The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “Perfect!” he chortled. “Moonhead, we’re going to clean up. Where were you the night of so-and-so, when the Bank of Sol was robbed? Why, Judge, old boy, I was right in the Comet Club, minding my own business, maybe having a little drink with Officer Jones, who was off-duty. Can’t you lay off and give a guy a chance who’s trying to go straight?” Scarface ended his monologue with a nasty laugh. “See, Moonhead?”

  “Sure I see.” Moonhead grinned. “When do we start?”

  “Right now,” Scarface said. “It’s late at night, so I’ll pull a trial job down on Ceres, maybe loot a rich buzzard’s home for a starter.”

  The one-man crime wave was ready to start and there was only me, Joe Lake the cabby, to stop it. I thought fast. If I got over to the aero-heat unit and shut it off, I’d have the two thugs gasping like a fish.

  I turned and fell flat on my face.

  I HAD stumbled over some old mining pipes in the dark. It nearly knocked me out and I made enough noise to be heard clear out to Saturn.

  When I scrambled up, a cone of light from a radium flashlight played over me. What looked like a cannon yawned in my face.

  “Stand still, chump!” Scarface’s hard voice ordered. “So it’s the cabby, huh? Followed us here, eh? Say your prayers, mister—”

  He was all ready to plug me on the spot. I almost laughed in his face. He didn’t know I was a double. He didn’t know that all I had to do was click the switch on my belt and I’d be out of his reach, way back on Ceres, hawking fares. Then I could send the police here pronto.

  I pressed the switch. Nothing happened, or it was the wrong thing. I was still looking down the barrel of the gun. I was single again—but here, not on Ceres!

  A chunk of solidified helium that once was my heart sank down toward my feet. Back on Ceres, I had been cruising down Luna Lane. I blinked out there, disappeared. What a moment! The real me, the one and only me, was still facing Scarface’s gun.

  I didn’t know how or why it happened. I didn’t have time to think. It was a good thing, maybe, because the next second I snapped the switch again. Bing! My double was back in the cab, wrenching the wheel over before the cab climbed the curb, driverless. Boy, that was a narrow squeak!

  But now my double was facing Scarface and the gun again. It was like a nightmare that I couldn’t get out of. If he shot, would this me die, and the other stay alive? Or what? I wasn’t sure any more. I didn’t know what it was all about. I should have checked up better with Dr. Petrie.

  But Scarface didn’t shoot.

  “Wait,” he said. “I’m a chump. Why take a chance on a murder rap? This cabby is going to be bumped off at five A.M., when I get back. They’ll find his body on another Z asteroid, but Scarface didn’t do it, because Scarface was at the Comet Club all the time. One of me is going there now to establish my alibi. The other is going to pull a job, like I said, and then come back and plug this snooper. It’s perfect!”

  Well, it gave me time, anyway, about four hours. That might be time to figure this mess out.

  Scarface left. Moonhead sat across from me with his gun ready. I was roped in a chair. They hadn’t stripped off my space-suit, so they didn’t know my Doubler Belt was underneath. I was safe for the time being, but sweating—both of me.

  BACK on Ceres, Joe Lake the First was racing in my cab for Asteroid W-43. I had to see Dr. Petrie and find out what I didn’t know about this double business. I made it in an hour and a half. By luck, no speed cop crossed my course, or he would have thought I was going to a fire on Mercury.

  I barreled down on W-43 like a meteorite. Dr. Petrie and Mayda were dozing in chairs, waiting to hear from me. As I stepped in, the scientist jumped up.

  “I wish I hadn’t let you do it,” he said worriedly. “I forgot to tell you two important things, Mr. Lake. If you snap off the belt at either end, you have no idea at which place you will become single. It depends solely on which sixtieth of a second you strike, here or there.”

  That explained a lot. Snapping the switch in front of Scarface, I had struck the sixtieth of a second there. I told my story. Petrie shuddered.

  “Bad, very bad,” he groaned. “Luckily you turned the belt on again while the tubes were still hot and the path was still open, otherwise you would have stayed single there.”

  “And what’s the second thing, Doc?” I asked, wanting to know the worst.

  Petrie swallowed. “Any injury to one of you is an injury to both.”

