Fantastic Vignettes

by Jerry

  “Well, why not something like I’m wearing?” Jim asked sheepishly. “I like the coverall style—and it’s practical.”

  “We have some very fine adaptations of that,” the clerk said with a faint smile. “You’ll want the heated type of course?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Jim replied.

  “Is it much more expensive?”

  “Not now,” the clerk answered quickly. “They’re making thermoplex on a large scale. Anyone can afford it.” The “anyone” was said pointedly.

  “Let us see some,” Mary said.

  Seven suits and forty minutes later, Jim Brady with Mary at his side, left the store. He looked like any man who is wearing a new suit. The thermoplex was a bit stiff and it would take time to settle to his dimensions, but Jim had to admit it was comfortable. He touched the stud at the belt and felt the aura of warmth creep over him. It felt good, he had to admit “That’s a lovely suit,” Mary said feelingly. “I’m glad we got it. I think I’ll wear it on the cold winter mornings while you wear your old one.”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Jim returned. “This suit is mine. If you want a built-in heater get yourself a new dress next week.”

  “May I? Oh, thanks. Jim . . .”

  And all the while she knew it would end that way . . .

  The Mine-Layer

  Milton Matthew

  HEROISM COMES from the most unexpected quarters. Lee Senn, now a name familiar to hundreds of millions, was the first of the little heroes who came out of the Second Martian War. What makes it more striking is that Lee wasn’t even a crewman, much less an officer in the Service. He was a plain and simple miner, nothing more.

  When the official notes of war came, with the destruction of Terran property on Mars, the pulses flashed out, ordering all Earthmen operating space vessels to report to the nearest friendly base at once.

  Lee had just loaded up his little craft with precious vanadium ore. The coded pulse just received meant that he’d have to head for the Venusian Base, deposit his cargo and immediately join the Service. All spacemen are members of the Service Reserve.

  But Lee wanted to get home. Since the time element wasn’t greatly different, he’d put down on Luna City. Then he could go into Service. His decision made, he plotted his course and opened the uranium motors.

  The journey from the Asteroid Belt was completely uneventful. He spotted no Martian Patrols, nor was he picked up or questioned by anyone. The transmitter kept him informed of action, and he heard of the cataclysmic Pyrhic victory gained by Earth in a space battle which cost both aides tremendous losses and which decided nothing. Now the war would go into the attribution stage.

  It was eight million miles from Luna base that the Martian super-battleship picked him up in its radar, and flashed the pulse: “Cut your jets. We’ll send out a boat for you!”

  The command was curt and positive. Ordinarily Lee would have obeyed. He knew he didn’t have a chance to run or fight, yet some perverse element in his nature refused. He flipped the controls into high power and shot like a bug in a flat trajectory for Luna.

  It is never known why the Martian commander decided to run down Lee, why he wanted to pick up the little vessel. Whatever his motives, instead of blasting Lee out of space, he followed him. Perhaps he thought Lee might have had some important information.

  Lee’s instruments showed the Martian looming up only a few hundred miles to his rear. Frantically, the spaceman went to work. With a bar of uranium, a few electronic tubes and a crude sheet metal shell from an ore bay, Lee assembled a bomb.

  The Martian quickly—a matter of two hours—matched speed and course and soon was drawing up on the little mining vessel. He was no more than a mile away riding Lee’s wake, and preparing to launch a pick-up boat. It was now or never.

  Suited, Lee kicked open the air-lock and dumped his hastily contrived “mine.” The vicious little chunk of metal, carrying the velocity of the “mine-layer” floated behind Lee’s vessel. A crudely rigged flare-rocket gave it a kick in the battleship’s direction. The mine moved slowly rearward.

  Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of the move, that lost the Martian commander. Who expects offensive action from a trivial little space boat?

  The speed of the bomb was slight. It was a fraction of a mile from the monster Martian battleship. The latter’s detectors could not sense such a small mass nor differentiate it from the boat itself at such a short distance.

