Review: "By Proxy" by Randall Garrett (1960)

Posted on March 1st, 2008

Randall Garrett stories are comfort food, the meatloaf and mashed potatoes of free fiction. Sure, if you have a bad day you can always come home, knock back a fifth of Jim Beam and kick the dog, but what does that get you? A hangover and a pissed-off dog. Next time you need a cocktail, try a Randall Garrett Old-Fashioned.

This novelette is thankfully missing psionics and while there are one or two light-hearted lines, Garrett’s atrocious punning also skips its appearance. At its heart, it is really just a slow-boiled adventure/mystery/suspense tale that happens to have a scientific invention at the center. The story could likely have been told with a different type of discovery and still worked.

Terrence Elshawe is a newspaper reporter assigned to the upcoming launch of Malcolm Porter’s homemade spaceship. Porter has just recently been released from prison after serving three years of a five year sentence for launching an unauthorized rocket.

Porter’s defense at his trial had been that he hadn’t launched a rocket, but that his craft had used a new anti-gravity technology. Unfortunately, the military had obliterated the ship when it shot it down, so he could not prove his claim, and after the government’s physics experts discounted his anti-gravity theory to the jury, he was easily convicted.

Following his release, Porter pulled the old gang together and developed another ship and is now set to launch. Elshawe is sent to cover the story, but finds multiple government players out to put a stop to it, including threatening Porter’s parole.

Egotistical Porter is unswayed, and continues preparations. Meanwhile, Elshawe begins investigating a quiet character on Porter’s team and finds out some interesting information about him. Eventually, there is a launch, and Elshawe, an on-the-scene-witness, finds himself in front of  a congressional committee hoping he can keep certain secrets.

Overall, it was interesting enough and focused more on the psychology of a couple individuals involved than it did on pot-boiling suspense or mystery. Like I said, comfort food.

Recommended. You can read it online here or find it at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or at Manybooks.net in more.

Tags: randall garrett, Review
Filed under Free Stuff, Garrett, Randall, Review, Science Fiction & Fantasy (SFF) | Comments Off

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 »

Tags: free science fiction, free speculative fiction, online science fiction story, public domain fiction, public domain science fiction, randall garrett, speculative fiction
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments Off

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.

Tags: free science fiction, free speculative fiction, online science fiction story, public domain fiction, public domain science fiction, randall garrett, Review, speculative fiction
Filed under Free Stuff, Garrett, Randall, Psionics, Review, Science Fiction & Fantasy (SFF) | Comments Off

Tinker’s Dam by Randall Garrett (1961)

Posted on February 22nd, 2008

[Note-while I list Randall Garrett as the author, it is officially listed as “Joseph Tinker.” For obvious reasons I believe that to be a pseudonym. I’m  personally convinced that Randall Garrett is the author–Argonautica]

There is something very fundamental indeed about the ancient showman’s trick—divert their attention from the thing you’re really doing …

Illustrated by Schoenherr

The call on the TV-phone came right in the middle of my shaving. They have orders not to call me before breakfast for anything less than a national calamity. I pressed “Accept,” too startled to take the lather from my face.

“Hi, Gyp,” George Kelly said to me from the screen. “Hurry it up, boy.” He made no reference to my appearance on his screen. “Quit draggin’ your feet!”

This I take from George Kelly. First of all, he’s Director of the F.B.I. Even more important, he’s my boss. “Hey, George,” I protested, knowing he would not have called on a routine matter. “I got up before breakfast as it is. What’s up?” I hardly needed to ask. When they call me, it’s always the same sickening kind of trouble.

“Fred Plaice and his gang got their hands on a telepath in the District last night,” George told me. “It’s been on the newscast already. There’ll be a damned ugly mob at the office—a lynch mob. Listen, Gyp, I want you to go through the main entrance this morning.”

I nodded my willingness to fight my way through the crowd that would be gathering at the office. Usually I have my taxi drop me on the roof of the building. Call it a petty vanity if you want. It’s one of the perquisites of being Washington brass.

“Swell, Gyp,” George Kelly said, as if there had been any question about whether I’d come in through the main entrance. “The public has a world of confidence in you. Now, damn it, Gyp, if they want to make a fuss over you this morning, let them. We’ve got to get that snake out of the building alive!”

“Oh, no,” I protested. “You don’t mean Fred took a telepath to the office?”

“I’m afraid so,” George said, his tone so neutral that I couldn’t take it as personal criticism. “See you down there.” His rugged features faded from the screen as he cut the image.

I had my driver drop the skim-copter to the street when we got to Pennsylvania Avenue within a block of the building, and he skimmed to the outskirts of the crowd that was pressing around the entrance. There were four or five hundred people there, milling around like a herd of restless cattle. Tighter knots of humanity were pressed around the usual four or five firebrands who were ranting and yelling for blood—telepathic blood.

The guards around the entrance, apparently tipped by George Kelly, started yelling, “Let him through!” They charged the mob to open a lane for me. The crowd drew back sullenly. As I pressed toward the guards, I could see the fear and panic on the faces around me.

Then a man recognized me. “God bless Gyp Tinker!” he bellowed in a voice loud enough to conjure an echo out of a prairie. People started jumping like so many animated pogo sticks, trying to get a sight of me over the heads of others. By the time I reached the steps, the whole mob was cheering and yelling, “Gyp!”

As George Kelly had asked, I paused on the steps and held up my hands for a chance to speak. It’s flattering when they give you silence. In the space of two breaths it was like the inside of a morgue.

