The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VI: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "Not likely, sir," the SR Officer said with a polite, knowing smile. "You see, the aliens are presumably susceptible to their own bacteriological weapons. At least we think so from the way they went about it. They want our planets, and they didn't want to have to decontaminate them when they took them over. Besides, it's practically impossible to decontaminate an entire planet, anyway."

  "But we did it with Earth."

  "For morale purposes, Central Authority let it be known that they were able to decontaminate it, but what actually happened was that the spores lost their effectiveness within a few years of their original seeding. I'm surprised they didn't tell you that in the beginning--" He caught himself suddenly, then shrugged and smiled again.

  "Maybe you aren't supposed to be told," he continued without embarrassment. "It's sometimes hard for me to know about such things. You have no idea how confused the directives can get in an organization this large. Anyway, as you can see, your men couldn't have poisoned Frendon or themselves or anybody else with those spores. That's why we have been using that particular form of suggested violence in this unpleasant business. If, as you pointed out, something unexpected did happen, it would be absolutely harmless. Naturally," he added, "we wouldn't like to risk unnecessarily a professional actor with such a remarkably suitable physical appearance as Commander Frendon--even if the poor fellow doesn't have the slightest trace of psi ability."

  Maise gaped at him for a moment as he comprehended the careful, knowledgeable planning behind the ruse, much of which had not been explained to him before in his briefings. He said, "And I guess there is still a lot more about it that I don't know."

  The SR Officer nodded agreement. "Neither you nor I," he replied in bald understatement. "After all, there are some pretty intelligent men in charge of this last-ditch defense of our species, and they do keep a few of the more important things to themselves. For your own safety among your crew, I suggest that you keep this spore business equally secret."

  "I don't need your advice for that," Maise said with a low voice and a wry grin on his face. But the grin vanished as he stood up to go. He hesitated and shook his head uncertainly.

  "So that takes care of that," the SR concluded. "Now you're all set, aren't you?"

  "All set?" Maise murmured, half to himself. "Hell, I'm just starting, and I'm scared. When the boys asked me if I trusted the intuition of the Psi Corps men, I suddenly realized that I really wasn't quite sure myself. I've studied and worked for two solid years under extraordinary teachers, and back on Earth they said I was unusually good. But now that men's lives will depend on it, it almost seems like something out of a joke book." He stopped talking and sighed. "Well, that's the way it has to be, I guess."

  He turned to go, but the SR Officer called him back. "Just a minute, sir," he said. "You forgot to sign this report. You are the originating officer, you know."

  "Oh, yes." Maise went back to the desk. He picked up a pen and riffled through the pages to the last one. There he signed his name, scribbling rapidly,

  "Alton A. B. Maise, Acting Lieutenant SCS Commander, Psi Corps."

  "There you are, lieutenant," he muttered, and started walking on back to the field where his ship was waiting.

  THE END

  * * *

  Contents

  The 4-D DOODLER

  by GRAPH WALDEYER

  "Do you believe, Professor Gault, that this four dimensional plane contains life--intelligent life?"

  At the question, Gault laughed shortly. "You have been reading pseudo-science, Dr. Pillbot," he twitted. "I realize that as a psychiatrist, you are interested in minds, in living beings, rather than in dimensional planes. But I fear you will find no minds to study in the fourth dimension. There aren't any there!"

  Professor Gault paused, peered from beneath bushy white brows out over the laboratory. To his near sighted eyes the blurred figure of Harper, his young assistant, seemed busily at work over his mathematical charts. Gault hoped sourly that the young man was actually working and not just drawing more of his absurd, senseless designs amidst the mathematical computations....

  "Your proof," Dr. Pillbot broke into his thoughts insistently, "is purely negative, Professor! How can you know there are no beings in the fourth dimension, unless you actually enter this realm, to see for yourself?"

  Professor Gault stared at the fat, puffy face of his visitor, and snorted loudly.

  "I am afraid, Pillbot, you do not comprehend the impossibility of such a passage. We can not possibly break from the confines of our three dimensional world. Here, let me explain by a simple illustration."

