Spaceman's Luck and Other Stories

by George O. Smith

  “There is a subtle difference between them.”

  “This he knows, but he does not know what it is.”

  “There is a delicate difference in warmth. One button will be faintly warmer than the other.”

  “Harla has felt them.”

  I dropped the third-person address and spoke to Teresa as if she were but one end of a telephone line. “Harla,” I said, “only part of the difference lies in the warmth to physical touch. There should be another kind of warmth. Are you not affected by a feeling that one is better than the other?”

  Harla’s reply came direct through Teresa: “Why yes, I am indeed drawn to the warmer of the two. Were this a game I would wager on it. But that is emotion and hardly suitable as a guide.”

  “Ah, but it is!” I replied quickly. “This is our frame of reference. Press the warmer of the but—”

  I was violently interrupted. Wallach shook me violently and hurled me away from Teresa. Frank Crandall was facing the girl, shouting, “No! No! The warm one will be the red one! You must press the green—”

  And then he, too, was interrupted.

  Displaced air made a near-explosive woosh! and the tunnel car was there on its pad. In it was a nightmare horror holding a limp Holly Carter across its snakelike tentacles. A free tentacle opened the door.

  “Take her while I hold my breath,” said Harla, still talking through Teresa. “I’ll return the tunnel car empty. I can, now that I know that warmth is where the hearth is.”

  Harla dropped the unconscious girl in my arms and snapped back into the car. It disappeared, then returned empty just as the doctor was bending over Holly.

  * * * *

  So now I have my Holly, but every now and then I lie awake beside her in a cold sweat. Harla could have guessed wrong. Just as Wallach and Crandall had been wrong in assuming the red button would be warmer than the green. Their reaction was as emotional as Harla’s.

  I hope Harla either forgives me or never finds out that I had to sound sure of myself, and that I had to play on his emotions simply to get him to take the fifty-fifty chance on his—hers—our lives.

  And I get to sleep only after I’ve convinced myself that it was more than chance…that somehow our feelings and emotions guided Harla where logic and definition fail.

  For right and left do not exist until terrestrial man defines them.

  The End

  **********************************

  Counter Foil,

  George O. Smith

  Analog April 1964

  Novelette - 8104 words

  The trouble with teleportation was that it was run by

  a computer, and computers can count on their fingers,

  have an enormous number of digits to count on ...

  and no sense whatever! They simply can't see the

  obvious fact that one and one make three.

  It was near the close of a normal day in late July, if a day in late July can properly be called normal. The temperature and the humidity were tied in the mid-nineties; a reporter from the News fired the usual egg on the pavement while his photographer snapped the picture that would adorn tomorrow’s front page. There had been three flying saucer sightings reported, and the Loch Ness monster had made his appearance right on schedule. The cases of heat prostration were running at par, and nerves in the un-airconditioned areas were fraying short. Still, the clock displayed hope as it crawled on toward the end of the work day and promised freedom from bondage and the right to pursue both internal and external liquid happiness.

  Gertrude, the videophone receptionist, still looked crisp in her office. Her voice as she responded with the singysongy, “Tele-por-TRAN-sit,” had not lost its lilt. But it was obvious to the caller that Trudy sat in air-conditioned splendor. And either she loathed the idea of leaving her comfort and going home, or she despised him who called. For after the lilting greeting, her voice dropped to a flat, “Oh, it’s you again.”

  Johnny Peters smiled. “Show?”

  “No.”

  “Swim?”

  “No.”

  “Dinner?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Trudy, I’m not poison, you know.”

  “Johnny, I know you’re not poison. But you’re not very ambitious, either.”

  “Now listen,” he said sharply, “I’m only asking for a date. I’m not offering to have you share my frugal life, bed, and board as a lowly technician. A date I can afford; a wife I can’t.”

  “You could try to get ahead.”

  “I’ve made my bid. I asked my illustrious leader for advanced training and an accelerated course so I could move along faster, and he said that moving too fast was bad for a young man. Shall I quit now and go elsewhere?”

  “Where would you go?”

  “That’s the trouble, Trudy. I majored in teleportonics, and it’s either teleportonics or I go back to school and start something new. Think the boss-man will move me faster in Greater Chicago? I doubt it. So I might as well stay right here in Megapolis.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “All right, let’s start over again. Show?”

  “Johnny, not tonight. I’m busy.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “If we’re not all cooked by then. Call me, Johnny.”

  “Will do,” he said with a growing smile.

  Johnny Peters broke the connection and checked his instrument panel. The primary powerline from Con Edison was running a tenth of a volt low; with bored, routine gesture he twitched a knob, watched the voltage rise, and then he settled back with little more to do until the end of his shift of duty.

  In the distant reaches of the city, the uneasy slumber of a napping woman was broken by a wave of pain. A gush of body-warm wetness brought a flash of things to mind that came and went as fast as thought, far too rapidly to reproduce in any electromechanical medium of expression. She thought, in turn: It was her firstborn. The doctor said there was little point in predicting the arrival of a firstborn because they had no record upon which to base an estimate. The women in her family were prone to deliver in taxicabs and ambulances on the way to the hospital.

