 AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE by C. C. McCapp. There's nothing wrong with dying. It just hasn't ever had the proper sales pitch. It all began when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog or blew a transistor or something. It was fantastic that the error, one of two decimal places, should enjoy a straight run of OKs, human and mechanical, clear down the line. But when the figures clacked out at the last clacking-out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred, immutable, and it is doubtful whether the President of the Concern or the Chairman of the Board would have dared question them, even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town. As for the advertising manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them, they were the budget for the coming fiscal year, into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped daisily into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly one hundred times what he'd been expecting. That is to say, fifty times what he'd put in for. When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home he tossed clothes into a traveling bag and barged towards the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. It didn't bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plain east and no nonsense about it. With one thing and another, the economy hadn't been exactly in overdrive that year and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bore them out. Gift-buying dribbled along feebly until thanksgiving, despite brave speeches by the administration. The holiday passed more in self-pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift-oriented businesses. Then on Friday following thanksgiving the coffin-ads struck. Struck may be too mild a word. People on the streets saw feverishly working crews at holiday rates slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly. A toothy and toothsome young woman leaned over a coffin she'd been unwrapping. She smiled as if she'd just received overtures of matrimony from an eighty-year-old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she'd just gotten out of bed or were ready to get into it. For amorous young men and some not so young, the message was plain, the motto, the gift that will last more than a lifetime seemed hardly to the point. Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that, if the young ladies' gratitude were really precipitous and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy. Of course the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man there was a blow directly between the eyes. Do you want your widow to be half safe? And for the spinster without immediate hopes. I dreamt I was caught dead without my virgin form casket. Newspapers, magazines, and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign for sheer concentration that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy. Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers who had grudgingly and under strong sales pressure made space for a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store, now rushed to the telephones like toots with a direct pronouncement from a horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the act, grocery supermarkets putting casket departments, the association of pharmaceutical retailers who felt they had some claim to priority, tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers, and whatever else could haul a coffin. The stock market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The President got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation short supply. State laws were passed against cremation under heavy lobby pressure. A new racket called box-jacking blossomed overnight. The advertising manager who had put the thing over had been fighting with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping, but by Wednesday after Thanksgiving they, along with their original one, were on a twenty-four hour seven-day basis. Still only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with Yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins. It might be supposed that Christmas goods other than caskets would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity, and such was the shortage of coffins that nearly everything, with a few exceptions, enjoyed the biggest season on record. On Christmas Eve the frenzy slumped to a crawl, though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. Mostly it sat on coffins, because there wasn't space in the living-rooms for any other furniture. There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn't have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, little boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now where it would be literally a case of dust to dust. Of course, everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our advertising manager, who by now was of course sales manager and first vice president also, wasn't settling for any boom in bust. He'd been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years that now, with his teeth in something, he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin payments and move the presents out of the front-rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred megatonner. Within a week everyone saw quite clearly that his Christmas models were now obsolete. The coffin became the new status symbol. The auto industry was, of course, demolished. Even people who had enough money to buy a new car weren't going to trade in the old one and let the new one stand out in the rain. The garages were full of coffins. Petroleum went along with autos, though there were those who whispered knowingly that the same people merely moved over into the new industry. It was noticeable that the center of it became Detroit. A few trucks and buses were still being built, but that was all. Some of the new caskets were true works of art. Others, well, there was variety. Compact models appeared, in which the occupants' feet were to be doubled up alongside his ears. One manufacturer pushed a circular model, claiming that by all the laws of nature the fetal position was the only right one. At the other extreme were virtual houses, ornate and lavishly equipped. Possibly the largest of all was the togetherness model, triangular, with graduated recesses for father, mother, eight children plus two playmates, and in the far corner beyond the baby, the cat. The slump was over. Still, economists swore that the new boom couldn't last either. They reckoned without the advertising manager, whose eyes gleamed brighter all the time. People already had coffins, which they polished and kept on display, sometimes in the new coffin ports being added to their houses. The advertising manager's reasoning was direct and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins, and now he had all the money to work with that he could use. The new note was woven in so gradually that it was not easy to put a finger on any one ad and say, It began here. One of the first was surely the widely printed one, showing a tattooed, smiling young man with his chin thrust out manfully, lying in a coffin. He was rugged-looking and likable, not too rugged for the spindly limb to identify with, and he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at every pore. He was probably the finest-looking corpse since Richard the Lion-hearted. Neither must one overlook the singing commercials. Possibly the catchiest of these, a really cute little thing, was achieved by jazzing up the funeral march. It started gradually, and it was all so unviolent that few saw it as suicide. Teenagers began having popping-off parties. Some of their elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up, too. The tired, the unappreciated, the ill, and the heavy laden lay down in growing numbers and expired. A black market in poisons operated for a little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes were very comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited, smiling. The beatniks who had their own models of coffin, moldy, scroungy, and without lids, since the beatniks insisted on being seen, placed their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They died with highly intellectual expressions, and eventually were washed by the gentle rain. Of course there were many voices shouting, Calamity! When aren't there? But in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed not. It isn't hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world, so let us imagine a few. The Communist bloc immediately gave its stamp of disapproval, denouncing the movement as a filthy capitalist imperialist pig plot. Red China, who had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a matter of method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as patent stupidity, saying that if the capitalists wanted to die, warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried out the thing as an answer to excess population and found it good. It also appealed to the well-known melancholy facet of Russian nature. Besides, after pondering for several days, the red bloc decided it could not afford to fall behind in anything, so it started its own program, explaining with much logic how it differed. An elderly British philosopher endorsed the movement on the grounds that a temporary setback in evolution was preferable to facing up to anything. The free bloc, the red bloc, the neutral bloc, and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a bloc, were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it. Oddly enough, the country where the movement began was the last to succumb completely. Or perhaps it is not so odd. Coffin maker to the world, the American casket industry had by now almost completely automated box-making and grave-digging, with some