STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS

by Benson Grayson

  The destruction of the Earth, Venus and Mercury were observed by astronomers on the planet Broma Three, the planet closest to the Solar system having an intelligent life form. Since because of the vast distance it had taken eons for the light of the catastrophe to reach observers on Broma Three, it was far too late for them to do anything about it, even if they had wished to do so. It is highly unlikely that any of the historians on Broma Three knew about the details of Vulcan Project to render an informed judgment concerning the wisdom of the endeavor. However, they might have benefitted from the conviction in the United States immediately before the destruction of the Earth than Project Vulcan was by far the most thoughtful and best executed program ever implemented by the federal government

  OBESITY

  Conditions in the United States and the rest of the developed world were deteriorating so rapidly that there could be no overlooking the problem. The President summoned an emergency session of the National Security Council and instructed them to come with a solution. For several days, they met and hotly debated the probable causes and how to remedy the situation. Realizing that the situation was so dire that they had to do something, they finally agreed to call in Dr. Kroutmier. The doctor was probably the most important unofficial adviser the government had ever had. A professor at the Cambridge School of Advanced Strategic Studies, he was widely regarded as a combination of Henry Kissinger and Bernard Baruch.

  As usual, Dr. Kroutmier’s schedule was fully booked for several months ahead, but he graciously agreed to travel to Washington and meet with the National Security Council the next weekend. The president’s senior advisers gathered in their high-security conference room, eagerly awaiting the doctor’s council. He Stroud in so purposefully that it was apparent to all that his was the dominant personality in the room. He demanded a slide projector, ordered the room lights to be dimmed, and with an attitude much like that of a teacher instructing dull students, turned on the projector.

  On the screen appeared a chart with two curves, one in green and one in red. The green line began very high on the vertical axis of the chart and plunged downward to the horizontal axes. The red line behaved in the reverse fashion, starting off low and climbing sharply. The red curve, the doctor, explained represented the rise in the problems of the United States. The green curve represented the calorie intake of the average American. There is not the slightest doubt; Kupatsky declared, that the decline of the U.S. position in the world was due to the popular movement in this country to adopt a more healthy diet.

  His listeners sat astounded. Many thought he had suddenly lost his wits. Others concluded that they had misunderstood him because of his strong German accent. The Secretary of Defense went so far as to utter a crude epithet and get up in disgust. Fortunately, a junior staff aide who had been ordered to the meeting to act as recorder suggested that they might submit the doctor’s theory to the secret government giant computer. It was a convenient face-saving exercise. The National Security Council voted unanimously to take this action and hastily left the conference room.

  Much to everyone’s surprise, the giant computer confirmed Dr. Kroutmier’s analysis. The National Security Council convened again and unanimously concluded that the computer had somehow malfunctioned. The doctor’s theory was just too absurd to be possible. Confident that another computer would dispel the nonsense, they sent the readout of the giant computer to a still bigger computer used by the National Weather Bureau to forecast the daily weather for the next century.

  The National Weather Service was reluctant to permit their computer to be diverted to mundane issues but agreed when the President personally ordered them to do so. Once again, Kupatsky’s theory was confirmed. There could be no doubt. The proximate cause for the decline of the U.S. and its allies was the fall in average caloric consumption.

  There was no time to lose. In the interests of speed, the President used his executive powers to order an immediate tripling of the caloric composition of the school lunch program. Fruits, vegetables and salads were all removed, to be replaced with candy, fried potatoes and soda, to which extra sugar had been added. Senior officials from the broadcast media were summoned to Camp David. There, they were informed by the President, in the company of the majority and minority party leaders of both branches of Congress, that their broadcast licenses would be voided if they did not eliminate all slender actors from their shows and replace them with obese ones. Restaurants, particularly fast food chains received subtle but nonetheless clear cut warning from the government that they would far more difficulties in their operations if they did not eliminate all healthy choices from their menus and increase the high-carb, fatty selections. Food production companies followed suite and at each stage of the manufacturing process, greatly increased amounts of salt and sugar were added.

  Not surprisingly, the alarming decline in the average American’s daily caloric intake stopped falling and began to rise sharply. Considering the scope of the national change in diet, a surprisingly large number of individuals remained ignorant of what was happening. The government encouraged this reaction, as did business groups. Clothing sizes were adjusted, so that the same size forty suits for men Was now the equivalent of what a size forty-four would have been previously. Both old and new customers at diet clubs found the caloric goals and weight guides set for them were not only not lower that what they had been but in fact considerably elevated. Where exercise clubs found it impossible to discourage customers from using their machines to lose weight, they were furnished and encouraged to consume so-called “health drinks” which were laced with calories and stimulants designed to increase their appetites.

