Everybody has his own Mexico. For some it is seafishing in Acapulco with the usual photograph of the fisherman and the fish. I believe the fish take as much pride in the photographs as the fishermen, only under the ocean things are turned upside down, and the pride of the fish is in the weight and size of the American who appears beside him.
Others sit on the lawns at Cuernavaca and bask in the sunshine. I suppose that on weekdays they are prominent leather manufacturers from Mexico City or famous doctors; but I have merely seen them in their basking costumes with their wives and children up from the City in play suits of Jim Tibet’s black patterns. I am told that there are even a few people in Mexico who go up Popo, and a slightly smaller number who come down again. However, I do not wish to assert what I have not observed with my own eyes.
For me Mexico means none of these. Instead, it means a severely formal and efficient building, with plumbing painted in three different colors, and the universal odor of the experimental laboratory. It means working with a friend of mine who is a physiologist, and who will not be named in the sequel for reasons that will appear obvious. It means a highly energetic and competent group of young men of various nationalities, who are not averse to playing occasional tricks on one another, and who pursue their several careers as physiologists, chemists, and other varieties of scientists. There is also Sebastian.
Sebastian is the janitor. I do not mean to imply in the least that he is an ordinary janitor. In fact, he is the janitor to end all janitors. When I first met him, he was possessed of a flowery conversational style, and two equally flowery moustachios. The moustachios, alas, have passed into history, although I suspect them of having been stolen by one of the younger chemists. The style is still there.
When I first met him, Sebastian was only able to be flowery in one language. As a matter of fact, the general question asked in the laboratory when a new article is to be turned over to the press is, “Is this the way that Sebastian would have said it?” Since then, with the ebb and flow of foreign and largely North American scientists, English has become the second language of the laboratory, and Sebastian can manage to be quite as dignified in it as he can be in Spanish. He holds very high opinions as to the responsibility and the conduct of “international scientists” and speaks reverently of them.
Sebastian is thus an internationalist, but he is not himself an un-national being. He is most definitely a Mexican, and a very devout one at that. There is a Shrine in the broom closet, not unlike the portable affairs that Mexican chauffeurs carry around with them on the front window; and I need not tell you that the Saint to whom he prays is his namesake. I don’t mean that there is not a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe somewhere in the Shrine—that would be too much to expect of a patriotic Mexican—but the main figure is that of a Roman soldier pierced through and through with arrows and looking very uncomfortable under the circumstances.
I must now report to you a sad event which happened some few years ago, and almost caused the disruption of our flourishing little institution. It all goes back to a visit the Boss paid to the National Pawn Shop. Why the Boss should visit the National Pawn Shop is more than I can understand, but I believe that it was under the pressure of some of his wife’s American friends, who had heard there were to be found there rather remarkable opportunities for the purchase of Colonial jewelry. However, one of the lots to be auctioned off seemed to consist of a miscellaneous collection of hardware, and to be so little in demand that it was going to be knocked down at a ridiculously low price. There is always a need for odd bits of metal around a laboratory, for clamping the different parts of an apparatus together; and as about fifteen pieces of miscellaneous junk were to be knocked down for half a peso, the Boss couldn’t resist the need of supporting the financial interests of his laboratory.
Most of the stuff was no use to anyone—it consisted of a few things that looked like picture frames, some miscellaneous brass work and a few bits of junk jewelry—but there were some iron rods which caught my friend’s attention as just what he needed for the assembly of his new oscillograph. The oscillograph is located in the back of the room just opposite the broom closet I have mentioned, where the janitor keeps his washrags and brooms, and performs his private devotions.
It is the part of the ideal scientist to keep a magnificent impartiality in his decisions; but although this is so, in a long career extending over 40 years and three continents, I have never met the ideal scientist. The very least he wants is to get publishable results, and what he usually wants is to show that Professor So-and-So of the University of Patagonia has made a fool of himself in his last paper. Much as I admire my esteemed Mexican colleague, I cannot acquit him of a full measure of human frailty in such matters. He is quite as capable of chortling as the next man, and his long and successful scientific career has given him many occasions to chortle.
In the period in which this tale is laid, Professor Halbwitz, formerly of the University of Spiesburg, and now a refugee at the University of Patagonia, had presented a paper concerning nervous conduction which contained some features highly obnoxious to my friend. The dispute began with the fact that the Patagonian scientist used a certain German make of amplifier, while the Mexican scientist swore by an American amplifier which a friend of his had constructed. At any rate, there was a marked discrepancy between the results of the two men. For a while, my friend put it down not only to the other fellow’s bad instrumentation, but in particular to the electrodes he was using. I may say bad electrodes or polarized electrodes are the continual excuse of the electro physiologists.
