Dimensiion X

by Jerry eBooks

  “There could be mine,” said the little man thoughtfully. “I would leave this planet and go elsewhere—to Mars, perhaps—because there are strange beauties yet to find. Because there will be scarlet sunsets over barren wastes, and in the star-strewn night the thin, cold air of a dying world stirring in restless sighs across the valleys of the dry canals. Because my soul yearns to set foot on another world as yet untrod by man.”

  Crowder said brusquely, “You are a sentimentalist. I am a man of logic. No matter. We can work together. Your workshop will be ready in the morning.”

  Four months later, in the smoky haze of an October sunset, the two men sat together again. But not this time in Crowder’s tower office. This time they crouched within the cubicle of a small, disk-shaped machine made by Crowder’s engineers on plans designed by Wilkins. Outside, great crowds were gathered to witness the test flight. They stirred and murmured, waiting restlessly, as inside the control room of the craft Wilkins installed the final secret part he had not revealed to those who built his driving apparatus.

  The little man secured a wire here, made a minute adjustment in another place. Crowder growled impatiently.

  “Well, Wilkins? What’s holding us up?”

  “Nothing now,” Wilkins laid down his tools, moved to the outer rim of the curiously shaped craft and raised a metal screen which allowed him to look out upon the proving-grounds. “Or—sentiment, perhaps. A wish to look once more on Earth’s familiar scenes.”

  “You are a maudlin fool,” sniffed Crowder, “or else you are afraid. Perhaps you have decided your invention won’t work, after all?”

  “It will work.”

  “Then turn on your motor. Let me hear its roar and feel the tug as we cut free of Earth’s gravity and fly outward into space.”

  The little man lowered the port and moved back to the controls. He touched a lever and depressed a key. His hands moved dreamily across the board. Said Crowder fretfully, “I’m beginning to distrust you, Wilkins. If this is all a hoax—When are we going to take off? You said at five sharp, and”—he glanced at his watch—“it is now five-oh-two. Well—Do we move?”

  “We are already moving,” said Wilkins.

  Once more he lifted the screen that covered the port. Crowder saw the purple-black of space, cream-splattered with myriad stars. Behind them, receding Earth was a toy balloon. . . a dime. . . a firefly.

  “By Gad!” cried Crowder, stumbling to his feet. “By Gad, you’ve done it, Wilkins!”

  Wilkins smiled.

  A great elation tore at Crowder’s breast. He knew emotion at last, this cold, hard man. He cried triumphantly, “Then I was right! There is nothing money and determination cannot buy. I swore to be the man to conquer space, and I’ve made good. It’s a triumph of power and ambition.”

  “And sentiment,” said Wilkins.

  “What! Your dreaming would have died a-borning, but for me. I made this possible, Wilkins; don’t ever forget that. My capital, my forcefulness, my will.”

  He stared at distant Earth through glowing eyes.

  “This is but the beginning,” he said. “We’ll build a larger model. One great enough to hold a hundred men. We’ll launch the first invasion of a world. I’ll forge a new empire—on Mars. Turn back now, Wilkins.”

  “No,” said Wilkins. “I think not.”

  “What? We’ve proven this ship can fly. Now well go back and prepare for greater flights.”

  “Not so,” said the little man. “We will go on.”

  “What’s this?” roared Crowder. “You defy me? Are you mad?”

  “No,” said Wilkins. “Sentimental.”

  He took off his coat. He took off his necktie and his shirt, slipped off his trousers and his shoes. Beneath his clothing shone another garb, a strange apparel totally unlike anything Crowder had ever seen before. A gleaming, tight-knit cloth of golden hue, curiously outlining the quite unhuman aspects of his small physique. He smiled at Crowder, and it was a friendly smile. But it was not the smile of a creature born on Earth.

  “Your money and ambition paved the way,” said the man from Mars, “but sentiment was the vital factor that sent me to you. You see—I wanted to go home.”

