The Scifi & Fantasy Collection

by L. Ron Hubbard

  “Huh,” said Joe, slumping down. “Gimme another bottle of beer. Doc, all I can see is Doughface Jack walkin’ around with an onion instead of a head.”

  “Another beer here,” said Pellman. He stared thoughtfully at it as he poured it and then sipped at it without much enthusiasm.

  “Y’worried?” said Joe.

  “A little,” said Doc Pellman. “The world isn’t full of onions, you know.”

  Chapter Five

  DOUGHFACE JACK was highly elated. He had just done a very clever thing. He had walked out of the university and clear down to Central Park without once being molested. He chuckled about it, very pleased. Although he enjoyed being lionized in the clinics and though the newspaper stories and the pictures of him tickled his fancy, he had been in New York for two months—and being two months in one place was akin to agony to the wanderlust of the tramp.

  And so he strolled in the sunshine, easy despite the stiffness of his clothes. Birds were caroling and he could almost imagine that he was in a jungle. Of course, all these people on the walk were not exactly to his taste and the cars which went by on the drive made a lot of noise. But still, even this small freedom was preferable to being dogged night and day by men with thick glasses.

  And all would have been well, even then, if a debutante had not fancied herself very powerful in the control of two white wolfhounds.

  She came posingly along the walk, dogs straining at the leashes with well-bred eagerness, and glancing around to see if anybody noticed. The girl was wholly unaware of a putty-faced little fellow who came toward her and he was oblivious of her.

  At the moment he was watching the clouds roll high overhead. And so he bumped squarely into the wolfhounds and trod on their tender toes.

  Instantly they snarled and snapped.

  Doughface Jack leaped back, unmanned for the moment. He had a tramp’s true distrust for dogs and he saw two raging beasts, so it seemed, charging to devour him.

  He saw he could not run. He must meet them as they sprang.

  He mustered up his fighting courage and the two wolfhounds fell dead.

  It was as simple as that. One minute they had been springing and the next they lay like two doormats of wool upon the walk.

  The girl stared at them in disbelief and then at Doughface Jack. Abruptly she whirled. Far away she spotted a mounted policeman coming on the trot to see what all the snarling had been about.

  “HELP! POLICE!” screamed the girl.

  “Please,” begged Doughface. “Please, ma’am. I didn’t do nothin’!”

  She turned again, glaring and shaking with hot rage. “You murderer! I saw you knife them!”

  Doughface Jack blinked at her and then he got just a little bit mad himself.

  The girl’s anger faded. She put her hand to her face and her knees became wobbly.

  Instantly Doughface was concerned.

  The girl stood up straight, mad all over again and very blistering in her language.

  He saw he could not run. He must meet them as they sprang.

  He mustered up his fighting courage and the

  two wolfhounds fell dead.

  “What’s goin’ on here?” snapped the officer. He started to get down from his horse.

  Doughface saw danger. Too many years he had run from cops not to run again. In panic he took to his heels. But fate was not kind. There was no way through the hedge along the walk.

  The officer heard the girl’s first few words and then he vaulted back into the saddle. With spur he sent his mount rocketing after the fleeing tramp.

  Doughface saw that he was done. He envisioned a striking club and perhaps another hospital. He saw himself losing all his prestige. The Law was on his trail.

  He could run no farther.

  He turned around. He saw he could not win but he had to do something. He struck a belligerent pose.

  And the policeman’s horse dropped dead with a mighty crash, spilling the officer to the concrete.

  He was not hurt and even as he rolled, the policeman fought to blow his whistle. He blew it, springing up. He glanced at his dead horse and then grabbed Doughface Jack by the arm.

  The tramp was shaking with terror. He had not one ounce of scrap in him now that the Law had him securely.

  “Please,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean nothin’. I was just out walkin’. . . .”

  “Mister,” said the tattered officer, “you got some questions to answer. That was Miss DuVrois back there and . . . and the guy that kills my horse is goin’ to sweat. Plenty!”