“Thanks, friends,” I called out to them. “George Kelly and I have already gotten the facts on the telepath who was captured here in Washington last night. There is absolutely no cause for alarm. I hope you’ll go to your homes and offices promptly. Let’s not give the Russians any more satisfaction than we have to. And rest easy, friends. We’ll use the full summary powers conferred by Congress.”

They gave me a terrific cheer. You’d think I had said something. At least they were reminded of the summary powers granted the F.B.I. to deal with telepaths, because of the gruesome danger they are to all of us.

Anita Hadley, my secretary, was waiting for me in the outer office, although it was a good hour before we were supposed to open.

“He’s in there,” she said, pointing to the door to my private office.

“The snake?” I asked, startled.

“Fred Plaice,” she said. “And he’s got the snake in there with him.” Her gray eyes flashed. She could guess how I felt about that.

“Come along,” I said to her, and went into my office.

“Hi, Gyp,” Fred Plaice greeted me, grinning. “Got a present for you.” He gave his prisoner a shove, making him stumble a couple steps toward me. The telepath was a stoop-shouldered balding gent with large feet. He certainly didn’t look like a walking bubonic plague, but then, they never do. Instinctively I closed my thoughts to him.

“What’s this snake doing here, Fred?” I asked my Section Chief quietly.

He flushed. He knew my policies. “What did you expect me to do with him?” he said hotly. “This isn’t some common snake we picked up out in the country. We snagged this viper right here in Washington, Gyp! I suppose I should have spirited him out of town on the midnight jet!”

“Yes,” I said. “That would have been my idea. Do you realize that all this publicity has gotten us a mob of five hundred people around our doors, a mob that’s waiting to lynch this prisoner of yours?”

The man gulped and started to say something, but Fred hit him hard between the shoulder blades. “Shut up,” he said. “Nobody cares what you think.” He walked up close to me. “Sure I know there’s a mob down there,” he said. “And I know why they’re there. Plain scared to death of what it means to have had a telepath loose in Washington. You’re wrong to hustle this guy out of town, Gyp. Look at this pathetic case—does he look like a superman?”

I looked at the snake. “No,” I agreed. “He looks like they roped him somewhere in West Virginia a few months ago, put shoes on him, and brought him to town.”

“Right,” Fred snapped. “Let the mob get a look at him. The contrast of you dragging him along by the ear and him stumbling along behind you is the sort of thing the public laps up. It’ll put you right in the driver’s seat.”

“I thought Congress had already done that,” I reminded him coldly. No bureaucrat could want powers more absolute than mine. “Unfortunately,” I growled at him. “I gave orders that no snakes were to be brought into this building without my prior consent. This ineffective-looking hill-billy has possibly read a thousand minds since you dragged him in here. How much of what he has picked up around here this morning will be peeped by some Russian telepath before you get him out of town?”

“Relax,” Fred scoffed. “He’s a short-range punk.”

That was too much. “I’ll do my own thinking, Fred,” I said. “From now on, you follow orders.”

I turned on the telepath. “Before I sentence you,” I said. “What have you got to say?”

“I never hurt nothin’,” he grumbled.

They’re all alike, so help me. “You are a telepath?” I asked him.

“Shoah.”

“Prove it,” I demanded, opening a chink in my mind.

His long red face twisted in a crooked grin, showing poorly-cared-for teeth scattered here and there in his gums.

“Yo’ think I never had no orthodonture, whatever thet is,” he said.

I shut my mind like a clam. If there’s anything I detest, it’s the ghastly creeping of a telepath into my own thoughts. “Hello, Pete!” he exclaimed. “Yo’ done shet yo’ mind!” He shook his head. “Ain’t never seen a body could do thet!” I’ll bet he hadn’t. There are only a few of us who can keep telepaths out of our thoughts. It takes a world of practice. Well, I’d had that.

“Can you do that?” I asked the snake.

He shook his head. “No, suh,” he admitted.

“So here you are,” I said, more heatedly. “Wandering around in a town full of secrets—Washington, the capital of your country, where the military, the diplomatic people, the security people, all of them have locked in their heads the things that keep us one step ahead of the Russians. Isn’t that true?”

“I reckon. But—”

“But nothing,” I snapped, getting sore about it for the thousandth time. “And you, you miserable snake, you can’t keep your thoughts from being read by another telepath. No telepath can. Your mind is open two ways—to let thoughts in but, damn it, equally to leak out anything you know.” I smiled coldly at him. “Can you get my thoughts now?”

The telepath shook his head. “Still got yo’ mind closed,” he said. He sounded bitter about it.

“You’re right,” I told him. “Something that few can do, and that no telepath can do! How can we let you wander around Washington leaking out thoughts of every secret your mind might accidentally have overheard from some ranking official? How many Russian telepaths have been accredited to their Embassy? How many crypto-telepaths have the Reds got in town? How many secrets have you already given away? How big a traitor have you been?”

That was the one that got him. “Traitor!” he yelled at me, starting across the office to where I stood leaning against my desk. Fred grabbed him and twisted his arm cruelly to stop all movement.

“Cut that out!” he snapped.

“Cut it out yourself, Fred,” I said. “Just because you’re sore at me, you don’t have to take it out on the snake.”

The telepath was not to be silenced. “My folks been in this country over three hundred years,” he stormed at me. “And it takes someone like you to call me a traitor!”

I am very dark, and my hair is black and curly. I don’t mind. With my heredity, it should be.

“Under the power vested in me—” I started.

“Aw, shet up,” he said, turning to walk to the door. “I reckon I know the rest!”

Anita stayed behind after Fred Plaice dragged the snake out with him. “Better get me George Kelly on the ‘visor,” I said to her.

“Right away,” Anita said, coming over to my desk. “But first—”

I looked up. “Yes?”

