Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  In the meantime, Joe Kingsley had finished his pack of cigarettes without having noted the lettering on any one of them. This seems unlikely at first sight. Yet an inveterate smoker will admit that he is not inclined to read the label on his cigarette, especially one who is busy with his hands most of the time and who may smoke a full package of cigarettes during the working day and another at night.

  In Kingsley’s case, the twenty smokes were gone by mid-morning, a good quantity of them having been burned during Kingsley’s night-time pondering. So the perpetrator of the outrage was himself completely unconscious of his act, and had he been confronted by the evidence itself, Kingsley would have disavowed any knowledge of it. And Kingsley’s argument would have the validity of truth, for Kingsley had no idea of the wheels-within-wheels that he had started turning.

  The quarter-in-reverse was not mentioned. It was kept from all public notice by the Treasury Department, and the recipient of Blair’s letter did not dare broach the subject openly to the storekeeper for fear the authorities would get curious.

  What Blair expected was not known. Blair himself did not know. All Blair knew was that something downright odd had taken place and Blair was smart enough to realize that something might be made of it if it could be made to work. And nothing would be lost if the strange affair led to nothing.

  So with the veiling of the strange quarter by the Treasury Department, that phase of the thing died. Yet there was one other item that was neither of interest to the Treasury nor to Kingsley, for neither of them knew about it. It was an item that could reach the newspapers in due time.

  And did.

  CHAPTER III

  Power of the Press

  THE STORY broke as a squib item on Page Eight, sandwiched between a recipe for a cake by a popular home economist and the daily cross-word puzzle. Its few lines were both terse and mysterious. It went:

  FORTEAN SOCIETY PLEASE NOTE!

  Gustave Stanisky today presented this newspaper with its first package of Lemac cigarettes. Stanisky collects cigarette stamps for his son’s collection, and found the empty and torn wrapper in his pile of waste paper.

  Upon close inspection, the package of Lemac cigarettes turned out to be a perfect mirror image of the. wrapper from a pack of Camels.

  The origin of this oddity is unknown, and equally vague are the means of doing the job and the reason why it was done. It is suggested that the Fortean Society whose members collect such rare oddities may be interested. Rumor has it that a Lemac smoked backward tastes like a Camel.

  This item caught the eye of Walter Murdoch during his dinner aboard the crack train heading toward Washington. He swore roundly because he had left too soon, and because the thing had hit the papers and was now public knowledge. It also heightened the mystery quite a bit, and gave it some weight. A quarter reversed might be an abortive attempt at counterfeiting, but when other things began to turn up reversed in the same inexplicable fashion, it began to look as though more than mere “happenstance” was in the making.

  Murdoch called for the conductor and had the train flagged down at the next station. There he fumed and fretted because a full thirty-six hours must pass before he could get back to Holland to look into this new development.

  The news item was also seen by the recipient of Blair’s letter, and that started a chain of thought. A bit of research disclosed that there were three members of the Forteans in Holland, and further research proved that one of them was an elderly lady who believed firmly in the occult, and was therefore of little use in any discussion of pure scientific fact.

  The second was an obscure young professor at Holland University of Science, and might prove interesting. The third was an adolescent of fifteen who was an avid collector of science fiction and fantasy stories.

  And so Joe Kingsley opened his door to a gentle knock and blinked as the girl smiled and asked uncertainly:

  “Doctor Kingsley?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Sally Ransome.”

  “How do you do.”

  Kingsley stood there foolishly, not knowing exactly what to do. He was not used to this. The girl was about twenty-four and constructed along very desirable lines all the way from her high-arched feet to her chestnut hair. Her eyes held his naively; nice eyes, large and brown, and their hold almost prevented Kingsley from seeing her generous mouth and finely molded nose.

  “I’m a roving reporter from the National Weekly,” she said.

  “I’ve read it occasionally. But what can I do for you? Come in, Miss Ransome.”

  “Thank you. I will. As to what you can do for me, have you any ideas about that reversed package of cigarettes?”

  “What reversed package of cigarettes?”

  Sally held forth the newspaper and showed him. He took the paper and read it through. He shook his head and shrugged.

  “A prank, I fear.”

  “That’s what most people will claim—and forget about it. But there’s something to it, I think.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But you’re a member of the Forteans. You aren’t supposed to doubt anything.”

  HE laughed, and shrugged again.

  “I do belong to the Fortean Society,” he admitted. “I joined several years ago because I was interested in some of the things Charles Fort claimed.”

  “I’ve read some of them. But isn’t finding a reverse-image wrapper almost as intriguing as a rain of frogs, or people disappearing from sight without leaving any trace?”

  “There are two reasons why people might join the Forteans,” he told her. “One of them is the one I have—because I happen to believe that everything has, somewhere, a sound basis in fact. Some scientific fact.”

  “How about the tales of people who have disappeared, only to turn up some other place in much less time than it is possible to travel regardless of the means?”

