by Various
"Quite so, Mr. Anders. You now admit I exist, that I have extraordinary powers. I am your own creation, Mr. Anders. As I said before you have exceptional senses, including imagination. And yes, imagination is the greatest of all the senses.
"Some humans with this gift often imagine ludicrous things, exciting things, horrifying things--depending don't you see, on mood, emotion. And the things these mortals imagine become real, are actually, created--only they don't know it, of course."
He stopped. He was probably giving me time to soak that up. Then he went on. "You've forgotten to keep trying to remember where you put that Luger, Mr. Anders. I just picked up the abandoned thought as it left your consciousness just now."
I gulped down something that tried to rise in my throat. I didn't like this guy.
"You created me when you were fourteen, Mr. Anders. You imagined me as a swashbuckling pirate. The only difference between me and the others who have been created in times past is that I have attained the ninth dimension. I am the first to do that. Also the first to capture the secrets of your own third dimension. Naturally then, it would be a pity for me to die."
"Get out," I said.
"Forgive me, Mr. Anders. My time is short. I die tomorrow."
"That's swell. Now get out."
"We're not immortal, you see. When our creators die their imaginations die with them. We too die. It follows. But for some time I've had an idea."
"Out," I said again. "Get the hell out of here!"
"You're going to die tomorrow, Mr. Anders, in that new flying saucer. And I must die with you. Except that I've had this idea."
There are times when you look yourself in the eye and don't like what you see. Or maybe what you see scares the living hell out of you. When those times come along some little something inside tells you you'd better watch out. Then the doubts creep in. After that the melancholy. And from that instant on you aren't very sane anymore.
"Out!" I yelled. "Out, out, OUT! Get the hell out!"
"One moment, Mr. Anders. Now as to this idea of mine. There's this woman--this Margie Hayman. This woman you call the Doll."
That one jerked me around.
"Exactly. Now listen very carefully. You aren't entirely you anymore, Mr. Anders. I mean, you aren't the complete whole individual you as you once were. You love this woman. Something inside you has gone out and is now a part of her."
"Therefore, if you will just discard the thought of her sometime between now and when you take that ship up I can attach myself to her sentient being, don't you see, and thereby exist--at least partly--even though you yourself are dead."
I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. I stared at the entire black repulsive undulating mass before me. I took a step toward it.
"It isn't much to ask, Mr. Anders. You've quarrelled with her. You want no more of her. You've practically told her that. All I ask is that you finish the job--forget her. Discard her--throw her into the mental junk pile of Abandonment."
I didn't take any more steps. Something inside me was screaming, was ripping at my guts, was roaring with all the cacaphony of all the giant discords of all eternity. Something inside my brain was sucking all my strength in one tremendous, surging power-dive of wish fulfillment. I was willing the black mucous mass of him out of my consciousness.
He was no longer there. The only thing to prove he'd ever been there at all was a very-old, very-rusty penknife over on the table in front of the davenport--the knife with my name carved on the bone handle.
After that I went unsteadily to the dresser in the living room. I got the Doll's picture down off the dresser. I undressed. I took the picture to bed with me. The lights burned in my bedroom the entire night.
* * * * *
Lieutenant Colonel Melrose looked weatherbeaten. His graying hair was pulled here and there like a rag mop that's dried dirty--stiff. He had a freshly lit cigarette between his lips. He grinned nervously when he saw me, butted the cigarette, said in a thin voice, "This is it, Anders. Ship goes up in twenty minutes."
"I know," I said.
He poked another cigarette at his lips. He said, "What?" in a startled tone.
"Nothing," I said. "All right, I'll get ready."
He lit the cigarette, took a puff that made the smoke do a frenetic dance around his nostrils. He jabbed it at an ashtray, bobbed his head in a convulsive movement, said, "Righto!"
They strapped me in. Pop came to the open hatch. He stuck his head in, grinned, said, "Hi, guy," softly. There was something in his eyes. The Doll had told him how I hate sour notes.
