Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  There was an immense documentation on Michael Novak, but it was no more extensive than the paper work on any other A.E.C. employee. For everyone—from scrubwoman to Nobel-prize physicist—the A.E.C. had one; so-and-so was eighty-seven years old and dribbled when he ate. Their backgrounds were checked to the times of their birth (it had once been suggested, in effect, that their backgrounds be checked to nine months before their birth—this by a congressman who thought illegitimacy should be sufficient reason for denying an applicant employment by the A.E.C.).

  The Security and Intelligence Office files could tell you that Michael Novak had been born in New York City, but not that he had played tag under and around the pillars of the Canarsie Line elevated shortly before it was torn down. They could tell you that his mother and father had died when he was sixteen, but not that he had loved them. They could tell you that he had begun a brilliant record of scholarshipgrabbing in high school, but not that he grabbed out of loneliness and fear.

  Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: aeronautical engineering (but he had been afraid to fly; heights were terrifying) and a junior-year switch to ceramic engineering, inexplicable to the A.E.C. years later.

  A ten-month affair with a leggy, tough, young sophomore from the Troy Day College for Women. They interviewed her after ten years as a plump and proper Scarsdale matron; she told the Security men yes, their information was correct; and no, Michael had shown no signs of sexual abnormality.

  Summer jobs at Corning Glass and Elpico Pottery, Steubenville, Ohio (but not endless tension: will they do what I tell them, or laugh in my face? Are they laughing at me now? Is that laughter I hear?). Ten years later they told the Security men sure I remember him, he was a good kid; no, he never talked radical or stuff like that; he worked like hell and he never said much (and maybe I better not tell this guy about the time the kid beat the ears off Wyrostek when he put the white lead in the kid’s coverall pocket).

  Scholarship graduate study at the University of Illinois, the Hopkins Prize Essay in Ceramic Engineering (with at first much envy of the scatterbrained kids who coasted four years to a B.A., later thin disgust, and last a half-hearted acceptance of things as they were).

  The teaching fellowship. The doctoral dissertation on “Fabrication of Tubular Forms from Boron-Based High-Tensile Refractory Pastes by Extrusion.” Publication of excerpts from this in the Journal of the Society of Ceramic Engineers brought him his bid from the A.E.C. They needed his speciality in N.E.P.A.—Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft.

  He had taken it, his records showed, but they did not show the dream world he had thought N.E.P.A. would be, or the dismaying reality it was.

  N.E.P.A. turned out to be one hour in the lab and three hours at the desk; bending the knee to seniors and being looked at oddly if you didn’t demand that juniors bend the knee to you. It was wangling the high-temperature furnace for your tests and then finding that you’d been bumped out of your allotted time by a section chief or a group director riding a hobby. It was ordering twenty pounds of chemically pure boron and getting fifty-three pounds of commercial grade. It was, too often, getting ahead on an intricate problem and then learning by accident that it had been solved last year by somebody else in some other division. It was trying to search the records before starting your next job and being told that you weren’t eligible to see classified material higher then Confidential. It was stamping your own results Restricted or at most Confidential and being told that it was safer, all things considered, to stamp them Secret and stay out of trouble.

  It was being treated like a spy.

  It was, in spite of all this, a chance to work a little at new and exciting problems.

  And then, his records showed, in August of his second year, he had been transferred to Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, as N.E.P.A. Refractories Group Liaison with Neutron Path Prediction Division of the Mathematical Physics Section. The records did not say why a ceramic engineer specializing in high-tensile refractories and with a smattering of aircraft background had been assigned to work in an immensely abstruse field of pure nuclear theory for which he had not the slightest preparation or aptitude.

  From August to mid-December, the records said, he bombarded the office of Dr. Hurlbut, director of Argonne Lab, with queries, petitions, and requests for a rectification of his absurd assignment, but the records showed no answers. Finally, the records showed that he resigned from A.E.C. without prior notice—forfeiting all salaries and allowances due or to become due—on a certain day toward the end of the year.

  This is what happened on that day.

