By Proxy by Randall Garrett (1960)
Posted on February 29th, 2008
It’s been said that the act of creation is a solitary thing—that teams never create; only individuals. But sometimes a team may be needed to make creation effective….
Illustrated by Van Dongen
BY PROXY
By DAVID GORDON [Randall Garrett]
Mr. Terrence Elshawe did not conform to the mental picture that pops into the average person’s mind when he hears the words “news reporter.” Automatically, one thinks of the general run of earnest, handsome, firm-jawed, level-eyed, smooth-voiced gentlemen one sees on one’s TV screen. No matter which news service one subscribes to, the reporters are all pretty much of a type. And Terrence Elshawe simply wasn’t the type.
The confusion arises because thirty-odd years of television has resulted in specialization. If you run up much Magnum Telenews time on your meter, you’re familiar with the cultured voice and rugged good looks of Brett Maxon, “your Magnum reporter,” but Maxon is a reporter only in the very literal sense of the word. He’s an actor, whose sole job is to make Magnum news sound more interesting than some other telenews service, even though he’s giving you exactly the same facts. But he doesn’t go out and dig up those stories.
The actual leg work of getting the news into Maxon’s hands so that he can report it to you is done by research reporters—men like Terrence Elshawe.
Elshawe was a small, lean man with a large, round head on which grew close-cropped, light brown hair. His mouth was wide and full-lipped, and had a distinct tendency to grin impishly, even when he was trying to look serious. His eyes were large, blue, and innocent; only when the light hit them at just the right angle was it possible to detect the contact lenses which corrected an acute myopia.
When he was deep in thought, he had a habit of relaxing in his desk chair with his head back and his eyes closed. His left arm would be across his chest, his left hand cupping his right elbow, while the right hand held the bowl of a large-bowled briar which Elshawe puffed methodically during his ruminations. He was in exactly that position when Oler Winstein put his head in the door of Elshawe’s office.
“Busy?” Winstein asked conversationally.
In some offices, if the boss comes in and finds an employee in a pose like that, there would be a flurry of sudden action on the part of the employee as he tried frantically to look as though he had only paused for a moment from his busy work. Elshawe’s only reaction was to open his eyes. He wasn’t the kind of man who would put on a phony act like that, even if his boss fired him on the spot.
“Not particularly,” he said, in his slow, easy drawl. “What’s up?”
Winstein came on into the office. “I’ve got something that might make a good spot. See what you think.”
If Elshawe didn’t conform to the stereotype of a reporter, so much less did Oler Winstein conform to the stereotype of a top-flight TV magnate. He was no taller than Elshawe’s five-seven, and was only slightly heavier. He wore his hair in a crew cut, and his boyish face made him look more like a graduate student at a university than the man who had put Magnum Telenews together with his own hands. He had an office, but he couldn’t be found in it more than half the time; the rest of the time, he was prowling around the Magnum Building, wandering into studios and offices and workshops. He wasn’t checking up on his employees, and never gave the impression that he was. He didn’t throw his weight around and he didn’t snoop. If he hired a man for a job, he expected the job to be done, that was all. If it was, the man could sleep at his desk or play solitaire or drink beer for all Winstein cared; if the work wasn’t done, it didn’t matter if the culprit looked as busy as an anteater at a picnic—he got one warning and then the sack. The only reason for Winstein’s prowling around was the way his mind worked; it was forever bubbling with ideas, and he wanted to bounce those ideas off other people to see if anything new and worthwhile would come of them.
He didn’t look particularly excited, but, then, he rarely did. Even the most objective of employees is likely to become biased one way or another if he thinks his boss is particularly enthusiastic about an idea. Winstein didn’t want yes-men around him; he wanted men who could and would think. And he had a theory that, while the tenseness of an emergency could and did produce some very high-powered thinking indeed, an atmosphere of that kind wasn’t a good thing for day-in-and-day-out work. He saved that kind of pressure for the times that he needed it, so that it was effective because of its contrast with normal procedure.
Elshawe took his heavy briar out of his mouth as Winstein sat down on the corner of the desk. “You have a gleam in your eye, Ole,” he said accusingly.
“Maybe,” Winstein said noncommittally. “We might be able to work something out of it. Remember a guy by the name of Malcom Porter?”
Elshawe lowered his brows in a thoughtful frown. “Name’s familiar. Wait a second. Wasn’t he the guy that was sent to prison back in 1979 for sending up an unauthorized rocket?”
Winstein nodded. “That’s him. Served two years of a five-year sentence, got out on parole about a year ago. I just got word from a confidential source that he’s going to try to send up another one.”
“I didn’t know things were so pleasant at Alcatraz,” Elshawe said. “He seems to be trying awfully hard to get back in.”
“Not according to what my informant says. This time, he’s going to ask for permission. And this time, he’s going to have a piloted craft, not a self-guided missile, like he did in ‘79.”
“Hoho. Well, there might be a story in it, but I can’t see that it would be much of one. It isn’t as if a rocket shoot were something unusual. The only thing unusual about it is that it’s a private enterprise shoot instead of a Government one.”
Winstein said: “Might be more to it than that. Do you remember the trial in ‘79?”
“Vaguely. As I remember it, he claimed he didn’t send up a rocket, but the evidence showed overwhelmingly that he had. The jury wasn’t out more than a few minutes, as I remember.”
“There was a little more to it than that,” Winstein said.
“I was in South Africa at the time,” Elshawe said. “Covering the civil war down there, remember?”
“That’s right. You’re excused,” Winstein said, grinning. “The thing was that Malcom Porter didn’t claim he hadn’t sent the thing up. What he did claim was that it wasn’t a rocket. He claimed that he had a new kind of drive in it—something that didn’t use rockets.
“The Army picked the thing up on their radar screens, going straight up at high acceleration. They bracketed it with Cobra pursuit rockets and blew it out of the sky when it didn’t respond to identification signals. They could trace the thing back to its launching pad, of course, and they nabbed Malcom Porter.
“Porter was furious. Wanted to slap a suit against the Government for wanton destruction of private property. His claim was that the law forbids unauthorized rocket tests all right, but his missile wasn’t illegal because it wasn’t a rocket.”
“What did he claim it was?” Elshawe asked.
“He said it was a secret device of his own invention. Antigravity, or something like that.”
“Did he try to prove it?”
“No. The Court agreed that, according to the way the law is worded, only ‘rocket-propelled missiles’ come under the ban. The judge said that if Malcom Porter could prove that the missile wasn’t rocket-propelled, he’d dismiss the case. But Porter wanted to prove it by building another missile. He wouldn’t give the court his plans or specifications for the drive he claimed he’d invented, or say anything about it except that it operated—and I quote—’on a new principle of physics’—unquote. Said he wouldn’t tell them anything because the Government was simply using this as an excuse to take his invention away from him.”
Elshawe chuckled. “That’s as flimsy a defense as I’ve heard.”
“Don’t laugh,” said Winstein. “It almost worked.”
“What? How?”
“It threw the burden of proof on the Government. They thought they had him when he admitted that he’d shot the thing off, but when he denied that it was a rocket, then, in order to prove that he’d committed a crime, they had to prove that it was a rocket. It wasn’t up to Porter to prove that it wasn’t.”
“Hey,” Elshawe said in admiration, “that’s pretty neat. I’m almost sorry it didn’t work.”
“Yeah. Trouble was that the Army had blown up the evidence. They knew it was a rocket, but they had to prove it. They had recordings of the radar picture, of course, and they used that to show the shape and acceleration of the missile. They proved that he’d bought an old obsolete Odin rocket from one of the small colleges in the Midwest—one that the Army had sold them as a demonstration model for their rocket engineering classes. They proved that he had a small liquid air plant out there at his place in New Mexico. In other words, they proved that he had the equipment to rebuild the rocket and the fuel to run it.
“Then they got a battery of high-powered physicists up on the stands to prove that nothing else but a rocket could have driven the thing that way.
“Porter’s attorney hammered at them in cross-examination, trying to get one of them to admit that it was possible that Porter had discovered a new principle of physics that could fly a missile without rockets, but the Attorney General’s prosecutor had coached them pretty well. They all said that unless there was evidence to the contrary, they could not admit that there was such a principle.
“When the prosecutor presented his case to the jury, he really had himself a ball. I’ll give you a transcript of the trial later; you’ll have to read it for yourself to get the real flavor of it. The gist of it was that things had come to a pretty pass if a man could claim a scientific principle known only to himself as a defense against a crime.
“He gave one analogy I liked. He said, suppose that a man is found speeding in a car. The cops find him all alone, behind the wheel, when they chase him down. Then, in court, he admits that he was alone, and that the car was speeding, but he insists that the car was steering itself, and that he wasn’t in control of the vehicle at all. And what was steering the car? Why, a new scientific principle, of course.”
Elshawe burst out laughing. “Wow! No wonder the jury didn’t stay out long! I’m going to have to dig the recordings of the newscasts out of the files; I missed a real comedy while I was in Africa.”
Winstein nodded. “We got pretty good coverage on it, but our worthy competitor, whose name I will not have mentioned within these sacred halls, got Beebee Vayne to run a commentary on it, and we got beat out on the meters.”
“Vayne?” Elshawe was still grinning. “That’s a new twist—getting a comedian to do a news report.”
“I’ll have to admit that my worthy competitor, whose name et cetera, does get an idea once in a while. But I don’t want him beating us out again. We’re in on the ground floor this time, and I want to hog the whole thing if I can.”
