Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Hey, listen," I yelled, "what's the idea? Do you do this for fun?"

  "Sure," he said. "Partly. I'm just experimenting, you know. It is fun, and there's always a chance I might fall into something important."

  "You're not trying to improve the atom bomb by any chance, are you?"

  "No," he laughed. "Nothing like that. Besides, the atom bomb is a problem of physics, not chemistry."

  I might have gotten used to Bert's chemistry, if he'd kept it in the attic. But by Wednesday or Thursday of that same week, he began to spread it out. Effie found her teakettle steaming with no fire under it. No water in it either, for that matter, just some fool chemical which was evaporating into a white vapor. And at supper that night he poured me a glass of water which turned a sickly green in my glass. Then he poured one for the delighted Effie. Only hers didn't turn green, it blazed up with fire.

  Effie was thrilled. "However did you do that?" she said. "Bert, you're so clever--"

  He winked at me. "Magic," he said to Effie. And to me: "Nothing at all but a little sliver of white metallic sodium, which perfectly naturally-- from the chemical point of view, that is--blazes when it gets wet. But don't tell her. I want her to think I'm smart."

  "Stop that stuff," I said, "before somebody gets killed around here."

  It sure gave you an uneasy feeling being around Bert, who had heaven knows what in his pocket. I began to be afraid to light my pipe for fear snakes would come out of it.

  Anyway, Saturday came, just a week after those three crooks had stopped and looked us over. I hadn't thought of them, but now somehow, just at sundown, memory of them popped into my head. Looking back to it, I could see how smoothly they had done everything, as though they had planned it ahead of time. One had moved over toward the house, to watch the road and to make sure nobody came out of the house. One of the others had blocked the little doorway of the service station room. A third had followed me to the cash register. They hadn't pulled anything, but they certainly had the proper setup, smooth as silk.

  Then I shrugged away the thoughts. You can't spend your time thinking about what might have happened, but didn't. I got busy with two or three cars arriving at once, and forgot it.

  After supper, as darkness came, things slackened. It had been a red-hot day, one of those breathless, oppressive days when you wished for a good snappy thunderstorm to clear things up. Sure enough, in mid-evening, there were distant clouds coming and a bit of wind that made the heat more comfortable. Between cars, I sat on the verandah.

  Bert and Effie were in the kitchen, doing the dishes. I could hear them laughing. They were getting along famously. Bert, as it happened, had had an experience about like Effie's. He'd left his young bride and gone to war; and soon after he got back he found that all was not well. It wasn't Bert's style to be violent or dramatic. He just quietly told the lady off and got a divorce.

  "Couldn't be helped, I guess," he told Effie and me. "Anyway, if at first you don't succeed--get what I mean? He flung Effie a glance, not brash because it had his queer sort of shyness mixed up in it. Effie had blushed.

  They could have been talking like that now, out in the kitchen. Two cars came, but I didn't bother

  to call Bert; I handled them myself. After all, even at seventy you can remember when you were young.

  At ten o'clock I joined Effie and Bert on the verandah. There hadn't been a car for quite a while.

  "Guess we might as well close up," I said.

  It had been a good day; a rush since before noon. There was quite a bit of cash in the register.

  We waited till eleven. Nothing more doing.

  "Okay," I said. "Late enough."

  "I'll help you," Bert said.

  We turned off the electric sign at the roadside. Effie was with us. With the big sign off, the darkness enveloped us. There was just a glow of light from the hall of the house, slanting out onto the verandah; and a glow from inside the little service station room. It was a black night now; no moon, no stars, just sullen-looking clouds overhead and the feel of rain in the air.

  "I'll get the cash," I said. I had a little safe in the house where I kept it at night.

  I was just starting for the register, when suddenly there was the sound of a car, the motor of it starting up near at hand. In a few seconds it came around the bend--two yellow headlights and a white searchlight at the side. The searchlight beam caught me, focused on me and clung. It all happened amazingly quickly. I had no time to do anything. With me standing there in the glare, the car came up and stopped with a shuddering grind of brakes, mingled with a man's voice:

  "Okay, grandpop, stand still if you don't want to get shot."