“Fred Plaice is throwing you a curve, Gyp.”

The instant she used my nickname, I knew Anita felt that it was important. She never did that unless we were alone and talking seriously.

“What the devil!”

“Fred caught another telepath last night, at the same time he got the snake you just saw,” Anita said. “You didn’t know that, did you, Gyp?”

“Hell, no,” I growled. “Does George Kelly know?”

“No,” she said.

“How did you find out, Anita?”

She shrugged. “I stand pretty good with a couple of the guys in Fred’s section. One of them tipped me on the ‘visor at home before I came to work. That’s how I knew to be down here, actually.”

I scowled over that one. “What did your buddy tell you?”

“Fred had said he’d have your O.K. to execute the second snake by noon and that everything about her was top-secret.”

That was enough. “Get Fred and this top-secret snake in here, Anita, and right now! Forget about that call to the Director.”

“Yes, sir!” she said, and went out with a swish of skirts.

But Fred came in alone. I decided it was about time to get him back on his heels. “Don’t you give a damn about my orders?” I growled at him. His eyebrows shot up. “I distinctly told Anita I wanted you to bring that other snake in with you. I know Anita got the message to you.”

But it didn’t shake him up. Fred Plaice came right toward my desk, leaned over and put his hands on it, and looked me in the eye. “Gyp,” he said. “Gyp, this is once you’re going to let me have my way.”

“Not that it makes any difference,” I snapped. “But why?”

“That’s exactly what I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “Listen, Gyp, have I ever tried to stick it in you, in any form?”

Fred’s a hot-shot. He’s the hardest-charger among my Section Chiefs. But I had never found his ambitions extending to my own job as head of the Division of Psychic Investigation. “You’re still here,” I conceded. “I guess I never caught you at it, Fred.”

“And you never will, Gyp,” he said. “You’ve given me the greatest breaks a guy ever got. This time I’m returning the favor.”

“By executing a telepath?” I demanded. “And a woman, at that!”

He didn’t ask me how I knew, but I could see it annoyed him.

“The biggest break you ever got,” he insisted. “This thing is so hot it will burn you to death. Another crypto-telepath, right here in the District. I want to make summary disposition of her, and I don’t want you to so much as look at the papers. Just give me instructions to use my own discretion.”

Talk about a blank check. “Fred,” I said, searching for words that wouldn’t offend him. “I have more confidence in you than in any man I’ve ever worked with. But execution! Sure, three years ago, when the President declared the psychic emergency, we were killing the most fatally dangerous ones. But that’s a couple years behind us. I just can’t go that far without more reason than you’ve given me.”

“It’s perfectly legal,” Fred said sullenly and beside the point. “Congress has given you summary—”

“Of course,” I cut in. “What F.B.I. man would suggest an illegal course of action? But why should I delegate? If this is so touchy, I should handle it myself. Why delegate?”

“Simply because, I ask it,” he said. “And because you trust me. Listen, Gyp,” he added, almost passionately. “Don’t ask me any more questions. I’ve said too much already. If you know why, it wouldn’t be right for you to delegate. Do as I ask. Trust me. I’m saving you a world of trouble.”

“Boy, oh boy!” I said. “This doesn’t sound like the way to stay out of trouble. What is so dangerous about this telepath?”

“Nothing doing,” Fred said. “I know I’m asking for a blank check. There’s no other way for me to help you play it.”

“This is your own idea, Fred?”

“Sure.”

“Talked it over with Anita?”

He shook his head furiously. “I wouldn’t compromise you, Gyp, and not with her!”

That settled it. I would trust Anita with the crown jewels.

“No dice, Fred,” I said. “Give me the facts.”

“Gyp,” he pleaded. “Don’t ask for them!”

“The facts!”

He straightened up from where he had hung over my desk during the whole argument. “This cuts my guts right out,” he said. “Suspect apprehended around two o’clock this morning and now in detention at the City Jail. Native white female, age fifty-eight. Named Maude Tinker.” He stopped.

I couldn’t start. Maude Tinker! My given name is Joseph Tinker—although they all call me Gyp. “What …” I got out at last. “What did she look…?”

He nodded, looking sick. “She’s a gypsy, if that’s what you mean, Gyp,” he said to me. “I’m sorry. You know I’m sorry.”

“Has she made any statement, Fred?” I asked softly, staring at the surface of my desk.

“She demanded to be taken at once to the Chief of the Division of Psychic Investigation, Mr. Joseph Tinker,” he said.

“Give any reason?”

He was quiet for a while, until I looked up. “She said,” Fred told me, “she said Gyp Tinker was her son.”

I smiled wanly at him. “Obviously I can’t let a statement like that go unchallenged, not in my position as the man charged with extirpating the danger of the snakes,” I said.

“Obviously,” Fred agreed. “Now that you know about it. If you had done as I asked, Gyp …”

“Get her over here, Fred,” I said. “I’ll see her at once. And send Anita in as you leave.”

“Sure, Gyp,” he said, starting for the door.

“And thanks, Fred,” I said. “But it never would have worked.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded from the door. “But the guy in the jam would have been me, not you.”

I turned my swivel around and stared out the window at the Mall and didn’t move until the light scent of Anita’s perfume reminded me that I had asked her to come in.

I swung around. “You watch out for that Fred Plaice,” Anita said, almost scoldingly.

“You mean, start watching my back, like I never did before? How did I get this far?”

Her frown softened a little. “You don’t miss many bets,” she said. “Not my Gypper. But this thing of Fred’s holding back on the other telepath he picked up last night has all the earmarks of a real slippery move.”

“Did Fred tell you anything about it on the way out?”

