A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “By mid-morning, the ship’s gravitors had floated her into the field for the usual feather-light landing, and mail call, always the first order of business, was over.

  “Women have a well-deserved reputation for dawdling over trifles when important matters wait, but that morning Prunella broke all previous records. She gossiped with the ship’s captain about interminable bills of lading, she inspected the field for any possible damage by the ship, she swallowed enough coffee to start a fair-sized shortage. Finally, just in time to save the station from a mass nervous collapse, she left the office for her quarters, carrying her mail in one hand and that small, all-important package in the other.

  “She reappeared for lunch wearing the tiny smile of a woman who knows she is appreciated by someone and, we hoped, also wearing something else not quite so visible. Never was one so closely watched by so many. If she looked distressed, we gloated. If she squirmed in her chair, we rejoiced. Her every move was analyzed for possible puff symptoms.

  “Prunella, that evening, dined as the captain’s guest aboard ship. In the mess hall, with Mr. Paulson installed in the seat of honor, the arguments were long, loud and heated: She had ’em on. She didn’t. The puffs had her. They didn’t.

  “I hadn’t realized there were so many synonyms for fool and idiot or so many genteel ways to sneer until my learned colleagues that night debated the case of the puffs versus Prunella. We went to bed still in an agony of indecision.”

  LEE WAITED for me to be appropriately sympathetic. I obliged.

  “The next morning, Prunella had breakfast alone in her quarters, but then she often did. Or I should say she ordered breakfast sent and then ate only a little of it and sent it back. A short while later, Prunella left her room, went to the library and returned to her quarters with a spool of microfilm in her hand. All the people who could cram into the tiny library cubicle were in before the hiss of Prunella’s closing door died away. A wild rape of the library files improved our digestions, dispositions and belief in the ultimate triumph of good over evil—Prunella had withdrawn the film on ‘Effects of Xenon Life-forms on the Human Body.’

  “I learned later that some far-sighted soul had added lurid details to the section of the film dealing with the puffs, describing minutely what one could expect after powder puff infestation. Odd thing about a few of those added details—some of the more horrible ones had never been noticed before nor have they been reported since.

  “Prunella went aboard the supply ship Hunter shortly after noon, scratching determinedly in several places that no lady should, at least in public.

  “The captain, most of his loading done and seeing her dire need, blasted off for Terra immediately and flipped into sub-space much closer to the planet than he should have. Prunella was on Terra that same night, Xenon time. The captain told me on his next trip that Pruny had commandeered both quarantine nurses at Polar Space Field to work on her. It still took the two women several hours to finish, according to him. She must have been covered with the things. Bet she looked as though she were sprouting fur.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” I told Lee. “You kept referring to a ‘treatment’ of some kind for the powder puffs. Didn’t Prunella know about it? If she did, I don’t see why she didn’t take it on Xenon. Surely, at the risk of being insubordinate, you didn’t deny it to her if she had ordered it.”

  “Quite the contrary, Sam. Prunella knew all about the ‘treatment.’ And in spite of your suspicions as to our hard hearts, many of us offered our services after leering in what we hoped was a suggestive manner. You see, Sam, the mysterious treatment consisted of nothing more than a very close examination of every square centimeter of the skin with a high-power magnifier and using a pair of fine tweezers to pull out the puff rootlets. But in addition to all of Prunella’s other faults and/or virtues, Prunella was a prude.”

  We drank a silent toast to pure womanhood.

  COLLECTOR’S ITEM

  Robert F. Young

  Very trivial things can go into the weaving of a nest. The human race, for instance—

  We’ve often wondered what would happen if Robert Young should cease to be alyrically intense writer for a story or two, forsaking the bright, poetic worlds of MISS KATY THREE and the first sweet sleep of night to become dispassionately analytical on a cosmic scale. Now we know! He’d chill us to the bone by setting two squixes to brooding over a never-to-be born Earth, exactly as he has done here. And thrill us, too—with the liveliest kind of entertainment.