  Novak stopped in the cafetaria downstairs for a second cup of coffee before beginning another baffling day at Neutron Path Prediction—a day he hoped would be his last if Hurlbut had looked into the situation.

  “Hi, there,” he said to a youngster from Reactor Design. The boy mumbled something and walked past Novak’s table to one in the corner.

  Oh, fine. Now he was a leper just because he was the victim of some administrative foolishness. It occurred to him that perhaps he had become a bore about his troubles and people didn’t want to hear any more about them. Well, he was sick of the mess himself.

  A girl computer walked past with coffee and a piece of fudge cake. “Hi, there,” he said, with less confidence. She had always been good for a big smile, but this time she really gave out.

  “Oh, Dr. Novak,” she gulped, “I think it’s just rotten.”

  What was this—a gag? “Well, I hope to get it fixed up soon, Grace.”

  She sat down. “You’re filing a grievance? You certainly ought to. A man in your position——”

  “Grievance? Why, no! I actually saw Hurlbut yesterday, and I just grabbed him in the corridor and told him my troubles. I said that evidently my memos weren’t getting through to him. He was very pleasant about it and he said he’d take immediate action.”

  She looked at him with pity in her eyes and said: “Excuse me.” She picked up her tray and fled.

  The kid was kidding—or nuts. Hurlbut would straighten things out. He was a notorious scientist-on-the-make, always flying all over the map for speaking dates at small, important gatherings of big people. You saw him often on the front pages and seldom in the laboratory, but he got his paper work cleaned up each month.

  Novak finished his coffee and climbed the stairs to the Mathematical Physics Section. He automatically checked the bulletin board in passing and was brought up short by his own name.

  FROM THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR

  To: Dr. Michael Novak (NPPD) Re: Requested Transfer Your request is denied. The Director wishes to call your attention to your poor record of production even on the routine tasks it was thought best you be assigned to.

  The Director suggests that a more co-operative attitude, harder work, and less griping will get you further than your recent attempts at office intrigue and buttonholing of busy senior officers.

  “The man’s crazy,” somebody said at his shoulder. “You have a perfect grievance case to take to the——”

  Novak ignored him. He ripped the memo from the board and walked unsteadily from the bare white corridors of the Mathematical Physics Section, through endless halls, and into the Administrative Division—carpets, beige walls, mahogany, business suits, pretty secretaries in pretty dresses walking briskly through these wonders.

  He pushed open a mahogany door, and a receptionist stopped doing her nails to say: “Who shall I say is—hey! You can’t go in there!”

  In the carpeted office beyond, a secretary said: “What’s this? What do you want?” He pushed on through the door that said: Dr. Hurlbut’s Secretary.

  Dr. Hurlbut’s secretary wore a business suit that fitted like a bathing suit, and she said: “Oops! You weren’t announced; you startled me. Wait a minute; Dr. Hurlbut is engaged——”

  Novak walked right past her into the director’s mahogany-furnished oak-paneled office while she fluttered behind him. Hurlbut, looking like the offici
al pictures of himself, was sitting behind half an acre of desk. A man with him gaped like a fish as Novak burst in.

  Novak slapped the memo on his desk and asked: “Did you mite this?”

  The director, impeccably clothed, barbered, and manicured, rose looking faintly amused. He read the notice and said: “You’re Novak, aren’t you? Yes, I wrote it. And I had it posted instead of slipping it into your box because I thought it would have a favourable effect on morale in general. Some of the section chiefs have been getting sadly lax. No doubt you were wondering.”

  He had been warned by the “personality card” that accompanied Novak on his transfer to expect such pifflling outbursts. However, the man worked like the devil if you just slapped him down and kept hectoring him. One of those essentially guilt-ridden types, the director thought complacently. So pitifully few of us are smooth-running, well-oiled, efficient machines . . .

  “Here’s my resignation,” said Novak. He gave his resignation to Hurlbut on the point of the jaw. The Director turned up the whites of his eyes before he hit the grey broadloom carpeting of his office, and the man with him gaped more fishily than ever. The secretary shrieked, and Novak talked out, rubbing the split skin on his knuckles. It was the first moment of pure satisfaction he had enjoyed since they took him off refractories at N.E.P.A.

