A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

“I believe I win our wager?” one asked suavely.

  “Yes,” the other conceded. “I must admit, brother, that bodies, in their limited fashion, are quite amusing. However, I am convinced that the old ways are best. This was a pleasant experiment, but I shouldn’t like it as a regular routine.”

  “I am enamored of it myself,” said the first. “The unsuspected histrionic talents I discovered in myself are fascinating. I am going to indulge in a variation of this experiment.”

  “On whom, brother?”

  “Ah, that is a question. Let me see, shall it be a man or a woman? Which?

  “Why not both?”

  “A brilliant thought! Brother, perhaps you have the makings of an imagination, after all. Would you care to join me?”

  “To be sure, brother.”

  CONTACT WITH EARTH

  W.A. Willis

  Massen paused on the cold doormat and examined his own science. It was not unduly clouded, and he knocked softly. Too softly, he thought, and knocked more firmly. Simultaneously there was a peremptory order to come in and, hot with embarrassment, he pushed open the door. The Foreign Secretary continued writing for exactly the time necessary to show that he was an extremely busy man, but equally courteous. Then he looked up and switched on his smile.

  “Ah, Mason,” he said, with the odious affability of the public figure, “Sit down”. Thank God for that, thought Massen, it’s not trouble anyway, but what can the old bot want. The old boy came to the point with unusual speed.

  “Briefly,” he said, “I have just been informed that the B.B.C. research engineers at Malvern claim to have received wireless messages from the direction of the moon. I am advised that we can dismiss the possibility of intelligence indigenou s to our satellite, and assume that we are being approached by a race which has evolved space travel and is using the moon as a “pied-a-terre”.

  Masssen said nothing, and he went on pompously: “I neeed hardly emphasize the necessity of treating this information as highly confidential. The negotiations have, of course, been put in the hands of my Department. I know there is no precedent, but i t was generally realised that the most suitable Ministry to deal with these alien beings was the Foreign Office: first however we have to find some means of mutual understanding. That will be your job.”

  Massen swallowed. “But sir,” he stammered, “My knowledge of terrestrial languages won’t be of much use inn dealing with one that probably belongs to none of the phonetic or ideographical classes known to us.”

  “Er, quite, quite,” said the Foreign Secretary, “but actually I have chosen you less because of your ability as a diplomat, though your experience should have given you the necessary resilience of mind, than on accountof your work with cyph ers, and your knowledge of mathematics.” He coughed almost apologetically. “I must explain that the signals so far received apparently consist entirely of groups of morse dots.”

  “But,” said Massen, “if radio communication is possible, why not television?”

  “One might have thought so, but the Chief Engineer tells me that is impossible for the present. I do not understand,” he said almost proudly, “the technical jargon used by these fellows, but he said something about synchronization, and I ga ther that any alien system of transmission is extremely unlikely to be suited to our present types of receiver. However,” he continued boldly, “I have every confidence in your ability, my dear Mason, and do not hesitate to call on any assistence you may require.”

  “All bloody well,” thought Masson, as he climbed into the car, “but how could you learn a language by sound alone? That’s expecting too much of onomatopoeia.” By the time he reached Malvern the problem seemed no nearer a solution and he could only hope that the aliens would think of one for him.

  It was obviously a matter of urgency to acknowledge the message as soon as possible, and when he reached the room which was being hurredly prepared for him he asked to hear the recordings. While he waited he asked the Engineer for a report.

  “Well, Mr. Mason—”

  “Massen.”

  “Sorry. Well, the signals started, or at least were first heard, at 10:30 this morning. They consist of an amplitude modulated transmission on about 75 megacycles, carrying a pure audio-frequency note of 2,400 cycles. Since there is only one A.F. we have been able to use considerable amplification, with audio filters and negative feedback.”

  “Thanks,” said Massen, but—” At that instant the recording came on. The message consisted of ‘pips’ like those of the Greenwich time signals, but transmitted very rapidly and divided into groups by almost imperceptable pauses. Massen not ed each dot on his pad and counted them carefully:

  1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 21, 23, 31, 37.

