 Navy Day by Harry Harrison. The Division went beyond the Congress of the United States, passed the Balmy June Day to another day that was coming, a day when the Army would have its destined place of authority. He drew a deep breath and delivered what was perhaps the shortest speech ever heard in the hallowed halls of Congress. The General Staff of the U.S. Army requests Congress to abolish the archaic branch of the armed forces known as the U.S. Navy. The aging senator from Georgia checked his hearing aid to see if it was in operating water, while the press box emptied itself in one concerted rush and a clatter of running feet that died off in the direction of the telephone room. A buzz of excited comment ran through the giant chamber. One by one the heads turned to face the naval section where rows of blue figures stirred and buzzed like smoked-out bees. The knot of men around a punchy figure heavy with gold braid broke up and Admiral Fitz James climbed slowly to his feet. Lesser men have quailed before that piercing stare, but General Wingrove was never the lesser man. The Admiral tossed his head with disgust, every line of his body denoting outraged dignity. He turned to his audience a small pulse beating in his forehead. I cannot comprehend the General's attitude, nor can I understand why he has attacked the Navy in this unwarranted fashion. The Navy has existed and will always exist as the first barrier of American defense. I ask you gentlemen to ignore this request as you would ignore the statements of any person, or slightly demanded. I should like to offer a recommendation that the General's sanity be investigated and an inquiry be made as to the mental health of anyone else connected with this preposterous proposal. The General smiled calmly. I understand Admiral and really don't blame you for being slightly annoyed, but please let us not bring this issue of national importance down to a shallow but personal level. The Army has facts to back up this request, facts that shall be demonstrated tomorrow morning. Turning his back on the raging Admiral General Wingrove included all the assembled Solons in one sweeping gesture. Reserve your judgment until that time, gentlemen. Make no hasty judgments until you have seen the force of argument with which we back up our request. It is the end of an era. In the morning the Navy joins its fellow fossils, the Dodo and the Brontosaurus. The Admiral's blood pressure mounted to a new record and the gentle thud of his unconscious body striking the floor was the only sound to break the shocked silence in the giant hall. The early morning sun warmed the white marble of the Jefferson Memorial and glinted from the soldiers' helmets and the roofs of the packed cars that crowded forward in a slow-moving stream. All the gentlemen of Congress were there, the passage of their cars cleared by the screaming sirens of motorcycle policemen. Around and under the wheels of the official cars pressed a solid wave of government workers and common citizens of the capital city. The trucks of the radio and television services pressed close, microphones and cameras extended. The stage was set for a great day. Neat rows of olive drab vehicles curved along the wooder's edge. Jeeps and half-tracks shouldered close by weapons carriers and six-bys, all of them shrinking to insignificance beside the looming patent tanks. A speakers platform was set up in the center of the line near the audience. At precisely ten a.m., General Wingrove stepped forward and scowled at the crowd until they settled into an uncomfortable silence. His speech was short and consisted of nothing more than amplifications of his opening statement that actions speak louder than words. He pointed to the first truck in line, a two-and-a-half ton filled with an infantry squad sitting stiffly at attention. The driver caught the signal and kicked the engine into life. With a grind of gears it moved forward toward the river's edge. There was an in-drawn gas from the crowd as the front wheels ground over the marble parapet and then the truck was plunging down toward the muddy wooders of the Potomac. The wheels touched the wooder and the surface seemed to sink while taking on a strange, glassy character. The truck roared into high gear and rode forward on the surface of the wooder surrounded by a saucer-shaped depression. It parked two hundred yards offshore and the soldiers goaded by the sergeant's park leapt out and lined up with a showy, present arms. The General returned the salute and waved to the remaining vehicles. They moved forward in a series of maneuvers that indicated a great number of rehearsal hours on some hidden pond. The tanks rumbled slowly over the wooder while the jeeps cut back and forth through their lines in intricate patterns. The trucks backed and turned like puffing ballerinas. The audience was rooted in a hushed silence, their eyeballs bulging. They continued to watch the amazing display as General Wingrove spoke again. You see before you a typical example of army ingenuity, developed in army laboratories. These motor units are supported on the surface of the wooder by an intensifying of the surface tension in their immediate area. Their weight is evenly distributed over the surface, causing the shallow depressions you see around them. This remarkable feat has been accomplished by the use of the Dornifier, a remarkable invention that is named after the brilliant scientist, Colonel Robert A. Dorn, commander of the Brook Point Experimental Laboratory. It was there that one of the civilian employees discovered the Dorn effect, under the Colonel's constant guidance, of course. Utilizing this invention, the army now becomes master of the sea as well as the land. Army convoys of trucks and tanks can blanket the world. The surface of the wooder is our highway, our motor park, our battleground, the airfield, and runway for our planes. Mechanics were pushing a shooting star onto the wooder. They stepped clear as flame gushed from the tailpipe with the familiar whooshing rumble that sped down the Potomac and hurled itself into the air. When this cheap and simple method of crossing oceans is adopted, it will of course mean the end of that fantastic medieval anachronism, the Navy. No need for billion-dollar aircraft carriers, battleships, dry docks, and all the other cumbersome junk that keeps those boats and things afloat. Give the taxpayer back his hard-earned dollar. Teeth grated in the naval section as carriers and battleships were called boats, and the rest of America's sea might lump under the casual heading of things. Lips were curled at the transparent appeal to the taxpayer's pocketbook, but with leaden hearts they knew that all this justified wrath and contempt would avail them nothing. This was Army Day, with a vengeance, and the doom of the Navy seemed inescapable. The Army had made elaborate plans for what they called Operation Sinker. Even as the general spoke, the publicity mills ground into high gear from coast to coast. The citizens absorbed the news with their mourning nourishment. Agnes, you hear what that radio said? The Army's going to give a trip around the world in a B-36's first prize in this limerick contest. All you got to do is fill in the last line and mail one copy to the Pentagon and one other to the Navy. The naval mailroom had standing orders to burn all limericks when they came in, but some of the newer men seemed to think the entire thing was a big joke. Commander Bulman found one in the mess hall. The Army will always be there, on land, on the sea, in the air. So why should the Navy take all the gravy to which a seagoing scribe had added, and not give us ensigns or share? The newspapers were filled daily with photographs of mighty B-36's landing on Lake Erie and grinning soldiers making mock beachhead attacks on Coney Island. Each man wore a buzzing black box at his waist and walked on the bosom of the now quiet Atlantic like a biblical prophet. Radio and television also carried the thousands of news releases that poured in an unending flow from the Pentagon building. Cards, letters, telegrams, and packages descended on Washington in an overwhelming torrent. The Navy Department was the unhappy recipient of depper, catery letters, and a vast quantity of little cardboard battleships. The people spoke, and their representatives listened closely. This was an election year. There didn't seem to be much doubt as to the decision, particularly when the reduction in the budget was considered. It took Congress only two months to make up its collective mind. The people were all pro-army. The novelty of the idea had fired their imaginations. They were about to take the final vote in the lower house. If the amendment passed, it would go to the states for ratification, and their votes were certain to follow that of Congress. The Navy had fought a last-ditch battle to no avail. The ballading was going to be pretty much of a sure thing. The wetwooder Navy would soon become ancient history. For some reason the admirals didn't look as unhappy as they should. The Naval Department had requested one last opportunity to address the Congress. Congress had patronizingly granted permission for even the doomed man is allowed one last speech. Admiral Fitz James, who had recovered from his choleric attack, was the appointed speaker. Gentlemen of the Congress of the United States, we in the Navy have a fighting tradition. We damn the torpedoes and sail straight ahead into the enemy's fire, if that is necessary. We have been stabbed in the back. We have suffered a second Pearl Harbor sneak attack. The Army relinquished its rights to fair treatment with this attack. Therefore, we are counter-attacking. Worn out by his attacking and mixed metaphors, the Admiral mopped his brow. Our laboratories have been working night and day on the perfection of a device we hope we would never be forced to use. It is now an operation having passed the final trials a few days ago. The significance of this device cannot be underestimated. We are so positive of its importance that we are demanding that the Army be abolished. He waved his hand toward the window and bellowed one word. Look! Everyone looked. They blinked and looked again. They rubbed their eyes and kept looking. Sailing majestically up the middle of Constitution Avenue was the battleship Missouri. The Admiral's voice rang through the room like a trumpet of victory. The Mark I D. Binder, as you see, temporarily lessens the binding energies that hold molecules of solid matter together. Solids become liquids, and a ship equipped with this device can sail anywhere in the world on sea or land. Take your vote, gentlemen. The world awaits your decision. End of Navy Day by Harry Harrison. You can do a great deal if you have enough data and enough time to compute on it by logical methods, but given the situation that neither data nor time is adequate and an answer must be produced, what do you do? On the day that the Polish freighter Ludmila laid an egg in New York harbour, Abner Longman's one-shot brawn was in the city going about his normal business, which was making another million dollars. As we found out later, almost nothing else was normal about that particular weekend for brawn. For one thing he had brought his family with him, a complete departure from routine, reflecting the unprecedentedly legitimate nature of the deals he was trying to make. From every point of view it was a bad weekend for the CIA to mix into his affairs, but nobody had explained that to the master of the Ludmila. I