Need I say more? It's nice to meet a fan in strange settings.
The anti-submarine device was a stinker for an involved technical reason that I'll explain over a bar at some convention if someone is interested. It didn't work. We were saved by the bell from having to demonstrate our half-developed device by the "end run" of the Korean campaign; the ships and airplanes we were to use in the NATO operation went to the Pacific, and we who were to go to Europe were told to continue as we had been to keep the prospective mobilization day a secret. So we waved our passports and wrote about the trip and what we hoped to do, and that we had permission and there would be time to travel through Europe.
The overtime stopped while we tinkered on, and I came up with some blunt remarks about someone's mentality by proposing a device that couldn't work without a major basic revision in its paper design.
This did not endear me to Philco Management, nor to a couple of the naval personnel, and my progress stopped. I was the oldest senior engineer at Philco, having been put back from "acting" project engineer.
Then a former boss of mine turned up as chief engineer at Emerson Radio & Phonograph, in New York, and I was invited to take on the job of managing the components engineering department.
So long, Philly. Hello, New York!
* * * *
The relationship between John, Dona, and me had, naturally, started out with friction. Such things do despite the "let's be civilized about this" attitude. The friction diminishes once the done-in one discovers that he or she and all the rest are a damned sight happier than before.
John had met, and married, Peg Winters. Peg was a strong woman, independent, clever in business, and determined enough to say, "Oh, come now, John!" and make it stick when John got off on one of his wilder ideas and tried to make it sound logical. One seldom argued with John. One listened to him. Until Peg. My personal opinion is that Peg was what he really needed, a bouncing board hard enough to slap his balls back at him with the right off-spin to make
him think.
It was, we discovered, a case in which the only blockage to the "bygones be bygones" road was a mutual waving of the olive branch.
The olive branch was the birth of Douglas Stewart Smith. He presented the two Campbell girls a half-brother to visit, and coping with these infrequent visitations required communication. John no longer wrote me the eight-page letter, but while passing along rail and bus schedules, John used the telephone in lieu of the eight-page letter. In one ending-up, John remarked that they were paying five cents a word, and why not tackle the typewriter again.
Knowing John, who is a real "dog" person, and his enthusiasm for the Cliff Simak stories about the up-and-coming dogs, I tried the following.
Missing text
Peter hit the door with the heel of his foot and slammed it open by splintering the doorframe. The dog crouched low and poised; Peter slipped in and around feeling for a light-switch. From inside there was a voiceless whimper of fright and from outside and below there came the pounding of several sets of heavy feet. Peter found the switch and flooded the room with light. The girl--whether she was Miss Vanessa Lewis or someone else, and kidnap-wise it was still a Terrestrial girl--lay trussed on the bed, a patch of surgical tape over her mouth.
"Sorry," said Peter in a voice that he hoped was soothing. He reached, freed a corner of the tape and ripped it off in a single swipe. The girl howled. Peter slapped her lightly. "Stop it!" he commanded sharply. "
Vanessa Lewis?"
"Yes, but--"
"Call out the marines, Peter," snarled the dog.
"No! Bo! Back!"
Reluctantly the dog backed into the room. He crouched low, poised to spring, with his nose just beyond the doorframe.
"Four of 'em," he whimpered pleadingly. "I can get two--"
"Well, I can't get the other two unless I'm lucky," snapped Peter. "
Don't be so eager to die for nothing, Buregarde."
"All this calculation," grumbled the dog sourly. "I don't call it a loss if I get two for one."
"I call it a loss if I don't get four for nothing--or the whole damned Empire of Xanabar for nothing, for that matter. We've a job to do and it ain't dying--until Miss Lewis is out of this glorious citadel."
The girl looked from one to the other. They did not need any identification; they were their own bona fides. Only man--Terrestrial Man--had intelligent dogs to work beside him. Period, question closed.
Buregarde snarled at the door warningly while Peter stripped surgical tape from wrists and ankles.
Outside, someone called, "Come out or we blast!"
