(3/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume III: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  She moved to the bookshelf, frowning now, considered, selected and rejected. Finally she settled on three slim books bound in russet leather, in glossy plastic, in faded cloth. She took a little purse from the table, put the cigarette case into it. Then, with a laugh, she took one cigarette and slipped it into a tiny pocket on her skirt.

  "I really meant to bring you one," she whispered to the empty air, "but wasn't I mean to tease?"

  In the corridor, she walked quickly past the rows of closed doors to the tiny refreshment stand at the foot of the dining room stairs. The attendant rose from his stool as she approached, and came to the counter.

  "I'd like two frosted starlights, please," she said, "on a tray."

  "Two," said the attendant, and nothing more, but his eyebrow climbed up his forehead, hung for a second, then slowly drooped back to normal, as if to say that after all these years he no longer puzzled about a lovely young girl who came around in the middle of a Wednesday rest period, dressed like Saturday night and smelling of perfume, ordering two intoxicating drinks--when she was obviously traveling alone.

  * * * * *

  Lenore felt a thrill of secret pleasure go through her, a feeling of possessing a delicious secret, a delightful sensation of reckless gaiety, of life stirring throughout the sleepy ship, of a web of secrets and countersecrets hidden from everyone but this unconcerned observer.

  She walked back down the corridor, balancing the tray. When a little splashed over the rim of the tall glasses, she took a sip from each, tasting the sweet, cold liquid in her throat.

  When she came to the head of the stairs, she realized that she did not even know her telepath's name. Closing her eyes, she said very slowly and distinctly inside her head, "Mr. Fairheart?"

  Instantly his thought was with her, overpowering, as breathless as an embrace. "Where are you?"

  "At the head of the central stairs."

  "Down you go."

  She went down the stairs, through more corridors, down more stairs, while he guided her steps. Once she paused to sip again at each glass when the liquid splashed as she was going down. The ice tickled her nose and made her sneeze.

  "You live a long way down," she said.

  "I've got to be near my charges," he answered. "I told you I work on the ship; I'm a zoologist classifying any of the new specimens of extraterrestrial life they're always picking up. And I always get stuck with the worst quarters on the ship. Why, I can't even call all my suite my own. The whole front room is filled with some sort of ship's gear that my steward stumbles over every meal time."

  She went on and on, down and down. "How many flights?" she wondered. "Two or twelve or twenty?" Now, why couldn't she remember? Only four little sips and her mind felt so cloudy. Down another corridor, and what was that funny smell? These passages were poorly ventilated in the lower levels; probably that was what made her feel so dizzy.

  "Only one more flight," he whispered. "Only one more."

  Down and along and then the door. She paused, conscious of rising excitement, conscious of her beating heart.

  Dimly she noticed the sign on the door. "You--you mean whatever it is you're taking care of is in there with you?"

  "Don't be frightened," his persuasive thought came. "It can't hurt you. It's locked in a cage."

  Then she slid the bolt and turned the handle. Her head hurt for an instant; and she was inside, a blue and silver shadow in the dim anteroom, with the tray in her hand and the books under her arm and her pulse hammering.

  She looked around the dim anteroom, at the spidery tangle of orange and black ropes against the left-hand wall; then at the doorway in the right-hand wall with the warm light streaming through. He was standing in the second room, one hand on the chair for support, the other extended toward her. For the first time he spoke aloud.

  "Hello, butterfly," he said.

  "Hello," she said. She smiled and walked forward into the light. She reached out for his hand.

  Then she stopped short, her hand pressed against an impenetrable wall.

  * * * * *

  She could see him standing there, smiling, reaching for her hand, but there was an invisible barrier between them. Then, slowly, his room began to fade, the light dimmed, his figure grew watery, transparent, vanished. She was standing, staring at the riveted steel bulkhead of a compartment which was lit only by the dim light filtering through the thick glass over the transom.

  She stood there frozen, and the ice in the glasses tinkled nervously. Then the tray slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Icy liquid splashed the silver sandals. In the silent gloom she stood immobile, her eyes wide in her white face, her fist pressed to her mouth, stifling a scream.