interesting assembly lines and packaging arrangements. There still remained the jobs of management and distribution. The president of General Mortuary, an ablient fellow, affectionately called sarcophagus Sam, put it well. As long as I have a single prospective customer and a single stockholder, he said, mangling a stogie and beatling his brows at the one reporter who showed up for the press conference, I'll try to put him in a coffin so I can pay him a dividend. Finally, though, a man who thought he must be the last living human wandered contentedly about the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an automatic self-adjusting cadaver contour inner-spring wherever plastic-covered mattress with a built-in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, closed his eyes, and sighed in solid comfort. Soft music played as the lid closed itself. From a building nearby a turkey-buzzard swooped down, cawing and raucous anger because it had led its attention wander for a moment. It was too late. It clawed screaming at the solid cover, hissed in frustration, and finally gave up. It flapped into the air again, still grumbling. It was tired of living on dead small rodents and coyotes. It thought it would take a swing over to Los Angeles where the pickings were pretty good. As it moved westward over parched hills, it aspired two black dots a few miles to its left. It circled over for a closer look, then grunted and went on its way. It had seen them before. The old prospector and his borough had been in the mountains for so long the buzzard had concluded they didn't know how to die. The prospector, whose name was Adams, trudged behind his borough towards the buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then, or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver he realized something was amiss. He stood engaged at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny pack rats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the unburied coffins. Tarnation! he said to the borough. Martians! A half-buried piece of newspaper fluttered in the breeze. He walked forward slowly and picked it up. It told him enough so that he understood. They're gone, Evie! he said to the borough. All gone! He put his arm affectionately around her neck. I reckon it's up to me and you again. We got to start all over. He stood back and gazed at her with a mild reproach. I sure hope they don't favor your side of the house so much this time. End of story. This recording is in the public domain. The Big Bounce by Walter S. Tevis. Seeing it in action anybody would quaver an alarm. What had Farnsworth overwrought? Let me show you something. Farnsworth said. He set his near empty drink, a Bacardi Martini, on the mantle and waddled out of the room toward the basement. I sat in my big leather chair, feeling very peaceful with the world, watching the fire. Whatever Farnsworth would have to show tonight would be far more entertaining than watching TV, my custom on other evenings. Farnsworth, with his four labs in the house and his very tricky mind, never failed to provide my best night of the week. When he returned, after a moment, he had with him a small box, about three inches square. He held this carefully in one hand and stood by the fireplace dramatically. Or as dramatically as a very small, very fat man with pink cheeks can stand by a fireplace of this sort that seems to demand a big man with tweeds, pipe, and perhaps a sabre wound. Anyway, he held the box dramatically and he said, last week I was playing around in the chem lab, trying to make a new kind of rubber eraser. Did quite well with the other drafting equipment, you know, especially the dimensional curve and the photosensitive ink. Well, I approached the job by trying for a material that would absorb graphite without abrading paper. I was a little disappointed with this. It sounded pretty tame, but I said, how did it come out? He screwed his pudgy face up thoughtfully. Synthesized the material, all right, and it seems to work. But the interesting thing is that it has a certain, uh, secondary property that would make it quite awkward to use. Interesting property, though. Unique, I'm inclined to believe. This began to sound more like it. And what property is that? I poured myself a shot of straight rum from the bottle sitting on the table beside me. I did not like straight rum, but I preferred it to Farnsworth's rather imaginative cocktails. I'll show you, John, he said. He opened the box and I could see that it was packed with some kind of batting. He fished in this and withdrew a gray ball about the size of a golf ball and set the box on the mantle. And that's the eraser, I asked. Yes, he said. Then he squatted down, held the ball about a half inch from the floor, dropped it. It bounced naturally enough. Then it bounced again and again. Only this was not natural, for on the second bounce the ball went higher in the air than on the first, and on the third bounce higher still. After a half minute my eyes were bugging out and the little ball was bouncing four feet in the air and going higher each time. I grabbed my glass. What in the world? I said. Farnsworth caught the ball in a pudgy hand and held it. He was smiling a little sheepishly. Interesting effect, isn't it? Now, wait a minute. I said, beginning to think about it. What's the gimmick? What kind of motor do you have in that thing? His eyes were wide and a little hurt. No gimmick, John, none at all. Just a very peculiar molecular structure. Structure, I said. Bouncing balls just don't pick up energy out of nowhere. I don't care how the molecules are put together. And you don't get energy out without putting energy in. Oh, he said. That's the really interesting thing. Of course you're right. Energy does go into the ball. Here, I'll show you. He let the ball drop again and it began bouncing higher and higher until it was hitting the ceiling. Farnsworth reached out to catch it, but he fumbled and the thing glanced off his hand, hit the mantelpiece, and zipped across the room. It banged into the far wall, ricocheted, banked off three other walls, picking up speed all the time. When it whizzed by me like a rifle bullet, I began to get worried. But it hit against one of the heavy draperies by the window, and this damped its motion enough so that it fell to the floor. It started bouncing again immediately, but Farnsworth stumbled across the room and grabbed it. He was perspiring a little, and he began instantly to transfer the ball from one hand to another and back again, as if it were hot. Here, he said, and handed it to me. I almost dropped it. That's like a ball of ice, I said. Have you been keeping it in the refrigerator? No, as a matter of fact it was at room temperature a few minutes ago. No, wait a minute, I said. I only teach physics in high school, but I know better than that. Moving around in warm air doesn't make anything cold except by evaporation. Well, there's your input and output, John, he said. The ball lost heat and took on motion, simple conversion. My jaw must have dropped to my waist. Do you mean that little thing is converting heat to kinetic energy? Apparently. But that's impossible. He was beginning to smile thoughtfully. The ball was not as cold now as it had been, and I was holding it in my lap. A steam engine does it, he said, and a steam turbine. Of course, they're not very efficient. They work mechanically, too, and only because water expands when it turns into steam. This seems to do it differently, he said, sipping thoughtfully at his dark brown martini. I don't know exactly how. Maybe something piezoelectric about the way its molecules slide about. I ran some tests, measured its impact energy and foot pounds, and compared that with the heat loss in BTUs. Seemed to be about 98% efficient, as close as I could tell. Apparently it converts heat into bounce very well. Interesting, isn't it? Interesting? I almost came flying out of my chair. My mind was beginning to spin like crazy. If you're not pulling my leg with this thing, Farnsworth, you've got something by the tail there that's just a little bit bigger than the discovery of fire. He blushed modestly. I'd rather thought that myself, he admitted. Good grief, look at the heat that's available, I said, getting really excited now. Farnsworth was still smiling, very pleased with himself. I suppose you could put this thing in a box with convection fins and let it bounce around inside. I'm way ahead of you, I said, but that wouldn't work. All your kinetic energy would go right back to heat on impact, and eventually that little ball would build up enough speed to blast its way through any box you could build. And how would you work it? Well, I said, choking down the rest of my rum. You'd seal the ball in a big steel cylinder, attach the cylinder to a crankshaft and flywheel, give the thing a shake to start the ball bouncing back and forth and let it run like a gasoline engine or something. It would get all the heat it needed from the air in a normal room. Mount the apparatus in your house and it would pump your water, operate a generator, and keep you cool at the same time. I sat down again, shakily, and began pouring myself in another drink. Farnsworth had taken the ball from me and was carefully putting it back in its padded box. He was visibly showing excitement, too. I could see that his cheeks were rudder, and his eyes even brighter than normal. But what if you want the cooling and don't have any work to be done? Simple, I said. You just let the machine turn a flywheel or lift weights and drop them, or something like that outside your house. You have an air intake inside, and if in the winter you don't want to lose heat, you just mount the thing in an outside building, attach it to your generator, and use the power to do whatever you want. Eat your house, say. There's plenty of heat