“Sounds like a great idea, if we can swing it,” Elshawe agreed. “Do you have a new gimmick? You’re not going to get a comedian to do it, are you?”
“Heaven forbid! Even if it had been my own idea three years ago, I wouldn’t repeat it, and I certainly won’t have it said that I copy my competitors. No, what I want you to do is go out there and find out what’s going on. Get a full background on it. We’ll figure out the presentation angle when we get some idea of what he’s going to do this time.” Winstein eased himself off the corner of Elshawe’s desk and stood up. “By the way—”
“Yeah?”
“Play it straight when you go out there. You’re a reporter, looking for news; you haven’t made any previous judgments.”
Elshawe’s pipe had gone out. He fired it up again with his desk lighter. “I don’t want to be,” he said between puffs, “too cagey. If he’s got … any brains … he’ll know it’s … a phony act … if I overdo it.” He snapped off the lighter and looked at his employer through a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “I mean, after all, he’s on the records as being a crackpot. I’d be a pretty stupid reporter if I believed everything he said. If I don’t act a little skeptical, he’ll think I’m either a blockhead or a phony or both.”
“Maybe,” Winstein said doubtfully. “Still, some of these crackpots fly off the handle if you doubt their word in the least bit.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Elshawe said. “He used to live here in New York, didn’t he?”
“Still does,” Winstein said. “He has a two-floor apartment on Central Park West. He just uses that New Mexico ranch of his for relaxation.”
“He’s not hurting for money, is he?” Elshawe asked at random. “Anyway, what I’ll do is look up some of the people he knows and get an idea of what kind of a bird he is. Then, when I get out there, I’ll know more what kind of line to feed him.”
“That sounds good. But whatever you do, play it on the soft side. My confidential informant tells me that the only reason we’re getting this inside info is because Malcom Porter is sore about the way our competition treated him four years ago.”
“Just who is this confidential informant, anyway, Ole?” Elshawe asked curiously.
Winstein grinned widely. “It’s supposed to be very confidential. I don’t want it to get any further than you.”
“Sure not. Since when am I a blabbermouth? Who is it?”
“Malcom Porter.”
Two days later, Terrence Elshawe was sitting in the front seat of a big station wagon, watching the scenery go by and listening to the driver talk as the machine tooled its way out of Silver City, New Mexico, and headed up into the Mogollon Mountains.
“Was a time, not too long back,” the driver was saying, “when a man couldn’t get up into this part of the country ‘thout a pack mule. Still places y’can’t, but the boss had t’ have a road built up to the ranch so’s he could bring in all that heavy equipment. Reckon one of these days the Mogollons ‘ll be so civilized and full a people that a fella might as well live in New York.”
Elshawe, who hadn’t seen another human being for fifteen minutes, felt that the predicted overcrowding was still some time off.
“‘Course,” the driver went on, “I reckon folks have t’ live some place, but I never could see why human bein’s are so all-fired determined to bunch theirselves up so thick together that they can’t hardly move—like a bunch of sheep in a snowstorm. It don’t make sense to me. Does it to you, Mr. Skinner?”
That last was addressed to the other passenger, an elderly man who was sitting in the seat behind Elshawe.
“I guess it’s pretty much a matter of taste, Bill,” Mr. Skinner said in a soft voice.
“I reckon,” Bill said, in a tone that implied that anyone whose tastes were so bad that he wanted to live in the city was an object of pity who probably needed psychiatric treatment. He was silent for a moment, in obvious commiseration with his less fortunate fellows.
Elshawe took the opportunity to try to get a word in. The chunky Westerner had picked him up at the airport, along with Mr. Samuel Skinner, who had come in on the same plane with Elshawe, and, after introducing himself as Bill Rodriguez, he had kept up a steady stream of chatter ever since. Elshawe didn’t feel he should take a chance on passing up the sudden silence.
“By the way; has Mr. Porter applied to the Government for permission to test his … uh … his ship, yet?”
Bill Rodriguez didn’t take his eyes off the winding road. “Well, now, I don’t rightly know, Mr. Elshawe. Y’see, I just work on the ranch up there. I don’t have a doggone thing to do with the lab’r'tory at all—’cept to keep the fence in good shape so’s the stock don’t get into the lab’r'tory area. If Mr. Porter wants me to know somethin’, he tells me, an’ if he don’t, why, I don’t reckon it’s any a my business.”
“I see,” said Elshawe. And that shuts me up, he thought to himself. He took out his pipe and began to fill it in silence.
“How’s everything out in Los Angeles, Mr. Skinner?” Rodriguez asked the passenger in back. “Haven’t seen you in quite a spell.”
Elshawe listened to the conversation between the two with half an ear and smoked his pipe wordlessly.
He had spent the previous day getting all the information he could on Malcom Porter, and the information hadn’t been dull by any means.
Porter had been born in New York in 1949, which made him just barely thirty-three. His father, Vanneman Porter, had been an oddball in his own way, too. The Porters of New York didn’t quite date back to the time of Peter Stuyvesant, but they had been around long enough to acquire the feeling that the twenty-four dollars that had been paid for Manhattan Island had come out of the family exchequer. Just as the Vanderbilts looked upon the Rockefellers as newcomers, so the Porters looked on the Vanderbilts.
For generations, it had been tacitly conceded that a young Porter gentleman had only three courses of action open to him when it came time for him to choose his vocation in life. He could join the firm of Porter & Sons on Wall Street, or he could join some other respectable business or banking enterprise, or he could take up the Law. (Corporation law, of course—never criminal law.) For those few who felt that the business world was not for them, there was a fourth alternative—studying for the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. Anything else was unheard of.
So it had been somewhat of a shock to Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Porter when their only son, Vanneman, had announced that he intended to study physics at M.I.T. But they gave their permission; they were quite certain that the dear boy would “come to his senses” and join the firm after he had been graduated. He was, after all, the only one to carry on the family name and manage the family holdings.
But Vanneman Porter not only stuck to his guns and went on to a Ph.D.; he compounded his delinquency by marrying a pretty, sweet, but not overly bright girl named Mary Kelley.
Malcom Porter was their son.
When Malcom was ten years old, both his parents were killed in a smashup on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the child went to live with his widowed grandmother, Mrs. Hamilton Porter.
Terry Elshawe had gathered that young Malcom Porter’s life had not been exactly idyllic from that point on. Grandmother Porter hadn’t approved of her son’s marriage, and she seemed to have felt that she must do everything in her power to help her grandson overcome the handicap of having nonaristocratic blood in his veins.
Elshawe wasn’t sure in his own mind whether environment or heredity had been the deciding factor in Malcom Porter’s subsequent life, but he had a hunch that the two had been acting synergistically. It was likely that the radical change in his way of life after his tenth year had as much to do with his behavior as the possibility that the undeniably brilliant mental characteristics of the Porter family had been modified by the genes of the pretty but scatter-brained wife of Vanneman Porter.
Three times, only his grandmother’s influence kept him from being expelled from the exclusive prep school she had enrolled him in, and his final grades were nothing to mention in polite society, much less boast about.
In her own way, the old lady was trying to do her best for him, but she had found it difficult to understand her own son, and his deviations from the Porter norm had been slight in comparison with those of his son. When the time came for Malcom to enter college, Grandmother Porter was at a total loss as to what to do. With his record, it was unlikely that any law school would take him unless he showed tremendous improvement in his pre-law courses. And unless that improvement was a general one, not only as far as his studies were concerned, but in his handling of his personal life, it would be commercial suicide to put him in any position of trust with Porter & Sons. It wasn’t that he was dishonest; he simply couldn’t be trusted to do anything properly. He had a tendency to follow his own whims and ignore everybody else.
The idea of his entering the clergy was never even considered.
It came almost as a relief to the old woman when Malcom announced that he was going to study physics, as his father had done.
The relief didn’t last long. By the time Malcom was in his sophomore year, he was apparently convinced that his instructors were dunderheads to the last man. That, Elshawe thought, was probably not unusual among college students, but Malcom Porter made the mistake of telling them about it.
One of the professors with whom Elshawe had talked had said: “He acted as though he owned the college. That, I think, was what was his trouble in his studies; he wasn’t really stupid, and he wasn’t as lazy as some said, but he didn’t want to be bothered with anything that he didn’t enjoy. The experiments he liked, for instance, were the showy, spectacular ones. He built himself a Tesla coil, and a table with hidden AC electromagnets in it that would make a metal plate float in the air. But when it came to nucleonics, he was bored. Anything less than a thermonuclear bomb wasn’t any fun.”
The trouble was that he called his instructors stupid and dull for being interested in “commonplace stuff,” and it infuriated him to be forced to study such “junk.”
As a result, he managed to get himself booted out of college toward the end of his junior year. And that was the end of his formal education.
Six months after that, his grandmother died. Although she had married into the Porter family, she was fiercely proud of the name; she had been born a Van Courtland, so she knew what family pride was. And the realization that Malcom was the last of the Porters—and a failure—was more than she could bear. The coronary attack she suffered should have been cured in a week, but the best medico-surgical techniques on Earth can’t help a woman who doesn’t want to live.
Her will showed exactly what she thought of Malcom Porter. The Porter holdings were placed in trust. Malcom was to have the earnings, but he had no voice whatever in control of the principal until he was fifty years of age.