had better add here that we knew nothing about this until afterward, from the point of view of the storyteller, an organization like Civilian Intelligence Associates gets to all its facts backwards, entering the tale at the payoff, working back to the hook, and winding up with a sheaf of background facts to feed into the computer for the next time. It's rough on the various people who've tried to fictionalize what we do, particularly for the lazy examples of the breed who come to us expecting that their plotting has already been done for them, but it's inherent in the way we operate, and there it is. Certainly nobody at CIA so much as thought of brawn when the news first came through. Harry Anderton, the harbor defense chief, called us at 0830 Friday to take on the job of identifying the egg. This was when our record show was officially entering the affair, but of course Anderton had been keeping the wires to Washington, steaming for an hour before that, getting authorization to spend some of his money on us. Our clearance status was then and is now C&R, clean and routine. I was in the central office when the call came through, and had some difficulty in making out precisely what Anderton wanted of us. Slow down, Colonel Anderton, please. I begged him. Two or three seconds won't make that much difference. How did you find out about this egg in the first place? The automatic compartment bulkheads on the Ludmilla were defective, he said. It seems that this egg was buried among a lot of other crates in the dump cell of the hold. What's a dump cell? It's a sea-lock for getting rid of dangerous cargo. The bottom of it opens right to Davy Jones. Standard fitting for ships carrying explosives, radioactives, anything that might act up unexpectedly. All right, I said. Go ahead. Well, there was a timer on the dump cell floor, set to drop the egg when the ship came up the river. That worked fine, but the automatic bulkheads that are supposed to keep the rest of the ship from being flooded while the cells open didn't. At least they didn't do a thorough job. The Ludmilla began to list, and the captain yelled for help. When the harbor patrol found the dump cell open, they called us N. I see. I thought about it a moment. In other words, you don't know whether the Ludmilla really laid an egg or not. That's what I keep trying to explain to you, Dr. Harris. We don't know what she dropped, and we have it any way of finding out. It could be a bomb. It could be anything. We're sweating everybody on board the ship now, but it's my guess that none of them know anything. The whole procedure was designed to be automatic. All right, we'll take it, I said. You've got divers down? Sure, but we'll worry about the butts from here on. Get us a direct line from your barge to the big board here so we can direct the work. Better get on over here yourself. Right, he sound relieved. Official people have a lot of confidence in CIA. Too much in my estimation. Someday the job will come along that we can't handle, and then Washington will be kicking itself, or more likely some scapegoat for having failed to develop a comparable government department. Not that there was much prospect of Washington's doing that. Official thinking had been running in the other direction for years. The precedent with the associated university's organization, which ran Brookhaven. CIA had been started the same way, by a loose corporation of universities and industries, all of which had wanted to own an Ultimac, and no one of which had had the money to buy one for itself. The Eisenhower administration, with its emphasis on private enterprise and concomitant reluctance to sink federal funds into projects of such size, had turned the two examples into a nice fat trend, which Ultimac herself said wasn't going to be reversed within the practicable lifetime of CIA. I buzzed for two staffers, and in five minutes got Clark Cheney and Joan Hadamard, CIA's business manager and social science division chief, respectively. The titles were almost solely for the benefit of the TO, that is, Clark and Joan do serve in those capacities, but said service takes about two percent of their capacities and their time. I shot them a couple of sentences of explanation, trusting them to pick up whatever else they needed from the tape, and checked the line to the diver's barge. It was already open. Anderton had gone to work quickly, and with the decision, once he was sure we were taking on the major question, the television screen lit, but nothing showed on it, but murky light, striped with streamers of darkness, slowly rising and falling. The audio went clunk, oing, oing, bonk, oing, underwater noises, shapeless and characterless. Hello out there in the harbor. This is CIA, Harris calling. Come in, please. Monic here, the audio said, bonk, oing, oing. Got anything yet? Not a thing, Dr. Harris, Monic said. You can't see three inches in front of your face down here. It's too silty. We've bumped into a couple of crates, but so far, no egg. Keep trying. Cheney, looking even more like a bulldog than usual, was setting his stopwatch by one of the eight clocks on Ultimax's face. Want me to take the divers? He said. No, Clark, not yet. I'd rather have Joan do it for the moment. I passed the mic to her. You'd better run a probability series first. Check. He began feeding tape into the integrator's mouth. What's your angle, Peter? The ship. I want to see how heavily shielded that dump-cell is. It isn't shielded at all, Anderton's voice said behind me. I hadn't heard him come in. But that doesn't prove anything. The egg might have carried sufficient shielding in itself. Or maybe the commies didn't care whether the crew was exposed or not. Or maybe there isn't any egg. All that's possible, I admitted. But I want to see it anyhow. Have you taken blood tests? Joan asked Anderton. Yes. Get the reports through to me. Then I want white-cell counts, differentials, platelet counts, hematocrit, and sedrates on every man. Anderton pecked up the phone, and I took a firmhold on the doorknob. Hey! Anderton said, putting the phone down again. Are you going to duck out just like that? Remember, Dr. Harris, we've got to evacuate the city, first of all. No matter whether it's a real egg or not. We can't take the chance on its not being an egg. Don't move a man until you get a go-ahead from CIA, I said. For all we know now, evacuating the city may be just what the enemy wants us to do, so they can grab it unharmed. Or they may want to start a panic for some other reason, any one of fifty possible reasons. You can't take such a gamble, he said grimly. There are eight-and-a-half million lives riding on it. I can't let you do it. You passed your authority to us when you hired us, I pointed out. If you want to evacuate without our OK, you'll have to fire us first. It'll take another hour to get that cleared from Washington, so you might as well give us the hour. He stared at me for a moment, his lips thinned. Then he picked up the phone again to order John's blood count, and I got out the door fast. A reasonable man would have said that I found nothing useful on the Ludmilla except negative information. But the fact is that anything I found would have been a surprise to me. I went down looking for surprises. I found nothing but a faint trail to Abner Longman's Bronn, most of which was fifteen years cold. There'd been a time when I'd known Bronn briefly, and to no profit to either of us. As an undergraduate majoring in social sciences, I'd taken on a term paper on the old International Longshoreman's Association, a racket-ridden union now formally extinct, although anyone who knew the signs could still pick up some traces on the docks. In those days Bronn had been the business manager of an insurance firm, the sole visible function of which had been to write policies for the ILA and its individual dock wallopers. For some reason he had been amused by the brash youngster who barged in on him and demanded the lowdown, and had shown me considerable lengths of ropes not normally in view of the public. Nothing incriminating, but enough to give me a better insight into how the union operated than I had had any right to expect, or even suspect. Hence I was surprised to hear somebody on the docks remark that Bronn was in the city over the weekend. It would never have occurred to me that he still interested himself in the waterfront, for he'd gone respectable with a vengeance. He was still a professional gambler, and according to what he had told the Congressional Investigating Committee last year, took in $30,000 to $50,000 a year at it, but his gambles were no longer concentrated on horses, the numbers, or shady insurance deals. Nowadays what he did was called investment, mostly in real estate. Realtors knew him well as the man who had almost bought the Empire State Building. The almost in the equation stands for the moment when the shoestring broke. Joan had been following his career too, not because she had ever met him, but because for her he was a type study in the evolution of what she called the extra-legal ego. With personalities like that, respectability is a disease, she told me. There's always an almost open conflict between the desire to be powerful and the desire to be accepted. Your ordinary criminal is a moral imbecile, but people like Braun are damned with conscience, and sooner or later they crack trying to appease it. I'd sooner try to crack a Timken bearing, I said, Braun's ten-point stale all the way through. Don't you believe it? The symptoms are showing all over him. Now he's backing Broadway plays, sponsoring beginning actresses, joining playwrights groups. He's the only member of Buskin and Brush, who's never written a play, acted in one, or so much as pulled the rope to raise the curtain. That's investment, I said. That's his business. Peter, you're only looking at the surface. His real investments almost never fail. But the plays he backs always do. They have to. He's sinking money in them to appease his conscience, and if they were to succeed it would double his guilt instead of solving it. It's the same way with the young actresses. He's not sexually interested in them. His type never is. Because living a rigidly orthodox family life is part of the effort towards respectability. He's backing them to pay his debt to society. In other words, they're talismans to keep him out of jail. It doesn't seem like a very satisfactory substitute. Of course it isn't, Joan had said. The next thing he'll do is go in for direct public service, giving money to hospitals or something like that. You watch. She had been right. Within the year, Braun had announced the founding of an association for clearing the Detroit slum area where he had been born, the plainest kind of symbolic suicide. Let's not have any more Abner Longman's bronze born down here. It depressed me to see it happen. For next on Joan's agenda for Braun was an entry into politics as a fighting liberal, a new dealer twenty years too late. Since I'm mildly liberal myself when I'm off duty, I hated to think what Braun's career might tell me about my own motives if I'd let it. All of which had nothing to do with why I was prowling around the Ludmilla, or did it. I kept remembering Anderton's challenge. You can't take such a gamble. There are eight and a half million lives riding on it. That put it up into Braun's normal operating area all right. The connection was still hazy, but on the grounds that any link might be useful, I phoned him. He remembered me instantly, like most