by Earl
“Hey!” I thought. “That can’t be any animal or plant. The asteroids don’t contain life. It must be my eyes.”
I didn’t see any more movement, so I got to thinking about the girl again. Pretty soon I was standing under a window at the side of the house. On tiptoe I could make out the room, crammed with more junk than a curio shop on Ganymede. It was junk to me, maybe, but they were scientific instruments to Dr. Petrie.
He was standing in the center of the room, his daughter at his side, and facing Mallow. Dr. Petrie was short and chubby-cheeked and looked tired. His voice drifted out to me through the half-open window.
“I’ve lived here twenty years,” the scientist was saying. “My daughter, Mayda, was born here. It’s our home. For twenty years we’ve watched the Jupiter liners go by like comets. We’ve shopped at Juno’s colorful markets. We can’t leave now—”
“I know your story,” Mallow cut in his voice snapping like a whip. “Made good money on your inventions, bought this place, then lost heavy in the Depression of Eighty-seven. You were forced to mortgage and I have the mortgage. You’re five payments in arrears and my patience is exhausted. After all, I’m a business man.”
“My wife is buried out there.” Petrie swallowed hard and begged: “Give me one more month. I’ll complete one of my unfinished inventions and sell it outright.”
I could see Mallow’s flint heart right through his bony chest.
“Same old story,” he sneered. “You’re a has-been, Petrie, an old, broken-down crackbrain. You couldn’t finish an invention if you tried.”
“You can’t talk like that to my father, you—you Plutonian spider!” cried Mayda. For a minute I thought she’d claw his eyes out, but she disappointed me. She got control of herself and coldly declared: “It so happens that Father did complete something recently.”
“What is it?” Mallow asked, suddenly greedy. “I might consider taking an invention as payment, providing it has commercial possibilities.” Well, you’ll have to take my word for the rest. Old Petrie took a belt off his work-table and strapped it around his middle. The belt had wires and gadgets on it, connected to one of those cosmic ray batteries that never run down. He pressed a switch and the belt kind of hummed. Nothing else happened.
“Well?” Mallow demanded sarcastically. “What does it do—blow soap bubbles?”
Tired and worried as he was, Dr. Petrie couldn’t help grinning as he walked apart. I mean he split in two—No, wait. What happened was that two Dr. Petries were there. One stood where he was. The other one walked to the far side of the room. They were exact twins and they were both grinning.
I KNEW it was my eyes again, or that Cerian beer I had had after lunch. I was seeing double. I eased down to my heels to rest my toes, and took a good look around to make sure everything else was single. Then I raised to my toes and looked through the window again.
I still saw two Dr. Petries! Mallow was swinging his head back and forth, so I knew he saw it, too. Mayda was smiling proudly.
“Petrie!” Mallow gasped. “You’re in two places at once!”
“Quite so,” came the answer from one Petrie on one side of the room.
“I’ll explain,” came the other answer from the other Petrie on the other side of the room. “I call this my Doubler Belt, which emanates a force field that completely surrounds me. This force field creates a path along which I can move as a second, separate entity.”
Something like that, it was. I’m no shakes as a scientist, so may be I left half of it out, but that was the idea.
“You mean there are two of you?” Mallow gulped.
“No,” the first Petrie answered, shaking his head. “My physical body is actually whisking back and forth, through this path, at the rate of sixty oscillations a second. It’s an optical illusion that there are two of me. Like a movie frame, the human eye sees any flickering faster than thirty-two times a second as continuous and solid.”
Mallow got about as much of that as I did.
“Can you do two things at once?” he demanded.
“That’s the beauty of this.” One of the Petries nodded. “I exist in both places at once—physically—even though my body is shuttling back and forth constantly. I’m solid and real, in both places, for all practical purposes. Watch.”
Petrie One raised his arms. Petrie Two put his hands behind his back, at the same moment. Petrie One picked up a book and read a line from it. Petrie Two picked up a different book and read. The two voices garbled together, just like two separate people talking at the same time.