in the outside air, even in December. John, said Farnsworth, you're very ingenious. It might work. Of course it'll work. Pictures were beginning to light up in my head. And don't you realize that this is the answer to the solar power problem? My mirrors and selenium are, at best, 10% efficient. Think of big pumping stations on the Sahara. All that heat, all that need for power, for irrigation. I paused a moment for effect. Farnsworth. This can change the very shape of the earth. Farnsworth seemed to be lost in thought. Finally he looked at me strangely and said, Perhaps we'd better try to build a model. I was so excited by the thing that I couldn't sleep that night. I kept dreaming of power stations, ocean liners, even automobiles, being operated by balls bouncing back and forth in cylinders. I even worked out a spaceship in my mind. A bullet-shaped deferra with a huge rubber ball on its end, gyroscopes to keep it oriented properly, the ball serving a solution to that biggest of missile engineering problems, excess heat. You'd build a huge concrete launching field, support it all the way down to bedrock, hop in the ship and start bouncing. Of course, it would be kind of a rough ride. In the morning, I called my superintendent and told him to get a substitute for the rest of the week. I was going to be busy. Then I started working in the machine shop in Farnsworth's basement, trying to turn out a working model of a device that, by means of a crankshaft, oleo dampers, and a reciprocating cylinder, would pick up some of the random kinetic energy from the bouncing ball and do something useful with it, like turning a driveshaft. I was just working out a convection and air pump system for circulating hot air around the ball when Farnsworth came in. He had tucked carefully under his arm a sphere of about the size of a basketball, and if he had made it to my specifications, weighing thirty-five pounds, he had a worried frown on his forehead. It looks good, I said. What's the trouble? There seems to be a slight hitch. You said? I've been testing for conductivity. It seems to be quite low. That's what I'm working on now. It's just a mechanical problem of pumping enough warm air back to the ball. We can do it with no more than twenty percent efficiency loss, and in engine that's nothing. Maybe you're right, but this material conducts heat even less than rubber does. The little ball yesterday didn't seem to have any trouble, I said. Naturally not. It had plenty of time to warm up before I started it, and its mass-surface area relationship was pretty low. The larger you make a sphere, of course, the more mass inside and proportion to the outside area. You're right, but I think we can whip it. We may have to honeycomb the ball and have part of the work the machine does operate a big air pump, but we can work it out. All that day I worked with lathe, milling machine, and hacksaw. After clamping the new big ball securely to a workbench, Farnsworth pitched in to help me. But we weren't able to finish by nightfall, and Farnsworth turned his spare bedroom over to me for the night. I was too tired to go home. And too tired to sleep soundly, too. Farnsworth lived on the edge of San Francisco, by a big truck bypass, and almost all night I wrestled with the pillow and sheets, listening half-consciously to those heavy trucks rumbling by, and in my mind, always, that little gray ball, bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. At daybreak, I came abruptly fully awake with the sound of crashing echoing in my ears, a battering sound that seemed to come from the basement. I grabbed my coat and pants, rushed out of the room, almost knocked over Farnsworth, who was struggling to get his shoes on out in the hall, and we scrambled down the two flights of stairs together. The place was a chaos, battered and bashed equipment everywhere, and on the floor, overturned against the far wall, the table that the ball had been clamped to. The ball itself was gone. I had not been fully asleep all night, and the sight of that mess and what it meant jolted me immediately awake. Something, probably a heavy truck, had started a tiny oscillation in that ball, and the ball had been heavy enough to start the table bouncing with it until, by dancing that table around the room, it had literally torn the clamp off and shaken itself free. What had happened afterwards was obvious, with the ball building a velocity with every successive bounce. But where was the ball now? Suddenly Farnsworth cried out hoarsely, look, and I followed his outstretched pudgy finger to where, at one side of the basement, a window had been broken open, a small window, but plenty big enough for something the sides of a basketball to crash through. There was a little weak light coming from outdoors, and then I saw the ball. It was in Farnsworth's backyard, bouncing a little sluggishly on the grass. The grass would damp it, hold it back until we could get to it, unless. I took off of the basement steps like a streak. Just beyond the backyard, I had caught a glimpse of something that frightened me. A few yards from where I had seen the ball was the edge of the big six-lane highway, a broad ribbon of smooth, hard concrete. I got through the house to the back porch, rushed out, and was in the backyard just in time to see the ball take its first bounce onto the concrete. I watched it, fascinated, when it hit. After the soft, energy-absorbing turf, the concrete was like a springboard. Immediately the ball flew high in the air. I was running across the yard toward it, praying under my breath, fall on that grass next time. It hit before I got to it, and right on the concrete again, and this time I saw it go straight up at least 50 feet. My mind was suddenly full of thoughts of dragging mattresses from the house, or making a net or something to stop that hurtling 35 pounds, but I stood where I was, unable to move, and saw it come down again on the highway. It went up 100 feet, and down again on the concrete, about 15 feet further down the road, in the direction of the city. That time it was 200 feet, and when it hit again it made a thud that you could have heard for a quarter of a mile. I could practically see it flatten out on the road before it took off upward again, at twice the speed it had hit at. Suddenly generating an idea, I whirled and ran back to Farnsworth's house. He was standing in the yard now, shivering from the morning air, looking at me like a little lost and badly scared child. Where are your car keys? I almost shouted at him. In my pocket. Come on. I took him by the arm and half dragged him to the carport. I got the keys from him, started the car, and by mangling about seven traffic laws and three prize rose bushes, managed to get on the highway, facing in the direction that the ball was heading. Look, I said, trying to drive down the road and search for the ball at the same time. It's risky, but if we can get the car under it and we can hop out in time it should crash through the roof. That ought to slow it down enough for us to nab it. But what about my car? Farnsworth pleaded. What about the first building, or first person, it hits in San Francisco? Oh, he said. I hadn't thought of that. I slowed the car and stuck my head out the window. It was lighter now, but no sign of the ball. If it happens to get to town, any town for that matter, it'll be falling from about ten or twenty miles, or forty. Maybe it'll go high enough first so that it'll burn, like a meteor. No chance, I said. Building cooling system, remember? Farnsworth formed his mouth into an O, and exactly at that moment there was a resounding thump, and I saw the ball hit in a field, maybe twenty yards on the edge of the road, and take off again. This time it didn't seem to double its velocity, and I figured the ground was soft enough to hold it back, but it wasn't slowing down either, not with a bounce factor of better than two to one. Without watching for it to go up, I drove as quickly as I could off the road and over, carrying part of a wire fence with me to where it hit. There was no mistaking it. There was a depression about three feet deep, like a small crater. I jumped out of the car and stared up. It took me a few seconds to spot it over my head. Once I had caught by the pale and slanting morning sunlight, it was only a bright diminishing speck. The car motor was running, and I waited until the ball disappeared for a moment and then reappeared. I watched for another couple of seconds until I felt I could make a decent guess on its direction, hollered at Farnsworth to get out of the car, and it just occurred to me that there was no use risking his life, too. Drove in and drove a hundred yards or so to the spot I had anticipated. I stuck my head out the window and up. The ball was the size of an egg now. I adjusted the car's position, jumped out, and ran for my life. It hit instantly after. About sixty feet away from the car. And at the same time it occurred to me that what I was trying to do was completely impossible, better to hope that the ball hit a pond or bounced out to sea or landed in a sand dune. All we could do would be to follow, and if it ever was damped down enough, grab it. Yet it hit soft ground and didn't double its height that time, but it had still gone higher. It was out of sight for almost a lifelong minute. And then, incredibly rotten luck, it came down with an ear-shattering thwack on the concrete highway again. I had seen it hit, and instantly afterward I saw a crack as wide as a finger open along the entire width of the road, and the ball had flown back up like a rocket. My word, I was thinking, now it means business, and on that next bounce. It seemed like an incredibly long time that we craned our necks, Farnsworth and I, watching for it to reappear in the sky. And when it finally did, we could hardly follow it. It