  Gault took up a book, held it so that a shadow fell onto the surface of the desk.

  "That shadow," he said, "is two dimensional, has length and breadth, but no thickness. Now in order to enter the third dimension, our plane, the shadow would have to bulge out in some way, into the dimension of thickness an obvious impossibility. Similarly, we can not enter the fourth dimension. Do you see?"

  "No!" retorted Pillbot with some heat. "In the first place, we are not two dimensional shadows, and--why, what is the matter?"

  Professor Gault's lanky form had stiffened, his near sighted eyes glaring out over the laboratory to the rear of Pillbot. The psychiatrist wheeled around, followed his host's gaze.

  It was Harper. That young man's antics drew an amazed grunt from Pillbot. He was describing peculiar motions in the air with his pencil. Circles, whorls, angles, abrupt jabs forward. He bent over the paper on the desk, made a few sweeps of the pencil, then the pencil rose again into the air to describe more erratic motions. Harper himself seemed in a trance.

  Suddenly Pillbot gave a stifled gasp. It seemed to him that Harper's arm vanished at the elbow as it stabbed forward, then reappeared. Once again the phenomenon happened.

  Pillbot blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes. It must have been illusion, he decided. It was too ... unlikely....

  "Harper!" Gault's voice was like the snapping of a steel trap.

  Startled, Harper came to with a jerk. Seeing he was being watched, he flushed redly, then bent over his charts again. An apologetic murmur floated from his desk.

  "What was he doing?" Pillbot asked puzzledly.

  "Doodling!" Gault spat out the word disgustedly.

  "Doodling?" echoed the psychiatrist. "Why that is a slang term we use in psychiatry, to describe the absent-minded scrawls and designs people make while their attention is elsewhere occupied. An overflow of the unconscious mind, we call it. Many famous people are 'doodlers.' Their doodles often are a sign of special ability--"

  "Exactly!" snapped Gault. "It shows a special ability to waste time. And Harper has become worse since I hired him to do some of my mathematical work. Some influence in this laboratory--I blush to confess--seems to bring it on. 'Four dimensional doodling' we call it, because, as you saw, he doesn't confine it to the surface of the paper!"

  Pillbot looked startled. "By jove," he cried. "I believe you've hit on something new to psychiatry. This young man may have some unknown faculty of mind--an instinctive perception of the fourth dimension. Just as some people have an unerring sense of direction, so perhaps Harper has a sense of--of a fourth direction--the fourth dimension! I should like to examine some of his 'doodles'."

  Harper looked up in alarm as his crusty tempered employer appeared, followed by the stout figure of Pillbot. He rose and stood aside unassumingly, as Pillbot bent over the scrawls on his charts, clucking interestedly.

  Harper flickered a worried glance over to the corner. He hoped they wouldn't notice his stress-analyzing clay model standing there. It looked like a futurist's nightmare, with angles, curves and knobs stuck out at all angles. Professor Gault might not understand....

  * * * * *

  For one of his retiring temperament, Harper was aiming high. There was a standing award of $50,000 for the lucky mathematician who would solve the mystery of the "stress-barrier" encountered by skyscrapers as they were built up toward the 150 story mark
. At this height, they encountered stress and strains which mathematical computations and engineering designs had been unable to solve. Harper believed the "stress-barrier" was due to an undetected space-bending close to the earth's surface, a bending of space greater than ever provided for in the prediction of Einstein. And if he was right, and could win that award, then there might be wedding bells, and a little bungalow with Judith....

  Harper's greatest fear was that he would do something to annoy Gault into firing him, thus depriving him of the privilege of using the mathematical charts and computing machines available in the laboratory. Right now, he hoped Gault wouldn't notice that statue in the corner--

  "What's that!"

  Harper's heart leaped. The Professor was glaring at the statue, as though it were something the cat brought in.

  Pillbot looked up from examination of the "doodles" and followed Gault over to the futuristic statuary.