Buregarde snarled, "Come in and we'll cut you to bits!"
The quick flash of a pencil-ray flicked in a lance above the dog's nose: Buregarde snapped back as the lancet of light cut downward, then snapped forward for a quick look outside as the little pencil of danger flickered dark.
"Careful, Bo!"
"You call the boys," snapped the dog. "I'll--"
Something came twisting forward to hit the doorframe, it dropped just inside the doorjamb. Buregarde leaped, snapped at the thing and caught it in midair, snapped his head in a vicious shake and sent it whirling back outside again before it could be identified. The dog sunfished and landed on all four. Then the thing went off with a dull pouf! outside. There was a gentle flash of quick light that was smothered by a billow of smoke.
Buregarde leaped into the cloud and disappeared. There was a hoarse shriek and the mad scrabble of dog-claws on the hard floor, the sound of a heavy thud, and the angry snarl of a dog with its teeth fastened into something soft. Then there was the fast patter of dog-feet and Buregarde came around the door on a dead run, sliding side-wise to carom off the opened door into safety just as a pencil-ray flicked to follow him.
"Got him," said the dog in a satisfied tone. "That's one!"
He took his post by the doorframe again, the tip of his nose just outside. There was a consultation out there in the hallway, at which Buregarde called, "Make a wild rush for us!"
Miss Lewis said, "What are we going to do?"
"Fight it out," said Peter. "They can't win so long as we're alive now. I've got my crew on its way in a dead run, and if we make enough noise, some of His Excellency's Peacemakers will step in and demand their cut of the finances." He grinned. "How much are you worth, Miss Lewis?"
She shuddered. "I don't know how much father would pay--"
"Hit 'em low, Peter!" came Buregarde's snarl.
Three of them came in a-slant, bounced shoulders against the opened door, caught their bearings and hell was out for noon. Buregarde caught the first with a slash at the throat; they went down in a mad whirl of dog and thug, paws, tail, arms, legs and a spurt of blood. The second flicked his pencil-ray at Peter, its capsule charge faded to a mere sting before it cut into him. The third aimed a kick at the struggling dog. Vanessa Lewis snatched a box from the bureau and hurled it at the second. Peter thumbed his pencil-ray and winged the third man in the biceps. Buregarde leaped for the second man's gun hand and closed on it as the hurled box opened and scatter-shotted his face with bric-a-brac. The man with the bloody throat flailed out and caught Peter by the ankle. Peter stomped his face with his other heel. Miss Lewis picked up the table lamp and with a single motion turned off the light and finished felling the one with the ray-burned shoulder.
Buregarde dropped from the second man's wrist and crouched to spring. The man cowered back, his good arm covering his throat and his other arm hanging limp. He mouthed fright-noises in some tongue native to some star a thousand light-years across the galaxy.
Coldly, Peter stepped forward and belted him in the plexus.
"Now," he said calmly, "we shall vacate the premises!"
They went side by side, facing slightly outward, Buregarde between them and slightly ahead. "We're coming out!" called the dog. "Three Barbarians from Terra!"
Down on the dark street, they met their mercenary again. He eyed them sourly. "I see you were, in a
sense, successful."
Peter Hawley faced the mercenary. "We were successful and would you like to make something of it?"
"I'm going to have to arrest you, you know."
"You'll lose an arm trying!" snapped the dog.
"There's murder been committed tonight," said His Excellency's Peacemaker. "The Peace of Xanabar has been disturbed."
"Why you chiseling crook, there's been kidnaping tonight, and--"
"I'm afraid that I shall have to ask that the young lady produce her passport," said the mercenary. "Otherwise she's in Xanabar Citadel illegally."
Buregarde said, "Hit him low, Peter. Here come the boys."
"No!"
"Just once--for fun?"
"No. I want our money-grubbing Peacekeeper to carry a message to His Excellency. I want His Excellency to read some Terrestrial History.