  Something touched her gently at head and wrist and ankle--all over her body. The web clung, delicate as lace, strong as steel.

  Even if she had been able to move, she could not have broken free as the thing against the wall began to clamber down the strands on eight furred legs.

  "Hello, butterfly," he said again.

  * * *

  Contents

  GOODBYE, DEAD MAN!

  by Tom W. Harris

  Mattup had killed a man, so it was logical he should be punished. It was Danny who came up with the idea of leaving him with the prophecy--

  It was Orley Mattup's killing of the old lab technician that really made us hate him.

  Mattup was a guard at the reactor installation at Bayless, Kentucky, where my friend Danny Hern and I were part of the staff when the Outsiders took everything over. In what god-forsaken mountain hole they had found Mattup, and how they got him to sell out to them, I don't know. He was an authentic human, though. You can tell an Outsider.

  Mattup and Danny and I were playing high-low-jack the night Uncle Pete was killed, sitting on the widewalk where Mattup had a view of the part of the station he was responsible for. High-low-jack is a back-country card game; Danny had learned it in northern Pennsylvania, where he came from, and Mattup loved the game, and they had taught it to me because the game is better three-handed. The evening sessions had been Danny's idea--I think he figured it might give him a line on Mattup.

  On the night in question, Mattup was on a week's losing streak and was in a foul humor. He was superstitious, and he had called for a new deck twice that evening and walked around his seat four different times. His bidding was getting wilder.

  "You'd better cool down," Danny told him. "Thing to do is ride out the bad luck, not fight it."

  Orley picked his nose and looked at his cards, "Bid four," he growled.

  Four is the highest possible bid. Tim played his cards well and he had good ones. He had sewed up three of his points when we heard somebody moving around down on the reactor floor. It was old Uncle Pete Barker, one of the technicians.

  "What you want down there?" bawled Mattup.

  "Just left my cap by the control room," said Uncle Pete, "and thought I'd go get it."

  "You keep the hell away from there," grunted Mattup.

  Uncle Pete stopped and stood gazing up at us. We went on playing. It was the last card of the hand, and would either win the game for Mattup or lose it for him. Orley slapped his card down; it was a crucial card, the jack. Danny took it with a queen and Mattup had lost the game.

  I felt like clearing out. Mattup's face was purple and his eyes looked like wolves' eyes. He glared at Danny, making a noise in his throat, and then I saw his gaze leave Danny and go to something down by the reactor.

  It was Uncle Pete, shuffling along toward the control room.

  Mattup didn't say a word. He stood up and unholstered the thing the Outsiders had given him and pointed it at Uncle Pete. There was a ringing in our ears and Uncle Pete began to twist. Something inside him twisted him, twisting inside his arms, his legs, head, trunk, even his fingers. It was only for a few seconds. Then the ringing stopped, and Uncle Pete sunk to the ground, and there was the silence and the smell.

  Mattup made us leave the body there until we had
played two more hands. Danny won one; he was a man with good nerves. When we were back in our room he said, "That did it--I'm going to get that guy."

  "I hate his big thick guts," I said, buttoning my pajama shirt, "but how are you going to get him?"

  "I'll get him," said Danny. "Meanwhile, we'll keep playing cards."

  Things went on almost normally at the Bayless reactor. It was a privately-owned pool-type reactor, and we were sent samples of all sorts of material for irradiation from all over the country. Danny was one of the irradiation men; I generally handled controlling. The Outsiders had filled the place with telescreens and guards, and all mail was opened, but there was no real interference with the work. I began to worry a little about Danny. Almost every afternoon he spent an hour alone in our room, with the door closed.

  Mattup kept getting worse; an animal with power. He used to go hunting with the damnable Outsider weapon, although the meat killed with it wasn't fit to eat, and he used it on birds until there wasn't one left anywhere near the plant. He never killed a bluebird, though. He said it was bad luck. Sometimes he drank moonshine corn liquor, usually alone, because the Outsiders wouldn't touch it, but sometimes he made some of us drink with him, watching sharply to see we didn't poison him and craftily picking his nose. When he was drunk he was abusive.