uneducated, power-driven men. He had a memory as good as any machines. You never did send me that paper you was going to write, he said. His voice seemed absolutely unchanged, although he was in his seventies now. You promised you would. Kids don't keep their promises as well as they should, I said, but I've still got copies, and I'll see to it that you get one this time. Right now I need another favor, something right up your alley. CIA business? Yes, I didn't know you knew I was with CIA. Braun chuckled. I still know a thing or two, he said. What's the angle? That I can't tell you over the phone, but it's the biggest gamble there ever was, and I think we need an expert. Can you come down to CIA's central headquarters right away? Yeah, if it's that big, if it ain't, I got lots of business here, Andy, and I ain't going to be in town long. You sure it's top stuff? My word on it. He was silent a moment. Then he said, Andy, send me your paper. The paper? Sure, but then I got it. I'd given him my word. You'll get it, I said. Thanks, Mr. Braun. I called headquarters and sent a messenger to my apartment to look for one of those long, dusty blue folders with the legal length sheets inside them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe more than months. Then I went back myself. The atmosphere had changed. Anderton was sitting by the big desk, clenching his fists and sweating. His whole posture telegraphed his controlled happiness. Cheney was bent over a seismograph, echo sounding for the egg through the river bottom. If that even had a prayer of working, I knew he'd have had the trains of the Hudson and Manhattan stopped. The rumbling course through their tubes would have blanked out any possible echo-pip from the egg. Wild goose chase, Jones said, scanning my face. Not quite. I've got something. If I can just figure out what it is. Remember one shot, Braun? Yes. What's he got to do with it? Nothing, I said, but I want to bring him in. I don't think we'll lick this project before deadline without him. What good is a professional gambler on a job like this? He'll just get in the way. I looked toward the television screen, which now showed an emperous black mass jutting up from a foundation of even deeper black. Is that operation getting you anywhere? Nothing's gotten us anywhere. Anderton interjected harshly. We don't even know if that's the egg. The whole area is littered with crates. Harris, you've got to let me get that alert out. Clark, how's the time going? Cheney consulted the stopwatch. Deadline in twenty-nine minutes, he said. All right, let's use those minutes. I'm beginning to see this thing a lot clearer. Joan, what we've got here is a one-shot gamble, right? In effect, she said cautiously. And it's my guess that we're never going to get the answer by diving for it. Not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a barge load of shells in the harbor back in fifty-two? They scrabbled for them for a year and never pulled up a one. They finally had to warn the public that if it found anything funny looking along the shore it shouldn't bang said object or shake it, either. We're better equipped than the Navy was then, but we're working against a deadline. If you'd admitted that earlier, Anderton said hoarsely, we'd have half a million people out of the city by now, maybe even a million. We haven't given up yet, Colonel. The point is this, Joan. What we need is an inspired guess. Get anything from the prob series, Clark? I thought not. On a one-shot gamble of this kind the laws of chance are no good at all. For that matter the so-called ESP experiments showed us long ago that even the way we construct random tables is full of holes, and that a man with a feeling for the essence of a gamble can make a monkey out of chance almost as well. And if there ever was such a man, Bronn is it. That's why I asked him to come down here. I want him to look at that lump on the screen and play a hunch. You're out of your mind, Anderton said. A decorous knock spared me the trouble of having to deny, affirm, or ignore the judgment. It was Bronn. The messenger had been fast, and the gambler hadn't bothered to read what a college student had thought of him fifteen years ago. He came forward and held out his hand, while the others looked him over, frankly. He was impressive, all right. It would have been hard for a stranger to believe that he was aiming at respectability. To the eye he was already there. He was tall and spare and walked perfectly erect, not without spring, despite his age. His clothing was as far from that of a gambler as you could have taken it by design. A black double-breasted suit with a thin vertical stripe. A gray silk tie with a pearl stick-pen, just barely large enough to be visible at all. A black Homburg, all perfectly fitted, all worn with proper casualness. One might almost say a formal casualness. It was only when he opened his mouth that one-shot Bronn was in the suit with him. I come over as soon as your runner got to me, he said. What's the pitch, Andy? Mr. Bronn, this is Joan Hadamardt. Clark Cheney, Colonel Anderton. I'll be quick, because we need speed now. A Polish ship has dropped something out in the harbor. We don't know what it is. It may be a hellbomb, or it may be just somebody's old laundry. Obviously, we've got to find out which, and we want you to tell us. Bronn's aristocratic eyebrows went up. Me? Al, Andy. I don't know nothing about things like that. I'm surprised with you. I thought CIA had all the brains it needed. Ain't you got machines to tell you answers like that? I pointed silently to Joan, who had gone back to work the moment the introductions were over. She was still on the mic to the divers. She was saying, What does it look like? It's just a lump of something, Dr. Hadamardt. Can't even tell its shape. It's buried too deeply in the mud. Clunk, oing, oing. Try the Geiger. We did. Nothing but background. Centilation counter? Nothing, Dr. Hadamardt. Could be it's shielded. Let us do the guessing, Monig. All right. Maybe it's got a clockwork fuse that didn't break with the impact, or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick a stethoscope on it, and see if you pick up a ticking or anything that sounds like a motor running. There was a lag, and I turned back to Bronn. As you can see, we're stymied. This is a long shot, Mr. Bronn. One throw of the dice. One showdown hand. We've got to have an expert call it for us. Somebody with a record of hits on long shots. That's why I called you. It's no good, he said. He took off the Homburg, took his handkerchief from his breast pocket, and wiped the hat band. I can't do it. Why not? It ain't my kind of thing, he said. Look, I never in my life run odds on anything that made any difference. But this makes a difference. If I guess wrong, then we're all dead ducks. But why should you guess wrong? Your hunches have been working for sixty years now. Bronn wiped his face. No, you don't get it. I wish you'd listened to me. Look, my wife and my kids are in the city. It ain't only my life. It's theirs, too. That's what I care about. That's why it's no good. That's why it's no good. On things that matter to me, my hunches don't work. I was stunned, and so, I could see, were Joan and Chaney. I suppose I should have guessed it, but it had never occurred to me. Ten minutes, Chaney said. I looked up at Bronn. He was frightened, and again I was surprised without having any right to be. I tried to keep at least my voice calm. Please try it anyhow, Mr. Bronn, as a favor. It's already too late to do it any other way. And if you guess wrong, the outcome won't be any worse than if you don't try at all. My kids, he whispered. I don't think he knew that he was speaking aloud. I waited. Then his eyes seemed to come back to the present. All right, he said. I told you the truth, Andy. Remember that. So, is it a bomb, or ain't it? That's what's up for grabs, right? I nodded. He closed his eyes. An unexpected stab of pure fright went down my back. Without the eyes, Bronn's face was a death mask. The water sounds and the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter seemed to spring out from the audio speaker four times as loud as before. I could even hear the pen of the seismograph scribbling away until I looked at the instrument and saw that Clark had stopped it probably long ago. Droplets of sweat began to form along Bronn's forehead and his upper lip. The handkerchief remained crushed in his hand. Anderton said, of all the full hush, Jen said quietly. Slowly, Bronn opened his eyes. All right, he said. You guys wanted it this way. I say it's a bomb. He stared at us for a moment more, and then, all at once, the Timkin bearing burst. Words poured out of it. Now you guys do something. Do your job like I did mine. Get my wife and kids out of there. Empty the city. Do something. Do something. Anderton was already grabbing for the phone. You're right, Mr. Bronn. If it isn't already too late. Cheney shot out a hand and caught Anderton's telephone arm by the wrist. Wait a minute, he said. What do you mean? Wait a minute. Haven't you already shot enough time? Cheney did not let go. Instead, he looked inquiringly at Joan and said, One minute, Joan. You might as well go ahead. She nodded and spoke into the mic. Monic, unscrew the cap. Unscrew the cap! the audio squawked. But Dr. Hadamard, if that sets it off, it won't go off. That's the one thing you can be sure it won't do. What is this? Anderton demanded. And what's this deadline stuff anyhow? The cap's off. Monic reported. We're getting plenty of radiation now. Just a minute. Yeah, Dr. Hadamard. It's a bomb, all right. But it hasn't got a fuse. Now, how could they have made a full mistake like that? In other words, it's a dud, Joan said. That's right, a dud. Now, at last, Braun wiped his face, which was quite gray. I told you the truth, he said grimly. My hunches don't work on stuff like this. But they do, I said. I'm sorry we put you through the ringer and you too, Colonel. But we couldn't let an opportunity like this slip. It was too good a chance for us to test how our facilities would stand up in a real bomb drop. A real drop, Anderton said. Are you trying to say that CIA staged this? You ought to be shot, the whole pack of you. No, not exactly, I said. The enemy's responsible for the drop, all right. We got word last month from our men in Gdynia that they were going to do it. And that the bomb would be on board, the Ludmilla. As I say, it was too good an opportunity to miss. We wanted to find out just how long it would take us to figure out the nature of the bomb, which we didn't know in detail after it was dropped here. So we had our people in Gdynia diffuse the thing after it was put on board the ship, but otherwise leave it entirely alone. Actually, you see, your hunch was right on the button as far as it went. We didn't ask you whether or not that object was a live bomb. We asked whether it was a bomb or not. You said it was, and you were right. The expression on Bron's face was exactly like the one he had worn while he had been searching for his decision. Except that, since his eyes were open, I could see that it was directing at me. If this was the old days, he said, in a nice cold voice, I might have made the Colonel's idea come true. I don't go for tricks like this, Andy. It was more than a trick, Clark put in. You'll remember we had a deadline on the test, Mr. Bron. Obviously, in a real drop, we wouldn't have had all the time in the world to figure out what kind of thing had been dropped. If we had still failed to establish that when the deadline ran out, we would have had to allow evacuation of the city with all the attendant risk that that was exactly what the enemy wanted us to do. So we failed the test, I said, at one minute short of the deadline. Joan had the divers unscrew the cap. In a real drop, that would have resulted in a detonation. If the bomb was real, we'd never risk it. That we did do it in the test was a concession of failure and admission that our usual methods didn't come through for us in time. And that means that you were the only person who did come through, Mr. Bron. If a real bomb drop ever comes, we're going to have to have you here as an active part of our investigation. Your intuition for the one-shot gamble was the one thing that bailed us out this time. Next time it may save eight million lives. There was quite a long silence. All of us, Anderton included, watched Bron intently, but his impassive face failed to show any trace of how his thoughts were running. When he did speak at last, what he said must have seemed insanely irrelevant to Anderton and maybe to Cheney, too. And perhaps it meant nothing more to Joan than the final clinical note in a case history. It's funny, he said. I was thinking of running for Congress next year for my district, but maybe this is more important. It was, I believe, the sigh of a man at peace with himself. End of One Shot by James Benjamin Blish. