 Subjectivity by Norman Spinrad. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Subjectivity by Norman Spinrad. Boredom on a long interstellar trip can be quite a problem, but the entertainment technique the government dreamed up for this one was a little too good. Interplanetary flight having been perfected, the planets and moons of the Sol system having been colonized, man turned his attention to the stars and ran into a stone wall. After three decades of trying, scientists reluctantly concluded that a faster-than-light drive was an impossibility, at least within the realm of any known theory of the universe. They gave up. But a government does not give up so easily, especially a unified government which already controls the entire habitat of the human race. Most especially a psychologically and sociologically enlightened government which sees the handwriting on the wall and has already noticed the first signs of racial claustrophobia, an objectless sense of frustrated rage, increases in senseless crimes, proliferation of perversions, and vices of every kind. With great juice sealed in a bottle, the human race had begun to ferment. Therefore, the solar government took a slightly different point of view toward interstellar travel. Man must go to the stars, period. Therefore, man will go to the stars. If the speed of light could not be exceeded, then man would go to the stars within that limit. When a government with tens of billions of dollars to spend becomes monomaniacal, great things can be accomplished. Also, unfortunately, unspeakable horrors. Stage one. A drive was developed which could propel a spaceship at half the speed of light. This was merely a matter of technological concentration and several billion dollars. Stage two. A ship was built around the drive and outfitted with every conceivable safety device. A laser beam communication system was installed so that Sol could keep in contact with the ship all the way to Centaurus. A crew of ten carefully screened, psyched, and trained near-supermen was selected and the ship was launched on a sixteen-year round trip to Centaurus. It never came back. Two years out, the ten near-supermen became ten raving maniacs. But the solar government did not give up. The next ship contained five near-supermen and five near-superwomen. They only lasted for a year and a half. The solar government intensified the screening process. The next ship was manned by ten bonafide supermen. They stayed sane for nearly three years. The solar government sent out a ship containing five supermen and five superwomen. In two years they had ten superlunatics. The psychologists came to the unstartling conclusion that even the cream of humanity in a sexually balanced crew could not stand up psychologically to sixteen years in a small steel womb surrounded by billions of cubic miles of nothing. One would have expected reasonable men to have given up, not the solar government. Monomania had produced great things in the form of a C2 drive. It now proceeded to produce unspeakable horrors. The cream of the race had failed, reasoned the solar government, therefore we will give the dregs a chance. The fifth ship was manned by homosexuals. They lasted only six months. A ship full of lesbians bettered that by only two weeks. Number seven was manned by schizophrenics. Since they were already mad, they did not go crazy. Nevertheless, they did not come back. Number eight was catatonics. Nine was paranoid. Ten was sadists. Eleven was masochists. Twelve was a mixed crew of sadists and masochists. No luck. Maybe it was because thirteen was still a mystic number or maybe it was merely that the solar government was running out of ideas. At any rate, ship number thirteen was the longest shot of all. Background. From the beginnings of man, it had been known that certain plants, mushrooms, certain cacti produced intense hallucinations. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists and other less scientifically minded had begun to extract those hallucinogenic compounds, chiefly mescaline and psilocybin. The next step was the synthesis of hallucinogens. LSD-25 was the first, and it was far more powerful than the extracts. In the next few centuries, more and more different hallucinogens were synthesized. LSD-105, johannic acid Huxley on baronite. So, by the time the solar government had decided that the crew of ship number thirteen would attempt to cope with the terrible reality of interstellar space by denying that reality, they had quite an assortment of hallucinogens to choose from. The one they chose was the new as yet untested. Two experiments for the price of one explained economy-minded officials and unbelievably complex compounds tentatively called Omnidrine. Omnidrine was what the name implied, a hallucinogen with all the properties of the others, some which had proven to be all its own and some which were as yet unknown. As ten micrograms was one day's dose for the average man, it was the ideal hallucinogen for the starship. So they sealed five men and five women. They had given up on sexually unbalanced crews in ship number thirteen, along with half a ton of Omnidrine, and their fondest wishes pointed the ship toward Centaurus and prayed for a miracle. In a way they could not have possibly foreseen, they got it. When ship thirteen passed the orbit of Pluto, a meeting was held since this could be considered the beginning of interstellar space. The ship was reasonably large, ten small private cabins, a bridge that would only be used for planet falls, large storage areas, and a big common room where the crew had gathered. They were all sitting in all-purpose lounges arranged in a circle. A few had their lounges at full recline, but most preferred the upright position. However, Brunei, the nominal captain, had just opened the first case of Omnidrine and taken out a bottle of the tiny pills. This fellow inmates, he said, is Omnidrine. The time has come for us to indulge. The automatics are all set. We won't have to do a thing we don't want to for the next eight years. He poured ten of the tiny blue pills into the palm of his right hand. On Earth they used to have some kind of traditional ceremony when a person crossed the equator for the first time. Since we are crossing a far more important equator, I thought we should have some kind of ceremony. The crew squirmed irritably. I do tend to be verbose, Brunei thought. Well, anyway, I just thought we all ought to take the first pills together, he said, somewhat defensively. So come on, Ollie, said a skinny, sour-looking man of about thirty years. OK, Lazar, OK. Marashavsky's going to be trouble, Brunei thought. Why did they put him on the