  Effie was near me, in the glare. She let out a little cry.

  "Take it easy!" I murmured. "Stand still!"

  I could see vaguely that it was a big open car with four men in it. Three of them leaped out, leaving one behind the wheel.

  "Put them lights out," somebody growled.

  The car lights went off. But there was still enough light for me to see that two of the men had Effie and me covered with leveled automatics. The men weren't masked, but their faces were just dim white ovals in the darkness.

  "Make it fast," the man behind the wheel said softly. He sounded nervous, and his voice seemed familiar.

  Then I caught a glimpse of his profile and recognized the rat-faced, weak-chinned fellow who had driven the car a week ago. And I saw that one of the men who had his gun on Effie and me was a big bruiser in a checked suit.

  It was the same outfit, only now there were four of them. The new one was in front of me, a squat, thick little man, evidently much older. Then I got the idea. Those three young cubs hadn't been equipped for a holdup last week. But they'd looked the ground over, and now they'd brought their leader back with them. Parked nearby, and when we put the lights out to close up, they jumped us.

  Effie and I were standing together with our hands over our heads. Then the third man saw Bert, who was closer to the car. Bert had his hands up, too, perfectly docile. The third bandit pounced on him, shoving a gun into his ribs.

  "Make it snappy," the fellow behind the wheel called again. "Make grandpop give you the cash an' let's get out of here."

  "Shut up," the squat man growled. "I'm givin' orders." He lined the three of us up. "This won't take a minute," he chuckled.

  It didn't. The man in the checked suit and his companion held us, while the squat little man darted in and emptied the cash register. I had a gun in the table drawer there. In a way I was glad I couldn't get to it. One gun against three, especially in the open, only gets you into trouble. Then the bandit found it; he chuckled again and shoved it into his pocket.

  In a few seconds, with all my cash stowed away on him, he came darting out again.

  "Okay," he said softly. "You boys were right. Fair enough."

  "Maybe the girl's got some jewelry on her," the man in the checked suit suggested.

  "You let her alone!" Bert growled suddenly. "So help me, if you want to start anything--"

  What I could see of Bert's grim, tense face suggested that he might have forgotten their guns and taken a poke at them if they'd come near Effie.

  "Easy!" I warned. "Let it ride, Bert."

  One of the young crooks laughed. "Grandpop's right. Safety first."

  All that grandpop stuff riled me. After all, I'm not senile.

  "Listen, you young squirt," I said, "I've had many a one like you sniveling in front of me with the guts scared out of him. Put away that gun and I'll take you on with my fists, man to man."

  Maybe I could have done it, too, but I didn't get the chance. They kept us covered as they backed

  toward their car, turned and jumped into it. Then the headlights flashed on and the car roared away, around the bend in the direction of Hewlett Corners. In a few seconds they were gone.

  "Well I'll be darned," I said.

  "Where's the nearest police?" Bert asked. "Let's give 'em a ring. Not Hewlett Corn
ers?"

  "No, no." Hewlett Corners had nothing. "Call Little Creek Junction."

  Captain MacKenzie made the four miles in about six minutes, with two cars and five of his men.

  "Maybe that open car those fellows have isn't too fast," Bert suggested.

  If we could catch them before they got to the White Notch crossroads--that's twenty miles. But from there, they could go anywhere. I got in beside Mac, in the smaller car, with Bert and Effie in the rear. It was beginning to rain, and all I could see was the blur of our headlights on the road.

  That little car was speedy. It bucked and jumped like a scared jackrabbit. I never even saw Hewlett Corners, as we went by. But fast as we were, Mac's big car with his armed men, was faster. It drew steadily away from us.

  From the darkness of the back seat, Bert murmured, "Good luck for us. Might be."

  "Good luck?" I said. "Will be, if Mac doesn't wreck us, driving like this."

  "I wasn't thinking of that," Bert said. "Those bandits--"

  He didn't get any further than that.

  "Listen!" Mac said tensely. "Gunshots! Darned if it isn't!"

  It did seem that far ahead of us in the murk there was the sound of two or three shots. Then a silence. Then a couple more. We topped a rise. Down another slope, half a mile ahead of us the bandit car had pulled off to one side of the road, and the tonneau was blazing.