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Shamback by Jack Vance. Howard Freyberg, production director of Know Your Universe, was a man of sudden unpredictable moods, and Sam Catlin, the show's continuity editor, had learned to expect the worst. Sam, said Freyberg, regarding the show last night. He paused to seek the proper words, and Catlin relaxed. Freyberg's frame of mind was merely critical. Sam, were in a rut. What's worse, the show's dull. Sam Catlin shrugged, not committing himself. Seaweed processors of Alfred Nine, who cares about seaweed? It's factual stuff, said Sam, defensive but not wanting to go too far out on a limb. We bring him everything, color, fact, romance, sight, sound, smell. Next week it's the ball expedition to the mixed up mountains on Gropis. Freyberg leaned forward. Sam, we're working the wrong slant on this stuff. We've got to loosen up, sock him, shift our ground, give him the old human angle, glamour, mystery, thrills. Sam Catlin curled his lips. I got just what you want. Yeah, show me. Catlin reached into his waist-basket. I filed this just ten minutes ago. He smoothed out the pages. Sequence idea by Wilbur Murphy. Investigate horsemen of space, the man who rides up to meet incoming space ships. Freyberg tilted his head to the side. Rides up on a horse? That's what Wilbur Murphy says. How far up? Does it make any difference? No, I guess not. Well, for your information it's up 10,000, 20,000 miles. He waves to the pilot, takes off his hat to the passengers, then rides back down. And where does all this take place? On—on—Catlin frowned. I can write it, but I can't pronounce it. He printed on his scratch-screen. Sergamesque? Red Freyberg. Catlin shook his head. That's what it looks like, but those consonants are all aspirated gutterals. It's more like— Oh, come on! Where did Murphy get this tip? I didn't bother to ask. Well, mused Freyberg, we could always do a show on strange superstitions. Is Murphy around? He's explaining his expense account to Schiffkin. Get him in here. Let's talk to him. Wilbur Murphy had a blonde crew-cut, a broad freckled nose, and a serious side-long squint. He looked from his crumpled sequence idea to Catlin and Freyberg. Didn't like it, eh? We thought the emphasis should be a little different, explained Catlin. Instead of the space-horseman, we'd give it the working title of odd superstitions of F-H-H-H-H-H-H. Oh, hell, said Freyberg. Call it Sergamesque. Anyway, said Catlin, that's the angle. But it's not superstition, said Murphy. Oh, come, Wilbur. I got this for sheer sober-sighted fact a man rides a horse up to meet the incoming ships. Where did you get this wild fable? My brother-in-law is a purser on the celestial traveler at Riker's Planet. They make connection with the feeder-line out of— Come in! Wait a minute, said Catlin. How did you pronounce that? Come in! The steward on the shuttle-ship gave out this story, and my brother-in-law passed it along to me. Somebody's pulling somebody's leg. My brother-in-law wasn't, and the steward was cold sober. They've been eating bong. Sergamesque is a Javanese planet, isn't it? Javanese, Arab, Mele. Then they took a bong, supply with them, and hashish, chat, and a few other sociable herbs. Well, this horseman isn't any drug dream. No. What is it? So far as I know it's a man on a horse. Ten thousand miles up, in a vacuum? Exactly. No space suit? That's the story. Catlin and Freyberg looked at each other. Well, Wilbur, Catlin began. Freyberg interrupted. What we can use, Wilbur, is a sequence on Sergamesque superstition, emphasis on voodoo or witchcraft, naked girls dancing, stuffed with roots in earth, but now typically Sergamesque. Lots of color, secret right stuff. Not much room on... For secret rights. It's a big planet, isn't it? Not quite as big as Mars. There's no atmosphere. The settlers live in mountain valleys with airtight lids over them. Catlin flipped the pages of thumbnail sketches of inhabited worlds. Says here there's ancient ruins millions of years old. When the atmosphere went, the population went with it. Freyberg became animated. There's lots of material out there. Go get it, Wilbur! Life! Sex! Excitement! Mystery! Okay, said Wilbur Murphy. But lay off this horseman in space. There is a limit to public credulity and don't let anyone tell you different. Sergamesque hung outside the port twenty thousand miles ahead. The steward leaned over Wilbur Murphy's shoulder and pointed a long brown finger. It was right out there, sir. He came riding up. What kind of man was it? Strange looking? No, he was Sergamesque. Oh! You saw him with your own eyes, eh? The steward bowed and his loose white mantle fell forward. Exactly, sir. No helmet, no space suit? He wore a singholt vest and pantaloons and a yellow hadrafi hat. No more. And the horse? Ah, the horse. There's a different matter. Different how? I can't describe the horse. I was intent on the man. Did you recognize him? By the brow of Lord Allah it's well not to look too closely when such matters occur. Then you did recognize him. I must be at my task, sir. Murphy frowned in vexation at the stewards retreating back, then bent over his camera to check the tape feed. If anything appeared now and his eyes could see it, the two hundred million audience of Know Your Universe could see it with him. When he looked up Murphy made a frantic grab for the stanchion, then relaxed. Sergamesque had taken the great twitch. It was an illusion, a psychological quirk. One instant the planet lay ahead, then a man winked or turned away and when he looked back ahead had become below. The planet had swung an astonishing ninety degrees across the sky and they were falling. Murphy leaned against the stanchion. The great twitch he muttered to himself. I'd like to get that on two hundred million screens. Several hours passed. Sergamesque grew. The sampan range rose up like a dark scab. The valley of the sultanates of Singhult, Hadra and New Batavia and Boing Bohat showed like glistening chicken tracks. The great rift colony of Sunderman reached down through the foothills like the trail of a slug. A loudspeaker voice rattled the ship. Attention, passengers for Singhult and other points on Sergamesque kindly prepare your luggage for disembarkation. Customs at Singhult are extremely thorough. Passengers are warned to take no weapons, drugs or explosives ashore. This is important. The warning turned out to be an understatement. Murphy was plied with questions. He suffered search of an intimate nature. He was three-dimensionally x-rayed with a range of frequencies calculated to excite fluorescence in whatever object he may have secreted in his stomach, in a hollow bone, or under a layer of flesh. His luggage was explored with similar minute attention and Murphy rescued his cameras with difficulty. What are you so damn anxious about? I don't have drugs. I don't have contraband. It's guns, Your Excellency. Guns, weapons, explosives. I don't have any guns. But these objects here, they're cameras. They record pictures and sounds and smells. The inspector seized the cases with a glittering smile of triumph. They resemble no cameras of my experience. I fear I shall have to impound a young man in loose white pantaloons, a pink vest, pale green cravat, and a complex black turban strolled up. The inspector made a swift obeisance with arms spread wide. Excellency! The young man raised two fingers. You may find it possible to spare Mr. Murphy any unnecessary formality. As Your Excellency recommends, the inspector nimbly repacked Murphy's belongings while the young man looked on benignly. Murphy covertly inspected his face. The skin was smooth, the color of the rising moon. The eyes were narrow, dark, superficially placid. The effect was a silken punctilio with hot ruby blood close beneath. Satisfied with the inspector's zeal, he turned to Murphy. Allow me to introduce myself to on Murphy. I am Ali Tomas of the House of Singhurt and my father the Sultan begs you to accept our poor hospitality. Why, thank you, said Murphy. This is a pleasant surprise. If you will allow me to conduct you, he turned to the inspector, Mr. Murphy's luggage to the palace. Murphy accompanied Ali Tomas into the outside light, fitting his own quick step to the prince's feline saunter. This is coming it pretty soft, he said to himself, I'll have a magnificent suite with bowls of fruit and gin pah-hits, not to mention two or three silken girls with skin like rich cream bringing me towels in the shower. Well, well, well. It's not so bad working for No Your Universe, after all. I suppose I ought to unlimber my camera. Prince Ali Tomas watched him with interest. And what is the audience of No Your Universe? We call them participants. Expressive. And how many participants do you serve? Oh, the bowler index rises and falls. Not about 200 million screens with 500 million participants. Fascinating. And tell me, how do you record smells? Murphy displayed the odor recorder on the side of the camera with its gelatinous track which fixed the molecular design. And the odors recreated, are they like the originals? Pretty close, never exact, but none of the participants knows the difference. Sometimes the synthetic odor is an improvement. Astounding, murmured the Prince. And sometimes, well, Carson Ten Lake went out to get the merblossoms on Venus. It was a hot day as days usually are on Venus and a long climb. When the show was run off there was more smell of Carson than of flowers. Prince Ali Tomas laughed politely. We turned through here. They came out into a compound paved with red, green and white tiles. Beneath the valley roof was a sinuous trough full of haze and warmth and golden light. As far in either direction as the eye could reach the hillsides were terraced, barred in various shades of green. Spattering the valley floor were tall canvas pavilions, tents, booths, shelters. Naturally, said Prince Ali Tomas, we hope that you and your participants will enjoy singhurt. It is a truism that in order to import we must export. We wish to encourage a pleasurable response to the made in singhurt tag on our