"How's the Doll, Pop?" I forced myself to say it.
"Swell, Ed. Just got a call from her. On her way out here to see you take off. Looks like she won't make it now though."
I didn't say anything. His eyes went down to the wallet I had propped up on my knees. The wallet was open, celluloid window showing. Inside the window was the Doll's picture.
"Tell her that, Pop," I said.
"Yeah, guy. Luck."
They shut the hatch.
There was no doubt about the takeoff. If one thing was perfected in the XXE-1 it was that. The ship rose like the mercury in a thermometer on a hot day in July. I took it slow to fifty thousand feet.
"Fifty thousand," I said into the throat mike.
"Hear you, Anders." Melrose's voice.
"Smooth," I said. "Radar on me?"
"On you, Anders."
I let the ship have a little head. This job used the clutch of a tax collector's claws for fuel. It just hooked itself on the nothing around us and yanked--and there we were.
One hundred thousand.
"Double that," I said into the mike.
"Yeah, Anders. How is it?"
"Haven't yet begun. Radar still on me?"
I heard a nervous laugh. He was nervous. "The General--General Hotchkiss just said something, Anders. He--ha, ha--he said you're on plot like stitches in a fat lady's hip. Ha, ha! He's got us all in stitches. Ha, ha!"
Ha, ha!
This was it. I released my grip on the accelerator control, yet it slide up. They say you can't feel speed in the air unless there's something relative within vision to tip you off. They're going to have to revise that. You can not only feel speed you can reach out and break hunks off it--in the XXE-1, that is. I shook my head, took my eyes off the instruments and looked down at the Doll on my lap.
"Melrose?"
"Hear you, Anders."
"This is it. Reaching me on radar still?"
"Naturally."
"All right."
This was it. This was where the other four ships like the XXE-1--the radio controlled models--had disintegrated. This was where it happened, and they didn't come back anymore.
I sucked in oxygen and let the accelerator control go over all the way.
Pulling a ship out of a steep dive, yes. Blackout then, yes. If the wings stay with you everything's fine and you live to mention the incident at the bar a little while later. Blackout accelerating--climbing--is not in the books. But blackout, nevertheless. Not just plain blackout but a thick mucous, slimy undulating blackout--the very black.
The very very black.
* * * * *
General Hotchkiss, "What's he saying, Melrose?"
Melrose, "Doesn't answer."
General Eaton, "Try again."
Melrose, "Yes sir."
General Hotchkiss, "What's he saying, Melrose?"
General Eaton, "Still nothing?"
Melrose, "Nothing."
General Hotchkiss, "Dammit, you've still got him on radar, haven't you?"
Melrose, "Yes sir."
General Hotchkiss, "Well, dammit, what's he doing?"
Melrose, "Still going up, sir."
General Eaton, "How far up?"
Melrose, "Signal takes sixty seconds to get back, sir."
General Hotchkiss, "God in heaven! One hundred and twenty thousand miles out! Halfway to the moon. How much more fuel has he?"
Melrose,
"Five seconds, sir. Then the auto-switch cuts in. Power will go off until he nears atmosphere again. After that, if he isn't conscious--well, I'm awfully afraid we've lost another ship."
General Eaton, "Cold blooded--"
* * * * *
The purple drapes before my eyes were wavering. Hung like rippled steel pieces of a caisson suspended by a perilously thin whisper of thread, they swayed, hesitated, shuddered their entire length, then began to bend in the middle from the combined weights of thirteen galaxies. The bend became a cracking bulge that in another second would explode destruction directly into my face. I screamed.
"Is--is that you, Anders?"
I screamed good this time.
"An--Anders! You all right? What happened? I couldn't get through to you?"
I took my hand from the accelerator control and stared numbly at it. The mark of it was deep in the skin. I sucked in oxygen.
"Anders! Your power is off. When you hear the signal you've got just three more seconds. You know what to do then. You've been out of the envelope, Anders! You broke through the atmosphere!"
