The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

by Isaac Asimov

  “Maybe.” Smyth still wasn’t happy. “But why me?”

  “Could you carry me?” Robeson snorted and shook out a sack he had found at the hydroponic station. “Come on now, no more arguing. With any sort of luck at all we’ll be on our way within the hour.”

  The Rigelian on duty at the airlock stared curiously at Robeson as he came puffing up the ramp, a sack slung over his shoulder.

  “Paid passenger to Perlon,” he gasped, extending his ticket. The Rigelian examined it, found it in order and uttered the customary warning.

  “Passage only sold liable to alteration on route.” His translator clicked and hummed. “You have provided yourself with supplies?”

  “I have.” Robeson opened the sack. “You want to see?”

  The Rigelian leaned forward, two of his eyes extending themselves as he peered into the sack. Smyth, his skin blackened with charcoal, his hair clipped and his hands bound, glared up at the alien. Robeson swallowed, hoping that the deception would work.

  It did. The eating habits of other races were varied and strange. The Rigelians themselves ate mineral salts, the Vegans a mass of quivering, opalescent jelly. The guard saw nothing strange in a live, animal-form being used as food. The disguise was sufficient to make Smyth, to a Rigelian, utterly different from a normal Terrestrial. Also he fell into the essential weight-restriction that no food supply could be greater than the body-weight of the passenger.

  “You may enter,” hummed the translator. “Take-off within the hour.”

  Safe inside the cubicle, Robeson released his partner and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. Talking was out; a man doesn’t hold discussions with his food, but both gave a sigh of relief as the ship lifted and the familiar twisting sensation told of the operation of the Hy-Drive.

  “Three days,” whispered Robeson. “Then we eat.”

  “Just enough time to work up a really sharp appetite,” agreed Smyth, also in a whisper. He fell silent as the door slid open. A Rigelian entered the room.

  “We regret to inform you,” clicked the translator, “of a change in schedule. We have been re-routed to Lundis, a journey of twenty days. I trust that your food supply will be sufficient.”

  THE LIFE WORK OF PROFESSOR MUNTZ, by Murray Leinster

  Nobody would ordinarily have thought of Mr. Grebb and Professor Muntz in the same breath, so to speak, yet their careers impinged upon each other remarkably. Mr. Grebb was a large, coarse person, with large coarse manners and large coarse pores on an oversized nose. He drove a beer truck for the Ajax Brewing Company, and his one dominant desire was to get something on Joe Hallix, who as head of the delivery service for Ajax, was his immediate boss.

  Professor Muntz, on the other hand, was the passionately shy and mouselike author of The Mathematics of Multiple Time-Tracks, who vanished precipitately when he found himself famous. In that abstruse work he referred worriedly to experimental evidence of parallel time-tracks, and other physicists converged upon him with hopeful gleams in their eyes, and he fled.

  Professor Muntz couldn’t talk to people. But they wanted to know about his experiments. They couldn’t make any. They didn’t know how to start, and to them the whole thing had been abstract theory. But he had made experiments and they wanted to ask about them, so he ran away in an agony of shyness.

  That was that. No one human being could seem less likely to be affected by Professor Muntz’ life-work than Mr. Grebb, and no life-work could seem more certainly immune to Mr. Grebb than Professor Muntz’. But life is full of paradoxes, and the theory of multiple time-tracks is even fuller. Therefore…

  Mr. Grebb waked when his alarm clock rang stridently beside his ear. His eyes still closed, he numbly reached out a large, hairy ham of a hand and threw the alarm clock fiercely, across the room. But it was a very tough alarm clock. It continued to ring in a far corner, battered and bruised, its glass long gone, and dented so that it had a rakish and completely disreputable appearance. But it rang defiantly. It rang stridently. It rang naggingly. Its tone seemed to have something of the quality of a Bronx cheer.

  Its tumult penetrated to the sleep drugged recesses of what Mr. Grebb considered his brain. It reminded him of the hour. Of the bright and merry sunshine. It was a clarion call to duty and the service of the Ajax Brewing Company. And in that context it was a reminder of the existence of Joe Hallix, and it was a raspberry.