batiks, carvings, lacquers. They rolled quietly across the square in a surface car displaying the house emblem. Murphy rested against deep cool cushions. Your inspectors are pretty careful about weapons. Ali Tomas smiled complacently. Our existence is ordered and peaceful. You may be familiar with the concept of a duck. I don't think so. A word, an idea from old earth. Every living act is ordered by ritual, but our heritage is passionate. And when unyielding, a duck stands in the way of an irresistible emotion. There is turbulence, sometimes even killing. An amok? Exactly. It is as well that the amok has no weapons other than his knife. Otherwise he would kill twenty where he now kills one. The car rolled along a narrow avenue scattering pedestrians to either side like the bow of a boat spreading foam. The men wore loose white pantaloons and a short open vest. The women wore only the pantaloons. Handsome set of people remarked Murphy. Ali Tomas again smiled complacently. I'm sure singhurt will present an inspiring and beautiful spectacle for your program. Murphy remembered the key note to Howard Freyberg's instructions. Excitement, sex, mystery. Freyberg cared little for inspiration or beauty. I imagine, he said casually, that you celebrate a number of interesting festivals. Colorful dancing, unique customs. Ali Tomas shook his head. To the contrary, we left our superstitions and our ancestor worship back on earth. We are quiet Muhammedians and indulge in very little festivity. Perhaps here is the reason for amoks and shambacks. Shambacks? We are not proud of them. You will hear sly rumor and it is better that I arm you beforehand with the truth. What's a shamback? They are bandits, flouters of authority. I will show you one presently. I heard, said Murphy, of a man riding a horse up to meet the spaceships. What would it count for a story like that? It can have no possible basis, said Prince Ali Tomas. We have no horses on Sergamesque, none, whatever. But, the various tidal talk, such nonsense will have no interest for your intelligent participants. The car rolled into a square, a hundred yards on a side, lined with luxuriant banana palms. Opposite was an enormous pavilion of gold and violet silk with a dozen peaked gables casting various changing sheens. In the center of the square a twenty-foot pole supported a cage about two feet wide, three feet long and four feet high. Inside this cage crouched a naked man. The car rolled past. Prince Ali Tomas waved an idle hand. The caged man glared down from bloodshot eyes. That, said Ali Tomas, is a shamback. As you see, a faint note of apology entered his voice, an attempt to discourage them. What's that metal object on his chest? The mark of his trade. By that you may know all shamback. In these unsettled times only we of the house may cover our chests. All others must show themselves and declare themselves true singalusi. Murphy said, tenetively, I must come back here and photograph that cage. Ali Tomas smilingly shook his head. I will show you our farms, our vines and orchards. Your participants will enjoy these. They have no interest in the duller of an ignoble shamback. Well, said Murphy, our aim is a well-rounded production. We want to show the farmers at work, the members of the great house at their responsibilities, as well as the deserved fate of wrongdoers. Exactly. For every shamback there are ten thousand industrious singalusi. It follows then that only one ten-thousandth part of your film should be devoted to this infamous minority. About three-tenths of a second, eh? No more than they deserve. You don't know my production director. His name is Howard Freberg and... Howard Freberg was deep in conference with Sam Catland, under the influence of what Catland called his philosophic kick. It was the phase which Catland feared most. Sam, said Freberg, do you know the danger of this business? Ulcers, Catland replied promptly. Freberg shook his head. We've got an occupational disease to fight. Progressive mental myopia. Speak for yourself, said Catland. Consider. We sit in this office. We think we know what kind of show we want. We send out our staff to get it. We're signing the cheque, so back it comes the way we asked for it. We look at it, hear it, smell it, and pretty soon we believe it. Our version of the universe, full blown from our brains, like Minerva stepping out of Zeus. You see what I mean? I understand the words. We've got our own picture of what's going on. We ask for it, we get it. It builds up and up, and finally we're like mice in a trap built of our own ideas. We cannibalize our own brains. Nobody'll ever accuse you of being stingy with a metaphor. Sam, let's have the truth. How many times have you been off earth? I went to Mars once, and I've spent a couple of weeks at our Astellus Resort on the moon. Freberg leaned back in his chair as if shocked. And we're supposed to be a couple of learned planetologists. Catland made a grumbling noise in his throat. I haven't been around the Zodiac, so what? You sneezed a few minutes ago, and I said Gesundheit, but I don't have any doctor's degree. There comes a time in a man's life, said Freberg, when he wants to take stock and get a new perspective. Relax, Howard, relax. In our case, it means taking out our preconceived ideas, looking at them, checking our illusions against reality. Are you serious about this? Another thing, said Freberg. I want to check up a little. Schiffkin says the expense accounts are frightful, but he can't fight it. When Keeler says he paid ten minutes for a loaf of bread on Nicar Four, who's gonna call him on it? Hell, let them eat bread. That's cheaper than making a safari around the cluster spot-checking the supermarkets. Freberg paid no heed. He touched a button. A three-foot sphere full of glistening moats appeared. Earth was at the center, with thin red lines. These scheduled spaceship routes radiating out in all directions. Let's see what kind of circle we can make, said Freberg. Gowers here at Canopus. Killers over here at Blue Moon. Wilbur Murphy's at Surgamesk. Don't forget, muttered Catlin, we've got a show to put on. We've got enough material for a year, scoffed Freberg. Get a hold of space lines. We'll start with Surgamesk, and see what Wilbur Murphy's up to. Wilbur Murphy was being presented to the Sultan of Singhort by the Prince Ali Tomas. The Sultan, a small, mild man of seventy, sat cross-legged on an enormous pink and green air cushion. Be at ease, Mr. Murphy. We dispense with as much protocol here as practicable. The Sultan had a dry, clipped voice, and the air of a rather harassed corporation executive. I understand you represent Earth's central home screen network. I'm a staff photographer for the Know Your Universe show. We export a great deal to Earth, mused the Sultan, but not as much as we'd like. We're very pleased with your interest in us, and naturally we want to help you in every possible way. Tomorrow the keeper of the archives will present a series of charts analyzing our economy. Ali Tomas shall personally conduct you through the fish hatcheries. We want you to know we're doing a great job out here on Singhort. I'm sure you are, said Murphy uncomfortably. However, that isn't quite the stuff I want. No. Just where do your desires lie? Ali Tomas said delicately, Mr. Murphy took a rather profound interest in the sham-back displayed in the square. Oh, and you explained that these renegades could hold no interest for serious students of our planet. Murphy started to explain that clustered around two hundred million screens tuned to Know Your Universe were four or five hundred million participants, the greater part of them, neither serious nor students. The Sultan cut indecisively. I will now impart something truly interesting. We Singhalusi are making preparations to reclaim four more valleys with an added area of six hundred thousand acres. I shall put my physiographic models at your disposal. You may use them to the fullest extent. I'll be pleased for the opportunity, declared Murphy, but tomorrow I'd like to prowl around the valley, meet your people, observe their customs, religious rites, courtships, funerals. The Sultan pulled a sour face. We are Ditchwooder Dull. Festivals are celebrated quietly in the home. There is small religious fervor. Courtships are consummated by family contract. I fear you will find little sensational material here in Singhurt. You have no temple dances, asked Murphy, no fire walkers, snake charmers, voodoo? The Sultan smiled patronizingly. We came out here to Sergamesque to escape the ancient superstitions. Our lives are calm, orderly. Even the Amux have practically disappeared. But the Shambacks? Negligible. Well, said Murphy, I'd like to visit some of these ancient cities. I'd advise against it, declared the Sultan. They are shards, weathered stone. There are no inscriptions, no art. There is no stimulation in dead stone. Now, tomorrow I will hear a report on hybrid soybean plantings in the Upper Cam District. You will want to be present. Murphy's suite matched or even excelled his expectation. He had four rooms and a private garden enclosed by a thicket of bamboo. His bathroom walls were slabs of glossy actinolite inlaid with cinnabar, jade, galena, pyrite, and blue malachite in representations of fantastic birds. His bedroom was a tent 30 feet high. Two walls were dark green fabric. A third was golden rust. The fourth opened upon the private garden. Murphy's bed was a pink and yellow creation 10 feet square, soft as cobweb, smelling of rose sandalwood. Carved black lacquer tubs held fruit, two dozen wines, liquors, syrups, essences flowed at a touch from as many ebony spigots. The garden centered on a pool of cool water, very pleasant in the hot-house climate of Singhort. The only shortcoming was the lack of the lovely servitors Murphy had envisioned. He took it upon himself to repair this lack and in a shady wine-house behind the palace, called Bangangapan, he made the acquaintance of a girl musician named Soik Panyobang. He found her enticing tones of quavering sweetness from the gamelan, an instrument well-loved in Old Bowie. Soik Panyobang had the delicate features and transparent skin of Sumatra, the supple long limbs of Arabia, and in a pair of wide and golden eyes a heritage from somewhere in Celtic Europe. Murphy bought her a goblet of frozen shavings, each a different perfume, while he himself drank white rice-beer. Soik Panyobang displayed an intense interest in the ways of earth and Murphy found it hard to guide the conversation. Weel-bar, she said, such a funny name. Weel-bar. Do you think I could play the gamelan in the great cities, the great palaces of earth? Sure. There's no law against gamelans. You talk so funny, Weel-bar. I like to hear you talk. I suppose you get kind of bored here in Singholt. She shrugged. Life is pleasant, but it concerns with little things. We have no great adventures. We grow flowers. We play the gamelan. She eyed him archly side-long. We love. We sleep. Murphy grinned. You run amok. No, no, no. That is no more. Not since the sham-back, say. The sham-backs are bad, but better than amok. When a man feels the knot forming around his chest, he no longer takes his criss and runs down the street. He becomes sham-back. This was getting interesting. Where does he go? What does he do? He robs. Who does he rob? What does he do with his loot? She leaned toward him. Not well to talk of them. Why not? The Sultan does not wish it. Everywhere are listeners. When one talks sham-back, the Sultan's ears rise