at the rest of them, but I knew, before I looked, the answer I would get. "All right," I said. "We'll try it." "It's all right for you," Fuller- ton retorted hastily. "You have your diet kit." Parsons reached out and grabbed him and shook him so hard that he went cross-eyed. "We don't talk like that about those diet kits." Then Parsons let him go. WE SET up double guards, for the stampede had wrecked our warning system, but none of us got much sleep. We were too upset. Personally, I did some worry- ing about why the critters had stampeded. There was nothing on the planet that could scare them. There were no other animals. There was no thunder or light- ning — as a matter of fact, it ap- peared that the planet might have 26 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION no boisterous weather ever. And there seemed to be nothing in the critter makeup, from our obser- vation of them, that would set them off emotionally. But there must be a reason and a purpose, I told myself. And there must be, too, in their drop- ping dead for us. But was the pur- pose intelligence or instinct? That was what bothered me most. It kept me awake all night long. At daybreak, a critter walked in and died for us happily. We went without our breakfast and, when noon came, no one said anything about lunch, so we skipped that, too. Late in the afternoon, I climbed the ladder to get some food for supper. There wasn't any. In- stead, I found five of the fattest punkins you ever laid your eyes on. They had chewed holes through the packing boxes and DROP DEAD 27 the food was cleaned out. The sacks were limp and empty. They'd even managed to get the lid off the coffee can somehow and had eaten every bean. The five of them sat content- edly in a corner, blinking smugly at me. They didn't make a racket, as they usually did. Maybe they knew they were in the wrong or maybe they were just too full. For once, perhaps, they'd gotten all they could eat. I just stood there and looked at them and I knew how they'd gotten on the ship. I blamed my- self, not them. If only I'd found the time to take down the unload- ing rig, they'd never gotten in. But then I remembered how that dangling rope had saved my life and Weber's and I couldn't de- cide whether I'd done right or wrong. I went over to the corner and picked the punkins up. I stuffed three of them in my pockets and carried the other two. I climbed down from the ship and walked up to camp. I put the punkins on the table. "Here they are," I said. "They were in the ship. That's why we couldn't find them. They climbed up the rope." Weber took one look at them. "They look well fed. Did they leave anything?" "Not a scrap. They cleaned us out entirely." The punkins were quite happy. It was apparent they were glad to be back with us again. After all, they'd eaten everything in reach and there was no further reason for their staying in the ship. ARSONS picked up a knife and walked over to the crit- ter that had died that morning. "Tie on your bibs," he said. He carved out big steaks and threw them on the table and then he lit his stove. I retreated to my tent as soon as he started cook- ing, for never in my life have I smelled anything as good as those critter steaks. I broke out the kit and mixed me up some goo and sat there eating it, feeling sorry for myself. Kemper came in after a while and sat down on his cot. "Do you want to hear?" he asked me. "Go ahead," I invited him re- signedly. "It's wonderful. It's got every- thing you've ever eaten backed clear off the table. We had three different kinds of red meat and a slab of fish and something that resembled lobster, only better. And there's one kind of fruit growing out of that bush in the middle of the back . . ." "And tomorrow you drop dead." "I don't think so," Kemper said. 28 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "The animals have been thriving on it There's nothing wrong with them." It seemed that Kemper was right. Between the animals and men, it took a critter a day. The critters didn't seem to mind. They were johnny-on-the-spot. They walked in promptly, one at a time, and keeled over every morning. The way the men and animals ate was positively indecent. Par- sons cooked great platters of dif- ferent kinds of meat and fish and fowl and what-not. He prepared huge bowls of vegetables. He heaped other bowls with fruit. He racked up combs of honey and the men licked the platters clean. They sat around with belts un- loosened and patted their bulging bellies and were disgustingly con- tented. I waited for them to break out in a rash or to start turning green with purple spots or grow scales or something of the sort. But nothing happened. They thrived, just as the animals were thriving. They felt better than they ever had. Then, one morning, Fullerton turned up sick. He lay on his cot flushed with fever. It looked like Centaurian virus, although we'd been inoculated against that. In fact, we'd been inoculated and immunized against almost every- thing. Each time, before we blast- ed off on another survey, they jabbed us full of booster shots. I didn't think much of it. I was fairly well convinced, for a time at least, that all that was wrong with him was overeating. OLIVER, who knew a little about medicine, but not much, got the medicine chest out of the ship and pumped Fullerton full of some new antibiotic that came highly recommended for al- most everything. We went on with our work, ex- pecting he'd be on his feet in a day or two. But he wasn't. If anything, he got worse. Oliver went through the medi- cine chest, reading all the labels carefully, but didn't find anything that seemed to be the proper medication. He read the first-aid booklet. It didn't tell him any- thing except how to set broken legs or apply artificial respiration and simple things like that. Kemper had been doing a lot of worrying, so he had Oliver take a sample of Fullerton's blood and then prepared a slide. When he looked at the blood through the microscope, he found that it swarmed with bacteria from the critters. Oliver took some more blood samples and Kemper pre- pared more slides, just to double- check, and there was no doubt about it. DROP DEAD 29 ' . 1 ' By this time, all of us were standing around the table watch- ing Kemper and waiting for the verdict. I know the same thing must have been in the mind of each of us. It was Oliver who put it into words. "Who is next?" he asked. Parsons stepped up and Oliver took the sample. We waited anxiously. Finally Kemper straightened "You have them, too," he said to Parsons. "Not as high a count as Fullerton." Man after man stepped up. All of us had the bacteria, but in my case the count was low. "It's the critter," Parsons said. "Bob hasn't been eating any." "But cooking kills—" Oliver started to say. "You can't be sure. These bac- teria would have to be highly adaptable. They do the work of thousands of other micro-organ- isms. They're a sort of handy- man, a jack-of -all-trades. They can acclimatize. They can meet new situations. They haven't weakened the strain by becoming specialized." "Besides," said Parsons, "we don't cook all of it. We don't cook the fruit and most of you guys raise hell if a steak is more than singed." "What I can't figure out is why it should be Fullerton," Weber said. "Why should his count be higher? He started on the critter the same time as the rest of us." I remembered that day down by the creek. "He got a head start on the rest of you," I explained. "He ran out of toothpicks and took to chewing grass stems. I caught him at it." 1KNOW it wasn't very com- forting. It meant that in an- other week or two, all of them would have as high a count as Fullerton. But there was no sense not telling them. It would have been criminal not to. There was no place for wishful thinking in a situation like that. "We can't stop eating critter," said Weber. "It's all the food we have. There's nothing we can do." "I have a hunch," Kemper re- plied, "it's too late anyhow." "If we started home right now," I said, "there's my diet kit . . ." They didn't let me finish mak- ing my offer. They slapped me on the back and pounded one an- other and laughed like mad. It wasn't that funny. They just needed something they could laugh at. "It wouldn't do any good," said Kemper. "We've already had it. Anyhow, your diet kit wouldn't last us all the way back home." "We could have a try at it," I argued. "It may be just a transitory 30 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION thing," Parsons said. "Just a bit of fever. A little upset from a change of diet." We all hoped that, of course. But Fullerton got no better. Weber took blood samples of the animals and they had a bac- terial count almost as high as Fullerton's — much higher than when he'd taken it before. Weber blamed himself. "I should have kept closer check. I should have taken tests every day » r> or so. "What difference would it have made?" demanded Parsons. "Even if you had, even if you'd found a lot of bacteria in the blood, we'd still have eaten critter. There was no other choice." "Maybe it's not the bacteria," said Oliver. "We may be jumping at conclusions. It may be some- thing else that Fullerton picked up Weber brightened up a bit. "That's right. The animals still seem to be okay." They were bright and chipper, in the best of health. We waited. Fullerton got nei- ther worse nor better. Then, one night, he disap- peared. Oliver, who had been sitting with him, had dozed off for a mo- ment. Parsons, on guard, had heard nothing. We hunted for him for three full days. He couldn't have gone far, we figured. He had wandered off in a delirium and he didn't have the strength to cover any distance. But we didn't find him. WE DID find one queer thing, however. It was a ball of some strange substance, white and fresh-appearing. It was about four feet in diameter. It lay at the bottom of a little gully, hid- den out of sight, as if someone or something might have brought it there and hidden it away. We did some cautious poking at it and we rolled it back and forth a little and wondered what it was, but we were hunting Ful- lerton and we didn't have the time to do much investigating. Later on, we agreed, we would come back and get it and find out what it