Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "Oh, just a mixture of stuff. Cookbook chemistry. Cysteine thiolactone and a fat-soluble magnesium compound."

  "I see. Just a mixture of stuff. And do your whiskers grow back the next day?"

  "Right on schedule," I said.

  McCord unfolded his length and stood staring out into the rain. Presently he said, "Henderson, Hilary and I are heading for my office. We can work there better than here, and if we're going to break the hearts of the razor industry, there's no better time to start than now."

  When they had driven off I turned and said, "Let's talk a while. We can always clean mouse cages later. Where's Tommy?"

  "Oh, he stopped at the bank to get a loan."

  "What on earth for? We have over six thousand in the account."

  "Well," Peter said, looking a little embarrassed, "we were planning to buy a hydraulic press. You see, Doris put some embroidery on that scheme of mine for making ball bearings." He grabbed a sheet of paper. "Look, we make a roller bearing, this shape only it's a permanent magnet. Then you see--." And he was off.

  "What did they do today, dear?" Marge asked as she refilled my coffee cup.

  "Thanks," I said. "Let's see, it was a big day. We picked out a hydraulic press, Doris read us the first chapter of the book she's starting, and we found a place over a garage on Fourth Street that we can rent for winter quarters. Oh, yes, and Jeff is starting action to get the company incorporated."

  "Winter quarters," Marge repeated. "You mean you're going to try to keep the group going after school starts?"

  "Why not? The kids can sail through their courses without thinking about them, and actually they won't put in more than a few hours a week during the school year."

  "Even so, it's child labor, isn't it?"

  "Child labor nothing. They're the employers. Jeff McCord and I will be the only employees--just at first, anyway."

  Marge choked on something. "Did you say you'd be an employee?"

  "Sure," I told her. "They've offered me a small share of the company, and I'd be crazy to turn it down. After all, what's to lose?"

  * * *

  Contents

  THE BELL TONE

  By Edmund H. Leftwich

  To Whom It May Concern:

  In order to clear up any misunderstanding or false impressions regarding the amazing case of my beloved friend and co-worker, Professor Howard E. Edwards, I submit herewith, extracts from the professor's notebook, which I found on the desk.

  Evans Barclay, B.S. Fellow IRE.

  Jan. 25.

  Last night, in my dreams, I was a monstrous ant, and had been digging myself a burrow in the soft fresh earth. The dream was intensely real, and when I awoke, I felt as tired as if I had actually been digging. My arms ached, and I was astonished, upon examining my hands, to find them raw.

  Dressing hastily, I rushed to the back yard, and there, sure enough, near the fence, was a large hole about two feet deep and three feet long. Hurriedly, I filled it in and returned to the house.

  I must rest for a few days, as I feel that the intense excitement caused by my investigations, is preying too heavily upon my mind.

  At this time, I feel that I should make a brief summary of my findings in respect to the ants, so that Barclay may go over these notes upon his return from his vacation.

  First: The ant colony is the source of a powerful bell-like tone which is radiated continuously on two wave-lengths, .0018 meter, and .00176 meter. This tone acts as a radio-beacon, and directs the ants to the colony, no matter where they may be located. The .0018 meter wave is used by the ants for their "clacking" conversations, by means of which they communicate with each other and the colony, receiving orders from the directing intelligence, reporting the location of food, and requesting help, when needed.

  The wave .00176 meter, is used for sending thought images or pictures which may be sent with the "clacking" code, or independently. I cannot conceive a more efficient or highly specialized communications system. I must learn their secret, their methods.

  Jan. 30.

  This morning, while sitting at the receiver in a semi-doze, with the bell-tone ringing in my ears, I fell into that state known as "day-dreaming." Little "Nippy," my beloved fox terrier, and constant companion, rushed into the laboratory and ran up to me.

  For a moment my mind went blank. My hands shot out. I grasped the dog around the throat and began to throttle him. I had risen from my chair, and the dog was nearly dead, when I slipped and fell, pulling the phone plug out of the receiver.

