"Not exactly," said Barden.
"No, for that means death."
"We were going to try it out," was Barden's calm thought.
"On--NO!" came the terrified reply.
"Well," returned Barden, "we're never pleased with red-hots who shoot at us!"
"But an entire system?" came the pleading exclamation.
"Filled with people of the same ilk," returned Barden unimpressed.
"But even warfare must not be annihilation," objected the alien. "For of what value is a dead enemy?"
"They are no longer any bother," Barden grunted. "We dislike being bothered, and our will happens to be that we want to go wherever we choose at any time we please. A favorable attitude upon the part of any other culture is one that permits us our will. A dead culture will never obstruct us, for one thing. It will never revert to its original attitude of belligerency, for the second thing. And for the third thing, alien, with the interstellar drive we have, we can find those cultures in the galaxy which see exactly as we do; therefore it is to our advantage to eliminate any malcontents right now."
"But what do you intend to do?" demanded the creature.
"My system has been the tool of some other culture. The purpose is not clear, though the outcome might have been quite disastrous. I intend to find both that culture and their reasons and extract full payment!"
"But how--?"
Barden smiled in a hard manner. "I intend to plant one of these unprotected space motors on one of your planets," he said. "That is for my own protection. Then we'll collect one of the enemy, and do likewise with his system. Then you and he will have your little talk--and you'll first call off this war, or you'll both be enjoying novas in your own backyards. It's about time that people learned how to get along with one another!"
"But I have little authority."
"I have," smiled Barden in a completely self-satisfied manner. "I have all the authority necessary to demand that your superiors and your scientists meet their contemporaries of your enemy--and peacefully."
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Do you know both languages?"
"No," answered the alien. "That's why we use the mentaphone."
"What do you know of the space motor?"
"Very little. It is, as you know, dangerous. We are forbidden to experiment on it."
"You know it is dangerous?" asked Barden.
"We have excellent reason to believe so. Our studies have been purely theoretical. But tell me, how do you hope to accomplish this mission of yours?"
"One of you four will be permitted to land and carry our message.
One of the enemy race will do likewise."
The alien disagreed. "You can never land," he said. "You cannot even approach."
"No?" said Barden harshly. "Well, we'll plant our motors first. And you'll use whatever you have to communicate with them and you'll tell 'em all. Then, my squat friend, there had better be a ten-thousand-piece brass band playing the Solar Anthem as we land! Or else!"
* * * *
Tom Barden sat in an easy chair, relaxing. He was watching the others, who were glaring at one another and trying to conceal their thoughts.
Lanthar--he of Procyon--and Grenis of Sirius both knew that the Terran who sat there so easily was not fooling.
"Now," said Barden, "what's the story? I've told you what happened, and why I'm angry. This warfare must stop, and Sol, too, must be protected.
Only by complete agreement can all three of us occupy the sky in safety.
Otherwise, there may be but two of us--and perhaps only one.
You--Lanthar--what do you know of the space motor?"
"I'll tell," said the one from Procyon. "I've been in disagreement with the plan, but outvoted. We discovered it and its danger. We'd have worked upon it, but we could not permit it to be used in space because of attack.
We could not try it on a planet, because of the danger. Remember, we were at war, and could afford to take no chances. There was a large faction which outvoted me--and then they permitted its theft from a false laboratory. It is amusing, Terran, to go into the full details of how this laboratory was set up, run, and finally thefted. We actually treated it as though it held one of our high secrets, but we were lax only in the total number of guards we used. They--succeeded.
"The purpose of this was to permit them to try it out. That would mean their destruction. I've insisted that a dead enemy is of no value--"
"We follow your reasoning, all of us," said Barden. "And go further.
We state that an enemy is a total loss per se, and we avoid the expense.
Now, Grenis, you stole the plans?"
"We did," said the Sirian. "But there was something wrong. Not only did we steal the plans, but we inspected their plant. While they were setting up their laboratory they forgot to include some means of accepting and dissipating enough transmitted power to make the work look real. There was a quite large discrepancy between the power used and the power we calculated would be needed to carry on such a program. So we became suspicious--which started when we were able to penetrate the place in the first place.
"What we found was interesting," said the Sirian. "But we were suspicious. We studied it carefully, and it seemed perfect. But, Terran, came again the suspicion. For if this were so perfect, why weren't they using it?
"Because it might be a trap," he went on. "And like he and his, we dared not establish a space laboratory because of the fear of attack. So we were completely stopped."
Lanthar grunted. "So he and his bunch went to work on a method of contacting other people at a great distance," he said. "It took them a long time, and they were without success at all until they succeeded in contacting you."
"That is correct," said Grenis, making an apology. "We have detectors capable of working on the gravitic effects. A nova would disrupt both the magnetic and the gravitic levels sufficiently to warn us immediately.
And we knew that any race which was not suspicious of an enemy would try it--"
"I see," said Barden angrily. "Then we have you to thank? And you," he said to Lanthar, "knowing that this was done, tried to protect us?"