was. ' Then the animals came down with the fever, one after another — all except the controls, which had been eating regular food un- til the stampede had destroyed the supply. After that, of course, all of them ate critter. By the end of two days, most of the animals were down. Weber worked with them, scarcely taking time to rest. We all helped as best we could. Blood samples showed a great- er concentration of bacteria. Weber started a dissection, but never finished it. Once he got the DROP DEAD 31 animal open, he took a quick look at it and scraped the whole thing off the table into a pail. I saw him, but I don't think any of the others did. We were pretty busy. I asked him about it later in the day, when we were alone for a moment. He briskly brushed me off. I went to bed early that night because I had the second guard. It seemed I had no more than shut my eyes when I was brought upright by a racket that raised goose pimples on every inch of me. I tumbled out of bed and scrabbled around to find my shoes and get them on. By that time, Kemper had dashed out of the tent. There was trouble with the ani- mals. They were fighting to break out, chewing the bars of their cages and throwing themselves against them in a blind and terri- ble frenzy. And all the time they were squealing and screaming. To listen to them set your teeth on edge. Weber dashed around with a hypodermic. After what seemed hours, we had them full of seda- tive. A few of them broke loose and got away, but the rest were sleeping peacefully. I got a gun and took over guard duty while the other men went back to bed. 1 STAYED down near the cages, walking back and forth because I was too tense to do much sitting down. It seemed to me that between the animals' frenzy to escape and Fullerton's disappearance, there was a paral- lel that was too similar for com- fort. I tried to review all that had happened on the planet and I got bogged down time after time as I tried to make the picture dove- tail. The trail of thought I fol- lowed kept turning back to Kem- per's worry about the critters' lack of a defense mechanism. Maybe, I told myself, they had a defense mechanism, after all the slickest, smoothest, trickiest one Man ever had encountered. * As soon as the camp awoke, I went to our tent to stretch out for a moment, perhaps to catch a catnap. Worn out, I slept for hours. Kemper woke me. "Get up, Bob!" he said. "For the love of God, get up!" It was late afternoon and the last rays of the sun were stream- ing through the tent flap. Kem- per's face was haggard. It was as if he'd suddenly grown old since I'd seen him less than twelve hours before. "They're encysting," he gasped. "They're turning into cocoons or chrysalises or . . ." I sat up quickly. "That one we 32 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION found out there in the field!" He nodded. "Fullerton?" I asked. "We'll go out and see, all five <>l us, leaving the camp and ani- mals alone." We had some trouble finding 1 1 because the land was so flat and featureless that there were DO landmarks. But finally we located it, just ns dusk was setting in. The ball had split in two not in a clean break, in a jagged one. It looked like an egg after ti chicken has been hatched. look at one another, knowing that the time was past for all dissem- bling, that there was no use of glossing over or denying what we'd seen in the dim light in the gully. "Bob is the only one who has a chance," Kemper finally said, speaking more concisely than seemed possible. "I think he should leave right now. Someone must get back to Caph. Someone has to tell them." He looked across the circle of lantern light at me. "Well," he said sharply, "get going! What's the matter with you?" "You were right," I said, not much more than whispering. "Re- member how you wondered about a defense mechanism?" "They have it," Weber agreed. "The best you can find. There's no beating them. They don't fight you. They absorb you. They make you into them. No wonder there are just the critters here. No won- der the planet's ecology is simple. They have you pegged and meas- ured from the instant you set foot on the planet. Take one drink of water. Chew a single grass stem. Take one bite of crit- ter. Do any one of these things and they have you cold." Oliver came out of the dark OMEONE, I think it was OH- and walked across- the lantern- ver, got the lantern lighted. lighted circle. He stopped in front We stood uneasily, unable to of me. And the halves lay there in the Withering darkness, in the silence underneath the sudden glitter of llir stars — a last farewell and a now beginning and a terrible alien fact. I tried to say something, but my brain was so numb that I was not entirely sure just what I should say. Anyhow, the words 1 1 ire I in the dryness of my mouth •nd the thickness of my tongue before I could get them out. Kor it was not only the two halves of the cocoon — it was Mm- marks within that hollow, the Impression of what had been there, blurred and distorted by the marks of what it had become. We Med back to camp. I' hop dead ' 33 ■ 34 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "Here are your diet kit and notes," he said. "But I can't run out on you!" "Forget us!" Parsons barked at me. "We aren't human any more. In a few more days . . ." He grabbed the lantern and strode down the cages and held the lantern high, so that we could "Look," he said. There were no animals. There were just the cocoons and the lit- tle critters and the cocoons that had split in half. I saw Kemper looking at me and there was, of all things, com- passion on his face. "You don't want to stay," he told me. "If you do, in a day or two, a critter will come in and drop dead for you. And you'll go crazy all the way back home wondering which one of us it was. » TJE TURNED away then. ■*"■- They all turned away from me and suddenly it seemed I was all alone. Weber had found an axe some- where and he started walking down the row of cages, knocking off the bars to let the little crit- ters out. I walked slowly over to the ship and stood at the foot of the ladder, holding the notes and the diet kit tight against my chest. When I got there, I turned around and looked back at them and it seemed I couldn't leave them. I thought of all we'd been through together and when I tried to think of specific things, the only thing I could think about was how they always kidded me about the diet kit. And I thought of the times I had to leave and go off some- where and eat alone so that I couldn't smell the food. I thought of almost ten years of eating that damn goo and that I could never eat like a normal human because of my ulcerated stomach. Maybe they were the lucky ones, I told myself. If a man got turned into a critter, he'd prob- ably come out with a whole stom- ach and never have to worry about how much or what he ate. The critters never ate anything except the grass, but maybe, I thought, that grass tasted just as good to them as a steak or a pumpkin pie would taste to me. So I stood there for a while and I thought about it. Then I took the diet kit and flung it out into the darkness as far as I could throw it and I dropped the notes to the ground. I walked back into the camp and the first man I saw was Par- sons. "What have you got for sup- per?" I asked him. CLIFFORD D. SIMAK DROP DEAD 35 I want the Galaxy to know • • • J did it, nobody else! And what was my reward? Just to get . . . By LLOYD BIGGLE, JR. T ALL began ten years ago, when I was a sub-clerk in the Special Problems Section on information concerning musical culture in its sector. "Let's see," I said. "There are Base VII. The Chief walked in the Golarifths on Willac. They rub their tentacles together dur- ing mating season. Humans can't one hot morning (all mornings are hot on Base VII) and tossed a letter at me. "Here's a special problem to end all special problems," he said. It was the expensively em- bossed stationery of the Galactic Commission, with an added fancy ornament that the Committee on Intercultural Relations had adopted. The Committee was re- questing of Base VII all available hear it, but it's said to produce some pretty lively music. It that what they had in mind?" "I wouldn't know," said the Chief. "And the Arocambi on Mandus. Their noises faintly resemble the backfire of a commuter plane. How would that do?" "It's your problem," he said, Illustrated by WEISS 36 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION and he walked away laughing. As a problem, it didn't amount to much. I'd had some really tough ones to handle. There was the time the Gistobs from Vernith were sending a trade commission to Earth. Base VII was requested to forward blueprints of a typical Gistob dwelling so a model com- munity could be built for them to use. As if any idiot didn't know that no self-respecting Gis- tob would ever hang his hat any- where but in a nice, creamy mud- hole. The thing was installed in the capital city of Lamruth and, ever since, the natives have gathered from miles around once a week to hear the thing cut loose. And then there was the prob- lem of the natives on Emruck. MRUCK developed into quite a tourist attraction because of its miniature active volcanoes and its moving rock formations. But the natives are humans and they positively refused to wear clothing. The Galactic Commis- Then there was the time the sion was highly embarrassed by Hollywood millionaires decided the situation and Special Prob- to double their fortunes by palm- ing off their three-hundred-year- old films to the outlying planets. Some kind of primitive war pic- ture was shown on Lamruth and the natives were enthralled. They didn't understand the picture, but they were captivated by the air raid sirens and they decided they wanted one. They bombarded Base VII with demands and threats until the thing was tossed into the lap of Special Problems. I got tired of the whole busi- ness after a year or so and I told Engineering to make them one. Engineering went overboard on the project, as Engineering usu- ally does. They delivered an amazing noisemaker that not only had a siren, but other gadgets that chirped and squeaked and honked and hissed. lems was put to work on it. It took some doing, but eventually we