Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  He laid his burden carefully on the vari-colored braided rug by the tub and began to draw a warm bath, testing the temperature frequently with his hand. When water reached the overflow outlet, he turned off the tap and sprinted downstairs for his sample case. The hall was still chokingly full of gas; and after grabbing out the case, he slammed the door again. He brought the case up to the bathroom, where he opened it on the floor beside the form of the old woman. He lifted out the tray, revealing masses of silvery tubing and a number of flasks of iridescent solutions nestling among loops of rubber insulated wiring. One flask he emptied into the bath, making the water seethe and turn a cloudy green.

  Then, dashing down the stairs again, he began looking for the telephone. His search became more and more hurried, as he opened cupboards and drawers in front room and kitchen with no success. Returning upstairs, he almost missed the instrument in the sitting-room because he was expecting the familiar sight of a round vizer screen. He stood over the phone and dialed.

  "Hey, Alice!"

  "What luck, Riggy?"

  "I'm in. The old lady's out cold on the bathroom floor. Primer solution's in the bath at five above tepid. I'm shoving her in now--with all her clothes on, of course--and I've wasted a lot of time already looking for this hypoblastic phone, so beat it on over here with Margy and get to work."

  "Are you ordering me around, Rigel O'Maffey?"

  "You know I never did this job on a woman. And don't forget, honey, we'll get enough out of this to get a new copter together. C'mon now." He put the phone back in, the cradle before she could answer.

  * * * * *

  Back in the bathroom, he drew a long thermometer from the case, took a careful reading on the water, ran in a little more hot from the faucet and left it running the slightest dribble.

  Carefully lifting the small body of Barbara Noble, Ph.D., he slid it gently into the water feet first over the end, smoothing down with one hand the percale housedress which ballooned as she went into the water. Finally he knelt beside the tub, holding her head out of the water in the crook of his elbow.

  A banging on the inner door downstairs some fifteen minutes later reminded him of the force with which he had slammed it in his hurry to reach the uncontaminated air of the front room. He looked longingly across the bathroom at the racks of towels on the other side, but finally, as the banging stopped and a feminine voice began yelling, "Hey, Riggy! Let us in!" he grabbed up the bright rug and wadded it under the scrawny neck.

  The girls scolded him all the way up the stairs for not leaving the door unlocked, while he tried to explain, at the same time, that he had to hold up the woman's head.

  "Screepers, Riggy, what do you think the perfectly good pair of water-wings in your case is for?"

  Humbled, he departed as the girls took over the beginning of the complicated, fortnight-long process of the rejuvenation of Barbara Noble.

  * * * * *

  The receptionist behind the ebony desk, whose gold plate proclaimed it as the headquarters of the Juvine Perpetual Youth Corporation, crammed shut the drawer before her. A metallic clink from within was the fall of a mirror with which she had been assisting the application of scarlet which now fluoresced gently on her full lips.

  Tossing her head (which showed the crop of glistening black curls to the fullest advantage) in a preoccupied manner, she addressed the man who stood before her desk. "How can the Juvine Perpetual Youth Corporation serve you?" Her hastily assumed look of efficient importance was replaced by melting eagerness as she took in the chiselled perfection of features and the broad shoulders of the young man in knife-creased bronze spunlon.

  "I'm Harris. For the directors' meeting." His voice was curt.

  "You're Doctor Harris? The Director? Oh, do come in." She rose from the desk and went around the end of it to open the high wrought-gold gate and hold it wide for him. "You're a little early. I'll take you down to the Board Room." Eager willingness to help was apparent in her every gesture.

  "Thanks, I know the way," he informed her, brushing past.

  She followed him, however, across the patio-like reception room, with its exotically gardened borders and splashing fountain, down the long corridor past glowing murals of men and women swimming, dancing and playing tennis, past tapestry shielded doorways to the great bright arch at the end. Before he went through, she caught his sleeve.

  "I should be pleased to steno for you today, if you need me."