Once upon a time there was a place called the Byzantine Empire that laid across the trade routes. The upper crust of people used to serve the Presence of God in a golden throne whilst their underlings dealt in human slaves and procured comely concubines for the emperor; their policemen took bribes and human life was cheap. And when Byzantium fell, all the world was forced to seek a new trade route. So tell His Excellency that he'd better clean up his own foul mess, or some barbarians will clean it up for him."
"And that," said Buregarde, "goes for your dad-ratted cat!"
* * * *
We were living, at the time, in Jackson Heights, an area that pleased us all because we were about a mile from the home of Willy and Olga Ley, the two Ley girls, two Persian cats, a long-haired dachshund named Waffle, and a cage of finches. And a wild tropical fish tank that Goofus, one of the Persians, used to drink from. The only tragedy of this was that one of their angel fish bit the poor cat on the tongue. The other cat, Albus, was, of course, white, and it seems that all white Persians are as deaf as a dead post, and he couldn't understand why everybody raised hell while he was romping all over Willy's piano. The cats, meanwhile, used to sit on top of the finch cage and let the birds pick fur for their nests in mating time.
It became time for the Chicago convention, to the best of my recollection the first of the big ones. With some careful eyeballing of the calendar, some trouble developed with some relays that a few of the Chicago manufacturing companies were making, and I had to go to Chicago to iron out the wrinkles. So Willy and I decided to share a room; I left on Wednesday morning; he was to join me on Saturday and, without standing in the line, meet me at the room.
Okay, so I got to Chicago on Wednesday, went to one of the relay fellows, got the main problem settled, and then registered, according to my reservation, at the Morrison Hotel, where the Chicago group had rented the Terrace Gardens for their meeting place.
This is about 8:00 in the evening. I'm registered. The bellhop grabs my bag, waves the key, starts across the lobby floor, and then pauses, looking at the key.
"Pardon me, Mr. Smith. I think there's a screw-up on this. Let me check."
He disappears, leaving me in the middle of the lobby with my bag. He returned about fifteen minutes later, and explained that he had been right, the room I'd been assigned hadn't been vacated. But, says he, cheerfully, there is a nice room high up in the towers that, if I don't mind, hasn't been cleaned yet. But, he says with equal cheer, this inconvenience is small, and it's all caused by a big convention that starts on the weekend, and you'll be far above all that noise and confusion.
Frankly, I wanted to be where the action was. But--well, the hotel had a sort of "butler door" in which you could put things to be cleaned and have them back there in the morning.
The bellhop is explaining this all to me in a loud voice when the door on the opposite side of the hall opened and a well-remembered voice said, "It sounds like George O. Smith, and it is George O. Smith." Behind Robert Bloch follows Bob Tucker, Bea Mahaffey, and a couple of other early arrivers.
It turned out that the bellhop was a science fiction fan, who had taken on the job as bellhop to be with the convention, and he was seeing to it, when he could, to put all the pros on the same floor.
One more incident about the Chicago convention. The "Little Men's Chowder, Marching, and Science Fiction Society" was plumping for the next year's convention and, to show that they could do it, had hired the grand ballroom of the Morrison for the after-banquet masquerade ball, all by themselves. The banquet speaker was Hugo Gernsback, who was proud of explaining to all that he had invented everything that Edison hadn't. Now, that sort of thing is a bit oddball; technically, the ancient Greeks invented radar because one of their theories about eyesight was that something in the eye sent out something that reflected on the sights to be seen, and returned to the eye with the information. Now, that's radar--er--
omitting a few of the minor details and all of the major details.
So I left, and went to see what the Little Men were doing. They were working like mad, decorating the ballroom. As I walked in, one of them (and if I remembered his name at this late date, I'd mention him) came out and greeted me with the attitude of a returned, long-lost relative. "Boy, George, am I glad to see you!"
"For what?"
"Well, you see, we don't know how much alcohol to add to the pineapple juice to make a good punch."
"Alcohol--? Pineapple juice--?"
