Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  There wasn't anything wrong with the new ones, either. At the time of her first examination everything was operating but the kidneys; their function was being handled by a very simple, very efficient sort of filter attached to the ventral wall of the peritoneum. We found a similar organ in autopsying poor Glenda Spooner. Next to it were the adrenals, apparently transferred there from their place astride the original kidneys. And sure enough, we found Amy's adrenals placed that way, and not on the new kidneys. In a fascinating three-day sequence we saw those new kidneys completed and begin to operate, while the surrogate organ that had been doing their work atrophied and went quiet. It stayed there, though, ready.

  The climax of the examination came when we induced panic terror in her with a vivid abreaction of the events in the recording shack the day Katherine died. Bless that Amy, when we suggested it she grinned and said, "Sure!"

  But this time it was done under laboratory conditions, with a high-speed camera to watch the proceedings. Oh God, did they proceed!

  The film showed Amy's plain, pleasant, sleeping face with its stainless halo of psych-field hood, which was hauling her subjective self back to that awful moment in the records shack. You could tell the moment she arrived there by the anxiety, the tension, the surprise and shock that showed on her face. "Glenda!" she screamed, "Get Joe!"—and then …

  It looked at first as if she was making a face, sticking out her tongue. She was making a face all right, the mask of purest, terminal fear, but that wasn't a tongue. It came out and out, unbelievably fast even on the slow-motion frames of the high-speed camera. At its greatest, the diameter was no more than two inches, the length … about eight feet. It arrowed out of her mouth, and even in mid-air it contracted into the roughly spherical shape we had seen before. It struck the net that the doctors had spread for it and dropped into a plastic container, where it hopped and hopped, sweated, drooled, bled and died. They tried to keep it alive, but it wasn't meant to live more than a few minutes.

  On dissection they found it contained all Amy's new equipment, in sorry shape. All abdominal organs can be compressed to less than two inches in diameter, but not if they're expected to work again. These weren't.

  The thing was covered with a layer of muscle tissue, and dotted with two kinds of ganglia, one sensory and one motor. It would keep hopping as long as there was enough of it left to hop, which was what the motor system did. It was geotropic, and it would alter its muscular spasms to move it toward anything around it that lived and had warm blood, and that's what the primitive sensory system was for.

  And at last we could discard the fifty or sixty theories that had been formed and decide on one: That the primates of Mullygantz II had the ability, like a terran sea cucumber, of ejecting their internal organs when frightened and of growing a new set; that in a primitive creature this was a survival characteristic, and the more elaborate the ejected matter the better the chances for the animal's survival. Probably starting with something as simple as a lizard's discarding a tail segment which just lies there and squirms to distract a pursuer, this one had evolved from "distract" to "attract" and finally to "attack." True, it took a fantastic amount of forage for the animal to supply itself with a new set of innards, but for vegetarian primates on fertile Mullygantz II, this was no problem.

  The only problem that remained was to find out exactly how terrans had become infected, and the records cleared that up. Clement got it from a primate's bite. Amy and Glenda got it from Clement. The Flents may well never have had it. Did that mean that Clement had bitten those girls? Amy said no, and experiments proved that the activating factor passed readily from any mucous tissue to any other. A bite would do it, but so would a kiss. Which didn't explain our one crew member who "contracted" the condition. Nor did it explain what kind of a survival characteristic it is that can get transmitted around like a virus infection, even between species.

  Within that same six weeks of quarantine, we even got an answer to that. By a stretch of the imagination, you might call the thing a virus. At least, it was a filterable organism which, like the tobacco mosaic or the slime mold, had an organizing factor. You might call it a life form, or a complex biochemical action, basically un-alive. You could call it symbiotic. Symbiotes often go out of their way to see to it that the hosts survive.

  After entering a body, these creatures multiplied until they could organize, and then went to work on the host. Connective tissue and muscle fiber was where they did most of their work. They separated muscle fibers all over the peritoneal walls and diaphragm, giving a layer to the entrails and the rest to the exterior. They duplicated organic functions with their efficient, primitive little surrogate organs and glands. They hooked the illium to the stomach wall and to the rectum, and in a dozen places to their new organic structures. Then they apparently stood by.