  Untitled Story

  Frank M. Robinson

  The mayor bought a bottle of “cure-all water”—which was a silly sort of gag to fall for. But it wasn’t a gag; it worked. And it was several thousand times more dangerous than ever he imagined . . .

  “I’m afraid I’ve been a fool,” the man said.

  He was a big, rawboned Irishman and looked as solid as the oak desk he sat behind. A trace of white ran through his hair but he still didn’t look his age.

  His kind never do, Hayssen thought. They look like they can handle a hod full of bricks up to the day they die.

  The man’s name was Flaherty and he had a faintly worried look on his bulldog face. He ran a nervous hand through his hair and for a fleeting moment, with that gesture and his worried expression, he looked like he was honestly pushing the middle sixties.

  “I am a fool,” he added.

  Hayssen shrugged his capable shoulders and looked interested. You didn’t get to Ire mayor of a city like Chicago by being a fool.

  The mayor cleared his throat and looked at the younger man intently.

  “You know, when you get old, Hayssen, you want to believe in a lot of things. You want to believe so hard sometimes that you throw your common sense out of the window. You get a hardening of the cranial arteries, you get gullible. To be brutal, you become stupid. And I’m afraid that’s what I’ve been.”

  Hayssen shooed invisible bugs off his hatband.

  “They call it senility,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re suffering from that—at least, not yet.” He wondered what the snapper was going to be.

  Flaherty hunched over his desk and lowered his voice, as if he was afraid somebody might be listening.

  “I want you to do some investigating for me, Hayssen. But before I tell you what it’s all about, I’d have to have your promise that you would keep it confidential.”

  Hayssen sighed. “The detective business is a confidential business, your honor. My clients’ names and the reasons they hire me are kept strictly secret.”

  Flaherty seemed satisfied.

  “I’ll make it simple then and I won’t apologize for myself. Two weeks ago I purchased a vial of radioactive water that’s supposed to cure any disease and keep you healthy enough so you can live to be a hundred or better.”

  Hayssen had sense enough not to laugh. Flaherty who had probably originated more crooked schemes than you could count, falling for something like this!

  “It’s none of my business,” he said slowly, “but how come you fell for it?”

  The mayor was looking older by the minute. Hayssen thought of the doomed expression that criminals have when they feel the hood drop over their face and the metal strips clamped over their shaved legs.

  “You see, Hayssen,” the mayor began in a tired voice, “life has suddenly become very precious to me. It’s not too well known but I have a small cancer. It’s in an inaccessible place for surgery and X rays would be dangerous.

  “How much time I have left, I don’t know. But I can’t make plans in advance. If I want, a vacation in California, I pack up and go. Tomorrow or a few months from now might be too late. And if somebody comes to me with a vial of radioactive water and says it will cure my cancer and help me live longer, I think twice before I throw him out as a crackpot. And if I have a particularly bad day”—he emphasized the “bad” slightly and Hayssen had a good idea of what he meant—“maybe I’ll even buy it.”

  There was silence in the room and Hayssen felt vaguely embarrassed.

  “What did you drop on it?”

  “A thousand dollars.” Flaherty managed to say it without flinching.

  Hayssen uncorked a low whistle. It was, roughly, a tenth of the salary that Flaherty got as mayor. But then, Flaherty couldn’t aff
ord his car or the house he lived in on his salary either and he still got by.

  “What do you want me to do, get it hack?”

  Flaherty waved the question aside with a blue-veined hand.

  “The money’s not important. The point is, it was a dumb thing to do. The people”—he coughed apologetically—“might think I was rather naive if word got around that I had dropped a grand on something like this.”

  “In other words, it wouldn’t do you any good if the loyal opposition got hold of the information, would it?”

  Flaherty looked grim.

  “I have every reason to believe that the opposition is behind it. It would be a neat trick for them to sell me the vial, then reveal the whole thing at election time.”

  “Have you anything substantial, any other reasons to think that it might be a political plot?”

  Flaherty had anticipated the question. “Naturally. Shortly after I purchased the vial I received an anonymous phone call not to take it. The phone call implied that it might be a poison or a drug of some kind.”