Before long the whole laboratory knew that the combat between their director and Herr Professor Halbwitz was a grim battle to the death. The less respectful youngsters had heavy bets on the outcome, weighted decisively, I may say, by the fact that their boss had almost always come across in the pinches. On the other hand, as becomes a man of dignity and substance, the janitor, our Sebastian, was unable to relieve his emotions in such a trivial and undignified way. The Boss over whom he watched, the Boss who was a national asset of Mexico, the Boss to whose office he had often brought the bootblack and the barber—much, I may say, to the Boss’s embarrassment—not only could not be wrong, but by some sort of contradiction, he needed the full support of Heaven in not being wrong. Far be it from me to expatiate on the fluency of the prayers which went up to Saint Sebastian. Neither the fluency of Sebastian’s Spanish nor my own linguistic abilities permit me to do justice to the subject. At any rate, the first results of this devotion were most gratifying. The Mexican electrodes seemed to work perfectly, and the American amplifiers were all that a committee of Edisons could have wished. The paper proceeded flowingly; it seemed as if H. Halbwitz was doomed to be swallowed into the outer darkness in which he belonged.
Convincing as the results of our laboratory were, they appeared to have no effect whatever on the stream of publications arising in Patagonia. In one article after another, Herr Professor Halbwitz continued to maintain his indefensible thesis, and the controversy went on for a period of months. By this time somebody in the Morganbilt Institute in New York began to be intrigued by the blank opposition between the results of the two scientists. He was an old friend of the Boss, and we had full confidence that the results of our laboratory would be completely confirmed. We got a most apologetic letter from the Morganbilt Institute, in which our friend, Dr. Schlemihl, confessed himself unable to duplicate our results. He supposed that there had been some misunderstanding on his part about our setup, but as far as his work went, it seemed to be distinctly on Halbwitz’s side. A long letter from our laboratory did not improve the situation. It appeared that Schlemihl’s understanding of what we had done had been perfectly correct. It was really a nasty situation, because the controversy came to take on a rather personal tinge, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it. An article appeared in an Argentine newspaper commenting on the corruption of Mexico by North American contacts, and declaring a national missio
n of Argentina to be at the lead in all branches of science and intellectual effort. This was followed by a rather chauvinistic article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, casting doubts on all Latin-American work.
We still kept getting the same results. The Boss began to look more and more strained. I don’t know how we could have kept from an explosion if just about this time a totally new and unexpected piece of work of his in an entirely different field had not come off, and saved the reputation of the laboratory. Still it was a close thing; and to this day the name of Halbwitz is not to be mentioned in the laboratory without a certain feeling of humiliation.
It was only the other day that we got our first clue as to where the difficulty really lay. The Boss was looking a little more carefully over the collection of junk that he had bought before throwing it out as utterly useless. In the bottom of the box, between two flat pieces of metal, there had sifted down a little slip of parchment, indicating that the box had been the property of an old Mexican priest who had excavated some of the material in the neighborhood of one of the early churches. This church was devoted to Saint Sebastian, and the priest offered as a theory, perhaps not too well substantiated but perfectly probable, that the pieces of metal he had dug up were relics; in fact, probably some of the original arrows of Saint Sebastian.
I don’t know just the process by which the engines of the death of Saint Sebastian acquired special miraculous powers, but we have the True Cross as a prototype, and relics are of the most diverse character. The miracle of Joshua, when he made the sun stand still, was a really good-sized one; but within the frame of science there are minor miracles as well. Now, to upset scientific experiment at all requires a very small miracle indeed, and with a devout and faithful servant praying to Saint Sebastian in the direct presence of his arrows, what can one expect? After all, as we understand it, the Saint was a Roman soldier, and the very special needs of the modern scientist must be well beyond him. The needs of an eloquent and faithful though simple soul are matters much more suited to his comprehension.
We have no complete evidence that this is what happened. However, since then I have noticed on the part of the Boss a distinct disinclination to use any material emanating from a quasi-clerical source. I don’t think he is any more religious than he was before, but he is very much annoyed, and last year when there was a question of hiring a fellow by the name of Sebastian as laboratory boy, the youngster lost the job. And I am very sure I know why.
At any rate, the moral of this little tale, if there is any moral, is that saint and scientist should each stick to his own business. Meanwhile, the janitor Sebastian flourishes, and I believe that in his self-satisfaction he is beginning to grow his moustachios again.
HEAVYPLANET
LEE GREGOR
(Milton A. Rothman)
Like Chan Davis, Isaac Asimov, and one or two others in this collection, Milton Rothman was a science fiction fan long before he was a scientist: there are few scientists at the age of twelve, which is when Milt Rothman began his interest in the field. Your editor well remembers the Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia, a quarter of a century ago, when four or five fans from New York journeyed to meet four or five Philadelphia fans, thus conducting what was called “The First American Science Fiction Convention” I was one of the guests, and Milt Rothman one of the hosts.
Since then Rothman, torn between music and science scholarships, elected ultimately to take his doctorate in physics. His present work is with the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory (once called Project Matterhorn), where his principal investigations have to do with the behavior of various types of wave motion in highly ionized gas.
Ennis was completing his patrol of Sector EM. Division 426 of the Eastern Ocean. The weather had been unusually fine, the liquid-thick air roaring along in a continuous blast that propelled his craft with a rush as if it were flying, and lifting short, choppy waves that rose and fell with a startling suddenness. A short savage squall whirled about, pounding down on the ocean like a million hammers, flinging the little boat ahead madly.