  When an emergency came, every muscle in the abdomen and throat cooperated in a single, synchronized spasm, and the entrails, sheathed in muscle fiber and dotted with nerve ganglia, were compressed into a long tube and forced out like a bullet. Instantly the revised and edited abdomen got to work, perforating the new stomach outlet, sealing the old, and starting the complex of simple surrogates to work. And as long as enough new building material was received fast enough, an enormously accelerated rebuilding job started, blueprinted God knows how from God knows what kind of cellular memory, until in less than two months the original abdominal contents, plus revision, were duplicated, and all was ready for the next emergency.

  Then we found that in spite of its incredible and complex hold on its own life and those of its hosts, it had no defense at all against one of humanity's oldest therapeutic tools, the RF fever cabinet. A high-frequency induced fever of 108 sustained seven minutes killed it off as if it had never existed, and we found that the "revised" gut was in every way as good as the original, if not better (because damaged organs were replaced with healthy ones if there was enough of them left to show original structure)—and that by keeping a culture of the Mullygantz "virus" we had the ultimate, drastic treatment for forty-odd types of abdominal cancer—including two types for which we'd had no answer at all!

  So it was we lost the planet and gained it back with a bonus. We could cause this thing and cure it and diagnose it and use it, and the new world was open again. And that part of the story, as you probably know, came out all over the newsfax and 'casters, which is why I'm getting a big hello from taxi drivers and doormen …

  · · · · ·

  "But the 'fax said you wouldn't be leaving the base until tomorrow noon!" Sue said after I had spouted all this to her and at long last got it all off my chest in one great big piece.

  "Sure. They got that straight from me. I heard rumors of a parade and speeches and God knows what else, and I wanted to get home to my walkin' talkin' wettin' doll that blows bubbles."

  "You're silly."

  "C'mere."

  The doorbell hummed.

  "I'll get it," I said, "and throw 'em out. It's probably a reporter."

  But Sue was already on her feet. "Let me, let me. You just stay there and finish your drink." And before I could stop her she flung into the house and up the long corridor to the foyer.

  I chuckled, drank my ale and got up to see who was horning in. I had my shoes off, so I guess I was pretty quiet. Though I didn't need to be. Purcell was roaring away in his best old-salt fashion, "Let's have us another quickie, Susie, before the Space Scout gets through with his red-carpet treatment tomorrow—miss me, honey?" … while Sue was imploringly trying to cover his mouth with her hands.

  Maybe I ran; I don't know. Anyway, I was there, right behind her. I didn't say anything. Purcell looked at me and went white. "Skipper …"

  And in the hall mirror behind Purcell, my wife met my eyes. What she saw in my face I cannot say, but in hers I saw panic terror.

  In the small space between Purcell and Sue, something appeared. It knocked Purcell into the mirror, and he slid down in a welter of blood and stinks a
nd broken glass. The recoil slammed Sue into my arms. I put her by so I could watch the tattered, bleeding thing on the floor hop and hop until it settled down on the nearest warm living thing it could sense, which was Purcell's face.

  I let Sue watch it and crossed to the phone and called the commandant. "Gargan," I said, watching. "Listen, Joe, I found out that Purcell lied about where he went in that first liberty. Also why he lied." For a few seconds I couldn't seem to get my breath. "Send the meat wagon and an ambulance, and tell Harry to get ready for another hollowbelly … Yes, I said, one dead … Purcell, dammit. Do I have to draw you a cartoon?" I roared, and hung up.

  I said to Sue, who was holding onto her flat midriff, "That Purcell, I guess it did him good to get away with things under my nose. First that helpless catatonic Glenda on the way home, then you. I hope you had a real good time, honey."

  It smelled bad in there, so I left. I left and walked all the way back to the Base. It took about ten hours. When I got there I went to the Medical wing for my own fever-box cure and to do some thinking about girls with guts, one way or the other. And I began to wait. They'd be opening up Mullygantz II again, and I thought I might look for a girl who'd have the … fortitude to go back with me. A girl like Amy.

  Or maybe Amy.