got the natives dressed. The Galactic Commission wasn't happy about that, either. As soon as the natives started wearing clothing, the tourist trade prac- tically dropped to zero. And there was the time — but all this doesn't have anything to do with my invention. The request for information on musical culture didn't faze me. In fact, I had a form letter for just such emergencies and I put it to work. "The musical culture of this sector," I wrote, "is extremely complex and virtually impossible to describe. No data has been accumulated because no one at- tached to Base VII has the neces- sary specialized knowledge and GYPPED 37 38 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION equipment for such a project." I sent the letter off and forgot about it. THE HIMARD supply ship was leaving that evening. I put the Professor and his equip- ment on board. He went quietly, Chief walked in with a shriveled, if not eagerly, because I had Some ten months later, the bewiskered specimen I certainly would have taken for a Nincolm if he hadn't been wearing clothing. "This," said the Chief, "is Pro- fessor Wolfstammer." "Professor Otto Wolfstammer," the Professor said. "The Professor is a musicolo- gist," said the Chief. "A comparative musicologist," the Professor said. "He has been sent out by the Galactic Commission to study music in this sector," said the Chief. "To study musical culture in this sector," the Professor said. "Do you know what a compara- tive musicologist is?" asked the Chief. I'd had a hard morning and my reflexes were on the slow side. "No," I confessed. "The Professor will be glad to tell you," the Chief said, and he walked away laughing. The Professor was more than glad to tell me. He dragged in a few crates of apparatus and lec- tured to me for two hours. When he had finished, I still didn't know what a comparative musi- cologist might be, but I had a very good idea about what should be done with the Professor. given him a stirring description of the unusual vocal music to be found among the natives there. I want it understood that there was neither malice nor ignorance behind my sending him to Him- ard. Of course I knew that the natives on Himard were tone deaf. ■ I thought that the Professor would discover that for himself in something under twenty-four hours. But even if he did, it would be a month before he could get back to Base VII and I needed that month to get over his lecture on comparative musicology. I overrated the Professor. He was gone for two months, and when he came back, he was a hospital case. He never did find out that the natives were tone deaf. But he bothered them so persistently and was so deter- mined to make them sing into his recording machine that they began to think he was ridiculing their musical inadequacy. People can be sensitive about a deficiency when an Earthling in long whiskers keeps making an issue of it. They nearly killed the Professor. I thought it might cost me my GYPPED 39 job, but he never filed a com- plaint. He still doesn't know those natives were tone deaf. He thought they were just unusually belli- gerent. He came to see me the day he got out of the hospital. "I'm very sorry to bother you again," he apologized. "Don't mention it," I said. "How did you enjoy the music on Him- ard?" "Wonderful! Really, it was marvelous. Most unusual, too. But I'm afraid it is not exactly suit- able for my purposes. I wonder if you would suggest — " "Another planet?" "Yes, if you would be so kind. If possible, one where the inhabi- tants are a bit more peaceful." I looked at the work piled on my desk and thought about the time it would take to go through the files looking for accidental references to music. I didn't even know that there were any. I couldn't recall ever having seen a single one. Then I had an inspiration. I remembered the siren I'd had built for the natives of Lamruth. it. "This might interest you," I said. "On Lamruth, there is an open-air concert once a week. The music is produced by some mysterious instruments which are carefully guarded. The concerts are so popular that natives walk miles to hear them." HP HE Professor's eyes sparkled. ■■• It may have been my ima- gination, but I think he drooled a little, too. > "Amazing," he said. "Such a level of musical development on these outlying planets has never been suspected." "You'll find the music unique," I promised him. "But I'll warn you about one thing — don't at- tempt to see the musical instru- ments or ask questions about them. The natives might react violently." "I shall proceed cautiously," he said. He still wore some bandages from his Himard adventure. A week later, the Professor left for Lamruth. I never saw him again, but I heard some pretty funny reports about what he did there. He was astonished by the music of Lamruth. He observed, listened and recorded. He analyzed and synthesized. Then he returned to Earth and wrote a book, and the Galactic Commission, with its usual disregard for the value of the taxpayers' money, published I've never seen the book. Few people have, but I understand that it contains several hundred pages of fine print, many sheets of music, a long series of mathe- matical calculations concerning the Lamruth musical system, and photographs of the enraptured 40 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION natives listening to my synthetic free electrical power conveniently air raid siren. It winds up with processed from their own noise, an essay on the sociological im- plications of music on Lamruth. What happened next is too fantastic to believe, but I'll re- mind you that these events are documented in the Galactic Com- mission Scientific Studies, Series 9847, Volume 432. A librarian in an obscure library on Mars noticed the pages of calculations in the Professor's book and classified the book as mathematics. It collected dust in that section of the library for two years. Then a passing mathe- matician accidently knocked it off the shelf. He picked it up to see what had hit him and noticed those same mathematical calcula- '< t * tions. He took the book home and studied it and wrote a paper on a new mathematical basis for musical sounds. The paper was read by a scien- tist on Earth, who used it as the point of departure for a theore- tical study in the latent energy of sound waves. An engineer saw this study and published a specu- lation on the amount of unhar- nessed energy released hourly in the noise of the average large city. Other scientists and engi- neers became interested and even- tually they evolved the now fa- mous Fottengil Process, by which all major cities of Earth have GYPPED IT SOUNDS fantastic, but as I told you, it's all documented. The Galactic Commission un- covered this strange series of events in a special investigation into the sources of the Fottengil Process. Lavish rewards were made to all who had contributed, including the librarian who mis- classified the Professor s book. The Professor was given a generous pension for life, in spite of the fact that other musicolo- gists had proven his mathemati- cal calculations to be completely in error. Even the Chief was re- warded for the cooperation ex- tended to the Professor by his department. He was transferred back to Earth and given a soft job with double the salary. The one who started the entire development — namely myself — was all but forgotten. It was I who had that siren built in the first place. It was I who sent the Professor to Lamruth. And I'm now a sub-clerk in the Special Problems Section on Base XVI. It's true that there is a sign on my desk that says "Cultural Adviser." It is also true that I don't have much work to do, be- cause not many people come here after cultural advice — only two 41 this year, so far. The last one was an art expert. I told him I'd heard of three-dimensional paintings on Base XVI, with no one for com- pany but haughty department heads and a lot of moronic sub- Calmus and got rid of him within clerks, and the climate is terrible. twenty-four hours. He may not be back, because the natives on Calmus have no eyesight and they tend to be sensitive about that. My job is easy and the govern- ment service provides regular pay credits. But I'm stuck here on I wouldn't have you think I'm bitter about it, but I want to set the record straight. I ask you, is that any way to reward the person responsible for the Fottengil Process? LLOYD BIGGLE, JR. F *■•••• EC The big news next month is the return of William Tenn, bringing with him, very much alive and fighting, TIME IN ADVANCE — and if you have any illusion that you will relax while reading this novelet, frown a bit over this situation: By using the installment plan, Crandall endured the worst that the Galaxy had to offer. Now it was Earth's turn to sweat! Take our word for it — you've never encountered an installment plan like the one Tenn has created — nor such menace as these murderously tough payments produce offer they are finished! Opening a new planet? Then read Robert Sheckley's novelet EARLY MODEL and take Bentley's advice — invulnerability is a great thing, but you practically need omniscience to make sure you don't overdo omnipo- tence! ■ Remember that last month's Forecast declared that Sturgeon is back again in full production? To round out a muscular trio of novelists, he offers THE CLAUSTROPHILE — and anybody trying to give a brief description of the story without blunting its point is in for a struggle something like this: Every once in too great a while, along comes a yarn that takes a good, hard-headed, practical fact — and shows that the fact is nothing but poor, pudding-headed, completely impractical nonsense. That is exactly what Sturgeon has done here . . . and its effect could revolutionize existing theory by turning it clear around . . . and plumping it down squarely on its feet! 42 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION <) information By WILLY LEY WELCOME TO REALITY, C-TI Aug. Sept. Oct. / Nov. * Dae. 1 x Jan. 1956 Fab. 1956 March 1956 TOTAl GALAXY Publishing Corp. 421 Hudson Street • New York 14, N. Y. Enclose check, cosh or money order. We pay postage Name Address $ City State Give this robotic therapist a condition to cure and it did— always— even if it had to convert itself into a Typhoid Mary to do so! Illustrated by CAVAT 68 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION Medicine By FINN O'DONNEVAN BAD MEDICINE ON MAY 2, 2103, Elwood Caswell walked rapidly down Broadway with a loaded revolver hidden in his coat pocket. He didn't want to use the weapon, but feared he might any- how. This was a justifiable as- sumption, for Caswell was a homi- cidal maniac. It was a gentle, misty spring day and the air held the smell of rain and blossoming dogwood. Caswell gripped the revolver in his sweaty right hand and tried to think of a single valid reason why he should not kill a man named Magnessen, who, the other day, had commented on how well Caswell looked. What business was it of Mag- nesseris how he looked? Damned busybodies, always spoiling things for everybody. . . 