ship? He handed the pills around. Lazar Marashavsky was about to gulp his down. Wait a minute, said Brunei. Let's all do this together. One, two, three. They swallowed the pills. In about ten minutes, thought Brunei, we should be feeling it. He looked at the crew. Ten of us, he thought, ten brilliant misfits. Lazar, who has spent half his life high on baronite, Vera Galendez would be medium, trying to make herself telepathic with mescaline. Jorge Donner, why is he here? Me, at least with me, it's simple. This, or jail. What a crew. Drug addicts, occultists, sensationalists. And what else? What makes a person do a thing like this? It'll all come out, thought Brunei. In sixteen years, it'll all come out. Feel anything yet, Ollie? Said Marsha Johnson. No doubt why she came along. Just an ugly old maid liking the idea of being cooped up with five men. Nothing yet, said Brunei. He looked around the room. Plain steel walls lined with cabinets full of omnodrine on two sides. View screens on the ceiling, bare floor. The other two walls decked out like an automatic. Plain gray steel walls. Then why were the gray steel walls turning pink? Uh-oh, said Joby Krell, rolling her pretty blonde head. Oh, oh, here it comes. The walls are dancing. The ceiling is a spiral, muttered Vera. A winding red spiral. OK, fellow inmates, said Brunei. It's hitting. Now the walls were red. Bright fire engine red, and they were melting. No, not melting, but evaporating. Like crystal it is, said Lin Pei, waving his delicate oriental hands, like jade as transparent as crystal. There is a camel in the circle, said Lazar, a brown camel. Let's all try to see the camel together, said Vera Galendez sharply. Tell us what it looks like, Lazar. It's brown. It's the two-humped kind. It has a two-foot tail. And big feet, said Lin Pei. A stupid face, said Donner. Very stupid. Your camel is a great bore, said the stocky, scowling, bram-dacker. Let's have something else, said Joby. OK, replied Brunei. Now someone else tell us what they see. A lizard, said Linda Tobias, a strange somber girl inclined to the morbid. A lizard squeaked Ingrid Solon. No, said Lin Pei, a dragon, a green dragon with a forked red tongue. He has little, useless wings, said Lazar. He's totally oblivious to us, said Vera. Brunei saw the dragon. It was five feet long, green, and scaly. It was a conventional dragon, except for the most bovine expression in its eyes. Yes, he thought the dragon is here, but the greater part of him knew that it was an illusion. How long would this go on? It's good that we see the same things, said Marsha. Let's always see the same things. Yes, yes. Now a mountain, a tall blue mountain. With snow on the peak. Yes, and clouds. One week out. Oliver Brunei stepped into the common room. Lin Pei, Vera, and Lazar were sitting together on what appeared to be a huge purple toadstool. But that's my hallucination, thought Brunei. At least I think it is. Hello, Ollie, said Lazar. Hi, what are you doing? We're looking at the dragon again, said Vera. Join us? Brunei thought of the dragon for a moment. The toadstool disappeared, and the by now familiar bovine dragon took its place. In the last few days they had discovered that if any two of them concentrated on something long enough to materialize it, anyone else who wanted to could see it in a moment. What's so interesting about that silly dragon, said Brunei? How about the camel, said Lazar? The dragon turned into the two-humped brown camel. Fui, said Lin Pei. OK, said Vera, so what do you want? Lin Pei thought for a moment. How about a meadow, he said? A soft lawn of green grass. The sky is blue, and there are a few white clouds. Clover is blooming, said Lazar. Smell it. Brunei reclined on the soft green grass. The smell of the earth beneath him was warm and moist. A few apple trees here and there, he said, and there was shade. Look over the hill, said Lazar. There's the dragon. Will you please get rid of that dragon? snapped Brunei. OK, Ollie, OK. One month out. Get out of the way! yelled Brunei. He gave the dragon a kick. It moved plaintively. That wasn't very nice, Ollie, said Lazar. That dragon is always underfoot, said Brunei. Why don't you get rid of it? I've taken a liking to it, said Lazar. Besides, what about your saint Bernard? This ship is getting too cluttered up with everyone's hallucinations, said Brunei. Ever since when was it, a week ago? Ever since we've been able to conjure him up by ourselves and make everyone else see him? Dacker dematerialized the woman on his lap. Why don't we get together, he said? Get together? Yes, we could agree on an environment. Look at this common room, for example. What a mess. Here it's a meadow, there it's a beach, a palace, a boudoir. You mean we should make it the same for all of us? asked Lazar. Sure, we can have whatever we want in our cabins, but let's make some sense out of the common room. Good idea, said Brunei. I'll call the others. Three months out. Brunei stepped through the stuccoed portal and into the central Spanish garden. He noticed that the sky was blue with a few fleecy white clouds, but then the weather was always good. They had agreed on that. Lazar, Ingrid, Lin Pei, and Vera were sitting on the green lawn surrounding the fountain. Dacker, Jobi, Linda, and Donner preferred the shade and lounged against the white arabesque wall which enclosed the garden on four sides, broken only by four arched entrance portals. The garden had been a good compromise, thought Brunei, something for everyone, fresh air and sunshine, but also the mental security offered by walls, which also provided shade for those who wanted it. A fountain, a few palm trees, grass, flowers, even the little formal Japanese rock garden that Lin Pei had insisted on. Hello, Ollie, said Lazar. Nice day. Isn't it always? replied Brunei. How about a little shower? Maybe tomorrow. I noticed a lot of sleeping people today, said Brunei. Yes, said Lin Pei. By now the garden seems to be able to maintain itself. You think it has a separate existence? asked Ingrid. Of course not, said Vera. Our subconscious minds are maintaining it. It's probably here when we're all asleep. No way of telling that, said Brunei. Besides, how can it exist when we're asleep when it doesn't really exist to begin with? Semantics, Ollie, semantics. Brunei took a bottle of Omnidrine out of his pocket. Time to charge up the old batteries again, he said. He passed out the pills. I noticed Marcia is still in her cabin. Yeah, said Lazar. She keeps to herself a lot. No great. Just then Marcia burst into the garden screaming, Make it go away. Make it go away. Behind her slithered a gigantic black snake with a head as big as a horse's