My Best Science Fiction Story

by Leo Margulies

  “He must have been furious at me,” cried Fortuna.

  “Let me amend my statement,” went on Zeoui. “I told only a portion of the story. I led them to believe that the theft and flight were Ropakihn’s idea exclusively, and that the outlaws kidnapped Miss Fortuna from her school on Earth. The director-general expressed great satisfaction in your activities, Ev, and intimated that he would release you from exile. He will also cease his objections to your marriage—”

  “Zeoui, you flower-faced sap!” exploded Everitt. “You’ve given me all the credit.”

  Again Zeoui nodded gravely.

  “But what about you?” Fortuna demanded.

  “Yes, you’re screwier than Ropakihn’s whole mob put together,” Everitt chimed in. “If you take no credit, they’ll keep you on duty here.”

  The Martian nodded.

  “That is eminently correct.” Both Everitt and Fortuna could have sworn that the petals of Zeoui’s weird visage were wreathed into something like a grin of satisfaction. “To be sure I shall remain on duty here. I enjoy it.”

  WHY I SELECTED STAR BRIGHT

  Mr. Jason Peabody is a harmless man of good will, caught in a common trap. Facing problems too complex to solve by any ordinary means, he escapes to the temporary freedom of Bannister Hill and utters his desperate wish to the star—as most of us have sometimes done.

  For hard reality makes an uncomfortable fit for human desires. The resulting conflict of wish and fact is the mainspring of life and hence the material of most fiction. The vigorous hero of the optimistic or popular school of literature is usually busy attempting to improve his environment, while the less fortunate people of the pessimistic or literary school are generally pictured in the dire process of being crushed by realities they are too weak to change.

  I don’t recall just how I came to write the story of Mr. Peabody, but the internal evidence suggests an effort to translate the premise of H. G. Wells’ story and motion picture, “The Man Who Could Work Miracles,” into the less fantastic terms of science fiction.

  The dream of altering circumstances by merely wishing things so is doubtless born again with every human being, however, and the folly of that dream is one of the first things he must learn—as is attested by all the folk tales of people who are granted three wishes and fail to get any good from them.

  Men since Babylon have found strange things in the sky. Even now, when the wonders astronomers seek are abstractions fully understood only by other astronomers, their children still make wishes to the stars. So do such desperate men as Mr. Peabody. Few such wishes—fortunately for all of us— are answered by the prompt arrival of a radioactive object to stimulate the psychophysical capacities of the brain. Such accidents don’t happen often.

  But just suppose …

  JACK WILLIAMSON

  Star Bright - Jack Williamson

  Have a Miracle; Have a Lot of Miracles. And When You’re Tired of Materializing Diamond Necklaces, Making and Unmaking Goldfish, You’ll Still Remember Jason Peabody—the Most Charming Gentleman Ever Hit by a Comet.

  Mr. JASON PEABODY got off the street car. Taking a great, relieved breath of the open air, he started walking up Bannister Hill. His worried eyes saw the first pale star come out of the dusk ahead.

  It made him grope back wistfully into the mists of childhood, for the magic words he once had known. He whispered the chant of power:

  Star light, star bright,

  First star I’ve seen tonight,

  I wish I may, I wish I might,

  Have the wish I wish tonight.

  Mr. Peabody was a brown, bald little wisp of a man. Now defiantly erect, his thin shoulders still betrayed the stoop they had got from twenty years of bending over adding machines and ledgers. His usually meek face now had a hurt and desperate look.

  “I wish—”

  With his hopeful eyes on the star, Mr. Peabody hesitated. His harried mind went back to the painful domestic scene from which he had just escaped. A wry little smile came to his troubled face.

  “I wish,” he told the star, “that I could work miracles!”

  The star faded to a pale malevolent red.

  “You’ve got to work miracles,” added Mr. Peabody, “to bring up a family on a bookkeeper’s pay. A family, that is, like mine.”

  The star winked green with promise.