whistled like a bomb, and we saw the gray streak plummeting to earth almost a quarter of a mile from where we were standing. But we didn't see it go back up again. For a moment we stared at each other silently. Then Farnsworth almost whispered, perhaps it slanted in a pond. Or in the world's biggest cowpile, I said, come on. We could have met our deaths by rock salt and buckshot that night, if the farmer who owned that field had been home. We tore up everything we came to getting across it, including cabbages and rhubarb. But we had to search for ten minutes, and even then we didn't find the ball. What we found was a hole in the ground that could have been a small scale meteor crater. It was a good twenty feet deep, but at the bottom no ball. I stared widely at it for a full minute before I focused my eyes enough to see, at the bottom, a thousand little gray fragments. Immediately it came to both of us at the same time. A poor conductor, the ball had used up all its available heat on that final impact. Like a golf ball that has been dipped in liquid air and dropped, it had smashed into thin splinters. The hole had sloping sides and I scrambled down in it and picked up one of the pieces, using my handkerchief, folded. There was no telling just how cold it would be. It was the stuff all right, and colder than a icicle. I climbed out. Let's go home, I said. Farnsworth looked at me thoughtfully. Then he sort of cocked his head to one side and asked, What do you suppose will happen when those pieces thaw? I stared at him. I began to think of a thousand tiny slivers whizzing around erratically, ricocheting off buildings in downtown San Francisco and in twenty countries, and no matter what the hit, moving and accelerating as long as there was any heat in the air to give them energy. And then I saw a tool shed on the other side of the pasture from us. But Farnsworth was ahead of me, waddling along, puffing. He got the shovels out and handed one to me. We didn't say a word, neither of us, for hours. It takes a long time to fill a hole twenty feet deep, especially when you're shoveling very, very carefully and packing down the dirt very, very hard. End of The Big Bounce by Walter S. Tevis. Recording by Jerome Lawson, December, 2007. The Dark Door. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bruce Bell Meyers. The Dark Door by Allen Edward Norse. One. It was almost dark when he awoke and lay on the bed, motionless and trembling his heart sinking in the knowledge that he should never have slept. For almost half a minute, eyes wide with fear, he lay in the silence of the gloomy room, straining to hear some sound, some indication of their presence. But the only sound was the barely audible hum of his wristwatch and the dismal splatter of raindrops on the cobbled street outside. There was no sound to feed his fear, yet he knew then, without a flicker of doubt, that they were going to kill him. He shook his head trying to clear the sleep from his brain as he turned the idea over and over in his mind. He wondered why he hadn't realized it before, long before, back when they had first started this horrible nerve-wracking cat and mouse game. The idea just hadn't occurred to him, but he knew the game-playing was over. They wanted to kill him now, and he knew that ultimately they would kill him. There was no way for him to escape. He sat up on the edge of the bed painfully, perspiration, standing out on his bare back. And he waited, listening. How could he have slept, exposing himself so helplessly? Every ounce of his energy, all the skill and wit and shrewdness at his command, were necessary in this cruel hunt. Yet he had taken the incredible, terrible chance of sleeping, of losing consciousness, leaving himself wide open and helpless against the attack which he knew was inevitable. How much had he lost? How close did they come while he slept? Fearfully he walked to the window, peered out, and felt his muscles relax a little. The gray foggy streets were still light. He still had a little time before the terrible night began. He stumbled across the small, old-fashioned room, sensing that action of some sort was desperately needed. The bathroom was tiny. He stared in the battered, stained reflector unit, shocked at the red-eyed, stubble-faced apparition that stared back at him. This is Harry Scott, he thought, thirty-two years old in the prime of life, but not the same Harry Scott who started out on a ridiculous quest so many months ago. This Harry Scott was being hunted like an animal, driven by fear, helpless and short of dye, unless he could find an escape somehow. But there were too many of them for him to escape, and they were too clever, and they knew he knew too much. He stepped into the shower-shave unit, trying to relax, to collect his racing thoughts. Above all, he wanted to stay the fear that burned through his mind, driving him to panic and desperation. The memory of the last hellish night was too stark to allow relaxation. The growing fear, the silent, desperate hunt through the night, the realization that their numbers were increasing, his frantic search for a hiding place in the new city, and finally his panic stricken, pel-mel flight down into the alleys and cobbled streets and crumbling frame buildings of the old city. Even more horrible, the friends who had turned on him, who turned out to be like them. Back in the bedroom, he lay down again, his body still tense. There were sounds in the building, footsteps moving around on the floor overhead, a door banging somewhere. With every sound, every breath of noise, his muscles tightened still further, freezing him in fear. His own breath was shallow and rapid in his ears as he lay, listening, waiting. If only something would happen, he wanted to scream, to bang his head against the wall, to run around the room, smashing his fist into the doors, breaking every piece of furniture. It was the waiting, the eternal waiting, the running and waiting for more, feeling the net drawing tighter and tighter as he waited, feeling the measured unhurried tread behind him, always following, coming closer and closer, as though he were a mouse on a string twisting and jerking helplessly. If only they would move, do something he could counter. But he wasn't even sure anymore that he could detect them, and they were so careful never to move into the open. He jumped up feverishly, moved to the window and peered between the slats of the dusty old-fashioned blind at the street below. An empty street at first, wet, gloomy, he saw no one, and then he caught the flicker of light in an entry several doors down and across the street, as a dark figure sparked a cigarette to life. Harry felt the chill run down his back again, still there then, still waiting, a hidden figure always present, always waiting. Harry's eyes scanned the rest of the street rapidly. Two three-wheelers rumbled by, their rubber hissing on the wet pavement. One of them carried the blue and white of the old city police, but the car didn't slow up or hesitate as it passed the dark figure in the doorway. They would never help me anyway, Harry thought, bitterly. He had tried that before and met with ridicule and threats. There would be no help from the police in the old city. Another figure came around a corner. There was something vaguely familiar about the tall body and broad shoulders as a man walked across the wet street. Something Harry faintly recognized from somewhere, during the spinning madness of the past few weeks. The man's eyes turned up toward the window for the briefest instant and then turned steadfastly to the street. Ah, they were sly. You could never spot them looking at you, never for sure, but they were always there, always nearby, and there was no one he could trust any longer, no one to whom he could turn. Not even George Weber. Swiftly his mind reconsidered that possibility, as he watched the figure move down the street. True, Dr. Weber had started him out on this search in the first place, but even Weber would never believe what he had found. Weber was a scientist, a researcher. What could he do? Go to Weber and tell him that there were men alive in the world who were not men, who were somehow men and something more. Could he walk into Dr. Weber's office in the Hoffman Medical Center, walk through the gleaming bright corridors, past the shining metallic doors, tell Dr. Weber that he had found people alive in the world who could actually see in four dimensions, live in four dimensions, think in four dimensions? Could he explain to Dr. Weber that he knew this simply because in some way he had sensed them and traced them and discovered them, and that he had not one iota of proof, except that he was being followed by them, hunted by them even now, in a room in the old city waiting for them to strike him down? He shook his head almost sobbing. That was what was so horrible. He couldn't tell Weber because Weber would be certain that he had gone mad just like the rest. He couldn't tell anyone. He couldn't do anything. He could just wait and run and wait. It was almost dark now, and the creaking of the old bored house intensified the fear that tore at Harry Scott's mind. Tonight was the night. He was sure of it. Maybe he had been foolish in coming here into the slum area where the buildings were relatively unguarded, where anybody could come and go, is he pleased? But the new city had hardly been safer, even in the swankiest private chamber in the highest building. They had had agents there, too, hunting him, driving home the bitter lesson of fear that they had to teach him. Now he was afraid enough. Now they were ready to kill him. Down below he heard a door bang, and he froze his back against the wall. There were footsteps, quiet voices, barely audible. His whole body shook, and his eyes slid round to the window. The figure in the doorway still