  “That’s happened,” he admitted. “Furthermore, just because we do not know the scientific fact that runs an occurrence on one day or during one era is no sign that the scientific truth might not come to light at a later day. Charles Fort and others call this phenomenon ‘teleportation’ and it has been used by many writers. It is, of course, completely unknown as they write about it. Yet there might—”

  Kingsley paused. He realized that he was treading on thin ground. He wanted no mention of his invention until much later.

  “Might be what?” she prompted.

  “I have no ideas about your cigarette package,” he said a bit abruptly. “It must be false.”

  “The men who know say ‘no’. They claim it is printed on good, authentic paper with the same kind of ink, and in perfect reverse-register to an original.”

  “I’d hate to go on record as claiming the thing might have passed through some sort of a space warp, or something like that,” mused Kingsley. “The trouble with these things is that they are entirely too scattered and infrequent. I guarantee that a whole rash of such stuff will come forth now that it’s begun. There were the Flying Saucers of a few years ago, you know, and the Loch Ness sea monster seems to make its yearly appearance just before vacation season.”

  “I’m a bit disappointed,” she told him. She stretched, and the gesture showed off to perfection her lissome waist and rounded arms. “I thought that a scientist who was also a member of the Forteans might be able to shed some light on the thing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Then your membership in the Forteans is not for any reason than to scoff.”

  “Why, no,” he replied firmly. “I’m definitely interested.”

  She smiled at him archly. “Yet you say the same thing that Fort said. That everything has an explanation but that we can’t understand it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But then you refuse to explain anything. ”

  “I don’t know everything.”

  “How do you explain teleportation?”

  “Why harp on that subject?” asked Kingsley un
comfortably.

  “Because you know something about it,” she told him directly.

  Kingsley colored. “Not—”

  Sally’s laugh was apologetic. “I’m sorry,” she said seriously when she finished showing him that she knew the score. “I don’t mean to pry. Perhaps it is a military secret?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it in that—” Kingsley shut his mouth with a slight click. He looked at her askance.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “I’ll agree to most anything for a story,” she said.

  “The deal is this: You print nothing until I’m ready to announce it, and then I’ll see that you get first information.”

  “That is a deal,” she said holding out a hand. Her hand was firm, and the pressure of it against his hand tingled a bit.

  “Then I’ll show you my teleport.”

  SALLY RANSOME blinked. Her mouth parted a bit, but she held her tongue. She arose and followed Kingsley to the laboratory.

  “I’m just polishing off a few last-minute ends,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for a week now.”

  “Looks like more time than that.”

  “Oh, the first model took me a long time. It was a small job. I’ve been making it bigger, and I’ve been using most of the old stuff in the larger model. That way I’ve saved time.”

  “Good idea. But it looks a mess.”

  “I suppose so.” He laughed as he picked up his tools and went to work on the gear.

  “When will this model be working?”

  “Golly, Miss Ransome, I don’t expect it to play until dark.”

  Sally Ransome seated herself in Kingsley’s easy chair and lit a cigarette.

  “This I will wait to see,” she told him…

  At seven o’clock, Joe Kingsley stood up and racked the soldering iron with an expansive gesture.

  “Finished?” she asked.

  “Finished wiring,” he said. “There’s just one question. You must be ravenous.”

  “How do you feel?”

  He shrugged. “I’m hungry, of course.”

  “We could go out and eat,” she said. “But what would you be doing if I weren’t here?”

  He grinned. “Well, I’ve got about two hours worth of alignment and calibration work to do before it ticks. I’d be inclined to do that.”

  “Then you go right ahead,” she told him. “I can wait, and then we can take enough time over our meal to taste it. Otherwise it’s hot dogs and coffee gulped on the run so we can get back. Right?”

  “Right,” he said with a look of admiration.

  He turned back to his equipment with a smile and began the arduous job of adjusting the gear. His two hours were a good estimate, and at nine o’clock he arose from the back of the equipment and announced that it was about to make history. He pointed to the four foot disc above the table.

  “Watch!” he said.

  The silvery disc grew dully translucent as Joe Kingsley advanced the power. Then it went into transparency and Sally gasped as the solid silver plate became glass-clear.

  The teleport looked from the laboratory into another room in the building, and he turned a dial which caused the plane of view to retreat until it passed through the wall into their own room.

  “I had a bit of trouble on my first try,” he told her ruminatively. “I drilled a three-inch hole in the wall over there.”

  “How did you do that?” she asked, leaning forward interestedly.

  “By running the thing forward for transfer while the power was full on, instead of merely watching. Now I merely use it to look through until I see where I want to go. Then I turn on the final dollop of power and the thing is not only transparent, but non-existent.”

  “But how does it work?” asked the incredulous girl.