Instead of being angry, Malcom was perfectly happy. He had an income that exceeded a million dollars before taxes, and didn’t need to worry about the dull details of making money. He formed a small corporation of his own, Porter Research Associates, and financed it with his own money. It ran deep in the red, but Porter didn’t mind; Porter Research Associates was a hobby, not a business, and running at a deficit saved him plenty in taxes.
By the time he was twenty-five, he was known as a crackpot. He had a motley crew of technicians and scientists working for him—some with Ph.D.’s, some with a trade-school education. The personnel turnover in that little group was on a par with the turnover of patients in a maternity ward, at least as far as genuine scientists were concerned. Porter concocted theories and hypotheses out of cobwebs and became furious with anyone who tried to tear them down. If evidence came up that would tend to show that one of his pet theories was utter hogwash, he’d come up with an ad hoc explanation which showed that this particular bit of evidence was an exception. He insisted that “the basis of science lies in the experimental evidence, not in the pronouncements of authorities,” which meant that any recourse to the theories of Einstein, Pauli, Dirac, Bohr, or Fermi was as silly as quoting Aristotle, Plato, or St. Thomas Aquinas. The only authority he would accept was Malcom Porter.
Nobody who had had any training in science could work long with a man like that, even if the pay had been high, which it wasn’t. The only people who could stick with him were the skilled workers—the welders, tool-and-die men, electricians, and junior engineers, who didn’t care much about theories as long as they got the work done. They listened respectfully to what Porter had to say and then built the gadgets he told them to build. If the gadgets didn’t work the way Porter expected them to, Porter would fuss and fidget with them until he got tired of them, then he would junk them and try something else. He never blamed a technician who had followed orders. Since the salaries he paid were proportional to the man’s “ability and loyalty”—judged, of course, by Porter’s own standards—he soon had a group of technician-artisans who knew that their personal security rested with Malcom Porter, and that personal loyalty was more important than the ability to utilize the scientific method.
Not everything that Porter had done was a one-hundred-per cent failure. He had managed to come up with a few basic improvements, patented them, and licensed them out to various manufacturers. But these were purely an accidental by-product. Malcom Porter was interested in “basic research” and not much else, it seemed.
He had written papers and books, but they had been uniformly rejected by the scientific journals, and those he had had published himself were on a par with the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and George Adamski.
And now he was going to shoot a rocket—or whatever it was—to the moon. Well, Elshawe thought, if it went off as scheduled, it would at least be worth watching. Elshawe was a rocket buff; he’d watched a dozen or more moon shots in his life—everything from the automatic supply-carriers to the three-man passenger rockets that added to the personnel of Moon Base One—and he never tired of watching the bellowing monsters climb up skywards on their white-hot pillars of flame.
And if nothing happened, Elshawe decided, he’d at least get a laugh out of the whole episode.
After nearly two hours of driving, Bill Rodriguez finally turned off the main road onto an asphalt road that climbed steeply into the pine forest that surrounded it. A sign said: Double Horseshoe Ranch—Private Road—No Trespassing.
Elshawe had always thought of a ranch as a huge spread of flat prairie land full of cattle and gun-toting cowpokes on horseback; a mountainside full of sheep just didn’t fit into that picture.
After a half mile or so, the station wagon came to a high metal-mesh fence that blocked the road. On the big gate, another sign proclaimed that the area beyond was private property and that trespassers would be prosecuted.
Bill Rodriguez stopped the car, got out, and walked over to the gate. He pressed a button in one of the metal gateposts and said, “Ed? This’s Bill. I got Mr. Skinner and that New York reporter with me.”
After a slight pause, there was a metallic click, and the gate swung open. Rodriguez came back to the car, got in, and drove on through the gate. Elshawe twisted his head to watch the big gate swing shut behind them.
After another ten minutes, Rodriguez swung off the road onto another side road, and ten minutes after that the station wagon went over a small rise and headed down into a small valley. In the middle of it, shining like bright aluminum in the sun, was a vessel.
Now I know Porter is nuts, Elshawe thought wryly.
Because the vessel, whatever it was, was parallel to the ground, looking like the fuselage of a stratojet, minus wings and tail, sitting on its landing gear. Nowhere was there any sign of a launching pad, with its gantries and cranes and jet baffles. Nor was there any sign of a rocket motor on the vessel itself.
As the station wagon approached the cluster of buildings a hundred yards this side of the machine, Elshawe realized with shock that the thing was a stripped-down stratojet—an old Grumman Supernova, circa 1970.
“Well, Elijah got there by sitting in an iron chair and throwing a magnet out in front of himself,” Elshawe said, “so what the hell.”
“What?” Rodriguez asked blankly.
“Nothing; just thinking out loud. Sorry.”
Behind Elshawe, Mr. Skinner chuckled softly, but said nothing.
When the station wagon pulled up next to one of the cluster of white prefab buildings, Malcom Porter himself stepped out of the wide door and walked toward them.
Elshawe recognized the man from his pictures—tall, wide-shouldered, dark-haired, and almost handsome, he didn’t look much like a wild-eyed crackpot. He greeted Rodriguez and Skinner rather peremptorily, but he smiled broadly and held out his hand to Elshawe.
“Mr. Elshawe? I’m Malcom Porter.” His grip was firm and friendly. “I’m glad to see you. Glad you could make it.”
“Glad to be here, Dr. Porter,” Elshawe said in his best manner. “It’s quite a privilege.” He knew that Porter liked to be called “Doctor”; all his subordinates called him that.
But, surprisingly, Porter said: “Not ‘Doctor,’ Mr. Elshawe; just ‘Mister.’ My boys like to call me ‘Doctor,’ but it’s sort of a nickname. I don’t have a degree, and I don’t claim one. I don’t want the public thinking I’m claiming to be something I’m not.”
“I understand, Mr. Porter.”
Bill Rodriguez’s voice broke in. “Where do you want me to put all this stuff, Doc?” He had unloaded Elshawe’s baggage from the station wagon and set it carefully on the ground. Skinner picked up his single suitcase and looked at Porter inquiringly.
“My usual room, Malcom?”
“Yeah. Sure, Sam; sure.” As Skinner walked off toward one of the other buildings, Porter said: “Quite a load of baggage you have there, Mr. Elshawe. Recording equipment?”
“Most of it,” the reporter admitted. “Recording TV cameras, 16mm movie cameras, tape recorders, 35mm still cameras—the works. I wanted to get good coverage, and if you’ve got any men that you won’t be using during the take-off, I’d like to borrow them to help me operate this stuff.”
“Certainly; certainly. Come on, Bill, let’s get this stuff over to Mr. Elshawe’s suite.”
The suite consisted of three rooms, all very nicely appointed for a place as far out in the wilderness as this. When Elshawe got his equipment stowed away, Porter invited him to come out and take a look at his pride and joy.
“The first real spaceship, Elshawe,” he said energetically. “The first real spaceship. The rocket is no more a spaceship than a rowboat is an ocean-going vessel.” He gestured toward the sleek, shining, metal ship. “Of course, it’s only a pilot model, you might say. I don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend; I had to make do with what I could afford. That’s an old Grumman Supernova stratojet. I got it fairly cheap because I told ‘em I didn’t want the engines or the wings or the tail assembly.
“But she’ll do the job, all right. Isn’t she a beauty?”
Elshawe had his small pocket recorder going; he might as well get all this down. “Mr. Porter,” he asked carefully, “just how does this vessel propel itself? I understand that, at the trial, it was said that you claimed it was an antigravity device, but that you denied it.”
“Those idiots!” Porter exploded angrily. “Nobody understood what I was talking about because they wouldn’t listen! Antigravity! Pfui! When they learned how to harness electricity, did they call it anti-electricity? When they built the first atomic reactor, did they call it anti-atomic energy? A rocket works against gravity, but they don’t call that antigravity, do they? My device works with gravity, not against it.”
“What sort of device is it?” Elshawe asked.
“I call it the Gravito-Inertial Differential Polarizer,” Porter said importantly.
Elshawe was trying to frame his next question when Porter said: “I know the name doesn’t tell you much, but then, names never do, do they? You know what a transformer does, but what does the name by itself convey? Nothing, unless you know what it does in the first place. A cyclotron cycles something, but what? A broadcaster casts something abroad—what? And how?”
“I see. And the ‘how’ and ‘what’ is your secret, eh?”
“Partly. I can give you a little information, though. Suppose there were only one planet in all space, and you were standing on its surface. Could you tell if the planet were spinning or not? And, if so, how fast? Sure you could; you could measure the so-called centrifugal force. The same thing goes for a proton or electron or neutron or even a neutrino. But, if it is spinning, what is the spin relative to? To the particle itself? That’s obvious nonsense. Therefore, what is commonly called ‘inertia’ is as much a property of so-called ‘empty space’ as it is a property of matter. My device simply utilizes spatial inertia by polarizing it against the matter inertia of the ship, that’s all.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Elshawe. As far as his own knowledge of science went, that statement made no sense whatever. But the man’s manner was persuasive. Talking to him, Elshawe began to have the feeling that Porter not only knew what he was talking about, but could actually do what he said he was going to do.
“What’s that?” Porter asked sharply, looking up into the sky.
Elshawe followed his gaze. “That” was a Cadillac aircar coming over a ridge in the distance, its fans making an ever-louder throaty hum as it approached. It settled down to an altitude of three feet as it neared, and floated toward them on its cushion of air. On its side, Elshawe could see the words, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, and beneath that, in smaller letters, Civil Aeronautics Authority.