  * * * *

  Mr. Grebb opened one vaguely bloodshot eye. Rage appeared in it. The other eye opened. Fury developed. He swore heavily at the name and thought of Joe Hallix, who would have him docked if he were late. The alarm clock-rang on, jeering.

  Mr. Grebb got out of bed, rumbling bitterly, and put on his clothes. He slept in his underwear, so he had merely to pull on his pants, slide into a brightly-checked flannel shirt, and pull on his shoes. He went down to breakfast, glowering.

  His landlady discreetly served him coffee without even a good-morning. She presented a huge stack of pancakes and vast quantities of sausage. He ate, largely and coarsely. He finished up the pancakes with thick molasses, wiping up his plate. He drank more coffee. A certain gloomy peace descended upon him.

  “Mr. Grebb—” said his landlady hopefully.

  He scowled, then remembered that his board was paid. He relaxed and fumbled out a cigarette which looked very small in his hairy fingers. “Yeah?”

  “I wondered if I could ask your advice,” his landlady went on. “I don’t know anything about machinery, Mr. Grebb, and I thought you’d know all about it, being you drive a truck.”

  Mr. Grebb was pleased at the tribute.

  “The lodger who had your room, Mr. Grebb,” said the landlady, “was a very nice little man. But one day he dodged a truck and jumped in front of a bus, and they took him to the hospital and he died there. And the police came and took his things to pay the hospital bill and to try to find his family. I don’t know if they did. And I was so flustered about him getting killed like that that I forget about him owing me a week’s board, and I didn’t think about the box until I went down in the cellar yesterday and noticed it.”

  Mr. Grebb’s hand caressed his stomach. He loosened his belt a trifle.

  “Yeah?” he said encouragingly.

  “He had a box he asked to have put down in the cellar, and I forgot to tell the police about it. But he did owe me a week’s board. So yesterday when I noticed the box I peeked in between the slats, and it’s a sort of machine. So I thought I’d get you to look at it. If it’s valuable I’ll tell the police and they can sell it and maybe pay me what he owed me.”

  “Huh!” said Mr. Grebb. “Them cops! Grafters, all of ’em! You keep the thing. Use it. What’s the difference?”

  “I don’t know what it’s for,” said the landlady. “Would you look at it, Mr. Grebb?”

  “Sure!” said Mr. Grebb amiably. “If it’s valuable I guess I know a place to sell it.”

  As a matter of fact, he did not. But he figured that somewhere among his acquaintances he could find somebody who would know how to sell almost anything with no questions asked, and he estimated that this landlady would take his word for what he sold it for. Which should mean a quick buck or two. The thought was cheering.

  “I got a coupla minutes,” he said generously. “I’ll look now.”

  He followed his landlady down the rickety cellar stairs. He saw the crate. He did not bother to read the express tag on it, or he would have seen that it was addressed to Professor Aldous Muntz at this street and number. He wouldn’t have thought of The Mathematics of Multiple Time-Tracks at that, though. He knew nothing of abstruse speculations on the nature of space and time and reality. But the landlady turned on a drop-light and he poked at the paper wrapping inside the crate.

  There were many wires. There were two or three radio tubes. There were transformer coils, and there was a row of dials marked, Milliamperes, Kilovolts, and so on.

  He pulled away the crating boards. He saw that it was not a factory-made contrivance.
It was not enclosed in a mass-production case. All the works were in plain view, though some were swathed in protective coverings. To Mr. Grebb it looked vaguely like a home-made radio. He was disappointed.

  The doorbell rang upstairs. The landlady said: “I’d better answer the bell. You just look it over, Mr. Grebb.”

  She went up. Mr. Grebb shook his head sadly. It was not something that could be sold at a standard hot-goods price, with a profit for himself. But he saw an extension cord with a bayonet plug at the end. He pulled it out and plugged it into the outlet of the dangling cellar light.

  Nothing happened. There was a row of switches. He poked one or two, experimentally. Still nothing happened. He did not hear music or even an enthusiastic voice telling of the marvelous new product, Reeko, a refined deodorant and double your money back if your best friends can smell you. The machine remained inert and useless. He did not notice that a tiny dial went over to “20” on the milliampere scale and to “19.6” on the kilovolt dial.