waited, but the other figure was not visible. He heard the steps on the stair, ascending slowly, steadily, a tread that paced itself with the powerful throbbing of his own pulse. Then the telephone screamed out. Harry gasped. The footsteps were on the floor below, moving steadily upward. The telephone rang again and again. The shrill jangling filled the room insistently. He waited until he couldn't wait any longer. His hand fumbled in a pocket and leveled a tiny, dull gray metal object at the door. With the other hand he took the receiver from the hook. Harry, is that you? His throat was like sandpaper, and the words came out in a rasp. What is it? Harry, this is George, George Weber. His eyes were glued to the door. All right, what do you want? We've got to come talk to us, Harry. We've been waiting for weeks now. You promised us. We've got to talk to you. Harry still watched the door, but his breath came easier. The footsteps moved with ridiculous slowness up the stairs, down the hall, towards the room. What do you want me to do? They've come to kill me. There was a long pause. Harry, are you sure? Dead sure. Can you make a break for it? Harry blinked. I could try, but it won't do any good. Well, at least try, Harry. Get here to the Hoffman Center. We'll help you all we can. I'll try. Harry's words were hardly audible as he set the receiver down with the trembling hand. The room was silent. The footsteps had stopped. A wave of panic passed up Harry's spine. He crossed the room, threw open the door, and stared up and down the hall, unbelieving. The hall was empty. He started down towards the stairs at a dead run, and then too late saw the faint golden glow of a Parkinson's field across the dingy corridor. He gasped in fear and screamed out once as he struck it. And then for second stretching into hours he heard his scream echoing and re-echoing down long, bitter miles of hollow corridor. Two. George Weber leaned back in the soft chair, turning a quizzical glance towards the younger man across the room. He lit a long black cigar. Well, his heavy voice boomed out in the small room. Now that we've got him here, what do you think? The younger man glanced uncomfortably through the glass wall panel into the small dark room beyond. In the dimness he could barely make out the still form on the bed, grotesque with the electrode vernier apparatus already in place at its temples. Dr. Minnelli looked away sharply and leafed through the thick sheaf of chart papers in his hand. I don't know, he said, Deli. I just don't know what to think. The other man's laugh seemed to rise from the depths of his huge chest. His heavy face creased into a thousand wrinkles. Dr. Weber was a large man, his broad shoulders carrying a suggestion of immense power that matched the intensity of his dark, wide-set eyes. He watched Dr. Minnelli's discomfort grow, saw the younger doctor's ears grow red, and the almost cruel lines in his face were masked, as he laughed still louder. Trouble with you, Frank, you just don't have the courage of your convictions. Well, I just don't see anything so funny about it. Minnelli's eyes were angry. The man has a suspicious syndrome, so you followed him, spied on him for weeks on end, which isn't exactly the highest ethical practice in collecting a history. I still can't see how you're justified. Dr. Weber snorted, tossing his cigar down on the desk with disgust. The man is insane. That's my justification. He's out of touch with reality. He's wandered into a wild, impossible, fantastic dream world. We've got to get him out of it, because what he knows, what he's trying to hide from us, is so incredibly dangerous, we don't dare let him go. The big man stared at Minnelli, his dark eyes flashing. Can't you see that? Or would you rather sit back and let Harry Scott go the way that Paulus and Weinberg and the others went? But if he used the Parkinson field on him, Dr. Minnelli shook his head hopelessly. He'd offered to come over, George. We didn't need to use it. Sure, he offered to come. Fine. Fine. But supposing he changed his mind on the way. For all we know, he had us figured into his paranoia, too, and we never would have come near the Hoffman Center. Dr. Weber shook his head. We're not playing a game anymore, Frank. Get that straight. I thought it was a game a couple of years ago, when we first started. But it ceased to be a game when men like Paulus and Weinberg walked in sane, healthy men and came out blubbering idiots. There's no game anymore. We're on to something big. And if Harry Scott can lead us to the core of it, then I can't care too much what happens to Harry Scott. Dr. Minnelli stood up sharply, walked to the window, and looked down over the bright, clean buildings of the Hoffman Medical Center. Out across the terraced park that surrounded the glass towers and shining metal of the center rose the new city, tear upon tear of smooth, functional architecture, a city of dreams built up painfully out of the rubble of the older ruined city. You could kill him, the young man said finally. The psycho integrator isn't any standard interrogative technique. It's dangerous and treacherous. You never know for sure just what you're doing when you dig down into a man's brain tissue with those little electrode probes. But we can learn the truth about Harry Scott, Dr. Weber said. Six months ago Harry Scott was working with us, a quiet, affable, pleasant young fellow. Extremely intelligent, intensely cooperative. He was just the man we needed to work with us, an engineer who could take our data and case studies, study them, and subject them to a completely non-medical analysis. Well, we had to have it done. The problem's been with us for a hundred years now, growing ever since the 1950s and 60s, insanity in the population, growing, spreading without rhyme or reason, insinuating itself into every nook and cranny of our civilized life. The big man blinked at Manelli. Harry Scott was a new approach. We were too close to the problem. We needed a non-medical outsider to take a look, to tell us what we were missing. So Harry Scott walked into the problem and then abruptly lost contact with us. We finally tracked him down, find him gone, out of touch with reality, on the same wretched road that all the others went. With Harry it's paranoia. He's being persecuted. He has the whole world against him. But most important, the factor we don't dare overlook, he's no longer working on the problem. Manelli shifted uneasily. I suppose that's right. Of course it's right, Dr. Weber's eyes flashed. Harry found something in those statistics. Something about the data or the case histories or something Harry Scott himself dug up, opened a door for him to go through a door that none of us ever dreamed existed. We don't know what he found on the other side of that door, or we know what he thinks he found, all this garbage about people that look normal but walk through walls when nobody's looking, think around corners instead of a straight line logic, but what he really found there, we don't have any way of telling. We just know that whatever he really found is something new, something unsuspected, something so dangerous, it can drive an intelligent man into the wildest delusions of paranoid persecution. A new light appeared in Dr. Manelli's eyes as he faced the other doctor. Wait a minute, he said softly. The integrator is an experimental instrument too. Dr. Weber smiled slyly, now real beginning to think. He said, but you'll see only what Scott himself believes and he thinks his story is true. Then we'll have to break his story. Break it? Certainly, for some reason this delusion of persecution is far safer for Harry Scott than facing what he really found out. What we've got to do is make this delusion less safe than the truth. The room was silent for a long moment. Manelli looked up, his fingers trembling. Let's hear it. It's very simple. Up to now Harry Scott has had delusions of persecution. But now we're really going to persecute Harry Scott, as he's never been persecuted before. Three. At first he thought he was at the bottom of a deep well. And he lay quite still, his eyes clamped shut, wondering where he was and how he could possibly have gotten there. He could feel the dampness and chill of the stone floor under him, and nearby heard the damp, insistent drip of water splashing against stone. He felt his muscles tighten as the dripping sound forced itself against his senses. And then he opened his eyes. His first impulse was to scream out wildly and unreasoning, suffocating fear he fought it down. Struggling to sit up in the blackness, his whole mind turned in bitter, hopeless hatred at the ones who had hunted him for so long and now had trapped him. Why? Why did they torture him? Why not kill him outright and have done with it? He shuddered and struggled to his feet, staring about him in horror. It was not a well, but a small room circular with little rivulence of stale water running down the granite walls. The ceiling closed low over his head, and the only source of light came from the single doorway opening into a long, low stone passageway. Wave after wave of panic rose in Harry's throat, each time he fought down the urge to scream, to lie down on the ground and cover his face with his hands and scream in helpless fear. How could they have known the horror that lay in his own mind, the horror of darkness, of damp, slimy walls and scurrying rodents, of the clinging, stale humidity of dungeon passageways? He himself had seldom recalled it except in his most hideous dreams, yet he had known such a fear as a boy so many years ago and now it was all around him. He had known somehow and used it against him. Why? He sank down on the floor, his head and his hands trying to think straight to find some clue in the turmoil bubbling through his mind that would tell him what had happened. He