  “In plain words,” I mumbled, my hair turning a little gray, “if Scarface plugs me there, I go out like a light. Both of me. All of me!”

  “You’re doing this for us,” Mayda said gently, putting her hand on my arm. “Give it up. Snap the switch now. If you materialize out there, snap it again. Sooner or later you’ll hit the right split-second here.”

  I shook my head. “My hands are tied at Scarface’s place. The wrong snap again here and I’m stuck there for good. Besides, I’m going to see this through.”

  I waited long enough to see her eyes flash like blue jewels at me. Then I said:

  “One thing is certain—I can’t bring in the police now. If they pick up Scarface at the Comet Club, it only establishes his alibi better. Scarface Two goes on. I don’t know where he is. I only know he’ll come back to his asteroid.”

  “Then we’ll send police there,” Dr. Petrie said, “to rescue you.”

  “No good,” I answered, slow and thoughtful. “The police would pick up Moonhead, but Scarface would still be free with an alibi.” I was thinking things out and I made up my mind, heading for the door. “Guess there’s only one way out. I’ll just have to rescue myself.”

  Mayda looked kind of startled, like she hoped I would stay, this one of me, anyway.

  “Be—be careful,” she faltered.

  “I shouldn’t have let you start in the first place,” Dr. Petrie groaned again. “Losing my home is bad enough, but causing an innocent bystander all this trouble—Oh, I wish I’d never invented the Doubler Belt!”

  “Listen, Doc, I’m enjoying this,” I lied.

  Then I hightailed before they saw different.

  I GUNNED my cab for the outer asteroid, feeling like the Lone Space Ranger on the radio, who was always dashing for the showdown against mighty stiff odds. The nearer I came to the hideout, the closer my feet got to absolute zero. If I only had a gun! But I didn’t, being an ordinary civilian.

  I landed next to the hidden space-mobile. Twice I’d landed here, in two different ships, but I hoped I’d get away just once. It didn’t seem like asking much.

  I sneaked into the dome, like before. Scarface didn’t suspect I was a double, so he hadn’t locked it. Creeping to the window of the shack, I took a quick gander. I knew what I’d see, naturally, because my other self was tied to a chair inside. Moonhead was playing Martian solitaire. He had a full view of the door and window by raising his head. His gun was on the table within easy reach.

  Now what? Time was short. Scarface was due back any minute. I had to free my double before he arrived.

  I figured out my best bet and began making noises with my feet outside the window. Moonhead leaped up and edged to the side of the window, looked out. I had already raced around the corner to make more noises.

  Moonhead took a quick look at my double in the chair, to see I was tied well, then came out. That was all I was waiting for. I climbed in through the window and began opening the knots. “Hello, Joe,” I couldn’t help cracking.

  “Hello, yourself,” I said back to myself. “If you get back on Ceres with a whole skin, you’re luckier than you deserve.”

  I yanked those ropes off as fast as I could, but just as my double was free and jumped up—

  “Reach, wise guys!”

  Moonhead had come back just a second too soon, and there I was, stuck before his gun. I was really stuck, this time, both of me.

  “Why, you’re twins!” Moonhead suddenly gasped. “You’re doubled, like Scarface.”

  His
gun wavered from one to the other of us, as though he wasn’t sure which one to plug in case we attacked. All at once it came to me, clear as a flash. I still had a fifty-fifty chance.

  “Yeah, Moonhead,” I gritted. “You have a gun, but it won’t do you any good. You can’t shoot me. Bullets won’t touch me. Didn’t Scarface tell you?”

  Could I talk him out of it? Was Moonhead just thick enough to believe it? I separated and crept up on him from two sides, grinning confidently for his benefit. I wasn’t grinning inside.

  Moonhead sweated and looked like he was going to bolt. Instead he shot at one of me, pointblank. The bullet came shrilling at me. I remembered Petrie’s words. If either of me was injured, both of me automatically were, because it was the same body shuttling back and forth.

  One of me was shot right through the stomach, but I didn’t fall!

  The next second I was on him, both of me. We twisted his gun away and clouted him on both sides of the head at once. I’ve always had a good right. Here I had two good rights. Moonhead went down and out.