and bulging red eyes. I thought we agreed to leave our private hallucinations in our cabins, snapped Brunei. I tried. I tried. I don't want it around, but it won't go away. Do something. Ten feet of snake had already entered the garden. The thing seemed endless. Take it easy, said Lazar. Let's all concentrate and think it away. They tried to erase the snake, but it just rolled its big red eyes. That won't work, said Vera. Her subconscious is still fighting us. Part of her must want the snake here. We've all got to be together to erase it. Marcia began to cry. The snake advanced another two feet. Oh, quiet! rassed Lazar. Ollie, do I have your permission to bring my dragon into the garden? The work of the snake. Brunei scowled. You and your dragon. OK. Maybe it'll work. Instantly the green dragon was in the garden, but it was no longer five feet long and bovine. It was a good twelve feet long with cold reptilian eyes and big yellow fangs. It took one look at the snake, opened its powerful jaws, and belched a huge tongue of orange flame. The serpent was incinerated. It disappeared. Brunei was trembling. What happened, Lazar? He said, that's not the same stupid little dragon. Ha, ha, ha, squeak Lazar. He's, uh, grown. Brunei suddenly noticed that Lazar was Ashen. He also noticed that the dragon was turning in their direction. Get it out of here, Lazar! Get it out of here! Lazar nodded. The dragon flickered and went pale, but it was over a minute before it disappeared entirely. Six months out. Things wandered the passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger every day, and there was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wing spread, and old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon and other assorted horrors. Even Oliver Brunei's friendly Saint Bernard had grown to monstrous size, turned pale green and grown large yellow fangs. Only the Spanish garden in the common room was free of the monstrosities. Here the combined consciousness of the ten crew members were still strong enough to banish the rampaging hallucinations. The ten of them sat around the fountain, which seemed to shade less sparkling. There were even rain clouds in the sky. I don't like it, said Bramdacker. It's getting completely out of control. So we just have to stay in the garden. That's all, said Brunei. The food's all here, and so is the Omnidrine, and they can't come here. Not yet, said Marcia. They all shuddered. What went wrong? asked Ingrid. Nothing, said Donner. They didn't know what would happen when they sent us out, so we can't say they were wrong. Very comforting, croaked Lazar, but can someone tell me why we can't control them any more? Who knows, said Brunei. At least we can keep them out of here. That's—there was a snuffling at the wall. The head of something like a tyrannosaurus rex peered over the wall at them. Ugh! said Lin Pei. I think that's a new one. The dragon's head appeared alongside the tyrannosaurs. Well, at least there's a familiar face, tittered Linda. Very funny. Marcia screamed. The huge black snake thrust its head through a portal. And the flap of leathery wings could be heard, and the smell of sulfur. Come on, come on, shouted Brunei. Let's get these things out of here. After five minutes of intense group concentration, the last of the horrors was banished. It was a lot harder this time, said Dacker. There were more of them, said Donner. They're getting stronger and bolder. Maybe some day they'll break through and— Lin Pei let the sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending. Don't be ridiculous, snapped Brunei. They're not real. They can't kill us. Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrine, suggested Vera, without very much conviction. At this point, said Brunei, he shuddered. If the garden disappeared and we had nothing but the bear ship for the next fifteen and a half years and we knew it, and at the same time knew that we had the Omnidrine to bring it back, how long do you think we'd hold off? You're right, said Vera. We'd just have to stick it out, said Brunei. Just remember, they can't kill us. They aren't real. Yes, the crew whispered in tiny, frail voice. They aren't real. Seven months out. The garden was covered with a gloomy gray cloud layer. Even the weather was getting harder and harder to control. The crew of the Starship No. 13 huddled around the fountain, staring into the water, trying desperately to ignore the snufflings, flappings, wheezes, and growls coming from outside the walls. But occasionally a scaly head would raise itself above the wall or a pterodactyl or bat would flap overhead, and there would be violent shudders. I still think we should stop taking the Omnidrine, said Vera Galendez. If we stopped taking it, asked Brunei, which would disappear first, them or the garden? Vera grimaced. But we've got to do something, she said. We can't even make them disappear at all anymore, and it's becoming a full-time job just to keep them outside the walls. And sooner or later, interjected Lazar, we're not going to be strong enough to keep them out. The snake! The snake! screamed Marsha. It's coming again. The huge black head was already through the portal. Stop the snake, everyone, yelled Brunei. Eyes were riveted on the ugly serpent in intense concentration. After five minutes it was obviously a stalemate. The snake had not been able to advance, nor could the humans force it to retreat. Then smoke began to rise behind the far wall. The dragon's burning down the wall, shrieked Lazar. Stop him! They concentrated on the dragon. The smoke disappeared. But the snake began to advance again. They're too strong, moaned Brunei. We can't hold them back. They stopped the snake for a few moments, but the smoke began to billow again. They're going to break through Scream Donner. We can't stop them. What are we going to do? Help! Creakings, cracklings, groanings as the walls began to crack and blister and shake. Suddenly Bram Dacker stood up, his dark eyes aflame. Only one thing strong enough he bellowed. Earth! Earth! Earth! Think of Earth, all of you. We're back on Earth. Visualize it. Make it real, and the monsters have to disappear. But where on Earth, said Vera bewildered. The spaceport shouted Brunei. The spaceport, we all remember the spaceport. We're back on Earth, the spaceport. Earth! Earth! Earth! The garden was beginning to flicker. It became red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, invisible. Then back again through the spectrum the other way. Violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, invisible. Back and forth like a pendulum through the spectrum. Oliver Brunei's head hurt unbearably. He could see