  In the face of such a massive campaign, which, in fact, could not be differentiated from the braining washing techniques developed by the former Communist security services of Eastern Europe, it is not surprising that it proved extremely effective. At the end of three years, the government officials administering the program submitted the data to the secret giant computer for analysis. The computer readout confirmed what had seemed obvious; problems in the United States and the rest of the developed world were on a sharply declining path with the trajectory of the rate of caloric consumption rising by the same multiple. Regrettably, a similar analysis could not be performed at the end of five years because the greatly increased girth of the technicians manning the computer now too great for them to get close enough to operate it.

  All told, Professor Kroutmier’s analysis of the problem, the solution he provided, and the government implementation of it may be deemed the most effective ever to come from the American government. There was only one small problem. As mankind not more and more obese, it became more and more difficult for anyone to actually work. At the same time as people demanded ever high intakes of food, farmers stopped going into the fields to produce it. Remedies might have been sought, but the fact that most people now telecommuted from their homes rather than actually producing any real work masked the problem. Mankind gradually became extinct, paralleling the fate of the carrier pigeon, the dodo and the dinosaur. When rats took over as the dominant life form on earth, they profited from what had happened to man. Search where you will, in every social stratum, and no where will you find an obese rate.

  THE SEERS

  Captain Winston Carpenter was flying his Army Air Corps plane over New Guinea in April 1944 when it developed engine failure and crashed. Because of bad flying weather, the search for survivors had to be postponed for twenty-four hours. When it was conducted, no trace of any wreckage could be spotted because of the dense foliage in many parts of New Guinea. After an appropriate period of time, Carpenter’s family was formally notified that he was missing in action and had to be presumed dead.

  More than fifty years passed. Then Carpenter’s son, Winston Carpenter Jr., pressed the Pentagon for further information concerning his father’s fate. The request would have received a routine reply except for the fact that the son was not only a member of Congress, but more importa
ntly the second ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. As head of one of the committee’s subcommittees, he could very easily reduce or even eliminate financing for some of the proposed new weapons systems most desired by the Pentagon.

  As a result of these special circumstances, the Defense Department decided to would only be fair to reopen the investigation into Captain Carpenter’s fate. New reconnaissance missions were flown using the more sophisticated sensors developed since 1944. The result was the same. The dense foliage in the area prevented any thorough search airplane debris that might have been left on the ground by a crash. Given the high priority Attached to keeping Congressman Carpenter’s good will, it was decided that further efforts were warranted.

  One of the service secretaries recalled that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had just terminated a project involved the use of seers, individuals believed to have telepathic powers to locate objects in areas in which aerial observation was not possible. Use of the seers to satisfy Congressman Carpenter’s request was approved at the highest Pentagon level, and three of the most highly regarded seers were summoned back to Washington to participate. They were briefed on all the known details concerning the disappearance and probable crash of Captain Carpenter’s aircraft and then placed in a room in the bowels of the Pentagon.

  Seven hours later they emerged with their joint conclusion. They believed his plane had crashed in a remote area of New Guinea and furnished the map coordinates that they thought indicated the probable site. Other aerial reconnaissance missions to overfly the location were ordered. Again, the dense jungle foliage prevented any confirmation.

  So great was the Pentagon’s desire to retain Congressman Carpenter’s good will that further efforts were ordered. The State Department obtained permission from the New Guinea authorities for an American search party to travel to the suspected crash site on foot. A search party of some dozen individuals was carefully selected. In addition to the remains identification experts, there was added a team of Navy Seals to provide security from possibly hostile indigenous tribes. The party was flown in by helicopter to the closest suitable drop-off area, and the search party then cut its way through the dense jungle.

  After three days of hard going, the searchers reached the coordinates given by the seers as the probable crash site. There to their joy, the found the wreckage of an airplane that had crashed many years before. Initial joy turned to disappointment as they carefully screened the wreckage, and it became obvious that the crashed plane had not been Captain Carpenter’s but of a Lockheed Electra and that Human remains in the wreckage were those of a woman of about forty years of age. The mystery was solved when some personal effects showed the pilot to have been famed aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in July 1937 in the South Pacific while on a flight to circumnavigate the world.

  When the search party returned to Washington, the results of the mission were interpreted as proving the utility of the seers’ research. All that was needed was to improve the accuracy of the map coordinates they provided. The seers were recalled to Washington and asked to repeat the effort. Again after some hours they jointly came up with new coordinates for the probable crash site of Captain Carpenter’s plane which was in the same general area as the first site they had provided. Rather than going through the time-consuming process to obtain permission authorities for the search party to again go on foot to the crash site, the Pentagon decided to just assume that the initial permission had been sufficiently broad to cover future attempts.