  W HEN Scarface walked in, ten minutes later, I met him at the lock with Moonhead’s gun in his ribs.

  “Reach, fella,” I said nonchalantly, “or I’ll put more holes in you than the Moon has craters. And hand over that belt you’re wearing.”

  I went on as a kind of crafty gleam came to his eye.

  “Yeah, I know this is only your double. Snap the switch. If you materialize here, I’ve got you. If you become single at the Comet Club, I’ll have you picked up before you can leave Ceres. Either way, I’ve got both of you.”

  “Ulp!” was all Scarface could say. He dropped the sack of loot he was dragging along and he materialized right in front of me, as luck would have it.

  I was back at Asteroid W-43 when the Sun came up and lighted the place like a golden palace. I could see why Dr. Petrie and Mayda hated to leave it after twenty years. I arrived double, delivering Petrie’s spacemobile and also my cab. One of me carried the sack Scarface had brought back. The other handed over the missing belt.

  “Here you are, Doc,” I said. “Scarface won’t be back. He and Moonhead are hightailing for Neptune to lie low. I could have sent him up for five years, with the belt as evidence to blow his alibi apart, but I didn’t want to bother.”

  “YOU let him go?” Dr. Petrie bleated.

  “Sure. He did us a good turn. But wait, I’ll tell you the story.”

  When I was done, Petrie looked space-shocked.

  “You say Moonhead fired at you pointblank—or at one of you—and you weren’t touched? Impossible!”

  “I figured it out myself,” I said as Mayda’s eyes played over me like my stock was hitting the roof. “I knew I had one chance, even if Moonhead fired. Moonhead fired at the wrong one of me. The bullet went through me!”

  Petrie caught on.

  “I see. He shot at the one which, just at that sixtieth of a second, wasn’t there. A bullet, of course, moves so fast that it was gone by the time, in the next sixtieth of a second, you had materialized. Wonderful, Lake, my boy! I didn’t think of that myself, in all my investigations with the Doubler Belt.”

  “Stil!”—Mayda shuddered a little—“you took a terrible chance. But why did you let Scarface go free for his crime? He robbed someone.”

  “Sure, and here’s the loot,” I answered, opening the bag and spreading about a hundred grand worth of jewelry before them.

  “But we can’t keep it!” Mayda gasped.

  “No,” I agreed, “but we can claim a reward. Let’s say five thousand. Half is yours.”

  Mayda’s eyes were shining and bright.

  “Why, that would pay off Mallow’s mortgage! Oh, Dad—”

  “Whose jewels are they?” Dr. Petrie asked. “Did Scarface say?”

  “Sure.” I nodded, grinning. “He robbed them from a home on Starshine Boulevard, back at Ceres. Some rich lady’s hardware. Mallow, I think, was the name. Mrs. Carl Mallow.”

  I took off the belt. I’d had enough of it. I’d stay single from now on, as far as the belt went.

  “Taxi, lady?” I said to Mayda.

  She came along for a ride and she hasn’t left yet.

  AFTER AN AGE

  Stuart Knight awoke in the future to find the world needed rebuilding; but men from three ages complicated the job.

  CHAPTER I

  Magna Charta 5000 A.D.

  KNIGHT read the preamble, his voice vibrant:

  “To the People of Earth of 5000 A.D.! The Government of Mankind shall hereafter be known as the World-State Government. Its Congress of Delegates from every Tribal-state shall have sole power to make laws. Appended are all details of procedure and office. One cardinal rule must always be followed—that no man on Earth shall have absolute power over any other man, or over any Tribal-state, or over the World-State.

  “I, Stuart Knight, First Lord of Earth, relinquish all claim to rule. It must never be given to one man again, or to any group not elected by the people. May Providence preserve the World-State for as long as humanity inhabits this World!”

  THAT was all.

  Knight had reduced his preamble to its barest essentials. He had never believed in oratory. The simple words, he knew, would strike home in every heart.

  Below the balcony, as his voice died, the delegates burst out in wild cheers, taken up by the whole crowd. The noise died. There was a pause. Then, spontaneously, another cheer arose. And Knight knew by its tone, if not its confused words, that it was for trim. For what he had been to them for twenty-five years—a beneficent dictator.