  Nobody pulled the alarm. It wasn’t the kind of thing Hurlbut would want on the front pages. Novak walked, whistling and unmolested across the lawn in front of Administration to the main gate. He unpinned his badge and gave it to a guard, saying cheerfully: “I won’t be back.”

  “Somebody leave you a fortune?” the guard kidded.

  “Uh, no,” said Novak, and the mood of pure satisfaction suddenly evaporated. Nobody had left him a fortune, and he had just put a large, indelible blot on his career.

  The first thing he did when he got back to his hotel was phone a situation-wanted ad to Ceramic Industries. Luckily he caught the magazine as it was closing its forms on classifieds; subscribers would have his ad in ten days.

  III.

  They were ten bad days.

  The local employment agencies had some openings for him, but only one was any good and he was turned down at the interview. It was a scientific supply house that needed a man to take over the crucibles and refractories department; it involved research. The president regretfully explained that they were looking for somebody a little more mature, a little more experienced in handling men, somebody who could take orders.

  Novak was sure the crack meant that he knew about his informal resignation from A.E.C. and disapproved heartily.

  All the other offers were lousy little jobs; mixing and testing batches in run-down Ohio potteries, with pay to match and research opportunities zero.

  Novak went to cheap cinemas and ate in cheap cafetarias until the answers to his ad started coming in. A spark-plug company in Newark made the best offer in the first batch; the rest were terrible. One desperate owner of a near-bankrupt East Liverpool pottery offered to take him on as full partner in lieu of salary. “I feel certain that with a technical man as well qualified as yourself virtually in charge of production and with me handling design and sales we would weather our present crisis and that the ultimate rewards will be rich. Trusting you will give this proposal your serious——”

  Novak held off wiring the Newark outfit to see what the next day would bring. It brought more low-grade offers and a curious letter from Los Angeles.

  The letterhead was just an office number and an address. The writer, J. Friml, very formally offered Dr. Novak interesting full-time work in refractories research and development connected with very high-altitude jet aircraft. Adequate laboratory facilities would be made available, as well as trained assistance if required. The salary specified in his advertisement was satisfactory. If the proposition aroused Dr. Novak’s interest, would he please wire collect and a telegraphed money order sufficient to cover round-trip expenses to Los Angeles would be forthcoming.

  One of the big, coast aircraft outfits? It couldn’t be anything else, but why secrecy? The letter was an intriguing trap, with the promised money order for bait. Maybe they wouldn’t want him after all, but there was nothing wrong with a free trip to Los Angeles to see what they were up to. That is, if they really sent the money.

  He wired J. Friml, collect, at the address on the letterhead:

  Interested your offer but appreciate further details if possible.

  The next morning a more-than-ample money order was slipped under his door, with the accompanying message:

  Full details forthcoming at interview; please call on us at your convenience wiring in advance. Our office opens daily except Sunday nine five. J. Friml, Secretary Treasurer.

  Of what?

  Novak laughed at the way he was being openly hooked by curiosity and a small cash bribe, and phoned for an airline reservation.

  He left his bag at the Los Angeles airport and showered in a pay booth. He had wired that he would appear that morning. Novak gave the address to a cabby and asked: “What part of town’s that?”

  “Well,” said the cabby, “I’ll tell you. It’s kind of an old-fashioned part of town. Nothing’s wrong with it.”

  “Old-fashioned” turned out to be a euphemism for “run-down.” They stopped at a very dirty eight-storey corner office building with one elevator. The lobby was paved with cracked octagonal tile. The lobby directory of tenants was enormous. It listed upwards of two hundred tenant firms in the building, quadrupled and quintupled up in its fifty-odd offices. Under Novak found J. Friml, Room 714.

  “Seven,” he bleakly told the unshaved elevator man. Whatever was upstairs, it wasn’t a big, coast plane factory.