  The search party, with most of its original members, again traveled by helicopter to the landing site in New Guinea. This time, the party had to spend four days cutting through the jungle. Once again, they were overjoyed to see a crashed airship hidden from above by the dense foliage. But it quickly became clear that the wreckage could not be the remains of Captain Carpenter’s aircraft. The airship had clearly been extremely large and circular in shape. The search party approached it and saw a door in one side of the ship. Dr. Foster, the team leader, instructed the other members to stay behind and walked up to the door; He tried it, and the door swung open easily.

  As he entered, and the door closed automatically behind him, some form of indirect lighting eliminated the interior. To his amazement, Foster beheld the remains of the crew. Four skeletons were found, humanoid, but clearly not those of humans. The saucer-like craft had been piloted by beings that were about three feet in height.

  Foster stood there gaping, wondering what to do. He had a pretty good idea but decided to confer with his subordinates. Returning to the door, he opened it and summoned in his two senior deputies, the commander of the Seals detachment and the senior remains specialist. Ushering them into the ship, he pointed to the mains of the crew and indicated his belief that they came from outer space and that from the condition of the remains and of the wreckage he estimated that the craft had crashed here more than three centuries ago.

  His colleagues agreed with Dr. Foster’s conclusions. They now had to decide on the proper course to follow. The team leader noted that if news of the discovery were ever made public, it would have an incalculable effect on the religious, scientific, economic and political beliefs of the world. He added that there appeared to be no urgency in disseminating the news. After all, the wreckage had been there undetected for about five centuries without any known effects on the world. Presumably, the race that sent it might well wait another five centuries or more before taking any further action which might make their existence known to the Earth’s population.

  After some discussion, they all agreed on the need for extreme secrecy. They would not communicate to the other team members what they had found no transmit the news back to Washington. They further agreed to Dr. Foster’s proposal, although only after some objections raised by the senior human remains specialist to completely destroy the wreckage by detonating a thermite bomb.

  One by one they left the ship, Dr. Foster being the last. He told the other team members that the wreckage appeared to be that of a secret Air Force Flying Saucer experimental observation craft. It would be necessary to destroy it completely; he added, to prevent the technology from being stolen by foreign powers. The Seals leader returned to the ship, placed the thermite bomb within, set the fuse and quickly left. From a spot in the clearing far enough from the wreckage to be safe, they watched the ship explode in a cloud of smoke. When the debris lifted, Foster breathed a sigh of relief. Everything that might have suggested that the wreckage had come from outer space had vanished with the explosion.

  The team sent back a curt message saying only that the wreckage had been carefully inspected and that it had been determined it definitely was not that from Captain Carpenter’s missing plane. The search party then cut its way back to the helicopter pickup point and was retrieved and flown back to Washington without incident. By the time the team members arrived back in Washington, media interest in the mission had faded from view. Dr.Foster arranged for a private meeting with the President’s National Security Advisor and in the latter’s office orally communicated to him the details of what the team had discovered. With considerable apprehension, he gave his justification for keeping the discovery secret and for thoroughly destroying the wreckage. Much to Foster’s relief, the presidential adviser agreed with his decision and told Foster he saw no reason to inform any other person. Some things, he noted, are better left secret.

  The only problem now was what to tell Congressman Carpenter. The need to retain his good will was just as great as ever. After explaining to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Navy on the urgency of his plan, the National Security Advisor obtained their agreement to christen the next navy missile destroyer the USS Winston Carpenter. Theoretically, the Carpenter so honored was the late Captain Winston Carpenter, but Congressman Carpenter’s association with his late father’s bravery was stressed in all of the Pentagon’s publicity on the subject. Happily, Congressman Carpenter can always be relied upon to thr
ow his powerful support behind any Pentagon proposal for expensive new weapon’s programs.

  THE STERLING PRIZE

  Rutgard Sterling became one of the wealthiest men in the world through his invention of the formula that turns women’s hair permanently blonde. From a tiny garage workshop near Stockholm, Sweden, he built up a giant manufacturing empire with factories all around the globe. Because of the strong and continuous demand for the product, his plants all operated at full capacity.

  At length, Sterling decided it was time for him to retire. He was an orphan, had never married and had no known relations. This caused widespread speculation as to what would become of his wealth once he departed this world. There was great anticipation in Swedish political circles over the prospect of acquiring the Sterling fortune and using it to fiancé many desired but unimplemented programs.

  Sterling had for many years engaged in a bitter dispute with the Swedish tax authorities of the government tax imposed on his product, which was taxed as a luxury rather than as what Sterling considered it to be a pharmaceutical product. For this reason, he determined that not even the smallest fragment of his wealth would ever fall into the greedy clutches of the government. Employing the best lawyers in Europe for the purpose, he had them design a philanthropic organization bearing his name with a structure so foolproof that every legal or administrative effort by the Swedish government to alter its provisions was straightway rebuffed by the Swedish courts.