  © 1957 by Venture Science Fiction

  Two Percent Inspiration, by Theodore Sturgeon

  DR. BJORNSEN WAS a thorough man. He thought that way and acted that way and expected others to exceed him in thoroughness. Since this was an impossibility, he expressed an almost vicious disappointment in incompetents, and took delight in pointing out the erring one’s shortcomings. He was in an ideal position for this sort of thing, being principal of the Nudnick Institute.

  Endowed by Professor Thaddeus MacIlhainy Nudnick, the institute was conducted for the purpose of supplying brilliant young assistants to Professor Nudnick. It enrolled two thousand students every year, and the top three of the graduating class were given subsistence and a considerable salary for the privilege of entering Nudnick’s eight-year secondary course, where they underwent some real study before they began as assistants in the Nudnick laboratories.

  Bjornsen never congratulated an honor student, for they had behaved as expected. He found many an opportunity of delivering a kick or two in the slats to those who had fallen by the wayside; and of these opportunities, the ones that pleased him the most were the ones involving expulsion. He considered himself an expert disciplinarian, and he was more than proud of his forte for invective.

  It was with pleasurable anticipation that he summoned one Hughie McCauley to his office one afternoon. Hughie was a second-year student, and made ideal bait for Bjornsen’s particular line of attack. The kid was intelligent to a degree, and fairly well read, so that he could understand Bjornsen’s more subtle insults. He was highly sensitive, so that he could be hurt by what Bjornsen said, and he showed it. He lacked sense, so that he continually retorted to Bjornsen’s comments, giving the principal blurted statements to pick meticulously apart while the victim writhed. Hughie was such perfect material for persecution that Bjornsen rather hated to expel him; but he comforted himself by recalling the fact that there were hundreds of others who could be made to squirm. He’d take his time with Hughie, however; stretch it out, savor the boy’s suffering before he kicked him out of the school.

  “Send him in,” Bjornsen told the built-in communicator on his luxurious desk. He leaned back in his chair, put the tips of his fingers together, lowered his head so that only the whites of his eyes were visible as he stared through his shaggy brows at the door, and waited.

  Hughie came in, his hair plastered unwillingly down, his fear and resentment sticking out all over him. The kid’s knees knocked together so that he stumbled against the doorpost. There was a gloss of cold sweat on his forehead. From previous experience, he had no difficulty in taking up the front-and-center position before the principal’s desk.

  “Y-yes, sir!”

  Bjornsen made a kissing noise with his wrinkled lips before he spoke, threw back his head and glared. “You might,” he said quietly, “have washed your ears before you came in here.” He knew that there is no more painfully undignified attack for an adolescent, particularly if it is not true. Hughie flushed and stuck out his lower lip.

  Bjornsen said, “You are an insult to this institution. You were in a position, certainly, to know yourself before you applied for admission; therefore, the very act of applying was dishonest and insincere. You must have known that you were unfit even to enter these buildings, to say nothing of daring to perpetuate the mistake of the board of examiners in staying here. I am thoroughly disgusted with you.” Bjornsen smiled his disgust, and it was a smile that perfectly matched his words. He bent to flip the switch on the communicator, cutting off its mellow buzz. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Bjornsen! Professor Nudnick is—”

  The annunciator’s hollow voice was drowned out in the crashing of a hard, old foot against the door. Nudnick kicked it open because he knew it could not be slammed, and he liked startling Bjornsen. “What sort of nonsense is this?” he demanded, in a voice that sounded like flatulence through ten feet of lead pipe. “Since when has that vinegar-visaged female out there been instructed to announce me? Damn it, you’ll see me whether you’re busy or not!”

  Bjornsen had bounced out of his chair to indulge in every sort of sycophantism short of curtsying. “Professor Nudnick! I am delighted to see you!” This was perfect. The only thing that could possibly increase Hughie McCauley’s agony was to have an audience to his dismissal; and what better audience could he have than the great endower of the school himself? Bjornsen rubbed his hands, which yielded an unpleasant dry sound, and began.