  He turned and looked at her as if he had not known she was behind him. "Thanks, but I sha'n't need one. It'll be a short meeting." He smiled down and patted her cheek. "But if I'm not entirely satisfied with the proceedings, maybe I can dictate a little afterward."

  She laughed as if that were a special joke between them and retreated rapidly down the corridor before he had time to turn and miss the splendor of her graceful carriage.

  His eyebrows were still raised and the corners of his mouth curved in appreciation when he passed through the arch and into the vast room under the clear bubble of a tremendous skydome.

  * * * * *

  A girl was sitting there, her back to him, looking out over the simmering city streets to the cool rise of mountains beyond. He recognized at once the slight figure, the sheen of the long curling auburn bob, the poise of her head and slim hand resting on the arm of the chair.

  "Babs!"

  She turned half around. "Hello, Rod."

  He grinned and sank down in the next chair. "Here we are again."

  "Knocked out by your own skunk oil?" she asked pointedly.

  "No. Company copter man got me leaving Jeery Wade's. What happened to you? I thought you were walled up neatly for the declining years."

  "The cosmetic man ambushed me in the hall. But I've got another fifty years to figure out something better ... if I still need it."

  "What do you mean if you still need it? Are you changing your mind about rejuvenation?"

  She smiled. "Well, you know it's always fun at first. But I'm having my lawyer come to this meeting. I've got an idea we can change the articles of agreement so that the process can finally become public property at the end of another fifty years instead of only after our deaths. Then if we want to go on and die, nobody" (she waved her hand around the great room at the little group of athletic men and glamorous, expensively gowned women moving in through the arch) "nobody will have any financial interest in rejuvenating us. Then, too, our own fat incomes will lapse; and since that's the reason we set up the articles the way they are--so we'd never be in danger of starving, that is--we'd have the more interesting choice of whether to die off or get young again and go back to work. Would you sign a fifty-year termination, Rod?"

  "Would you marry me for the fifty years, Babs?" His voice was gentle, pleading.

  "Honest to goodness, now, aren't you really pretty tired of me?" she asked earnestly, turning to face him.

  "No, I can't say I am. You're pretty special, doctor, and you're special pretty." It was a ritual.

  "You know you're the only man. I'll marry you. Will you sign?"

  "Of course I'll sign. I would have anyhow when I knew you wanted me to. And Babs--maybe we could get some sort of jobs now--sort of to get in practice. I'll bet we could rent a lab somewhere and do commercial analyses for a while until we got hit by another idea for research."

  "Rod, that's the best idea you've had in the last hundred and fifty years. But we could have a honeymoon first, couldn't we?"

  "That's your best suggestion in the last seventy years. And maybe we could get Jeery Wade and his wife to rejuvenate and go with us. After the first couple of weeks, that is."

  * * * * *

  They left the meeting arm in arm, somewhat ahead of the rather disgruntled group of directors, who stayed behind to lament the end of a good thing. In the garden room, Barbara stopped to choose an orchid.

  Rod Harris wandered on to the receptionist's desk, where the girl of the black curls waited, smiling.

  He looked back at Barbara
, then smiled down at the girl. "Just like I said ... a short meeting. No need for any dictating. Lucky you."

  "Oh, I don't know," she countered coyly.

  "Say, I heard a story the other day you might like. Do you like stories?"

  "What kind of story?"

  "You'd have to be the judge of that."

  Suddenly Barbara was with them, pinning on a bronze and green blossom. "C'mon along, dear. We've got a good many things to do before we leave."

  He opened the golden wicket for her and followed her out. Turning back toward the desk, he called to the girl, "I may be back in a few weeks to see about a job. Remind me then to tell you the one about the Martian, the Venusian and the robot."