  Mr. Peabody still owed three thousand dollars on the little stucco house, two blocks off the Locust Avenue car line; the payments were as easy as rent, and in fourteen years it would be his own. Ella met him at the door, this afternoon, with a moist kiss.

  Ella was Mrs. Peabody. She was a statuesque blond, an inch taller than himself, with a remarkable voice. Her clinging kiss made him uneasy. He knew instantly, from twenty-two years of experience, that it meant she wanted something.

  “It’s good to be home, dear.” He tried to start a countercampaign. “Things were tough at the office today.” His tired sigh was real enough. “Old Berg has fired until we’re all doing two men’s work. I don’t know who will be next.”

  “I’m sorry, darling.” She kissed him moistly again, and her voice was tenderly sympathetic. “Now get washed. I want to have dinner early, because tonight is Delphian League.”

  Her voice was too sweet. Mr. Peabody wondered what she wanted. It always took her a good while to work up to the point. When she arrived there, however, she was likely to be invincible. He made another feeble effort.

  “I don’t know what things are coming to.” He made a weary shrug. “Berg is threatening to cut our pay. With the insurance, and the house payments, and the children, I don’t see how we’d live.”

  Ella Peabody came back to him, and put her soft arm around him. She smelled faintly of the perfume she had used on the evening before, faintly of kitchen odors.

  “We’ll manage, dear,” she said bravely.

  She began to talk brightly of the small events of the day. Her duties in the kitchen caused no interruption. Her remarkable voice reached him clearly, even through the closed bathroom door.

  With an exaggerated show of fatigue, Mr. Peabody settled himself into an easy chair. He found the morning paper— which he never had time to read in the morning—opened it, and then dropped it across his knees as if too tired to read. Feebly attempting another diversion, he asked:

  “Where are the children?”

  “William is out to see the man about his car.”

  Mr. Peabody forgot his fatigue.

  “I told William he couldn’t have a car,” he said, with some heat. “I told him he’s too young and irresponsible. If he insists on buying some pile of junk, he’ll have to pay for it himself. Don’t ask me how.”

  “And Beth,” Mrs. Peabody’s voice continued, “is down at the beauty shop.” She came to the kitchen door. “But I have the most thrilling news for you, darling!”

  The lilt in her voice told Mr. Peabody to expect the worst. The dreaded moment had come. Desperately he lifted the paper from his knees, became absorbed in it.

  “Yes, dear,” he said. “Here—I see the champ is going to take on this Australian palooka, if—”

  “Darling, did you hear me?” Ella - Peabody’s penetrating voice could not be ignored. “At the Delphian League tonight, I’m going to read a paper on the Transcendental Renaissance. Isn’t that a perfectly gorgeous opportunity?”

  Mr. Peabody dropped the paper. He was puzzled. The liquid sparkle in her voice was proof enough that her moment of victory was at hand. Yet her purpose was still unrevealed.

  “Ella, dear,” he inquired meekly, “what do you know about the Transcendental Renaissance?”

  “Don’t worry about that, darling. The young man at the library did the research and typed the paper for me, for only ten dollars. But it’s so sweet of you to want to help me, and there’s one thing that you can do.”

  Mr. Peabody squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. The trap was closing, and he could see no escape.

  “I knew you’d understand
, darling.”- Her voice had a little tender throb. “And you know I didn’t have a decent rag to wear. Darling, I’m getting that blue jersey that was in the window of the Famous. It was marked sixty-nine eighty, but the manager let me have it for only forty-nine ninety-five.”

  “I’m awfully sorry, dear,” Mr. Peabody said slowly. “But I’m afraid we simply can’t manage it. I’m afraid you had better send it back.”

  Ella’s blue eyes widened, and began to glitter.

  “Darling!” Her throbbing voice broke. “Darling—you must understand. I can’t read my paper in those disgraceful old rags. Besides, it has already been altered.”

  “But, dear—we just haven’t got the money.”

  Mr. Peabody picked up his paper again, upside down. After twenty-two years, he knew what was to come. There would be tearful appeals to his love and his pride and his duty. There would be an agony of emotion, maintained until he surrendered.