  "We got 'em!" Mac murmured.

  Mac's big car had pulled up a hundred yards this side of the bandits. The bandits were out on the road, ducking down behind their blazing machine with Mac's men firing at them. As we lurched down the hill, there was another exchange. We could see the stabbing bursts of flame, and see Mac's men darting forward.

  It was all over by the time we got there.

  "Swell," Mac said, as his men herded the sullen crooks forward in the rain. The older one showed now to be a flat-nosed fellow about forty. I never saw an uglier-looking customer. His right arm was hanging limp where one of Mac's men had winged him. His pockets yielded all my cash, which was very nice. The three younger ones weren't hurt, they were just sullen and scared. I've seen plenty of young crooks like that. Too bad they don't get scared ahead of time.

  "Shove 'em into the big car," Mac ordered. "Keep away from that bus of theirs. Its tank could explode any minute."

  There was still some fire in the back seat of the big car.

  "Now however in the world did they manage to get themselves on fire like that?" Mac murmured.

  In the rainy murk I heard Bert chuckle. And when I gazed at him, he winked.

  "I'm glad it rained," Bert said.

  Those little sticks of white metallic sodium! He'd had some in his pockets, tossed them into the back of the open car when it first dashed up in the darkness, with the bandits tumbling out of it!

  Effie and Bert are engaged to be married now. Bert still putters with his chemicals. One explosion, last evening, was so bad, even Bert was surprised. Maybe some time he'll finish us all up by discovering something even nastier than the atomic bomb.

  I hope not.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE SCALPEL OF DOOM

  Ray Cummings

  A doctor is not supposed to use his knowledge to slay.

  Yet there came a time when this small-town medico had to operate with...

  LOTS of things, particularly unpleasant ones, can get crowded into an hour. I've had it happen to me often, but never quite like that hour which began at about midnight, one evening last summer. And I never thought I'd have occasion to kill a man. Every doctor worries that sometime he might make a little mistake, or even just an error of judgment; his patient would die--and the doctor would forever after blame himself. But this wasn't anything like that. I wanted to kill this fellow, and I did. I can't say I'm exactly sorry, but it gives you a queer feeling just the same.

  I was alone in my office, that summer night. I live in a little stucco house near the edge of Pleasant Grove Village, with my office and reception room occupying about half its lower floor. My wife and young daughter were away for a week at the beach. I was alone on the premises, that night at midnight. I'd had quite a tough day at the hospital--two operations, one of which had turned out to be more serious than I had anticipated, and a long steady grind of routine calls that had kept me going until about eleven-thirty. I had just decided to go to bed when a car stopped outside. Hurried footsteps came up the walk; my night bell rang.

  It was a slim, dark-haired young girl. She wore a black, somewhat shabby raincoat and hood. Which struck me as odd, because it was a hot summer night, with a full moon in a cloudless sky.

  "You Dr. Bates?"

  "Yes," I said. "Come in."

  She shook her head. I couldn't see her face very well because of the hood. Her voice was low, agitated. "You got to come, doc," she said. "I got a--a patient. I guess he's hurt bad." She gestured toward the car at the curb. It was a big, black limousine, a really handsome affair. "I'll drive you," she added. "It ain't far. Hurry, doc. Please."

  "A patient?" I said.

  "A patient--for you. He--he's my brother. You'll hurry, won't you?"

  I got my hat and bag. She stood in the doorway. She was trembling. My hall light was on her. She was young, quite pretty--a pale, drawn face framed by bobbed black hair.

  "Somebody hurt?" I said. "An accident? Why didn't you drive him to the hospital? There's one here in Pleasant Grove."

  She backed out of the light into the dimness of my porch. "I couldn't, doc. I'll tell you about that. But please--you gotta hurry--he could die."

  I climbed into the front seat of the car with her and we rolled away, heading north out of Pleasant Grove. She drove swiftly but, it seemed, skillfully.

  "Where is he?" I said.

  "Over near Palenburg. I'll bring you back, doc. You--do your best for him, won't you, doc?"