  * * *

  Contents

  THE BUFFALO PUBLIC LIBRARY IN 1983

  by Charles Ammi Cutter

  In the year 1983 I had come to Buffalo from Niagara, where I had been admiring the magnificent canal works by which the enormous power of the Falls was collected to be transmitted by wire, not merely to the great manufacturing city that had grown up upon each bank of the river, but also to Buffalo, here every machine, from a hundred-ton trip-hammer to an egg-beater, was driven by the water that had formerly only furnished a livelihood to hack-drivers and toll-takers. The Falls were as beautiful as ever, though their volume was slightly diminished. Along the bank ran the park; for all the factories, which were generally owned and managed in Buffalo, were kept at a distance from the water and hidden by trees. These great industrial towns, which furnished Buffalo its wealth, both directly and by nourishing its commerce, contained several well-used collections of books of moderate size, but no great library such as I was told I should see at Buffalo.

  That city was not then one of the largest of the United States, having about two millions of inhabitants; but it yielded to none in the attention it gave to popular education, part of the remarkable commercial energy which distinguished the first century of its existence, having naturally, with the acquisition of wealth, been turned into the channels of literature, art, and science. The library, therefore, as being the very culmination of the educational system, had a high reputation both for its excellent management, for the extent to which it was used, and for the pride and affection with which it was regarded by the citizens. The library building was near the centre of the city. A whole block some 200 feet square had been secured for it. Part was already built upon, and part, reserved for the inevitable extension of a growing collection, was occupied by stores and houses, whose rents were allowed to accumulate for a building fund. Wide avenues gave it air and light, and protected it against fire on three sides; on the fourth there was space enough between the library and the shops. The situation, as I have said, was central, and yet it was a little retired from the noisiest streets. All the neighboring paving was of a kind to minimize the clatter of passing vehicles, and particular attention was paid to keeping the ways scrupulously clean, to prevent, as far as might be, the evil of dust.

  The building, when complete, was to consist of two parts, the first a central store, 150 feet square, a compact mass of shelves and passageways, lighted from the ends, but neither from sides nor top; the second an outer rim of rooms 20 feet wide, lighted from the four streets. In front and rear the rim was to contain special libraries, reading-rooms, and work-rooms; on the sides, the art-galleries. The central portion was a gridiron of stacks, running from front to rear, each stack 2 feet wide, and separated from its neighbor by a passage of 3 feet. Horizontally, the stack was divided by floors into 8 stories, each 8 feet high, giving a little over 7 feet of shelf-room, the highest shelf being so low that no book was beyond the reach of the hand. Each reading-room, 16 feet high, corresponded to two stories of the stack, from which it was separated in winter by glass doors. When I first entered a reading-room, which was in summer, when the doors were off, I was much amused by the appearance of the two tiers of passages running off from one side like so many bird holes in a sandy river-bank, sixty of them leading off into darkness. They were, in fact, sixty short tunnels, with floors for top and bottom and books for sides, 8 feet high, 3 feet wide, and now 75 feet long. When the library should occupy the whole lot, they were to be 150 feet long. "Their length might equally well," said my guide, "be 300 feet, for they do not depend upon the sun for light. In the night, or in a dark day the runner, on going in, touches a knob, which lights an electric glow-lamp in the middle; that shows him his way. There are other lamps in the tunnel at suitable distances. If his central lamp does not give him light enough to read the titles or the books themselves at the shelf where he is, he has only to touch the button of the nearest lamp to get all the light he wants. In the first experiments in stack-building, which were made a century ago, if the light came from the sides, either the stack could not exceed 20 feet in width, or the middle was dark; if one wanted to use a wide lot of ground, it was necessary to have light-wells about as wide as the stack, which sacrificed valuable space and neutralized the sole advantage of a stack, which is compact storage of the books. If an attempt was made to let the light from the top filter down through perforated, or through glass floors, the lower passages were still dark, and in summer the upper floors under a glass roof were intolerably hot. With electric illumination we are both light and cool. We can store the greatest number of books in the closest proximity to the reading-room, and extend our storage-room indefinitely. There is no way in which books can be packed in closer nearness to the place where they are used. We have now room for over 500,000 volumes in connection with each of the four reading-rooms, or 4,000,000 for the whole building when completed. In the present reading-room there are 9,000 square feet on the front of the building, without counting the special rooms under the art-galleries on the side. We have, of course, book-lifts, noiseless and swift, to take the books from floor to floor. For horizontal transmission we tried various little railroads, but came to the conclusion that a smart boy was the best and the quickest railroad in a library. For carrying many books at a time, of course, we use trucks; and, as the attendants in each room have two stories of shelves to go to, to save the fatigue of climbing even the small height of 8 feet, each room has several little lifts just large enough for one person, driven, like everything else in the library, by Falls-power."

