Return to Otherness

by Henry Kuttner

  There was no way. The room had no windows, and the door was firm. Gallegher floated toward the piles of junk. An old sofa. A box of scraps. Pillows. A rolled carpet. Junk.

  Gallegher found a length of wire, a bit of mica, a twisted spiral of plastic, once part of a mobile statuette, and some other trivia. He put them together. The result was a thing vaguely resembling a gun, though it had some resemblance to an egg beater. It looked as weird as a Martian’s doodling.

  After that, Gallegher returned to the chair and sat down, trying, by sheer will power, to sober up. He didn’t succeed too well. When he heard footsteps returning, his mind was still fuzzy.

  The door opened. Blazer came in, with a swift, wary glance at Gallegher, who had hidden the gadget under the table.

  “Back, are you? I thought it might be Max.”

  “He’ll be along, too,” Blazer said. “How d’you feel?”

  “Woozy. I could use another drink. I’ve finished this bottle.” Gallegher had finished it. He had poured it down a rat hole.

  Blazer locked the door and came forward as Gallegher stood up. The scientist missed his balance, lurched forward, and Blazer hesitated. Gallegher brought out the crazy egg-beater gun and snapped it up to eye level, squinting along its barrel at Blazer’s face.

  The thug went for something, either his gun or his sap. But the eerie contrivance Gallegher had leveled at him worried Blazer. His motion was arrested abruptly. He was wondering what menace confronted him. In another second he would act, one way or another - perhaps continuing that arrested smooth motion toward his belt.

  Gallegher did not wait. Blazer’s stare was on the gadget. With utter disregard for the Queensbury Rules, Gallegher kicked his opponent below the belt. As Blazer folded up, Gallegher followed his advantage by hurling himself headlong on the thug and bearing him down in a wild, octopuslike thrashing of lanky limbs. Blazer kept trying to reach his weapon, but that first foul blow had handicapped him.

  Gallegher was still too drunk to coordinate properly. He compromised by crawling atop his enemy and beating the man repeatedly on the solar plexus. Such tactics proved effective. After a time, Gallegher was able to wrench the sap from Blazer’s grasp and lay it firmly along the thug’s temple.

  That was that

  With a glance at the gadget, Gallegher arose, wondering what Blazer had thought it was. A death-ray projector, perhaps. Gallegher grinned faintly. He found the door key in his unconscious victim’s pocket, let himself out of the attic, and warily descended a stairway. So far, so good.

  A reputation for scientific achievements has its advantages. It had, at least, served the purpose of distracting Blazer’s attention from the obvious.

  What now?

  The house was a three-story, empty structure near the Battery. Gallegher escaped through a window. He did not pause till he was in an airtaxi, speeding uptown. There, breathing deeply, he flipped the wind filter and let the cool night breeze cool his perspiring cheeks. A full moon rode high in the black autumn sky. Below, through the earth-view transparent panel, he could see the brilliant ribbons of streets, with slashing bright diagonals marking the upper level speedways.

  Smith. Fatty Smith. Connected with DU, somehow -

  With an access of caution, he paid off the pilot and stepped out on a rooftop landing in the White Way district. There were televisor booths here, and Gallegher called his lab. The robot answered.

  “Narcissus -”

  “Joe,” the robot corrected. “And you’ve been drinking some more. Why don’t you sober up?

  “Shut up and listen. What’s been happening?”

  “Not much.”

  “Those thugs. Did they come back?”

  “No,” Narcissus said, “but some officers came to arrest you. Remember that summons they served you with today? You should have appeared in court at 5 P.M.”

  Summons. Oh, yeah. Dell Hopper - one thousand credits.

  “Are they there now?”

  “No. I said you’d taken a powder.”

  ‘Why?” asked Gallegher.

  “So they wouldn’t hang around. Now you can come home whenever you like - if you take reasonable precautions.”

  “Such as what?”

  “That’s your problem,” Narcissus said. “Get a false beard. I’ve done my share.”

  Gallegher said, “All right, make a lot of black coffee. Any other calls?”

  “One from Washington. A commander in the space police unit. He didn’t give his name.”

  “Space police! Are they after me, too? What did he want?”