  Instantly, my mind cleared, and words cannot express the remorse I felt at my inhuman actions. Nippy would have nothing to do with me, and crawled dejectedly from the room, a terrified look in his eyes.

  I have no explanation for my actions.

  Feb. 3.

  The transmitter is ready for operation. I have constructed a pair of metal disc-electrodes which clamp tightly to my head and press upon my temples. This device will pick up the thought impulses from my brain, feed them directly into the radio-frequency amplifier, where they will be amplified, and then radiated in a tight directed beam.

  My two ants were in their little enclosure under the microscope when I threw the switch to the "send" position. I pictured myself as I looked as a man, and sent the thought, "I am a man."

  Hastily, I threw the switch to the "receive" position. I looked through the microscope.

  The ants were lying on their sides. Somehow, I felt that the power was too great, and had stunned them. Keeping my eye to the microscope, I again threw the switch to "send," and cut the power to half.

  "Get up, friends ... get up," I thought, as I pictured them rising. Sure enough ... the ants slowly regained their feet. They looked about in apparent bewilderment. Back again, in "receive" position, I was conscious of the thought image,

  "The man ... he is the man. The man holds us here. He is killing us. We must kill the man."

  They gnashed their fierce-looking mandibles. I snapped back to "send" and thought.

  "No ... you must not kill the man. The man will not harm you ... he is your friend. He will help you."

  As I watched, the ants seemed to become less excited. From the larger of the two, I received the thought,

  "We are dying. The man is killing us with his strong vibrations. We must kill the man."

  Then a very powerful thought impression burst upon my brain.

  It seemed to come from the colony, three feet away.

  "Warning to the man. Stop your thought transmissions at once! Your vibrations are killing us. We want nothing from you. We have everything we need. You will learn nothing from us. You will stop at once!"

  I threw the switch to "send." Viewed through the microscope, the two ants were lying on their backs ... dead, to all appearances.

  "What if I don't stop?" I sent the thought question, "I want to learn the secret of your communication. In return, I will teach you many things. I can't stop now!"

  I changed to receive, and the answer came back,

  "If you do not stop ... we will kill you!"

  I turned off the apparatus, but the powerful bell tone continued to pound incessantly into my brain.

  I laughed. They'd kill me ... would they? Those tiny insects ... what could they do? Well—let them try, but I'd get what I was after. I would not quit now, with success so near. What if my transmissions did kill a few of them? Of what importance were the lives of a few ants as compared to the advancement of the science of Communication?

  Feb. 9.

  I found myself digging again in the back yard yesterday. As before, I had been "day-dreaming," when an overwhelming desire to go outside and feel the cool moist earth between my fingers and on my face took possession of me.

  I rushed out into the back yard, and began digging feverishly ... madly, until finally I fell, exhausted. Then my mind cleared and I filled in the hole.

  About half the ants have died, due no doubt to the strength of my radiations. No matter how low I cut the power, they
still cannot live but a short time under the force of my transmissions. They have stopped sending thought impressions entirely, and are using only their "clacking" code signals, which they seem to realize I cannot understand.

  I feel that they are undertaking some sort of campaign against me. For hours they congregate, closely packed, their antennae stiffly pointed straight up. Their thought currents seem to be flowing into and merging with the bell tone, which grows stronger and more penetrating day by day.

  In my back yard, there are four large ant hills, and at each hill, curiously, there is no activity except the same mass concentration of the ants. Have they, too, been affected by my radiations and joined forces with the original colony against myself?

  The bell tone continues to grow stronger.

  Feb. 11

  Mrs. Winslow, the middle-aged widow, who comes to clean my house and laboratory twice a week, was here this morning.

  She is short, dumpy, and inclined to be stout. As she went about her work, I noticed particularly the fat firm flesh of her neck, just below the jaw. I felt an uncontrollable desire to sink my teeth deep into that flesh, and enjoy the taste of the warm fresh blood.