“Just that he was bringing the telepath from the City Jail right back with him, and that you wanted to see her at once.”

“This snake is a woman, aged fifty-eight, Anita,” I told her. “She gave the name of Maude Tinker and says she’s my mother,” I added, without any particular expression.

Anita laughed. “Oh, no!” she said. “What they won’t think of next!” But her face sobered in an instant, and she bent forward, almost whispering the rest: “Gyp! You mean that Fred Plaice took her seriously! That he was trying to get rid of her?”

“He felt it would be better if I never knew about it,” I admitted. “What do you think I should do, Anita?”

Her heart-shaped face grew more solemn. “I think it would be bad to try to cover it up,” she decided. “And I’m glad you didn’t let Fred do that to you. Some newscast would be sure to get hold of the story and there’d be snide accusations. All this talk recently about the heredity of psi powers is bad, too. That’s what she’s trying to cash in on. And if the public thought that the man in charge of catching and pulling the fangs of all the snakes was a hereditary telepath, they’d be after your scalp in no time.”

“So?”

“Scotch it. See her, face her down, prove her charge is ridiculous, and ship her west.”

I smiled a little dimly. “Just one complication.”

“Yes, Gyp?”

“This Maude Tinker, says Fred, is a gypsy.”

Anita’s face did the most abrupt change. I had never seen her furiously angry. She’s a typical high echelon Washington secretary, cool, extremely well-mannered, cheerful without being bumptious. But this time she was downright mad.

“I told you,” Anita said.

“What?”

“I told you to watch out for Fred Plaice!”

“It’s not his fault,” I protested. “Catching telepaths is his job.”

“Within limits,” she said scornfully. “I thought it was just one more of his screwball ideas! He had his whole Section concentrating on gypsies, for a couple of months. He had a long story to go with it, Gyp! How all the soothsayers and clairvoyants and finders were really short-range telepaths or pre-cogs.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “You mean that Fred started with my nickname, and has been on this campaign of looking for telepaths among gypsies just in hopes he could embarrass me?”

“Yes!”

You have to like loyalty, no matter what the circumstances that incite it.

“I can’t believe that of one of my boys, Anita,” I said. “Fred was all broken up about it.”

“I bet I can call the turn,” Anita said, starting back for her own desk. “Fred’s next move is to tell you that no one can blame you for disqualifying yourself from this case. After all, your own mother!”

Well, the political implications were deep. “I think I would agree,” I said at length. “Let’s see what happens. Send this Maude Tinker in as soon as she gets here.”

“Aren’t you going to take any precautions, Gyp?” Anita demanded.

“Against what?”

“You’re impossible,” she snapped. “I’ll take care of the precaution department myself. And don’t you dare let Fred get that woman in here until I get back.”

“No what…?”

“Joseph Tinker!” she cried. “Be quiet!” She stormed out.

In about twenty minutes the buzzer on my pix-box sounded, and I depressed the key. Anita’s face was tense on the small screen.

“Just got a flash,” she said. “Fred has her in his ‘copter and will let down on the roof in about four or five minutes. I’ll need a couple minutes more than that. Now don’t you let him in with her before I get there, do you hear me?”

I said I heard her. She beat Fred at that. For all I know she had booby-trapped them in getting down from the roof. Anita has drag with everybody in the building, and that could have included the elevator service man, who quite easily could have loused service to the roof enough to delay Fred.

Anita came in. “Mr. Tinker,” she said crisply. “Meet Tony Carlucci.”

I stood up. Tony was a darned good-looking chap, about my age, with very dark hair, somewhat curly, and a flash of white teeth for a smile. I told him I was pleased to meet him.

“Move over,” Anita directed, stepping smartly around my desk and giving my elbow a sharp yank. “You sit behind the desk, Tony. Now try to look like a big wheel, for heaven’s sake.”

“I am a big wheel,” Tony protested. “In the used ‘copter racket.”

Anita was already reaching up to push down on my shoulders. “Won’t you sit down?” she demanded. She had me in one of the comfortable chairs I have in my office for callers, rather off to one side. She put herself down in the chair across my desk from Tony Carlucci, as though she were getting instructions.

He didn’t need much hinting. “Tell the bulls we’re gonna clean up the District,” he started, waving his hands around. “No more poker. No more dice. No more Sneaky Pete.” I’d never heard of that.

“Shut up!” Anita said. “He’ll be here any instant.”

Fred was as good as her word. He was holding the door for his telepath within seconds. Tony Carlucci stopped hamming it up and straightened importantly in my chair. I had to admit that Anita had found a guy who, superficially, resembled me more than a little. No one who knew either of us would ever mistake one for the other, but our general descriptions were quite similar.

The woman who came in not only was a gypsy, she was dressed as a gypsy. Her blouse was white, and quite frilly. She had on a billowing red skirt, liberally encrusted with embroidered beads of a darker red. The tattered hem of a petticoat hung below it. Her hair had been dark once, but it was shot with threads of silver. There was a lot of it, and piled up high so that her ears were exposed. They had pierced lobes, and heavy gold rings hung from them.

Instinctively I closed my mind as tight as a clam. The mere sight of a telepath triggers that reaction. Fred closed the door behind him, continuing to stand just behind his captive. She glanced briefly at me and then looked for a longer moment at Tony Carlucci, behind my desk.

“Joe,” she said to him. “Joe, don’t let them do this to me!”

I don’t know how much coaching Anita had given Carlucci, but he knew enough to call her “mother.” And I knew enough to watch Fred Plaice the instant Tony said: “Oh, mother! Why the devil couldn’t you keep out of sight!”

Fred was one mighty confused looking boy. The two-bit word is consternation. He had it. Anita had given him the business.