had started down the hallway from his room to find Dr. Webber and tell him about the other people. He stopped short, looked up wide-eyed. Had he been going to Dr. Webber? Had he actually decided to go? Perhaps. Yes, perhaps he had, though Webber would only laugh at such a ridiculous story, but the not-men who had hunted him would not laugh. To them it would not be funny they knew that it was true and they knew he knew it was true. But why not kill him? Why this torture? Why this horrible persecution to dug into the depths of his own nightmares to haunt him? His breath came fast and a chilly sweat broke out on his forehead. Where was he? Was this some long-forgotten vault in the depths of the old city? Or was this another place, another world, perhaps, that the not-men with their impossible powers had created to torture him? His eyes sought the end of the hall, saw the turn at the end, saw the light which seemed to come from the end, and then in an instance he was running down the damp passageway, his pulse pounding at his temples until he could hardly gasp enough breath as he ran. Finally he reached the turn in the corridor where the light was brighter and he swung round to stare at the source of the light a huge burning smoky torch which hung from the wall. Even as he looked at it the torch went out shutting him into inky darkness. The only sound at first was the desperation of his own breath. Then he heard little scurrying sounds around his feet and screamed involuntarily as something sleek and forefoot had jumped at his chest with snapping jaws, shuddering he fought the thing off, his fingers closing on wiry fur as he caught and squeezed a thing when limp and suddenly melted in his hands he heard it splash as it struck the damp ground at his feet. What were they doing to his mind? He screamed out in horror and followed the echoes of his own scream as he ran down the stone corridor blindly slipping on the wet stone floor falling on his knees into inches of brackish water scraping back to his feet with an uncontrollable convulsion of fear and loathing only to run more. The corridor suddenly broke into two and he stopped short. He didn't know how far or how long he had run but it suddenly occurred to him that he was still alive still safe. Only his mind was under attack only his mind was afraid teetering on the edge of control and this maze of dungeon tunnels where could such a thing exist? So perfectly outfitted to horrify him so neatly fitting into his own pattern of childhood fears and terrors from where could such a very individual attack on his sanity have sprung from nowhere except from his own mind. For an instant he saw a flicker of light thought he grasped the edge of a concept previously obscure to him. He stared around him at the mist swirling down the damp dark corridor and thought of the rat that had melted in his hand. Suddenly his mind was a fire searching through his experience with the strange not men he had learned to detect trying to remember everything he had learned and adduced about them before they began their brutal persecution. They were men and they looked like men but they were different. They had other properties of mind other capabilities that men did not have. They were not men they could exist and coexist two people in one frame one person known realized by all who saw the other one concealed except from those who learned how to look. They could use their minds they could rationalize correctly they could use their curious four dimensional knowledge to bring them to answers no three dimensional man could reach but they couldn't project into men's minds. Carefully Harry peered down the misty tunnels. They were clever these creatures and powerful and since they had discovered that he knew them they had done their work of fear and terror on his mind skillfully but they were limited too they couldn't make things happen that were not true. Fantasies Illusions Yes this dungeon was an illusion it had to be. He cursed and started down the right hand corridor his heart sinking there was no such place and he knew it. He was walking in a dream a fantasy that had no substance yet that could do no more than frighten him drive him insane and yet he must have already lost his mind to be accepting such an illusion. Why had he delayed? Why hadn't he gone to the Hoffman Center? Laid the whole story before Dr. Weber and Dr. Minnelly at the very first told them what he had found. Well true they might have thought him insane but they wouldn't have put him to torture. They might even they might even have believed him enough to investigate what he told them and then the cat would have been out of the bag the tail would have been incredible but at least his mind would have been safe. He turned down another corridor and walked suddenly into waste-deep water so cold it numbed his legs. He stopped again to force back the tendrils of unreasoning horror that brushed his mind. Nothing could really harm him. He would merely wait until his mind finally reached a balance again. There might be no end it might be a ghastly trap but he would wait. Strangely the mist was becoming greenish in color as it swirled toward him in the damp vaulted passageway. His eyes began watering a little and the lining of his nose started to burn. He stopped short newly alarmed and stared at the walls rubbing the tears away to clear his vision. The greenish yellow haze grew thicker catching his eyes and burning like a thousand furies ripping into his throat until he was choking and coughing as though great knives sliced through his lungs. He tried to scream and started running blindly each gasping breath was in agony as the blistering gas dug deeper and deeper into his lungs. Reasoned departed from him he was screaming incoherently as he stumbled up a stony ramp crashed into a wall spun round and smashed blindly into another and then something caught at his shirt. He felt the heavy planks and pounded iron scrollwork of a huge door and threw himself upon it wrenching at the old latch until the door swung open with a screech of rusty hinges he fell forward on his face and the door swung shut behind him. He lay face down panting and sobbing in the stillness. coarse hands grasped his collar jerking him rudely to his feet and he opened his eyes across the dim vaulted room he could see the shadowy form of a man a big man with a broad chest and powerful shoulders a man whose rich voice Harry almost recognized but whose face was deep in shadow as Harry wiped the tears from his tortured eyes he heard the van's voice rumble out at him perhaps you've had enough now to change your mind about telling us the truth. Harry stared not quite comprehending the the truth the man's voice was harsh cutting across the room impatiently the truth I said a problem you fool what you saw what you learned you know perfectly well what I'm referring to but we'll swallow no more of this silly four-dimensional Superman tale so don't bother start it I don't understand you it's it's true again he tried to peer across the room why are you hunting me like this what are you trying to do to me we want the truth we want to know what you saw but but you're what I saw you you know what I found out I mean he stopped his face going white his hand went to his mouth he stared still harder who are you he whispered the truth the man roared you'd better be quickly you'll be back in the corridor Weber your last chance Harry without warning Harry was across the room flying across the desk crashing into the big man's chest with a scream of fury he fought driving his fists into the powerful chest wrenching at the thick flailing arms of the startled man it's you he screamed it's you that's been torturing me it's you that's been hunting me down all this time not the other people you and your crowd of ghouls have been at my throat he threw the big man off balance dropped heavily on him as he fell back to the ground glared down into the other's angry brown eyes and then as though he had never been there at all the big man vanished and Harry sat back on the floor his whole body shaking with frustrated sobs as his mind twisted in anguish he had been wrong completely wrong ever since he had discovered the not men because he had thought they had been the ones who hunted and tortured him for so long and now he knew how far he had been wrong for the face of the shadowy man the man behind the nightmare he was living was the face of Dr. George Weber you're a fool said Dr. Manelli sharply as he turned away from the sleeping figure on the bed to face the older man of all the ridiculous things to let him connect you with this young doctor turned abruptly and sat down in a chair glowering at Dr. Weber you haven't gotten the first base yet but you've just given Scott enough evidence to free himself from integrator control altogether if he give it's any thought I suppose you realize that nonsense Dr. Weber retorted they had enough information to do that when we first started I'm no more worried now than I was then I'm sure he doesn't know enough about the psycho integrator to be able to voluntarily control the patient operator relationship to any degree oh no he's safe enough but you've missed the whole point of that little interview Dr. Weber grinned at Manelli I'm afraid I have it looked to me like useless bravado the persecution man the persecution he shifted his sights before that interview the not men were torturing him remember because they were afraid he would report his findings to me of course but now it's I that's against him his grin widened you see where that leads we were talking almost it's all you believe the story about a different sort of people among us Dr. Weber shrugged perhaps I do oh come now George Dr. Weber's eyebrows went up and the grin disappeared from his face Harry Scott believes at Frank we mustn't forget that or miss