like the points on a cat. Suppose they do. What's the difference? I've got a legitimate interest. I saw one of them in that cage out there. That's torture. I want to know about it. He is very bad. He opened the monorail car and the air rushed out. Forty-two Singh Halusi and Hadrasi bloated and blew up. And what happened to the sham-back? He took all the gold and money and jewels and ran away. Ran where? Out across the great Farasang plain. But he was a fool. He came back to Singholt for his wife. He was caught and set up for all people to look at so they might tell each other. Thus it is for sham-backs. Where do sham-backs hide out? Oh! She looked vaguely around the room. Out in the plains, in the mountains. They must have some shelter and air-dome? No. The Sultan would send out his patrol boat and destroy them. They roam quietly. They hide among the rocks and tend their oxygen stills. Sometimes they visit old cities. I wonder, said Murphy, staring into his beer. Could it be sham-backs who ride horses up to meet the spaceships? The weak Banyubang knit her black eyebrows as if preoccupied. That's what brought me out here, Murphy, when on the story of a man riding a horse out in space. Ridiculous! We have no horses in Sargamesk. All right. The steward won't swear to the horse. Suppose the man was up there on foot or riding a bicycle. But the steward recognized the man. Who was this man prey? The steward clammed up. The name would have just been noise to me anyway. I might recognize the name. Ask him yourself. The ship's still out of the field. She shook her head slowly, holding her golden eyes on his face. I do not care to attract the attention of either steward, sham-back, or Sultan. Murphy said impatiently, in any event it's not who, but how. How does the man breathe? Vacuum sucks a man's lungs up out of his mouth, bursts his stomach, his ears. We have excellent doctors," said Soyeek Panyabang, shuddering. But alas! I am not one of them. Murphy looked at her sharply. Her voice held the plangent sweetness of her instrument with additional overtones of mockery. There must be some kind of invisible dome around him holding in air, said Murphy. And what if there is? It's something new, and if it is, I want to find out about it. Soek smiled languidly. You are so typical in old lander, worried, frowning, dynamic. You should relax, cultivate Napal, enjoy life as we do here in Singhurt. What's Napal? It's our philosophy where we find meaning and life and beauty in every aspect of the world. That sham-back in the cage could do with a little less Napal right now. No doubt he is unhappy, she agreed. Unhappy. He's being tortured. He broke the sultan's law. His life is no longer his own. It belongs to Singhurt. If the sultan wishes to use it to warn other wrongdoers, the fact that the man suffers is of small interest. If they all wear that metal ornament, how can they hope to hide out? He glanced at her own bare bosom. They appear by night, slipped through the streets like ghosts. She looked in turn at Murphy's loose shirt. You will notice persons brushing up against you, feeling you. She laid her hand along his breast. And when this happens you will know they are agents of the sultan, because only strangers and the house may wear shirts. But now, let me sing to you a song from the old land, old Java. You will not understand the tongue, but no other words so join the voice of the game-lan. This is the gravy-train, said Murphy. Instead of a garden sweet with a private pool, I usually sleep in a bubble-tent with nothing to eat but condensed food. Soik Panubang flung the water out of her sleek black hair. Perhaps we'll bet you will regret leaving Sergamesque. Well, he looked up to the transparent roof, barely visible where the sunlight collected and refracted. I don't particularly like being shut up like a bird in an aviary. Mildly claustrophobic, I guess. After breakfast drinking thick coffee from tiny silver cups, Murphy looked long and reflectively at Soik Panubang. What are you thinking, Willebert? Murphy drank his coffee. I'm thinking that I'd better get to work. And what will you do? First I'm going to shoot the palace and you sitting here in the garden playing your game-lan. But, Willebert, not me. You're part of the universe, rather an interesting part. Then I'll take the square. And the sham-back? A quiet voice spoke from behind. A visitor to Juan Murphy. Murphy turned his head. Bring him in. He looked back to Soik Panubang. She was on her feet. It is necessary that I go. When will I see you? Tonight, at the barangapan. The quiet voice said, Mr. Rube Trimmer to Juan. Trimmer was small and middle-aged with thin shoulders and a punch. He carried himself with a hell-raising swagger, left over from a time twenty years gone. His skin had the waxy look of lost fluoridity. His tuft of white hair was coarse and thin. His eyelids hung in the off-side droop that amateur physiognominists like to associate with Kyle. I'm the resident director of the import-export bank, said Trimmer. Heard you were here and thought I'd pay my respects. I suppose you don't see many strangers. Not too many. There's nothing much to bring them. Sergamesk isn't a comfortable tourist planet. Too confined. Shut in. A man with a sensitive psyche goes nuts. Pretty easy here. Yes, said Murphy. I was thinking the same thing this morning. That dome begins to give a man the willies. How do the natives stand it? Or do they? Trimmer pulled out a cigar case. Murphy refused the offer. Local tobacco, said Trimmer. Very good. He lit up thoughtfully. Well, you might say that the Sergameskier Schizophrenic. They've got the docile Javanese blood, plus the Arabian Elan. The Javanese part is on top, but every once in a while you see a flash of arrogance. You never know. I've been out here nine years and I'm still a stranger. He puffed on his cigar, studied Murphy with his careful eyes. You work for—know your universe, I hear. Yeah, I'm one of the legmen. Must be a great job. A man sees a lot of the galaxy and he runs into queer tales like this shamback stuff. Trimmer nodded without surprise. My advice to you, Murphy, is to lay off the shambacks. They're not healthy around here. Murphy was startled by the bluntness. What's the big mystery about these shambacks? Trimmer looked around the room. This place is bugged. I found two pickups and plugged them, said Murphy. Trimmer laughed. Those were just plants. They hide them where a man might just barely spot them. You can't catch the real ones. They're woven into the cloth, pressure-sensitive wires. Murphy looked critically at the cloth walls. Don't let it worry, you said, Trimmer. They listen more out of habit than anything else. If you're fussy, we'll go for a walk. The road led past the palace into the country. Murphy and Trimmer sauntered along a placid river, overgrown with lily-pads, swarming with large white ducks. This shamback business said, Murphy, everybody talks around it. You can't pin anybody down. Including me, said Trimmer. I'm more or less privileged around here. The Sultan finances his reclamation through the bank on the basis of my reports. But there's more to sing-hole to than the Sultan. Namely, Trimmer waved his cigar waggishly. Now we're getting in where I don't like to talk. I'll give you a hint. Prince Ali thinks roofing in more valleys is a waste of money when there's Hadra and New Batavia and Sundaman so close. You mean armed conquest? Trimmer laughed. You said it, not me. They can't carry on much of a war unless the soldiers commute by monorail. Maybe Prince Ali thinks he's got the answer. Shambacks? I didn't say it, said Trimmer blandly. Murphy grinned. After a moment he said, I picked up with a girl named Soi Kpanyo Bang who plays the gamelan. I suppose she's working for either the Sultan or Prince Ali. Do you know which? Trimmer's eyes sparkled. He shook his head. Might be either one. There's a way to find out. Yeah? Get her off where you're sure there's no spy cells. Tell her two things. One for Ali, the other for the Sultan. Whichever one reacts, you know you've got her tagged. For instance? Well, for instance, she learns that you can rig up a hypnotic ray from a flashlight battery, a piece of bamboo, and a few lengths of wire. That'll get Ali in an awful sweat. He can't get weapons, none at all. And for the Sultan, Trimmer was warming up to his intrigue, chewing his cigar with gusto. Tell her you're onto a catalyst that turns clay into aluminum and oxygen in the presence of sunlight. The Sultan would sell his right leg for something like that. He tries hard for Sengholt and Sergamesk. And Ali? Trimmer hesitated. I never said what I'm going to say. Don't forget, I never said it. OK, you never said it. Ever hear of a jihad? Mohammedian holy wars? Believe it or not, Ali wants a jihad. Sounds kind of fantastic. Sure it's fantastic. Don't forget, I never said anything about it. But suppose someone, strictly unofficial of course, let the idea percolate around the peace office back home. Ah, said Murphy, that's why you came to see me. Trimmer turned a look of injured innocence. Now Murphy, you're a little unfair. I'm a friendly guy. Of course I don't like to see the bank lose what we've got tied up in the Sultan. Why don't you send in a report yourself? I have, but when they hear the same thing from you, a know your universe man, they might make a move. Murphy nodded. Well, we understand each other, said Trimmer heartily, and everything's clear. Not entirely. How's Ali going to launch a jihad when he doesn't have any weapons, no warships, no supplies? Now, said Trimmer, we're getting into the realm of supposition. He paused, looked behind him. A farmer pushing a rotary tiller bowed politely, trundled ahead. Behind was a young man in a black turban gold earrings, a black and red vest, white pantaloons, black curl-toed slippers. He bowed, started past. Trimmer held up his hand. Don't waste your time up there, we're going back in a few minutes. Thank you to one. Who are you reporting to, the Sultan or Prince Ali? The Tuan is sure to pierce the veil of my evasions I shall not disemble. I am the Sultan's man. Trimmer nodded. Now, if you'll kindly remove to about a hundred yards where your whisper pickup won't work. By your leave I go. He retreated without haste. He's almost certainly working for Ali, said Trimmer. Not a very subtle lie. Oh, yes, third level. He figured I'd take it second level. How's that again? Naturally I wouldn't believe him. He knew I knew that he knew it. So when he said Sultan I'd think he wouldn't lie simply, but that he'd lie double, that he actually was working for the Sultan. Murphy laughed. Suppose he told you a fourth level lie. It starts to be a toss-up pretty soon, Trimmer admitted. I don't think he gives me credit for that much subtlety. What are you doing the rest of the day? Taking footage. Do you know where I can find some picturesque rights? Mystical dances? Human sacrifice? I've got to work up some glamour and exotic lore. There's this sham-back in the cage that's about as close to the medieval as you'll find anywhere in Earth Commonwealth. Speaking of sham-backs, no time, said Trimmer, got to get back. Drop in at my office, right down the square from the palace. Murphy returned to his suite. The shadowy figure of his room-servant said, His Highness the Sultan desires the Tuan's attendance in the Cascade Garden. Thank you, said Murphy, as soon as I load my camera. The Cascade Room was an open patio in front of an artificial waterfall. The Sultan was pacing back and forth, wearing dusty