Short Stories Vol.1

by Isaac Asimov

  In a far corner, Technician Aub listened with painful attention. He was no longer a Technician, of course, having been relieved of his duties and assigned to the project, with a fine-sounding title and good pay. But, of course, the social distinction remained and the highly placed scientific leaders could never bring themselves to admit him to their ranks on a footing of

  ('equality. Nor, to do Aub justice, did he, himself, wish it. He was as uncomfortable with them as they with him.

  <" The general was saying, "Our goal is a simple one, gentlemen; the re-

  • placement of the computer. A ship that can navigate space without a com-

  I puter on board can be constructed in one fifth the time and at one tenth the

  expense of a computer-laden ship. We could build fleets five times, ten

  times, as great as Deneb could if we could but eliminate the computer.

  "And I see something even beyond this. It may be fantastic now; a mere dream; but in the future I see the manned missile!" There was an instant murmur from the audience. The general drove on. "At the present time, our chief bottleneck is the fact that missiles are limited in intelligence. The computer controlling them can only be so large, and for that reason they can meet the changing nature of anti-missile defenses in an unsatisfactory way. Few missiles, if any, accomplish their goal and missile warfare is coming to a dead end; for the enemy, fortunately, as well as for ourselves.

  "On the other hand, a missile with a man or two within, controlling flight by graphitics, would be lighter, more mobile, more intelligent. It would give us a lead that might well mean the margin of victory. Besides which, gentlemen, the exigencies of war compel us to remember one thing. A man is much more dispensable than a computer. Manned missiles could be launched in numbers and under circumstances that no good general would care to undertake as far as computer-directed missiles are concerned-" He said much more but Technician Aub did not wait.

  Technician Aub, in the privacy of his quarters, labored long over the note he was leaving behind. It read finally as follows:

  "When I began the study of what is now called graphitics, it was no more than a hobby. I saw no more in it than an interesting amusement, an exercise of mind.

  "When Project Number began, I thought that others were wiser than I; that graphitics might be put to practical use as a benefit to mankind, to aid in the production of really practical mass-transference devices perhaps. But now I see it is to be used only for death and destruction.

  "I cannot face the responsibility involved in having invented graphitics."

  He then deliberately turned the focus of a protein-depolarizer on himself and fell instantly and painlessly dead.

  They stood over the grave of the little Technician while tribute was paid to the greatness of his discovery.

  Programmer Shuman bowed his head along with the rest of them, but remained unmoved. The Technician had done his share and was no longer needed, after all. He might have started graphitics, but now that it had

  started, it would carry on by itself overwhelmingly, triumphantly, until manned missiles were possible with who knew what else.

  Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head.

  And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him.

  The Dying Night

  PART ONE

  It was almost a class reunion, and though it was marked by joylessness, there was no reason as yet to think it would be marred by tragedy.

  Edward Talliaferro, fresh from the Moon and without his gravity legs yet, met the other two in Stanley Kaunas's room. Kaunas rose to greet him in a subdued manner. Battersley Ryger merely sat and nodded.

  Talliaferro lowered his krge body carefully to the couch, very aware of its unusual weight. He grimaced a little, his plump lips twisting inside the rim of hair that surrounded his mouth on lip, chin, and cheek.

  They had seen one another earlier that day under more formal conditions. Now for the first time they were alone, and Talliaferro said, "This is a kind of occasion. We're meeting for the first time in ten years. First time since graduation, in fact."

  Ryger's nose twitched. It had been broken shortly before that same graduation and he had received his degree in astronomy with a bandage disfiguring his face. He said grumpily, "Anyone ordered champagne? Or something?"

  Talliaferro said, "Come on! First big interplanetary astronomical convention in history is no place for glooming. And among friends, too!"

  Kaunas said suddenly, "It's Earth. It doesn't feel right. I can't get used to it." He shook his head but his look of depression was not detachable. It remained.