  As Gault made strangled noises, Pillbot stared interestedly. "Why--its like some of the designs in his doodling," he exclaimed.

  "And made with some of my best modeling clay for reproducing geometric solids!" rasped Gault. He wheeled upon Harper.

  "Get that thing out of here! I won't stand for such rot in this laboratory. Throw it into the hall for the janitor!"

  "Ye-yessir," said Harper, gulping. He took hold of the statue, pulled at it.

  "It--it won't budge," he exclaimed amazedly.

  "Eh? Won't move? It's not heavy, is it?" demanded the Professor.

  "No--about thirty pounds, but it wont move!"

  Gault took hold of one of the angles of the thing, jerked at it savagely. He gave it up with an oath, returned to Harper's desk muttering.

  Harper suddenly noticed the top portion of the statue. It didn't seem to be all there! He was positive there had been another section on top, shooting off at an angle, representing a problem in tangential stress. What had happened to that top section?

  He would figure that out later, when the occasion was more propitious. Right now, he realized that only the presence of Dr. Pillbot prevented Gault from firing him. He cast an apprehensive glance toward his employer.

  With trepidation, he saw Gault reach for something projecting from behind a bench. Gault pulled it out, held it dangling before him. A strangled exclamation of wrath came from him. His long nose pointed accusingly toward Harper, like a finger pointing out a criminal.

  "I was afraid of that!" he grated. "Cutting paper dolls!" Gault was holding up a large paper cutout of a human figure--a long, rangy man.

  "This is the last straw," Gault went on, his voice rising. "I have stood enough--"

  "It--it wasn't me, sir," Harper cried quickly, with visions of his job and $50,000 vanishing. "It was your ten year old nephew, Rudolph, when he was here yesterday. He cut it out, said it looked like--like his uncle--"

  Harper stopped as Gault seemed about to explode. Then the mathematician subsided, a malicious expression crept over his face.

  "H-m-m," he said. "Might be just what I need to explain things to Dr. Pillbot."

  "I shall take this matter before the Psychiatric Society," Pillbot was saying excitedly. "Undoubtedly you have some strange faculty--an instinctive perception of four dimensional laws ... what was that, Professor?"

  "I said if you will step over to this desk I will explain to you in elementary terms--very elementary and easy to understand--why you will never be able to study four dimensional beings--if any exist!" Gault's voice was tinged with sarcasm.

  Pillbot came over, followed by Harper, who was interested in any explanations about the fourth dimension--even elementary ones....

  Gault, with a glint in his eye, pressed the paper figure flatly on the surface of Harper's desk.

  "This paper man, we will say, represents a two dimensional creature. We lay him flatly against the desk, which represents his world--Flatland, we mathematicians call it. Mr. Flatlander can't see into our world. He can see only along the flat plane of his own world. To see us, for instance, he would have to look up, which is the third dimension, a direction inconceivable to him. Now, Doctor, are you beginning to understand why we can never see four dimensional beings?"

  Pillbot frowned thoughtfully, then looked up. "And what about the viewpoint of the four dimensioners themselves--what would prevent them from seeing us?"

  Harper hardly heard the Professor's snort of disgust. This two dimensional cutout in "Flatland" fascinated him. An idea occurred to him. Now, just supposing the....

  * * * * *

  As Gault and Pillbot argued, Harper grasped the paper cutout, and bent it, "jacknifed" it, creasing it firmly in the middle. Then he raised the upper half so that it rose vertically from the desk, while the lower half was still pressed flatly against the desk surface.

  "Now," he murmured to himself, "the Flatlander would appear to his fellows to have vanished from the waist up, because from the waist up he is bent into the third dimension ... so far as they are concerned...."

  "E-e-e-e-e!"

  At the wavering scream, Harper looked up quickly. Pillbot was staring frozenly in front of him, toward the floor. Harper followed his glance--and saw it.

  Professor Gault had vanished from the waist up.

  His lower body still stood before Pillbot, swaying slightly, but the upper body was unconditionally missing. From the large feet planted solidly on the floor, long legs rose majestically, terminating in slim, angular hips--and from thence vanished abruptly into nothingness. It was as though the upper body had been sheared away, neatly and precisely, at the waist.