  THE CONDENSATION of the histories of ten thousand races into a text concise enough to fit into a single volume had been a task of unprecedented proportions. There had been times when the Galactic Historian had doubted whether even his renowned abilities were up to the assignment that the Galactic Board of Education had so lightly tossed his way, times when he had thrown up his hands—all five of them—in despair. But at last the completed manuscript lay before him on his desk with nothing but the final reading remaining between it and publication.

  The Galactic Historian repeatedly wiped his brows as he turned the pages. It was a warm night, even for Mixxx Seven. Now and then, a tired breeze struggled down from the hills and limped across the lowlands to the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the Galactic Historian’s study via the open door and out again via the open windows, fingering the manuscript each time it passed but doing nothing whatsoever about the temperature.

  The manuscript was something more than a hammered-down history of galactic achievement. It was the ultimate document. The two and seventy thousand jarring texts that it summarized had been systematically destroyed, one by one, after the Galactic Historian had stripped them of their objective information. If an historical event was not included in the manuscript, it failed as an event. It ceased to have reality.

  The responsibility was the Galactic Historian’s alone and he did not take it lightly. But he had a lot on his minds and, of late, he hadn’t been sleeping well. He was overworked and over-tired and over-anxious. He hadn’t seen his wives for two Mixxx months and he was worried about them—all fifty of them.

  He never should have let them take the Hub cruise in the first place. But they’d been so enthusiastic and so eager that he simply hadn’t had the hearts to let them down. Now, despite his better judgments, he was beginning to wonder if they might not be on the make for another coordinator.

  Wives trouble, on top of all his chronological trouble, was too much. The Galactic Historian could hardly be blamed for wanting to see the last of the manuscript, for wanting to transmit it to his publishers, potential hiatuses and all, and take the next warp for the Hub.

  But he was an historian—the historian, in fact—and he persisted heroically in his task, rereading stale paragraphs and checking dreary dates, going over battles and conquests and invasions and interregnums. Despite his mood and despite the heat, the manuscript probably would have arrived at his publishers chronologically complete. So complete, in fact, that schoolteachers all over the galaxy would have gotten the textbook they had always wanted—a concise chronicle of everything that had ever happened since the explosion of the primeval atom, a history textbook that no other history textbook could contradict for the simple reason that there were no other history textbooks.

  As it was, they got the textbook, but it did not contain everything that had ever happened. Not quite.

  Two factors were responsible for the omission. The first was an oversight on the part of the Galactic Historian. With so much on his minds, he had forgotten to number the pages of the manuscript.

  The second factor was the breeze.

  The breeze was the ultimate archfiend and there can be no question as to its motivation. Nothing short of sheer malice could have caused it suddenly to remember its function after neglecting that function all evening.

  All evening it had been tiptoeing down the hillsides and across the lowlands as though it was afraid of disturbing a single blade of grass or a single drooping
leaf. And then, at the crucial moment, it huffed and puffed itself up into a little hurricane, charged down upon the Galactic University buildings and whooshed through the Galactic Historian’s study like a band of interstellar dervishes.

  Unfortunately, the Galactic Historian had begun to wipe his brows at the very moment of the breeze’s entry. While the act was not a complicated one, it did consume time and monopolize attention. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to witness the theft. Neither is it surprising that he failed to notice afterwards that the page he had been checking was gone.

  He was, as previously stated, overworked, over-tired, and over-anxious and, in such a state, even a Galactic Historian can skip a whole series of words and dates and never know the difference. A hiatus of twenty thousand years is hardly noticeable anyway. Galactically speaking, twenty thousand years is a mere wink in time.

  The breeze didn’t carry the page very far. It simply whisked it through a convenient window, deposited it beneath a xixxix tree and then returned to the hills to rest. But the choice of a xixxix tree is highly significant and substantiates the malicious nature of the breeze’s act. If it had chosen a muu or a buxx tree instead, the Galactic Historian might have found the page in the morning when he took his constitutional through the university grounds.