  And other cops came running at last and Doughface Jack, shaking as though with the ague, certain of his doom, afraid to show any fight, was wheeled off to the precinct to the tune of a wailing siren.

  Doughface Jack was caught in an avalanche of blue which bore him out of the wagon, up the steps of the station house, down dingy corridors and into a room where sat a desk sergeant of large dimensions.

  “Book this guy for disorderly conduct,” said the outraged mounted patrolman, “until I can sweat some real crimes out of him!”

  Again the wave picked up Doughface Jack and hurled him along a corridor and into a room where a white light glared. Doughface landed in the chair and the light bored into his skull and faces ringed him ’round.

  “Please,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean ta . . .”

  “Howja kill them dogs?”

  “Howja kill my horse?”

  “C’mon, talk!”

  “Ja use a knife?”

  “Whereja throw it?”

  “Y’know this might mean a year in the pen?”

  “Howja kill them dogs?”

  “Please!” moaned Doughface. “I didn’t do nothin’. I’m the guy with tha-tha eyes. C-Call up tha university. C-C-Call Professor Beardsley. I . . .”

  “So ya won’t talk!”

  “Howja kill them dogs?”

  “PLEASE! I’m the guy with tha EYES! Call Professor B-B-Beardsley. I didn’ do nothin’. I . . .”

  “So ya won’t talk!”

  “Howja kill my horse?”

  “PLEASE!” wailed Doughface. “I don’t know. Things happen and I don’t know! I tell you, y’gotta call Professor B-B-Beardsley.”

  One of them heard him and grabbed a phone and the third degree was about to begin when he came back.

  “Wait! Beardsley said this was the guy with the mito-something eyes. Y’know. In the papers.”

  “Yeah, but my horse . . .”

  “Please, please, please,” moaned Doughface. “I . . .”

  “Wait!” cried the man who had phoned. “This guy’s got somethin’ screwy about him. He can cure anythin’ he looks at.” He had their attention now. “And Beardsley says for God’s sake don’t make him mad!”

  Doughface couldn’t see very well because of the light but he could sense the way they suddenly drew back. He could see the awe. He sat up straight and scowled, testing it out. They drew back further.

  Doughface understood now. They were scared of him or at least they weren’t going to jump him. He had to put up a front and get out quick before they jailed him.

  He kicked at the lamp and it spun, taking its light from his face. The officers bristled anew.

  Doughface got halfway out of his chair. He was glaring now, getting mad and acting dangerous in the hope that he could cow them.

  And an awful thing happened. The men began to get wobbly. One grabbed hold of the table for support and then his knees buckled, letting him down. Another backed to the wall and slipped from there to the carpet. The mounted officer fell flat on his face.

  In Doughface Jack’s brain rang the words of Pellman, “Don’t glare at anybody, Jack. Something might happen.” It was happening all right. And he was glad of it.

  The last man collapsed before him. They were not dead. He could see them breathing with difficulty. But he had learned something, had Doughface. He had killed dogs with a glare. He had killed a horse by a glare. He had knocked these men out th
ough he was still scared of them.

  He marched to the door. He felt too big to walk in a corridor, and though his size had not increased, his perception had.

  Abruptly he realized what would happen to him if he was found here with these knocked out cops and in a panic he rushed out into the corridor.

  The desk sergeant saw him coming and recognized nothing but an escaping prisoner. He surged up and leaped to block the tramp’s way, brandishing a nightstick.

  Doughface started to say, “Please,” but the sergeant was coming too fast. There was no retreat. Doughface took a deep breath and squared off for a glare.

  The desk sergeant did a complete somersault and landed at Doughface Jack’s feet. He was breathing but he was a mighty sick man.

  Further panic hit Doughface. He dashed like a frightened rabbit out into the street.

  Chapter Six

  LIKE the little boy passing the cemetery, Doughface Jack tried to appear casual and still keep alert. But for all that he had to walk rapidly. He was sick at his stomach from the portent of doom which overhung him. Regardless of its mito-genetic powers, his brain was a maelstrom of confusion.

