Dr. Hale would have, of course, if he'd thought of it. But he wasn't used to traveling and besides, there'd been the Tartan Plaid. A taxi had seemed the easiest way to get anywhere—no worrying about tickets and connections and stations. Money was no object, and the plaid condition of his mind had caused him to overlook the human factor involved in an extended journey by taxi.
When he awoke, almost frozen, in the parked taxi, that human factor dawned upon him. The driver was so sound asleep that no amount of shaking could arouse him. Dr. Hale's watch had stopped, so he had no idea where he was or what time it was.
Unfortunately, too, he didn't know how to drive a car. He took a quick drink to keep from freezing and then got out of the cab, and as he did so, a car stopped.
It was a policeman—what is more it was a policeman in a million.
Yelling over the roar of the storm, Hale hailed him. "I'm Dr. Hale," he shouted. "We're lost, where am I?"
"Get in here before you freeze," ordered the policeman. "Do you mean Dr. Milton Hale, by any chance?"
"Yes."
"I've read all your books, Dr. Hale," said the policeman. "Physics is my hobby, and I've always wanted to meet you. I want to ask you about the revised value of the quantum."
"This is life or death," said Dr. Hale. "Can you take me to the nearest airport, quick:"
"Of course, Dr. Hale."
"And look—there's a driver in that cab, and he'll freeze to death unless we send aid."
"I'll put him in the back seat of my car and then run the cab off the road. We'll take care of details later."
"Hurry, please."
The obliging policeman hurried. He got in and started the car.
"About the revised quantum value, Dr. Hale," he began, then stopped talking.
Dr. Hale was sound asleep. The policeman drove to Waterbury Airport, one of the largest in the world since the population shift from New York City in the 1960s and 70s had given it a central position. In front of the ticket office, he gently awakened Dr. Hale.
"This is the airport, sir," he said.
Even as he spoke, Dr. Hale was leaping out of the car and stumbling into the building, yelling, "Thanks," over his shoulder and nearly falling down in doing so.
The warm-up roaring of the motors of a superstratoliner out on the field lent wings to his heels as he dashed for the ticket window.
"What plane's that?" he yelled.
"Washington Special, due out in one minute. But I don't think you can make it.
Dr. Hale slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the ledge. "Ticket," he gasped. "Keep change."
He grabbed the ticket and ran, getting into the plane just as the doors were being closed. Panting, he fell into a seat, the ticket still clutched in his hand. He was sound asleep before the hostess strapped him in for the blind take-off.
An hour later, the hostess awakened him. The passengers were disembarking.
Dr. Hale rushed out of the plane and ran across the field to the airport building. A big clock told him that it was nine o'clock, and he felt elated as he ran for the door marked "Taxis." He got into the nearest one.
"White House," he told the driver. "How long'll it take?"
"Ten minutes."
Dr. Hale gave a sigh of relief and sank back against the cushions. He didn't go back to sleep this time. He was wide awake now. But he closed his eyes to think out the words he'd use in explaining matters... .
"Here you are, sir."
Dr. Hale gave a sigh of relief and sank back against the cab into the building. It didn't look as he had expected it to look. But there was a desk, and he ran up to it.
"I've got to see the President, quick. It's vital."
The clerk frowned. "The President of what?"
Dr. Hale's eyes went wide. "The President of wh—say, what building is this? And what town?"
The clerk's frown deepened. "This is the White House Hotel," he said. "Seattle, Washington."
Dr. Hale fainted. He woke up in a hospital three hours later. It was then midnight, Pacific Time, which meant it was three o'clock in the morning on the Eastern seaboard. It had, in fact, been midnight already in Washington, D.C., and in Boston, when he had been leaving the Washington Special in Seattle.
Dr. Hale rushed to the window and shook his fists, both of them, at the sky. A futile gesture.
Back in the East, however, the storm had stopped by twilight, leaving a light mist in the air. The star-conscious public had thereupon deluged the weather bureaus with telephoned requests about the persistence of the mist.
