LAURA: "How can you do that?"
CHARLES: "Suppose we could create another strong probability. Mightn't he come back and fight, just as strong, for his own existence?"
LAURA: "I don't follow."
CHARLES: "He's my grandson. Amelia is his grandmother. But suppose--Laura, will you marry me right here and now?"
LAURA: "Charles! At three-thirty in the morning?"
SOUND: Door buzzer, cheerful tattoo.
LAURA: "Charles--it's Junior again. Don't go! DON'T GO!"
SOUND: Bare feet walking, doorknob.
LAURA: "Oh no!
NO! No! No!"
MEDDLER: "Good morning, I'm in time, I see!"
CHARLES:
"Do come in. I was expecting you."
MEDDLER: "Good morning, Miss Phillips. May I introduce myself? I am the Reverend Charles Laurence Martin, the Third. You'll notice that my middle name is a masculine form of the given name of my grandmother, Mrs. Charles Martin, nee Laura Phillips."
LAURA: "Why Charles--this is the other probability."
MEDDLER: "Precisely, and stronger than the other."
CHARLES: "Let's get along with it. Quickly. Before something else comes up.
MEDDLER, calmly: "Please. We must not be impatient. There must be witnesses.
But I have prepared for everything. Everything!"
SOUND: Door buzzer.
MEDDLER: "Permit me."
SOUND: Walking in shoes, door opening.
MEDDLER: "Please do come in. Come in! Oh, but this is a most auspicious occasion, despite the time,"
LAURA : "Amelia!"
CHARLES: "And Harry! What are they doing here?"
MEDDLER: "Witnesses. And not only witnesses, but greater support for my probability."
LAURA: "I'm still a bit confused."
MEDDLER: "You have forgotten that a person has four grandparents. I said that I'd prepared for everything. It is not often that a man has the opportunity of officiating at a double wedding ceremony, to unite his grandparents."
CHARLES: "Can you make this stick?"
MEDDLER: "Why yes--unless I double-cross this double ceremony. Charles, take Laura's hand and stand away over here on my left. Harry, take Amelia's hand and stand to my right."
SOUND: Walking, two female, one male with shoes, one without.
MEDDLER: "Now we're all sorted out properly. Fine! History says that Charles and Laura will have a stalwart son. Harry and Amelia will have a beautiful daughter. Son and daughter are my own parents."
LAURA: "Are you sure?"
MEDDLER: "I arrived a bit late, my dear, because I've been quite a busy man. I made a stop on my way through time, pausing long enough to unite your son and their daughter in marriage. It was a
lovely wedding!"
MUSIC: "As Time Goes By" several bars, fading to background level.
JOHN W. COMPBELL: "Ah yes! 'As Time Goes By.' Woman needs man, and man must have his mate. But that doesn't mean that you've got to be stuck with any particular mate. There's freedom of choice there. You see, the way you get rid of the little man who wasn't there is to have a different little man not there. And that takes care of that!"
ANNOUNCER: Here in our cast tonight were Lawson Zirby, Connie Lempke, and Robert Webb. Script was by George O. Smith. Produced and directed by Sanford Marshall in New York."
* * * *
Everything changes. I escaped from my minimum-security prison in Germantown by finding a small apartment in a suburb known as "Indian Queen." This, by malice or misguided fun, was promptly re-named "Indian Queer"; that spread through fandom.
With my own place, my chasing up and down slowed. L. Ron leaked the dianetics story to John just in time to create publicity that helped L. Ron's book on the subject in the eyes of the publishers. John, as L. Ron said he would, jumped in head first and went the whole way.