khaki-putis brown plastic boots a yellow polo shirt. He carried a twig which he used as a riding-crop, slapping his boots as he walked. He turned his head as Murphy appeared, pointed his twig at a wicker bench. I pray you sit down, Mr. Murphy. He paced once up and back. How is your suite? Do you find it to your liking? Very much so. Excellent, said the Sultan. You do me honour with your presence. Murphy waited patiently. I understand that you had a visitor this morning, said the Sultan. Yes, Mr. Trimmer. May I inquire the nature of the conversation? It was of a personal nature, said Murphy, rather more shortly than he meant. The Sultan nodded wistfully. A single Lucy would have wasted an hour telling me half truths, distorted enough to confuse, but not sufficiently inaccurate to anger me if I had a spy cell on him all the time. Murphy grinned. A single Lucy has to live here the rest of his life. A servant wheeled a frosted cabinet before them, placed goblets under two spigots, withdrew. The Sultan cleared his throat. Trimmer is an excellent fellow, but unbelievably loquacious. Murphy drew himself two inches of chilled rosy pale liquor. The Sultan slept his boots with the twig. Undoubtedly he confided all my private business to you, or at least as much as I have allowed him to learn. Well, he spoke of your hope to increase the compass of Singhurt. That, my friend, is no hope. It's an absolute necessity. Our population density is 1500 to the square mile, we must expand or smother. There'll be too little food to eat, too little oxygen to breathe. Murphy suddenly came to life. I could make that the idea of the theme of my feature, Singhurt dilemma, expand or perish. No, that would be an advisable, inapplicable. Murphy was not convinced. It sounds like a natural. The Sultan smiled. I'll impart an item of confidential information, although Trimmer no doubt has preceded me with it. He gave his boots an irritated whack. To expand I need funds. Funds are best secured in an atmosphere of calm and confidence. The implication of emergency would be disastrous to my aims. Well, said Murphy, I see your position. The Sultan glanced at Murphy side long. Anticipating your cooperation, my Minister of Propaganda has arranged an hours program. Stressing our progressive social attitude, our prosperity and financial prospects. But, Sultan... Well... I can't allow your Minister of Propaganda to use me and know your universe as a kind of investment brochure. The Sultan nodded wearily. I expected you to take that attitude. Well, what do you yourself have in mind? I've been looking for something to tie to, said Murphy. I think it's going to be the dramatic contrast between the ruined cities and the new domed valleys. How the earth settlers succeeded where the ancient people failed to meet the challenge of the dissipating atmosphere. Well, the Sultan said grudgingly, that's not too bad. Today I want to take some shots of the palace, the dome, the city, the paddies, groves, orchards, farms. Tomorrow I'm taking a trip out to one of the ruins. I see, said the Sultan. Then you won't need my charts and statistics? Well, Sultan, I could film the stuff your propaganda minister cooked up and I could take it back to earth. Howard Fraeburg or Sam Catlin would tear into it, rip it apart, lard in some head-hunting, a little cannibalism and temple prostitution. And you'd never know you were watching singhurt. You'd scream with horror and I'd be fired. In that case, said the Sultan. I will leave you to the dictates of your conscience. Howard Fraeburg looked around the gray landscape of Riker's Planet, gazed out over the roaring black Mogador ocean. Sam, I think there's a story out there. Sam Catlin shivered inside his electrically heated glass overcoat. Out on that ocean? It's full of man-eating Plesiosores. Horrible things, forty feet long. Suppose we worked something out on the line of Moby Dick. The white monster of the Mogador ocean. We'd set sail in a catamaran. Us? No, said Fraeburg impatiently. Of course not us. Two or three of the staff, they'd sail out there, look over these gray and red monsters, maybe fake a fight or two. But all the time they're after the legendary white one. How's it sound? I don't think we pay our men enough money. Wilbur Murphy might do it. He's willing to look for a man riding a horse up to meet his spaceships. He might draw the line at a white Plesiosore riding up to meet his catamaran. Fraeburg turned away. Somebody's got to have ideas around here. We'd better head back to the spaceport, said Catlin. We got two hours to make the Sergamesque shuttle. Wilbur Murphy sat in the Burangapan, watching marionettes performing to xylophone, castanet, gong, and gamelan. The drama had its roots in proto-historic Mojino Dotto. It had filtered down through ancient India, medieval Burma, Melea, across the Straits of Malacca to Sumatra and Java. From modern Java across space to Sergamesque, 5,000 years time, 200 light-years of space. Somewhere along the route it had met an assimilated modern technology. Magnetic beams controlled arms, legs, and bodies, guided the poses and posturings. The manipulators faced by agency of clip, wire, radio control, and miniscule Celsen projected his scowl, smile, sneer, or grimace to the peaked little face he controlled. The language was that of old Java, which perhaps a third of the spectators understood. This portion did not include Murphy, and when the performance ended he was no wiser than at the start. Soik Panyobang slipped into the seat beside Murphy. She wore musician's garb, a sarong of brown, blue, and black batik, and a fantastic headdress of tiny silver bells. She greeted him with enthusiasm. Wheel-bear, I saw you watching. It was very interesting. Ah, yes, she sighed. Wheel-bear, you'd pick me with you back to earth. You make me a great picture-ama star. Please, Wheel-bear. Well, I don't know about that. I behaved very well, Wheel-bear. She nuzzled his shoulder, looked soulfully up with her shiny yellow hazel eyes. Murphy nearly forgot the experiment he intended to perform. What did you do today, Wheel-bear? You look at all the pretty girls? No, I ran footage, got the palace, climbed the ridge up to the condensation veins. I never knew there was so much water in the air till I saw the stream pouring off those veins, and hot. We have much sunlight. It makes the rice grow. The sultan ought to put some of that excess light to work. There's a secret process. Well, I'd better not say. Oh, come, Wheel-bear, tell me your secrets. It's not much of a secret, just a catalyst that separates clay into aluminum and oxygen when sunlight shines on it. Soak's eyebrows rose, poised in place like a seagull riding the wind. Wheel-bear, I did not know you for a man of learning. Oh, you thought I was just a bomb, eh? Good enough to make picture-ama stars out of game-land players, but no special genius. No, no, Wheel-bear. I know a lot of tricks. I can take a flashlight battery, a piece of copper foil, a few transistors and bamboo tube and turn out a paralyzer gun that'll stop a man cold in his tracks. And you know how much it costs? No, Wheel-bear, how much? Ten cents. It wears out after two or three months, but what's the difference? I make them as a hobby. Turn them out two or three an hour. Wheel-bear, you're a man of marvels. Hello, we will drink. And Murphy settled back in the wicker chair, sipping his rice-beer. Today, said Murphy, I get into a space suit and ride out to the ruins in the plain. Got tomapole, I think they're called. Like to come? No, Wheel-bear. Soik Panjabang looked off into the garden, her hands busy tucking a flower into her hair. A few minutes later, she said, Why must you waste your time among the rocks? There are better things to do and see and it might well be dangerous. She murmured the last word off-handedly. Danger from the shambaks? Yes, perhaps. The sultans giving me a guard, twenty men with crossbows. The shambaks carry shields. Why should they risk their lives attacking me? Soik Panjabang shrugged. After a moment she rose to her feet. Goodbye, Wheel-bear. Goodbye. Isn't this rather abrupt, won't I see you tonight? If so, be Allah's will. Murphy looked after the lithe-swaying figure. She paused, plucked a yellow flower, looked over her shoulder. Her eyes, yellow as the flower, lucent as water-jewels held his. Her face was utterly expressionless. She turned, tossed away the flower with a jaunty gesture and continued, her shoulders swinging. Murphy breathed deeply. She might have made Pichurama at that. One hour later he met his escort at the valley gate. They were dressed in spacesuits for the planes, twenty men with sullen faces. The trip to Gautama Pole clearly was not to their liking. Murphy climbed into his own suit, checked the oxygen pressure gauge, the seal at his collar. Already, boys? No one spoke. The silence drew out. The gatekeeper on hand to let the party out snickered. They're all ready to on— Well, said Murphy, let's go then. Outside the gate, Murphy made a second check of his equipment. No leaks in his suit. Inside pressure, fourteen point six. Outside pressure, zero. His twenty guards morosely inspected their crossbows and slim swords. The white ruins of Gautama Pole lay five miles across the Farasang plain. The horizon was clear, the sun was high, the sky was black. Murphy's radio hummed. Someone said sharply, Look! There it goes! He wheeled around. His guards had halted and were pointing. He saw a fleet something vanish into the distance. Let's go, said Murphy, there's nothing out there. Sham back. Well, there's only one of them. Where one walks, others follow. That's why the twenty of you are here. It is madness challenging the sham backs. What has gained, another argued. I'll be the judge of that, said Murphy, and set off along the plain. The warriors reluctantly followed, muttering to each other over their radio intercoms. The eroded city walls rose above them, occupied more and more of the sky. The platoon leader said in an angry voice, We have gone far enough. You're under my orders, said Murphy, we're going through the gate. He punched the button on his camera and passed under the monstrous portal. The city was frailer stuff than the wall and had succumbed to the thin storms which had raged a million years after the passing of life. Murphy marveled at the scope of the ruins. Virgin archaeological territory. No telling what a few weeks digging might turn up. Murphy considered his expense account. Schiffkin was the obstacle. There'd be tremendous prestige and publicity for know your universe if Murphy uncovered a tomb, a library, works of art. The sultan would gladly provide diggers. They were sturdy enough people, they could make quite a shelling in a week, if they were able to put aside their superstitions, fears and dreads. Murphy sized one of them up from the corner of his eye. He sat on a sunny slab of rock, and if he felt uneasy, he concealed it quite successfully. In fact, thought Murphy, he appeared completely relaxed. Maybe the problem of securing diggers was a minor one after all. And here was an odd sidelight on the single Lucy character. Once clear of the valley, the man openly wore his shirt, a fine loose garment of electric blue, in defiance of the sultan's edict. Of course, out here he might be cold. Murphy felt his own skin crawling. How could he be cold? How could he be alive? What is this spacesuit? He lounged on the rock, grinning sardonically at Murphy. He wore heavy sandals, a black turban, loose breeches, the blue shirt, nothing more. Where