He went into the kitchen and returns with a one-liter bomb, carefully sealed, of Absolute Alcohol. The label was scientifical: "Ehtanol, Absolute," it said in large capital letters, and below in smaller: "CH
CHOH, 100%" and below that a list of impurities starting 2
2
with sulphuric acid, silver nitrate, sodium chloride, and so on, all of them tabulated in the neighborhood of "0.00X%" and at the bottom, "Water: Trace."
"Urn," says I, "where did you get this stuff?"
"Oh, we liberated about fifteen liters of it from the university."
Fifteen liters. For you who live in the past, that's somewhat better than fifteen quarts.
Liberated. Then drove it across six or seven state lines and into Chicago, where they were going to serve it to their guests, in the grand ballroom of the Hotel Morrison in the Loop.
Now and then we hear of someone bragging that he could take the pure quill. Don't believe him. Absolute is 100% alcohol, equal to 200 proof. Alcohol can't be distilled beyond about 95%, or 190 proof; to get the rest remaining, the process takes a bit of chemistry in which the water is dissolved with sulphuric acid, then the solute is treated to an insoluble salt, which is treated and filtered and so forth, which is why that list of "0.00X%" impurities.
Even to claim drinking 190 proof is a wild brag; it would burn the tongue and throat and the whole intake system on the first swallow, and the chances of the victim taking the second swallow (of anything!) vary from unlikely to never. There are liquors in the eastern part of Europe that run to 140 proof (70%), and one can toss off a shot provided one smothers the fire with cold water as a chaser.
After some thinking, I replied, "Now, the better vodkas run 100 proof, so mix one liter of the stuff with one liter of water and you have 100 proof Vodka. Drown it with five parts more of water, and you have a stiff vodka highball. Drown the 100 proof with about ten parts of juice and you'll start a drinking party that will end up with all of us flat on the floor by midnight."
Ultimately, they mixed it about twenty to 1; that would be forty parts of juice against one part of absolute, and everybody had a high old time.
I've often wondered what they did with what was left over. Fifteen liters would make 30 quarts of high test, and their mix of about 40 to 1 would have filled the grand ballroom to the ankles. Did they return their stuff, back across six or seven state lines and home into California?
* * * *
The foregoing tale of the after-banquet party shows how innocent folks can break the law when, really, all they want to do is to provide fun for a large number of their compatriots. In his own way, John Campbell was also a sucker for a story th
at ran on a collision course with some generally accepted idea. Of course, the "dianetic clear" was to have been a superb being, and John was claiming that "The next president will have to be a clear!" because, you understand, the clear will not lie or be lied to and there were nimble mutterings that it might be possible that the dianetic clear might either develop, or find that once clear, he would have telepathetic qualities. And, of course, the advent of telepathy would eliminate all evil-doings, skullduggery, espionage, and possibly things that go bump! in the night.
The question I asked myself when I sat down to write the next is, "How would one fix a horse race in a world of telepaths, all ready to shout 'Foul!' at the first mental whisper of trickery?" Well--
missing text
* * * *
Next came another change. Emerson vacated their offices in New York, and moved to the factory in Jersey City, and there I was traipsing from Jackson Heights, through Manhattan, and into the north end of New Jersey. We began to look around. The word came back that Inga and Fletcher Pratt had space vacant down in their weekend place in Highlands, along the Jersey shore, on a hill that overlooked the Shrewsbury. There was a place, the "old part"
had been the first place, built about 1820, separated from the "new part" added to it after the Civil War.
Living there was fine. In fact, so fine that it took all my writing down the hatch. For I went on a commuting trip that left Highlands about 7:30, and didn't return until about twelve hours later.
And the weekends? Fletcher and Inga, with a longtime friend named St. Leger Lawrence, used to arrive late Friday night, and by noon on Saturday, their weekend guests would begin to arrive. That took care of weekends, the whole bunch would leave following a late luncheon.
Then, with space available and the summer approaching, it became expedient for the Campbell girls to stay more than one day; when they had time, they could stay for a week. With more communication with John when they brought the girls down, and when I returned them after the visit.
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