“But we don’t exist separately for each other,” Petrie said, as the two of them walked together. They made the motion of shaking hands. The hands went through each other. Then the two scientists stepped together like two shadows and there was a click.
Petrie stood alone.
“You see,” he went on explaining, “what the Doubler Belt does is make possible an existence in two places at the same time. Look at it this way. Suppose you stand in one corner of the room and shout ‘Here I am!’ Then you run to the other corner of the room and shout ‘No, I’m here!’ Gradually increase the speed with which you run back and forth. Eventually you shuttle back and forth so fast that the human ear and eye cannot follow.
“The ear and eye are aware only of the moments you stop at each corner. When these periods of rest reach sixty times a second, you become solid-looking and real in both places. It’s like a sixty-cycle electric light, which seems to shine continuously to the human eye, though it’s blinking on and off all the time.”
He paused for emphasis.
“And please note that you really exist in both places, for your body is whisking back and forth. Remember that it’s no different from slow running back and forth, in which what happens is clearly visible. With the belt, though, the running is so speeded up that the transition of the body becomes undetectable. But the body—and with it the mind and personality—is actually in existence at both places, during alternate sixtieths of a second.”
EVEN I began to understand what he meant then.
“There!” Mayda said. “No other scientist ever accomplished that before. It’s a wonderful thing—”
“For what?” Mallow, with the demonstration over, was his old self, scowling and skeptical.
“Why, business men could use it, for example, to keep two appointments at once.”
“Rubbish!” Mallow snorted. “There’d be too many legal tangles. Thanks for the demonstration, but it’s just a good act for a magician’s show. I can’t use it and no one else can.”
“That’s what you think, nitwit!” Those words came in a new voice near the door. Dr. Petrie, Mayda and Mallow whirled around to see who it was, and then sort of froze. I strained up another inch to see, too, and my spine became one big, cold, rigid icicle.
A space-suited man stood in the door with a gun. His visor was open. He was a hard-looking hombre with a pair of twisty lips and a scar across his temple. It was “Scarface” Dolan! I knew him right away—one of the trickiest, meanest criminals, just fresh out of Red Spot Penitentiary. His gun was the new-style kind that shot without a sound.
“W-who are you?” Dr. Petrie gasped. “Stop pointing that gun at us. Get out of my house—”
“Shut your rockets,” Scarface Dolan cut in. “I’m doing the talking. I came to case this joint for valuables, only now I ain’t interested in anything except that belt. Hand it over!”
“Th-this b-belt?” Petrie stammered. “Why, what good would it do a thief?”
“Plenty, dimwit,” Scarface drawled. “Ever hear of an alibi? Wearing that belt, I can be two places at once. I can rob a bank in one place, and I can be having a chat with a copper in another, both at the same time. Right, Professor?”
Petrie nodded dumbly. Scarface laughed.
“By the rings of Saturn, what luck I came here tonight! Got sent up for five years, for grand larceny. Now I can start fresh and always with a perfect alibi! I’ll rob the aster
oids blind. I’ll always have a copper as my witness that I was right there before his eyes when the crime was committed.” Scarface turned to Mallow. “Dope! And you turned this thing down. Now let’s have the belt, Professor.”
What was I doing all this time? Well, I was just gradually shaking the last liquid oxygen out of my blood and thinking fast. I had to stop Scarface Dolan in some way. I’d get him from the back. I started to move—
“No, you don’t!” growled a voice in my ear. Scarface had a henchman! Something poked into my back and I knew it wasn’t a lollypop. “Easy, or I’ll spread your brains from here to Neptune.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not scared of man or beast in a fair fight.
Once I even beat the ears off a Uranian bull-man for insulting Earth. But you can’t laugh off a gun.
“Into the house, pal,” the thug told me.
In a minute I was lined up with the others, facing two guns. Scarface leered at me.
“We had our eye on you, cabby, so you wouldn’t interfere. We parked our ship outside the dome and pick-locked our way into the back airlock.”