Science fiction story problems could no longer be solved by some tablecloth engineering, and the villains weren't being villainous because of their heartless search for money or position. The story problems were caused by the engrams created while the character was
in utero when father or mother groaned, "Oh, why must everything go wrong!" So, in adult life, the character always pushed the wrong button, used chisels for screwdrivers, and drove the wrong way on one-way streets. The story problem was solved by Our Hero, who prognosed the situation as a "fifty-hour case." After which our character repaired the spacecraft and rescued the lovely Lady Bountiful from the fate worse than death, threatened by the villainous Captain Lecher who refused treatment that would have made him a "clear."
And I wasn't about to be lectured by John W. Campbell, nor "cleared" of my engrams by the editor of a science fiction magazine, so my remain-at-home program took on serious aspects.
I may be out of kilter with time; forgive me, it's a long number of years ago. But somewhere about here, the news of the group in Toronto and their plans began to make lines about their "Torcon," which became Torcon I recently when Torcon II was held. At that time, Fred Pohl and wife were going to drive to Toronto, and they asked me to ride along.
This was in the days long before the "big" conventions. Torcon I may have had in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty of us. It was small, but it was also friendly, since most of us knew one another.
Robert Bloch was the guest of honor. His talk was a classic, "The Seven Stages of Science Fiction Fandom." It went from Stage One, where the fan first learns that there is an organized fandom and makes his first effort to join. The stages go higher and higher until Stage Seven, when the whole-time fan is so busy writing for fanzines and publishing them that he collects the prozines but doesn't have time to read them. Robert missed one point, but we forgive him because the fan or stage hadn't been invented yet. That's a group who think that science fiction would be better if there were no mention of science in it, and that conventions would be better if there were no pros to attend.
Also present was Bob Tucker, who had recently run off the first of the questionnaire and canvass studies. He gave his report on the subject, complete with charts and diagrams of this, that, and other things in fandom.
On Sunday night, the Toronto group had come up with some 16-millimeter films on atomic energy that might have been excellent for someone who had never heard of Hiroshima or the Manhattan Project, nor read the Smyth Report. I doubt that one of the hundred fifty were that unaware of anything. It started with Hahn and Strassmann, who discovered the fission of uranium 235 back before the war. I "think" it ended with that first blast in Alamogordo. I use the word "think" because there was a fair exodus from the arena to the nearest bar. When the film ended, there was a break while the Toronto crew scoured the bars seeking those who had escaped, and the next speaker of the evening. They found me, and I was escorted back to the convention, where Sam Moskowitz said, "George, this is your day!"
"Yes?"
"After that film, anything you say will be greeted with cheers!"
Well, not long earlier, Arthur C. Clarke had written an article about the radio power required to send messages to the moon and some of the nearer planets. I boiled down his data, added a sauce of science fiction, and used the latest thing in transmission information, and discussed the simple prospect of communication with the first lunar landing. It covered a single voice channel in simplex; that is, speaker and listener swap roles in conversation.
Sam was right. They kept me there until about eleven-thirty answering questions, and I was rescued by Dave Maclnnes, who asked the last question: "George, do you think that blonde you were admiring is still in that bar?"
Exodus!
They asked me, on Monday, to be the host for the entertainment. I agreed, and asked who had something to present. They didn't, and suggested that I pull something together. I tried, and thanks to a few fans with good senses of humor, and Robert Bloch, who did a take-off on Bob Tucker's report (ending with a chart showing "... a fan broken down by sex!").
Torcon I ended in a
party in which, I think, half of the hundred and fifty either got into my room or tried to. The biggest subject of conversation was where was the next convention to be held. In the midst of this party, the phone rang and I, being trapped in the filled-to-standing room next to the telephone, answered. It was the group in Cincinnati, who'd just heard that there was some problem, and suggested that they'd be happy to give the next con. I got silence, made the announcement, and it was Maclnnes who shouted, "There's only one name for it. It's the Sinvention!"
* * * *
Sometime earlier, John said in one of his eight-page letters that he was going to try a stunt.
He outlined, briefly, a story idea, or basis for a story, and asked for a 10,000-word target.