  Talliaferro said, "I know. I'm so heavy. It takes all the energy out of me. At that, you're better off than I am, Kaunas. Mercurian gravity is 0.4 normal. On the Moon, it's only 0.16." He interrupted Ryger's beginning of a sound by saying, "And on Ceres they use pseudo-grav fields adjusted to 0.8. You have no problems at all, Ryger."

  The Cerian astronomer looked annoyed, "It's the open air. Going outside without a suit gets me."

  "Right," agreed Kaunas, "and letting the sun beat down on you. Just letting it."

  Talliaferro found himself insensibly drifting back in time. They had not changed much. Nor, he thought, had he himself. They were all ten years older, of course. Ryger had put on some weight and Kaunas's thin face had grown a bit leathery, but he would have recognized either if he had met him without warning.

  He said, "I don't think it's Earth getting us. Let's face it."

  Kaunas looked up sharply. He was a little fellow with quick, nervous movements of his hands. He habitually wore clothes that looked a shade too large for him.

  He said, "Villiers! I know. I think about him sometimes." Then, with an air of desperation, "I got a letter from him."

  Ryger sat upright, his olive complexion darkening further and said with energy, "You did? When?"

  "A month ago."

  Ryger turned to Talliaferro. "How about you?"

  Talliaferro blinked placidly and nodded.

  Ryger said, "He's gone crazy. He claims he's discovered a practical method of mass-transference through space. -He told you two also? -That's it, then. He was always a little bent. Now he's broken."

  He rubbed his nose fiercely and Talliaferro thought of the day ViDiers had broken it.

  For ten years, Villiers had haunted them like the vague shadow of a guilt that wasn't really theirs. They had gone through their graduate work together, four picked and dedicated men being trained for a profession that had reached new heights in this age of interplanetary travel.

  The Observatories were opening on the other worlds, surrounded by vacuum, unblurred by air.

  There was the Lunar Observatory, from which Earth and the inner planets could be studied; a silent world in whose sky the home-planet hung suspended.

  Mercury Observatory, closest to the sun, perched at Mercury's north pole, where the terminator moved scarcely at all, and the sun was fixed on the horizon and could be studied in the minutest detail.

  Ceres Observatory, newest, most modem, with its range extending from Jupiter to the outermost galaxies.

  There were disadvantages, of course. With interplanetary travel still difficult, leaves would be few, anything like normal life virtually impossible, but this was a lucky generation. Coming scientists would find the fields of knowledge well-reaped and, until the invention of an interstellar drive, no new horizon as capacious as this one would be opened.

  Each of these lucky four, Talliaferro, Ryger, Kaunas, and Villiers, was to be in the position of a Galileo, who by owning the first real telescope, could not point it anywhere in the sky without making a major discovery.

  But then Romero Villiers had fallen sick and it was rheumatic fever. Whose fault was that? His heart had been left leaking and limping.

  He was the most brilliant of the four, the most hopeful, the most intense -and he could not even fin
ish his schooling and get his doctorate.

  Worse than that, he could never leave Earth; the acceleration of a spaceship's take-off would kill him.

  Talliaferro was marked for the Moon, Ryger for Ceres, Kaunas for Mercury. Only Villiers stayed behind, a life-prisoner of Earth.

  They had tried telling their sympathy and Villiers had rejected it with something approaching hate. He had railed at them and cursed them. When Ryger lost his temper and lifted his fist, Villiers had sprung at him, screaming, and had broken Ryger's nose.

  Obviously Ryger hadn't forgotten that, as he caressed his nose gingerly with one finger.

  Kaunas's forehead was an uncertain washboard of wrinkles. "He's at the Convention, you know. He's got a room in the hotel-405."

  "/ won't see him," said Ryger.

  "He's coming up here. He said he wanted to see us. I thought- He said nine. He'll be here any minute."

  "In that case," said Ryger, "if you don't mind, I'm leaving." He rose.

  Talliaferro said, "Oh, wait a while. What's the harm in seeing him?"

  "Because there's no point. He's mad."

  "Even so. Let's not be petty about it. Are you afraid of him?"