  Consequently, even as the lock of the Martian ship opened to permit the emersion of a space-boat, the improptu mine struck it squarely on the nose.

  There was a catastrophic flare of light as twenty pounds of uranium converted itself into radiant energy! From a proud and powerful vessel, the Martian battleship was reduced in the twinkling of an eye to a mass of junk, peopled by dead and dying men.

  The radiant flare filled space with light ranging through the spectrum, and the Service Patrols picked it up instantly and flashed on the scene.

  Unharmed and waiting to greet them from the rather pummeled hulk of his little space craft, was Lee. It was some time before Lee managed to convince the Service people of what he had done. Eventually of course, the truth became clear and Lee was feted as few men have been. The very act was a shot in the arm to the sagging morale of Terran forces, and the ultimate victory in the Second Martian War is due, in no little respect to the single accomplishment of Lee Senn, miner—and mine-layer . . .

  Saboteur . . .

  J.R. Marks

  AT ROCKET Port Customs, the passenger passed through with no trouble. He carried himself with the slightly disinterested air of one to whom travel is slightly boring. He looked exactly like what he claimed to be.

  “Did you check this guy, Kaltari somebody-or-other, Jack?” one of the agents asked.

  “Clean as a whistle,” Jack replied. “His passport and visa both say Finnish structural engineer—and his baggage is empty—no apparent Commie connections. Seems O.K. to me.”

  “Just for the hell of it, I’m going to buzz intelligence.” the agent said. “You never know.”

  “Go ahead,” the other shrugged. “I think you’re just wasting time though.”

  They let the Finnish engineer through, but immediately the agent put through a commune to the Custom Police.

  Consequently the smooth-faced Finnish engineer was entirely unaware of the two men tailing him. A close observer might have seen his lip curl after he’d gone through the customs, almost as if he were thinking, “what stupid people.”

  Kaltari Sem registered at a small hotel and behaved unobtrusively and unsuspiciously, exactly as one would expect of a man who is interested in architectural and structural work. He remained that way for two weeks and the agents were about to give up the chase when a peculiar quirk in his behavior was noted.

  Kaltari Sem went to a radio supply house and purchased seventy dollars worth of miscellaneous parts. The agents followed him and checked up on what he had bought. Off-hand it was an innocuous list. Vacuum tubes, condensers, resistors, a chassis and odds and ends such as one would expect for the building of a radio amplifier. Rut the same things that go into an amplifier go into a transmitter . . .

  It was a simple matter to put an observer in the room next to Kaltari Sem. The agent watched the whole proceeding. As calmly as a man involved in innocent work, Kaltari built something on the chassis he had bought—and when the job was done the agents just as calmly, stepped in and arrested him.

  “Kaltari Sem?—come along. We arrest you for sabotage—potential sabotage that is.”

  In spite of the man’s vigorous protests that he was simply an amateur radioman, that he’d built the gadget as a hobby, he was dragged into headquarters and it wasn’t much of a job to sweat the truth from him.

  The little “amplifier” he’d built was nothing less than a micro-wave transmitter, a beacon guide for guided missiles to center on. The frequency was high and a super-sensitive receiver in the nose of a war-headed rocket
could easily pick it out.

  Very little fuss was made over the disappearance of the mild Finnish engineer, “Kaltari Sem . . .”

  Heli-Taxi

  Sandy Miller

  THE ROOFS of the theater district were beginning to disgorge the hordes of theatre-goers. N’Yawk in January isn’t warm, and the icy wind was mingled with a liquid downfall that was beginning to harden into something more than slush.

  And of course the crowd pressed for heli-taxis.

  In the glare of lights, Grogan spotted an opening in the flurry of revolving rotors. Skillfully, with the judgment born of long practice, he eased his model Kar-’92 into the tangled mass of air-borne traffic bringing up before the roof-marquee.

  The couple stepped into the heli-taxi, Grogan touched the signal light showing the heli-taxi occupied; then, “where to?”

  “Keen’s—Tower’s Place,” the man answered briskly, “God, it’s nasty out, and getting a heli-taxi on a night like this is a major undertaking.”