  I had actually risen from my chair to accomplish my desire, when the telephone rang ... and my mind cleared.

  Feb. 14.

  I have decided to stop my experiments with the ants.

  As they refuse to send any more thought impressions, there is nothing further I can learn from them. Somehow, I feel that they are gaining a hold upon my mind, and that every time I listen in on the receiver, that hold becomes stronger. I firmly believe that I would have attacked poor Mrs. Winslow, had not the ringing of the 'phone so opportunely interrupted me. I have sent word for her to stay away ... as I cannot trust myself.

  I keep a box of fresh earth on the table in my laboratory. I often run my hands through it, and taste it. It is remarkable how much this soothes my nerves.

  Feb. 16.

  It is too late!

  For two days, I have kept my apparatus shut off. I have not so much as looked at the ants, but still that confounded bell tone rings in my ears with all the insistence of African tom-toms. Hour by hour ... the tone becomes more penetrating. I cannot sleep, and can eat but little.

  As a last resort, I destroyed my ant colony. I even went so far as to pour boiling water on the four ant hills in my yard.

  Still ... the bell tone persists. I can stand it no longer!

  Perhaps if I were to dig ... again in the yard ... in the soothing earth, I could forget....

  (News Clipping: From Philadelphia Banner)

  RADIO COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEER DEAD

  Howard E. Edwards, Suicide

  Philadelphia, Feb. 18. The body of Howard E. Edwards, B.S., PhD., Member I. R. E., eminent authority on Radio Communications, aged 56, was found this morning in the back yard of his residence, 1427 Raines Avenue. The body was almost completely buried in a long narrow hole in the ground.

  At first, foul-play was suspected, but later it appeared that Edwards had dug himself into the ground and died of suffocation, as his nostrils and mouth were filled with dirt.

  Dr. P. A. Hofner, who examined the body, found no wounds, stated that Edwards had been dead for about two days, and pronounced the death as a clear case of suicide, the strange means employed probably due to an unbalanced mental condition.

  Elaborate radio apparatus upon which Edwards had been working had been smashed to bits.

  * * *

  Contents

  BREAD OVERHEAD

  By Fritz Leiber

  The Staff of Life suddenly and disconcertingly sprouted wings --and mankind had to eat crow!

  As a blisteringly hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products ("Spike to Loaf in One Operation!") began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.

  The walking mills resembled fat metal serpents, rather larger than those Chinese paper dragons animated by files of men in procession. Sensory robot devices in their noses informed them that the waiting wheat had reached ripe perfection.

  As they advanced, their heads swung lazily from side to side, very much like snakes, gobbling the yellow grain. In their throats, it was threshed, the chaff bundled and burped aside for pickup by the crawl trucks of a chemical corporation, the kernels quick-dried and blown along into the mighty chests of the machines. There the tireless mills ground the kernels to flour, which was instantly sifted, the bran being packaged and dropped like the chaff for pickup. A cluster of tanks which gave the metal serpents a decidedly humpbacked appearance added water, shortening, salt and other ingredients, some named and some not. The dough was at the same time infused with gas from a tank conspicuously labeled "Carbon Dioxide" ("No Yeast Creatures in Your Bread!").

  Thus instantly risen, the dough was clipped into loaves and shot into radionic ovens forming the midsections of the metal serpents. There the bread was baked in a matter of seconds, a fierce heat-front browning the crusts, and the piping-hot loaves sealed in transparent plastic bearing the proud Puffyloaf emblem (two cherubs circling a floating loaf) and ejected onto the delivery platform at each serpent's rear end, where a cluster of pickup machines, like hungry piglets, snatched at the loaves with hygienic claws.

  A few loaves would be hurried off for the day's consumption, the majority stored for winter in strategically located mammoth deep freezes.

  But now, behold a wonder! As loaves began to appear on the delivery platform of the first walking mill to get into action, they did not linger on the conveyor belt, but rose gently into the air and slowly traveled off down-wind across the hot rippling fields.