“I’m sorry, madame,” I said standing and walking over to where Tony was emoting, with the back of his hand pressed to his eyes. “We threw you a curve. Meet Mr. Tony Carlucci.” Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “And I, madame, am Joseph Tinker.”

“Joe!” she cried, or wailed is a better word, and threw herself around the desk to seize me in her arms. She smelled faintly of garlic, oregano and some kind of incense, maybe sandalwood. A nice clean gypsy smell. Cleaner than a lot of gypsies I can think of.

Fred pulled her off me, not too gently. I’d say he was a little sore about something. Anita’s eyes were slits of fury.

“Thanks, Tony,” I said. “See you around.”

“Honest Tony Carlucci,” he said. “If you need a used ‘copter, Joe, jet on down to my dock. Nothing down. Listen, I got one that was never used except in the spring by a little old lady who gave up walking for Lent. I’ll tell you what I’ll do—”

“Wasting your time,” Anita told him. “The Government provides Mr. Tinker with any kind of transportation he needs. A thousand thanks, Tony. I won’t forget—” The rest was cut off as she gave him one of the more polite bum’s rushes. I think he would have liked to hang around to see the rest of our little amateur theatrical.

Fred had his grin going. “Couldn’t get the drift for a minute, Gyp,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Nice work! Now I know why I get such a kick out of working for you!” He whirled on Maude Tinker. “And you, you foolish old biddy! How far do you think you would get with an act like this against another telepath?”

She spat a curse at him in Romany. “So smart!” she sneered. “There isn’t another telepath in the city of Washington!”

That was a laugh. For its own safety the F.B.I. has its own gang of tame TP’s—they are all, of course, exceptionally short-range telepaths, and we practically keep them under lock and key to make sure some important thoughts don’t leak in and out of their diseased minds.

“Send in Freeda Sayer,” I said, leaning down to press the intercommute. Freeda is a thick-ankled, thick-headed telepath. But stupid or not, she is telepathic, and is an acid test in these cases.

“Is this woman a telepath?” I asked Freeda, when she stumped in.

Freeda looked at Maude Tinker, her mouth hanging a little open. She snuffled and walked quite close to the gypsy woman. “Yeah,” she said. “She knows I’m thinking her hem is torn.” She turned her head with that low-thyroid slowness to me. “Is that all, Mr. Tinker?” she asked.

Fred answered. “Swell, Freeda. That’s all.”

Freeda wandered out.

Fred said: “O.K., Gyp. What’ll I do with her?”

“Sit down, Mrs. … it is Mrs., isn’t it? … Mrs. Tinker, won’t you please?” I said in answer to his question. She took the chair Anita had been using when Tony was pretending to be me, and I sat down in my swivel across the desk from her.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tinker,” I said. “It’s bad enough that you have deliberately stayed in the District after all telepaths were most stringently warned to register with us so that we could move them to less sensitive areas. But I take it quite hard that you have tried to embarrass me.”

“That would take a little doing,” she said. “You’ve got a heart like a piece of flint. Let me see your palm!” she demanded, reaching imperatively across my desk. Fred started to protest, but I passed my hand across to her, leaning forward so that she could reach it.

Maude Tinker smoothed out my palm, rubbing her thumb over it as if to clear away a veil of mystery, and bent close over it, her dark face intense. She traced a line or two with her fingernail, and dropped my hand to the walnut. “You have no mercy,” she said. “You will use the excuse that I tried to hinder the work of your department as a reason to punish me severely—and your real reason is that you feel I might have damaged you personally.”

Fred was moving around the desk. He spoke softly in my ear while I kept my eye on the gypsy. That was silly. He can’t close his mind the way I can. She could read his thoughts just as well as if he were screaming them out loud.

“That’s a charge she may repeat, Gyp,” he said. “Nobody could blame you, if you disqualified yourself from this decision. I think we could get the newscasts to see it as impeccable public behavior. We’ll paint you as the administrator so devoted to pure justice that even potential resentment will be a barrier to your personal decision. How’s that sound to you, Gyp?”

“The day you have to start painting a picture for them, I’ve had it, Fred,” I said. I felt sure Anita had overheard his soft words in my ear, but to be sure, I added, “I think it would be suicide to disqualify myself from this case. That’s just the first step to disqualifying myself from the job. If there’s any hint of telepathic heredity in my case, ducking this decision would be a public admission that I’m sensitive in that area. No. I’ll handle it.”

Anita nodded slowly to me. Well, she had called it. Maybe she was right about Fred. “Tell you what,” I said. “Several things about this case interest me. If we are to believe her, this woman has had absolutely no contact with any other telepath in Washington—she thought she was the only one who had escaped our dragnet. Why don’t all of you shoo—I want to do a little survey in depth here—a little motivational work. I think I can get more frankness out of her if there are no witnesses. Beat it, kids.”

Anita left with Fred. Maude Tinker and I were alone in my office. I looked at her with a smile.

“Hello, Joe,” she said.

“Hello, Mother,” I said. “You look just wonderful.”

Mother smiled at me and reached across the desk again to take both my hands. “Yosip,” she said in Romany. “What a wonderful long way you have come since you ran away. A lawyer, and now a big man, a very big man, in Washington. I am a very proud gypsy.”

What I might have said to her was interrupted by a racket outside my office. Voices were raised. I thought I heard what could only be Anita yelling. That’s another thing that had never happened before.

Fred burst back into the office, with Anita right on his heels. His face was livid. Mother turned in her chair and looked coldly at him. A gypsy woman can give you the snootiest look in the world, right down her aquiline nose, when she feels like it. It stopped Fred Plaice in his tracks.