  A second wave of pain assailed her, interrupting the rapid flow of thought. Then as the pain subsided, she went on: That was fast!

  She struggled to her feet and duckwalked heavily on her heels to the videophone. She pressed the button for one of the stored-program numbers and immediately a crisp, cool voice responded, “Tele-port-TRAN-sit,” in the lilt with all four clear tones sounding in order.

  “Trudy, this is Irma Fellowes. Can you connect me with Joe?”

  “Sure thing. Half a mo’ and you’re on. How’s things?”

  “Baby’s on the way.” The simple statement was emphasized by a smothered groan and the grimace of pain on Irma Fellowes’ face.

  Trudy gulped and lost her cool, crisp, composure. “Whoops! I’ll give Joe the double-whammy ring.”

  The muted wail of a siren came, and almost instantly the scene on the videophone switched to a man, seated at his desk. His face was still changing to a look of puzzled concern. He barked, “Where’s the emergency and wha . . . oh! Irma. Wh . . . er . . .?”

  “Baby’s on the way, Joe.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Have you called Maternity?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Irma, I can’t do you any good at all. I appreciate the information, but it could have waited until you got to the hospital.”

  “Joe! It’s your child!”

  “Sure. And you’re my wife. Now buzz off here and call the hospital. Get going.”

  He hung up; reluctantly because he hated the harshness of the act, but deliberately because it was the only way he could get her to move in the right direction.

  Irma Fellowes stared at the videophone as though it should resume operation after a brief interruption. It didn’t. Whatever she started to think at that moment was stopped by another wave
of agony. When it subsided, she pressed another button, one that had been set up for a temporary emergency. It connected her with the maternity ward of City Hospital; the plate showed an elderly woman in nurse’s uniform, who said, “Maternity, Nurse Wilkins speaking.”

  “This is Mrs. Fellowes. Baby’s on the way.”

  “Just how frequent are your pains, Mrs. Fellowes?”

  “Rapid. And coming faster all the time.”

  Irma was interrupted by another pain, through which, faintly, she heard the muted siren. Nurse Wilkins read off some detailed instructions from a card, speaking unhurriedly to someone that could not be seen on the videophone. When she finished, Nurse Wilkins said to Irma Fellowes, “Take it easy now, there’s a resident doctor, an interne, and a nurse on their way.”

  Irma closed the circuit, waddled to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, returned to the living room and paced a bit. Perhaps two minutes passed, then came a rap on the door. She opened it to admit doctor and nurse, followed by the interne pushing a wheeled stretcher.

  “Hop on,” said the intern.

  “I can’t,” groaned Irma.

  The doctor scooped her up and deposited her on the stretcher. He applied stethoscope, then palpated her abdomen gently. “O.K.,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go. No problem.”

  Irma said, “But I was born in an ambulance, and—”

  The doctor laughed. “Mrs. Fellowes, from what little I know of the process, teleportation flips you from entry to exit at the speed of light. Now, even if it were from here to Alpha Centauri, your baby couldn’t be born en route simply because at the speed of light all timing processes come to a quiet standstill. And by ‘timing processes’ I mean things like clocks, and biochemical reactions, births, aging, and death. O.K.?”

  “That’s what Joe always says, but—”

  “Well, let’s find out if he’s right.”

  The corridor was partly cooled from leakage from the air-conditioned apartments, but by contrast it was stifling enough to make Irma gasp. The interne had used foresight; the elevator door was blocked open so that no one could call it away and tie it up. He held the “No Stops” button as the elevator dropped them smoothly to the stage below the first floor. Here the full heat of the city hit them as they made their way along a short corridor to the teleportransit booth.

  The signal light turned green as soon as the interne inserted the credit key in the lock-register. He pressed the buttons with a practiced hand, then paused to check the number in the address readout carefully.

  “Pays to be careful,” he said.

  “Ever goof?” asked the nurse.

  “Not really bad,” he replied turning the credit key. The green light changed to orange, which started the circuit-computer on its faster-than-lightning task of selecting the route from this entry station to the address in the read-out panel. The orange turned to red. “Um-m-m. Maternity seems to have another customer,” he said. “We’ll be on our way as soon as they get her out of the booth and close the door.” He looked at the number again.

  “Worried?” asked the nurse.

  “Not really worried,” he replied. “But I’ve been thoughtful ever since I watched a hapless, well-dressed citizen trying to walk on air back to the diving exit they have over the ocean at Jones Beach. He was still protesting and waving his brief case as he disappeared beneath the billowy wave.”

  “I hear you can watch about one per hour on a busy day,” chuckled the doctor.

  “Yeah,” said the interne. He looked at the red light. “All right, all ready. Let’s get cutting, huh?”

  Two men whose names are legion paused and stood in momentary indecision halfway between Father’s Bar and Grill on Eighth Avenue and the kiosk that led down to the 14th Street Teleportransit Station. Habit clashed with common sense; there was also the reluctance to part company.

  “Fast one?”

  “In this heat?”

  “Father’s is air-conditioned.”