69 Caswell was a choleric little man with fierce red eyes, bulldog jowls and ginger-red hair. He was the sort you would expect to find perched on a detergent box, orat- ing to a crowd of lunching busi- nessmen and amused students, shouting, "Mars for the Martians, Venus for the Venusians!" But in truth, Caswell was unin- terested in the deplorable social conditions of extraterrestrials. He was a jetbus conductor for the New York Rapid Transit Corpor- ation. He minded his own busi- ness. And he was quite mad. Fortunately, he knew this at least part of the time, with at least half of his mind. PERSPIRING FREELY, Cas- well continued down Broad- way toward the 43rd Street branch of Home Therapy Appli- ances, Inc. His friend Magnessen would be finishing work soon, re- turning to his little apartment less than a block from Caswell's. How easy it would be, how pleasant, ■ to saunter in, exchange a few words and ... No! Caswell took a deep gulp of air and reminded himself that he didn't really want to kill any- one. It was not right to kill peo- ple. The authorities would lock him up, his friends wouldn't un- derstand, his mother would never have approved. But these arguments seemed pallid, over-intellectual and en- tirely without force. The simple fact remained — he wanted to kill Magnessen. Could so strong a desire be wrong? Or even unhealthy? Yes, it could! With an agonized groan, Caswell sprinted the last few steps into the Home Therapy Appliances Store. Just being within such a place gave him an immediate sense of relief. The lighting was discreet, the draperies were neutral, the displays of glittering therapy ma- chines were neither too bland nor obstreperous. It was the kind of place where a man could happily lie down on the carpet in the shadow of the therapy machines, secure in the knowledge that help for any sort of trouble was at hand. A clerk with fair hair and a long, supercilious nose glided up softly, but not too softly, and mur- mured, "May one help?" "Therapy!" said Caswell. "Of course, sir," the clerk an- swered, smoothing his lapels and smiling winningly. "That is what we are here for." He gave Caswell a searching look, performed an in- stant mental diagnosis, and tap- ped a gleaming white-and-copper machine. "Now this," the clerk said, "is the new Alcoholic Reliever, built by IBM and advertised in the 70 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION leading magazines. A handsome piece of furniture, I think you will agree, and not out of place in any home. It opens into a tele- vision set." With a flick of his narrow wrist, the clerk opened the Alcoholic Reliever, revealing a 52-inch screen. "I need — " Caswell began. "Therapy," the clerk finished for him. "Of course. I just wanted to point out that this model need never cause embarrassment for yourself, your friends or loved ones. Notice, if you will, the re- cessed dial which controls the de- sired degree of drinking. See? If you do not wish total abstinence, you can set it to heavy, moderate, social or light, That is a new fea- ture, unique in mechanotherapy." 64T AM not a alcoholic," Caswell •*• said, with considerable dig- nity. "The New York Rapid Transit Corporation does not hire alcoholics." "Oh," said the clerk, glancing distrustfully at Caswell's blood- shot eyes. "You seem a little nerv- ous. Perhaps the portable Bendix Anxiety Reducer- "Anxiety's not my ticket, either. What have you got for homicidal mania?" The clerk pursed his lips. "Schizophrenic or manic-depres- sive origins?" "I don't know," Caswell admit- n ted, somewhat taken aback. "It really doesn't matter," the clerk told him. "Just a private theory of my own. From my ex- perience in the store, redheads and blonds are prone to schizo- phrenia, while brunettes incline toward the manic-depressive." "That's interesting. Have you worked here long?" "A week. Now then, here is just what you need, sir." He put his hand affectionately on a squat black machine with chrome trim. "What's that?" "That, sir, is the Rex Regener- ator, built by General Motors. Isn't it handsome? It can go with any decor and opens up into a well-stocked bar. Your friends, family, loved ones need never know — " "Will it cure a homicidal urge?" Caswell asked. "A strong one?" "Absolutely. Don't confuse this with the little ten amp neurosis models. This is a hefty, heavy- duty, twenty-five amp machine for a really deep-rooted major condition." "That's what I've got," said Caswell, with pardonable pride. "This baby'll jolt it out of you. Big, heavy-duty thrust bearings! Oversize heat absorbers! Com- pletely insulated! Sensitivity range of over- "I'll take it," Caswell said. "Right now. I'll pay cash." » BAD MEDICINE 71 "Fine! I'll just telephone Stor- age and — " "This one'll do," Caswell said, pulling out his billfold. "I'm in a hurry to use it. I want to kill my friend Magnessen, you know." ^HE CLERK clucked sympa- thetically. "You wouldn't want to do that. . . Plus five per cent sales tax. Thank you, sir. Full instructions are inside." Caswell thanked him, lifted the Regenerator in both arms and hurried out. After figuring his commission, the clerk smiled to himself and lighted a cigarette. His enjoyment was spoiled when the manager, a large man impressively equip- ped with pince-nez, marched out of his office. "Haskins," the manager said, "I thought I asked you to rid your- self of that filthy habit." "Yes, Mr. Follansby, sorry, sir," Haskins apologized, snubbing out the cigarette, "I'll use the display Denicotinizer at once. Made rath- er a good sale, Mr. Follansby. One of the big Rex Regenerators." "Really?" said the manager, impressed. "It isn't often w< wait a minute! You didn't sell the floor model, did you?" "Why- why, I'm afraid I did, Mr. Follansby. The customer was in such a terrible hurry. Was there prominent white forehead in both hands, as though he wished to rip it off. "Haskins, I told you. I must have told you! That display Re- generator was a Martian model. For giving mechanotherapy to Martians/ 9 "Oh," Haskins said. He thought for a moment. "Oh." Mr. Follansby stared at his clerk in grim silence. "But does it really matter?" Haskins asked quickly. "Surely the machine won't discriminate. I should think it would treat a homicidal tendency even if the patient were not a Martian." "The Martian race has never had the slightest tendency toward homicide. A Martian Regenerator doesn't even possess the concept. Of course the Regenerator will treat him. It has to. But what will it treat?" "Oh, said Haskins. "That poor devil must be stop- ped before — you say he was homicidal? I don't know what will happen! Quick, what is his ad- dress?" "Well, Mr. Follansby, he was in » any reason Mr. Follansby gripped his such a terrible hurry — " The manager gave him a long, unbelieving look. "Get the police! Call the General Motors Security Division! Find him!" Haskins raced for the door. "Wait!" yelled the manager, struggling into a raincoat. "I'm coming, too!" 72 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION T^LWOOD CASWELL return- •*-^ ed to his apartment by taxi- copter. He lugged the Regenera- tor into his living room, put it down near the couch and studied it thoughtfully. "That clerk was right," he said after a while. "It does go with the ?> room. Esthetically, the Regenerator was a success. Caswell admired it for a few more moments, then went into the kitchen and fixed himself a chicken sandwich. He ate slowly, staring fixedly at a point just above and to the left of his kitchen clock. Damn you, Magnessen! Dirty no-good lying shifty-eyed enemy of all that's decent and clean in the world. . . Taking the revolver from his pocket, he laid it on the table. With a stiffened forefinger, he poked it into different positions. It was time to begin therapy. Except that. . . Caswell realized worriedly that he didn't want to lose the desire to kill Magnessen. What would become of him if he lost that urge? His life would lose all pur- pose, all coherence, all flavor and zest. It would be quite dull, really. Moreover, he had a great and genuine grievance against Mag- nessen, one he didn't like to think about. Irene! His poor sister, debauched by the subtle and insidious Magnes- sen, ruined by him and cast aside. What better reason could a man have to take his revolver and. . . Caswell finally remembered that he did not have a sister. Now was really the time to be- gin therapy. He went into the living room and found the operating instruc- tions tucked into a ventilation louver of the machine. He opened them and read: To Operate All Rex Model Regenerators: 1. Place the Regenerator near a comfortable couch. (A comfort- able couch can be purchased as an additional accessory from any General Motors dealer.) 2. Plug in the machine. 