  “You,” the robot said. “Good-by. You interrupted a lovely song I was singing to myself.”

  “Make that coffee,” Gallegher ordered as the image faded. He stepped out of the booth and stood for a moment, considering, while he stared blankly at the towers of Manhattan rising around him, with their irregular patterns of lighted windows, square, oval, circular, crescent, or star-shaped.

  A call from Washington.

  Hopper cracking down.

  Max Cuff and his thugs.

  Fatty Smith.

  Smith was the best bet. He tried the visor again, calling DU.

  “Sorry, we have closed for the day.”

  “This is important,” Gallegher insisted. “I need some information. I’ve got to get in touch with a man -”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “S-m-i-t-h,” Gallegher spelled. “Just look him up in the file or something, won’t you? Or do you want me to cut my throat while you watch?” He fumbled in his pocket.

  “If you will call tomorrow—”

  “That’ll be too late. Can’t you just look it up for me? Please. Double please.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m a stockholder in DU,” Gallegher snarled. “I warn you, my girl!”

  “A … oh. Well, it’s, irregular, but - S-m-i-t-h? One moment. The first name: is what?”

  “I don’t know. Give me all the Smiths.”

  The girl disappeared and came back with a file box labeled SMI. “Oh, dear,” she said, riffling through the cards. “There must be several hundred Smiths.”

  Gallegher groaned. “I want a fat one,” he said wildly. “There’s no way of checking on that, I suppose.”

  The secretary’s lips tightened. “Oh, a rib. I see. Good night!” She broke the connection.

  Gallegher sat staring at the screen. Several hundred Smiths. Not so good. In fact, definitely bad.

  Wait a minute. He had bought DU stock when it was on the skids. Why? He must have expected a rising market. But the stock had continued to fall, according to Arnie.

  There might be a lead there.

  He reached Arnie at the broker’s home and was insistent. “Break the date. This won’t take you long. Just find out for me why DU’s on the skids. Call me back at my lab. Or I’ll break your neck. And make it fast! Get that dope, understand?”

  Arnie said he would. Gallegher drank black coffee at a counter stand, went home warily by taxi, and let himself into his house. He double-locked the door behind him. Narcissus was dancing before the big mirror in the lab.

  “Any calls?” Gallegher said.

  “No. Nothing’s happened. Look at this graceful pas.”

  “Later. If anybody tries to get in, call me. I’ll hide till you can get rid of ‘em.” Gallegher squeezed his eyes shut. “Is the coffee ready?”

  “Black and strong. In the kitchen.”

  The scientist went into the bathroom instead, stripped, cold-showered, and took a brief irradiation. Feeling less woozy, he returned to the lab with a gigantic cup full of steaming coffee. He perched on Bubbles and gulped the liquid.

  “You look like Rodin’s Thinker,” Narcissus remarked.

  “I’ll get you a robe. Your ungainly body offends my aesthetic feelings.”

  Gallegher didn’t hear. He donned the robe, since his sweating skin felt unpleasantly cool, but continued to drink the coffee and stare into space.

  “Narcissus. More of
this.”

  Equation: a (or) b (or) c equals x. He had been trying to find the value of a, b, or c. Maybe that was the wrong way. He hadn’t located J. W. at all. Smith remained a phantom. And Dell Hopper (one thousand credits) had been of no assistance.

  It might be better to find the value of x. That blasted machine must have some purpose. Granted, it ate dirt. But matter cannot be destroyed; it can be changed into other forms.

  Dirt went into the machine; nothing came out.

  Nothing visible.

  Free energy?

  That was invisible, but could be detected with instruments.

  Voltmeter, ammeter - gold leaf -

  Gallegher turned the machine on again briefly. Its singing was dangerously loud, but no one rang the door buzzer, and after a minute or two Gallegher snapped the switch back to OFF. He had learned nothing.

  Arnie called. The broker had secured the information Gallegher wanted.

  “‘Twasn’t easy. I had to pull some wires. But I found out why DU stock’s been dropping.”

  “Thank Heaven for that! Spill it.”