And then I heard him speak to somebody else--he must have been speaking to somebody else, he couldn't have meant me--"Crissake, give me a cigarette. The guy's still alive."
I suppose I was grinning when they unstrapped me and slid me out of the hatch. They were grinning back at any rate. The ground held me up surprisingly--like it always had all my life before. They'd stopped grinning now, their eyes were eating the inside of the ship. They weren't interested in me anymore--all they wanted was the instruments' readings.
My feet could still move me. Knew where to go. Knew where to find the door that had the simple word Plotting on it.
The Doll was there with her father. The two of them didn't say anything, just looked at me--just stared at me. I said, "He tried damned hard. He put everything he had in it. He got me. He had me down and there wasn't any up again for the rest of the world. For me there wasn't."
They stared. Pop stared. The Doll stared.
"Just one thing he forgot," I muttered. "He gave me the tip-off himself and then he forgot it. He told me I wasn't all me anymore, that a part of me had gone out to you since I was supposed to be in love with you. And that's where the tip-off lies. I wasn't all me anymore but I hadn't lost anything. You know why, Doll?"
They stared.
"Simple--any damn fool would tumble. If I wasn't all me, then you weren't all you. Part of you was me--get it? And you weren't scheduled to bust out today. Not you--me! And that's what he couldn't work over. That's what brought me down again. He couldn't touch that." I stopped for a moment.
I said suddenly, "What the hell you guys staring at?" I growled.
"That's my Baby," said the Doll.
"No strings," I said.
"Like we said." Her words were soft petals. "Like we said, Baby. Just like we said."
"Sure. Only damn it, I don't like it that way. I want strings, see? I want meshes of 'em, balls of 'em, like what comes in yarn--get it?"
The Doll grinned. "Sure, Baby--you're sure you want it that way?"
"Sure I'm sure. I just said it, didn't I? Didn't I?"
"You just said it, Baby." She left her father's side, came over to me, put her arm in mine, pulled close. We turned, started to go out the door.
"Where you guys going?" asked Pop. We turned again. He looked like something was skipped somewhere on a sound track he'd been listening to. I grinned.
"Gotta look for a Brown Bess," I said. "Museum just lost one."
* * *
Contents
THE WEDGE
By H. B. Fyfe
When the concealed gong sounded, the man sitting on the floor sighed. He continued, however, to slump loosely against the curving, pearly plastic of the wall, and took care not to glance toward the translucent ovals he knew to be observation panels.
He was a large man, but thin and bony-faced. His dirty gray coverall bore the name "Barnsley" upon grimy white tape over the heart. Except at the shoulders, it looked too big for him. His hair was dark brown, but the sandy ginger of his two-week beard seemed a better match for his blue eyes.
Finally, he satisfied the softly insistent gong by standing up and gazing in turn at each of the three doors spaced around the cylindrical chamber. He deliberately adopted an expression of simple-minded anticipation as he ambled over to the nearest one.
The door was round, about four feet in diameter, and set in a flattened part of the wall with its lower edge tangent with the floor. Rods about two inches thick projected a hand's breadth at four, eight, and twelve o'clock. The markings around them suggested that each could be rotated to three different positions. Barnsley squatted on his heels to study these.
Noting that all the rods were set at the position he had learned to think of as "one," he reached out to touch the door. It felt slightly warm, so he allowed his fingertips to slide over the upper handle. A tentative tug produced no movement of the door.
"That's it, though," he mumbled quietly. "Well, now to do our little act with the others!"
He moved to the second door, where all the rods were set at "two." Here he fell to manipulating the rod handles, pausing now and then to shove hopefully against the door. Some twenty minutes later, he tried the same routine at the third door.
Eventually, he returned to his starting point and rotated the rods there at random for a few minutes. Having, apparently by accident, arranged them in a sequence of one-two-three, he contrived to lean against the door at the crucial instant. As it gave beneath his weight, he grabbed the two lower handles and pushed until the door rose to a horizontal position level with its hinged top. It settled there with a loud click.