  "Afraid!" Ryger looked contemptuous.

  "Nervous, then. What is there to be nervous about?"

  "I'm not nervous," said Ryger.

  "Sure you are. We all feel guilty about him, and without real reason. Nothing that happened was our fault." But he was speaking defensively and he knew it.

  And when, at that point, the door signal sounded, all three jumped and turned to stare uneasily at the barrier that stood between themselves and Villiers.

  The door opened and Romero Villiers walked in. The others rose stiffly to greet him, then remained standing in embarrassment, without one hand being raised.

  He stared them down sardonically. He's changed, thought Talliaferro.

  He had. He had shrunken in almost every dimension. A gathering stoop made him seem even shorter. The skin of his scalp glistened through thinning hair, the skin on the back of his hands was ridged crookedly with bluish veins. He looked ill. There seemed nothing to link him to the memory of the past except for his trick of shading his eyes with one hand when he stared intently and, when he spoke, the even, controlled baritone of his voice.

  He said, "My friends! My space-trotting friends! We've lost touch."

  Talliaferro said, "Hello, Villiers."

  Villiers eyed him. "Are you well?"

  "Well enough."

  "And you two?"

  Kaunas managed a weak smile and a murmur. Ryger snapped, "All right, Villiers. What's up?"

  "Ryger, the angry man," said Villiers. "How's Ceres?"

  "It was doing well when I left. How's Earth?"

  "You can see for yourself," but Villiers tightened as he said that.

  He went on, "I am hoping that the reason all three of you have come to the Convention is to hear my paper day after tomorrow."

  "Your paper? What paper?" asked Talliaferro.

  "I wrote you all about it. My method of mass-transference."

  Ryger smiled with one corner of his mouth. "Yes, you did. You didn't say anything about a paper, though, and I don't recall that you're listed as one of the speakers. I would have noticed it if you had been."

  "You're right. I'm not listed. Nor have I prepared an abstract for publication."

  Villiers had flushed and Talliaferro said soothingly, "Take it easy, Villiers. You don't look well."

  Villiers whirled on him, lips contorted. "My heart's holding out, thank you."

  Kaunas said, "Listen, Villiers, if you're not listed or abstracted-"

  "You listen. I've waited ten years. You have the jobs in space and I have to teach school on Earth, but I'm a better man than any of you or all of you."

  "Granted-" began Talliaferro.

  "And I don't want your condescension either. Mandel witnessed it. I suppose you've heard of Mandel. Well, he's chairman of the astronautics division at the Convention and I demonstrated mass-transference for him. It was a crude device and it burnt out after one use but- Are you listening?"

  "We're listening," said Ryger coldly, "for what that counts."

  "He'll let me talk about it my way. You bet he will. No warning. No advertisement. I'm going to spring it at them like a bombshell. When I give

  them the fundamental relationships involved it will break up the Convention. They'll scatter to their home labs to check on me and build devices. And they'll find it works. I made a live mouse disappear at one spot in my lab and appear in another. Mandel witnessed it."

  He stared at them, glaring first at one face, then at another. He said, "You don't believe me, do you?"

  Ryger said, "If you don't want advertisement, why do you tell us?"

  "You're different. You're my friends, my classmates. You went out into space and left me behind."

  "That wasn't a matter of choice," objected Kaunas in a thin, high voice.

  Villiers ignored that. He said, "So I want you to know now. What will work for a mouse will work for a human. What will move something ten feet across a lab will move it a million miles across space. I'll be on the Moon, and on Mercury, and on Ceres and anywhere I want to go. I'll match every one of you and more. And I'll have done more for astronomy just teaching school and thinking, than all of you with your observatories and telescopes and cameras and spaceships."

  "Well," said Talliaferro, "I'm pleased. More power to you. May I see a copy of the paper?"

  "Oh, no." Villiers' hands clenched close to his chest as though he were holding phantom sheets and shielding them from observation. "You wait like everyone else. There's only one copy and no one will see it till I'm ready. Not even Mandel."