  * * * * *

  The robot claws of the pickup machines clutched in vain, and, not noticing the difference, proceeded carefully to stack emptiness, tier by tier. One errant loaf, rising more sluggishly than its fellows, was snagged by a thrusting claw. The machine paused, clumsily wiped off the injured loaf, set it aside--where it bobbed on one corner, unable to take off again--and went back to the work of storing nothingness.

  A flock of crows rose from the trees of a nearby shelterbelt as the flight of loaves approached. The crows swooped to investigate and then suddenly scattered, screeching in panic.

  The helicopter of a hangoverish Sunday traveler bound for Wichita shied very similarly from the brown fliers and did not return for a second look.

  A black-haired housewife spied them over her back fence, crossed herself and grabbed her walkie-talkie from the laundry basket. Seconds later, the yawning correspondent of a regional newspaper was jotting down the lead of a humorous news story which, recalling the old flying-saucer scares, stated that now apparently bread was to be included in the mad aerial tea party.

  The congregation of an open-walled country church, standing up to recite the most familiar of Christian prayers, had just reached the petition for daily sustenance, when a sub-flight of the loaves, either forced down by a vagrant wind or lacking the natural buoyancy of the rest, came coasting silently as the sunbeams between the graceful pillars at the altar end of the building.

  Meanwhile, the main flight, now augmented by other bread flocks from scores and hundreds of walking mills that had started work a little later, mounted slowly and majestically into the cirrus-flecked upper air, where a steady wind was blowing strongly toward the east.

  About one thousand miles farther on in that direction, where a cluster of stratosphere-tickling towers marked the location of the metropolis of NewNew York, a tender scene was being enacted in the pressurized penthouse managerial suite of Puffy Products. Megera Winterly, Secretary in Chief to the Managerial Board and referred to by her underlings as the Blonde Icicle, was dealing with the advances of Roger ("Racehorse") Snedden, Assistant Secretary to the Board and often indistinguishable from any passing office boy.

  "Why don't you jump out the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you?" the Golden Glacie
r said in tones not unkind. "When are your high-strung, thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider marriage with a business inferior? You have about as much chance as a starving Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's clapped on the interdict."

  * * * * *

  Roger's voice was calm, although his eyes were feverishly bright, as he replied, "A lot of things are going to be different around here, Meg, as soon as the Board is forced to admit that only my quick thinking made it possible to bring the name of Puffyloaf in front of the whole world."

  "Puffyloaf could do with a little of that," the business girl observed judiciously. "The way sales have been plummeting, it won't be long before the Government deeds our desks to the managers of Fairy Bread and asks us to take the Big Jump. But just where does your quick thinking come into this, Mr. Snedden? You can't be referring to the helium--that was Rose Thinker's brainwave."

  She studied him suspiciously. "You've birthed another promotional bumble, Roger. I can see it in your eyes. I only hope it's not as big a one as when you put the Martian ambassador on 3D and he thanked you profusely for the gross of Puffyloaves, assuring you that he'd never slept on a softer mattress in all his life on two planets."

  "Listen to me, Meg. Today--yes, today!--you're going to see the Board eating out of my hand."

  "Hah! I guarantee you won't have any fingers left. You're bold enough now, but when Mr. Gryce and those two big machines come through that door--"

  "Now wait a minute, Meg--"

  "Hush! They're coming now!"

  Roger leaped three feet in the air, but managed to land without a sound and edged toward his stool. Through the dilating iris of the door strode Phineas T. Gryce, flanked by Rose Thinker and Tin Philosopher.

  The man approached the conference table in the center of the room with measured pace and gravely expressionless face. The rose-tinted machine on his left did a couple of impulsive pirouettes on the way and twittered a greeting to Meg and Roger. The other machine quietly took the third of the high seats and lifted a claw at Meg, who now occupied a stool twice the height of Roger's.