  It was far beyond him to understand what had happened. He could only draw conclusions insofar as his experience would allow. He knew definitely that cops carried clubs and hit people over the head.

  He had no great terror of jails. He had seen too many when booked for vagrancy. He had sometimes worked himself into jail when the nights were cold. But he knew that cops carried clubs and brakies carried clubs and in that lay his entire horror.

  More than once his scalp had been bruised and bloodied by a nightstick and the resulting headaches had filled weeks with misery. And now he had another thing bothering him.

  Pellman—and he still thought he could trust Pellman—had told him that he would have to be careful of a fall. “You get a dent in that tin skull you’ve got, Jack, and it’s liable to be the end of you.”

  Of course the skull wasn’t tin. Tin that thick would have had some resistance. But tin rusted and so the skull was soft, pliable silver. One blow from a nightstick and he would be a dead man. Doughface Jack knew that. He had no faith in anything after a man’s lights went out and he was very anxious to stay on an earth which had been pleasant to him. One blow on the head and he was done.

  Cops were such unreasonable people, he thought as he scurried along uptown. Could he help it if a couple dogs dropped dead and if a horse collapsed? Was it his fault? Did he do it on purpose?

  No!

  And had he asked those cops to bully him that way? And had he deliberately knocked them for a loop? And, therefore, was it his fault if they fell on their faces?

  No!

  But cops, he thought, were dumb. They couldn’t understand those things and the next one . . .

  And there he was, standing on the corner swinging his nightstick and watching the parade of baby carriages go along the park walk.

  Doughface Jack’s heart was a chunk of alum. He slowed down. He sauntered. He eyed the trees and sky and attempted to whistle. The officer had not yet heard the broadcast and though he thought that this pasty-faced little fat man was acting suspiciously, there wasn’t any real reason to accost him.

  And so, for the instant, Doughface Jack got by.

  Fifty feet ahead was a crossing and the lights were against Doughface. He was much too interested in the bluecoat behind him to see the truck coming. It was an enormous thing grumbling under the weight of great rolls of sheet iron. The driver was a New York truck driver. He had the weight and he had the right of way and so he stuck his broken nose in the air and sailed serenely along and let the pedestrians fall where they might.

  Doughface heard the rumble when he was almost under the wheels of the juggernaut.

  With a yelp of fright, the tramp skipped back.

  “Watch where ya goin’,” snarled the truck driver in passing.

  And then an awful thing happened. The driver collapsed over his wheel and the truck careened toward the curb. Pedestrians screamed as they scurried back. Over the curb went the truck, over the curb and over the sidewalk and straight into a plate-glass window the size of a billboard.

  There was a splintering crash, the rending of metal and the sudden shriek of the patrolman’s whistle down the block.

  Doughface Jack waited to see no more. He started to run and banged squarely into an officer coming from the other direction. He bounced off at an angle and that officer, thinking it was suspicious, tried to grab Doughface. Abruptly he was flat on the walk.

  “Hey you!” bellowed the other one behind Doughface.

  The tramp spun about. He wasn’t risking being either shot or struck from behind. He knew what he could do now. He glared and the patrolman banged to concrete with a grunt which faded out into a moan.

  When Doughface took wing this time he barely touched pavement for blocks. He dashed over crossings and through crowds driven by terror and the necessity of finding refuge at the university.

  He beat the mile record getting there, vowing with each sturdy puff that he would never again walk these streets if he got out of this scrape alive. If possible he would leave New York and return to the rods. Starvation was preferable to such danger.

  So blind was he with sweat and exhaustion that he almost leaped up the steps of Professor Beardsley’s house without examining the ground. But sunlight hit on a brass button in the nick of time. Doughface dived for the shrubbery and peered carefully forth.

  The front steps were an entire bank of blue cloth. Fortunately all the officers had been facing the door and they had missed him. They were not entering, it seemed, but waiting for their superiors to come out.