He said he was also sending copies to Hal Clement and A. E. VanVogt, and that he intended to print all three of them in one issue, just to show his readers how three writers with the same idea can be so widely varied in their output.
The stunt didn't work. John reported that the three stories were so different that no
one could find any connection. He did not tell me the names of the other two stories, so I can't recite them to let you paw through your collection of the past. Mine was that slight offshoot on the Venus Equilateral stories, "Lost Art," and John's story gimmick had come from an observation of his that, in one of the various manuals and handbooks that I used in engineering, a vacuum tube manual (today it would be a semiconductor manual), there is a veritable wealth of information on the various ways in which the many kinds of tube can be used, and the working parameters for each--but nowhere does it say that the radio receiving set using X number of tubes connected in W, Y, and Z ways isn't going to be worth a hoot unless someone has built a transmitter.
Well, now, I'd written "Rat Race," and "Meddler's Moon" for Campbell, and, needing a quick buck, wrote "In The Cards," for Sam Merwin at Thrilling Wonder. Once more, the
publication dates seem amiss, but again, the reason is that the editor puts his magazine together from the stories in his files and prefers to have both the writers and the story lines varied.
IN THE CARDS
When Jim Forrest stole the block of zonium from Ellen Haynes he almost upset the entire Solar System, but he had the most compelling motive for theft in history!
CHAPTER I
The Theft
THE masked man crept down the corridor stealthily. It was quite dark in the hallway but he knew that it was a synthetic darkness, a matter of temporal convenience, for on a spaceship, time is regulated by the Terran daily cycle of twenty-four hours.
On spacecraft the passenger-sections observe a strict twelve-hour division between sheer brilliance and utter darkness. He estimated that it was a full two hours before light-time, which meant that those couples who preferred to sit and hold hands whilst staring at the rather over-stable aspect of the sky were by now bedded down and asleep.
Even so the masked man understood that with such it was not the sky that was appealing, and that under such circumstances time was a minor and often disregarded item. So he went carefully just in case he should happen upon such.
He was lucky. There were no couples immersed in one another
's dreams and so the
masked man went all the way from the auxiliary spacelock near the bottom to the
"B" deck,
just below the rounded hemisphere of seamless plastiglass that domed the top of the spacecraft. He entered the corridor that led to the staterooms and, by the dim hall lights, found the room he sought. The lock was obviously intended to keep out only honest men and the door was of the same manufacture. He took a tiny fountain-pen-sized implement from a loop in his belt and applied the business end to the door.
There was neither sound nor light. Silently the thing worked and it completely removed a sliver ten-thousandths of an inch wide as he moved the tiny beam in a careless square around the lock. He grasped the knob in his hand as he completed the cut. That way it would not drop to the floor and make an unwanted racket. .
Shoving the door open gently, he entered and closed it behind him. He took a moment to replace the square of aluminum with the lock and, with a couple of quick motions, he welded the square back in place.
An experienced welder would have called the job
'buttering
' because the patch was
held by only two
minute battens of welded metal. It could be broken out with a single twist of the hand.
Then, reasonably safe from outside detection--if the steward passed, he would not notice unless he gave each door a careful scrutiny--the masked man took out a tiny flashlight and searched the room quickly.
A tousled head of luxuriant hair half covered the pillowcase but the face beneath it was not visible from the door. The masked man shrugged and turned to the wall compartment where the baggage was stored. He knew about where to look. He fumbled through three drawers, and finally came up on a
box of some ten cubic inches.
It was not too heavy and the masked man tucked it under one arm and smiled confidently. His pen-beam he used to weld the call-button to its frame so that it could not be pushed. He used it to weld the lock in a barred position and, again outside, he welded the patch together firmly. The inhabitant was to all intents and purposes a prisoner until she could command attention by yelling and beating upon the door.