  However, since a xixxix tree was selected, no doubt whatever can remain as to the breeze’s basic motivation. Articles of a valuable nature just aren’t left beneath xixxix trees. Everybody knows that squixes live in xixxix trees and everybody knows that squixes are collectors. They collect all sorts of things, buttons and pins and twigs and pebbles—anything at all, in fact, that isn’t too big for them to pick up and carry into their xixxix tree houses.

  They have been called less kind things than collectors. Thieves, for example, and scavengers. But collectors are what they really are. Collecting fulfills a basic need in their mammalian makeup; the possession of articles gives them a feeling of security. They love to surround their little furry bodies with all sorts of odds and ends, and their little arboreal houses are stuffed with everything you can think of.

  And they simply adore paper. They adore it because it has a practical as well as a cultural value.

  Specifically, they adore it because it is wonderful to make hammocks out of.

  When the two squixes in the xixxix tree saw the page drift to the ground, they could hardly believe their eyes. They chittered excitedly as they skittered down the trunk. The page had hardly stopped fluttering before it was whisked aloft again, clenched in tiny squix fingers.

  The squixes wasted no time. It had been a long while since the most cherished of all collector’s items had come their way and they needed a new hammock badly. First, they tore the page into strips, then they began to weave the strips together.

  —1456, Gut. Bi. pr.; 1492, Am. dis.; 1945, at. b. ex. Almgdo.; 1971, mn. rchd., they wove.

  —2004, Sir. rchd.; 2005-6, Sir.—E. wr.; 2042, Btlgs. rchd.; 2043-4, Btlgs.—E. wr

  They wove and wove and wove.

  15,000, E. Emp. clpsd.; 15,038, E. dstryd.; Hist. E., end of.

  It was a fine hammock, the best the two squixes had ever wove. But they didn’t sleep well that night. They twisted and turned and tossed, and they dreamed the most fantastic dreams—

  Which isn’t particularly surprising, considering what they were sleeping on. Sleeping on the history of Earth would be enough to give anybody nightmares.

  Even squixes.

  THE RACER

  Ib Melchior

  Willie felt the familiar intoxicating excitement. His mouth was dry; his heart beat faster, all his senses seemed more aware than ever. It was a few minutes before 000 hours—his time to start.

  This was the day. From all the Long Island Starting Fields the Racers were taking off at 15-minute intervals. The sputter and roar of cars warming up were everywhere. The smell of oil and fuel fumes permeated the air. The hubbub of the great crowd was a steady dim This was the biggest race of the year—New York to Los Angeles—100,000 bucks to the winner! Willie was determined to better his winning record of last year: 33 hours, 27 minutes, 12 seconds in Time. And although it was becoming increasingly difficult he’d do his damnedest to better his Score too!

  He took a last walk of inspection around his car. Sleek, lowslung, dark brown, the practically indestructible plastiglass top looking deceptively fragile, like a soap bubble. Not bad for an old-fashioned diesel job. He kicked the solid plastirubber tires in the time-honored fashion of all drivers. Hank was giving a last-minute shine to the needle-sharp durasteel horns protruding from the front fenders.

  Willie’s car wasn’t nicknamed “The Bull” without reason. The front of the car was built like a streamlined bull’s head complete with bloodshot, evil-looking eyes, iron ring through flaring nostrils—and the horns. Although most of the racing cars were built to look like tigers, or sharks, or eagles, there were a few bulls—but Willie’s horns were unequalled.

  “Car 79 ready for Start in five minutes,” the loudspeaker blared. “Car 79. Willie Connors, driver. Hank Morowski, mechanic. Ready your car for Start in five minutes.”

  Willie and Hank took their places in “The Bull.” At a touch by Willie on the starter the powerful diesel engine began a low purr. They drove slowly to the starting line.

  “Last Check!” said Willie.

  “Right,” came Hank’s answer.

  “Oil and Fuel?”

  “40 hours.”

  “Cooling Fluid?”