“Yes, Fred?” I said quietly.

“If you don’t mind, Tinker,” he said brusquely. “I’d like to be present for this interview.”

“Tinker?”

“I’m sorry, Gyp,” he said. “I’m … I’m upset.”

“I’ll bet you are, you sneak,” Anita said. “Chief,” she told me. “He was fit to be tied when you chased us out. The first thing he wanted to know was whatever had made you decide to get Tony Carlucci in here to trick his gypsy snake. I was so mad that I flipped and told him it was my idea.”

“Is that why you’re back?” I asked him.

“Get this calf-eyed girl Friday of yours off my back,” he said stonily. “Our security certainly doesn’t permit your confidential assistant to be in love with you. We’re supposed to be checking each other constantly.”

I hardly knew which of his two ideas to blast the hardest. I looked at Anita first. She simply raised her head and looked me straight in the eye. It could mean almost anything.

I tried Fred: “And you consider it’s your job to check on me?”

“Of course. Goes without saying,” he said. I shrugged. “At any rate,” he added, calming down. “I’m staying. Nothing outside of a direct order, which I will protest to George Kelly, will get me to leave.” The last thing I wanted was trouble with the Director.

“Stay, Fred,” I said. “But we’ll have some things to settle afterwards.”

“Maybe,” he smiled. “It will depend. Right now I’d like to get a load of this motivational research you’ve got cooked up.”

“Don’t bother,” Mother said. “I’ve got more sense than to tie the rope around my own neck. I’m not saying a word.” She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair with a granitic finality.

“So much the quicker,” Fred said. “You can sentence her right now, Gyp!”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure I can.” I wish I could say that my mind raced to a quick decision. No—I couldn’t think. Or almost couldn’t. One idea percolated through. Mother had made no “mistake” in calling Tony by my name. She had read Fred’s mind in the ‘copter on the way from the jail, and Anita’s as she was ushered in. Her “mistake” could only mean one thing—Fred Plaice was not sure she was my mother.

This much thought took time. Fred knew I was stalling. “Come on,” he snapped in a tone he had never dared to use to me before. “Let’s have the sentence!”

He was right in one thing. He had me over a barrel. I squeezed my eyelids shut and did something I hadn’t done since that day twenty years before when I had run away from home. I opened my mind to my mother.

Unless you have had the experience, you can’t imagine what it is like to live with a telepath. It is disquieting in the extreme. One of the concomitants of consciousness is that it is private consciousness. And when this isn’t true, when someone, even a loved one, can creep into your mind and know what you think, your insides writhe. Caterpillars course around under your skin. And you resent. Sooner or later you will hate. I ran away from home because I couldn’t stand Mother in my mind, and couldn’t bear the thought of hating her.

But now I had to know what I should do to her. I let her into my thoughts. Give me some sign, I thought, as I waved a hand at Fred for quiet. Mother, tell me what to do!

Poor Joe, she thought. He loves me in spite of it all. He can’t bear to do what he has to do. Joe! her mind shrieked at me. You read my mind!

I snapped upright in my chair and grabbed its arms until I could hear my knuckles crack. My mind snapped shut with an almost audible crack. I was a damned snake!

I could dimly hear Fred yammering at me. With a sick fear I slowly opened my mind again. His thoughts surged into it. Well, Anita had been right. And Anita!

Yes, Mother thought. She does love you, Joe. A lovely girl. You lucky man.

Fred had me by the shoulder, yelling at me, shaking me, trying to get me to speak. He was almost slavering in his greed. I paid him no heed. All right, I thought. What’s to be done, Mother?

Throw the book at me, Mother thought.

“Shut up, Fred. And sit down.” He kept his tight grip on my shoulder. “Sit down!” I yelled at him. “Three strikes and out, Fred. This is the third order you’ve resisted today!”

“Now hear this,” I said. “Under the powers vested in me …” I sentenced Mother to indefinite detention in Oklahoma. I threatened her with worse—face it, the only worse thing was death—if she were found in a restricted area again.

“Take her out, Fred,” I said. He hadn’t counted on my being able to do it, and it left him without a plan. “Four times?” I asked him.

“No. No, Gyp. On my way,” he said, taking Mother by the arm.

Anita started to follow him. I stopped her and waited until the door had closed behind Fred and Mother.

“You were right about Fred, Anita,” I said. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“Oh, Gyp,” she said, tears trying to brim over her eyelids. “He’s such a cutthroat!”

“Sure,” I said. “But now we know it. Get me an appointment with George Kelly, will you, Anita?”

She compressed her lips. “That’s more like it!” she said angrily. “Get Fred kicked clear out of the Bureau. George Kelly is a great Director, Gyp, and he’ll do it if you insist.”

“Maybe,” I said. I stewed over what to tell the boss until Anita came back in.

“Mr. Kelly can see you now, Mr. Tinker,” she said, all calmed down again.

I got up and came around the desk and took her by the elbow, standing at my door. “Just in case,” I said, leaning down to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I love you, too.”

“Too?” she said.

I froze. It was the kind of slip that sooner or later trips up every snake. My grin was a sick one. I walked out without another word.

The Director’s office is on the fourth floor, I climbed the single flight, and his girl let me in. George affects long slim cigars. I say affects. He seldom lights them, but he waves them like batons, conducting some kind of a symphony of words and ideas all day.

“Welcome, stranger,” he said, calling on the fiddles for a little pizzicato. “What’s up, Gyp?”

I sat down across from him at his desk and tried to put a smile on my face. “I want to submit my resignation, George,” I said. “Effective immediately.”

“Not accepted,” he said, without a second thought. Then his face grew solemn. “What’s this about?” he demanded. “I can’t lose you, Gyp. My right bower!”