were the others? Murphy turned a feverish glance over his shoulder, a good three miles distant, bounding and leaping toward Singholt where twenty desperate figures, they all wore spacesuits. This man here, a shamback, a wizard, a hallucination? The creature rose to his feet, strode springily towards Murphy. He carried a crossbow and a sword like those of Murphy's fleet-footed guards, but he wore no spacesuit. Could there be breathable traces of an atmosphere? Murphy glanced at his gauge. Outside pressure, zero. Two other men appeared, moving with long elastic steps. Their eyes were bright, their faces flushed. They came up to Murphy, took his arm. They were solid, corporeal. They had no invisible force fields around their heads. Murphy jerked his arm free. Let go of me, damn it! But they certainly couldn't hear him through the vacuum. He glanced over his shoulder. The first man held his naked blade a foot or two behind Murphy's bulging spacesuit. Murphy made no further resistance. He punched the button on his camera to automatic. It would now run for several hours, recording one hundred pictures per second, a thousand to the inch. The shambaks led Murphy two hundred yards to a metal door. They opened it, pushed Murphy inside, banged it shut. Murphy felt the vibration through his shoes, heard a gradually waxing hum. His gauge showed an outside pressure of five, ten, twelve, fourteen, fourteen point five. An inner door opened. Hands pulled Murphy in, unclamped his dome. Just what's going on here, demanded Murphy angrily. Prince Ali Thomas pointed to a table. Murphy saw a flashlight battery, aluminum foil, wire, a transistor kit, metal tubing, tools, a few other odds and ends. There it is, said Prince Ali Thomas. Get to work. Let's see one of these paralysis weapons you boast of. Just like that, eh? Just like that. What do you want them for? Does it matter? I'd like to know. Murphy was conscious of his camera recording sight, sound, odor. I lead an army, said Ali Thomas, but they march without weapons. Give me weapons. I will carry the word to Hadra and New Batavia, to Sundaman, to Boing Bahut. How? Why? It is enough that I will it. Again, I beg of you," he indicated the table. Murphy laughed. I've got myself in a fine mess. Suppose I don't make this weapon for you. You'll remain until you do, under increasingly difficult conditions. I'll be here a long time. If such is the case, said Ali Thomas, we must make our arrangements for your care on a long-term basis. Ali made a gesture. Hand seized Murphy's shoulders. A respirator was held to his nostrils. He thought of his camera and he could have laughed. Mystery, excitement, thrills. Dramatic sequence for Know Your Universe staffman murdered by fanatics. The crime recorded on his own camera. See the blood. Hear his death rattle. Smell the poison. The vapor choked him. What a break. What a sequence. Sirgamesk, said Howard Frabert, bigger and brighter every minute. It must have been just about in here, said Catlin, that Wilbur's horseback rider appeared. That's right. Yes, sir. We're about twenty thousand miles out, aren't we? About fifteen thousand, sir. Ciderial cavalry. What an idea. I wonder how Wilbur's making out on his superstition angle. Sam Catlin, watching out the window, said in a tight voice, Why not ask him yourself? Ask him yourself. There he is, outside, riding some kind of critter. It's a ghost, whispered Frabert, a man without a spacesuit. There's no such thing. He sees us. Look. Murphy was staring at them, and his surprise seemed equal to their own. He waved his hand. Catlin gingerly waved back. Said Frabert, that's not a horse. He's riding it's a combination ramjet and kitty car with stirrups. He's coming aboard the ship, said Catlin. That's the entrance port down there. Wilbur Murphy sat in the captain's stateroom, taking careful breaths of air. How are you now? asked Frabert. Fine, a little sore in the lungs. I shouldn't wonder the ship's doctor growled. I never saw anything like it. How does it feel out there, Wilbur? Catlin asked. It feels awful, lonesome, and empty, and the breath seeping up out of your lungs, never going in. That's a funny feeling. The air blowing on your skin. I never realized it before. Air feels like silk, like whipped cream. It's got a texture. But aren't you cold? Space is supposed to be absolute zero. Space is nothing. It's not hot, and it's not cold. When you're in the sunlight, you get warm. It's better in the shade. You don't lose any heat by air convection, but radiation and sweat evaporation keep you comfortably cool. I still can't understand it, said Frabert. This Prince Ali, he's kind of a rebel, eh? I don't blame him in a way. A normal man living under those domes has to let off steam somehow. Prince Ali decided to go out crusading. I think he would have made it, too, at least on Surgamesk. Certainly there are many more men inside the domes. When it comes to fighting, said Murphy, a sham-back can lick twenty men in spacesuits. Nick doesn't hurt him, but a little Nick bursts open a spacesuit, and the man inside comes apart. Well, said the captain, I imagine the peace office will send out a team to put things in order now. Catlin asked, what happened when you woke up from the chloroform? Well, nothing very much. I felt this attachment on my chest, but didn't think much about it. Still kind of woozy. I was halfway through decompression. They keep a man there eight hours, drop pressure on him two pounds an hour. Nice and slow, so he don't get the bends. Was this the same place they took you when you met Ali? Yeah, that was their decompression chamber. They had to make a sham-back out of me. There wasn't anywhere else they could keep me. Well, pretty soon my head cleared, and I saw this apparatus stuck to my chest. He poked at the mechanism on the table. I saw the oxygen tank. I saw the blood running through the plastic pipes. Blue from me to that carburetor arrangement. Red on the way back in. And I figured out the whole arrangement. Carbon dioxide still exhales up through your lungs, but the vein back to the left oracle is routed through the carburetor and supercharged with oxygen. A man doesn't need to breathe. The carburetor flushes his blood with oxygen. The decompression tank adjusts him to the lack of air pressure. There's only one thing to look out for. That's not to touch anything with your naked flesh. If it's in the sunshine, it's blazing hot. If it's in the shade, it's cold enough to cut. Otherwise, you're free as a bird. But how did you get away? I saw those little rocket bikes and began figuring. I couldn't go back to Singholt. I'd be lynched on site as a sham-back. I couldn't fly to another planet. The bikes don't carry enough fuel. I knew when the ship would be coming in, so I figured I'd fly up to meet it. I told the guard I was going outside for a minute, and I got on one of the rocket bikes. There was nothing much to it. Well, said Freyberg, it's a great feature, Wilbur, a great film. Maybe we can stretch it into two hours. There's one thing bothering me, said Katelyn. Who did this steward see up here the first time? Murphy shrugged. It might have been somebody up here sky-larking, a little too much oxygen, and you start cutting all kinds of capers. Or it might have been someone who decided he had enough crusading. There's a sham-back in a cage right in the middle of Singholt. Prince Ali walks past. They look at each other eye to eye. Ali smiles a little and walks on. Suppose this sham-back tried to escape to the ship. He's taken aboard, turned over to the Sultan, and the Sultan makes an example of him. What'll the Sultan do to Ali? Murphy shook his head. If I were Ali, I'd disappear. A loudspeaker turned on. Attention, all passengers, we have just passed through quarantine. Passengers may now disembark. Important, no weapons or explosives allowed on Singholt. This is where I came in, said Murphy. End of... Sham-back by Jack Vance. Two-timer by Frederick Brown. 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. Two-timer by Frederick Brown. One experiment. The first-time machine gentleman, Professor Johnson, proudly informed his two colleagues. True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds five ounces, and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works. The small-scale model looked like a small scale, a postage scale, except for two dials in the part under the platform. Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. Our experimental object, he said, is a brass cube weighing one pound two point three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future. He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. Look at your watches, he said. They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine's platform. It vanished. Five minutes later, to the second, it reappeared. Professor Johnson picked it up. Now, five minutes into the past. He set the other dial. Placing the cube in his hand, he looked at his watch. It is six minutes before three o'clock. I shall now activate the mechanism by placing the cube on the platform at exactly three o'clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform. Five minutes before I place it there. How can you place it there, then? Asked one of his colleagues. It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o'clock. Notice, please. The cube vanished from his hand. It appeared on the platform of the time machine. See, five minutes before I shall place it there. It is there. His other colleague frowned at the cube. But, he said, what if now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o'clock? Wouldn't there be a paradox of some sort involved? An interesting idea, Professor Johnson said. I had not thought of it and it will be interesting to try. Very well. I shall not. There was no paradox at all. The cube remained. But the entire rest of the universe, professors and all, vanished. Two. Century. He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold and he was fifty thousand light-years from home. A strange blue sun gave light and the gravity twice what he was used to made every movement difficult. But in tens of thousands of years this part of war hadn't changed. The fly-boys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips are down, though, it was still the foot-soldier, the infantry that had to take the ground and hold it foot by bloody foot. Like this damned planet of a star he'd never heard of until they'd landed him here. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were there, too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the galaxy, cruel, hideous and repulsive monsters. Contact had been made with them near the center of the galaxy after the slow but difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets and it had been war at sight. They'd shot without even trying to negotiate or to make peace. Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out. He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold and the day was raw with a high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate and every sentry post was vital. He stayed alert, gun ready, fifty thousand light-years from home fighting on a strange world and wondering if he'd ever live to see home again. And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange horrible sound they all make, then it lay still. He shuddered at the sound in sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while but he'd never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skins and no scales. End of Two-Timer by Frederick Brown