With the same stealth that he had used in coming this way he returned to the auxiliary spacelock. He donned the spacesuit he had left there and looked at the safety-switch that had been welded closed. He shrugged--no need of opening the switch to close the door upon it. He
'd welded the switch shut so that opening the auxiliary lock hadn
't flipped the
warning lamp on the pilot
's panel.
Then the masked man stepped out of the airlock into empty space, kicking himself away from the side of the spacecraft. At once he became a separate celestial body, and the motion of the ship with regard to his present status was an acceleration of one gravity, though his velocity was intrinsically that of the spacecraft upon his instant of severance.
But intrinsic velocity of this nature never harmed a soul and the action as he saw it, was that the ship was stable and he was falling with Terran constants towards the tail.
HE WAITED, counting off the minutes by his watch. The spacecraft dwindled and was finally lost in the distance. Yet he waited, for the first use of his suit-drive would raise a spot on the pilot
's celestial sphere, giving warning.
An hour later he applied the drive on his suit and, using a small direction finder, he located another, arriving ship. Using extreme care, he put himself in the course of the oncomer and applied his suit-drive with extreme caution. He matched the acceleration of the other ship, matched its course and then, by increments, let the ship catch up with him.
Eventually it passed him close enough, and he drove himself through the main open spacelock. He slammed the airlock door and went to the control room. He made a rapid turnover and applied the drive to put as many miles as possible between himself and the pirated superliner.
Only then did he remove his suit, stow it, and address his interest to the package. It contained a strange crystal. The crystal was a perfect cube two inches to a side. From face to opposite face it was as transparent as space itself. Even the surfaces were non-reflecting. Looking through it one derived a sort of tunnel effect, for the surrounding faces were opaque. Holding it at a distance from the eye and looking though it gave the impression of a two-by-two square tube made of some metal having zero thickness. A thin square--an optical illusion--marked the boundary of the optical axis.
He nodded. This was the crystal he sought. He checked one of the opaque pair of faces with a continuity tester and confirmed his belief. For one axis of the crystal was optical, another axis was a superconductor of electricity. The third axis was a magnetic axis and was a perfect conductor of magnetic flux. This was hard
er to check with simple equipment but the testing of the other two axes gave him sufficient proof.
He nodded in satisfaction.
Success!
Now, give him time to work out his problem, and everything would be just as he had planned. Getting his hands on that crystal, he felt, was going to be the first step in the success of Jim Forrest. He opened a cabinet door and started to push things aside to make space for it, when from behind him, a cool voice said:
"I'll take that!"
He turned at the voice and his face went through several changes, coming out finally with a stunned look.
"You were locked in."
"Yes?" The girl shrugged.
"Well, you were locked out! Now I 'll take that crystal!
" Her statement was backed up by a heavy blaster that looked like a semiportable in comparison to her spacegloved hand. The hand was small and the blaster was heavy but there was no waver to the green-crystal muzzle. It was trained perfectly upon Jim Forrest 's belt buckle.
"Yes? And where will you take it? "
"None of your business!" she snapped.
He looked at her suit and shrugged.
"Better call for aid," he said, pointing at the space radio. "You'll never make it in suit-drive."
"Drivel!" she snorted.
"You'll run me near Terra before we part."
"My dear Ellen Haynes," he said with exaggerated politeness, "may I point out that we are not going to Terra?"
ELLEN laughed nastily, which made it seem worse because it went against the human grain to hear such purely vicious laughter coming from such an attractive girl.
"We'll go," she said shortly, "whether you drive or not. I can run this doodlebug too."
She waved the blaster suggestively. "Turn it--or else!"
"Y'know," he replied, "maybe you'd better drill me. I don't know that I like the idea of chasing all over the solar system with Ellen Haynes."
"Turn the ship and get going."
"No," he said flatly. He stretched and went into a relaxed posture. "We' re heading for Ganymede." He looked at her--stared at her--and smiled slightly. His attitude became almost paternal, as he stepped forward. "You know," he said quietly, "we both want the same things. We ought to do them together."
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