  And he couldn’t surrender: that was the trouble. In twenty-two years, his affection had never swerved seriously from his wife and his children. He would have given her the money, gladly; but the bills had to be paid tomorrow.

  He sighed with momentary relief when an unfamiliar motor horn honked outside the drive. William Peabody slouched, in ungraceful indolence, through the side door.

  William was a lank, pimpled sallow-faced youth, with unkempt yellow hair and prominent buck teeth. Remarkably, in spite of the fact that he was continually demanding money for clothing, he always wore the same dingy leather jacket and the same baggy pants.

  Efforts to send him to the university, to a television school, and to a barber college, had all collapsed for want of William’s cooperation.

  “Hi, Gov.” He was filling a black college-man pipe. “Hi, Mom. Dinner up?”

  “Don’t call me Gov,” requested Mr. Peabody, mildly. “William!” He had risen and walked to the window, and his voice was sharper. “Whose red roadster is that in the drive?”

  William dropped himself into the easy chair which Mr. Peabody had just vacated.

  “Oh, the can?” He exhaled blue smoke. “Why, didn’t Mom tell you, Gov? I just picked it up.”

  Mr. Peabody’s slight body stiffened.

  “So you bought a car? Who’s going to pay for it?”

  William waved the pipe, carelessly.

  “Only twenty a month,” he drawled. “And it’s a real buy, Gov. Only eighty thousand miles, and it’s got a radio. Mom said you could manage it. It will be for my birthday, Gov.”

  “Your birthday is six months off.”

  Silver, soothing, Mrs. Peabody’s voice floated from the kitchen:

  “But you’ll still be paying for it when his birthday comes, Jason. So I told Bill it would be all right. A boy is so left out, these days, if he hasn’t a car. Now, if you will just give me the suit money—”

  Mr. Peabody began a sputtering reply. He stopped suddenly, when his daughter Beth came in the front door. Beth was the bright spot in his life. She was a tall slim girl, with soft sympathetic brown eyes. Her honey-colored hair was freshly set in exquisite waves.

  Perhaps it was natural for father to favor daughter. But Mr. Peabody couldn’t help contrasting her cheerful industry to William’s idleness. She was taking a business course, so that she would be able to keep books for Dr. Rex Brant, after they were married.

  “Hello, Dad.” She came to him and put her smooth arms around him and gave him an affectionate little squeeze. “How do you like my new permanent? I got it because I have a date with Rex tonight. I didn’t have enough money, so I said I would leave the other three dollars at Mrs. Larkin’s before seven. Have you got three dollars, Dad?”

  “Your hair looks very pretty, dear.”

  Mr. Peabody patted his daughter’s shoulder, and dug cheerfully into his pocket. He never minded giving money to Beth—when he had it. Often he regretted that he had not been able to do more for her.

  “Thanks, Dad.” Kissing his temple,-she whispered, “You dear!”

  Tapping out his black pipe, William looked at his mother.

  “It just goes to show,” he drawled. “If it was Sis that wanted a car—”

  “I told you, son,” Mr. Peabody declared positively, “I’m not going to pay for that automobile. We simply haven’t the money.”

  William got languidly to his feet.

  “I say, Gov. You wouldn’t want to lose your fishing tackle.”

  Mr. Peabody’s face stiffened with anxiety.

  “My fishing tackle?”

  In twenty-two years, Mr. Peabody had actually found the time and money to make no more than three fishing trips. He still considered himself, however, an ardent angler. Sometimes he had gone without his lunches, for weeks, to save for some rod or reel or special fly. He often spent an hour in the back yard, casting at a mark on the ground.

  Trying to glare at William, he demanded hoarsely:

  “What about my fishing tackle?”

  “Now, Jason,” interrupted the soothing voice of Mrs. Peabody, “don’t get yourself all wrought up. You know you haven’t used your old fishing tackle in the last ten years.”

  Stiffly erect, Mr. Peabody strode toward his taller son.

  “William, what have you done with it?”

  William was filling his pipe again.