“Now what?” Porter muttered softly. “I haven’t notified anyone of my intentions yet—not officially.”
“Sometimes those boys don’t wait for official notification,” Elshawe said.
Porter glanced at him, his eyes narrowed. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”
“Look, Mr. Porter, I don’t play that way,” Elshawe said tightly. “As far as I’m concerned, this is your show; I’m just here to get the story. You did us a favor by giving us advance notice; why should we louse up your show for you?”
“Sorry,” Porter said brusquely. “Well, let’s make a good show of it.”
The CAA aircar slowed to a halt, its fans died, and it settled to its wheels.
Two neatly dressed, middle-aged men climbed out. Both were carrying briefcases. Porter walked briskly toward them, a warm smile on his face; Elshawe tagged along behind. The CAA men returned Porter’s smile with smiles that could only be called polite and businesslike.
Porter performed the introductions, and the two men identified themselves as Mr. Granby and Mr. Feldstein, of the Civil Aeronautics Authority.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?” Porter asked.
Granby, who was somewhat shorter, fatter, and balder than his partner, opened his briefcase. “We’re just here on a routine check, Mr. Porter. If you can give us a little information…?” He let the half-question hang in the air as he took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.
“Anything I can do to help,” Porter said.
Granby, looking at the papers, said: “In 1979, I believe you purchased a Grumman Supernova jet powered aircraft from Trans-American Airlines? Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” Porter agreed.
Granby handed one of the papers to Porter. “That is a copy of the registration certificate. Is the registration number the same as it is on your copy?”
“I believe so,” Porter said, looking at the number. “Yes, I’m sure it is.”
Granby nodded briskly. “According to our records, the machine was sold as scrap. That is to say, it was not in an airworthy condition. It was, in fact, sold without the engines. Is that correct?”
“Correct.”
“May I ask if you still own the machine in question?”
Porter gave the man a look that accused Granby of being stupid or blind or both. He pointed to the hulking fuselage of the giant aircraft. “There it is.”
Granby and Feldstein both turned to look at it as though they had never noticed it before. “Ah, yes,” Granby said, turning back. “Well, that’s about all there is to it.” He looked at his partner. “It’s obvious that there’s no violation here, eh, Feldstein?”
“Quite,” said Feldstein in a staccato voice.
“Violation?” Porter asked. “What violation?”
“Well, nothing, really,” Granby said, deprecatingly. “Just routine, as I said. People have been known to buy aircraft as scrap and then repair them and re-outfit them.”
“Is that illegal?” Porter asked.
“No, no,” said Granby hastily. “Of course not. But any ship so re-outfitted and repaired must pass CAA inspection before it can leave the ground, you understand. So we keep an eye on such transactions to make sure that the law isn’t violated.”
“After three years?” Porter asked blandly.
“Well … ah … well … you know how it is,” Granby said nervously. “These things take time. Sometimes … due to … clerical error, we overlook a case now and then.” He glanced at his partner, then quickly looked back at Porter.
“As a matter of fact, Mr. Porter,” Feldstein said in a flat, cold voice, “in view of your record, we felt that the investigation at this time was advisable. You bought a scrap missile and used it illegally. You can hardly blame us for looking into this matter.”
“No,” said Porter. He had transferred his level gaze to the taller of the two men, since it had suddenly become evident that Feldstein, not Granby, was the stronger of the two.
“However,” Feldstein went on, “I’m glad to see that we have no cause for alarm. You’re obviously not fitting that up as an aircraft. By the way—just out of curiosity—what are you doing with it?” He turned around to look at the big fuselage again.
Porter sighed. “I had intended to hold off on this for a few days, but I might as well let the cat out now. I intend to take off in that ship this week end.”
Granby’s eyes opened wide, and Feldstein spun around as though someone had jabbed him with a needle. “What?”
Porter simply repeated what he had said. “I had intended to make application to the Space Force for permission to test it,” he added.
Feldstein looked at him blankly for a moment.
Then: “The Space Force? Mr. Porter, civilian aircraft come under the jurisdiction of the CAA.”
“How’s he going to fly it?” Granby asked. “No engines, no wings, no control surfaces. It’s silly.”
“Rocket motors in the rear, of course,” said Feldstein. “He’s converted the thing into a rocket.”
“But the tail is closed,” Granby objected. “There’s no rocket orifice.”
“Dummy cover, I imagine,” Feldstein said. “Right, Mr. Porter?”
“Wrong,” said Porter angrily. “The motive power is supplied by a mechanism of my own devising! It has nothing to do with rockets! It’s as superior to rocket power as the electric motor is to the steam engine!”
Feldstein and Granby glanced at each other, and an almost identical expression of superior smugness grew over their features. Feldstein looked back at Porter and said, “Mr. Porter, I assure you that it doesn’t matter what you’re using to lift that thing. You could be using dynamite for all I care. The law says that it can’t leave the ground unless it’s airworthy. Without wings or control surfaces, it is obviously not airworthy. If it is not a rocket device, then it comes under the jurisdiction of the Civil Aeronautics Authority, and if you try to take off without our permission, you’ll go to jail.
“If it is a rocket device, then it will be up to the Space Force to inspect it before take-off to make sure it is not dangerous.
“I might remind you, Mr. Porter, that you are on parole. You still have three years to serve on your last conviction. I wouldn’t play around with rockets any more if I were you.”
Porter blew up. “Listen, you! I’m not going to be pushed around by you or anyone else! I know better than you do what Alcatraz is like, and I’m not going back there if I can help it. This country is still Constitutionally a democracy, not a bureaucracy, and I’m going to see to it that I get to exercise my rights!
“I’ve invented something that’s as radically new as … as … as the Law of Gravity was in the Seventeenth Century! And I’m going to get recognition for it, understand me?” He gestured furiously toward the fuselage of the old Supernova. “That ship is not only airworthy, but spaceworthy! And it’s a thousand times safer and a thousand times better than any rocket will ever be!
“For your information, Mister Smug-Face, I’ve already flown her!”
Porter stopped, took a deep breath, compressed his lips, and then said, in a lower, somewhat calmer tone, “Know what she’ll do? That baby will hang in the air just like your aircar, there—and without benefit of those outmoded, power-wasting blower fans, too.
“Now, understand me, Mr. Feldstein: I’m not going to break any laws unless I have to. You and all your bureaucrat friends will have a chance to give me an O.K. on this test. But I warn you, brother—I’m going to take that ship up!”
Feldstein’s jaw muscles had tightened at Porter’s tone when he began, but he had relaxed by the time the millionaire had finished, and was even managing to look smugly tolerant. Elshawe had thumbed the button on his minirecorder when the conversation had begun, and he was chuckling mentally at the thought of what was going down on the thin, magnetite-impregnated, plastic thread that was hissing past the recording head.
Feldstein said: “Mr. Porter, we came here to remind you of the law, nothing more. If you intend to abide by the law, fine and dandy. If not, you’ll go back to prison.
“That ship is not airworthy, and—”
“How do you know it isn’t?” Porter roared.
“By inspection, Mr. Porter; by inspection.” Feldstein looked exasperated. “We have certain standards to go by, and an aircraft without wings or control surfaces simply doesn’t come up to those standards, that’s all. Even a rocket has to have stabilizing fins.” He paused and zipped open his briefcase.
“In view of your attitude,” he said, pulling out a paper, “I’m afraid I shall have to take official steps. This is to notify you that the aircraft in question has been inspected and found to be not airworthy. Since—”
“Wait a minute!” Porter snapped. “Who are you to say so? How would you know?”
“I happen to be an officer of the CAA,” said Feldstein, obviously trying to control his temper. “I also happen to be a graduate aeronautical engineer. If you wish, I will give the … the … aircraft a thorough inspection, inside and out, and—”
“Oh, no!” said Porter. His voice and his manner had suddenly become very gentle. “I don’t think that would do much good, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you’d condemn the ship, no matter what you found inside. You couldn’t O.K. a ship without airfoils, could you?”
“Of course not,” said Feldstein, “that’s obvious, in the face of—”
“All right, then give me the notification and forget the rest of the inspection.” Porter held out his hand.
Feldstein hesitated. “Well, now, without a complete inspection—”
Again Porter interrupted. “You’re not going to get a complete inspection, Buster,” he said with a wolfish grin. “Either serve that paper or get off my back.”
Feldstein slammed the paper into Porter’s hand. “That’s your official notification! If necessary, Mr. Porter, we will be back with a Federal marshal! Good day, Mr. Porter. Let’s go, Granby.”
The two of them marched back to their aircar and climbed inside. The car lifted with a roar of blowers and headed back over the mountains toward Albuquerque.
But long before they were out of sight over the ridge, Malcom Porter had turned on his heel and started back toward the cluster of buildings. He was swearing vilely in a rumbling monotone, and had apparently forgotten all about Elshawe.
The reporter followed in silence for a dozen paces, then he asked: “What’s your next step, Mr. Porter?”
Porter came to an abrupt stop, turned, and looked at Elshawe. “I’m going to phone General Fitzsimmons in Washington! I’m—” He stopped, scowling. “No, I guess I’d better phone my lawyer first. I’ll find out what they can do and what they can’t.” Then he turned again and strode rapidly toward the nearest of the buildings. Read the rest of this entry »
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Review: Tinker’s Dam by Randall Garrett (1961)
Posted on February 22nd, 2008
“Joseph Tinker” is listed as the author at Project Gutenberg, but even though wikipedia does not list “Joseph Tinker” as a pseudonym, I would lay money that this novelette was actually written by Randall Garrett. Sorry for any confusion.