  “Space is curved,” he said. “Curved in the fourth dimension. Inasmuch as this thing looks anywhere we want it to, it must cross space directly. Actually, it works because of a bit of rather involved field theory. In simple terms—which because they’re simplified are subject to argument for absolute fact—it is a situation where time and space are factors normal to this particular universe or environment. However, neither time nor space have the same meaning when you traverse a space or a universe that has no connection to this one. So the teleport connects two locations in this space with no apparent distance between them.”

  “But why?”

  KINGSLEY picked up a bit of paper, and put two dots on it about three inches apart. Then he folded the paper so that the dots touched one another.

  “See? The two-dimensional paper is curved in the third dimension so that the two dots are touching through one dimension but three inches apart in the other.”

  “But you can’t tell me that this room full of equipment is powerful enough to cause any warpage of space you feel inclined to bend?”

  He shook his head. “No, even the mass of the sun warps space only a minute bit. But the case is that we cannot really get any mental picture of a curved space. It may be curved in many ways, and might even have a multiplicity of curves. Since it curves in the fourth dimension, there is always some curve that will cause any two spots to be adjacent, and these curves are constantly variable so that you move smoothly from one to the other as you change the power.”

  “I’m still dull,” she said, and smiled.

  “That’s hunger,” he said. “And while I’m demonstrating, I’ll make another attempt.”

  He twiddled the dials until the scene went down into a lower floor. He approached the stove first, then switched in the extra power. Then, standing before the circle, he reached through and took the coffee pot from the stove.

  He turned the scene to a cupboard where he got coffee from a flower-printed cannister. He filled the coffee pot, placed it on the stove, and lit the gas. He turned the scene to the refrigerator and took a paper-wrapped package.

  “Hamburger,” he said.

  CHAPTER IV

  Mobius Space

  JOE KINGSLEY set the meat in the pan, then went back to the cupboard. From this he took plates, knives, forks, cups and saucers. He handed them back over his shoulder with a flourish, and Sally Ransome set a corner of the laboratory table.

  Then, watching the frying hamburger, Kingsley continued to explain.

  “You’ve seen the normal curve of a function—a curved line running across a piece of cross-ruled paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever seen a three-dimensional graph?”

  “No.”

  “It’s called a functional surface. It has places that show the function of two variables. You can vary either of them, and the position of the intersection shows the function. You can vary one of them in a minute increment and the function may move only slightly. It’s like drawing a series of lines on a curved surface, like—like a contour map.” He gave her a pleased glance. His fumbling had found the proper simile and he was happy.

  “So,” he continued, “the tide can come in a thousandth of an inch, and the contour will change minutely. So in a four dimensional graph, you change the function slightly and the space-curve changes slightly—not abruptly but smoothly—and you have another location. Follow?”

  “I follow, but I’m a long way behind. All I know is that it seems to work. How’s the hamburger?”

  “Done,” he said.

  He handed the food over and took the coffee pot from the stove. He poured.

  “Not the Biltmore,” he said. “And even so, it’s just the thing you didn’t want a couple of hours ago.”

  “Here it’s fine,” she said. “We can still talk. I like it. Two, Joe.”

  Kingsley’s spirits lifted again. He dropped two lumps of sugar in Sally’s coffee and settled back in his chair. Sally tasted the coffee.

  “I think I’ll need another lump,” she said apologetically.

  Joe laughed and dropped another lump in her cup. “Come from a long line of chemists?�
��

  “Why?” she asked, stirring vigorously.

  “All chemists seem to take about nine spoons of sugar per cup,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “No one knows, not even chemists. But it’s apparently a habit.”

  Sally tasted and then shrugged her shapely shoulders. “Just call me chemist,” she said. She held up the cup for another lump.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I’d normally say that four lumps would make this taste like syrup.”

  “It should,” he told her. “Mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  He tasted gingerly. He shook his head.

  “What kind of sugar is that?” she asked.

  “Standard dextrose.”

  “I didn’t ask the chemical name for it. Who made it?”

  “Same people who have been making it for years. Standard brand.”

  “It’s been cut,” she said.

  “Well, use more and we’ll discount it.” Sally dropped in more lumps and stirred again.

  “Dextrose!’ she said glumly. “As puny a grade as any. What we need is saccharin, I guess.”

  He laughed.

  “Well, all I know about it is that some people use saccharin. What else is there?”

  Kingsley smiled, happy to show off his knowledge. “There are about nine different kinds—perhaps more. There’s dextrose, fructrose, levulose … Levulose!”

  “What is levulose? Sounds like a bad name.”

  “Maybe they got some levulose mixed in with the batch,” he said musingly.

  “What is levulose?”

  “Levulose is similar to dextrose except that it is about one-tenth as sweet as sugar.”

  “How do you tell ’em apart? Taste?”

  “That’s one way. Dextrose is a flanged-up nomenclature for ‘right-hand sugar’ because dextrose polarizes light to the right. Levulose means ‘left-hand sugar’ because it polarizes light to the left. Yet their molecules are built the same except that one is a left-hand image of the other.”