  It didn’t quite fit. “How do you get a plot out of that?”

  “Consider. If I had taken the contents of the vial, nothing would have happened and I would know something was up or that I had been a sucker. But before I have a chance to take it, I get a phone call advising me not to.”

  Flaherty probably had political plots on his mind all the time but Hayssen granted him a point. “I think I see. If you had bought the Hal and then regretted it, a phone call like that would make you think there might be something to it after all.”

  Flaherty nodded agreement. “Exactly. Reverse psychology. I wouldn’t take the vial but I would still hang onto it, thinking that possibly might be the real McCoy.

  “But that’s how I’m supposed to feel. Be indecisive and remain that way until the elections a few weeks from now.”

  Hayssen pulled at his ear. Politics was dirty but this was a new low.

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Investigate the man who sold it to me. Find out who’s behind it, what backing they have. Maybe we can figure out a way to turn the tables on them.”

  Flaherty rummaged around in his desk and finally came up with a card and a vial of thick, colorless liquid. He handed them to Hayssen.

  “You might as well have the vial so you know what one looks like. The card gives his name and business address.”

  Hayssen read the card: Arthur C. Lehman, Longevity Expert. It gave an address in an exclusive part of town.

  Flaherty looked like he had other things to do so Hayssen picked up his hat and coat and started to leave. He stopped at the door and looked back. He felt sorry for Flaherty. It was true that he ran a crooked city machine but Hayssen had seen times when it had been a lot worse.

  And you couldn’t help but feel sorry for a guy who could spell out the rest of his life in the ticks of his watch.

  But business was still business.

  “What’s in it for me?”

  Flaherty didn’t look up. “The price of the vial and maybe more.”

  Hayssen had to hand it to him. Flaherty was willing to pay for his mistakes.

  He closed the door softly behind him. He was facing outwards, into the room where you cooled your heels until Flaherty got ready to see you. Flaherty’s secretary was writing something down on a pad. She hadn’t heard him.

  He let the knob turn in the lock with a soft click. Her hand darted toward a box on her desk and then she was relaxed and poised once more.

  He walked up to her desk and stopped. He coughed politely and she turned toward him, her face friendly.

  “You were in there a long time,” she drawled. “Howd’ja come out?”

  “Swell. I bought the Outer Drive for only ten bucks and the cost of mailing.”

  “That’s kind of high,” she said. “Last week he was offering it for five.”

  She said “five” like a telephone operator does.

  And it was the voice that got him. Offhand, it sounded like a good grade of Brooklynese with a trace of some other accent. Just a trace of a strange accent that he had never heard before.

  He took a good long look at her and felt sorry about being sarcastic. She was a nice-looking girl, even sitting down. Very nice. He made a mental note to write Rose La Rose a letter and tell her she’d have to find somebody else to dream about her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I’ve been listening to too many detective programs.”

  She showed her teeth in a pearly smile. They were nice white teeth and he even forgave the chewing gum. It probably helped keep them that way.

  “It isn’t polite to stare,” she said. “I was only wondering what your name was.” The frank approach was always the best.

  She pointed to a triangular sign on her desk that read C. Cooper.

  “The C stands for Cathrinxa.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “My folks named me after a famous actress,” she answered, and then suddenly bit her lip.

  “I’ll call you Catherine. And look, I’m sorry about that wisecrack. Next time I come up to see hizzoner I’ll bring along a package of gum as a gift offering. O.K.?”

  “O.K.!” Her eyes were laughing and he couldn’t help but think they were the clearest blue he had ever seen.

  “What’s your name?” she asked. The card he had presented listed the agency name, not his own.

  He felt like a heel. She was getting a big kick out of this. It was a shame that it wasn’t going to last.

  “Donald Hayssen,” he said slowly. “But I thought you knew. You’ve been listening to the mayor call me by it for the last half hour.”

  He leaned over and threw the switch on her intercom box. The click was a nice sharp noise in the room.

  “Big Mike’s kind of careless, isn’t he?” He said it half apologetically.