3. Affix the adjustable contact band to the forehead. And that's all! Your Regenera- tor will do the rest! There will be no language bar or dialect problem, since the Regenerator communicates by Direct Sense Contact (Patent Pending). All you must do is cooperate. Try not to feel any embarrass- ment or shame. Everyone has problems and many are worse than yours! Your Regenerator has no interest in your morals or ethical standards, so don't feel it is 'judging' you. It desires only to aid you in becoming well and happy. As soon as it has collected and BAD MEDICINE 73 processed enough data, your Re- generator will begin treatment. You make the sessions as short or as long as you like. You are the boss! And of course you can end a session at any time. That's all there is to it! Simple, isn't it? Now plug in your Gen- eral Motors Regenerator and GET SANE! UiyrOTHING HARD about ■*■ ^ that," Cassidy said to him- self. He pushed the Regenerator closer to the couch and plugged it in. He lifted the headband, started to slip it on, stopped. "I feel so silly!" he giggled. Abruptly he closed his mouth and stared pugnaciously at the black-and-chrome machine. "So you think you can make me sane, huh?" The Regenerator didn't an- swer. "Oh, well, go ahead and try." He slipped the headband over his forehead, crossed his arms on his chest and leaned back. Nothing happened. Caswell set- tled himself more comfortably on the couch. He scratched his shoulder and put the headband at a more comfortable angle. Still nothing. His thoughts began to wander. Magnessen! You noisy, over- bearing oaf, you disgusting — "Good afternoon," a voice mur- mured in his head. "I am your mechanotherapist." *** AfTMoft 74 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION Caswell twitched guiltily. "Hel- lo. I was just— you know, just sort of— "Of course," the machine said soothingly. "Don't we all? I am now scanning the material in your preconscious, with the intent of synthesis, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. I "Yes?" "Just one moment." The Re- generator was silent for several minutes. Then, hesitantly, it sai "This is beyond doubt a most unusual case." "Really?" Cassidy asked, pleased. "Yes. The coefficients seem — I'm not sure. . ." The machine's robotic voice grew feeble. The "> ' BAD ME NE 7$ pilot light began to flicker and fade. "Hey, what's the matter?" "Confusion," said the machine. "Of course," it went on in a strong- er voice, "the unusual nature of the symptoms need not prove en- tirely baffling to a competent therapeutic machine. A symptom, no matter how bizarre, is no more than a signpost, an indication of inner difficulty. And all symptoms can be related to the broad main- stream of proven theory. Since the theory is effective, the symp- toms must relate. We will pro- ceed on that assumption." "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" asked Caswell, feeling light-headed. HPHE MACHINE snapped back, -*- its pilot light blazing, "Me- chanotherapy today is an exact science and admits of no signifi- cant errors. We will proceed with a word-association test." "Fire away," said Caswell. "House?" "Home." "Dog?" "Cat." "Fleefl?" Caswell hesitated, trying to fig- ure out the word. It sounded vaguely Martian, but it might be Venusian or even — • "Fleefl?" the Regenerator re- peated. "Marfoosh," Caswell replied, making up the word on the spur of the moment. "Loud?" "Sweet." "Green?" • "Mother." "Thanagoyes?" "Patamathonga/ "Arrides?" "Nexothesmodrastica." "Chtheesnohelgnopteces? " "Rigamaroo latasentricpropa- tria!" Caswell shot back. It was a collection of sounds he was par- ticularly proud of. The average man would not have been able to pronounce them. "Hmm," said the Regenerator. "The pattern fits. It always does." "What pattern?' "You have," the machine in- formed him, "a classic case of feem desire, complicated by strong dwarkish intentions." "I do? I thought I was homici- dal." "That term has no referent," the machine said severely. "There- fore I must reject it as nonsense syllabification. Now consider these points: The feem desire is perfectly normal. Never forget that. But it is usually replaced at an early age by the hovendish re- vulsion. Individuals lacking in this basic environmental response — " "I'm not absolutely sure I know what you're talking about," Cas- well confessed. "Please, sir! We must establish 76 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION one thing at once. You are the pa- tient. J am the mechanotherapist. You have brought your troubles to me for treatment. But you can- not expect help unless you co- operate." "All right," Caswell said. "Ill try." Up to now, he had been bathed in a warm glow of superiority. Everything the machine said had seemed mildly humorous. As a matter of fact, he had felt capable of pointing out a few things wrong with the mechanotherapist. Now that sense of well-being evaporated, as it always did, and Caswell was alone, terribly alone and lost, a creature of his com- pulsions, in search of a little peace and contentment He would undergo anything to find them. Sternly he reminded himself that he had no right to comment on the mechanothera- pist. These machines knew what they were doing and had been do- ing it for a long time. He would cooperate, no matter how out- landish the treatment seemed from his layman's viewpoint. But it was obvious, Caswell thought, settling' himself grimly on the couch, that mechanothera- py was going to be far more diffi- cult than he had imagined. npHE SEARCH for the missing -■- customer had been brief and useless. He was nowhere to be found on the teeming New York streets and no one could remem- ber seeing a red-haired, red-eyed little man lugging a black thera- peutic machine. It was all too common a sight. In answer to an urgent tele- phone call, the police came im- mediately, four of them, led by a harassed young lieutenant of detectives named Smith. Smith just had time to ask, "Say, why don't you people put tags on things?" when there was an interruption. A man pushed his way past the policeman at the door. He was tall and gnarled and ugly, and his eyes were deep-set and bleakly blue. His clothes, unpressed and uncaring, hung on him like cor- rugated iron. "What do you want?" Lieuten- ant Smith asked. The ugly man flipped back his lapel, showing a small silver badge beneath. "I'm John Rath, General Motors Security Divi- » sion. "Oh. . . Sorry, sir," Lieutenant Smith said, saluting. "I didn't think you people would move in so fast." Rath made a noncommittal noise. "Have you checked for prints, Lieutenant? The customer might have touched some other therapy machine." "I'll get right on it, sir," Smith said. It wasn't often that one of BAD MEDICINE 77 the operatives from GM, GE or IBM came down to take a per- sonal hand. If a local cop showed he was really clicking, there just might be the possibility of an In- dustrial Transfer. • • Rath turned to Follansby and Hoskins, and transfixed them with a gaze as piercing and as imper- sonal as a radar beam. "Let's have the full story," he said, taking a notebook and pencil from a shape- less pocket. He listened to the tale in omi- nous silence. Finally he closed his notebook, thrust it back into his pocket and said, "The therapeutic machines are a sacred trust. To give a customer the wrong ma- chine is a betrayal of that trust, a violation of the Public Interest, and a defamation of the Com- pany's good reputation." The manager nodded in agree- ment, glaring at his unhappy clerk. "A Martian model," Rath con- tinued, "should never have been on the floor in the first place." "I can explain that," Follansby said hastily. "We needed a dem- onstrator model and I wrote to the Company, telling them "This might," Rath broke inexorably, "be considered a case of gross criminal negligence." OTH THE manager and the clerk exchanged horrified looks. They were thinking of the in General Motors Reformatory out- side of Detroit, where Company offenders passed their days in sul- len silence, monotonously draw- ing micro-circuits for pocket tele- vision sets. "However, that is out of my jur- isdiction," Rath said. He turned his baleful gaze full upon Haskins. "You are certain that the cus- tomer never mentioned h i s name?" "No, sir. I mean yes, I'm sure," Haskins replied rattledly. "Did he mention any names at all?" Haskins plunged his face into his hands. He looked up and said eagerly, "Yes! He wanted to kill someone! A friend of his!" "Who?" Rath asked, with terri- ble patience. "The friend's name was — let me think — Magneton! That was it! Magneton! Or was it Morri- son? Oh, dear. . ." Mr. Rath's iron face registered a rather corrugated disgust. Peo- ple were useless as witnesses. Worse than useless, since they were frequently misleading. For reliability, give him a robot every time. "Didn't he mention anything significant?" "Let me think!" Haskins said, his face twisting into a fit of con- centration. Rath waited. Mr. Follansby cleared his 78 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION throat. "I was just thinking, Mr. Rath. About that Martian ma- chine. It won't treat a Terran homicidal case as homicidal, will it?" "Of course not. Homicide is un- known on Mars." "Yes. But what will it do? Might it not reject the entire case as unsuitable? Then the customer would merely return the Regen- erator with a complaint and we would — " Mr. Rath shook his head. "The Rex Regenerator must treat if it finds evidence of psychosis. By Martian standards, the customer is a very sick man, a psychotic- no matter what is wrong with him." Follansby removed his pince- nez and polished them rapidly. "What will the machine do, then?" "It will treat him for the Mar- tian illness most analogous to his case. Feem desire, I should ima- gine, with various complications. As for what will happen once treatment begins, I don't know. I doubt whether anyone knows, since it has never happened be- fore. Offhand, I would say there are two major alternatives: The patient may reject the therapy out of hand, in which case he is left with his homicidal mania un- abated. Or he may accept the Martian therapy and reach M R. FOLLANSBY'S face cure. n brightened. "Ah! A cure is possible!" "You don't understand," Rath said. "He may affect a cure — of his non-existent Martian psycho- sis. But to cure something that is not there is, in effect, to erect a gratuitous delusional system. You might say that the machine would work in reverse, producing psychosis instead of removing it" Mr. Follansby groaned and leaned against a Bell Psychoso- matica. "The result," Rath summed up, "would be to convince the cus- tomer that he was a Martian. A sane Martian, naturally." Haskins suddenly shouted, "I remember! I remember now! He said he worked for the New York Rapid Transit Corporation! I remember distinctly!" "That's a break," Rath said, reaching for the telephone. Haskins wiped his perspiring face in relief. "And