the pain on the other faces, but he allowed only one thought to fill his being. Earth! The spaceport. Earth! More and more, faster and faster the garden flickered, and now it was the old common room again, and that was flickering. Light was flickering, mind was flickering, time too seemed to flicker. Only Earth! thought Brunei. Earth doesn't flicker, the spaceport doesn't flicker. Earth! Earth! Now all the flickerings of color, time, mind, and dimensions were coalescing into one gigantic vortex that was a thing neither of time nor space nor mind, but all three somehow fused into one. They're screaming, Brunei thought. Listen to the horrible screams. Suddenly he noticed that he too was screaming. The vortex was growing, swirling, undulating, and it too began to flicker. There was an unbearable, impossible pain, and the sight of Starship number 13 suddenly appearing out of nowhere and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the spaceport was somewhat disconcerting to the spaceport officials, especially since at the very moment it appeared and even afterward they continued to have visual and laser contact with its image over three light months from Earth. However, the solar government itself was much more pragmatic. One instant Starship 13 had been light months from Earth. The next it was sitting in the spaceport. Therefore Starship 13 had exceeded the speed of light somehow. Therefore it was possible to exceed the speed of light and a thorough examination of the ship and its contents would show how. Therefore you idiots throw a security cordon around that ship. In such matters the long-conditioned reflexes of the solar government worked marvelously before the airwaves had cooled two hundred heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the ship. Two hours later the solar coordinator was on the scene with ten orders of sol to present to the returning heroes and a large well-armored vehicle to convey them to laboratories where they would be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. An honor guard of two hundred men standing at attention made a pathway from the ship's main hatch to the armored carrier in front of which stood the solar coordinator with his ten medals. They opened the hatch. One, two, five, seven, ten days and bewildered heroes staggered past the honor guard to face the coordinator. He opened his mouth to begin his welcoming speech and start the five years of questioning and experiments which would eventually kill five of the crew and give man the secret of faster than light drive. But instead of speaking he screamed. So did two hundred heavily armed soldiers because out of Starship 13's main hatch sauntered a twelve-foot green dragon followed by a tyrannosaurus rex, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspan, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon and finally big as a horse's the pop-eyed head of an enormous black serpent. End of Subjectivity by Norman Spinrad They also serve by Donald E. Westlake. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. They also serve by Donald E. Westlake. Why should people hate vultures? After all, a vulture never kills anyone. The launch carrying the mail, supplies and replacements eased slowly in toward the base keeping the bulk of the moon between itself and earth. Captain E. Boer, seated at the controls, guided the ship to the rocky uneven ground with the easy carelessness of long practice. Then cut the drive, got to his walking tentacles and stretched. Donning his spacesuit, he'd left the ship to go over to the dome and meet Darkwell Noy, the base commander. An open ground car was waiting for him beside the ship. The driver encased in his spacesuit crossed tentacles in a sloppy salute and E. Boer returned the gesture quite a sloppily. Here on the periphery, cast formalities were all but dispensed with. E. Boer stood for a moment and watched the unloading. The crew, used to working in spacesuits, had one truck already half full. The replacements, unused to spacesuits and, in addition, awed and a bit startled by the bleakness of this satellite were moving awkwardly down the ramp. Satisfied that the unloading was proceeding smoothly, E. Boer climbed aboard the ground car, awkward in his suit and settled back heavily in the seat to try and get used to gravity again. The gravity of this moon was slight, of course. It won sixth the gravity of the home world or most of the colonies, but it still took getting used to after a long trip in freefall. The driver sat at the controls and the car jerked into motion. E. Boer, looking up, noticed for the first time that the dome wasn't there anymore. The main dome, housing the staff and equipment of the base, just wasn't there. And the driver, he now saw, was aiming the car toward the nearby crater wall, extending two of his eyes till they almost touched the faceplate of his helmet he could see activity at the base of the crater wall and what looked like an airlock entrance. He wondered what had caused the change, which had obviously been done at top speed. The last time he'd been here, not very long ago, the dome had still been intact and there had been no hint of any impending move underground. The driver steered the car into the open airlock and they waited until the first cargo truck had lumbered in after them. Then the outer door closed. The pumps were turned on and in a minute the red light flashed over the inner door. E. Boer removed the spacesuit gratefully, left it in the car and walked clumsily through the inner door into the new base. A good job had been done on it for all the speed. Rooms and corridors had been melted out of the rock. The floors had been carpeted, the walls painted and the ceiling lined with light panels. All of the furnishings had been transferred here from the original dome and the result looked on the whole quite livable, as livable as the dome had been at least. But the base commander, Darkwell Noy, waiting for his old friend E. Boer near the inner door of the lock, looked anything but happy with the arrangement. At E. Boer's entrance he raised a limp tentacle in weary greeting and said, Come in, my friend, come in. Tell me the new jokes from home. Use some cheering up. None worth telling, said E. Boer. He looked around. What's happened here, he asked. Why have you gone underground? Why do you need cheering up? Darkwell Noy clicked his eyes in despair. Those things, he cried, those annoying little creatures on that blasted planet up there! E. Boer repressed an amused ripple. He knew Darkwell Noy well enough to know the commander invariably overstated things. What have they been up to, Dar, he asked? Come on, you can tell me over a hot