I GAVE myself a good swift mental kick. I had seen something move before, out on the asteroid. If I’d investigated then, none of this would have happened.
“So long, suckers,” Scarface said. “Thanks for the belt. Come on, Moonhead. We’re ready for business. Big business!”
And they were gone. I watched from the window as they raced around to the back airlock of the dome and went through, zippering up their space-suits. The two figures faded among the rocks, heading for their ship.
I turned back. Carl Mallow was shrugging, now that the danger was over.
“I’m going,” he said indifferently. “This incident makes no difference about the mortgage, Petrie. Understand that? I’ll still have to foreclose.”
“You would!” I gritted.
Mayda began crying on her father’s shoulder. It was just too much to happen to them all at once.
“A vicious criminal has the Doubler Belt!” Dr. Petrie groaned. “He’ll be able to do all he says with it, robbing and even murdering among the asteroids without being legally tracked down. Oh, what have I done? Can’t we stop him somehow?”
I thought it was pretty grand of the old guy. With all his own troubles, he was thinking of other people and what trouble the Doubler Belt would bring them.
“I’m going,” Mallow said again, impatiently.
“Yeah?” I retorted. “Well, you can walk then, right through space.
I’m going after Scarface Dolan!”
“No,” Mayda said, smiling and choking down her sobs. “It’s nice of you to make the offer for our sake, but you’d be risking your life. Besides, you can’t drop your own taxi business.”
I couldn’t, at that. I had bills to pay. It might be heroic to drop everything and trail Scarface Dolan, but not very practical. I knew that, yet I liked the way the girl smiled at me for saying it, so I went on. What the devil, it didn’t cost me anything to build myself up a little in Mayda Petrie’s eyes.
“If I could only do both things,” I mumbled. “If we only had another Doubler Belt—”
“We have!” Dr. Petrie cried, his face lighting up. And darned if he didn’t fish another belt from a cabinet. It was just like the first one. “I made two, one as a patenting model. Here it is, Mr.—er—”
“Lake,” I said weakly. “Joe Lake. Thanks.”
I took the belt like it was a snake. What had I got myself into? It was one thing to talk being a hero, but another thing to do it. I might have welched on the spot, except for two things. Mallow gave me a nasty grin, and Mayda looked at me like I was suddenly a king. The last would have been enough, but the first was plenty, too.
“How does it work?” I snarled, strapping the belt on. “Hurry, before Scarface takes off!”
I hadn’t seen the flare yet, beyond the dome. The two thugs had quite a hike to their ship. Dr. Petrie pointed out the switch.
“Snap it on and then walk away. Your double will automatically form. After that, use your judgment.”
I snapped the switch, but I didn’t feel anything. I took a couple of steps.
“Hey, it don’t work—” I began, a little nervously.
I turned and saw him—I mean myself. I was still standing there! Then my viewpoint seemed to switch and I was the one standing still, watching the other one—the other me—turn and stare as if seeing a ghost.
NUTTY? It’s the craziest feeling, but I snapped out of it. I had no time to dawdle and scratch my head, or heads. Outside, a sudden flare lit up the other end of the asteroid. Scarface was taking off!
“You have a spacemobile?” I shouted.
Petrie nodded and ran to the garage beside the landing yard. As I jumped into his old touring spacemobile, he said:
“Just try to locate Scarf ace’s headquarters and set the police after him. Don’t risk your life.”
I was steaming through the big lock of the dome in another ten seconds. It couldn’t have been more than a minute after Scarface left, just time enough to locate his rocket flare by steady searching among the stars.
There it was! He was streaking away from the Sun, toward the outer fringes of the Asteroid Belt. I hove around and followed at a safe distance, keeping his blasts within sight.
But all the while I was doing this, I was also back at Petrie’s, still talking to them. My double was, I mean. It’s like being two people at once, without one interfering with the other. I knew everything I was doing in the space ship, yet I was also standing down on Asteroid W-43.