  * * * * *

  One night we were in our room, dead for sleep after a long game, and Danny said, "Let me show you something."

  He shuffled the cards, I cut, and he dealt me an ace, king, queen, jack, ten and deuce of spades. He shuffled again and dealt me the same in hearts.

  "Watch as closely as you can," he grinned. "See if you can catch me."

  I couldn't.

  "I've been practicing," he said. "I'm going to get Mattup."

  "What good will it do to beat him in cards? You'll only make him sore." I was relieved to learn what Danny had been doing, alone in our room, but this card-sharp angle didn't make much sense to me.

  "Who says I'm going to beat him at cards?" smiled Danny. "By the way, did you hear the rumor? They're going to break up the staff, Outsider policy, send us to Oak Ridge, Argonne, Shippingport, send new people down here."

  "That doesn't leave you much time," I said.

  "Time enough," said Danny.

  The next night Mattup began a fantastic streak of luck. It seemed he couldn't lose, and he was as unpleasant a winner as he was a loser.

  "You boys don't know what card-playin' is," he'd gloat. "Think you're pretty smarty with all that science stuff but you can't win a plain old card game. You know why you can't beat me, boys?"

  "Because you're too smart, I guess," said Danny.

  "Well, yeah, and somethin' else. I dipped my hands in spunk water, up on the mountain where you can never find it, and besides that I spit on ever' card in this deck and wiped it off. Couldn't lose now to save my life."

  "Maybe you're right," said Danny, and went on dealing.

  In a few days the rumor of moving was confirmed; I was being sent to Oak Ridge, Danny to Argonne. Mattup kept winning, and "suggested" that we raise the stakes. By the day that we were to leave we owed him every cent we had.

  I paid up soberly; I wouldn't give Mattup any satisfaction by complaining. It looked as though Danny wasn't going to "get" Mattup after all. But Danny surprised me.

  "Look, buster," he wheedled. "If I pay you seventy-five bucks I won't have a cent left. How about me paying half now and the rest later?"

  "No good," said Mattup. "You got it--pay me. If you can't pay cash gimme your watch. I know you got one."

  "Look, buster--"

  "Quit callin' me buster."

  "What am I going to live on until I get paid again?"

  "What do I care?"

  It went on like that until the busses for the airport were nearly ready to leave and both men seemed angry enough to kill each other.

  "Let's go," I begged Danny. "Pay him and leave."

  "All right then!" Danny snapped, and pulled out his wallet. He counted out all his bills into Mattup's hand.

  "You're a buck short," said Mattup.

  "Why not forget the buck?" said Danny. "You can spare it."

  "You're a buck short," repeated Mattup, scowling.

  Danny dashed his wallet to the ground. "You're even taking my change!" He got his jacket from the back of a chair--it was a hot day--and emptied change from the side pocket.

  There were two quarters and a half dollar, and he paid them over. "I have eleven cents left," he said. "Hell, take that too. I don't give a damn."

  Mattup grinned. "Sure I'll take it--if you weren't lying when you said I could have it."

  "It'll break me," said Danny.

  "I know it," said Mattup. "Gonna break your promise?"

  The bus driver was honking. "The hell with you," Danny said to Mattup, and gave him a dime and a penny. He looked Mattup in the eye with a strange expression. "Now, I gave you that and you didn't win it. You took it of your own free will. I offered it to you and you took it. Right?"

  "Right," said Mattup. "Sucker."

  We scrambled on the bus and as it pulled away Danny yelled "Hey, Buster, look!" Mattup looked, and Danny stuck his right arm out the window, pointing at Mattup with his right forefinger and his little finger stuck out straight and parallel, the thumb tucked under. A strange, disturbed look came over Orley. He turned his back as the bus roared out of the drive.

  At the airport Danny popped into a phone-booth and got Orley on the line--nobody seemed to care, either Outsiders or guards--and he let me listen.

  "Spent your money yet, dead man?" purred Danny.

