Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  She had a little Martini and Clifton and Novak had big ones.

  “We all go to the meeting tonight I guess? First I want biftek aux pommes de terre someplace.”

  “What the hell, Mama!” Clifton objected. “This time yesterday you was a vegetarian for fife.”

  “I change my mind,” she said. “Go get shaved up and dress you’self and we go someplace for biftek.”

  When Clifton appeared—shaved, dressed, and subdued—Lilly was still in the bedroom, putting on finishing touches. The two men had another martini apiece.

  “What about the contracts?” Novak asked.

  Clifton understood. “If they try to hold us to them we could just lie down on the job and let them pay us. Hate to work it like that, though. It’d be dull.”

  “It’s still the craziest business I ever heard of.”

  Lilly appeared, looking sexy in a black dinner dress with a coronet of blonde hair swept up from her creamy neck. Clifton let out a long, loud wolf-howl and said: “The hell with the beefsteaks and the meeting. Let’s——”

  “Later,” said Lilly firmly.

  As the maroon Rolls thundered down the canyon, Clifton said casually: “I may quit the space hounds, Mama.”

  “So what you gonna do for a yob?”

  “Buy you a red dress and turn mack, I guess. Nah, ya too old and ugly. Maybe I’ll open a radio shop or ship out again for an electrician; I guess I still got my card. I kinda hate to leave my best girl out there in the desert, but the whole thing’s a joke. She’s pretty, but she’ll never amount to a damn.”

  Novak knew why he was lying about the reason. I understand in these cloak-and-dagger things they kill you if you find out too much.

  VI.

  They had dinner at a downtown restaurant and were at the A.S.F.S.F. meeting hall by 8.30. Novak Was alarmed when the building turned out to be the Los Angeles Slovak Sokol Hall, rented for the occasion.

  “Foreigners!” he exclaimed. “Does the A.S.F.S.F. go around looking for jams to get into?”

  “Relax, Mike,” Clifton told him. “The Sokol’s strictly American by now. They got a long anti-Communist record.”

  Still, fretted Novak, foreigners—Slavic foreigners. The building was in the same run-down area that housed the Society’s business office. It was liberally hung with American flags and patriotic sentiments. Inconspicuous on the lobby walls were a few photographs of group calisthenics and marchers in Czech national costumes, from decades ago.

  A well-worn placard on an easel said that the A.S.F.S.F. meeting was being held at 8.30 in the main hall, straight ahead and up the stairs.

  About a score of people in the lobby were having final smokes and talking. Novak could divide them easily into two types: juvenile space hounds and employed hobbyists. The hobbyists were what you’d see at any engineers’ convention: pipe-smokers, smiling men, neat, tanned. The space hounds were any collection of juvenile enthusiasts anywhere—more mature than an equal number of hot-rod addicts, perhaps, but still given to nervous laughter, horse-play, and catchwords.

  Their entrance had been the signal for the younger element to surround Clifton and bombard him with questions.

  “Cliff, how she coming?”

  “Mr. Clifton, need a good carpenter at the field?”

  “How’s the acceleration couch coming, Cliff?”

  “Could we get that boring mill at South Bend?”

  “Shaddap!” said Clifton. “Leave a man breathe, will ya!” They loved him for it. “What’s the movie tonight?”

  “A stinker,” one girl told him. “Pirates of the Void, with Marsha Denny and Lawrence Malone. Strictly for yocks.”

  “They show a space-flight movie,” Clifton explained to Novak. “There ain’t enough business to kill the time and send everybody home in the proper state of exhaustion.” He towed his wife and Novak up the stairs, where a youngster at a card table challenged their membership. They were clamourously identified by a dozen youngsters and went in. The hall seated about four hundred and had a stage with a movie screen and more American flags.

  “Better sit in the back——” began Clifton, and then: “For

  God’s sake!” It was Anheier, smiling nervously.

  “Hello,” said the Security man. “I thought I’d combine business with pleasure. Marsha Denny’s a great favourite of mine and I understand there’s going to be a preview tonight.”

  “Well, enjoy yourself,” Clifton said coldly. He took Lilly and Novak to the left rear comer of the auditorium and they sat down. He told his wife: “An A.E.C. guy we met. A creep.”