  Room 712 stopped him dead in the corridor with the audacity of the lettering on its glass door. It claimed to house the Arlington National Cemetery Association, the Lakeside Realty Corporation, the Western Equitable Insurance Agency, the California Veterans League, Farm and Home Publications, and the Kut-Rite Metal Novelties Company in one small office.

  But at Room 714 his heart sank like a stone. The lettering said modestly: American Society for Space Flight.

  I might have known, he thought glumly. Southern California! He braced himself to enter. They would be crackpots, the lab would be somebody’s garage, they would try to meet their pay roll by selling building lots on Jupiter . . . but they were paying for his time this morning. He went in.

  “Dr. Novak?” said a young man. Nod. “I’m Friml. This is Mr. MacIlheny, president of our organization.” MacIlheny was a rawboned middle-aged man with a determined look. Friml was sharpfaced, eye-glassed, very neat and cold.

  “I’m afraid you might think you were brought here under false pretences, Doctor,” said MacIlheny, as if daring him to admit it.

  Friml said: “Sit down.” And Novak did, and looked around. The place was clean and small with three good desks, a wall banked with good files—including big, shallow blue-print files—and no decorations.

  “I asked for research and development work,” Novak said cautiously. “You were within your rights replying to my ad if you’ve got some for

  MacIlheny cracked his knuckles and said abruptly: “The anonymous offer was my idea. I was afraid you’d dismiss us as a joke. We don’t get a very good press.”

  “Suppose you tell me what you’re all about.” It was their money he was here on.

  “The A.S.F.S.F. is about twenty years old, if you count a predecessor society that was a little on the juvenile side. They ‘experimented’ with powder rockets and never got anywhere, of course. They just wanted to hear things go bang.

  “An older element got in later—engineers from the aircraft plants, science students from Cal Tech and all the other schools—and reorganized the Society. We had a tremendous boom, of course, after the war—the V-2’s and the atom bomb. Membership shot up to five thousand around the country. It dropped in a couple of years to fifteen hundred or so, and that’s where we stand now.”

>   Friml consulted a card: “One thousand, four hundred, and seventy-eight.”

  “Thanks. I’ve been president for ten years, even though I’m not a technical man, just an insurance agent. But they keep re-electing me so I guess everybody’s happy.

  “What we’ve been doing is research on paper. Haven’t had the money for anything else until recently. Last January I went to Washington to see the A.E.C. about backing, but it was no dice. With the approval of the membership I went the rounds of the industrial’ firms looking for contributions. Some foresighted outfits came through very handsomely and we were able to go to work.

  “There was a big debate about whether we should proceed on a ‘bits-and-pieces’ basis or whether we should shoot the works on a full-scale steel mock-up of a moon ship. The mock-up won, and we’ve made very satisfactory progress since. We’ve rented a few acres in the desert south of Barstow and put up shops and——” He couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice. He opened his desk drawer and passed Novak an eight-by-ten glossy print. “Here.”

  He studied it carefully: a glamour photograph of a gleaming, massive, bomb-shaped thing standing on its tail in the desert with prefab huts in the background. It was six times taller than a man who stood beside it, leaning with a studied air against a delta-shaped fin. That was a lot of metal—a lot of metal, Novak thought with rising excitement. If the picture wasn’t a fake, they had money and the thing made a little more sense.

  “Very impressive,” he said, returning the picture. “What Would my job be?”

  “Our engineer in charge, Mr. Clifton, is a remarkable man—you’ll like him—but he doesn’t know refractories. It seems to be all he doesn’t know! And our plans include a ceramic exhaust throat liner and an internal steering vane. We have the shapes, theoretically calculated, but the material has to be developed and the pieces fabricated.”

  “Internal steering vane. Like the graphite vanes in the various German bombardment rockets?”

  “Yes, with some refinements,” MacIlheny said. “It’s got to be that way, though I don’t envy you the job of developing a material that will take the heat and mechanical shock. Side-steering rockets would be much simpler, wouldn’t they? But the practical complications you run into—each separate steering jet means a separate electrical system, a separate fuel pump, perforating structural members and losing strength, adding weight without a corresponding thrust gain.”