  "Whacha mean, dead man?" gruffed Orley's voice. "You crazy or something?"

  "You know that eleven cents extra you took?" gloated Danny. "It's gonna kill you, Buster, for killing Uncle Pete, and for everything else you've done. I know. I've been talking nights to Uncle Pete. You're a dead duck, Orley Mattup! Dead!"

  "That's--I don't believe it, it's baloney! I'm going to spend that eleven cents and get rid of it."

  "You do exactly that, Buster. I locked the curse on it, and I made the sign on you, and you have to keep that eleven cents the rest of your life. If you spend it--or if you lose it, and you will lose it--that's the end of you."

  "I'll come out there and pound the hell out of you!" yelled Mattup.

  "Too late, Buster, our planes are leaving. Goodbye, dead man!"

  And we had to run for our planes. Danny's pitch sounded pretty weak to me, even though Orley was superstitious, but I didn't get to tell Danny that until nearly five years later.

  * * * * *

  "I think I got him," said Danny. "You don't know the whole thing."

  A hotel clerk had been listening. "You mean Orley Mattup, the guard? He got sick, and said he had a hex on him, and took off one day and a lot later they found him up on the mountain. He was dead."

  "Any money on him?" asked Danny.

  "Jest some change. They buried it with him; they heard the hex was locked onto that money."

  "Congratulations," I told Danny. "I didn't think it'd work. You scared him to death."

  "Not quite," said Danny. "I scared him into hanging onto the money. That money would have killed anybody that carried it much longer than the few minutes I handled it. I'd been keeping the stuff in the reactor beam tubes. It was radioactive as hell."

  * * *

  Contents

  THE VELVET GLOVE

  By Harry Harrison

  Jon Venex fitted the key into the hotel room door. He had asked for a large room, the largest in the hotel, and paid the desk clerk extra for it. All he could do now was pray that he hadn't been cheated. He didn't dare complain or try to get his money back. He heaved a sigh of relief as the door swung open, it was bigger than he had expected—fully three feet wide by five feet long. There was more than enough room to work in. He would have his leg off in a jiffy and by morning his limp would be gone.

  There was the usual adjustable hook on the back wall. He
slipped it through the recessed ring in the back of his neck and kicked himself up until his feet hung free of the floor. His legs relaxed with a rattle as he cut off all power from his waist down.

  The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it, plenty of time to skim through the newspaper. With the chronic worry of the unemployed, he snapped it open at the want-ads and ran his eye down the Help Wanted—Robot column. There was nothing for him under the Specialist heading, even the Unskilled Labor listings were bare and unpromising. New York was a bad town for robots this year.

  The want-ads were just as depressing as usual but he could always get a lift from the comic section. He even had a favorite strip, a fact that he scarcely dared mention to himself. "Rattly Robot," a dull-witted mechanical clod who was continually falling over himself and getting into trouble. It was a repellent caricature, but could still be very funny. Jon was just starting to read it when the ceiling light went out.

  It was ten P.M., curfew hour for robots. Lights out and lock yourself in until six in the morning, eight hours of boredom and darkness for all except the few night workers. But there were ways of getting around the letter of a law that didn't concern itself with a definition of visible light. Sliding aside some of the shielding around his atomic generator, Jon turned up the gain. As it began to run a little hot the heat waves streamed out—visible to him as infra-red rays. He finished reading the paper in the warm, clear light of his abdomen.

  The thermocouple in the tip of his second finger left hand, he tested the temperature of his leg. It was soon cool enough to work on. The waterproof gasket stripped off easily, exposing the power leads, nerve wires and the weakened knee joint. The wires disconnected, Jon unscrewed the knee above the joint and carefully placed it on the shelf in front of him. With loving care he took the replacement part from his hip pouch. It was the product of toil, purchased with his savings from three months employment on the Jersey pig farm.

  Jon was standing on one leg testing the new knee joint when the ceiling fluorescent flickered and came back on. Five-thirty already, he had just finished in time. A shot of oil on the new bearing completed the job; he stowed away the tools in the pouch and unlocked the door.