"Not basically," apologized the man from Procyon. "You see, we did not know you--nor even where you were in the galaxy. You meant nothing to us at all then, except as a consulting service for our enemy--completely hidden and quite safe. We did not want you to go into nova because that would have warned them. We knew that after a period of time, with no sign of failure, they'd try it!"
"A fine pair of stinkers," sneered Barden. "Well," he said with a laugh,
"Now you'll co-operate with us all, or else! But Lanthar, how can you be certain that nova will occur?"
Lanthar of Procyon stood up and smiled tolerantly. "Me--?" he said.
"I know only what I've been told about it. Strangely enough, it came to me in a dream, too!"
* * * *
Somewhere in the galaxy, two scientists consulted their time predictions.
They agreed silently that sufficient time had been permitted, and that their detectors had shown no warping of the magneto-gravitic continuum.
Despite the questionable value of negative evidence, they felt safe.
"I doubt all new arts," said one of them, thrusting the switch home, "especially when I know not the source."
* * * *
I was saved from over-running my writing by a note from a friend in the spring-summer of 1946.
Let's backflash a moment. Before the war I'd been with the Automobile Radio Laboratory of Philco, in Detroit. Many of the older members remained with Philco and went to the home plant in Philadelphia, and were still there. Now, my first story had been written before I left Philco, although it was printed later, so several members knew of the Venus Equilateral tales, and--in this spring-summer of 1946, I received a letter forwarded from Astounding from one of the department heads from the group in Detroit. He suggested, completely unofficially, of course, that Philco w
as heading for their return to entertainment radio, and they were looking for those of us who had experience in designing radios for high mass production at minimum cost. If I were to turn up by person or letter, the chance was quite high that I would be interviewed, not as an applicant, but to find out which section I could be most useful in.
Well, that took care of Boston. Next stop: Philly!
Unfortunately, in Philadelphia, there were no sites of historic interest to be rented, and even if they'd wanted to rent one, I think Independence Hall is a bit too grand (to say nothing of being too expensive) for George O.
So the worst thing about living in Philadelphia is living in Philadelphia in the Germantown YMCA, which is one of the best, but still YMCA, a sort of minimum-security prison. So, when not at work, I spent as much time out of it as possible.
Here I must profess a bit of pardonable ignorance. Let's backtrack to 1945 in Boston. I'd been writing science fiction since 1942 and did not so much as discover that there was an organized fan movement. But, as things settled down after the war, rumors and notices, and plans, began to increase that Los Angeles was going to hold the first fan convention after the war. I would have given my eye teeth to make it, but as it happened, that particular autumn I was so busy running from the YMCA in Germantown to the site of historic interest in Boston, and working on a new job at Philco, that l couldn't have made it even if I'd had the cash.
But now I was in Philadelphia, and, as time went on, with things less flurried, L. Sprague de Camp suggested that I might like to visit the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, which held clubhouse meetings once each month. And there I discovered that the next convention was to be held in Philadelphia, and (cliche!) the air was abuzzing with plans.
John W. Campbell was going to talk on atomic energy, Willy Ley was going to talk on rockets. I was asked to talk on anything.
Doc Smith was to be there, and there was lots of talk about what was going to happen when EE met George O, since a lot of the fans had the notion that I'd been in competition with Doc Smith, having been handed the baton by Campbell. For those of you who are not members of "First Fandom" and couldn't remember, John and Doc had some fun out-doing one another. Where Doc invented inoson, the alloy that "had the ultimate theoretical physical strength," Campbell went on to use something with ten times the theoretical, and they upped their power until one had the power of one sun, which came out in the jargon as "One Sol," as the unit, whereupon the other had his electric meter running in ones, tens, and so on Sols.
But John was no longer writing, and E. E. Smith had had little competition in sidewising science into fiction. But here I was, crassly warping facts into fiction, sidewising them nicely to the point that John R.
Pierce, Ph.D. (wrote under the name of J. J. Coupling), pointed out that IF a
matter transmitter were to be built it would work as George O described in
"Special Delivery," BUT it had better have a transmission bandwidth that ran from zilch up through the gamma-ray frequencies.
So the local fans looked forward to the confrontation.
It happened on Saturday afternoon, when John was lecturing as Guest of Honor. I was sitting in the back of the hall, several rows behind the last row of filled seats. No, I wasn't aloof. But I was present for protocol and social reasons, and since I'd heard John discuss atomic and nuclear power before, I didn't find it necessary to sit in the front row to hang on his words.
Here I must point out that the first of the big cons was yet to come.
The attendance at the first "Philcon" was in the shooting gallery of about a hundred and fifty, plus or minus a lot of stragglers. So into the back of the filled rows, a gentleman enters and talks, in very low whispers, to someone beside him. The someone-beside-him nods, turns, and points to me.
Thereafter, if one can walk sotto voce, the gentleman practically crawls out of sight toward me, comes up beside, grasps my hand, and says, "So you're George O. Smith. Glad to meet you. I've wanted to tell you how much I've enjoyed your stories."
End of dust-up. Beginning of a long session of mutual admiration discussions that went on past the end of John's lecture (when he joined us) in through dinner, and into a party in my room (not at the YMCA!) with most of the professionals there and half of the fans trying to get in.