  MacIlheny climbed to the stage and called to stragglers in the back of the hall: “Okay, men. Let’s go.” They found seats.

  Crack went the gavel. “The-meeting-is-called-to-order. The-chair-will-entertain-a-motion-to-adopt-the-standard-agenda-as-laid-down-in-the-organization’s-byelaws.”

  “So move,” said somebody, and there was a ragged chorus of seconds.

  “All-in-favor-signify-by-raising-one-hand-any-opposed? The-motion-seems-to-be-and-is-carried. First-on-the-agenda-is-the-reading-of-previous-meetings-minutes.”

  Somebody stuck his hand up, was recognized, and moved that the minutes be accepted as read. The motion was seconded and carried without excitement. So were motions to accept and adopt reports of the membership, orbit computation, publications, finance, structural problems and control mechanisms committees.

  “Making good time,” Clifton commented.

  Under “good and welfare” a belligerent-looking youngster got recognized and demanded the impeachment of the secretary-treasurer. There was a very mild, mixed demonstration: some applause and some yells of “Sit down!” and “Shuddup!” MacIlheny rapped for order.

  “The motion is in order,” he wearily announced. “Is there a second?” There was—another belligerent kid.

  “In seconding this motion,” he said loudly, “T just want to go over some ground that’s probably familiar to us all. With due respect to the majority’s decision, I still feel that there’s no place for salaried employees in the A.S.F.S.F. But if there has to be a paid secretary-treasurer, I’m damned if I see why an outsider with no special interest in space flight——”

  Friml was on his feet in the front row, clamouring for recognition on a point of personal privilege.

  “Damn it, Friml, I wasn’t insulting you——”

  “That’s for the chair to decide, Mr. Grady! I suggest you pipe down and let him.”

  “Who’re you telling to——”

  MacIlheny hammered for silence. “Chair recognizes Mr. Friml.”

  “I simply want a ruling on the propriety of Mr. Grady’s language. Thank you.”

  “The chair rules that Mr. Grady’s remarks were improper and cautions him to moderate his language.”

  Breathing hard, the youngster tried again. “In seconding this motion to impeach, I want to point out that there are members with much more seniority in the organization than Mr. Friml and with a long-demonstrated record of interest in space flight which he cannot match.” MacIlheny called for debate and recognized one of the engineer-types.

  “It should be evident to all of us,” the engineer said soothingly, “that the criterion for the secretary-treasurer’s office ought to be competence. We’re not playing with marbles any more—I’m happy to say. And I for one am very much relieved that we have the services of a man with a B.B.A., an M.B.A., and a C.P.A. after his name.

  “Now, I may have more organizational experience than Mr. Grady, since I’ve been somewhat active in the A.S.M.E. and the aeronautical societies. I name no names—but in one of those groups we were unwise enough to elect a treasurer who, with all the good will in the world, simply didn’t know how to handle the job. We were rooked blind before we knew what hit us, and it took a year to straighten the records out. I don’t want that to happen to the A.S.F.S.F.’, and I seriously urge that the members here vote against the impeachment. Let’s not monkey with a smooth-running machi
ne. Which is what we’ve got now.”

  There was a lot of applause.

  A thin, dark girl, rather plain, was recognized. Her voice was shrill with neurotic hatred. “I don’t know what’s become of the A.S.F.S.F. In one year I’ve seen a decent, democratic organization turned into a little despotism with half a dozen people—if that!—running the works while the plain members are left in the dark. Who is this Friml? How do we know he’s so good if we don’t know the amount and nature of the contributions he handles? And Mr. August Clifton, whom everybody is so proud of, I happen to know he was fired from Western Aircraft! The fact is, MacIlheny’s got some cash donors in his hip pocket and we’re all afraid to whisper because he might——”

  MacIlheny pounded for silence. “The chair rules Miss Gingrich out of order,” he said. “This is debate on a motion to impeach Mr. Friml and not to reconsider a policy of accepting contributions in confidence, which was approved by the membership as the minutes show. Miss Stuart, you’re recognized.”