  "The books," he told me, "are arranged in groups of subjects on the different stories, those most called for lowest. On the groundfloor is a selection from all classes of books that are in most active circulation, many of them duplicated in their proper places on higher floors. On the same floor is the class literature, because it is, on the whole, the most sought for. We have not yet escaped the preponderant use of fiction though we have diminished it since your day. It used to be 75 per cent. Thanks to our training the school children in good ways it has fallen to forty. I doubt if it goes much lower. The next two stories are given to the historical, geografical, and social sciences; the fourth to the natural sciences, the industrial arts, the fine arts and sports, and finally to filosofy and theology. When several classes correspond to a single reading-room, one of them is put on one side of the stack opposite one end of the reading-room, another opposite the middle, and a third, if there are three, opposite the other end. This arrangement greatly facilitates procuring books. Every one goes to that reading-room, and to that part of the room whose adjacent shelves contain the subject he is going to work on, — if art, to the fourth story, middle; if European history, to the second story, west end. If he happens to need books from another class, of course he can have them sent up or down to him.

  "But the main advantage of this system of separate reading-rooms is that it compels the appointment of just as many competent librarians. There must be one for each floor, and in fact there is one for each great subject, — a scientific man for the science, an art lover for the art, an antiquarian for the history, and a traveller for the geografy; and even in their attendants the specialization of function has led to a special development of ability. In selecting them we take into ac
count aptitude, so far as it can be discovered, but we find that a librarian who is himself interested will train even his runners into a very considerable degree of capacity to assist readers. This we think an extremely important matter. It is a more glorious thing to organize and administer a great library, but full as good results may be got even in very small collections of books by a sort of spade husbandry. We boast of both here. Our chief librarian is not more successful in the conduct of the whole than his subordinates are in the thorough cultivation each of his own little plot. On the one hand their knowledge of the shelves, volume by volume, on the other, their personal intercourse with the students enable them to give every book to that reader to whom it will do most good, — as a skilful bookseller suits the tastes of his patrons, — and to answer every inquiry with the best work the library has on that matter, as the doctor prescribes the right medicines for his patient. No one man could do this for our half million volumes; and our chief librarian's ability, for all his enormous acquaintance with literature, is best shown in his selection of the men who do it for him."

  The first room that I entered was the delivery on the ground floor. It was divided into three parts, all having access to a central curved counter, the middle one for children, the right side for women, the left for men. There was nothing remarkable about it save the purity of the air. I remarked this to the friend who accompanied me, and he said that it was so in all parts of the building; ventilation was their hobby; nothing made the librarian come nearer scolding than any impurity in the air.

  "We do not have drafts," he said, "because we introduce and draw off our air at so many points; but we do have a constant renewal of the air, and the more borrowers or readers there are the faster we renew it. Formerly we had a young man, whose sole duty it was to attend to heat and ventilation; and to ensure his attention there were several registering thermometers and hygrometers and atmosferometers in every room. If he let the heat get above 70 in the reading-room or above 60 in the stack, or if the dryness or the impurity went beyond a certain point, there was the tell-tale record to accuse him, and that record was examined every day by the chief librarian. After a time one of these ventilators invented an arrangement by which the rooms regulated their own dryness and heat. The air is nearly as good as out-of-doors. Every one must be admitted into the delivery-room, but from the reading-rooms the great unwashed are shut out altogether or put in rooms by themselves. Luckily public opinion sustains us thoroughly in their exclusion or seclusion.