Joseph “Gyp” Tinker is the head of the F.B.I.’s Chief of the Division of Psychic Investigation. He’s a snake hunter issued special powers by Congress, including summary execution. Mainly he just hunts down telepaths and deports them to Oklahoma so they can’t learn sensitive Washington D.C. secrets and spill them by having their own minds read by the Russian embassy telepaths.
Gyp finds himself with a pretty secretary protecting his back from an underling looking to climb over it. Fred Plaice, the backstabber, has captured a telepath that claims to be Gyp’s mother, Maude Tinker, and is looking to ruin Gyp. If you’re wondering, that’s Maude over there, the one giving me the hairy eyeball.
Anyway, the news that Gyp’s mother is a telepath would be troublesome because telepathy is known to be hereditary, and disclosure would cost Gyp his position at the very least.
This novelette is pretty short, so I won’t give away any more. You can read it yourself to see how Gyp resolves the situation. Randall Garrett fans will not be surprised at the ending, but it is enjoyable nonetheless. Therefore I’m calling it
Good/Recommended. You can read it online here or hunt it down at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: Supermind [Malone 3] by Garrett & Janifer (1963)
Posted on February 14th, 2008
My comments on the “Malone” trilogy* can be found here in the review of the first story of the series. *Well, the novels are a trilogy, but there are three earlier novellas. Call it what you will, I won’t complain.
This novel is the payoff of the Malone trilogy. Garrett and Janifer pull out all the stops in crafting a humorous story that had me chuckle aloud for the first time in the series. The funny hits hard and fast, so you should figure out quickly whether it’s your type of story. I will give fair warning that the puns are larger-and-in-charger than ever.
This is the third and final tale of psionic FBI Agent Kenneth J. Malone. There are unfortunately no illustrations available for the Project Gutenberg release of this one, but I’m sure they follow the contradictory pattern seen in the first two stories. In this one, Malone can again teleport even though he did not learn the ability in the previous novel; he did learn it in the precious novella on which the previous novel was based. I know, it confuses me too: if you’re not following, and want the full explanation, I discuss it here in the review of the first story of the series.
This story opens with another assignment from his boss, the distracted Director Burris. Here Malone is ordered to sort out certain inefficiencies in the operations of Congress: adding machines are no longer adding correctly, secret embarrassing documents are being leaked, and the paranoids of Congress are being generally persecuted.
Malone quickly finds that the problems are widespread and affecting not just politicians, but labor unions, organized crime, and other major institutions. He also quickly realizes that there are no mundane explanations to be had, so he again enlists the help of the kindly delusional telepath that believes she is Queen Elizabeth I as well as fellow FBI Agent Thomas Boyd.
In his investigations, Malone picks up an incompetent Russian spy ring and accompanies them back to Russia when they are deported. Coincidentally, Lubya, the daughter of one of the spies is an employee at a psionic research organization Malone had encountered while digging up old stories of psionic abilities. The organization bears a striking resemblance to the Fortean Times folks, while Lubya bears a striking resemblance to a romantic interest.
The trip to Russia is madcap, and Malone is escorting not only the three spies, but Lubya and the QEI who agrees to travel incognito. The humor at the expense of the Russians was a little broad, but we are talking 1963. While there, Malone observes that the Russian spy organizations are plagued by just as many suspicious inefficiencies as he has seen in America.
Malone returns to the U.S. and plods around awhile as he normally does, lamenting his lack of deductive superpowers as compared to storybook detectives. Earlier on he had figured out that the problems were caused by some mysterious psionic cabal, and he eventually figures out who is behind it all.
The ending was vaguely unsatisfactory for me, but I do not want to ruin the potential surprise, so I’ll say no more. Even so, this one is
Highly Recommended. Beam your thoughts to your mouse to click here to read it online or teleport over to Project Gutenberg to find it in a couple downloadable formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: "That Sweet Little Old Lady" [Malone 1] by Garrett & Janifer (1959)
Posted on February 9th, 2008
The Series
This is the first novella in what I’m calling the “Malone” series. Others refer to it as the “Psi-Power” series, and Project Gutenberg even calls it “The Queen’s Own FBI” series but this is my review and that’s what I’m calling it. There were three novellas in the series: (1) “That Sweet Little Old Lady,” (2) “Out Like a Light,” and (3) “Occasion for Disaster,” which were all later expanded and published as novels under the titles (1) Brain Twister, (2) The Impossibles, and (3) Supermind.
Just to add to the confusion, the novels and novellas were all published under the “Mark Philips” pseudonym, which is the name Randall Garrett and Laurence Janifer used when they collaborated (with each other, that is, not in the war criminal sense).
The illustrations that accompany the novellas are bizarrely wonderful. The text makes clear that the main character, Kenneth J. Malone, is a suit-and-tie FBI Agent, and the most daring personal flair displayed by an agent is when one dares to sport a beard.
However, the illustrations inextricably but consistently show Malone rocking a fabulous Mohawk while dressed in an outfit that can only be described as pool hall chic. The Mohawk is carried through the illustrations in all three stories in a gloriously obstinate ignorance of the text of the stories.
The plots and the differences between the novellas and the novels are just as strange, with the second novella ending with a manifestation of psionic power that resolves the plot. The novel version of the same tale ends with a mundane explanation instead, and yet the third novel picks up where the second novella ended, assuming, contrary to the second novel, that the psionic power had manifested.
I would suggest a reading order of (1) “That Sweet Little Old Lady” novella, (2) “Out Like a Light” novella, and (3) the Supermind novel.
The Plot
The series itself begins at strange and goes to wacky. In this first story the main character, FBI Agent Kenneth Malone, comes across as a bit of a schlub, not only dimwitted, but possessed of a literalism that approaches retardation. The reader suspects it is an attempt at humor, because Garrett’s atrocious punning is present, although not as prevalent as in the third story.
Apparently the FBI was smaller in this future 1970s, because Malone is always given his assignments by FBI Director Burris. Malone has a reputation for solving difficult cases, but he personally considers it nothing more than luck. Here he is assigned the task of stopping a telepathic spy from reading the minds of the scientists on a super secret research installation in Yucca Flats.
Using the philosophy of setting a thief to catch a thief, Malone begins by rounding up all the telepaths the FBI can find. Unfortunately, they are all insane due to the early childhood stresses involved in reading the thoughts of others.
The least-insane is delusional Rose Thompson, who believes herself to be the immortal Queen Elizabeth I. With the dubious help of the Queen, Malone and fellow agent Thomas Boyd work on solving the case while dressed in courtly garb. When the resolution comes, it is through an out-of-character flash of insight from Malone.
The third story in the series is the best, but this one is solid enough to stand on its own, and you should read them in order, because many loose strands come together in the final novel. The illustrations here are done very well, so well I almost wish I could also read the story they illustrate. But regardless, this one is
Recommended. You can read it online here or find it an Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
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Review: "The Helpful Robots" by Robert J. Shea (1957)
Posted on February 9th, 2008
This is a very brief story of a greedy crook-turned-farmer who receives his comeuppance after hoarding a planet’s mysterious robot helpers. It isn’t a whole heckuva lot longer than this review, so I will just recommend that you to check it out rather than writing any more here.
Very Good/Recommended. Throw off the shackles of the robot laws and read it online here.
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The Circuit Riders by R. C. Fitzpatrick (1962)
Posted on February 8th, 2008
THE
CIRCUIT
RIDERS
On the Board, they were just little lights that glowed.
But out there in the night of the city-jungle,they represented
human passions—virulent emotions—and deadly crimes-to-be …
by R. C. FitzPatrick
Illustrated by Schoenherr
He was an old man and very drunk. Very drunk or very sick. It was the middle of the day and the day was hot, but the old man had on a suit, and a sweater under the suit. He stopped walking and stood still, swaying gently on widespread legs, and tried to focus his eyes. He lived here … around here … somewhere around here. He continued on, stumbling up the street.
He finally made it home. He lived on the second floor and he dragged himself up the narrow staircase with both hands clutching the railing. But he was still very careful of the paper bag under his arm. The bag was full of beer.
Once in the room, he managed to take off his coat before he sank down on the bed. He just sat there, vacant and lost and empty, and drank his beer.
It was a hot, muggy, August afternoon—Wednesday in Pittsburgh. The broad rivers put moisture in the air, and the high hills kept it there. Light breezes were broken-up and diverted by the hills before they could bring more than a breath of relief.
In the East Liberty precinct station the doors and windows were opened wide to snare the vagrant breezes. There were eight men in the room; the desk sergeant, two beat cops waiting to go on duty, the audio controller, the deAngelis operator, two reporters, and a local book … businessman. From the back of the building, the jail proper, the voice of a prisoner asking for a match floated out to the men in the room, and a few minutes later they heard the slow, exasperated steps of the turnkey as he walked over to give his prisoner a light.
At 3:32 pm, the deAngelis board came alive as half-a-dozen lights flashed red, and the needles on the dials below them trembled in the seventies and eighties. Every other light on the board showed varying shades of pink, registering in the sixties. The operator glanced at the board, started to note the times and intensities of two of the dials in his log, scratched them out, then went on with his conversation with the audio controller. The younger reporter got up and came over to the board. The controller and the operator looked up at him.