“I can’t figure out which is really me,” I said dizzily to Dr. Petrie. “I’m in the space ship and I’m here on solid ground. Which is the real me?”
“Both are,” Petrie tried to explain. “Your physical body is shuttling back and forth, sixty times a second. For a sixtieth of a second you’re in the ship, then a sixtieth here, then a sixtieth there, and so on.”
“I go right through the walls, back and forth?” I wanted to know.
“In a manner of speaking. The force field really creates a path in the sub-ether. Your atoms glide through matter without touching the atoms. You see—”
“Never mind, Doc,” I said. “The important thing is that it works. Well, I guess I may as well get back to my taxi—this one of me. Come on, Mallow.”
It wasn’t till I was out in space, zooming back toward Ceres, that it all hit me like a ton of meteors. A couple of hours ago I had been minding my own business, doing nothing to nobody. Now I was a Jekyll and Hyde, half of me chasing a desperado for all I was worth. What a dope I was, and all because a pair of blue eyes made me think of summer breezes on Earth!
I delivered Mallow at the Starshine Apartments on Ceres and took it out on him by charging twelve-thirty-seven. The extra two thallahs were for waiting, the thirty-seven zans for sales tax.
“Robbers, you and Scarface both!” he yapped.
“What, no tip?” I asked.
Mallow choked. “Tip? Sure I’ll give you a tip. Never stick your nose in other people’s business. I hope your double gets shot. When you see Dr. Petrie, tell him to have his furniture ready for removal.”
“Okay, Mr. Mallow,” I said politely. “Hope you find yourself in space some time in your pajamas.”
Feeling better, I cruised to the theater district for late fares and had picked up a guy with a rich lady in a Martian spider-silk evening gown. The guy tipped me five for a short haul.
Other fares popped up, but all this while, of course, Joe Lake the Second was burning rockets after Scarface Dolan.
LEAVING W-43, the trail led toward the “Z” asteroids, those with orbits nearest Jupiter and farthest from the main centers. We began to pass handfuls that even the real-estaters didn’t bother with, being so far out in the sticks. Here and there I saw the flare of a miner’s lamp, where some lonely old prospector was scraping together a few bits of gold or radium.
It was deserted as Pluto, out he
re in the Z Band, an ideal spot for a smalltime crook like Scarface to have a hideaway. Small-time? With the Doubler Belt, Scarface would soon get into the big-time. He’d make headlines and stand the Space Police on their ears with his foolproof alibi every time.
The other ship turned into the Z Band and finally zoomed down, two hours later, over a midget asteroid maybe a half-mile across. There was a camouflaged dome down there, painted with zigzaggy streaks, that I might have missed except for seeing Scarface land beside it. Keeping the horizon of the asteroid between us, I landed at the far end.
At this point, maybe I should have left and brought back the police. We had enough on Scarface to get him before a judge on petty larceny and at least get the belt back.
But I didn’t go. I was feeling pretty good now. The Doubler Belt was working fine for me and I wanted to see the business through. I had nothing to worry about. I’d confront Scarface. If I got in trouble—click—and I’d be gone. It was perfect. I could have fun and still be back with my taxi business, safe and sound.
So I crawled into the car’s regulation space-suit and sneaked up to the dome by foot. The magnetic soles kept me from bobbing up too high in the light gravity.
The dome was an old, abandoned mining post, where ore had been dug till the asteroid ran out of pay-dirt. With a little work, Scarface had relined the airlock and installed an aero-heat unit. From here he could operate all over the asteroids, where some of the richest people and corporations of the Solar System were located.
After a careful gander through a clear patch of the dome, I slipped in. The double lock hatches squeaked, but no one came running out of the millhouse. I got to a window of the shack and looked in.
There were three guys, but who was the third? Then I saw that two of them were Scarface. He was practicing with the belt already, with “Moonhead” watching kind of bewildered. Scarface One smoked a Venus cheroot, while Scarface Two pulled his gat and swept up imaginary loot.