  “Professor Nudnick,” he said, catching Hughie’s trembling shoulder and using it to thrust the attached boy between him and Nudnick, “you could not have picked a better time to arrive. This shivering example of negation is typical of the trash that has been getting by the examiners recently. Now I may prove to you that my recent letter on the subject was justified.”

  Nudnick looked calmly at Hughie. “I don’t read your letters,” he said. “They bore me. What’s he done?”

  Bjornsen, a little taken aback, put this new resentment into his words. “Done? What he hasn’t done is more important. He has neglected to tidy up his thinking habits. He indulges in reading imaginative fiction during his hours of relaxation instead of reading books pertaining in some way to his studies. He whistles in corridors. He asks impertinent questions of his instructors. He was actually discovered writing a letter to a … a girl!”

  “Tsk, tsk,” chuckled the professor. “This during classes?”

  “Certainly not! Even he would not go that far, though I expect it hourly.”

  “Hm-m-m. Is he intelligent?”

  “Not very.”

  “What kind of questions does he ask?”

  “Oh—stupid ones. About the nature of a space-warp, whatever that may be, and about whether or not time travel is possible. A dreamer—that’s what he is, and a scientific institution is no place for dreamers.”

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  “Expel him, of course.”

  Nudnick reached over and pulled the boy out of Bjornsens’s claw. “Then why not post him as expelled and spare him this agony? It so happens, Bjornsen, that this is just the kind of boy I came here to get. I’m going to take him with me on a trip to the Asteroid Belt. Salary at two thousand a month, if he’s willing. Are you, what’s-your-name?”

  Hughie nodded swimmingly.

  “Eh.” Beckoning the boy, Nudnick started for the door. “My advice to you, Bjornsen,” grated the scientist, “is as follows. Keep your nose out of the students’ lives on their off hours. If you must continue in these little habits of yours, take it out in pulling the wings off flies. And get married. Take this advice or hand in your resignation effective this date next month.”

  Hughie paused at the door, look
ing back. Nudnick gave him a quick look, shoved him toward Bjornsen. “Go ahead, kid. I’d like it, too.”

  Hughie grinned, walked up to Bjornsen, and with a quick one-two knocked the principal colder than a cake of ice.

  They were eight days out now, and these were the eight:

  The day when the unpredictable Professor Nudnick had whisked Hughie up to his mountain laboratory, and had put him to work loading the last of an astonishingly inclusive list of stores into the good ship Stoutfella. Hughie began to regard the professor as a little less than the god he had imagined, and a little more as a human being. The old man was perpetually cheerful, pointing out Hughie’s stupidities and his little triumphs without differentiating between them. He treated Hughie with a happy tolerance, and seemed to be more delighted with the lad’s ignorance than by his comparatively meager knowledge. When Hughie had haltingly asked if he might take a suitcase full of fiction with him, Nudnick had chuckled dryly and sent him off to the nearest town with a pocketful of money. Hughie arrived back at the laboratory laden and blissful. They took off.

  And the day when they heard the last broadcast news report before they whisked through the Heaviside layer. Among other items was one to the effect that Dr. Emil Bjornsen, principal of the Nudnick Institute, had resigned to accept a government job. Hughie had laughed gleefully at this, but Nudnick shook his shaggy old head. “Not funny, Hughie,” he said. “Bjornsen’s a shrewd man. I’ve an idea why he did that, and it has nothing to do with my … our … ultimatum.”

  Struck by the scientist’s sober tone, Hughie calmed down to ask, “What did he do it for?”

  Nudnick clapped a perforated course card into the automatic pilot, reeled its lower edge into the integrator, and checked his controls before switching them over to the “Iron Mike.”

  “It has to do with this trip,” he said, waving the kid into the opposite seat, “and it’s about time you knew what this is all about. What we’re after is a mineral deposit of incalculable value. How it is, I don’t know, but somewhere in that mess of nonsense out there”—he indicated the Asteroid Belt—“is a freak. It’s a lump like the rest of the asteroids, but it differs from the rest of them. It must’ve been a wanderer, drifting heaven alone knows how far in space until it got caught in the Belt. It’s almost pure, through and through—an oxide of prosydium. That mean anything to you?”