“One favor,” I said, not answering him. “Don’t move Fred Plaice up to my old spot. Any of the other Section Chiefs, but not Fred.”

“Well, well,” George said, whipping up the brasses with his cigar. “This begins to sound like cause and effect.” He hushed the whole orchestra to a whisper. “I thought Fred was your fair-haired boy, Gyp. You two get in a hassle?”

I shook my head. “Not directly, George,” I told him. “I want you to know two things. They’ll explain why I’m quitting. My mother is a telepath. We arrested her early this morning, here in the District. I just sentenced her to transportation and detention in Oklahoma.”

“Good heavens,” he gasped. “Your own mother! Gyp, no wonder you’re upset. Didn’t you know she was a snake?”

My smile was a little tired. “Of course I knew,” I told him. “I ran away from home at thirteen to get away from having her inside my head all the time. That’s how I learned to close my mind—closing her out as much as I could. The power got stronger as I grew older.”

“It’s embarrassing,” George said, turning away from me to look out the window. “To have you, of all people, Gyp, with telepathic heredity. Still, if no one knows, and since you’ve never had the slightest manifestation of psi powers yourself, there may be some way we can preserve your usefulness.”

“Today, within the last half hour, George, my latent telepathic ability became manifest. George, I’m a snake.”

His face froze. Then the batonlike cigar stopped its movement. He was like a statue. The pose broke, and he pressed a button.

“Send Carol Lundgren in,” he ordered. I knew Carol, another short-range telepath that George used as his private lie-detector.

Carol was at my elbow in a moment or so. George wasted no words. “Carol, is there a telepath in this room?” he asked.

Carol grinned. “Yep,” he said to the enforced silence. “There is.” George Kelly’s face fell. “His name is Carol Lundgren,” the kid went on. “Next question?”

George looked as though he could have brained him. “All right, you Philadelphia lawyer,” he grumbled. “Besides yourself, Carol, is there a telepath in this room?”

“No, Mr. Kelly, there is not.”

“Get out, and don’t scare me like that again.” George told him.

I didn’t get it. I said so: “George, I don’t get it. I read my mother’s thoughts, and for that matter, Fred Plaice’s thoughts, too. That’s why I asked you not to give him my job. I swear to you I can read thoughts.”

“So?”

“If I know I’m a telepath, Carol should be able to read the thought that I know it,” I protested.

“You’re like me,” George Kelly said. “You automatically close your mind in the presence of a telepath. It’s pure reflex now. Carol couldn’t read a thing because you clammed your thoughts the instant he walked in.”

“That was then!” I yelled at him. “Before my psi powers became manifest. You know that a telepath can’t close his mind! Why couldn’t Carol read my thoughts?”

Well, George thought, he couldn’t read mine either, could he?

No, I thought. He couldn’t. He … George! my mind shrieked at him.

Somebody kicked the props out from under my world. George Kelly was a snake!

Don’t be silly, he thought. I’m no more a snake than you are, Gyp.

But you’re a telepath!

So are you, Gyp, he thought. The only kind of telepath that really counts. You can read minds, but others can’t read yours.

I fell back on words, closing my mind—it was rattling so I didn’t want George to read my thoughts: “But a telepath can’t close his mind!” I protested.

“I hope the Russians are as sure of that as you are, Gyp,” George grinned. “The only agents we have in Russia are closed-mind telepaths—telepaths who don’t automatically give themselves away. Now that kind of a telepath really is a usable espionage agent or a safe link in a communications net.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About three years, Gyp. When we discovered that certain training could make some telepaths closed-mind operators, we got the President to promulgate the Executive Orders that Congress later made into law. We got all ordinary telepaths out of circulation and put to work those that we could train to closed-mind operation. Now you know why I won’t take your resignation.”

I sputtered. “George, how can I conscientiously crack down on these poor people, if I’m a TP myself?”

He grinned. “You won’t. You’ll still be doing just what you’ve always been doing, except now you’ll know that you’re doing it. You’ll be recruiting telepaths for us. Where do you think we train them?”

“Oklahoma? The Detention area?”

“Sure. Where else? Now relax. But for heaven’s sake, don’t ever leak this. We feel sure the Russians haven’t discovered this business of closed-mind telepaths yet. Some day, I suppose, they will. It may take a long time. The self-realized closed-mind telepath like you, Gyp, is a rarity. Mostly we have to train people rigorously for it. It took your mother over two years to learn it.”

“My mother!”

“Sure. Why did you think she was in Washington? She’s part of the Sevastopol, Teheran and Cairo communications network.”

“George,” I insisted. “Something is shaky. If she’s on the inside, how did she ever get picked up?”

He laughed. “Just part of her cover. Fred Plaice got too close. We know what he is, Gyp. But we didn’t dare to have him guess what your mother was. She’s on her way to a nice California vacation. New assignment after that. Maybe middle Europe. After all, she is a gypsy. Ought to go well, say, in Bulgaria!”

THE END

Tags: randall garrett
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments Off

The Unnecessary Man by Randall Garrett (1959)

Posted on February 15th, 2008

THE
UNNECESSARY
MAN

BY RANDALL GARRETT

Sometimes an organizational setup grows, sets its ways, and becomes so traditional that once-necessary jobs become unnecessary. But it is sometimes quite hard to spot just which man is the unnecessary one. In this case … not the one you think!

Illustrated by Martinez

"I recall," said the Businessman, "that William Wrigley, Junior, once said: ‘When two men in a business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.’ How true that is."

The Philosopher cast his eyes toward Heaven. "O God! The Mercantile Mind!" He looked back at the Businessman. "When two men in a business always agree, one of them will come in handy as a scapegoat."