  “Sealed.”

  “No-Sleeps?”

  “Check.”

  “Energene Tabs?”

  “Check.”

  “Thermo Drink?”

  “Check.”

  The Starter held the checkered flag high over his head. The crowds packing the grandstands were on their feet. Hushed.

  Waiting.

  “Here we go!” whispered Willie.

  The flag fell. A tremendous cry rose from the crowd. But Willie hardly heard it. Accelerating furiously he pushed his car to its top speed of 190 miles an hour within seconds—shooting like a bullet along the straightaway toward Manhattan. He was elated; exhilarated. He was a Racer. And full of tricks!

  Willie shot through the Tunnel directly to Jersey.

  “Well?” grumbled Hank. “Can you tell me now?”

  “Toledo,” said Willie. “Toledo, Ohio. On the Thruway. We should make it in under three hours.”

  He felt a slight annoyance with Hank. There was no reason for the man to be touchy. He knew a driver didn’t tell anyone the racing route he’d selected. News like that had a habit of getting around. It could cost a Racer his Score.

  “There’s not much chance of anything coming up until after we hit Toledo,” Willie said, “but keep your eyes peeled. You never know.”

  Hank merely grunted.

  It was exactly 1048 hours when “The Bull” streaked into the deserted streets of Toledo.

  “O.K.—what now?” asked Hank.

  “Grand Rapids, Michigan,” said Willie laconically.

  “Grand Rapids! But that’s—that’s an easy 300 miles detour!”

  “I know.”

  “Are you crazy? It’ll cost us a couple of hours.”

  “So Grand Rapids is all the way up between the Lakes. So who’ll be expecting us up there?”

  “Oh! Oh, yeah, I see,” said Hank.

  “The Time isn’t everything, my friend. Whoever said the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? The Score counts too.

  And here’s where we pick up our Score!”

  The first Tragi-Acc never even knew the Racer had arrived. “The Bull” struck him squarely, threw him up in the air and let him slide off its plastiglass back, leaving a red smear behind and somewhat to the left of Willie—all in a split second.

  Near Calvin College an imprudent coed found herself too far from cover when the Racer suddenly came streaking down the campus. Frantically she sprinted for safety, but she didn�
�t have a chance with a driver like Willie behind the wheel. The razor sharp horn on the right fender sliced through her spine so cleanly that the jar wasn’t even felt inside the car.

  Leaving town the Racer was in luck again. .n elderly woman had left the sanctuary of her stone-walled garden to rescue a straying cat. She was so easy to hit that Willie felt a little cheated.

  At 1232 hours they were on the speedway headed for Kansas City.

  Hank looked in awe at Willie. “Three!” he murmured dreamily, “a Score of three already. And all of them Kills—for sure. You really know how to drive!”

  Hank settled back contentedly as if he could already feel his 25,000 dollar cut in his pocket. He began to whistle “The Racers Are Roaring” off key.

  Even after his good Score it annoyed Willie. And for some reason he kept remembering the belatedly pleading look in the old woman’s eyes as he struck her. Funny that should stay with him .

  He estimated they’d hit Kansas City at around 1815 hours, CST. Hank turned on the radio. Peoria, Illinois, was warning its citizens of the approach of a Racer. All spectators should watch from safety places.

  Willie grinned.

  That would be him. Well—he wasn’t looking for any Score in Peoria.

  Dayton, Ohio, told of a Racer having made a Tragic Accident Score of one, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, was crowing over the fact that three Racers had passed through without scoring once. From what he heard it seemed to Willie he had a comfortable lead, both in Time and Score.

  They were receiving Kansas City now. An oily-voiced announcer was filling in the time between Racing Scores with what appeared to be a brief history of Racing.

  “. . . and the most popular spectator sports of the latter half of the 20th Century were such mildly exciting pursuits as boxing and wrestling. Of course the spectators enjoyed seeing the combatants trying to maim each other, and there was always the chance of the hoped-for fatal accident.