  “Hm,” he muttered, “arithmetical progression? No. . . . Yes.” He turned to the Engineer.

  “And this message is still being transmitted, without change?”

  “Yes. At intervals of about 13 minutes. The next is due in a few moments. You will hear it through this speaker. And here is the key of our transmitter, for your reply.”

  “Good,” said Massen, “then would you please answer with a group of 41 dots. They have sent us the first 12 prime numbers, and then by replying with the thirteenth we tell them that they are in touch with someone possessing a knowledge of m athematics.”

  “As the last dot sped on its journey a tense silence fell on the room. The wait seemed endless, but after only two minutes the alien transmission began again, with what seemed a new eagerness. Massen could hardly control his fingers as he noted the dots. The first human to communicate with extra-terrestrial beings! The message was long and very fast, and he was unable to examine it as he wrote. But when it had ceased he looked at the mass of dots in dismay. He counted them hurriedly:

  9, 17, 5, 16, 2, 13, 1, 9, 2, 5, 5, 2, 9.

  1, 13, 2, 16, 5, 17, 9, 16, 13, 13, 16, 9,

  17, 9, 1, 3, dash, 1, 3, 5

  He searched desperately for some relationship among these heterogenous numbers. He was still searching after they had been repeated a dozen times. Sick with failure he walked to the window and gazed despondently at the cloudy sky.

  All at once he was attacked by an overwhelming sense of catastrophe. He whirled round, but there was nothing unusual, except that the Engineer had left the room. He stared vacantly at the desk, and the realization struck him like a blow that the signals had stopped. The implications stunned him. The aliens had abandoned their project in disgust at human, at his, obtuseness. The message would prove to be absurdly simple and humanity would revile him for having bungled their greatest opportunity. The-

  The phone rang, and he lifted the receiver clumsily. It was the Engineer. “It’s all right, the receiver’s O.K. The moon has set, and we needn’t expect anything more until 7:50 tomorrow morning.”

  Massen felt better after sandwiches and coffee in the Cafeteria. “I wonder,” the Engineer was saying, “why they don’t just land on Earth? I suppose they’re short of fuel?”

  “More likely they want to make sure of a friendly reception.”

  “Yes,” said the Engineeer, “I suppose they might easily land in some barbarous place and be attacked.” He eyed Massen sympathetically. “What are you going to do next?”

  “God knows,” said Massen, “play the recordings again, I suppose.”

  At 1 a.m. the recordings were still being played, and the Engineer had gone to bed. Massen was lying back in his chair and resting his eyes. His brain was tired too, but he could not afford to sleep. There was no time to waste, he thought, staring at h is watch.

  The chair skittered against the wall as he burst into the ante-room, where a weary technician was lifting another disc.

  “Can you slow down that turn-table?”

  “Sure. How’s that?”

  “More. Yes, that’ll do.”

  The dots began to resemble fog-horn blasts. Massen took off his watch and set it down before him.

  Half an hour passed, and the technic
ian looked up again as Massen flung open the door.

  “You can pack up now. Everything’s all right.”

  “The clue,” he said, gulping his breakfast coffee, “was something that did not appear in my transcription of the message. Actually, the pauses between the groups of dots vary in length, but so slightly as to be imperceptable to our ears un til the recording was slowed down. Evidently these beings have a much more highly developed sense of duration than us. More rapid metabolism, I suppose. Anyway the message actually reads like this.” He wrote:

  9,17 5,16 2,13 1,9 2,5 5,2 9,1

  13,2 16,5 17,9 16,13 13,16 9,17

  9,1 3, dash, 1, 3, 5

  “So what?”

  “Don’t you see,” Massen exclaimed. The co-ordinates of a graph! Plot these points, connect them, and you will find you have drawn a circle and a diameter. They have sent us a picture! With patience they could draw anything the same way.” ;

  “And the number at the end?”

  “The value of Pi expressed in the 12cale of notation. Presumably they want to know our scale so they can send larger numbers, and thus more complicated pictures. It will be enough to reply ‘3, dash, 1, 4, 1, 7.’