  His thoughts flew back.

  Twenty-five years had passed since Stuart Knight, scientist of the 20th century, had awakened in his time-crypt, from suspended animation, after 3000 years.

  He had been revived, like a living fossil, by the future people of 4975 A.D. He had stepped out in eager awe, expecting to see a mighty, thronging civilization, as far ahead of 1940 as 1940 had been ahead of the Grecian Era. Instead had come a crushing revelation. After a long series of frightful wars, and a Second Dark Age, mankind had plunged back to the Stone Age!

  With the collapse of the Machine had come social eruption, famine, anarchy, and barbarism. All the knowledge of a mechanical civilization had been lost. Tribal-states had arisen, all over Earth, each a law unto itself. It was a reincarnated Stone Age, without metals, without machines, and as steeped in the primitive and unmechanical as 20,000 B.C. had been.

  Into this strange world Stuart Knight had been cast.

  And thereby history had pivoted, twenty-five years before. Staggered at first by the return to a Stone Age, a second revelation followed. Down in Antarctica, a bit of power-and-metals civilization had survived, based on ore and coal deposits there.

  These favored Antarcticans—or Narticans in the clipped, modified English of the day—held sway over Stone Age earth, as if it were their feudal backyard. They took servants—almost slaves—and food tribute from those they called the Tribers. And for a thousand years they had slipped deeper into the mire of decadence and spiritual death.

  Such was the world Stuart Knight had been dropped into, like a bit of driftwood in the currents of Time.

  Nine-tenths of humanity in a Second Stone Age. The remainder in an isolated Pabylon. The whole in a stalemate that throttled progress.

  Stuart Knight had changed that. For a year he had preached, and the world had rallied behind him. First Lord of Earth he had been proclaimed, with destiny in his hands. Destiny to mold and shape the future of the entire human race. For twenty-five years he had tried to bring advancement, upliftment.

  It was the crossroads of history. Fate willing, a new civilization would spring forth, Sphinxlike, from the ashes of the old. And now, today . . .

  THERE was complete silence again, as the sea of faces watched him.

  Overhead was a cloudless blue sky. Underneath lay a hushed world. Perhaps as hushed as when a British king, four thousand years before, had signed a parchment inscri
bed with words of freedom.

  Stirnye, Lord of Earth, was signing a second Magna Charta.

  The Magna Charta of humanity!

  For the historic moment, he was on the outside balcony of his capital, at the center of Manhattan Island. Columbus Circle it had been, an age before. Beside him stood one Antarctican and one Triber, as witnesses. Back of him were his two sons, and their mother, of the blonde race of Nartica.

  One other was there, old Aran Deen, his silver-white hair blowing in the breeze, erudite scholar and historian of Nartica.

  Knight’s hand trembled, as he gripped the writing pen. Benign ghosts from the past were leaning over his shoulder—Moses, Gautama, Christ, King John, Washington.

  He signed: “Stuart Knight, 1940 A.D.—”

  He started, at the mistake. In the back of his 20th century mind lurked that number, and it seemed much more real than the one he should have written. In that year, 1940, he had been interred in a record-crypt, to survive after an age.

  At odd times, he forgot that he existed 3000 years and more beyond the time of his birth.

  He had been daydreaming, thinking of the long dead and forgotten civilization he had known. The 20th century was as remotely historical now as the ancient days of Egypt and Babylon and Rome.

  Memories, only memories remained—in his mind alone. And a few old records and relics, leaking through time.

  There were no books in this Second Stone Age. No electric lights, radio, telephone, telegraph, movies, trains, trucks, drill-presses, or factories. There were no coal, oil, or mines bringing up metal ores. It was a primitive world, the 50th century. Stone, wood, hide and bone were again the staples of living, as in the original Stone Age.

  Knight cleared his mind of the fleeting reflections. He scratched out the number “1940” and substituted “5000 A.D.”

  Then he arose from the desk, speaking again.

  “People of Earth. The World-State Government will preserve liberty and justice, for all time. I withdraw, because no man has the right to rule. I am from the past. This is your world. Whatever I have been able to do, toward a higher civilization, is not because I am noble or kind. It is your rightful heritage of the best, from a past that destroyed itself.”