  "One copy," cried Talliaferro. "If you misplace it-"

  "I won't. And if I do, it's all in my head."

  "If you-" Talliaferro almost finished that sentence with "die" but stopped himself. Instead, he went on after an almost imperceptible pause, "-have any sense, you'll scan it at least. For safety's sake."

  "No," said Villiers, shortly. "You'll hear me day after tomorrow. You'll see the human horizon expanded at one stroke as it never has been before."

  Again he stared intently at each face. "Ten years," he said. "Good-by."

  "He's mad," said Ryger explosively, staring at the door as though Villiers were still standing before it.

  "Is he?" said Talliaferro thoughtfully. "I suppose he is, in a way. He hates us for irrational reasons. And, then, not even to scan his paper as a precaution-"

  Talliaferro fingered his own small scanner as he said that. It was just a neutrally colored, undistinguished cylinder, somewhat thicker and somewhat shorter than an ordinary pencil. In recent years, it had become the hallmark of the scientist, much as the stethoscope was that of the physician and the micro-computer that of the statistician. The scanner was worn in a jacket pocket, or clipped to a sleeve, or slipped behind the ear, or swung at the end of a string.

  Talliaferro sometimes, in his more philosophical moments, wondered how it was in the days when research men had to make laborious notes of the literature or file away full-sized reprints. How unwieldy!

  Now it was only necessary to scan anything printed or written to have a micro-negative which could be developed at leisure. Talliaferro had already recorded every abstract included in the program booklet of the Convention. The other two, he assumed with full confidence, had done likewise.

  Talliaferro said, "Under the circumstances, refusal to scan is mad."

  "Space!" said Ryger hotly. "There is no paper. There is no discovery. Scoring one on us would be worth any lie to him."

  "But then what will he do day after tomorrow?" asked Kaunas.

  "How do I know? He's a madman."

  Talliaferro still played with his scanner and wondered idly if he ought to remove and develop some of the small slivers of film that lay stored away in its vitals. He decided against it. He said, "Don't underestimate Villiers. He's a brai
n."

  "Ten years ago, maybe," said Ryger. "Now he's a nut. I propose we forget him."

  He spoke loudly, as though to drive away Villiers and all that concerned him by the sheer force with which he discussed other things. He talked about Ceres and his work-the radio-plotting of the Milky Way with new radioscopes capable of the resolution of single stars.

  Kaunas listened and nodded, then chimed in with information concerning the radio emissions of sunspots and his own paper, in press, on the association of proton storms with the gigantic hydrogen flares on the sun's surface.

  Talliaferro contributed little. Lunar work was unglamorous in comparison. The latest information on long-scale weather forecasting through direct observation of terrestrial jet-streams would not compare with radioscopes and proton storms.

  More than that, his thoughts could not leave Villiers. Villiers was the brain. They all knew it. Even Ryger, for all his bluster, must feel that if mass-transference were at all possible then Villiers was a logical discoverer.

  The discussion of their own work amounted to no more than an uneasy admission that none of them had come to much. Talliaferro had followed the literature and knew. His own papers had been minor. The others had authored nothing of great importance.

  None of them-face the fact-had developed into space-shakers. The colossal dreams of school days had not come true and that was that. They were competent routine workmen. No less. Unfortunately, no more. They knew that.

  Villiers would have been more. They knew that, too. It was that knowledge, as well as guilt, which kept them antagonistic.

  Talliaferro felt uneasily that Villiers, despite everything, was yet to be

  more. The others must be thinking so, too, and mediocrity could grow quickly unbearable. The mass-transference paper would come to pass and Villiers would be the great man after all, as he was always fated to be apparently, while his classmates, with all their advantages, would be forgotten. Their role would be no more than to applaud from the crowd.

  He felt his own envy and chagrin and was ashamed of it, but felt it none the less.

  Conversation died, and Kaunas said, his eyes turning away, "Listen, why don't we drop in on old Villiers?"