  “You got the best,” Grogan replied with a grin. His fingers played with the throttle and he poured powered to the keening turbine that drove the rotors. The Heli-taxi shot skyward like a bullet.

  Crash! Bang I Thump! The heli-taxi was brought up sharply by the scrape of stubby wing against stubby wing as the driver of another cab misjudged his distance.

  Grogan shot his head out the window. The air was split with thunderous obscenities as Grogan cut loose with all the practiced skill of a N’Yawker. Sulphurous curses turned the air into ozone.

  The offending heli-taxi disengaged itself hurriedly, its driver, tough himself, quailing before the verbal barrage of Grogan. Grogan goosed the turbine once more, this time clearing the lower layers.

  “Sorry, folks,” he called back to his passengers, “some of these rummies ain’t learned to drive yet.” The heli-taxi roared on triumphantly.

  “Did you say something, dear?” the woman asked her escort.

  The man chuckled. “They never change Elise. I’ll bet this heli-taxi driver isn’t removed more than one tenth of a personality from a Roman litter-bearer—even though three centuries have passed since then!”

  The Man and the Neutrons

  Walter Lathrop

  MAJOR VINCENT was in conference with the “Know-How Boys”, as they called the scientists, and the commanding officer. Colonel Cleary merely sat back and let the discussion take its head. The matter wasn’t important—just something about putting dual Geigers in all the levels. There’s a peculiar sense of timelessness and security when you’re eight hundred feet beneath the surface of the Earth, in a concrete honeycomb, standing watch over a pile of atomic bombs.

  The conference was dragging its boring way to a conclusion when the sound of a scuffle came from the door. Suddenly it burst open, and a Guardsman, dirty and disheveled forced his way in against the restraining arms of the Marine.

  “Sir!” he gasped out, “let me in! Fletcher went nuts in the number eight bomb section!”

  Major Vincent stood up. “What did he do?” he demanded swiftly. “He didn’t get at the bombs . . .”

  “He broke up a half dozen sir. Then he ran out. We shot him down but not before he locked the chamber. And we figure he’s triggered one!”

  “Cut through the door—we’ve got to get in there. I don’t care how hot the place is.” Vincent was through the conference room door like a shot.

  Five minutes later he was in front of the entrance to the number eight atomic bomb storage room. A dozen men were working on the massive nickel steel door with a set of torches, and slowly it was beginning to give way in incandescent streams, as the tough metal softened and finally ran.

  A knot of white-faced men stood around watching the operation, helpless to do anything until an entrance had been affected.

  “Get me a suit and a Geiger—and a bunch of hand tools,” Vincent snapped. “This is my baby—if we’ve got time. The rest of you beat it. Colonel Cleary has turned the operation over to me and he’s evacuating the station. There’s going to be one hell of a hole in the ground if this place goes. And if it doesn’t . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish. The rest of the crewmen knew what he was thinking. That chamber was alive with lethal neutronic radiation. The man who entered it wasn’t going to live long. Major Vincent had a family, too.

  It was a matter of minutes before the officer managed to get the protesting men to leave. Only the stuttering hiss of torches made any sound in the cavernous gloom.

  When the entrance finally buckled under the searing flames, Major Vincent was ready. He stepped over the white-hot sill and entered the bomb-chamber. Ordinarily, he knew, sheathed in their cylinders, the innocuous-appearing atomic bombs were just that, but the sight that greeted his eyes was one of carnage. Bomb cases were shattered and all over the floor was scattered lumps of heavy dark metal—uranium and polonium, hurling into the atmosphere their hideous invisible charges.

  The counter at the major’s side clicked violently and then chattered into a whine. Even as he walked toward the bombs, his eyes seeking for the armed one, he knew he was dying on his feet. There was no pain, no sensation. But the tiny neutrons were converting the components of his body into other radioactives and making of him, a seething atomic furnace.

  He found the aimed bomb, and in a matter of minutes, he deftly removed the arming device preventing the ghastly explosion of three hundred atomic bombs.