My part in this convention proper was small. I had a talk prepared which showed the difference between science fiction and science science, generally based upon the truth that Morse and Bell and Marconi and Einstein, and you-name-him did not eat a meal of melted cheese on toast, have nightmares, and come up with their inventions and discoveries in the morning.
They scheduled me before Willy Ley, and being ahead of the main speaker is worse than following the dog act in vaudeville. The trained dog act is put on last, to chase the audience out so that they can fill it with new customers, and if you follow the dog act, you're acting to an empty house.
To be put on before the main speaker is acting to a bored house who are there because they came to hear the main speaker. What they wanted to hear, and "they" included me, was Willy talk about rockets. So I flubbered through a rapid cut-off (I was later told that it sounded as if I was giving an outline, of something) and got the devil out of the way as soon as I could.
Whereupon Willy, eyeballing me with Teutonic Disgust, says, "Some people take the easy way out, don't they Mister Smith!"
Willy, forgive me, but I did walk off the stage. I wasn't dragged off, nor given the hook, nor the bell, nor tarred and feathered for keeping the customers bored while they waited.
So that was my first convention, and after that it was back to Philco for the day and to the YMCA at night, and looking for an apartment, and writing now and then, and weekending elsewhere.
I have a personal opinion that the state of New Jersey was invented by Benjamin Franklin as a buffer zone to prevent the city of Philadelphia from becoming the sixth borough of New York. In this buffer state, Campbell lived in Westfield, and L. Ron Hubbard (having been discharged without ever serving as military governor, and gone off on one of his adventures, and returned) living in Elizabeth.
My chasing from Philly to New York took on side trips. John had discovered "high fidelity," and was trying to see what he could get from the old 78-rpm shellac records without ripping off the roof with needle hiss, and wanting to know more about high cut-off filters. And Ron was interesting to talk to, provided one had the good sense not to go into one of his schemes.
John had another habit that he used on all of us. In writing, one often tosses in a throw-away for background. But if the throw-away was interesting to John, some time later he would mention it in one of his eight-page letters as an idea. In the last tale of Venus Equilateral, an epilog, mostly ("Identity"), I'd mentioned a period of warfare where both armies had used duplicators to expand their troops, but dropped the idea right there after mentioning that there had been trouble after the end of the war when thousands of identical troops tried to go home to their wife or sweetheart.
So I had my own idea shoved back at me, and what could I do for two cents a word?
So this is the story of the man who built a better mousetrap.
No, the world did not beat a path to his door, nor shower him with riches and fame. Instead, it--well, the best way to tell a story that lies within a story is to tell it the way it happened.
Act One. The scene, the cafeteria at Philco during a coffee break.
There are two main characters to this act. One is a senior scientist by the name of Cliff Hoagland, who was a long-time reader of Astounding.
The other is the inventor of the mousetrap, who was to have a brief moment of dubious fame:
"Congratulations, George O."
"Thanks, Cliff. But what have I done now?"
"You are the first writer to get a cold-blooded dirty story into Astounding!"
So here it is:
Rat Race
"You're nuts," came the reply, but the voice on the telephone
was jovially reproving, rather than sarcastic. "I can't do anything about this order."
Peter Manton blinked. "But it has a Four-A-One priority."
Brannon nodded--invisibly, of course--and said, "Sure, you have a top priority. Anything your lab wants has top. But darn it, Peter, the best priority in the world isn't going to buy you a dozen mousetraps that are nonexistent."
"But--"
"Besides which, that building you're in is about as rat-proof as a sealed gasoline can. There isn't an item of comestible in the place."
"I know that. And the mice can go hungry, for all I care. But the mice don't seem to understand that bringing food into the place is not only forbidden by law, but dangerous."
"But there ain't a mousetrap in the country. Ding bust it, Peter, mousetraps take spring wire, and labor. The people who used to make mousetraps are now making bombsights and tanks. Besides, Peter, over at that laboratory of yours there should be enough brains and gear to really build the Better Mousetrap. If you can spot a plane at fifty miles, split atoms, and fire radio equipment out of a cannon, you ought to be able to dispose of a mouse or two."
Peter grinned. "You mean spot 'em with radar, and then shoot 'em down in flames with proximity fuses loaded with plutonium warheads? That might be a little strenuous, don't you think? Like cutting the throat to stop the spread of impetigo."
"Well, if you have mice over there, you think of something. But top priority or not, we can't get you your mousetraps!"
Peter hung up unhappily. He turned from his desk to see an impertinent mouse sitting on the floor, watching him out of beady black eyes. Peter hurled a book at it and swore, a rare thing for him.
The mouse disappeared behind a bank of filing cabinets.
"That's right," he grunted. "Go on--disappear!"
The word struck home. Peter blinked. And remembered...
* * * *
It was dark, though not too dark for the mouse to see his surroundings. It was hungry, and it was beginning to understand that, of the many places occupied by man, this was one place where man left nothing that could be eaten. This evening, however, the situation was changed. There was a faint smell of food in the place, relatively great compared to the sterile atmosphere of previous days.
The Worlds of George O Page 14