I just remem- bered something else that should make it easier still." "What?" "The customer said he had been an alcoholic at one time. I'm sure of it, because he was in- terested at first in the IBM Alco- holic Reliever, until I talked him out of it. He had red hair, you know, and I've had a theory for some time about red-headedness and alcoholism. It seems— n BAD MEDICINE 79 "Excellent," Rath said. "Alco- holism will be on his records. It i narrows the search considerably." As he dialed the NYRT Cor- poration, the expression on his craglike face was almost pleasant. It was good, for a change, to find that a human could retain some significant facts. patient's feelings — both revealed and repressed — toward his gori- UDUT SURELY you remem- me. -*-* ber your goricae?" the Re- "Aw, look," Caswell complain- ed, "I don't even know what a goricae is." "Of course you do. You just won't let yourself know." "I don't know. Tell me." "It would be better if you told V generator was saying. "No," Caswell answered weari- ly. "Tell me, then, about your ju- venile experiences with the thora- strian fleep." "Never had any." "Hmm. Blockage," muttered the machine. "Resentment. Re- pression. Are you sure you don't remember your goricae and what it meant to you? The experience is universal." "Not for me," Caswell said, swallowing a yawn. He had been undergoing me- chanotherapy for close to four hours and it struck him as futile. For a while, he had talked volun- tarily about his childhood, his mother and father, his older broth- er. But the Regenerator had asked him to put aside those fantasies. The patient's relationships to an imaginary parent or sibling, it ex- plained, were unworkable and of minor importance psychological- ly. The important thing was the "How can I?" Caswell raged. "I don't know!" "What do you imagine a gori- cae would be?" "A forest fire," Caswell said. "A salt tablet. A jar of denatured al- cohol. A small screwdriver. Am I getting warm? A notebook. A re- volver — " "These associations are mean- ingful," the Regenerator assured him. "Your attempt at random- ness shows a clearly underlying pattern. Do you begin to recog- nize it?" "What in hell is a goricae?" Caswell roared. "The tree that nourished you during infancy, and well into pub- erty, if my theory about you is correct. Inadvertently, the gori- cate stifled your necessary rejec- tion of the feem desire. This in turn gave rise to your present urge to dwark someone in a vlen- dish manner." "No tree nourished me." "You cannot recall the experi- ence : ?" 80 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "Of course not. It never hap- pened." "You are sure of that?" "Positive." "Not even the tiniest bit of doubt?" "No! No goricae ever nourished me. Look, I can break off these sessions at any time, right?" "Of course," the Regenerator said. "But it would not be advisa- ble at this moment. You are ex- pressing anger, resentment, fear. By your rigidly summary re- jection — " "Nuts," said Caswell, and pull- ed off the headband. HHHE SILENCE was wonderful. ■*- Caswell stood up, yawned, stretched and massaged the back of his neck. He stood in front of the humming black machine and gave it a long leer. "You couldn't cure me of a common cold," he told it. Stiffly he walked the length of the living room and returned to the Regenerator. "Lousy fake!" he shouted. Caswell went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of beer. His revolver was still on the table, gleaming dully. Magnessen! You unspeakable treacherous filth! You fiend incar- nate! You inhuman, hideous mon- ster! Someone must destroy you } Magnessen! Someone . . . Someone? He himself would have to do it. Only he knew the bottomless depths of Magnessen's depravity, his viciousness, his dis- gusting lust for power. Yes, it was his duty, Caswell thought. But strangely, the knowl- edge brought him no pleasure. After all, Magnessen was his friend. He stood up, ready for action. He tucked the revolver into his right-hand coat pocket and glanced at the kitchen clock. Nearly six-thirty. Magnessen would be home now, gulping his dinner, grinning over his plans. This was the perfect time to take him. Caswell strode to the door, opened it, started through, and stopped. A thought had crossed his mind, a thought so tremendously involved, so meaningful, so far- reaching in its implications that he was stirred to his depths. Cas- well tried desperately to shake off the knowledge it brought. But the thought, permanently etched upon his memory, would not de- part. Under the circumstances, he could do only one thing. He returned to the living room, sat down on the couch and slipped on the headband. The Regenerator said, "Yes?" "It's the damnedest thing," Cas- well said, "but do you know, I think I do remember my goricae!" BAD MEDICINE 81 82 OHN RATH contacted the New York Rapid Transit Cor- poration by televideo and was put into immediate contact with Mr. Bemis, a plump, tanned man with watchful eyes. "Alocoholism?" Mr. Bemis re- peated, after the problem was ex- plained. Unobtrusively, he turned on his tape recorder. "Among our employees?" Pressing a button beneath his foot, Bemis alerted Transit Security, Publicity, In- tercopany Relations and the Psy- choanalysis Division. This done, he looked earnestly at Rath. "Not a chance of it, my dear sir. Just between us, why does General Motors really want to know?" Rath smiled bitterly. He should have anticipated this. NYRT and GM had had their differences in the past. Officially, there was cooperation between the two giant corporations. But for all practical purposes — "The question is in terms of the Public Interest," Rath said. "Oh, certainly," Mr. Bemis re- plied, with a subtle smile. Glanc- ing at his tattle board, he noticed that several company executives had tapped in on his line. This might mean a promotion, if han- dled properly. "The Public Interest of GM," W- Mr. Bemis added with polite nas- tiness. "The insinuation is, I sup- pose, that drunken conductors are operating our jetbuses and helis?" GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION .^•*> w * * rf gpemra** \ \,-.3;. . * i V. I *!•• -•. .J t - -^ ■" ^ *«- ll*' BAD MEDICINE 83 » "Of course not. I was searching for a single alcoholic predilection, an individual latency "There's no possibility of it. We at Rapid Transit do not hire peo- ple with even the merest tendency in that direction. And may I sug- gest, sir, that you clean your own house before making implications about others?" And with that, Mr. Bemis broke the connection. No one was going to put any- thing over on him. "Dead end," Rath said heavily. He turned and shouted, "Smith! Did you find any prints?" Lieutenant Smith, his coat off and sleeves rolled up, bounded over. "Nothing usable, sir." Rath's thin lips tightened. It had been close to seven hours since the customer had taken the Martian machine. There was no telling what harm had been done by now. The customer would be justified in bringing suit against the Company. Not that the money mattered much; it was the bad publicity that was to be avoided at all cost. t "Beg pardon, sir," Haskins said. Rath ignored him. What next? Rapid Transit was not going to cooperate. Would the Armed Services make their records avail- able for scansion by somatotype and pigmentation? "Sir," Haskins said again. 'What is it?" "I just remembered the cus- tomer's friend's name. It was Magnessen." "Are you sure of that?" "Absolutely," Haskins said, with the first confidence he had shown in hours. "I've taken the liberty of looking him up in the telephone book, sir. There's only one Manhattan listing under that » name. Rath glowered at him from under shaggy eyebrows. "Haskins, I hope you are not wrong about this. I sincerely hope that." "I do too, sir," Haskins ad- mitted, feeling his knees begin to shake. "Because if you are," Rath said, "I will . . . Never mind. Let's go!" Y POLICE escort, they ar- rived at the address in fifteen minutes. It was an ancient brown- stone and Magnessen's name was on a second-floor door. They knocked. The door opened and a stocky, crop-headed, shirt-sleeved man in his thirties stood before them. He turned slightly pale at the sight of so many uniforms, but held his ground. "What is this?" he demanded. "You Magnessen?" Lieutenant Smith barked. "Yeah. What's the beef? If it's about my hi-fi playing too loud, I can tell you that old hag down- stairs — " 84 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "May we come in?" Rath asked. "It's important." Magnessen seemed about to re- fuse, so Rath pushed past him, followed by Smith, Follansby, Haskins and a small army of po- licemen. Magnessen turned to face them, bewildered, defiant and more than a little awed. "Mr. Magnessen," Rath said, in the pleasantest voice he could muster, "I hope you'll forgive the intrusion. Let me assure you, it is in the Public Interest, as well as your own. Do you know a short, angry-looking, red-haired, red- eyed man?" "Yes," Magnessen said slowly and warily. Haskins let out a sigh of relief. "Would you tell us his name and address?" asked Rath. "I suppose you mean — hold it! What's he done?' "Nothing." "Then what you want him for?" "There's no time for explana- tions," Rath said. "Believe me, it's in his own best interest, too. What is his name?" Magnessen studied Rath's ugly, honest face, trying to make up his mind. Lieutenant Smith said, "Come on, talk, Magnessen, if you know what's good for you. We want that name and we want it quick." It was the wrong approach. Magnessen lighted a cigarette, blew smoke in Smith's direction and inquired, "You got a warrant, buddy?" "You bet I have," Smith said, striding forward. "I'll warrant you, wise guy." "Stop it!" Rath ordered. "Lieu- tenant Smith, thank you for your assistance. I won't need you any longer." Smith left sulkily, taking his platoon with him. Rath said, "I apologize for Smith's over-eagerness. You had better hear the problem." Briefly but fully, he told the story of the customer and the Martian thera- peutic machine. When he was finished, Magnes- sen looked more suspicious than ever. "You say he wants to kill me?" "Definitely." "That's a lie! I don't know what your game is, mister, but you'll never make me believe that. El- wood's