* * * * *
Barnsley stooped to crawl through into an arched passage of the same pearly plastic. He straightened up and walked along for about twenty feet, flashing a white-toothed grin through his beard while muttering curses behind it. Presently, he arrived at a small, round bay, to be confronted by three more doors.
"Bet there's a dozen of you three-eyed clods peeping at me," he growled. "How'd you like me to poke a boot through the panel in front of you and kick you blubber-balls in all directions? Do you have a page in your data books for that?"
He forced himself to feel sufficiently dull-witted to waste ten minutes opening one of the doors. The walls of the succeeding passage were greenish, and the tunnel curved gently downward to the left. Besides being somewhat warmer, the air exuded a faint blend of heated machine oil and something like ripe fish. The next time Barnsley came to a set of doors, he found also a black plastic cube about two feet high. He squatted on his heels to examine it.
I'd better look inside or they'll be disappointed, he told himself.
From the corner of his eye, he watched the movement of shadows behind the translucent panels in the walls. He could picture the observers there: blubbery bipeds with three-jointed arms and legs ending in clusters of stubby but flexible tentacles. Their broad, spine-crested heads would be thrust forward and each would have two of his three protruding eyes directed at Barnsley's slightest move. They had probably been staring at him in relays every second since picking up his scout ship in the neighboring star system.
That is, Barnsley thought, it must have been the next system whose fourth planet he had been photo-mapping for the Terran Colonial Service. He hoped he had not been wrong about that.
Doesn't matter, he consoled himself, as long as the Service can trace me. These slobs certainly aren't friendly.
He reconsidered the scanty evidence of previous contact in this volume of space, light-years from Terra's nearest colony. Two exploratory ships had disappeared. There had been a garbled, fragmentary message picked up by the recorders of the colony's satellite beacon, which some experts interpreted as a hasty warning. As far as he knew, Barnsley was the only Terran to reach this planet alive.
To judge from his peculiar imprisonment, his captors had recovered from their initial dismay at encount
ering another intelligent race--at least to the extent of desiring a specimen for study. In Barnsley's opinion, that put him more or less ahead of the game.
"They're gonna learn a lot!" he muttered, grinning vindictively.
He finished worrying the cover off the black box. Inside was a plastic sphere of water and several varieties of food his captors probably considered edible. The latter ranged from a leafy stalk bearing a number of small pods to a crumbling mass resembling moldy cheese. Barnsley hesitated.
"I haven't had the guts to try this one yet," he reminded himself, picking out what looked like a cluster of long, white roots.
The roots squirmed feebly in his grasp. Barnsley returned them to the box instantly.
Having selected, instead, a fruit that could have been a purple cucumber, he put it with the water container into a pocket of his coverall and closed the box.
Maybe they won't remember that I took the same thing once before, he thought. Oh, hell, of course they will! But why be too consistent?
He opened one of the doors and walked along a bluish passage that twisted to the left, chewing on the purple fruit as he went. It was tougher than it looked and nearly tasteless. At the next junction, he unscrewed the cap of the water sphere, drained it slowly, and flipped the empty container at one of the oval panels. A dim shadow blurred out of sight, as if someone had stepped hastily backward.
"Why not?" growled Barnsley. "It's time they were shaken up a little!"
* * * * *
Pretending to have seen something where the container had struck the wall, he ran over and began to feel along the edge of the panel. When his fingertips encountered only the slightest of seams, he doubled his fists and pounded. He thought he could detect a faint scurrying on the other side of the wall.
Barnsley laughed aloud. He raised one foot almost waist-high and drove the heel of his boot through the translucent observation panel. Seizing the splintered edges of the hole, he tugged and heaved until he had torn out enough of the thin wall to step through to the other side. He found himself entering a room not much larger than the passage behind him.
