The Shipshape Miracle: And Other Stories

by Clifford D. Simak

  Someone else would have to get Hellion Smith. Perhaps Old Gus, if Old Gus were still alive. Perhaps some stony-eyed veteran of the Undersea Patrol—perhaps one of the government submarines, nosing around to find other camps of the Venusian invaders.

  “The last story,” said Grant Nagle, staring out over the canyon, down into the depths where the dome gleamed dimly. “The last story and I won’t write it.”

  Grant swung the right arm of the suit upward, found a handhold with his spotlight, hooked the steel fingers on it, tested their grip and geared the motors. The suit bumped and scraped against the rock as the arm levered it up a few feet.

  Only a few feet more and he would reach the top of the canyon wall. What would he do then? What was there to do? What does a man do when he had just an hour or two to live?

  He shifted the spotlight to find a hold for the fingers of the left arm and, as he did so, a shadowy, ghostly thing leaped over the canyon’s lip and plunged out into the watery space behind him. An oblong thing, a tubelike thing, that seemed to be spinning as it fell. A thing that plunged down, straight at the dome below.

  Grant twisted the periscopic lenses to watch and, as he recognized it, he sucked in his breath. That falling thing was one of the cylinders from the Venusians’ camp! One of the great cylinders to which the motor had been connected! The cylinder was falling faster now, faster and faster, still spinning along its axis.

  From above came a coughing hiss, as if someone had uncorked a bottle, and down toward the spinning cylinder flashed a shimmering projectile. Someone had fired an airgun!

  In the split second before the projectile struck, Grant found a handhold for the left hand of the suit, clamped the steel fingers into it savagely. The concussion of the exploding projectile as it blasted against the spinning cylinder battered his suit against the wall. But the fingers held and, hanging there against the canyon rocks, he saw the cylinder split open as if a man had sliced it with a knife. Saw it spill a flood of curling greenish-yellow substance down upon the dome.

  With little regard for safety, Grant swarmed up the wall those few remaining feet, pulled himself over the edge and turned to stare down into the depths.

  The dome was gone—flattened out—shattered into a million shards as the acid had weakened it, allowed the pressure to get in its deadly work.

  Hellion Smith was dead. So was the Rat and all the others. Except for a few, perhaps, who might be guarding the tanks.

  The waters of Robber’s Deep were painted a ghastly yellow—a yellow that swirled and crawled and eddied like fiendish, writhing arms.

  “Who the hell are you?” asked a voice.

  Grant whirled. “Gus,” he cried. “Gus, you old devil, you did it!”

  The suited figure stood stolidly in the gloom, a gun clutched in one hand. Behind it bulked the outline of an underwater tank.

  “I kind of got my dander up,” Old Gus explained. “First they knocked over my dome and that put me out of sorts, and then they took my pearl and that made me downright sore.”

  He turned his spotlight on Grant’s vision plate. “It’s Nagle,” he said. “I was wondering where you were.”

  “It’s a long story,” said Grant.

  “You can tell it to me in the tank,” said Gus. “I got to be getting back.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Grant.

  “I got to get Butch,” said Gus. “When I went up to the Venusians’ camp and got ready to haul the cylinder down here, Butch was bound to follow me. I told him the pressure would be too much for him and I tried to make him stay. But he got stubborn, so I had to stake him out.”

  Gus chuckled thinly. “I bet he’s madder than hell by now,” he said.

  Eternity Lost

  Possibly impressed by Switzerland’s ability to remain neutral during World War II, Clifford Simak used Geneva as the world capitol in a number of his future-set stories—including some of the City stories; and although he never got over to Europe, he imagines Geneva, in this story, as a place of beauty … which makes it all the more striking that political corruption would be exposed in such a place. And who better than an old-fashioned newspaperman would recognize, and resent, that corruption?

  Sent to John W. Campbell Jr., during the last few days of 1948, the story was accepted in less than two weeks, and was first published in the July 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Cliff got $200 for it, and it is an ugly story.

  —dww

  Mr. Reeves: The situation, as I see it, calls for well defined safeguards which would prevent continuation of life from falling under the patronage of political parties or other groups in power.

  Chairman Leonard: You mean you are afraid it might become a political football?

  Mr. Reeves: Not only that, sir, I am afraid that political parties might use it to continue beyond normal usefulness the lives of certain so-called elder statesmen who are needed by the party to maintain prestige and dignity in the public eye.

  —From the Records of a hearing before the science subcommittee of the public policy committee of the World House of Representatives.

  Senator Homer Leonard’s visitors had something on their minds. They fidgeted mentally as they sat in the senator’s office and drank the senator’s good whiskey. They talked, quite importantly, as was their wont, but they talked around the thing they had come to say. They circled it like a hound dog circling a coon, waiting for an opening, circling the subject to catch an opportunity that might make the message sound just a bit offhanded—as if they had just thought of it in passing and had not called purposely on the senator to say it.