my best friend. We been best friends since we was kids. We been in service together. Elwood would cut off his arm for me. And * I'd do the same for him." "Yes, yes," Rath said impa- tiently, "in a sane frame of mind, he would. But your friend Elwood — is that his first name or last?" "First," Magnessen said taunt- ingly. "Your friend Elwood is psy- chotic." "You don't know him. That guy loves me like a brother. Look, BAD MEDICINE 85 what's Elwood really done? De- faulted on some payments or something? I can help out." "You thick-headed imbecile!" Rath shouted. "I'm trying to save your life, and the life and sanity of your friend!" "But how do I know?" Magnes- sen pleaded. "You guys come busting in here — "You must trust me," Rath said. Magnessen studied Rath's face and nodded sourly. "His name's Elwood Caswell. He lives just down the block at number 341." it terrible mistake. The Regenera- tor you took was a Martian model — for giving therapy to Mar- HPHE MAN who came to the ■*■ door was short, with red hair and red-rimmed eyes. His right hand was thrust into his coat PQcket. He seemed very calm. "Are you Elwood Caswell?" Rath asked. "The Elwood Caswell who bought a Regenerator early this afternoon at the Home Ther- apy Appliances Store?" "Yes," said Caswell. "Won't you come in?" Inside Caswell's small living room, they saw the Regenerator, glistening black and chrome, standing near the couch. It was unplugged. "Have you used it?" Rath asked anxiously. "Yes." Follansby stepped forward. "Mr. Caswell, I don't know how to explain this, but we made a anguish tians." "I know," said Caswell. "You do?" "Of course. It became pretty obvious after a while." "It was a dangerous situation," Rath said. "Especially for a man with your — ah — troubles." He studied Caswell covertly. The man seemed fine, but appearances were frequently deceiving, espe- cially with psychotics. Caswell had been homicidal; there was no reason why he should not still be. And Rath began to wish he had not dismissed Smith and his policemen so summarily. Some- times an armed squad was a com- forting thing to have around. Caswell walked across the room to the therapeutic machine. One hand was still in his jacket pocket; the other he laid affec- tionately upon the Regenerator. "The poor thing tried its best," he said. "Of course, it couldn't cure what wasn't there." He laughed. "But it came very near succeeding!" ATH STUDIED Caswell's face and said, in a trained casual tone, "Glad there was no harm, sir. The Company will, of course, reimburse you for your lost time and for your mental » 86 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION "Naturally," Caswell said. " — and we will substitute a proper Terran Regenerator at once." "That won't be necessary." "It won't?" "No." Caswell's voice was deci- sive. "The machine's attempt at therapy forced me into a com- plete self-appraisal. There was a moment of absolute insight, dur- ing which I was able to evaluate and discard my homicidal inten- tions toward poor Magnessen." Rath nodded dubiously. "You feel no such urge now?" "Not in the slightest." Rath frowned deeply, started to say something, and stopped. He turned to Follansby and Has- kins. "Get that machine out of here. I'll have I guess you could look at it." I'd be delighted to," Dickson- Hawes agreed heartily. "I do hope you understand, old man, that there's quite a lot of money in- volved in this." "Yeah. You've really got the capital lined up? Twice before, you were sure you had big money interested. But the deals always fell through. I got pretty tired of it." "This time it's different. The money's already in escrow, not to mention what I'm putting in my- self. We intend a coast-to-coast network of horror houses in every gayway, playland and amusement park." "Yeah. Well, come along." They went down the corridor to another door. Freeman un- locked it. "By the way," he said, "I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your voice down. Some of the machinery in this stuff's — deli- cate. Sensitive." "By all means. Of course." They entered. To their right was an old brick house, not quite in ruin. To the left, a clump of blackish trees cut off the sky. Just in front of them was the moss-covered coping of an old stone well. The ground around the well was slick with moisture. Dickson-Hawes sniffed appre- ciatively. "I must say you've paid wonderful attention to detail. It's exactly like being out of doors. It even smells froggy and damp." "Thanks," Freeman replied with a small, dour smile. "What happens next?" "Look down in the well." Rather gingerly, Dickson- Hawes approached. He leaned over. From the well came a gur- gling splash. 104 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION HORRER HOWCE 105 Dickson-Hawes drew back ab- ruptly. Now his face was not quite greenish; it was white. "My word, what a monster!" he gasped. "What is it, anyway?" "Clockwork," Freeman an- swered. "It'll writhe for thirty-six hours on one winding. I couldn't use batteries, you know, on ac- count of the water. That greenish flash in the eyes comes from prisms. And the hair is the same thing you get on those expensive fur coats, only longer. I think they call it plasti-mink." "What happens if I keep lean- ing over? Or if I drop pebbles down on it?" "It'll come out at you." ICKSON-HAWES LOOKED disappointed. "Anything else?" "The sky gets darker and noises come out of the house. Isn't that enough?" Dickson-Hawes coughed. "Well, of course we'd have to soup it up a bit. Put an electrified rail around the well coping and per- haps make the approach to the well slippery so the customers would have to grasp the hand rail. Install a couple of air jets to blow the girls' dresses up. And naturally make it a good deal darker so couples can neck when the girl gets scared. But it's a nice little effort, Freeman, very nice indeed. I'm almost certain we can use it. Yes, we ought to have your well in our horror house." Dickson-Hawes' voice had rung out strongly on the last few words. Now there came another watery splash from the well. Free- man seemed disturbed. "I told you to keep your voice down," he complained. "The par- titions are thin. When you talk that loud, you can be heard all over the place. It isn't good for the — machinery." "Sorry." "Don't let it happen again . . . I don't think the customers ought to neck in here. This isn't the place for it. If they've got to neck, let them do it outside. In the corridor." "You have no idea, old chap, what people will do in a darkened corridor in a horror house. It seems to stimulate them. But you may be right. Letting them stay here to neck might spoil the illu- sion. We'll try to get them on out." "Okay. How much are you pay- ing me for this?" "Our lawyer will have to dis- cuss the details," said Dickson- Hawes. He gave Freeman a smile reeking with synthetic charm. "I assure you he can draw up a satisfactory contract. I can't be more definite until I know what the copyright or patent situation would be." "I don't think my Well could 106 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION be patented," Freeman said. "There are details in the machin- ery nobody understands but me. I'd have to install each unit in your horror house network my- self. There ought to be a clause in the contract about my per diem expenses and a traveling al- lowance." "I'm sure we can work out something mutually satisfactory." "Uh . . . let's get out of here. don't know. It's full of bugs. I just haven't had time to work it out yet." "Let's have it, old man, by all means!" "Not so loud! You've got to keep your voice down. Otherwise I can't take you in." Freeman himself was speaking almost in a whisper. "All right. Here." They had stopped before a much more substantial door than This is an awfully damp place to the one behind which the Well do much talking in." HEY WENT out into the hall again. Freeman locked the door. "Have you anything else?" Dickson-Hawes asked. Freeman's eyes moved away. "No." "Oh, come now, old chap. Don't be coy. As I told you before, there's money involved." "What sort of thing do you want?" "Well, horrid. Though not quite so poetically horrid as what you have behind the shutter. That's a little too much. Perhaps some- thing with a trifle more action. With more customer participa- tion. Both the Well and Spring Scene are on the static side." "Uh." They walked along the corri- dor. Freeman said slowly, "I've been working on something. There's action and customer par- ticipation in it, all right, but I lay. There was a wide rubber flange all around it, and it was secured at top and bottom by two padlocked hasps. In the top of the door, three or four small holes had been bored, apparently to admit air. "You must have something pretty hot locked up behind all that," Dickson-Hawes remarked. "Yeah." Freeman got a key ring out of his pocket and began looking over it. Dickson-Hawes glanced around appraisingly. "Somebody's been writing on your wall," he observed. "Rotten speller, I must say." Freeman raised his eyes from the key ring and looked in the direction the other man indicated. On the wall opposite the door, just under the ceiling, somebody had written HORRER HOWCE in what looked like blackish ink. The effect of the ill-spelled words on Freeman was remark- able. He dropped the key ring HORRER HOWCE 107 with a clatter, and when he straightened from picking it up, his hands were quivering. "I've changed my mind," he said. He put the key ring back in his pocket. "I always did have the damnedest luck." ICKSON-HAWES LEANED I back against the wall and crossed his ankles. "How do you get your ideas, Freeman?" "Oh, all sorts of ways. Things I read, things people tell me, things I see. All sorts of ways." Both men were speaking in low tones. "They're amazing. And your mechanical effects — I really don't see how you get machinery to do the things you make it do." Freeman smiled meagerly. "I've always been good at me- chanics. Particularly radio and signaling devices. Relays. Com- munication problems, you might say. I can communicate with any- thing. Started when I was a kid." There was a silence. Dickson- Hawes kept leaning against the wall. A close observer, Freeman noticed almost a tic, a fluttering of his left eyelid. At