  He turned and lumbered upstairs, disgusted. Not a chance for a sudden buck. Which was just his kind of luck, he thought. Like having Joe Hallix for a boss.

  “I ain’t got time to look it over good,” he told his landlady. “I’ll see about it later.”

  He put on his hat and windbreaker and went out the front door. He saw the morning paper on the porch. He picked it up and stuffed it in his pocket. It belonged to his landlady, but she had not seen him take it. It would be convenient to read on the bus. He had to run to get to the corner on time. He thought of Hallix who would raise the devil if he were late to work. He breathed heavily in his indignation at the existence of people like Joe Hallix who would get him fired if he had half a chance. Presently he got out the newspaper.

  He read, quite unsuspicious. The newspaper, had he known it, was unique. It was quite the most remarkable newspaper on the whole world. It was the direct result of a milliammeter reading of twenty and a kilovolt reading of nineteen-point-six on the device down in the cellar of his landlady’s home.

  This newspaper said that “Undertaker Joe” had beaten “Goatface Jim” at the wrestling matches last night. It said that the Rangers had won, 6-3, in last night’s night game. It said that Carribee had romped home first in the fourth race, paying seven for two. Mr. Grebb was pained. He stuffed the paper in the crack of the seat beside him. He fell into bitter meditation on the undesirable characteristics of Joe Hallix.

  In time, he got off the bus, the bus-conductor gathered up the paper with other trash and heaved it into the trash box at the end of the line, and it was lost forever. Which was regrettable, because all other copies of the morning paper said that Goatface Jim had won over Undertaker Joe, that the Pilots beat the Rangers 5-3, and that Mooncalf won in the fourth race, paying three for two. The foreign news was different, too, the political news was subtly unlike, and the financial news was peculiar. But Mr. Grebb did not notice.

  That day he drove his truck, and got into three arguments with customers, two with Joe Hallix, and almost had a fight with a friend who insisted that Goatface Jim had won the wrestling match. Mr. Grebb was furious when his friend’s newspaper checked. It was apparently the same edition of the same paper he’d read, but it didn’t say the same things. He considered that it had betrayed him.

  Actually, the paper was the result of Professor Muntz’ apparatus for experiment in multiple time-tracks. But Mr. Grebb had never heard of Professor Muntz except as a lodger who’d dodged a truck and jumped in front of a bus. He certainly had never heard of multiple time-tracks and surely could not have imagined experiments in that field.

  But very many eminent scientists would have given much to read that newspaper, and the contrivance in the cellar could have been sold to any of half a dozen research institutions for tens of thousands of dollars. But Mr. Grebb didn’t even guess at such a thing, and he went to bed that night in a very gloomy mood.

  Next morning the alarm clock jerked him awake and he went downstairs filled with bitterness at the fate which made him get up and gave him Joe Hallix as a boss. His landlady dared not address him even after he was fed.

  He stamped dourly out the front door. There was the morning paper. He stooped to pick it up. As he bent over, there was the thump of a rolled-up paper landing. Then there were two papers on the porch. Mr. Grebb jumped, and turned scowling to glare at the paper-boy who apparently had almost hit him. But there was no paper-boy in sight. The paper seemed to have materialized out of empty air. Mr. Grebb growled anathemas at fool boys who hid, and went to his bus.

  * * * *

  Today’s paper did not deceive him. Today, his oracular comments on sporting events went unchallenged. But he had a furious argument with Joe Hallix. The delivery boss was riding him. Mr. Grebb fumed and muttered all day. When he got home, his landlady said uneasily:

  “Mr. Grebb, did you see the paper?”

  He growled inarticulately.

  “There’s a piece in it about Mr. Muntz,” said the landlady. “You know, the lodger who had your room and was hit by a bus? They call him Professor Muntz and say he lives here! But the policemen told me that he died in the hospital. I don’t know what to think!”