  Amy Stuart got up looking grim. “I want to make two statements. First, on a point of personal privilege, that Mr. Clifton was fired from Western because he was too high-spirited to get along in a rather conservative outfit and not for incompetence. More than once I’ve heard my father say that Mr. Clifton was—or almost was—the best man he had working for him.

  “Second, I move to close debate.”

  “Second the motion,” somebody called from the floor.

  Miss Gingrich was on her feet shrilling: “Gag rule! Nobody can open his mouth around here except the Holy Three and their stooges!

  We were doing all right before MacIlheny——” The rest was lost in shouts of disapproval and the whacking of the gavel. The girl stood silently for a moment and then sat down, trembling.

  “Motion to close debate has been made and seconded. This motion takes precedence and is unamendable. All in favour raise one hand.” A forest of hands went up. “Any opposed?” Maybe twenty. “The motion is carried. We now have before us a motion to impeach Mr. Friml, our secretary-treasurer. All in favour.” The same twenty hands. “Opposed?” The forest of hands rose again, and a few kids cried: “No, no!”

  “The motion is defeated. Unless there are further matters under good and welfare”—he was refusing to let his eye be caught, and half a dozen members were trying to catch it—”we will proceed to the introduction of a new A.S.F.S.F. full-time scientific worker. Dr. Michael Novak comes to us from two years with the United States Atomic Energy Commission. He has been working with high-tensile, refractory ceramic materials—a vital field in rocketry; I’m sure the application to our work is obvious to all. Dr. Novak.”

  He was on his feet and starting down the aisle to a polite burst of applause. They might be spies or they might not; he might be working for them tomorrow or he might not, but meanwhile there was a certain rigmarole you went through at these things, and he knew it well.

  “Mr. President, members, and guests, thank you.” Now the joke. “My field of work stems from very early times. It was a cave man who founded ceramic engineering when he accidentally let a mud-daubed wicker-basket fall into his campfire and pulled out, after the fire died down, the first earthenware pot. I presume he did not realize that he was also a very important pioneer of space flight.” A satisfactory chuckle.

  Now the erudition. “Basically, my problem is to develop a material which is strong, workable, and heat-resistant. For some years the way to tackle such a job has been to hunt the material among the so-called ‘solid solutions’. An alloy is a familiar example of a solid solution—the kind in which both the solvent and the solute are metals.

  “The substance tungsten carbide is well known to any of you who have machine-shop experience. It is a solid solution with one non-metallic constituent, and its properties have revolutionized industrial production. Dies and tool bits of this fantastically hard stuff have probably increased the productivity of this country by several per cent with no other changes being put into effect. Idle time of machine tools has been reduced because tungsten-carbide bits go on, and on, and on without resharpening. Idle time on presses of all sorts has been reduced because tungsten-carbide dies go on, and on, and on without replacement.

  “This is only one example of the way Mother Nature comes up with the answer to your particular problem if you ask her in the right way. She also offers among the solid solutions the chromium and cobalt carbides, which top tungsten carbide for refractory qualities, and the boron carbides with which I intend to work.

  “In the solid solutions there is a situation that rules out dramatic, abrupt crystallizations of one’s problem. An organic chemist trying to synthetize a particular molecule may leap up with a shriek of ‘eureka—I’ve got it!’ And so he may, for an organic molecule either is there or it isn’t: a yes-or-no situation. But in working with solutions rather than compounds, there is continuous variation of solvent to solute. Theoretically, it would take an infinite amount of time to explore the properties of every boron carbide, even if their properties varied simply and continuously with the ratio of constituents alone. But it is more complicated than that.

  “Actually the properties you seek in your carbides do not appear when you turn out a batch fresh from your crucible. There is the complicated business of ageing, in which the carbide spends a certain time at a certain temperature. Two more variables. And in some cases the ageing should be conducted in a special atmosphere—perhaps helium or argon. Another variable! And secondary properties must be considered. For example, the standard ceramic bond to metal is obtained by heating both parts to red heat and plunging them into liquid air. There are carbides that may have every other desirable property but which cannot take such a drastic thermal shock.”