cup of rest-no. I've been practically living on the stuff for the last two DREN, said Darkwell Noy hopelessly. Well, I suppose another cup won't kill me. Come on to my quarters. I've worked up a fine thirst on the trip, E. Boer told him. The two walked down the long corridor together and E. Boer said, Well, what happened? They came here, Darkwell Noy told him simply. At E. Boer's shocked look he rippled in one amusement and said, Oh, it wasn't as bad as it might have been. I suppose it was just that we had to rush around so frantically unloading and dismantling the dome, getting this place ready. What do you mean they came here? demanded E. Boer. They are absolutely the worst creatures for secrecy in the entire galaxy, exclaimed Darkwell Noy in irritation. Absolutely the worst. Then you've picked up at least one of their habits, E. Boer told him. Now stop talking in circles and tell me what happened. They built a spaceship, is the long and short of it, Darkwell Noy answered. E. Boer stopped in astonishment. No. Don't tell me no, cried Darkwell Noy. I saw it. He was obviously at his wits end. It's unbelievable, said E. Boer. I know, said Darkwell Noy. He led the way into his quarters, motioned E. Boer to a perch and rang for his orderly. It was just a little remote controlled apparatus, of course, he said. The fledgling attempt, you know, but it circled this moon here, busily taking pictures and went right back to the planet again, giving us all a terrible fright. There hadn't been the slightest indication they were planning anything that spectacular. None, asked E. Boer. Not a hint? Oh, they've been boasting about doing some such things for ages, Darkwell Noy told him. But there was never any indication that they were finally serious about it. They have all sorts of military secrecy, of course, and so you never know what thing is going to happen until it does. Did they get a picture of the dome? Thankfully no, and before they had a chance to try again I whipped everything underground. It must have been hectic, E. Boer said sympathetically. It was, said Darkwell Noy simply. The orderly entered, Darkwell Noy told him to rest now, and he left again. I can't imagine them making a spaceship, said E. Boer thoughtfully. I would have thought they'd have blown themselves up long before reaching that stage. I would have thought so too, said Darkwell Noy. But there it is. At the moment they've divided themselves into two camps, generally speaking, that is, and the two sides are trying like mad to outdo each other in everything. As a part of it they're shooting all sorts of rubbish into space and crowing every time a piece of the other side's rubbish malfunctions. They could go on that way indefinitely, said E. Boer. I know, said Darkwell Noy gloomily, and here we sit. E. Boer nodded, studying his friend. You don't suppose this is all a waste of time, do you? He asked after a minute. Darkwell Noy shook a tentacle in negation. Not at all. Not at all. They'll get around to it sooner or later. They're still boasting themselves into the proper frame of mind. That's all. E. Boer rippled in sympathetic amusement. I imagine you sometimes wish you could give them a little prodding in the right direction, he said. Darkwell Noy fluttered his tentacles in horror, crying, Don't even think of such a thing. I know, I know, said E. Boer hastily, the laws. Never mind the laws, snapped Darkwell Noy. I'm not even thinking about the laws. Frankly, if it would do any good I might even consider breaking one or two of the laws and the devil with my conditioning. You are upset, said E. Boer at that. But if we were to interfere with those creatures up there, continued Darkwell Noy, interfere with them in any way at all, it would be absolutely disastrous. The orderly returned at that point with two steaming cups of rest-no. Darkwell Noy and E. Boer accepted the cups and the orderly left, making a sloppy tentacle cross salute, which the two ignored. I wasn't talking necessarily about attacking them, you know, said E. Boer, returning to the subject. Neither was I, Darkwell Noy told him. We wouldn't have to attack them. All we would have to do was let them know we're here, not even why we're here, just the simple fact of our presence. That would be enough. They would attack us. E. Boer extended his eyes in surprise. As vicious as all that. Chilling, Darkwell Noy told him. Absolutely chilling. Then I'm surprised they haven't blown themselves to pieces long before this. Oh well, said Darkwell Noy. You see they're cowards, too. They have to boast and brag and shout a while before they finally get to clawing and biting at one another. E. Boer waved a tentacle. Don't make it so vivid. Sorry, apologized Darkwell Noy. He drained his cup of rest-no. Out here, he said, living next door to the little beasts' day after day, one begins to lose one's sensibilities. It has been a long time, agreed E. Boer. Longer than we had originally anticipated, Darkwell Noy said frankly. We've been ready to move in for, I don't know how long, and instead we just sit here and wait. Which isn't good for morale, either. No, I don't imagine it is. There's already a theory among some of the workmen that the blow-up just isn't going to happen, ever. And since that ship went circling by, of course morale has hit a new low. It would have been nasty if they'd spotted you, said E. Boer. Nasty, echoed Darkwell Noy. Catastrophic, you mean. All that crowd up their needs is an enemy, and it doesn't much matter to them who that enemy is. If they were to suspect that we were here, they'd forget their own little squabbles at once and start killing us instead. And that, of course, would mean that they'd be united for the first time in their history. And who knows how long it would take them before they'd get back to killing one another again. Well, said E. Boer, you're underground now, and it can't possibly take them too much longer. One wouldn't think so, agreed Darkwell Noy. In a way, he added, that spaceship was a hopeful sign. It means that they'll be sending a man's ship along pretty soon, and that should do the trick. As soon as one side has a base on the moon, the other side is bound to get things started. A relief for you, eh? said E. Boer. You know, said Darkwell Noy thoughtfully. I can't help thinking I was born in the wrong age. All this scrabbling around, searching everywhere for suitable planets. Back when the universe was younger, there were lots and lots of planets to colonize. Now the old problem of half-life is taking its toll, and we can't even hope to keep up with the birth rate anymore. If it weren't for the occasional planets like that one up there, I don't know what we'd do. Don't worry, E. Boer told him. They'll have their atomic war pretty soon and leave us a nice high-radiation planet to colonize. I certainly hope it soon, said Darkwell Noy. This waiting gets on one's nerves. He rang for the orderly. End of They Also Serve by Donald E. Westlake. The Untouchable by Stephen A. Callis Jr. 