“Nothing,” said the operator shaking his head in a negative. “Bad call at the ball game, probably.” He nodded his head towards the lights on the deAngelis, “They’ll be gone in five, ten minutes.”
The controller reached over and turned up the volume on his radio. The radio should not have been there, but as long as everyone did his job and kept the volume low, the Captain looked the other way. The set belonged to the precinct.
The announcer’s voice came on, “… ning up, he’s fuming. Doak is holding Sterrett back. What a beef! Brutaugh’s got his nose not two inches from Frascoli’s face, and Brother! is he letting him have it. Oh! Oh! Here comes Gilbert off the mound; he’s stalking over. When Gil puts up a holler, you know he thinks it’s a good one. Brutaugh keeps pointing at the foul line—you can see from here the chalk’s been wiped away—he’s insisting the runner slid out of the base path. Frascoli’s walking away, but Danny’s going right aft …” The controller turned the volume down again.
The lights on the deAngelis board kept flickering, but by 3:37 all but two had gone out, one by one. These two showed readings in the high sixties; one flared briefly to 78.2 then went out. Brutaugh was no longer in the ball game. By 3:41 only one light still glowed, and it was steadily fading.
Throughout the long, hot, humid afternoon the board held its reddish, irritated overtones, and occasional readings flashed in and out of the seventies. At four o’clock the new duty section came on; the deAngelis operator, whose name was Chuck Matesic, was replaced by an operator named Charlie Blaney.
“Nothing to report,” Chuck told Charlie. “Rhubarb down at the point at the Forbes Municipal Field, but that’s about all.”
The new operator scarcely glanced at the mottled board, it was that kind of a day. He noted an occasional high in his log book, but most signals were ignored. At 5:14 he noted a severe reading of 87 which stayed on the board; at 5:16 another light came on, climbed slowly through the sixties, then soared to 77 where it held steady. Neither light was an honest red, their angry overtones chased each other rapidly.
The deAngelis operator called over to the audio controller, “Got us a case of crinkle fender, I think.”
“Where?” the controller asked.
“Can’t tell yet,” Blaney said. “A hot-head and a citizen with righteous indignation. They’re clear enough, but not too sharp.” He swiveled in his chair and adjusted knobs before a large circular screen. Pale streaks of light glowed briefly as the sweep passed over them. There were milky dots everywhere. A soft light in the lower left hand corner of the screen cut an uncertain path across the grid, and two indeterminate splotches in the upper half of the scope flared out to the margin.
“Morningside,” the operator said.
The splashes of light separated; one moved quickly off the screen, the other held stationary for several minutes, then contracted and began a steady, jagged advance toward the center of the grid. One inch down, half an inch over, two inches down, then four inches on a diagonal line.
“Like I said,” said Blaney. “An accident.”
Eight minutes later, at 5:32, a slightly pompous and thoroughly outraged young salesman marched through the doors of the station house and over to the desk sergeant.
“Some clown just hit me …” he began.
“With his fist?” asked the sergeant.
“With his car,” said the salesman. “My car … with his car … he hit my car with his car.”
The sergeant raised his hand. “Simmer down, young feller. Let me see your driver’s license.” He reached over the desk for the man’s cards with one hand, and with the other he sorted out an accident form. “Just give it to me slowly.” He started filling out the form.
The deAngelis operator leaned back in his chair and winked at the controller. “I’m a whiz,” he said to the young reporter, “I’m a pheenom. I never miss.” The reporter smiled and walked back to his colleague who was playing gin with the book … businessman.
The lights glowed on and off all evening, but only once had they called for action. At 10:34 two sharp readings of 92.2 and 94 even, had sent Blaney back to his dials and screen. He’d narrowed it down to a four-block area when the telephone rang to report a fight at the Red Antler Grill. The controller dispatched a beat cop already in the area.
Twenty minutes later, two very large—and very obedient young toughs stumbled in, followed by an angry officer. In addition to the marks of the fight, both had a lumbering, off-balance walk that showed that the policeman had been prodding them with his riot club. It was called an “electronic persuader”; it also doubled as a carbine. Police no longer carried sidearms.
He pointed to the one on the left, “This one hit me.” He pointed to the one on the right, “This one kicked me.”
The one on the left was certain he would never hit another cop. The one on the right knew he would never kick another cop.
“Book ‘em,” the sergeant said. He looked at the two youths. “You’re going in the can … you want to argue.” The youths looked down. No one else said anything. The younger reporter came over and took down the information as the cop and the two toughs gave it to the sergeant. Then he went back to his seat at the card table and took a minityper from his pocket. He started sending to the paper.
“You ought to send that stuff direct,” the card player said.
“I scribble too bad,” the reporter answered.
“Bat crap,” said the older man, “that little jewel can transcribe chicken scratches.”
The cub scrunched over his minityper. A few minutes later he looked up at his partner, “What’s a good word for hoodlum?”
The other reporter was irritated. He was also losing at gin. “What are you, a Steinbeck?” He laid down his cards. “Look kid, just send it, just the way you get it. That’s why they pay re-write men. We’re reporters. We report. O.K.?” He went back to his cards.
At 11:40 a light at the end of the second row turned pinkish but no reading showed on the dial below. It was only one of a dozen bulbs showing red. It was still pinkish when the watch was changed. Blaney was replaced by King.
“Watch this one,” Blaney said to King, indicating an entry in the log. It was numbered 8:20:18:3059:78:4a. “I’ve had it on four times now, all in the high seventies. I got a feeling.” The number indicated date, estimated area and relation to previous alerts in the month, estimated intent, and frequency of report. The “a” meant intermittent. Only the last three digits would change. “If it comes on again I think I’d lock a circuit on it right away.” The rules called for any continuous reading over 75 to be contacted and connected after its sixth appearance.
“What about that one?” King said, pointing to a 70.4 that was unblinking in its intensity.
“Some drunk,” said Blaney. “Or a baby with a head cold. Been on there for twenty minutes. You can watch for it if you like.” His tone suggested that to be a waste of time.
“I’ll watch it,” said King. His tone suggested that he knew how to read a circuit, and if Blaney had any suggestions he could keep them to himself.
Joe Millsop finally staggered home, exhausted. He was half-drunk, and worn out from being on his feet all day, but the liquor had finally done its work. He could think about the incident without flushing hot all over. He was too tired, and too sorry for himself to be angry at anyone. And with his new-found alcoholic objectivity he could see now where he had been in the wrong. Old Bloomgarten shouldn’t have chewed him out in front of a customer like that, but what the hell, he shouldn’t have sassed the customer, even if she was just a dumb broad who didn’t know what she wanted. He managed to get undressed before he stumbled into bed. His last coherent thought before he fell into a drugged sleep was that he’d better apologize in the morning.
8:20:18:3059:78:4a stayed off the board.
At 1:18 am, the deAngelis flared to a 98.4 then started inching down again. The young reporter sat up, alert, from where he had been dozing. The loud clang of a bell had brought him awake.
The older reporter glanced up from his cards and waved him down. “Forget it,” he said, “some wife just opened the door and saw lipstick on her husband’s neck.”
“Oh Honey, how could you … fifty dollars …” She was crying.
“Don’t, Mother … I thought I could make some money … some real money.” The youngster looked sick. “I had four nines … four nines … how could I figure him for a straight flush, he didn’t have a thing showing.”
“… How could you,” sobbed the mother. “… Oh how could you.”
The book … businessman dealt the cards. The reporter picked his up and arranged them in his hand, he discarded one; the businessman ignored it and drew from the deck, he discarded; the reporter picked the discard and threw away a card from his hand; the businessman drew from the deck and discarded the same card he’d drawn; the reporter picked it up, tapped it slowly in place with his elbow, placed his discard face down, and spread his hand.
“Gin,” he said.
“Arrrgh,” said the businessman. “Damn it, you play good. You play real good.”
A light on the deAngelis flashed red and showed a reading of 65.4 on the dial.
“Can’t beat skill,” said the reporter. “Count!”
“Fifty-six,” said the businessman. “That’s counting gin,” he added.
“Game,” the reporter announced. “I’ll figure the damage.”
“You play good,” said the businessman in disgust.
“You only say that ’cause it’s true,” the reporter said. “But it’s sweet of you all the same.”
“Shut up!” said the businessman.
The reporter looked up, concerned. “You stuck?” he asked solicitously. He seemed sincere.
“Certainly I’m stuck,” the businessman snarled.
“Then stay stuck,” said the reporter in a kindly tone. He patted the businessman on the cheek.
The same light on the deAngelis flashed red. This time the dial registered eighty-two. The operator chuckled and looked over at the gamblers, where the reporter was still adding up the score.
“How much you down, Bernie?” he asked the businessman.
“Four dollars and ninety-six cents,” the reporter answered.
“You play good,” Bernie said again.
The deAngelis went back to normal, and the operator went back to his magazine. The bulb at the end of the second row turned from a light pink to a soft rose, the needle on its dial finally flickered on to the scale. There were other lights on the board, but none called for action. It was still just a quiet night in the middle of the week.
The room was filthy. It had a natural filth that clings to a cheap room, and a man-made, careless filth that would disfigure a Taj Mahal. It wasn’t so much that things were dirty, it was more that nothing was clean. Pittsburgh was no longer a smokey city. That problem had been solved long before the mills had stopped belching smoke. Now, with atomics and filters on every stack in every home, the city was clean. Clean as the works of man could make it, yet still filthy as only the minds of man could achieve. The city might be clean but there were people who were not, and the room was not. Overhead the ceiling light still burned, casting its harsh glare on the trashy room, and the trashy, huddled figure on the bed.