  Major Vincent straightened up. The leaden suit surrounding his tissues was so much paper to the nightmarish neutrons.

  “All right boys,” he called to the men outside hidden from the radiations by a shield and by their distance, “I’ve pulled the teeth on this baby—but I’m soaked. The room is hotter than Hades. Use tongs and shields on everything. We’ll—” He corrected himself—“you’ll have to seal this off when you’ve pulled the bombs and leave me here.”

  A hardened grizzled crewman outside the fatal room let a tear roll down his cheek. “Good luck, Major,” he called, “I’m sorry it had to be you.”

  “Forget it,” Vincent called back, his face pale. “Tell my wife and kids—you know . . .” There was silence for a moment. “I’m not going to wait any longer,” came Vincent’s voice.

  The crewmen knew what he meant. A minute later came the muffled sound of a shot. The depot would not blow up now— and Major Vincent’s body would remain where his charges had been . . .

  Mr. Merriman’s Mad Mix-Up

  Lynn Standish

  MR. MERRIMAN’S appearance belied his name. He was a sad lugubrious little man, whose very looks suggested nothing so much as a poor little terrier left out in the rain by his master. Mr. Merriman was an electronics technician—a very good one too—his job with International Video testified to that, but his sad dispirited personality never enabled him to rise higher than that technician’s status—a fact which Mrs. Merriman, a buxom woman of forty-five years and two hundred and forty pounds—was fond of reminding him.

  All events conspired against him. The day before, Mr. Clark, the chief engineer at I.V. had publicly scolded Mr. Merriman.

  “John,” he’d said, “you’ve been very slack lately. I want you to wake up. This organization has no use for dunderheads.”

  “Yes sir,” Mr. Merriman had acknowledged the reprimand hoarsely. “I’ll watch things, sir.”

  Then Mrs. Merriman (Mr. Merriman never thought of his wife as anything but “Mrs. Merriman”) had scolded him this morning for failing to bring in certain desired purchases she had made the day before.

  So this morning, Mr. Merriman sat in the control cubicle looking sadly at the four hundred co-axial cable lines, at the hundreds of relays and the thousands of switches and dangerous thoughts began to stir in his ordinarily complacent brain.

  It must not be thought that Mr. Merriman suddenly revolted. No, this was a matter which had been brewing a long time, and like a diaphragm which is gradually overloaded, Mr. Merriman resisted the pressures of events up unti
l that delicate breaking point.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon when Mr. Merriman finally summoned up his courage. He thought of the hundred million video receivers in operation; he thought of the thousand different programs now pouring over the lines; and he thought of what he, Mr. Merriman, electronics technician, could do. And he did it.

  He got up from his chair, took his screw driver and pliers and went to work. Flipping switches, he changed circuit after circuit, until, in twenty minutes, every video line in the vast network of International Video, was connected with another video line—the wrong one.

  Mr. Merriman then calmly put on his hat and coat, walked out of the building, drew his savings from the bank—and disappeared.

  Meanwhile, all hell broke loose. All over the North American Confederation, a video riot had broken out. Students in Medic Center had been watching an appendectomy—they found themselves abruptly seeing a dog-show . . .

  The face of the Reverend Elman vanished from the church’s screen to be replaced by Sari’s Sensuous Strips . . .

  A classroom of little tykes found, to its glee, that the dissection of a corpse was an engaging affair . . .

  Rocket Engineers, Inc. saw the test rocket vanish from the screen to be replaced by “Mrs. Gregor’s Travail”, a tear-jerker which affected no one . . .

  It took the engineers of International Video more than four hours to straighten out the mess after being threatened by Communications with almost an atom bombing, not to mention a presidential order.

  As for Mr. Merriman, his disappearance was never successfully solved, and Mrs. Merriman (who is now Mrs. Drayton—her second husband is not an electronics technician) does not speak of the spouse who so embarrassed her. Her last words on the matter were, “Mr. Merriman was mad—quite mad, I assure you . . .”