its significance before Harry started this investigation of his he wouldn't have paid any attention to such nonsense but he believes it now but Harry Scott is insane you said it yourself ah yes said Dr. Weber insane just like the others who started to get somewhere along these lines of investigation try to analyze the growing incidence of insanity in the population and you yourself go insane you've got to be crazy to be a psychiatrist it's an old joke but it isn't very funny anymore too much for coincidence and then consider the nature of the insanity a full-blown paranoia oh it's amazing a cunning organization of men or not men a regular fairy story all straight from Harry Scott's agile young mind but now it's we who are persecuting him and he still believes his fairy tale so Dr. Weber's eyes flashed angrily it's too neat Frank it's clever and it's powerful whatever we're up against but I think we've got an ace in the hole we have scary Scott and you really think he'll lead us somewhere Dr. Weber laughed that door I spoke of that Harry peeked through I think we'll go back to it again I think he started to open that door already this time I'm going to follow him through four it seemed incredible yet Harry Scott knew that he had not been mistaken it had been Dr. Weber's face that he had seen a face no one could forget an unmistakable face and that meant that it had been Dr. Weber who had been persecuting him but why he had been going to report to Weber when he had run into that golden field in the Roominghouse Hallway and suddenly things had changed Harry felt a chill reaching to his fingers and toes yes something had changed all right the attack on him had suddenly become butcherous cruel sneaking into his mind somehow to use his most dreaded nightmares against him there was no telling what new horrors might be waiting for him but he knew that he would lose his mind unless he could find an escape he was on his feet his heart pounding he had to get out of here wherever he was he had to get back to town back to the city back to where people were if he could find a place to hide a place where he could rest he could try to think his way out of this ridiculous maze or at least try to understand it he wrenched at the door and the passageway started through and smashed face up against a solid brick wall he cried out and jumped back from the wall blood trickled from his nose the door was walled up the mortar dry and hard frantically he glanced around the room there were no other doors only the row of tiny windows around the ceiling of the room pale ghostly squares of light he pulled the chair over to the windows peered out through the cob webbed openings to the corridor beyond it was not the same hallway as before but an old dirty building corridor incredibly aged with bricks sagging away from the walls at the end he could see stairs and even the faintest hint of sunlight coming from above wildly he tore the masonry of the window chipping away at the soggy mortar with his fingers until he could squeeze through the opening he fell to the floor of the corridor outside it was much colder and the silence was no longer so intense he seemed to feel rather than hear the surging power the rumble of many machines the little almost palpable vibrations from far above him he started in a dead run down the musty corridor to the stairs and began to climb them almost stumbling over himself in his eagerness after several flights the brick walls gave way to cleaner plastic and suddenly a brightly lighted corridor stretched before him panting from the climb Harry ran down the corridor to the end wrenched open a door and looked out anxiously he was almost stunned by the bright light at first he couldn't orient himself as he stared down at the metal ramp the moving strips of glowing metal carrying the throngs of people sliding along the thoroughfare before him unaware of him watching unaware of any change from the usual the towering buildings before him rose to unbelievable heights bathed in ever-changing rainbow colors and he felt his pulse thumping in his temples as he gaped he was in the new city of that there was no doubt this was the part of the great metropolis which had been built again since the devastating war that had nearly wiped the city from the earth a decade before these were the moving streets the beautiful residential apartments following the modern neo-functional patterns and the participational design which had completely altered the pattern of city living the old city still remained of course the slums the tenements the skid rows of the metropolis but this was the teeming heart of the city a new home for men to live in and this was the stronghold where the not men could be found too the thought cut through Harry's mind sending a tremor up his spine he had found them here he had uncovered his first clues here and discovered them and even now his mind was filled with a horrible paralyzing fear he had felt that first night when he had made the discovery yet he knew now that he dared not go back where he had come from at last he could understand why the not men might have feared and persecuted him but he could not understand the horrible assault that Dr. Weber had unleashed and somehow he found Dr. Weber's attack infinitely more frightening he seemed to be safe here though at least for the moment quickly he moved down onto the nearest moving sidewalk heading towards the living section of the new city he knew where he would go there where he would lock himself in a place where he could think possibly find a way to fight off Dr. Weber's attack of nightmares he settled back on a bench in the moving sidewalk watching the city slide past him for several minutes before he noticed the curious shadow form which seemed to whisk out of its field of vision every time he looked they were following him again he looked around wildly as the sidewalk moved swiftly through the cool evening air far above he could see the shimmering iridescent screen that still stood to protect the new city from the devastating virus attacks which might again strike down from the skies without warning far ahead he could see the magnificent bridge formed by the sidewalk crossing over to the apartment area where the thousands who worked in the new city were returning to their homes someone was still following him presently he heard the sound so close to his ear he jumped yet so small he could hardly identify it as a human voice what was it you found Harry what did you discover better tell better tell he saw the rift in the moving sidewalk coming far ahead a great gaping rent in the metal fabric of the swiftly moving escalator as if a huge blade were slicing it down the middle Harry's hand went to his mouth choking back a scream as the whole moved with incredible rapidity down the center of the strip swallowing up whole rows of the seats moving straight towards his own he glanced in front he glanced in fright right over the side just as the sidewalk moved out onto the bridge and he gasps as he saw the towering canyons of buildings fall far below saw the seats tumble end over end heard the sounds of screaming blend into the roar of air by his ears and then the rift screamed by him with a demonic whine and he sank back onto his bench gaping as the two cloven halves of the strip clang back together again he stared at the people around him on the strip and they stared back at him mildly unperturbed and returned to their evening papers as the strip passed through the first local station on the other side of the bridge Harry Scott sprang to his feet moving swiftly across slower strips for the exit channels he noted the station stopped vaguely but his only thought wow was speed desperate speed fear driven speed to put into action the plan that had suddenly burst into his mind he knew that he had reached his limit he had come to a point beyond which he couldn't fight alone somehow Weber had burrowed into his brain laid his mind open to attacks of nightmare and madness that he could never hope to fight facing this alone he would lose his mind his only hope was to go for help to the ones he feared only slightly less the ones who had minds capable of fighting back for him he crossed under the movable sidewalks and boarded the one going back into the heart of the city somewhere there he hoped he would find the help he needed somewhere back in that city where men he had discovered who were men and something more Frank Minnelli carefully took the blood pressure of the sleeping figure on the bed then turned to the other man he'll be dead soon he snapped another few minutes now it's all it'll take just a few more absurd there's nothing in these stimuli that can kill him George Weber's had tense his eyes fixed on the pale fluctuating screen near the head of the bed his own mind can kill him he's on the run now you've broken him loose from his nice safe paranoia his mind is retreating running back from some other delusions it's escaping to the safety his fantasy people can afford him these not men he thinks about yes yes agreed Dr. Weber his eyes eager oh he's on the run now but what will he do when he finds there aren't any not men to save him what will he do then Weber looked up frowning and grim and will know what he found behind the dark door that he opened that's what no you're wrong he'll die he'll find nothing and the shock will kill him my god Weber you can't tamper with a man's mind like this and hope to save his life you're obsessed you've always been obsessed by this impossible search for something in our society some undiscovered factor to account for the mental illness the divergent minds but you can't kill a man to trace it down it's too neat said Weber he comes back to tell us the truth and we call him insane we say he's paranoid throw him in restraint place him in an asylum and we never know what he found the