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_Come, enjoy a Carl Jacobi field day--backed by his vivid, irresistible imagination and his keen sense of fun. Or was it so funny for Martin Sutter? For, unlike him, you'll surely be cautious the next time you turn on your TV set--especially if you notice it was made in Tanganyika._
made in tanganyika
_by ... Carl Jacobi_
See what happens when two conchologists get caught in a necromantic nightmare of their own.
On his fortieth birthday Martin Sutter decided life was too short tocontinue in the rut that had been his existence for more than twentyyears. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third FederalBank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerkhe was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. Theground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy three thousandcredits.
To accustom himself to the car's controls Sutter chose Highway 56 for adriving lesson. He tooled the electric runabout up into the third level,purred out across state at an effortless two hundred, then descended viaa cloverleaf to ground tier and entered a maze of subsidiary roads thatled through the summer countryside.
In this manner he drove the major part of the afternoon. Travel waslight, away from the elevated lanes and he enjoyed himself.
At four o'clock he began to look for a convenient place to turn around.It was then that he sighted the roadside stand ahead. Above it a freshlypainted sign read: TV SETS. LATEST MODELS. SPECIAL WHOLESALE PRICES!
Sutter smiled. Whoever heard of selling television sets on a countryhighway? It was like--why, it was like selling eggs in the lobby of theHotel International! Then it occurred to him that his own TV set had notbeen in good working order for more than a year. The olfactory controlhad jammed last week while he was watching a Sumatran tribal ceremony,inland from Soerabaja, and he had been unable to smell the backdropfrangipani blossoms. It was time he bought a new set....
Sutter touched a stud and the electric runabout coasted to a halt. As heclimbed out of the car and walked across the highway toward the stand,he thought for a moment there was something wrong with his contactlenses or perhaps his eyes.
The stand and the sign above it appeared to waver uncertainly, to becomedisjointed as though viewed through uneven glass. But the effect passedand Sutter approached the stand and nodded to the individual tilted backin a chair beside it.
He was a rawboned man with a thatch of thick black hair and small wateryeyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in a pair of tight-fitting trousersof white lawn, a flaming red tunic and a yellow cummerbund.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Can I show you something in a new TV?"
"Where are they?" asked Sutter, surveying the empty stand.
"Out back," replied the man. "Just a minute and I'll show you."
He rose lazily from his chair and led the way around to the rear of thestand. Sutter could have sworn he had seen an apple orchard behind thestructure as he rode up, but he must have been mistaken for now he saw alow-roofed, aluminum-walled building there, huge doors open on one side.It looked, he thought, somewhat like a hangar....
Two hours later Sutter arrived back at his home in town. He parked thecar, went around to the rear compartment, lifted out a large packingcase and carried it to his sitting room. There, with the aid of hammerand crowbar, he stripped away the protective boards and then trundledthe cabinet to an unoccupied corner.
It was certainly a unique TV set. A very new model, the salesman hadsaid. The cabinet was shaped like a delta with a cube surmounted on thepointed end of the triangle. The cube held the screen, the triangle, thecontrols. Finished in a subdued ochre color, the set captured the lightof the dying day that filtered through the bay window and gleamed with asoft radiance.
Sutter looked at the control panel and his smile of satisfaction fadedsomewhat. It looked a little complicated....
Instead of the usual knobs there were five small spoked wheels, eachclosely calibrated in lavender with resilient studs that seemed to bemade of plush. Below this was a small dial with the legend _Element ofProbability_ lettered on it.
Sutter was about to switch on the set when the door buzzer sounded. Hecrossed to the door and pulled it open.
A tall gangly man stood there. Swarthy, face partially covered by aneatly trimmed beard, he looked the conventional picture of a story-bookvillain. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and an under-slung pipe was clampedin his teeth. He said in a deep booming voice, "Are you Mr. MartinSutter?"
"Yes, I am. What can I do for you?"
The man said his name was Lucien Travail. He explained that he had beenlooking for a room and that Mrs. Conworth, the landlady, had informedhim she had no vacancies but suggested that her roomer, Mr. Sutter,might be interested in a roommate.
"Of course I realize you don't know me but I believe our strangenesswill be offset by our mutual hobby."
Sutter was silent, waiting for him to continue.
"I collect shells," Travail said.
For thirty years Sutter had pursued a hobby which had begun in hisboyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore--the collecting ofexoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment ofcowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their glasscabinet and overflowed into three carefully catalogued packing cases.
To Sutter, anyone who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus itwas that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man'sreferences, he invited Travail to move in with him.
During those two days Sutter tried unsuccessfully to put his newtelevision set into operation. But the set refused to work. Turn thequeer dials as he would, all he could get on the elliptical screen was ablur of blinding colors.
On the evening of the third day Travail looked up from his newspaper,said, "It says here that the president of the Federal Union Congress isgoing to make a speech in New Paris. Will you tune him in?"
Sutter frowned. "I would," he said, "but my set is out of order. Ishould call a repair man, but I had hoped to get it regulated myself."
Travail laid down his pipe. "Out of order, eh?" he said. "I'm sort ofhandy with gadgets. Let me take a look at it."
He walked across to the cabinet, turned it around and stood peering atthe complicated chassis. A small brass nameplate caught his eye:_Manufactured by the Tanganyika Company, Dodoma, Empire of Tanganyika,East Africa. Under charter of the Atomic Commercial EnterpriseCommission. Warning: Permit only an accredited employee of this companyto touch wiring._
Travail snorted. "Accredited employee, my foot! I know as much aboutthese things as they do."
He went into the kitchen and returned with a screwdriver. While Sutterlooked on with apprehensive eyes, he began to tinker with the wiring.Suddenly there was a dull report and a flash of flame. Travail jerkedhis arm back as a thin streamer of smoke and the smell of burninginsulation entered the room.
"You've broken it," said Sutter accusingly.
But his voice died abruptly as the screen flared into light and a lowhum sounded behind the panel. An instant later the light became subduedand a streak of tawny yellow took form. The yellow slowly coalesced intoa sandy stretch of beach with long rolling swells washing up on it, torecede in a smother of foam. Through the amplifier came the muted roarof the breakers and the low soughing of the wind.
"Well, we got something at any rate," Travail said. "I wonder what itis."
Sutter stared, fascinated. The view of the beach seemed to come intosharper focus as he watched, and he saw now that it was an incrediblylonely scene, with the sea stretching away to a vanishing point and astand of stunted spruce flanking the width of sand. B
ut what caught hiseye and held him almost in a trance was the array of objects litteringthe sand at the water's edge.
They were shells. Not the prosaic commonplace shells usually found on aNew England shore nor even the brighter colored, more intricately formedshells of tropic seas. These were shells he had never seen before, evenin library collections. Alien and soft-hued and lovely shells thatcaused his collector's heart to jump wildly. He saw a delicatestar-shaped thing that might have been fashioned of porcelain andenameled with the brush of the Mings. He saw spiral coverings fromuncatalogued cephalopods, many chambered and many hued. He saw shells ofa thousand shapes and designs, all incredibly beautiful....
Sutter forgot everything else as he sat there staring at thatcollector's paradise.
"I'll see if I can get something else," said Travail.
"No!" said Sutter quickly. "Don't touch it!"
He continued to
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