  As they waited beside the transmitter key the Engineer asked, “What do you think they’ll send us next?”

  “I don’t know,” said Massen. “Theoretically we could learn one another’s language this way, but it would be a slow job. I expect they’ll just arrange a landing or a television contact.”

  “Well, I think the world owes you a vote of thanks, Mr. Mason,” said the Engineer.

  Earth’s first diplomatic representative was much too happy to protest.

  THE END

  RING AROUND THE REDHEAD

  John D. MacDonald

  Bill Maloney Opens the Doorway to Other Worlds, and Finds—the Stuff of Dreams!

  THE prosecuting attorney was a lean specimen named Amery Heater. The build-up given the murder trial by the newspapers had resulted in a welter of open-mouthed citizens who jammed the golden oak courtroom.

  Bill Maloney, the defendant, was sleepy and bored. He knew he had no business being bored. Not with twelve righteous citizens who, under the spell of Amery Heater’s quiet, confidential oratory were beginning to look at Maloney as though he were a fiend among fiends.

  The August heat was intense, and flies buzzed around the upper sashes of the dusty windows. The city sounds drifted in the open windows, making it necessary for Amery Heater to raise his voice now and again.

  But though Bill Maloney was bored, he was also restless and worried. Mostly he was worried about Justin Marks, his own lawyer.

  Marks cared but little for this case. But, being Bill Maloney’s best friend, he couldn’t very well refuse to handle it. Justin Marks was a proper young man with a Dewey mustache and frequent daydreams about Justice Marks of the Supreme Court. He somehow didn’t feel that the Maloney case was going to help him very much.

  Particularly with the very able Amery Heater intent on getting the death penalty.

  The judge was a puffy old citizen with signs of many good years at the brandy botde, the hundreds of gallons of which, surprisingly, had done nothing to dim the keenness of eye or brain.

  Bill Maloney was a muscular young man with a round face, a round chin, and a look of sleepy skepticism. A sheaf of his coarse, corn-colored hair jutted out over his forehead. His eyes were clear, deep blue.

  He stifled a yawn, remembering what Justin Marks had told him about making a good impression on the jury. He singled out a plump lady juror in the front row and winked solemnly at her. She lifted her chin with an audible sniff.

  No dice there. Might as well listen to Amery Heater.

  “. . . and we, the prosecution, intend to prove that on the evening of July tenth William Howard Maloney did murderously attack his neighbor, James Finch, and did kill James Finch by crushing his skull. We intend to prove there was a serious dispute between these men, a dispute that had continued for some time. We further intend to prove that the cause of this dispute was the dissolute life being led by the defendant.”

  AMERY HEATER droned on and on. The room was too hot. Bill Maloney slouched in his chair and yawned. He jumped when Justin Marks hissed at him. Then he remembered that he had yawned and he smiled placatingly at the jury. Several of them looked away hurriedly.

  Fat little Dr. Koobie took the stand. He was sworn in, and Amery Heater, polite and respectful, asked questions which established Koobie’s name, profession, and presence at the scene of the “murder” some fifty minutes after it had taken place.

  “And now, Dr. Koobie, would you please describe in your own words exactly what you found.”

  Koobie hitched himself in his chair, pulled his trousers up a little over his chubby knees, and said, “No need to make this technical. I was standing out by the hedge between the two houses. I was on Jim Finch’s side of the hedge. There was a big smear of blood around. Some of it was spattered on the hedge. Barberry, I think. On the ground there was some hunks of brain tissue, none of them bigger than a dime. Also a piece of scalp maybe two inches square. Had Jim’s hair on it, all right. Proved that in the lab. Also found some pieces of bone. Not many.” He smiled peacefully. “Guess old Jim is dead, all right. No question of that. Blood was his and the hair was his.”

  Three jurors swallowed visibly, and a fourth began to fan himself vigorously.

  Koobie answered a few other questions, and then Justin Marks took over the cross-examination.

  “What would you say killed Jim Finch?”

  Many people gasped at the question, having assumed that the defense would be that, lacking a body, there was no murder.