  Pillbot stared from the visible portion of Gault to slack-jawed Harper and back again, sweat splashing from his puffy face.

  "Why, why really my dear fellow," he quavered, addressing the half-figure. "This--this is a bit rude of you, vanishing in the midst of my sentence. I--I trust you will--ah, return at once!" Then, as the full import of the phenomenon penetrated to his understanding, his eyes became glazed and he backed away.

  The portion of Professor Gault addressed failed to give any indication it had heard the remonstrance. Slowly, the legs began to feel their way, like a blind man, about the floor.

  Harper stared wildly, white showing around his pale blue irises.

  "No!" he bleated. "The Professor didn't do it himself--I caused it to happen. I bent the paper cutout, and--and Something saw me do it, and imitated me by bending the Professor into the fourth dimension!" Harper moaned faintly, wringing his hands.

  Pillbot at the moment got little satisfaction from this demonstration of his point about four dimensional life. He glanced fearfully at the half-figure.

  "You--you mean to say," he quailed, "that we are under scrutiny by some Being of the fourth dimension?"

  "That's it," replied Harper with a whinny. "I--I know it, I can feel it. It became aware of our three dimensional life in some way, and its attention is now concentrated on the laboratory!" He wrung his hands. "I just know something else terrible is going to happen!" He backed away quickly as the occupied pair of pants moved toward him.

  His retreat was halted by his desk, upon which reposed two large California oranges, an inevitable accompaniment to Harper's lunch. To him, orange juice was a potent, revivifying drink. Now he automatically reached for one of the oranges, as a more hardy individual might reach for a whisky and soda in a moment of mental shock.

  His eyes wide on the shuffling approach of Gault's underpinnings, Harper nervously dug sharp fingernails into the orange, tore off large chunks of skin.

  A sudden blur seen from the corner of his eyes pulled his gaze back to the desk. The other orange had vanished.

  Phwup!

  It dropped to the floor before Harper, but now it was a squashy mess, the insides standing out like petals, the juice running from it.

  The other orange slipped from Harper's nerveless fingers, rolled along the desk top. Harper pounced on the squashy thing on the floor, feverishly pushed back the projecting insides, closely examined it. He looked up
wide-eyed at Pillbot.

  "Turned inside out," he gasped hoarsely, "without breaking its skin!"

  Pillbot's expression indicated that the scientific attitude was slowly replacing his former fright. He snapped his fingers.

  "Imitation again!" he said, half to himself. He looked at Harper. "When you bent the paper figure this--this fourth dimensional entity imitated your action by bending the Professor. Now, as you started to peel the orange, your action was again imitated--in a four dimensional manner--by this entity turning the other orange inside out."

  His voice dropped, as he muttered, "Imitativeness--the mark of a mind of low evolutionary order, or of ..." his words faded off, his expression thoughtful.

  More white showed around Harper's eyes. "You--you mean I am being specially watched by this Being--that He--It--imitates everything I do...?"

  "That's it," clipped Pillbot. "Because you possess this strange perception of Its realm the Being has been especially attracted to you, imitates whatever you do, but in a four dimensional manner. A Being of inexplicable powers and prerogatives, with weird power over matter, but with a mentality that is either very primitive, or--"

  Harper leaped into the air with a yell, as Professor Gault's abbreviated body sidled up to him from behind. As he leaped, the inside out orange flew out of his grasp.

  "I just know," he quavered, "that Professor Gault wants me to do something, is probably barking orders at me from that other dimension--oh dear, I've dropped the orange on the Professor's--where his stomach should be!"

  The squashy orange had landed on the area of Gault that was the line of demarkation between his visible and invisible portions--the area that his stomach would occupy normally. It rested there in plain sight of the two startled men.

  "I--I'd better remove it," said Harper weakly. He moved with a dreadful compulsion toward the swaying half-figure, one slender hand extended tremblingly toward the inverted orange.