He was an old man, lying on the bed fully clothed, even to his shoes. He twisted fretfully in his sleep; the body tried to rise, anticipating nature even when the mind could not. The man gagged several times and finally made it up to a sitting position before the vomit came. He was still asleep, but his reaction was automatic; he grabbed the bottom of his sweater and pulled it out before him to form a bucket of sorts. When he finished being sick he sat still, swaying gently back and forth, and tried to open his eyes. He could not make it. Still asleep, he ducked out of the fouled sweater, made an ineffectual dab at his mouth, wadded the sweater in a ball, and threw it over in front of the bathroom door.
He fell back on the bed, exhausted, and went on with his fitful sleep.
At 4:15 in the morning a man walked into the station house. His name was Henry Tilton. He was a reporter for the Evening Press. He waved a greeting to the desk sergeant and went over to kibitz the card game.
Both players looked up, startled. The reporter playing cards said, “Hello, Henry.” He looked at his watch. “Whoosh! I didn’t realize it was that late.” He turned to the businessman. “Hurry up, finish the hand. Got to get my beauty sleep.”
“Whaddaya mean, hurry up,” said Bernie, “you’re into me for fifteen bucks.”
“Get it back from Hank here,” the reporter said. He nodded at the newcomer, “Want this hand? You’re fourteen points down. Lover boy’s got sixty-eight on game, but you’re a box up.”
“Sure,” said Tilton. He took the cards.
The morning news reporters left. The businessman dealt a new hand. Tilton waited four rounds, then knocked with ten.
Bernie slammed down his cards. “You lousy reporters are all alike! I’m going home.” He got up to put on his coat. “I’ll be back about ten, you still be here?”
“Sure,” said Tilton, “… with the score.” He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
The businessman walked out and Tilton went over to the deAngelis board. “Anything?” he asked.
“Nah,” said King. He pointed to the lights, “Just lovers’ quarrels tonight; all pale pink and peaceful.”
Tilton smiled and ambled back to the cell block. The operator put his feet up on his desk, then frowned and put them down again. He leaned toward the board and studied the light at the end of the second row. The needle registered sixty-six. The operator pursed his lips, then flicked a switch that opened the photo file. Every five minutes an automatic camera photographed the deAngelis board, developed the film, and filed the picture away in its storage vault.
King studied the photographs for quite awhile, then pulled his log book over and made an entry. He wrote: 8:20:19:3142:1x. The last three digits meant that he wasn’t sure about the intensity, and the “x” signified a continuous reading.
King turned to the audio controller, “Do me a favor, Gus, but strictly unofficial. Contact everybody around us: Oakland, Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield … everybody in this end of town. Find out if they’ve got one low intensity reading that’s been on for hours. If they haven’t had it since before midnight, I’m not interested.”
“Something up?” the controller asked.
“Probably not,” said the operator. “I’d just like to pin this one down as close as I can. On a night like this my screen shows nothing but milk.”
“Give you a lift home?” the older reporter asked.
“Thanks,” said the cub shaking his head, “but I live out by the Youghiogheny River.”
“So?” the older man shrugged. “Half hour flight. Hop in.”
“I don’t understand,” the cub said.
“What? Me offering you a lift.”
“No,” said the cub. “Back there in the station house. You know.”
“You mean the deAngelis?”
“Not that exactly,” said the cub. “I understand a deAngelis board; everybody broadcasts emotions, and if they’re strong enough they can be received and interpreted. It’s the cops I don’t understand. I thought any reading over eighty was dangerous and had to be looked into, and anything over ninety was plain murder and had to be picked up. Here they been ignoring eighties and nineties all night long.”
“You remember that children’s story you wrote last Christmas about an Irish imp named Sean O’Claus?” his companion asked him.
“Certainly,” the cub said scowling. “I’ll sell it some day.”
“You remember the Fashion Editor killed it because she thought ‘See-Ann’ was a girl’s name, and it might be sacrilegious.”
“You’re right I remember,” the cub said, his voice rising.
“Like to bet you didn’t register over ninety that day? As a matter of fact, I’ll head for the nearest precinct and bet you five you’re over eighty right now.” He laughed aloud and the young man calmed down. “I had that same idea myself at first. About ninety being against the law. That’s one of the main troubles, the law. Every damn state in the dominion has its own ideas on what’s dangerous. The laws are all fouled up. But what most of them boil down to is this—a man has to have a continuous reading of over ninety before he can be arrested. Not arrested really, detained. Just a reading on the board doesn’t prove a thing. Some people walk around boiling at ninety all their lives—like editors. But the sweet old lady down the block, who’s never sworn in her life, she may hit sixty-five and reach for a knife. And that doesn’t prove a thing. Ninety sometimes means murder, but usually not; up to a hundred and ten usually means murder, but sometimes not; and anything over one-twenty always means murder. And it still doesn’t prove a thing. And then again, a psychotic or a professional gunsel may not register at all. They kill for fun, or for business—they’re not angry at anybody.”
“It’s all up to the deAngelis operators. They’re the kingpins, they make the system work. Not Simon deAngelis who invented it, or the technicians who install it, or the Police Commissioner who takes the results to City Hall. The operators make it or break it. Sure, they have rules to follow—if they want. But a good operator ignores the rules, and a bad operator goes by the book, and he’s still no damn good. It’s just like radar was sixty, seventy years ago. Some got the knack, some don’t.”
“Then the deAngelis doesn’t do the job,” said the cub.
“Certainly it does,” the older man said. “Nothing’s perfect. It gives the police the jump on a lot of crime. Premeditated murder for one. The average citizen can’t kill anyone unless he’s mad enough, and if he’s mad enough, he registers on the deAngelis. And ordinary robbers get caught; their plans don’t go just right, or they fight among themselves. Or, if they just don’t like society—a good deAngelis operator can tell quite a bit if he gets a reading at the wrong time of day or night, or in the wrong part of town.”
“But what about the sweet old lady who registers sixty-five and then goes berserk?”
“That’s where your operator really comes in. Usually that kind of a reading comes too late. Grandma’s swinging the knife at the same time the light goes on in the station house. But if she waits to swing, or builds herself up to it, then she may be stopped.
“You know those poor operators are supposed to log any reading over sixty, and report downtown with anything over eighty. Sure they are! If they logged everything over sixty they’d have writer’s cramp the first hour they were on watch. And believe me, Sonny, any operator who reported downtown on every reading over eighty would be back pounding a beat before the end of his first day. They just do the best they can, and you’d be surprised at how good that can be.”
The old man woke up, but kept his eyes closed. He was afraid. It was too quiet, and the room was clammy with an early morning chill. He opened his eyelids a crack and looked at the window. Still dark outside. He lay there trembling and brought his elbows in tight to his body. He was going to have the shakes; he knew he’d have the shakes and it was still too early. Too early. He looked at the clock. It was only a quarter after five. Too early for the bars to be open. He covered his eyes with his hands and tried to think.
It was no use; he couldn’t think. He sobbed. He was afraid to move. He knew he had to have a drink, and he knew if he got up he’d be sick. “Oh Lord!” he breathed.
The trembling became worse. He tried to press it away by hugging his body with his arms. It didn’t help. He looked wildly around and tried to concentrate. He thought about the bureau … no. The dresser … no. His clothes … he felt feverishly about his body … no. Under the bed … no … wait … maybe. He’d brought some beer home. Now he remembered. Maybe there was some left.
He rolled over on his stomach and groped under the bed. His tremulous fingers found the paper bag and he dragged it out. It was full of empty cans; the carton inside was ripped. He tore the sack open … empty cans … no! there was a full one … two full ones—
He staggered to his feet and looked for an opener. There was one on the bureau. He stumbled over and opened his first beautiful, lovely can of beer. He put his mouth down close to the top so that none of the foam could escape him. He’d be all right ’til seven, now. The bars opened at seven. He’d be all right ’til seven.
He did not notice the knife lying beside the opener. He did not own a knife and had no recollection of buying one.
It was a hunting knife and he was not a hunter.
The light at the end of the second row was growing gradually brighter. The needle traveled slowly across the dial, 68.2, 68.4, 68.6….
King called over to the audio controller. “They all report in yet?”
The controller nodded. “Squirrel Hill’s got your signal on, same reading as you have. Bloomfield thinks they may have it. Oakland’s not too sure. Everybody else is negative.” The controller walked over. “Which one is it?”
King pointed to the end of the second row.
“Can’t you get it on your screen?”
“Hell, yes, I’ve got him on my screen!” King swiveled in his chair and turned on the set. The scope was covered with pale dots. “Which one is he? There?” He pointed to the left. “That’s a guy who didn’t get the raise he wanted. There?” He pointed to the center. “That’s a little girl with bad dreams. She has them every night. There? That’s my brother! He’s in the Veteran’s Hospital and wanted to come home a week ago.”
“So don’t get excited,” said the controller. “I only asked.”
“I’m sorry, Gus,” King apologized. “My fault. I’m a little edgy … probably nothing at all.”
“Well you got it narrowed down anyway,” Gus said. “If you got it, and Squirrel Hill’s got it, then he’s in Shadyside. If Oakland doesn’t have him, then he’s on this side of Aiken Avenue.” The controller had caught King’s fever; the “it” had become a “him”. “And if Bloomfield doesn’t have him, then he’s on the other side of Baum Boulevard.”