  Koobie put a fat finger in the corner of his mouth, took it out again. “Couldn’t rightly say.”

  “Could a blow from a club or similar weapon have done it?”

  “Good Lord, no! Man’s head is a pretty durable thing. You’d have to back him up against a solid concrete wall and bust him with a full swing with a baseball bat and you still wouldn’t do that much hurt. Jim was standing right out in the open.”

  “Dr. Koobie, imagine a pair of pliers ten feet long and proportionately thick. If a pair of pliers like that were to have grabbed Mr. Finch by the head, smashing it like a nut in a nutcracker, could it have done that much damage?”

  Koobie pulled his nose, tugged on his ear, frowned, and said, “Why, if it clamped down real sudden like, I imagine it could. But where’d Jim go?”

  “That’s all, thank you,” Justin Marks said.

  Amery Heater called other witnesses. One of them was Anita Hempflet.

  Amery said, “You live across the road from the defendant?”

  Miss Anita Hempflet was fiftyish, big-boned, and of the same general consistency as the dried beef recommended for Canadian canoe trips. Her voice sounded like fingernails on the third-grade blackboard.

  “Yes, I do. I’ve lived there thirty-five years. That Maloney person, him sitting right over there, moved in two years ago, and I must say that I . . .”

  “You are able to see Mr. Maloney’s house from your windows?”

  “Certainly!”

  “Now tell the court when it was that you first saw the redheaded woman.”

  She licked her lips. “I first saw that . . . that woman in May. A right pleasant morning it was, too. Or it was until I saw her. About ten o’clock, I’d say. She was right there in Maloney’s front yard, as bold as brass. Had on some sort of shiny silver thing. You couldn’t call it a dress. Too short for that. Didn’t half cover her the way a lady ought to be covered. Not by half. She was . . .”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Well, she come out of the house and she stopped and looked around as though she was surprised at where she was. My eyes are good. I could see her face. She looked all around. Then she sort of slouched, like she was going to keel over or something. She walked real slow down toward the gate. Mr. Maloney came running out of the house and I heard him yell to
her. She stopped. Then he was making signs to her, for her to go back into the house. Just like she was deaf or something. After a while she went back in. I guessed she probably was made deaf by that awful bomb thing the government lost control of near town three days before that.”

  “You didn’t see her again?”

  “Oh, I saw her plenty of times. But after that she was always dressed more like a girl should be dressed. Far as I could figure out, Mr. Maloney was buying her clothes in town. It wasn’t right that anything like that should be going on in a nice neighborhood. Mr. Finch didn’t think it was right, either. Runs down property values, you know.”

  “In your knowledge, Miss Hempflet, did Mr. Maloney and the deceased ever quarrel?”

  “They started quarreling a few days after that woman showed up. Yelling at each other across the hedge. Mr. Finch was always scared of burglars. He had that house fixed up so nobody could get in if he didn’t want them in. A couple of times I saw Bill Maloney pounding on his door and rapping on the windows. Jim wouldn’t pay any attention.”

  Justin cross-examined.

  “You say, Miss Hempflet, that the defendant was going down and shopping for this woman, buying her clothes. In your knowledge, did he buy her anything else?”

  Anita Hempflet sniggered. “Say so! Guess she must of been feebleminded. I asked around and found out he bought a blackboard and chalk and some kids’ books.”

  “Did you make any attempt to find out where this woman came from, this woman who was staying with Mr. Maloney?”

  “Should say I did! I know for sure that she didn’t come in on the train or Dave Wattle would’ve seen her. If she’d come by bus, Myrtle Gisco would have known it. Johnny Farness didn’t drive her in from the airport. I figure that any woman who’d live openly with a man like Maloney must have hitchhiked into town. She didn’t come any other way.”

  “That’s all, thank you,” Justin Marks said.

  MALONEY sighed. He couldn’t understand why Justin was looking so worried. Everything was going fine. According to plan. He saw the black looks the jury was giving him, but he wasn’t worried. Why, as soon as they found out what had actually happened, they’d be all for him. Justin Marks seemed to be sweating.