  “DU’s a sort of exchange, you know. They farm out jobs. This one - it’s a big office building to be constructed in downtown Manhattan. Only the contractor hasn’t been able to start yet. There’s a lot of dough tied up in the deal, and there’s a whispering campaign that’s hurt the DU stock.”

  “Keep talking.”

  Arnie went on. “I got all the info I could, in case. There were two firms bidding on the job.”

  “Who?”

  “Ajax, and somebody named -”

  “Not Smith?”

  “That’s it,” Arnie said. “Thaddeus Smith. S-m-e-i-t-h, he spells it.”

  There was a long pause. “S-m-e-i-t-h,” Gallegher repeated at last. “So that’s why the girl at DU couldn’t … eh? Oh, nothing. I ought to have guessed it.” Sure. When he’d asked Cuff whether Fatty spelled his name with an e or an i, the alderman had said both. Smeith. Ha!

  “Smeith got the contract,” Arnie continued. “He underbid Ajax. However, Ajax has political pull. They got some alderman to clamp down and apply an old statute that put the kibosh on Smeith. He can’t do a thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Arnie said, “the law won’t permit him to block Manhattan traffic. It’s a question of air rights. Smeith’s client - or DU’s client, rather - bought the property lately, but air rights over it had been leased for a ninety-nine-year period to Transworld Strato. The strato-liners have their hangar just beyond that property, and you know they’re not gyros. They need a straightaway course for a bit before they can angle up. Well, their right of way runs right over the property. Their lease is good. For ninety-nine years they’ve got the right to use the air over that land, above and over fifty feet above ground level.”

  Gallegher squinted thoughtfully. “How could Smeith expect to put up a building there, then?”

  “The new owner possesses the property from fifty feet above soil down to the center of the earth. Savvy? A big eighty-story building - most of it underground. It’s been done before, but not against political pull. If Smeith fails to fulfill his contract, the job goes to Ajax - and Ajax is hand-in-glove with that alderman.”

  “Yeah. Max Cuff,” Gallegher said. “I’ve met the lug. Still - what’s this statute you mentioned?”

  “An old one, pretty much obsolete, but still on the books. It’s legal. I checked. You can’t interfere with downtown traffic, or upset the stagger system of transport.”

  “Well?”

  “If you dig a hole for an eighty-story building,” Arnie said, “you get a lot of dirt and rock. How can you haul it away without upsetting traffic? I didn’t try to figure out how many tons have to be removed.”

  “I see,” Gallegher said softly.

  “So there it is, on a platinum platter. Smeith took the contract. Now he’s stymied. He can’t get rid of the dirt he’ll be excavating, and pretty soon Ajax will take over and wangle a permit to truck out the material.”

  “How - a Smeith can’t?”

  “Remember the alderman? Well, a few weeks ago some of the streets downtown were blocked off, for repairs. Traffic was rerouted - right by that building site. It’s been siphoned off there, and it’s so crowded that dirt trucks would tangle up the whole business. Of course it’s temporary” - Arnie laughed shortly - “temporary until Smeith is forced out. Then the traffic will be rerouted again, and Ajax can wangle their permit.”

  “Oh,” Gallegher looked over his shoulder at the machine. “There may be a way -”

  The door buzzer rang. Narcissus made a gesture of inquiry.

  Gallegher said, “Do me another favor, Arnie. I want to get Smeith down here to my lab, quick.”

  “All right, vise him.”

  “His visor’s tapped. I don’t dare. Can you hop over and bring him here, right away?”

  Arnie sighed. “I certainly earn my commissions the hard way. But O. K.”

  He faded. Gallegher listened to the door buzzer, frowned, and nodded to the robot. “See who it is. I doubt if Cuff would try anything now, but - well, find out. I’ll be in this closet.”

  He stood in the dark, waiting, straining his ears, and wondering. Smeith - he had solved Smeith’s problem. The machine ate dirt. The only effective way to get rid of earth without running the risk of a nitrogen explosion.

  Eight hundred credits, on account, for a device or a method that would eliminate enough earth - safely - to provide space for an underground office building, a structure that had to be mostly subterranean because of prior-leased air rights.

  Fair enough.

  Only - where did that dirt go?