  MacIlheny, in the front row, was looking at his watch. Time for the windup. “I hope I’ve given you an idea of what we’re up against. But I hope I haven’t given you an idea that the problem’s uncrackable in a less-than-infinite amount of time, because it isn’t. Experiments in some number must be made, but mathematics comes to the aid of the researcher to tell him when he’s on the right track and when he’s going astray. With the aid of the theory of least squares, plenty of sweat, and a little dumb luck I hope before long to be able to report to you that I’ve developed a material which can take the heat and thrust of any escape-velocity fuel which may some day come along.”

  The applause was generous.

  “We have the privilege tonight,” MacIlheny was saying, “of being the first audience in this area to see the new space-flight film Pirates of the Void——” There were a few ironical cheers. “——through the kindness of Mr. Riefenstahl of United Productions’ promotion staff. Audience comment cards will be available on the way out. I think it would be only fair and courteous if all of us made it a point to get one and fill it out, giving our—serious—opinion of the movie. And I’d like to add that Sokol Hall has made two projection machines available to us, so that this time there will be no interruption for changing between reels.” The cheers at that were not ironical.

  “I’m gonna the men’s room,” Clifton announced, and left.

  “Cliff don’ like movies much,” Lilly announced proudly. “He’ll be back.”

  The lights went out and Pirates of the Void went on with a fanfare and the United Productions monogram.

  The film, thought Novak as he watched, was another case of the public’s faith that space flight is an impossibility. It was a fable in which the actors wore odd garments: the men, shiny overalls; and the women, shiny shorts and bras. The time was far in the future—far enough for there to be pirates of space and a Space Navy of the United World to battle them. Space flight tomorrow, but never space flight today. But MacIlheny had. a fuel and knew its performance.

  He leaned back, wishing he could smoke, and saw Marsha Denny’s problem unfold. Marsha was a nurse in the Space Navy and she had a brother (but there was a plant indicating that he wasn’t really her brother, though she didn’t
yet know that), in the Pirate Fleet, high up. She was in love with Lawrence Malone, who took the part of the muscular G-2 of the Space Navy and had assigned himself the mission of penetrating the Pirate Fleet in the guise of a deserter from the regulars.

  Somehow fifteen minutes of it passed, and Lilly leaned across the seat between them. “Mike,” she asked worriedly, “you mind doing somet’ing for me? You go and find Cliff? He’s gone an awful long time.”

  “Why, sure,” he whispered. “Glad to get out of here.”

  He slipped from the dark auditorium and promptly lit a cigarette. Men’s Room, said a sign with an arrow. He followed it to a big, empty washroom with six booths. One of the doors was closed.

  “Cliff?” he called, embarrassed. There was no answer.

  Cliff must he in the corridor somewhere. His eye was caught by the shine of gold on the corner of a washstand. A wedding band—Cliff’s wedding band? Slipped it off before he washed his hands? There was no engraving in it and he didn’t remember what Cliff’s ring looked like; just that he wore one.

  Maybe.

  “Mister,” he said to the closed door, “I found a gold ring on the washstand. You lose it?”

  There was no answer. A thread of crimson blood snaked from under the closed door, slowly over the tiled floor, seeking a bright brass drain.

  I understand in these cloak-and-dagger things they kill you if you find out too much.

  To be continued

  From: TAKEOFF

  Copyright 1952 by C.M. Kornbluth. Published by Doubleday & Co. Inc.

  Takeoff

  The mock-up Moon rocket being built by the American Society for Space Flight is nearing completion, but Clifton’s murder complicates the final details and Michael Novak takes over. From here on it is success or failure for the Society—with the espionage net drawing tighter about Novak’s neck every hour.

  Part Two of Three Parts

  FOREWORD

  Michael Novak, ceramic engineer, working in the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA), Division of the ZJ.S. Atomic Energy Commission, is inexplicably transferred to the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago where his particular talents are entirely wasted in the field of pure nuclear theory. Attempting in vain to get a suitable transfer he forcibly resigns and attempts to get a job elsewhere. The fact that he had struck the Research Director when handing in his resignation goes against him wherever he applies, and he is getting more than despondent when he receives a curious letter from a Los Angeles office offering him fulltime work in refractories research and development with high-altitude jet aircraft.