  The look on her pretty face told hint what she was thinking. In her mind’s eye she was feeding him to the vultures. Piece by piece.

  Hayssen sniffed the air and listened to the satisfying crunch of his shoes on the dry leaves that lay on the sidewalk. The air was filled with wisps of smoke from smoldering piles of half-burned brush.

  Just dusk, he thought. The time of early evening when the last touch football game has broken up. Supper time, when all the kids are washing up and the old man is starting to relax in his easy-chair, ready for his pipe and slippers.

  He stared at the warm, friendly windows of the houses he was walking by.

  The time of early fall evening when every bachelor wishes he wasn’t one. When girls like Catherine Cooper really got under your skin.

  He shook his head angrily and stomped up the walk to the apartment house where he lived.

  He heard the phone ringing before he even got the door key out °f his pocket. It was a long, wailing ring. The kind that tells you the operator has been buzzing your number for the last hour because someone was being downright mean and insistent about it.

  He flipped his hat on an end table and picked up the phone. The voice at the other end of the line sounded muffled, like it was being strained through two layers of handkerchief.

  “Is this Air. Donald Hayssen?”

  “I live alone and don’t like it,” Hayssen said. “Were you expecting someone else?”

  The voice was annoyed. “Just a warning, Mr. Hayssen. Stay away from your liquor cabinet and don’t touch your bed.”

  “I’m sorry but I don’t like to sleep on the floor!” Hayssen snapped.

  He banged down the receiver disgustedly. One of the joys of being a private detective. Like being zoo keeper on April 1st when all the wise guys call up and want to talk to Mr. Lion and Mrs. Tiger.

  Sir Jock, his little Scottish terrier, was at his feet, whining and barking.

  “You should be glad that you’re not a detective, Jock,” he said musingly. “All kinds of people calling you up and trying to get your goat. Sometimes I wish I had shaggy ears like y
ou so I couldn’t hear them.”

  He went to his bedroom and started to strip for a shower.

  “I’m not supposed to sleep in my bed tonight, Jock. Imagine that! I suppose I should use a park bench, instead.”

  He was in the shower now, soaping up. Jock was in the doorway to the bathroom, his ears pricked up and head cocked. Hayssen scraped some of the suds off a muscular arm and flicked them at Jock.

  Jock backed away and barked.

  “That’s no way to act, Jock. And come to think of it, you weren’t your old exuberant self tonight when I came home. No jumping all over me, like you usually do.”

  He was out of the shower, toweling himself.

  Jock was still whining and acting very strange, like he had ever since Hayssen had come home.

  Hayssen walked to the back door and opened it, shivering slightly as he felt the cold air against his damp skin. “Want to go out, Jock?”

  Jock didn’t go near the door.

  Hayssen shrugged and went into the bedroom and rummaged around in his drawer for some clean underwear. He put on his shorts and turned to face the bed. It was a very ordinary bed, with a plain blue and white chenille spread.

  “Look at that bed, Jock! Did you ever see a more ordinary bed in your life? But I shouldn’t sleep on it. I suppose I shouldn’t eat either.”

  He knotted his tie and strolled over to the bed.

  Jock whined and barked and pulled at Hayssen’s trousers.

  Hayssen looked at him closely. The dog was frightened of something, he couldn’t deny that. Had somebody been in his apartment?

  It wasn’t impossible, he supposed.

  He knelt down and scratched the dog’s ears. “What’s wrong, Jock? Is there really something wrong with the bed?”

  He turned and lifted up a corner of the spread and peered under the bed.

  “There’s nothing underneath the bed, Jock, nothing at all.”

  Jock apparently wasn’t satisfied.

  Hayssen was puzzled. “I can’t understand you, Jock.” He turned and started to sit down on the bed when Jock, with an anguished whine, jumped on top of the spread and barked a warning.

  It was the last jump that Jock ever made. The spread on the bed suddenly closed in on him like a Venus flytrap does on a fly. The spread rolled itself up into a tight, hard ball and Hayssen could hear cracks like somebody snapping twigs.