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 Glenn Kirsten. The Untouchable by Stephen A. Callis Jr. The man finally entered the office of General George Garber's. As the door closed behind him, he saw the general who sprang from his chair to greet him. Max, you finally came! Got here as soon as I could. I wager half my time was taken up by the security checkpoints. You are certainly isolated in here. All of that, agreed the general. Have a seat, won't you? he asked, indicating a chair. His friends sank into it gratefully. Now, what's this vital problem you called me about? You weren't too specific. No, said Garber's, I wasn't. This is a security matter, after a fashion. It's vitally important that we get technical help on this thing, and since you and I are friends, I was asked to call you in. Well, I'm afraid I'll have to make a story of it. Quite all right by me, but don't mind if I interject a question now and then. Mind if I smoke? Go right ahead, said Garber's, fumbling out a lighter. Just don't spill ashes on the rug. This all began on the 3rd of May. I was working here on some top security stuff. I'd suddenly got the feeling of being watched. I know it seems silly what with all the checkpoints that a potential spy would have to go through to get here, but that's just how I felt. Several times I glanced around the office, but of course it was empty. Then I began to think that it was my nerves. You always were a bit of a hypochondriac, observed his friend. Be that as it may, continued Garber's. It was the only explanation I had at the time. Either someone was watching me, which seemed impossible, or I was beginning to crack under the strain. Well, I put my papers away and tried to take a short break. I was reaching into my drawer where I keep magazines when, so help me, a man stepped out of the wall into my office. What? It seems as if you just said a guy stepped out of the wall. That's just what I did say. It sounds crazy, but let me finish, will you? I'm not kidding, and I'll show you proof later if necessary. Anyway, this bird stepped straight out of the wall, as if it had been a waterfall or something, but the wall itself was undamaged. The only proof I had that he had actually done it was the fact that he was in my office, but that was proof enough. To put it mildly, I was thunderstruck. After jumping to my feet, I could only stand there like an idiot. I was so shaken that I couldn't speak a word, but he spoke first. General Garber's, he asked, just as if you'd run into me at a cocktail party or on the street. I told him he was correct and asked him who he was and what he wanted and how he got into my office. He identified himself as a Henry Bush and explained that he was acting in behalf of a good friend of his, the late Dr. Hyman Duvall. Have you ever heard of Duvall, Max? His friend twisted his face and thought, can't say that I have offhand, but the name seems to ring a bell somewhere. Well, anyway, he said that Duvall had perfected an invention of great national importance shortly before his death, and asked Bush to deliver it to the government if anything should happen to him. Then Duvall died suddenly of a heart attack. And what was this invention? Isn't it obvious? A machine that would enable a man to walk through walls. And Bush has no idea how the thing works other than the general explanation that Duvall gave him. And Bush was poles apart from Duvall. They were friends from college, not because of professional interests. It seems they were both double-crossed by the same girl. Duvall was a brilliant but obscure nuclear and radiation physicist. He was one of those once-in-a-lifetime fellas like Tesla. He was so shy that he didn't bring himself to anybody's attention, save for a few papers he published in the smaller physical societies magazines. It was only because he had inherited a considerable amount of money that he could do any research whatsoever. Hmm... I seem to remember a paper about wave propagation in one of the quarterlies. Quite unorthodox, as I recall, said Max. Could be, but anyway, about Bush. Bush majored in psychology at college, but took special courses after he graduated and took a Master's in English. He has written two novels and collections of poems under various pen names. At the time of Duvall's death, he was working on the libretto of an opera. He has had no technical training unless you want to count a year of high school general science. So he wasn't too much help in explaining how Duvall's instrument works. And, just to make matters more juicy, Duvall kept no notes. He had total recall and a childlike fear of putting anything into writing that had not been experimentally verified. And this machine. How is it supposed to work? Garvers got up and began to pace. According to Bush, Duvall devised the instrument after stumbling into an entirely new branch of physics. This device of Duvall's is a special case of a theory of matter and energy. Matter is made up of sub-nuclear particles, electrons, protons, and the like. However, Duvall said that these particles are in turn made up of much smaller particles grouped together in aggregate clouds. The size ratio of these particles to protons is somewhat like the ratio of an individual proton to a large star. They seem to be composed of tiny clots of energy from a fantastically complex energy system in which electromagnetism is but a small part. Each energy segment is represented by a different facet of each particle, and the arrangement of the individual particles to each other determines what super-particle they will form, such as an electron. Duvall called these sub-particles LEMS. Bush says he was told that a field of a special nature could be generated so as to make the individual LEMS in the particles of matter rotate in a special way that would introduce a polarization field, as Duvall called it. This field seems to be connected somehow with gravity, but Bush wasn't told how. The upshot is that matter in the initial presence of the field is affected so that it's able to pass through ordinary matter. Hold on, interrupted Max. If a device can do that, then the user would immediately fall towards the center of the Earth. Just you hold on. You didn't let me finish. A single plane of atoms at the base of the treated object is the point of contact. It remains partially unaffected because it's the