THE IDLE WORSHIPERS

by R. Phillip Dachboden

Lord Barrick Sorban, Colonel, H.I.M.O.G., Ret., sipped gently at his drink and looked mildly at the sheaf of newsfacsimile that he’d just bought fresh from the reproducer in the lobby of the Royal Hotel. Sorban did not look like a man of action; he certainly did not look like a retired colonel of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Guard. The most likely reason for this was that he was neither.

Not that he was incapable of action on a physical level if it became necessary; he was past forty, but his tough, hard body was in as fine a shape as it had been fifteen years before, and his reflexes had slowed only slightly. The only major change that had occurred in his body during that time had been the replacement of an irreparably damaged left hand by a prosthetic.

But Lord Barrick Sorban preferred to use his mind, to initiate action in others rather than himself, and his face showed it. His was a precision mind, capable of fast, accurate computations, and his eyes betrayed the fact, but the rest of his face looked, if anything, rather like that of a gentle, persuasive schoolteacher—the type whom children love and parents admire and both obey.

Nor was he a retired colonel of the Imperial bodyguard, except on paper. According to the official records, he had been retired for medical reasons—the missing left hand. In reality, his position in the Imperium was a great deal higher than that of an ordinary colonel, and he was still in the active service of the Emperor. It was a secret known only to a comparative few, and one that was carefully guarded.

He was a fairly tall man, as an Imperial Guardsman had to be, with a finely-shaped head and dark hair that was shot through with a single streak of gray from an old burn wound. In an officer’s uniform, he looked impressive, but in civilian dress he looked like a competent businessman.

He held the newsfac in his prosthetic left hand, which was indistinguishable in appearance and in ordinary usage from the flesh, bone, and blood that it had replaced. Indeed, the right hand, with its stiff little finger, often appeared to be more useless than the left. The hand, holding the glass of rye-and-ginger, gave an impression of over-daintiness because of that stiff digit.

Lord Sorban paid little attention to the other customers in the bar; customers of the Green Room of the Royal Hotel weren’t the noisy kind, anyway. He kept his attention on the newsfac for the most part; only a small amount of awareness was reserved for the approach of the man he was waiting for.

The banner line on the newsfac said:

BAIRNVELL OCCUPIED

BY IMPERIAL FORCES

He read through the article hurriedly, absorbing what facts he didn’t know, and then flipped over to the editorial page. If he knew the Globe, there would sure as Space be an editorial.

There was.

At 0231 Greenwich Earth Time, 3/37/229, the forces of the Imperial Government occupied the planet Bairnvell. (See article, Page One.) The ships of the Imperial Space Force landed, purportedly at the request of Obar Del Pargon, rebel leader of the anti-Presidential forces. That such an action should be condoned by the Imperial File is astounding enough; that it should be ordered by the Prime Portfolio himself is almost unbelievable.

The government of Bairnvell, under the leadership of President Alverdan, was not, by any means, up to the standards of the Empire; the standard of living is lower, and the political freedom of the people is not at all what we are used to. But that is no excuse for interfering with the lawful government of any planet. If the Imperium uses these methods for extending its rule, the time must eventually come when our own civil liberties will be in peril.

Perhaps Lord Senesin’s actions are not so surprising, at that. This is the third time during his tenure as Prime Portfolio that he has arbitrarily exercised his power to interfere in the affairs of governments outside the Empire. Each such action has precipitated a crisis in Galactic affairs, and each has brought the Empire nearer to conflict with the Gehan Federation. This one may be the final act that will bring on interstellar war.

The …

Colonel Lord Sorban stopped reading as he noticed the approach of the man he’d been waiting for, but he didn’t look up until the voice said:

"I see you’ve been reading it, my lord." The voice was bitter. "A real fiasco this time, eh?"

Sorban looked up. "It looks like it might mean trouble," he said carefully. "Have you read all of it, Mr. Senesin?"

The young man nodded. The bitterness in his voice was paralleled by the bitterness reflected in his face. "Oh, yes. I read it. The other newsfacs pretty much agreed with the Globe. I’m afraid my father seems to be rather in the soup. Being Prime Portfolio in the Terran Empire isn’t the easiest way to stay out of trouble. They’ll be screaming for a Special Election next." He sat down next to the colonel and lowered his voice just enough to keep anyone else from hearing it, but not enough to sound conspiratorial. "I think I’ve got a line on those tapes."

Colonel Sorban raised an eyebrow. "Really? Well, I wish you luck. If you can uncover them in time, you may be able to save your father’s career," he said, in a voice that matched Senesin’s.

"You don’t sound very concerned, my lord," said young Senesin.

"It’s not that," said the colonel. "I just find it difficult to believe that—" He cut his words off as another man approached.

The second newcomer was a red-faced, plumpish man with an almost offensively hearty manner. "Well, well! Good afternoon, Lord Sorban! Haven’t seen you in some time. A pleasure to see you again, my lord, a distinct pleasure! I don’t get to Honolulu often, you know. How long’s it been? Four years?"

"Two, I think," said the colonel.

"Really? Only two? It seems longer. How’ve you been?"

"Well enough," said the colonel. "Excuse me—Mr. Heywood, I’d like to present you to the Honorable Jon Senesin; Mr. Senesin, this is Robar Heywood, of South African Metals."

While the two men shook hands and mouthed the usual pleasantries, Colonel Lord Sorban watched them with an amusement that didn’t show on his placid face. Young Senesin was rather angry that the tête-á-tête had been interrupted, while Heywood seemed flustered and a trifle stuffy.

"So you’re the son of our Prime Portfo