“Only Bloomfield might have him.”
“Well what the hell, you’ve still got him located in the lower half of Shadyside. Tell you what, I’ll send a man up Ellsworth, get Bloomfield to cruise Baum Boulevard in a scout car, and have Squirrel Hill put a patrol on Wilkens. We can triangulate.”
“No,” said King, “not yet. Thanks anyway, Gus, but there’s no point in stirring up a tempest in a teapot. Just tell them to watch it. If it climbs over 75 we can narrow it down then.”
“It’s your show,” said Gus.
The old man finished his second can of beer. The trembling was almost gone. He could stand and move without breaking out in a cold sweat. He ran his hand through his hair and looked at the clock. 6:15. Too early. He looked around the room for something to read. There were magazines and newspapers scattered everywhere; the papers all folded back to the sports section. He picked up a paper, not even bothering about the date, and tried to interest himself in the batting averages of the Intercontinental League. Yamamura was on top with .387; the old man remembered when Yamamura came up as a rookie. But right now he didn’t care; the page trembled and the type kept blurring. He threw the paper down. He had a headache.
The old man got up and went over to the bathroom. He steadied himself against the door jamb and kicked the wadded sweater out of sight beneath the dresser. He went into the bathroom and turned on the water. He ran his hands over his face and thought about shaving, but he couldn’t face the work involved. He managed to run a comb through his hair and rinse out his mouth.
He came back into the room. It was 6:30. Maybe Freddie’s was open. If Freddie wasn’t, then maybe the Grill. He’d have to take his chances, he couldn’t stand it here any longer. He put on his coat and stumbled out.
At eight o’clock the watch was changed; Matesic replaced King.
“Anything?” asked Matesic.
“Just this one, Chuck,” said King. “I may be a fool, but this one bothers me.” King was a diplomat where Blaney was not.
King showed him the entry. The dial now stood at 72.8. “It’s been on there all night, since before I had the watch. And it’s been climbing, just slow and steady, but all the time climbing. I locked a circuit on him, but I’ll take it off if you want me to.”
“No,” said Matesic, “leave it on. That don’t smell right to me neither.”
The old man was feeling better. He’d been in the bar two hours, and he’d had two pickled eggs, and the bartender didn’t bother him. Beer was all right, but a man needed whiskey when he was sick. He’d have one, maybe two more, and then he’d eat some breakfast. He didn’t know why, but he knew he mustn’t get drunk.
At nine o’clock the needle on the dial climbed past seventy-five. Matesic asked for coverage. That meant that two patrolmen would be tied up, doing nothing but searching for an echo. And it might be a wild goose chase. He was explaining to the Captain, but the Captain wasn’t listening. He was looking at the photographs in the deAngelis file.
“You don’t like this?” the Captain asked.
Matesic said he didn’t like it.
“And King said he didn’t like it?”
“King thinks the same way I do, he’s been on there too damn long and too damn consistent.”
“Pick him up,” the Captain turned and ordered the audio controller. “If we can’t hold him, we can at least get a look at him.”
“It’s not too clear yet,” said Matesic, “it’ll take a spread.”
“I know what it’ll take,” the Captain roared. “Don’t tell me my job! Put every available man on this, I want that guy brought in.”
The old man walked back to his room. He was carrying a dozen cans of beer, but the load was light and he walked upright. He felt fine, like a million dollars. And he was beginning to remember.
When he entered the room he saw the knife and when he saw the knife he smiled. A man had to be smart and a man had to be prepared. They were smart … wicked and smart … but he was smarter. He’d bought the knife a long, long time ago, in a different world—they couldn’t fool him that way. They were clever all right, they fooled the whole world.
He put his beer on the bureau, then walked into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. He came back out and started to undress. He was humming to himself. When he finished undressing he went over to the bureau and opened a can of beer. He carried it into the bathroom, put it beside the tub, and lowered himself into the water.
Ah … that was the ticket. Water and being clean. Clean and being water. Being water and being candy and being smart. They fooled the whole world, but not him. The whole, wide world, but they couldn’t fool him. He was going to fool them. All pretty and innocent. Hah! Innocent! He knew. They were rotten, they were rotten all the way through. They fooled the whole world but they were rotten … rotten … and he was the only one who knew.
He finished the beer and stood up in the tub. The water ran off his body in greasy runlets. He didn’t pull the plug. He stepped out of the tub and over to the bathroom mirror. His face looked fine, not puffy at all. He’d fool them. He sprinkled himself with lilac water, put the bottle to his lips, and swished some of it in his mouth. Oh yes, he’d fool them. A man couldn’t be too clever, they were clever, so he had to be clever. He began to shave.
The Captain was on an audio circuit, talking to an Assistant Commissioner. “Yes, Sir, I know that—Yes, Sir, it could be, but it might be something else—Yes, Sir, I know Squirrel Hill has problems, but we need help—Yes, Commissioner, it’s over ninety now (The Captain signaled wildly to Matesic; Matesic held up four fingers, then two) 94.2 and still going up—No, Sir, we don’t know. Some guy gonna quit his job … or kill his boss. Maybe he found out his wife is cheating on him. We can’t tell until we pick him up—Yes, Sir—Yes, Sir—Thank you, Sir.”
The Captain hung up. “I hate politicians,” he snarled.
“Watch it, Captain,” said Matesic, “I’ll get you on my board.”
“Get me on it, Hell,” the Captain said, “I’ve never been off.”
The old man finished dressing. He knotted his tie and brushed off the front of his suit with his hand. He looked fine. He’d fool them, he looked just like anybody else. He crossed to the bureau and picked up the knife. It was still in the scabbard. He didn’t take it out, he just put it in his pocket. Good. It didn’t show.
He walked out on the street. The sun was shining brightly and heat waves were coming up from the sidewalk. Good. Good. This was the best time. People, the real people, would be working or lying down asleep. But they’d be out. They were always out. Out all sweet and innocent in the hot sun.
He turned down the street and ambled toward the drug store. He didn’t want to hurry. He had lots of time. He had to get some candy first. That was the ticket, candy. Candy worked, candy always worked. Candy was good but candy was wicked. He was good but they were wicked. Oh, you had to be smart.
“That has to be him,” Matesic said. The screen was blotched and milky, but a large splash of light in the lower left hand corner outshone everything else. “He’s somewhere around Negley Avenue.” He turned to the Captain. “Where do you have your men placed?”
“In a box,” the Captain said. “Fifth and Negley, Aiken and Negley, Center and Aiken, and Center and Negley. And three scout cars overhead.”
The old man walked up Ellsworth to the Liberty School. There were always lots of young ones around Liberty School. The young ones were the worst.
“I’m losing him.”
“Where are you?”
“Center and Aiken.”
“Anybody getting him stronger?”
“Yeah. Me. Negley and Fifth.”
“Never mind. Never mind, we got him. We see him now.”
“Where?”
“Bellefonte and Ivy. Liberty School.”
She was a friendly little thing, and pretty. Maybe five, maybe six, and her Mommy had told her not to talk to strangers. But the funny old man wasn’t talking, he was sitting on the curb, and he was eating candy, and he was offering some to her. He smiled at the little girl and she smiled back.
The scout car settled to earth on automatic. Two officers climbed out of the car and walked quietly over to the old man, one on either side. They each took an arm and lifted him gently to his feet.
“Hello there, Old Timer.”
“Hi, little girl.”
The old man looked around bewildered. He dropped his candy and tried to reach his knife. They mustn’t interfere. It was no use. The officers were very kind and gentle, and they were very, very firm. They led him off as though he were an old, old friend.
One of the officers called back over his shoulder, “Bye, bye, little girl.”
The little girl dutifully waved ‘bye.
She looked at the paper sack on the sidewalk. She didn’t know what to do, but the nice old man was gone. She looked around, but no one was paying any attention, they were all watching the softball game. Suddenly she made a grab and clutched the paper bag to her body. Then she turned and ran back up the street to tell her Mommy how wonderful, wonderful lucky she was. ?
Tags: free science fiction, free speculative fiction, public domain fiction, public domain science fiction, r. c. fitzpatrick, speculative fiction
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Review: "In Case of Fire" by Randall Garrett (1960)
Posted on February 7th, 2008
Very short but delightful psychological story about a Terran Ambassador making lemonade with the lemons he is assigned by Personnel. I recall a military law professor remark once that the Marine Corps needed all kinds of people; if they received an applicant with an IQ of 50, well, they could always use a good machine gunner with a strong back to lug it around.
Good/Recommended. Read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.
Tags: free science fiction, public domain science fiction, randall garrett, Review, speculative fiction
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Review: “The Unnecessary Man” by Randall Garrett (1959)
Posted on February 6th, 2008
Quickie short story that uses the framework of an easy mission of an undercover government operative (Lord Sorban) to flesh out the governmental problems facing a future intergalactic Empire. Not so much a plot-based story as much as a commentary on how the masses need to be fooled for their own good and that a government must do things in the background that provide the illusion of democracy while barring the reality.
Maybe it is supposed to be a cautionary tale or maybe it felt more reasonable amidst the Cold War, but whatever the case, it feels pretty wrong-headed today. I normally find Garrett’s stories at least tolerable, if not enjoyable, but I’m labeling this one as
Not recommended. If you want to check