  Narcissus returned and opened the closet door. “It’s a Commander John Wall. He vised from Washington earlier tonight. I told you, remember?”

  “John Wall?”

  J. W., fifteen hundred credits! The third client!

  “Let him in,” Gallegher ordered breathlessly. “Quick! Is he alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then step it up!”

  Narcissus padded off, to return with a gray-haired, stocky figure in the uniform of the space police. Wall grinned briefly at Gallegher, and then his keen eyes shot toward the machine by the window.

  “That it?”

  Gallegher said, “Hello, commander. I … I’m pretty sure that’s it. But I want to discuss some details with you first.”

  Wall frowned. “Money? You can’t hold up the government. Or am I misjudging you? Fifty thousand credits should hold you for a while.” His face cleared. “You have fifteen hundred already; I’m prepared to write you a check as soon as you’ve completed a satisfactory demonstration.”

  “Fifty thou -” Gallegher took a deep breath. “No, it isn’t that, of course. I merely want to make certain that I’ve filled the terms of our agreement. I want to be sure I’ve met every specification.” If he could only learn what Wall had requested! If he, too, had wanted a machine that ate dirt -

  It was a farfetched hope, an impossible coincidence, but Gallegher had to find out. He waved the commander to a chair.

  “But we discussed the problem in full detail -”

  “A double-check,” Gallegher said smoothly. “Narcissus, get the commander a drink.”

  “Thanks, no.”

  “Coffee?”

  “I’d be obliged. Well, then - as I told you some weeks ago, we needed a spaceship control - a manual that would meet the requirements of elasticity and tensile strength.”

  “Oh-oh,” Gallegher thought.

  Wall leaned forward, his eyes brightening. “A spaceship is necessarily big and complicated. Some manual controls are required. But they cannot move in a straight line; construction necessitates that such controls must turn sharp corners, follow an erratic and eccentric path from here to here.”

  “Well -”

  “Thus,” Wall said, “you want to turn on a water faucet in a house two blocks away. And you want to do it while yo
u’re here, in your laboratory. How?”

  “String. Wire. Rope.”

  “Which could wind around corners as … say … a rigid rod could not. However, Mr. Gallegher, let me repeat my statement of two weeks ago. That faucet is hard to turn. And it must be turned often, hundreds of times a day when a ship is in free space. Our toughest wire cables have proved unsatisfactory. The stress and strain snap them. When a cable is bent, and when it is also straight - you see?”

  Gallegher nodded. “Sure. You can break wire by bending it back and forth often enough.”

  “That is the problem we asked you to solve. You said it could be done. Now - have you done it? And how?”

  A manual control that could turn corners and withstand repeated stresses. Gallegher eyed the machine. Nitrogen - a thought was moving in the back of his mind, but he could not quite capture it.

  The buzzer rang. “Smeith,” Gallegher thought, and nodded to Narcissus. The robot vanished.

  He returned with four men at his heels. Two of them were uniformed officers. The others were, respectively, Smeith and Dell Hopper.

  Hopper was snarling savagely. “Hello, Gallegher,” he said. “We’ve been waiting. We weren’t fast enough when this man” - he nodded toward Commander Wall - “came in, but we waited for a second chance.”

  Smeith, his plump face puzzled, said, “Mr. Gallegher, what is this? I rang your buzzer, and then these men surrounded me -”

  “It’s O. K.,” Gallegher said. “You’re on top, at least. Look out that window.”

  Smeith obeyed. He popped back in again, beaming.

  “That hole -”

  “Right. I didn’t cart the dirt away, either. I’ll give you a demonstration presently.”

  “You will in jail,” Hopper said acidly. “I warned you, Gallegher, that I’m not a man to play around with. I gave you a thousand credits to do a job for me, and you neither did the job nor returned the money.”

  Commander Wall was staring, his coffee cup, forgotten, balanced in one hand. An officer moved forward and took Gallegher’s arm.

  “Wait a minute,” Wall began, but Smeith was quicker.

  “I think I owe Mr. Gallegher some credits,” he said, snatching out a wallet. “I’ve not much more than a thousand on me, but you can take a check for the balance, I suppose. If this - gentleman - wants cash, there should be a thousand here.”