  It was queer, the senator told himself. For he had known these two for a good while now. And they had known him equally as long. There should be nothing they should hesitate to tell him. They had, in the past, been brutally frank about many things in his political career.

  It might be, he thought, more bad news from North America, but he was as well acquainted with that bad news as they. After all, he told himself philosophically, a man cannot reasonably expect to stay in office forever. The voters, from sheer boredom if nothing else, would finally reach the day when they would vote against a man who had served them faithfully and well. And the senator was candid enough to admit, at least to himself, that there had been times when he had served the voters of North America neither faithfully nor well.

  Even at that, he thought, he had not been beaten yet. It was still several months until election time and there was a trick or two that he had never tried, political dodges that even at this late date might save the senatorial hide. Given the proper time and the proper place and he would win out yet. Timing, he told himself—proper timing is the thing that counts.

  He sat quietly in his chair, a great hulk of a man, and for a single instant he closed his eyes to shut out the room and the sunlight in the window. Timing, he thought. Yes, timing and a feeling for the public, a finger on the public pulse, the ability to know ahead of time what the voter eventually will come to think—those were the ingredients of good strategy. To know ahead of time, to be ahead in thinking, so that in a week or month or year, the voters would say to one another: “You know, Bill, old Senator Leonard had it right. Remember what he said last week—or month or year—over there in Geneva. Yes, sir, he laid it on the line. There ain’t much that gets past that old fox of a Leonard.”

  He opened his eyes a slit, keeping them still half closed so his visitors might think he’d only had them half closed all the time. For it was impolite and a political mistake to close one’s eyes when one had visitors. They might get the idea one wasn’t interested. Or they might seize the opportunity to cut one’s throat.

  It’s because I’m getting old again, the senator told himself. Getting old and drowsy. But just as smart as ever. Yes, sir, said the senator, talking to himself, just as smart and slippery as I ever was.

  He saw by the tight e
xpressions on the faces of the two that they finally were set to tell him the thing they had come to tell. All their circling and sniffing had been of no avail. Now they had to come out with it, on the line, cold turkey.

  “There had been a certain matter,” said Alexander Gibbs, “which had been quite a problem for the party for a long time now. We had hoped that matters would so arrange themselves that we wouldn’t need to call it to your attention, senator. But the executive committee held a meeting in New York the other night and it seemed to be the consensus that we communicate it to you.”

  It’s bad, thought the senator, even worse than I thought it might be—for Gibbs is talking in his best double-crossing manner.

  The senator gave them no help. He sat quietly in his chair and held the whiskey glass in a steady hand and did not ask what it was all about, acting as if he didn’t really care.

  Gibbs floundered slightly. “It’s a rather personal matter, senator,” he said.

  “It’s this life continuation business,” blurted Andrew Scott.

  They sat in shocked silence, all three of them, for Scott should not have said it that way. In politics, one is not blunt and forthright, but devious and slick.

  “I see,” the senator said finally. “The party thinks the voters would like it better if I were a normal man who would die a normal death.”

  Gibbs smoothed his face of shocked surprise.

  “The common people resent men living beyond their normal time,” he said. “Especially—”

  “Especially,” said the senator, “those who have done nothing to deserve it.”

  “I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,” Gibbs protested.

  “Perhaps not,” said the senator. “But no matter how you say it, that is what you mean.”

  They sat uncomfortably in the office chairs, with the bright Geneva sunlight pouring through the windows.

  “I presume,” said the senator, “that the party, having found I am no longer an outstanding asset, will not renew my application for life continuation. I suppose that is what you were sent to tell me.”

  Might as well get it over with, he told himself grimly. Now that it’s out in the open, there’s no sense in beating around the bush.

  “That’s just about it, senator,” said Scott.

  “That’s exactly it,” said Gibbs.

  The senator heaved his great body from the chair, picked up the whiskey bottle, filled their glasses and his own.

  “You delivered the death sentence very deftly,” he told them. “It deserves a drink.”

  He wondered what they had thought that he would do. Plead with them, perhaps. Or storm around the office. Or denounce the party.

  Puppets, he thought. Errand boys. Poor, scared errand boys.

  They drank, their eyes on him, and silent laughter shook inside him from knowing that the liquor tasted very bitter in their mouths.

  Chairman Leonard: You are agreed then, Mr. Chapman, with the other witnesses, that no person should be allowed to seek continuation of life for himself, that it should be granted only upon application by someone else, that—

  Mr. Chapman: It should be a gift of society to those persons who are in the unique position of being able to materially benefit the human race.

  Chairman Leonard: That is very aptly stated, sir.

  —From the Records of a hearing before the science subcommittee of the public policy committee of the World House of Representatives.

  The senator settled himself carefully and comfortably into a chair in the reception room of the Life Continuation Institute and unfolded his copy of the North American Tribune.