closest to the Gravitostatic Field Center, which I guess is the Earth's center of attraction. This plane of semi-treated atoms can be forced through an object. If it is moved horizontally, its untreated aspect prevents the subject wearing the device from falling through the floor. Bush demonstrated this device to me, turning it on and strolling through various objects in this room. Think of it. No soldier could be killed or held prisoner, and... Now, hang on, objected Max. Let's not run away with ourselves. He may have perfected a device that would enable a soldier to avoid capture, but there would certainly be other ways to kill him than my bullets. Let's see now. Suppose that the enemy shot a flamethrower at him. The burning materials might pass through him, but he would be cooked anyway. Or poison gas. Hmm. As far as gas goes, I suppose a gas mask would be necessary. Bush doesn't know about the breathing mechanism, except that he had to take breaths. But as far as fire or radiation goes, the man's protected. If the radiation is either harmful by nature or by amount, the field merely reflects it. It is something called the lemic stress of the field that causes the phenomenon. That's why we need your help. Max scratched his head thoughtfully. I don't understand. Garvers looked pained. When Bush had finished his demonstration, he carelessly tossed the device on my desk. The thing skidded and hit my paperweight so that the switch was thrown on again. So now the device and my desk are both untouchable. Go over to the desk and try to touch it, said Garvers dryly. His friend got up and ambled over to the desk. There he saw a small black box resting near a paperweight. Its toggle switch was at the on position, and it was lying on its side. He tried to pick the box up, but his hand slid effortlessly through it, as if it were so much air. Well, Max said. He passed his hand through the desk again. Well, well. Are you sure Bush told you everything? Bush! He honestly wants to help, and we've taken him through the mill. Pentathol, Scopolamine, and the like. Hypnotism and the polygraph. We've dug that man deeper than we've ever dug anybody before. And have you conducted any experiments of your own? Certainly. That's what's so frustrating. We tried to X-ray the thing, and we don't get a thing. We bombarded it with every radiation we could think of, from radio to gamma, and it just reflected them. We can detect no radiation coming out of it. Magnetic fields don't affect it, nor do heat and cold. Nuclear particles are ignored by it. It just sits there, thumbing its nose at us. And we can't even wait for it to run down. According to Bush, the power requirements of the thing are funny, and once the field is established, it takes no additional energy to maintain it. And the collapsing power remains indefinitely until it's time to turn the machine off. But it's unreachable by any means we have. It's pure frustration. There's no way we can analyze it until we can handle it, and no way we can handle it until we turn it off. And there's no way we can turn it off until we've analyzed it. If we're alive, I'd think that it was laughing at us. Do you have any ideas?" asked Garver's, hopefully. Nothing that would help a solution at present, said Max. But do you remember the legend of King Tantalus? Slightly. What about it? Well, if he were here, said Max thoughtfully, he'd sympathize. The End of the Untouchable by Stephen A. Callis Jr. Recording by Glenn Kirsten Vanishing Point This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Red by Megan Argo Vanishing Point by C.C. Beck Oh, that's a perspective machine. Well, not exactly, but that's what I call it. No, I don't know how it works. Too complicated for me. Carter could make it go, but after he made it, he never used it. Too bad, he thought he'd make a lot of money with it there for a while, while he was working it out. Almost had me convinced, but I told him, get it to work first, Carter, and then show me what you can do with it better than I can do without it. I'm doing pretty well as it is. Pictures selling good, even if I do make them all by guesswork, as you call it. That's what I told him. You see, Carter was one of them artists that think they can work everything out by formulas and stuff. Me, I just paint things as I see them. Never worry about perspective and all that kind of mechanical aids. Never even went to art school, but I do all right. Carter now was a different sort of artist. Well, he wasn't really an artist, more of a draftsman. I first got him in to help me with a series of real estate paintings I got an order for. Big aerial views of land developments and drawings of buildings, roads and causeways, that kind of stuff. It was a little too much for me to handle alone, because I never studied that kind of things, you know. I thought he'd do the mechanical drawings, which should have been simple for anybody trained their way, and I'd thrown the colours, figures, trees and so on. He did fine, job came out good, client was real happy. We made a pretty good amount on the job, enough to keep us for a couple of months without working afterwards. I took it easy, fishing and so on, but Carter stayed here in the studio, working on his own stuff. I let him keep an eye on things for me around the place and just dropped in now and then to check up. The guy was nuts on the subject of perspective. I thought he knew all there was to know about it already, but he claimed nobody knew anything about it really. Said he'd been studying it for years, and the more he learned about it, the more there was to learn. He used to cover big sheets of paper with complicated diagrams, trying to prove something or other to himself. I'd come into the studio and find him with thumbtacks and string and stuff all over the place. He'd get big long rulers and draw lines to various points all over the room, and end up with a little drawing of a cube about an inch square that anybody could have made in half a minute without all the apparatus. Seemed pretty silly to me. Then he brought in some books on mathematics and physics and other things, and a bunch of slide rules, calculators and junk. He must have been a pretty smart guy to know how to handle all those things, even if he was kind of dopey about other things. You know, women and fishing and sports and drinking. He was lousy at everything except working those perspective problems. Personally, I couldn't see much sense to what he was doing. The guy could draw right already, so I asked him what more did he want? Let me see if I can remember what he said. I'm trying to get at things as they really are, not as they appear, he said. I think those were