  “So’s my apartment. And there I can have the Little Woman construct me a cool, tall one whilst I get out of these clothes and into something comfortable. Then I can sit on the terrace in shorts and have my drink in comfort.”

  “You’ve got a point. No sense in leaving the office early if we don’t take advantage of it.”

  They turned and headed for the kiosk. Down below, where the subway once rumbled, 14th Street Station was lined with booths, and before each booth was the start of a line-up of people. The big rush hour hadn’t started yet, but there were enough citizens in this area who had the kind of job they could leave early to avoid the big jam. There were quite a number who didn’t have that kind of job, but they left anyway, hoping their dereliction would either be overlooked or forgotten by Monday morning.

  The legion of citizens who left their jobs early to avoid the rush were not being watched by Big Brother, but by an impersonal peg-count that drove a dial that indicated the number of completed transits per minute. Beside the dial was a series of animated graphs that compared the day’s traffic against yesterday’s traffic, the same day a year ago, the maximum and minimum for this day any year, and the grand maximum and minimum for any day any year. All of the statistical graphs showed a sudden upsurge at the line denoting five o’clock, and the animated graph-line that displayed today’s traffic was approaching a record.

  Today’s traffic had surpassed yesterday’s for the past half hour, but this was not surprising because the rush-hour and just-before-rush traffic was heavier on Friday afternoons. It would undoubtedly repeat itself on Monday morning.

  But as the moving finger wrote on toward the critical hour, it approached an all-time record. This would ring no bells nor toot any whistles. It would be duly noted, and a memorandum would be issued authorizing a survey to determine the possible future expansion of facilities; the probable cost of such an expansion; and above all, how much more income would pour into the coffers of Teleportransit, Incorporated.

  Walter Long said, “I appreciate your interest, Harry, but I simply can’t go out of line for your Johnny Peters.”

  “Is it out of line?” asked Harry Warren.

  “Yes, and it is also obvious to us in this section. Or, rather, it would be obvious if I did it.”

  “I should think you’d jump at a chance to reward someone who asked for advancement.”

  “I would. And I could justify jumping Peters over a number of his seniors if he were outstanding in just one department. But he isn’t outstanding in anything but his ability to lolly-gag with Trudy.”

  “You make him sound like a washout.”

  “Oh, Peters is no washout,” said Walter Long. “He’s just not sufficiently outstanding to warrant special attention.”

  “Well, you must admit that maintaining a monitor over a function-panel for a system that’s adjusted and operated by a computer is not a job that provides an opportunity to be outstanding. There’s just so much verve and vigor with which an ambitious man can turn a small knob to twitch the incoming line voltage by a couple of tenths. This operation gets pretty dull, especially when the computer will twist the knob itself if the line gets more than about a quarter of a volt off.”

  “I suppose you’ve a point.”

  “I think I do. But why not ask Johnny’s boss? Joe knows him better than either of us.”

  “All right.” Walter Long pressed a button; the intercom on his desk came to life.

  Trudy, her composure regained, said, “Yes, Mr. Long?”

  “Trudy, connect me with Joe Fellowes, will you?”

  “Mr. Fellowes took off a few minutes ago.”

  “Where, for the Love of Pete?”

  “Mrs. Fellowes called and said that her baby was on the way. Joe took off for the maternity ward right after that. I could call him.”

  “No, don’t bother right now. Just ask him to see me when he gets back. You’ve no word from the hospital yet, have you?”

  “No, but from the way things looked, we won’t hav
e long to wait.”

  “O.K. Trudy. Keep me informed.”

  “Yes, sir.” She closed the circuit; contact died in the middle of her lilting response, “Tele-por-TRAN-sit,” to some incoming caller.

  The clock hit five. The dial registering transits per minute rose sharply, and so did the graphs that displayed today’s traffic compared to statistics. The increased load ran the incoming line down, the computer compensated for the drop before Johnny Peters could react. Somewhere down in the power distribution frames, a fuse blew; the local emergency power took over with no interruption while the blown fuse was replaced by a device that had neither nerves to twitch nor fingers to fumble.

  The first inkling that something was wrong was given to Joe Fellowes.

  Down in the computer, Joe’s emergency trip from the Teleportransit Building to the maternity ward of City Hospital was racked up by the peg count circuits and added to the statistics being compiled in the Accounting Department. The computer also registered the awaiting trip of Mrs. Fellowes, the doctor, the interne, and the nurse. Being a machine, it did not understand about birth and life or death, so it can’t be blamed for not registering the unborn Fellowes infant, alive and a passenger though he be.

  Machinelike, it awaited the closing of the booth door that exited in the maternity ward, and when the signal came it promptly processed the party—people, stretcher, and unborn—into the system.

  In the maternity ward, Joe Fellowes stared at the door to the teleportransit booth; mentally, he was urging it to open upon his wife. “What’s keeping them?” he asked nervously.

  “Heaven only knows,” replied Nurse Wilkins, calmly.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  “Hardly.”

  “What makes you think so?” he demanded.

  “If anything were wrong, they’d call for help. Or come for it. That booth can’t be used when . . . er . . . how did you get here, young man?” she demanded sharply.