truth is too incredible when we hear it it must be insanity we're hearing the big doctor laughed jabbing his thumb at the screen this isn't insanity we're seeing oh no this is the answer we're following I won't stop now I've waited too long for this show well I say stop it while he's still alive Dr. Weber's eyes were deadly get out Frank he said softly I'm not stopping now his eyes returned to the screen to the bobbing figure that the psycho integrator placed on the fluorescent background 20 years of search had led him here and now he knew the end was at hand five it was a wild nightmarish journey at every step Harry's senses betrayed him his wristwatch turned into a brilliant blue-green snake that snapped at his wrist the air was full of snarling creatures that threatened him at every step but he fought them off knowing that they would harm him far less than panic would he had no idea where to hunt nor whom to try to reach but he knew that they were in the new city and somehow he knew they would help him if only he could find them he got off the moving strip as soon as the lights of the center of the city were clear below and stepped into the self-operated lift that sped down to ground level from the elevator he moved on to one of the long honeycombed concourses filled with passing shoppers who stared at the colorful enticing three-dimensional displays at one of the intersections ahead he spotted a visisphone station and dropped into the little seat before the screen there had been a number if only he could recall it but as he started to dial the silvery screen shattered into a thousand sparkling glass chips showering the floor with crystal and sparks Harry cursed grabbed the hand instrument and jangled frantically for the operator before she could answer the instrument grew warm in his hand then hot and soft like wax slowly it melted and ran down his arm he bolted out into the stream of people trying desperately to draw some comfort from the crowd around him he felt utterly alone he had to contact the not men who were in the city warn them before they spotted him of the attack he carried with him if you were leading his pursuer he could expect no mercy from the ones whose help he sought he knew the links to which they would go to remain undetected in the society around them yet he had to find them in the distance he saw a figure waiting back against one of the show windows Harry stopped short ducked into a doorway and peered out fearfully their eyes locked for an instant then the figure moved on Harry felt a jolt of horror search through him Dr. Webber hunting him in person he ducked out of the doorway turned and ran madly in the opposite direction searching for an up escalator he could catch behind him he heard shots heard the angry whine of bullets past his ear he breathed in great gasping sobs as he found an almost empty escalator and bounded up at four steps at a time below he could see Webber coming too his broad shoulders forcing their way relentlessly through the middle of people panting Harry reached the top checked his location against the wall map and started down the long ramp which led toward the building he had tried to call another shot broke out behind him the wall alongside powdered away leaving a gaping hole on impulse he leaped into the hole running through to the rear of the building as the weakened wall swayed and crumbled into a heap of rubble just as Webber reached the place Harry had entered Harry breathed a sigh of relief and raced up the stairs of the building to reach a ramp on another level he turned his eyes towards the tall building at the end of the concourse there he could hide and relax and try somehow to make a contact someone's fell into step beside him and took his arm gently but firmly Harry jerked away turning terrified eyes to the one who had joined him quiet said the man steering him round towards the edge of the concourse not a sound you'll be all right Harry felt a tremor pass through his mind the barest touching of mental fingertips a recognition that sent a surge of eager blood through his heart he stopped short facing the man I'm being followed he gasped you can't take me anywhere you don't want Webber to follow or you'll be in terrible danger the stranger shrugged and smiled briefly you're not here you're in a psycho integrator it can hurt you if you let it but it can't hurt me he stepped up his pace slightly and in a moment they turned abruptly into a darkened cul-de-sac suddenly they were moving through the wall of the building into the brilliantly lit lobby of the tall building Harry gasped but the stranger let him without a sound towards the elevator stepped aboard with him and sped upward the silence broken only by the whoosh whoosh of the passing floors finally they stepped out into a quiet corridor and down through a small office door a man sat behind the desk in the office his face quiet his eyes very wide and dark he hardly glanced at Harry but turned his eyes to the other man set he asked couldn't miss now the man nodded and looked at last at Harry you're upset he murmured once bothering you Weber said Harry hoarsely he's following me here he'll spot you I tried to warn you before I came but I couldn't the man at the desk smiled hmm Weber again huh our old friend Weber that's all right Weber's at the end of his tether there's nothing he can do to stop us he's trying to attack with force and he fails to realize that time and thought are on our side the time when force would have succeeded against us his long past but now there are many of us almost as many as not Harry stared shrewdly at the man behind the desk then why are you so afraid of Weber he asked afraid well you know you are long ago you threatened me if I reported to him you watched me played with me why are you afraid of him the man sighed hmm Weber's premature we're stalling for time that's all we wait we've grown from so very few back in the 1940s and 50s but the time for quiet usurpation of power has not quite arrived but men like Weber force our hand discover us try to expose us Harry's goth's face was white his hands shaking and what do you do to them we deal with them and those like me the man smiled lopsidedly those like Paulus and Weinberg and the rest they're happy really like little children but one like you is so much more useful he pointed almost apologetically to the small screen on his desk Harry looked at it realization dawning he watched the huge broad-shouldered figure moving down the hallway towards the door Weber was dangerous to you unbelievably dangerous so dangerous we would use any means to trap him suddenly the door burst open and there stood Weber a triumphant Weber face flushed eyes wide as he stared at the man behind the desk the man smiled back and said come on in George we've been waiting for you Weber stepped through the door Manelli you fool there was a blinding flash as he crossed the threshold a faint crackle of sound reached Harry's ears then the world blacked out it might have been minutes or hours or days the man who had been behind the desk was leaning over Harry smiling down at him gently bandaging the treffin wounds at his temples gently he said as Harry tried to sit up don't try to move he went through a rough time Harry peered up in him oh not Dr. Weber no I'm Dr. Manelli Dr. Weber's been called away an accident he'll be some time recovering I'll be taking care of you vaguely Harry was aware that something was peculiar something not quite as it should be the answer slowly dawned on him the statistical analysis he explained I was supposed to get some data for Dr. Weber about an analysis something about rising insanity rates Dr. Manelli looked blank insanity rates you must be mistaken you were brought here for an immunity examination nothing more but you can check with Dr. Weber when he gets back six George Weber sat in the little room trembling listening his eyes wide in the thick misty darkness he knew it would be a matter of time now he couldn't run much further he hadn't seen them true oh he'd been very clever but they thought they were dealing with a fool and they weren't he knew they'd been following and he'd known it for a long time now it was just as he had been telling the man downstairs the night before they were everywhere your neighbor upstairs the butcher on the corner your own son or daughter maybe even the man you were talking to everywhere and of course he had to warn as many as people as he possibly could before they caught him throttled him off as they had threatened to if he talked to anyone if only the people would listen to him when he told them how cleverly it was all planned how it would only be a matter of months maybe only weeks or days before the change would happen and the world would be quietly silently taken over by the other people the different people who could walk through the walls and think in impossibly complex channels and no one would know the difference because business would go on as usual he shivered sinking down lower on the bed if only people would listen to him it wouldn't be long now he had heard the stealthy footsteps on the landing below his room some time ago this was the night they had chosen to make good their threats to choke off his dangerous voice once and for all there were footsteps on the stairs now growing louder wildly he glanced around the room as the steps moved down the hall toward his door he rushed to the window threw up the sash and screamed horizontally to the silent street below look out they're here all around us they're planning to take over look out look out the door burst open and there were two men moving toward him grim faced dressed in white tall strong men with sad faces and strong arms one was saying better come quietly, Mr. no need to wake up the whole town end of the dark door by Alan Edward Norse recording by Bruce Belmires