Ennis tore at the controls, granite-hard muscles standing out in bas-relief over his short, immensely thick body, skin gleaming scalelike in the slashing spray. The heat from the sun that hung like a huge red lantern on the horizon was a tangible intensity, making an inferno of the gale.
The little craft, that Ennis maneuvered by sheer brawn, took a leap into the air and seemed to float for many seconds before burying its keel again in the sea. It often floated for long distances, the air was so dense. The boundary between air and water was sometimes scarcely defined at all —one merged into the other imperceptibly. The pressure did strange things.
Like a dust mote sparkling in a beam, a tiny speck of light above caught Ennis’ eye. A glider, he thought, but he was puzzled. Why so far out here on the ocean? They were nasty things to handle in the violent wind.
The dust mote caught the light again. It was lower, tumbling down with a precipitancy that meant trouble. An upward blast caught it, checked its fall. Then it floated down gently for a space until struck by another howling wind that seemed to distort its very outlines.
Ennis turned the prow of his boat to meet the path of the falling vessel. Curious, he thought; where were its wings? Were they retracted, or broken off? It ballooned closer, and it wasn’t a glider. Far larger than any glider ever made, it was of a ridiculous shape that would not stand up for an instant. And with the sharp splash the body made as it struck the water—a splash that fell in almost the same instant it rose—a thought seemed to leap up in his mind. A thought that was more important than anything else on that planet; or was to him, at least. For if it was what he thought it was—and it had to be that—it was what Shadden had been desperately seeking for many years. What a stroke of inconceivable luck, falling from the sky before his very eyes.
The silvery shape rode the ragged waters lightly. Ennis’ craft came up with a rush; he skillfully checked its speed and the two came together with a slight jar. The metal of the strange vessel dented as if it were made of rubber. Ennis stared. He put out an arm and felt the curved surface of the strange ship. His finger prodded right through the metal. What manner of people were they who made vessels of such weak materials?
He moored his little boat to the side of the larger one and climbed to an opening. The wall sagged under him. He knew he must be careful; it was frightfully weak. It would not hold together very long; he must work fast if it were to be saved. The atmospheric pressure would have flattened it out long ago, had it not been for the jagged rent above which had allowed the pressure to be equalized.
He reached the opening and lowered himself carefully into the interior of the vessel. The rent was too small; he enlarged it by taking the two edges in his hands and pulling them apart. As he went down he looked askance at the insignificant plates and beams that were like tissue paper on his world. Inside was wreckage. Nothing was left in its original shape. Crushed, mutilated machinery, shattered vacuum tubes, sagging members, all ruined by the gravity and the pressure.
There was a pulpy mess on the floor that he did not examine closely. It was like red jelly, thin and stalky, pulped under a gravity a hundred times stronger and an atmosphere ten thousand times heavier than that it had been made for.
He was in a room with many knobs and dials on the walls, apparently a control room. A table in the center with a chart on it, the chart of a solar system. It had nine planets; his had but five.
Then he knew he was right. If they came from another system, what he wanted must be there. It could be nothing else.
He found a staircase, descended. Large machinery bulked there. There was no light, but he did not notice that. He could see well enough by infrared, and the amount of energy necessary to sustain his compact gianthood kept him constantly radiating.
Then he went through a door that was of a comfortable massiveness, even for his planet—and there it was. He recognized it at once. It was big,
squat, strong. The metal was soft, but it was thick enough even to stand solidly under the enormous pull of this world. He had never seen anything quite like it. It was full of coils, magnets, and devices of shapes unknown to him. But Shadden would know. Shadden, and who knows how many other scientists before him, had tried to make something which would do what this could do, but they had all failed. And without the things this machine could perform, the race of men on Heavyplanet was doomed to stay down on the surface of the planet, chained there immovably by the crushing gravity.
It was atomic energy. That he had known as soon as he knew that the body was not a glider. For nothing else but atomic energy and the fierce winds was capable of lifting a body from the surface of Heavyplanet. Chemicals were impotent. There is no such thing as an explosion where the atmosphere pressed inward with more force than an explosion could press outward. Only atomic, of all the theoretically possible sources of energy, could supply the work necessary to lift a vessel away from the planet. Every other source of energy was simply too weak.
Yes, Shadden, all the scientists must see this. And quickly, because the forces of sea and storm would quickly tear the ship to shreds, and, even more vital, because the
scientists of Bantin and Marak might obtain the secret if there was delay. And that would mean ruin—the loss of its age-old supremacy—for his nation. Bantin and Marak were war nations; did they obtain the secret they would use it against all the other worlds that abounded in the Universe.
The Universe was big. That was why Ennis was so sure there was atomic energy on this ship. For, even though it might have originated on a planet that was so tiny that chemical energy—although that was hard to visualize— would be sufficient to lift it out of the pull of gravity, to travel the distance that stretched between the stars only one thing would suffice.
The Expert Dreamers (1962) Anthology Page 19