  It was a chilling sight.

  Doughface, panting as silently as he could, thought fast. He could not stay on the streets. His name had been plastered all over New York and his picture had appeared so often that he could never hope to escape exposure. He felt naked without strong walls around him.

  He withdrew cautiously and hurried down the block. He turned the corner and then headed into an alley. He knew the back of Beardsley’s house because he had often had the pleasure of talking to the garbage man there. And so, with great stealth he tiptoed up the steps and eased into the kitchen. The officers would not search the house. They wouldn’t think he was here. And besides, Beardsley would help him out of this jam. Beardsley would tell them the truth.

  He started to enter a hall when he heard voices in the study. He got down and put his eye to the keyhole and found that he was looking at Beardsley in profile at his desk.

  “Gentlemen,” said Beardsley, “I tell you once more that he is not here. You can search the house if you like.”

  “Maybe he’ll come back,” muttered a police captain.

  “We’ll wait,” decided an inspector.

  “Gentlemen,” said Beardsley, tears in his voice, “believe me when I tell you that I had no slightest inkling of his potentialities.”

  “Yeah,” said the police captain.

  “But believe me!” said Beardsley, polishing his pince-nez in agitation. “I took pity on him, a poor, helpless tramp. . . .”

  “You made yourself famous with him,” stated the inspector.

  “Gentlemen, in the interests of humanity, science will even condone vulgar publicity.”

  “Y’didn’t tell the newsmen that,” said the captain. “See here, Professor, your university . . .”

  “My university,” said Beardsley, “has no responsibility in the matter whatever and neither have I. There is in existence no contract establishing any connection for responsibility between the university and myself and this tramp. What he has done is regrettable, true. But to expect the university to act as guardian angel to a tramp—a mere tramp, gentlemen—that is going too far.”

  “Y’mean you’ll turn him over to us?” said the inspector hopefully.

  “He has broken the law,” stated the professor, growing bolder. “And for that he must suffer.”<
br />
  “If them guys die,” growled the captain, “it’s the chair for him.”

  “Justice must be served,” said Beardsley in a devout manner.

  “Say, look,” said the captain, “how come you didn’t suspect that this hobo could kill things by just lookin’ at ’em?”

  Beardsley took refuge in scientific lore. “Mito-genetic rays are almost wholly unknown. No great amount of work has been done upon them. We were experimenting. That was all. Evidently as long as this tramp is in a jolly frame of mind the rays are beneficial to the recipient. But when this man’s anger is aroused, then the rays become so intense that they not only kill all foreign bacteria and stimulate cells and tissue but they destroy those cells themselves. By destruction of such cells, a man is instantly made to suffer from acute anemia. And there is a telepathic factor which seems to enter. Generating fear, this tramp makes another man feel afraid at long last. Generating rage, he makes other men rage. Generating cheer, he makes others cheerful. Emotional telepathy, the commonest kind. . . .”

  “I didn’t come here to listen to no lecture,” growled the captain. “All I want is to get my grub hooks on that hobo. We’ll show him a thing or two.”

  “Perhaps,” said Beardsley, “if you make a cordon about any part of the city where his presence is known you can sneak up on him. I must warn you that if he is given a chance, no amount of police can cope with him.”

  “You mind if we . . . ah . . . find it necessary to shoot your guinea pig?” said the inspector.

  “It would be a loss to science,” said Beardsley. “But—the man is dangerous. We have no claim or hold upon him, no responsibility to him. . . .”

  “Even though he got you a five-million-dollar donation,” said the disgusted captain. “C’mon, Inspector. The circles of the mighty make me sick to my stomach. Let’s go out and nail that tramp.”

  “Professor,” said the inspector, “if he comes here, you will, of course, quietly call us?”

  Beardsley pondered. It was dangerous to be in line with Doughface Jack now. “Inspector, I can probably find a way to put some heavy sleeping powder in his food.”