  "Of course," I said. The factory town of Palenburg was about ten miles north. "There are doctors in Palenburg," I said. "A hospital, too. Why didn't you--?"

  "I couldn't. He's--in the--a place in the woods."

  * * *

  AT THE crossroads, we turned west. I knew this region pretty well. The country west of Palenburg is unusually wild--wooded hills with hardly a house. The girl drove grimly, silently. The front seat was dark, with just the glow reflected from the lighted instruments of the panel. Beside me, on the inside of the right-hand door, there was a plush pouch. On impulse I reached into it.

  A pair of man's gloves--handsome chamois skin--were in it. And a few letters. I glanced at one. It was addressed: George J. Livingston, The Oakes, Palenburg.

  I put the things back. "What's your name?" I said.

  "Jenny Dolan."

  "You work for Mr. Livingston? Is that it?"

  She turned her head, flashed me a startled glance. "Mr.--who?" Then she looked frightened, sullen.

  "Or maybe you just borrowed his car?" I said. "Look, Jenny, hadn't you better tell me all about this?"

  "No! No--"

  "Why not?"

  "I can't! I promised him!"

  "Your brother?"

  "Yes. Oh doc--" I had put my hand on her shoulder. I'm forty years old, with grey hairs coming. To me, I'm still a pretty husky young fellow, but to her--well, I was old enough to be her father. She evidently felt that. At my touch and my gentle tone, she suddenly wilted out of her grimness. "Oh, doc, you wouldn't--you wouldn't do anything against him? I'm trustin' you--"

  She was tearful. She turned toward me. "Watch the road!" I said sharply. We had wobbled toward the ditch. She brought us back.

  "Take it easy," I said. "If you've promised him not to explain to me--that's okay. How far is it from here?"

  "Not far." She was slowing us down. Then she turned from the highway into a little side road that wound up into the forested foothills of Black Mountain. So far as I could judge we were about three miles from Palenburg. The car bumped over the little rocky road. Then it was so steep we had to go into low gear.


  "You know, don't you," I said, "if he's got a gunshot wound or been stabbed or anything, I have to report it to the police?"

  "No, no! That's what he said you'd do! Oh doc--"

  "Don't get excited," I said. Which sounded inane. She was pretty pathetic, in a panic of terror, trying to drive the car with one hand and grabbing appealingly at me with the other.

  "Doc, he's only a kid. Only eighteen--my twin. You--you won't let him die, will you? Doc, I had to come and get you--"

  "Of course. If he's that bad, we'll have to get him to the hospital--"

  "That's what I told him! But you can't! Oh please--"

  She suddenly stopped the car. "What's the idea?" I said.

  "We're here. It's--he's right near here--"

  The little road had petered out into almost nothing. I climbed out. Around us there was only black, somber woods, with the moonlight vaguely filtering down through the tree branches....

  "This way, doc."

  I followed after her as she led me into the woods. Now I'm certainly not versed in woodcraft, but I guess my nerves were on edge, my senses sharpened. At all events, it suddenly seemed that I heard a crackling in the underbrush off to one side, behind us. I reached forward, gripped the girl's shoulder.

  "Wait!" I murmured. "Quiet!"

  We stood silent. It was so quiet I could seem to hear my heart thumping against my ribs.

  "What is it?" Jenny whispered.

  "I thought I heard something, off there." I vaguely gestured. But there was obviously nothing to hear now. "Go ahead," I said. "It wasn't anything. Or maybe an animal--"

  We were in a little patch of moonlight. On the girl's face there was a new terror. "You heard somebody--"

  "Somebody?" I murmured. My hand was still on her shoulder. I shook her. "Look here, do you figure somebody's around here following us?"

  "No! No, of course not!" She pulled away from me. "Why would there be? There's only Tom--and he's hurt--"

  * * *

  I LET it go, and followed her as she plunged deeper into the woods. We had only gone a hundred yards or so from where we left the car until I saw that a little tumbledown shack was ahead of us. Once it may have stood in a small clearing, but the thickets and underbrush were close around it now--a small, deserted, practically uninhabitable building with half its roof gone. We were almost on it before I could see a faint gleam of yellow glow through one of its broken windows which was blocked on the inside with newspapers.