his words. Art is an illusion, a bag of tricks, reality is something else, not what we think it is. Drawings are two-dimensional projections of a world that is not only three, but four-dimensional, if not more, he said. Yeah, kind of a crackpot Carter was. Just on that one subject though. Nice enough guy otherwise. Here, look at some of the drawings he made working out his formulas. Nice designs, huh? Might make good wallpaper or fabric patterns. A little abstract, that's what people seem to like. See all those little letters scattered around among the lines? Different kinds of vanishing points they are. Carter claimed the whole world was full of vanishing points. You don't know what a vanishing point is? Well, let me see if I can explain. Come over to the window here. You see how that road out there gets smaller and smaller in the distance. Of course, the road doesn't really get smaller, it just looks that way. That's what we call a vanishing point in drawing. Simple, isn't it? You never could understand why Carter went to so much trouble working out all those ways to locate vanishing points. Me, I'll just throw him in wherever I need him. But Carter claimed that was wrong, said they were all connected together some way, and he was going to work out a method to prove it. Here, here's a little gadget he made up to help his calculations. Bunch of disks all pivoted together at the centre. You're supposed to turn them around so the arrows point to the different figures and things. Here's the square root sign, I remember Carter telling me that. This one is the tangent function, whatever that means. Log there is short for logarithm. Oh, he had a bunch of that scientific stuff in his head all the time. Don't know whether he understood it all himself. He built this thing just before he put together that perspective machine there. Silly-looking gadget, huh? All them pipes and wires and that little cube in the centre. Don't try to touch it, it ain't really there. You just think it is. It's what Carter called a tether-act or a cataract. No, that ain't the right word. Something like that, tether or something or other. There's a picture like it in one of Carter's books. It hurts your eyes to look at it, don't it? That's what Carter thought was going to make him a lot of fame and money, that perspective machine. I told him nobody had ever made a drawing machine yet that worked, but he said it wasn't supposed to make drawings. It was supposed to give people a view of what reality really is, instead of what they think it is. I don't know whether he expected to charge money to look through it or whether he was going to look through it himself and make some new kind of drawings and sell them. No, I can't tell you how it works. I said before I don't know. Carter only used it once himself. I came in here the day he finished it, just as he was ready to turn it on. He was just putting the finishing touches on it. In a few minutes he told me, I'll have the answer to a question that may never have been answered before. What is reality? Is the world a thing by itself and all we know illusion? Why do things grow smaller the further away from us they appear? Why can't we see more than one side of anything at a time? What happens to the far side of an object? Does it cease to exist just because we can't see it? Are objects not present, non-existent? Because artists draw things vanishing to points. Does that mean they really vanish? A whack, that's what he was. Nice guy, but sort of squirmy. He kept saying more goofy things while he was finishing up the machine about how he'd figured out that all we knew about vision and drawing and so on must be wrong and that once he got a look at the real world he'd prove it. How about cameras, I asked him. Take a picture with a camera and it looks just about the same as a drawing, don't it? That's because cameras are built to take pictures like we're used to seeing them, he said. Flat two-dimensional slices of reality without depth for motion. Even 3D moving pictures, I asked. They're closer to reality, he admitted, but there are still only cross-sections of it. The shutter of a movie camera is closed as much of the time as it is open. What happens in between the times it's open? You know, he went on, people used to think that matter and motion were continuous but scientists have proved that they are discontinuous. Now some of them think that time may be too. Maybe everything is just imaginary and appears to our senses in whatever way we want it to appear. We are so well trained that we see everything just as we are taught to see it by generations of artists, writers and other symbol makers. If we could see things as they really are, what might happen? We're probably all going nuts, I told him. He just smiled. Well, here goes, he said, it's finished. Now to find out who is right, the scientists and philosophers who say reality is forever unreachable or the artists who say there isn't a reality, that we make the whole thing up to suit ourselves. He moved one of those pointers you see there and squinted around at the different scales and dials and then stepped back. That little tessie thing appeared, real small at first, just a point. You could hardly see it. I couldn't see anything else happening and thought he was going to do something else to the machine. I turned to look at Carter and saw his face as white as a sheet. Good God, he says, just like that. Good God, that's all. Well, I says to him, who is right, the scientists or the artists? The artists, he sort of squeaches, the artists were right all the time. There is no reality. It's all a fabric of illusion we've created ourselves. And now I've ripped a hole in that. He gives a strangled hoot and then goes high tail and out of here like something was after him. Jumps in his car and roars off down the road and disappears. No, I don't mean he really disappeared, are you nuts? Just roared on down the road till he got so small I couldn't see him no more. You know, the way things do when they go further and further away. Happens every day. That's what we artists mean by perspective. The machine, well, I don't know what to do with it. If Carter ever comes back he might not like me getting rid of it. I was thinking maybe I'll put it in the hobby show at the county fair next week though. You know how that funny looking cube inside there gets bigger every time you look at it. There, it just doubled in size again, see? People at the fair already get a big kick out of that. No telling how big it'll get, we all those people looking at it. But come on, let's go fishing. We better hurry or it'll be too late. End of Vanishing Point by CeCe Beck. Red by Megan Argo.