last Freeman said, "How much are you paying for the Well?" Dickson-Hawes closed his eyes and opened them again. He may have been reflecting that while ing as a written one, it is difficult to prove the existence of a verbal contract to which there are no witnesses. He answered, "Five thousand in a lump sum, I think, and a pro- rated share of the net admissions for the first three years." There was an even longer silence. Freeman's face relaxed at the mention of a definite sum. He said, "How are your nerves? I need money so damned bad." Dickson-Hawes' face went so blank that it would seem the other man had touched a vulner- able spot. "Pretty good, I imag- ine," he said in a carefully modu- lated voice. "I saw a good deal of action during the war." Cupidity and some other emo- tion contended in Freeman's eyes. He fished out the key ring again. "Look, you must not make a noise. No yelling or anything like that, no matter what you see. They're very — I mean the ma- chinery's delicate. It's full of bugs I haven't got rid of yet. The whole thing will be a lot less ghastly later on. I'm going to keep the basic idea, make it just as exciting as it is now, but tone it down plenty." "I understand." Freeman looked at him with a frown. "Don't make a noise," he cautioned again. "Remember, none of this is real." He fitted a verbal contract is quite as bind- the key into the first of the pad- 108 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION locks on the stoutly built door. The second padlock was a lit- tle stiff. Freeman had to fidget with it. Finally he got the door open. The two men stepped through it. They were outside. HERE IS no other way of expressing it: They were out- side. If the illusion had been good in the Well, here it was perfect. They stood in a sort of safety island on the edge of a broad freeway, where traffic poured by in an unending rush eight lanes wide. It was the time of day when, though visibility is really better than at noon, a nervous motorist or two has turned on his parking lights. Besides the two men, the safety island held a new, shiny, * eggplant - colored sedan. Dickson-Hawes turned a be- wildered face on his companion, "Freeman," he said in a whisper, "did you make all this?" For the first time, Freeman grinned. "Pretty good, isn't it?" he replied, also in a whisper. He opened the car door and slid into the driver's seat. "Get in. We're going for a ride. Remember, no n noise. The other man obeyed. Free- man started the car — it had a very quiet motor — and watched until a lull in the traffic gave him a chance to swing out from the curb. He stepped on the acceler- ator. The landscape began to move by. Cars passed them. They passed some cars. Dickson-Hawes looked for the speedometer on the dash- board and couldn't find it. A gar- age, a service station, a billboard went by. The sign on the garage read: WE FIX FLATTEDS. The service station had conical pumps. The tomatoes on the bill- board were purple and green. Dickson-Hawes was breathing shallowly. He said, "Freeman where are we?" 1 Once the other more, tne otner man grinned. "You're getting just the effect I mean to give," he retorted in a pleased whisper. "At first, the customer thinks he's on an ordinary freeway, with ordinary people hurrying home to their dinners. Then he begins to notice all sorts of subtle differences. Everything's a little off-key. It adds to the uneasiness." "Yes, but — what's the object of all this? What are we trying to do?" "Get home to our dinners, like everyone else." "Where does the ficulty come in?" "Do you see that car in the outer lane?" They were still con- versing in whispers. "Black, bul- let-shaped, quite" small, going very fast?" "Yes." "Keep your eye on it." well, dif- HORRER HOWCE 109 The black car was going very fast. It caught up with a blue sedan in front of it, cut in on it and began to crowd it over to the curb. The blue sedan tried to shake off the black car, but with- out success. If the driver didn't want to be wrecked, he had to get over. OR A while, the two cars ran parallel. The black car began to slow down and crowd more aggressively than ever. Suddenly it cut obliquely in front of the sedan and stopped. There was a frenzied scream of brakes from the sedan. It stopped with its left fender al- most against the black bullet- shaped car. The bodies were so close, there was no room for the sedan driver to open his door. Freeman had let the car he was driving slow down, presum- ably so Dickson-Hawes could see everything. For a moment, there was noth- ing to see. Only for a moment. Then two -— or was it three? — long, blackish, extremely thin arms came out from the black car and fumbled with the glass in the window of the sedan. The glass was forced down. The arms en- tered the sedan. From the sedan there came a wild burst of shrieking. It was like the flopping, horrified squawks of a chicken at the chop- ping block. The shrieks were still going on when the very thin arms came out with a — The light hid nothing. The three very thin arms came out with a plucked-ofl human arm. They threw it into the interior of the black car. The three arms invaded the sedan once more. This time, Dickson-Hawes had turned neither white nor green- ish, but a blotchy gray. His mouth had come open all around his teeth, in the shape of a rigid ob- long with raised, corded edges. It was perfectly plain that if he was not screaming, it was solely because his throat was too para- lyzed. Freeman gave his passenger only a momentary glance. He was looking into the rear-view mirror. He began to frown anxiously. rpHE SHRIEKING from the -*• blue sedan had stopped. Dick- son-Hawes covered his face with his hands while Freeman drove past it and the other car. When the group lay behind them, he asked in a shaking whisper, "Freeman, are there any more of them? The black cars, I mean?" "Yeah. One of them's coming toward us now." Dickson-Hawes' head swiveled around. Another of the black cars was hurtling toward them through the traffic, though it was still a long way behind. no GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION Dickson-Hawes licked his lips. "Is it — after us?" "I think so." "But why? Why — us'i ?» "Part of the game. Wouldn't be horrid otherwise. Hold on. I'm going to try to shake it off." Freeman stepped down on the accelerator. The eggplant-colored sedan shot ahead. It was a very fast car and Freeman was evi- dently an expert and nerveless driver. They slid through non- existent holes in the traffic, glanced off from fenders, slipped crazily from lane to lane, a shut- tle in a pattern of speed and escape. The black car gained on them. No gymnastics. A bulletlike di- rectness. But it was nearer all the time. Dickson-Hawes gave a sort of whimper. "No noise," Freeman cautioned in a fierce whisper. "That'll bring them down for sure. Now!" He pressed the accelerator all the way down. The eggplant-col- ored car bounced and swayed. There was a tinkle of glass from the headlights of the car on the left as the sedan brushed it glanc- ingly. Dickson-Hawes moaned, but realized they had gained the length of several cars. Momen- tarily, the black pursuer fell be- hind. They went through two red lights in a row. So did the black bullet. It began to edge in on them. Closer and closer. Faster and faster. Dickson-Hawes had slumped forward with his head on his chest. The black car cut toward them immediately. Freeman snarled. Deliberately, he swung out into the path of the pursuer. For a second, it gave ground. "Bastards," Freeman said grimly. The black car cut in on them like the lash of a whip. The sedan slithered. Hub caps grated on concrete. The sedan swayed drunkenly. Brakes howled. Dick- son-Hawes, opening his eyes in- voluntarily for the crash, saw that they were in a safety island. The same safety island, surely, from which they had started out? The black car went streaking on by. "I hate those things," Freeman said bitterly. "Damned Voom. If I could — But never mind. We got away. We're safe. We're home." ICKSON-HAWES DID not move. "I said we're safe," Freeman repeated. He opened the car door and pushed the other man out through it. Half-shoving, half-carrying, he led him to the door from which they had en- tered the freeway. It was still the time of day at which nervous mo- HORRER HOWCE 111 torists turn on their parking lights. Freeman maneuvered Dickson- Hawes through the door. He closed it behind them and fast- ened the padlocks in the hasps. They were out in the corridor again — the corridor on whose wall somebody had written HOR- RER HOWCE. Freeman drew a deep breath. "Well. Worked better than I thought it would. I was afraid you'd yell. I thought you were the type that yells. But I guess the third time's the charm." "What?" "I mean I guess my goddam luck has turned at last. Yeah. What did you think of it?" Dickson-Hawes swallowed, un- able to answer. Freeman regarded him. "Come along to my office and have a drink. You look like you need one. And then you can tell me what you think of this setup." The office was in the front of the house, down a couple of steps. Dickson-Hawes sank into the chair Freeman pulled out for him. He gulped down Freeman's dubious reddish Bourbon grate- fully. After the second drink, he was restored enough to ask, "Freeman, was it real?" "Certainly not," the other man said promptly. "It looked awfully real," Dick- son-Hawes objected. "That arm . . ." He shuddered. "A dummy," Freeman an- swered promptly once more. "You didn't see any blood, did you? Of course not. It was a dummy arm." "I hope so. I don't see how you could have made all the stuff we saw. There's a limit to what ma- chinery can do. I'd like another drink." Freeman poured. "What did you think of it?" Color was coming back to Dickson-Hawes' cheeks. "It was the most horrible experience I ever had in my life." Freeman grinned. "Good. Peo- ple like to be frightened. That's why roller-coaster rides are so popular." "Not that much, people don't. Nobody would enjoy a roller- coaster ride if he saw cars crash- ing all around him and people getting killed. You'll have to tone it down a lot. An awful lot." "But you liked it?" "On the whole, yes. It's a unique idea. But you'll have to tone it down about seventy-five per cent." 1T