  Mr. Grebb remembered vaguely a newspaper which had told him lies. Yesterday’s paper. It had appeared out of thin air and it did not tell the truth. Today, the paper that appeared from nowhere had been left behind. But he had no theory. He merely growled:

  “Don’t believe them newspapers. They print a lot of hooey!”

  From his experience of the day before, the remark was justified. But he did not think of the machine in the cellar. Which was a pity, because Mr. Grebb and his landlady too would have been clasped to the bosom of anybody who understood The Mathematics of Multiple Time-Tracks and found out about that machine or the newspapers either.

  The theory of multiple time-tracks is, in effect, that since there are a great number of really possible futures, that there are a great number of possibly real presents. If a dozen futures are equally possible, they are equally real, and there is no reason to assume that all of them but one cease to have any validity merely because we experience that one as the present.

  The theory says that there is no evidence that the present moment of our experience is the only present moment that exists. That reality may be multiple, and that if you toss a coin for a decision, resolving that if it comes heads you will propose to Mabel and to Helen if it comes tails, there exist two futures in which each event can happen, and possibly after the tossing there exist two present moments in which each event does.

  And thus it followed that if Professor Muntz jumped out of the way of a truck, immediately before him there was one future in which he was hit by a bus, and another in which he was not. So that a person who understood Professor Muntz’ work, and knew about the machine down in the cellar, would immediately have concluded that the newspaper came from a time-track in which Professor Muntz’ attempt to dodge the truck had been wholly successful.

  But Mr. Grebb did not even speculate about such things. Instead, at supper he described at length and bitterly just what part of a horse’s anatomy most resembled Joe Hallix. He explained in great detail just how Joe Hallix had gotten all the delivery slips mixed up so that he, Mr. Grebb, had almost been charged with the loss of four kegs of beer. And afterward he went out to a tavern and had half a dozen beers and grew more embittered as he thought upon his wrongs.

  Next morning was cloudy when he went out the front door. There was one paper on the porch. There was a large wet space in the small front yard, and part of the porch was soaking wet. Mr. Grebb picked up the paper, dourly wondering who the devil had been using a hose when it looked like rain anyhow. Then there was a plopping sound, and a second paper appeared out of nowhere and smacked close by Mr. Grebb. He looked indignantly for the boy. He was invisible. There was no boy. The newspaper had come from nowhere.

  Mr. Grebb picked it up, too, and went belligerently out to the street to find the paper boy and
tell him to stop playing tricks. Mr. Grebb’s brain was not analytical. When something happened which he did not understand, he assumed aggrievedly that somebody was acting smart. He rumbled wrathfully at his failure to find anybody, and went heavily off to the bus.

  On the bus he unfolded one newspaper. He glanced at the headlines and was bored. He shoved it down beside him and seethed over the remembrance of the four kegs of beer he had been accused of mislaying the previous day.

  Presently he unfolded the second paper, forgetting the first. The headlines were not the same. He blinked, remembered, and retrieved the first paper. The mastheads were identical. The date was identical. A minor story was identical. But where the headlines differed, they contradicted each other. One said that the local front-page criminal trial had ended in acquittal for the lady who murdered her husband with a boy-scout axe. The other said that she had been convicted and would appeal.

  * * * *

  It did not occur to Mr. Grebb that the jurymen might have been tossing coins, and that the two papers were the results, respectively, of a coin coming heads and the same coin coming tails. He regarded the two papers with enormous indignation. He checked the inner pages. Again they differed and contradicted each other. Some few items were the same, and the advertisements seemed to match, but the two copies of the same newspaper for the same date treated the same events as if they had happened on different worlds.

  Which they had. In different time-tracks, at any rate. One newspaper outlined the events in a world in which metaphorically all coins tossed heads, and the other world in which tails invariably turned up. The scores of the ball games were different. The racing results—for the same races—were different.

  Mr. Grebb furiously tore both papers to shreds and rumbled to himself of the perfidy of newspapers in general and this sheet in particular.

  But he had no time to meditate upon it that day. The matter of the four kegs of beer came up again. Mr. Grebb was requested to explain. Purple with fury, he bellowed. Joe Hallix was not the questioner, today. Somebody from the bookkeeping department of the Ajax Brewing Company asked involved and insulting questions.