  “Keep your shirt on, Gov,” he advised. “Mom said it would be all right. And I had to have the dough to make the first payment on the bus. Now don’t bust an artery. I’ll give you the pawn tickets.”

  “Bill!” Beth’s voice was sharp with reproof. “You didn’t—”

  Mr. Peabody, himself, made a gasping incoherent sound. He started blindly toward the front door.

  “Now, Jason!” Ella’s voice was silver with a sweet and unendurable reason. “Control yourself, Jason. You haven’t had your dinner—”

  He slammed the door violently behind him.

  This was not the first time in twenty-two years that Mr. Peabody had fled to the windy freedom of Bannister Hill. It was not even the first time he had spoken a wish to a star. While he had no serious faith in that superstition of his childhood, he still felt that it was a very pleasant idea.

  An instant after the words were uttered, he saw the shooting star. A tiny point of light, drifting a little upward through the purple dusk. It was not white, like most falling stars, but palely green.

  It recalled another old belief, akin to the first. If you saw a falling star, and if you could make a wish before the star went out, the wish would come true. Eagerly, he caught his breath.

  “I wish,” he repeated, “I could do miracles!”

  He finished the words in time. The star was still shining. Suddenly, in fact, he noticed that its greenish radiance was growing brighter.

  Far brighter! And exploding!

  Abruptly, then, Mr. Peabody’s vague and wistful satisfaction changed to stark panic. He realized that one fragment of the green meteor, like some celestial bullet, was coming straight at him! He made a frantic effort to duck, to shield his face with his hand—

  Mr. Peabody woke, lying on his back on the grassy hill. He groaned and lifted his head. The waning moon had risen. Its slanting rays shimmered from the dew on the grass.

  Mr. Peabody felt stiff and chilled. His clothing was wet with the dew. And something was wrong with his head. Deep at the base of his brain, there was a queer dull ache. It was not intense, but it had a slow, unpleasant pulsation.

  His forehead felt oddly stiff and drawn. His fingers found a streak of dried blood, and then the ragged, painful edge of a small wound.

  “Golly!”

  With that little gasping cry, he clapped his hand to the back of his head. But there was no blood in his hair. That small leaden ache seemed close beneath his hand, but there was no other surface wound.

  “Great golly!” whispered Mr. Peabody. “It has lodged in my brain!”

  The evidence was clear enough. He had seen the meteor hurtling straight at him. There was a tiny hole
in his forehead, where it must have entered. There was none where it could have emerged.

  Why hadn’t it already killed him? Perhaps because the heat of it had cauterized the wound. He remembered reading a believe-it-or-not about a man who had lived for years with a bullet in his brain.

  A meteor lodged in his brain! The idea set him to shuddering. He and Ella had met their little ups and downs, but his life had been pretty uneventful. He could imagine being shot by a bandit or run over by a taxi. But this—

  “Better go to Beth’s Dr. Brant,” he whispered.

  He touched his bleeding forehead, and hoped the wound would heal safely. When he tried to rise, a faintness seized him. A sudden thirst parched his throat.

  “Water!” he breathed.

  As he sank giddily back on his elbow, that thirst set in his mind the image of a sparkling glass of water. It sat on a flat rock, glittering in the moonlight. It looked so substantial that he reached out and picked it up.

  Without surprise, he drank. A few swallows relieved his thirst, and his mind cleared again. Then the sudden realization of the incredible set him to quivering with reasonless panic.

  The glass dropped out of his fingers, and shattered on the rock. The fragments glittered mockingly under the moon. Mr. Peabody blinked at them.

  “It was real!” he whispered. “I made it real—out of nothing. A miracle—I worked a miracle!”

  The word was queerly comforting. Actually, he knew no more about what had happened than before he had found a word for it. Yet much of its disquieting unfamiliarity was dispelled.

  He remembered a movie that the Englishman, H. G. Wells, had written. It dealt with a man who was able to perform the most surprising and sometimes appalling miracles. He had finished, Mr. Peabody recalled, by destroying the world.