  Column one said that system trade was normal, according to a report by the World Secretary of Commerce. The story went on at length to quote the secretary’s report. Column two was headed by an impish box that said a new life form may have been found on Mars, but since the discoverer was a spaceman who had been more than ordinarily drunk, the report was being viewed with some skepticism. Under the box was a story reporting a list or boy and girl health champions selected by the state of Finland to be entered later in the year in the world health contest. The story in column three gave the latest information on the unstable love life of the world’s richest woman.

  Column four asked a question:

  WHAT HAPPENED

  TO DR. CARSON?

  NO RECORD OF

  REPORTED DEATH

  The story, the senator saw, was by-lined Anson Lee and the senator chuckled dryly. Lee was up to something. He was always up to something, always ferreting out some fact that eventually was sure to prove embarrassing to someone. Smart as a steel trap, that Lee, but a bad man to get into one’s hair.

  There had been, for example, that matter of the spaceship contract.

  Anson Lee, said the senator underneath his breath, is a pest. Nothing but a pest.

  But Dr. Carson? Who was Dr. Carson?

  The senator played a little mental game with himself, trying to remember, trying to identify the name before he read the story.

  Dr. Carson?

  Why, said the senator, I remember now. Long time ago. A biochemist or something of the sort. A very brilliant man. Did something with colonies of soil bacteria, breeding the things for therapeutic work.

  Yes, said the senator, a very brilliant man. I remember that I met him once. Didn’t understand half the things he said. But that was long ago. A hundred years or more.

  A hundred years ago—maybe more than that.

  Why, bless me, said the senator, he must be one of us.

  The senator nodded and the paper slipped from his hands and fell upon the floor. He jerked himself erect. There I go again, he told himself. Dozing. It’s old age creeping up again.

  He sat in his chair, very erect and quiet, like a small scared child that won’t admit it’s scared, and the old, old fear came tugging at his brain. Too long, he thought. I’ve already waited longer than I should. Waiting for the party to renew my application and now the party won’t. They’ve thrown me overboard. They’ve deserted me just when I needed them the most.

  Death sentence, he had said back in the office, and that was what it was—for he couldn’t last much longer. He didn’t have much time. It would take a while to engineer whatever must be done. One would have to move most carefully and never tip one’s hand. For there was a penalty—a terrible penalty.

  The girl said to him: “Dr. Smith will see you now.”

  “Eh?” said the senator.

  “You asked to see Dr. Dana Smith,” the girl reminded him. “He will see you now.”

  “Thank you, miss,” said the senator. “I was sitting here half dozing.”

  He lumbered to his feet.

  “That door,” said the girl.

  “I know,” the senator mumbled testily. “I know. I’ve been here many times before.”

  Dr. Smith was waiting.

  “Have a chair, senator,” he said. “Have a drink? Well, then, a cigar, maybe. What is on your mind?”

  The senator took his time, getting himself adjusted to the chair. Grunting comfortably, he clipped the end off the cigar, rolled it in his mouth.

  “Nothing particular on my mind,” he said. “Just dropped around to pass the time of day. Have a great and abiding interest in your work here. Always have had. Associated with it from the very start.”

  The director nodded. “I know. You conducted the original hearings on life continuation.”

  The senator chuckled. “Seemed fairly simple then. There were problems, of course, and we recognized them and we tried the best we could to meet them.”

  “You did amazingly well,” the director told him. “The code you drew up five hundred years ago has never been questioned for its fairness and the few modifications which have been necessary have dealt with minor points which no one could have antic
ipated.”

  “But it’s taken too long,” said the senator.

  The director stiffened. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  The senator lighted the cigar, applying his whole attention to it, flaming the end carefully so it caught even fire.

  He settled himself more solidly in the chair. “It was like this,” he said. “We recognized life continuation as a first step only, a rather blundering first step toward immortality. We devised the code as an interim instrument to take care of the period before immortality was available—not to a selected few, but to everyone. We viewed the few who could be given life continuation as stewards, person who would help to advance the day when the race could be granted immortality.”

  “That still is the concept,” Dr. Smith said, coldly.

  “But the people grow impatient.”

  “That is just too bad,” Smith told him. “The people will simply have to wait.”

  “As a race, they may be willing to,” explained the senator. “As individuals, they’re not.”

  “I fail to see your point, senator.”

  “There may not be a point,” said the senator. “In late years I’ve often debated with myself the wisdom of the whole procedure. Life continuation is a keg of dynamite if it fails of immortality. It will breed system-wide revolt if the people wait too long.”

  “Have you a solution, senator?”

  “No,” confessed the senator. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I’ve often thought that it might have been better if we had taken the people into our confidence, let them know all that was going on. Kept them up with all developments. An informed people are a rational people.”

  The director did not answer and the senator felt the cold weight of certainty seep into his brain.

  He knows, he told himself. He knows the party had decided not to ask that I be continued. He knows that I’m a dead man. He knows I’m almost through and can’t help him any more—and he’s crossed me out. He won’t tell me a thing. Not the thing I want to know.