"A breeze off the ocean is expected," they were told. "It is blowing now, in fact, and within an hour or two will have cleared off the light fog."
By eleven-fifteen the skies of Boston were clear.
Untold thousands braved the bitter cold and stood staring upward at the unfolding pageant of the no longer-eternal stars. It almost looked as though—an incredible development had occurred.
And then, gradually, the murmur grew. By a quarter to twelve, the thing was certain, and the murmur hushed and then grew louder than ever, waxing toward midnight. Different people reacted differently, of course, as might be expected. There was laughter as well as indignation, cynical amusement as well as shocked horror. There was even admiration.
Soon, in certain parts of the city, a concerted movement on the part of those who knew an address on Fremont Street began to take place. Movement afoot and in cars and public vehicles, converging.
At five minutes of twelve, Rutherford R. Sniveley sat waiting within his house. He was denying himself the pleasure of looking until, at the last moment, the thing was complete.
It was going well. The gathering murmur of voices, mostly angry voices, outside his house told him that. He heard his name shouted.
Just the same, he waited until the twelfth stroke of the clock before he stepped out upon the balcony. Much as he wanted to look upward, he forced himself to look down at the street first. The milling crowd was there and it was angry. But he had only contempt for the milling crowd.
Police cars were pulling up, too, and he recognized the mayor of Boston getting out of one of them, and the chief of police was with him. But so what? There wasn't any law covering this.
Then having denied himself the supreme pleasure long enough, he turned his eyes up to the silent sky, and there it was. The four hundred and sixty-eight brightest stars, spelling out:
USE
SNIVELY'S
SOAP
For just a second did his satisfaction last. Then his face began to turn an apoplectic purple.
"My heavens!" said Mr. Sniveley. "It's spelled wrong!" His face grew more purple still, and then, as a tree falls, he fell backward through the window.
An ambulance rushed the fallen magnate to the nearest hospital, but he was pronounced dead—of apoplexy—upon entrance.
But misspelled or not, the eternal stars held their positions as of that midnight. The aberrant motion had stopped, and again the stars were fixed. Fixed to spell—SNIVELY'S SOAP.
Of the many explanations offered by all and sundry who professed some physical and astronomical knowledge, none was more lucid—or closer to the actual truth—than that put forth by Wendell Mehan, president emeritus of the New York Astronomical Society.
"Obviously, the phenomenon is a trick of refraction," said Dr. Mehan. "It is manifestly impossible for any force contrived by man to move a star. The stars, therefore, still occupy their old places in the firmament.
"I suggest that Sniveley must have contrived a method of refracting the light of the stars, somewhere in or just above the atmospheric layer of the earth, so that they appear to have changed their positions. This is done, probably, by radio waves or similar waves, sent on some fixed frequency from a set—or possibly a series of four hundred and sixty-eight sets—somewhere upon the surface of the earth. Although we do not understand just how it is done, it is no more unthinkable that light rays should be bent by a field of waves than by a prism or by gravi
tational force.
"Since Sniveley was not a great scientist, I imagine that his discovery was empiric rather than logical—an accidental find. It is quite possible that even the discovery of his projector will not enable present-day scientists to understand its secret, any more than an aboriginal savage could understand the operation of a simple radio receiver by taking one apart.
"My principal reason for this assertion is the fact that the refraction obviously is a fourth-dimensional phenomenon, or its effect would be purely local to one portion of the globe. Only in the fourth dimension could light be so refracted...."
There was more but it is better to skip to his final paragraph:
"This effect cannot possibly be permanent—more permanent, that is, than the wave-projector which causes it. Sooner or later, Sniveley's machine will be found and shut off or will break down or wear out of its own volition. Undoubtedly it includes vacuum tubes which will someday blow out, as do the tubes in our radios...."
***
The excellence of Dr. Mehan's analysis was shown two months and eight days later, when the Boston Electric Co. shut off, for non-payment of bills, service to a house situated at 901 West Rogers Street, ten blocks from the Sniveley mansion. At the instant of the shut-off, excited reports from the night side of Earth brought the news that the stars had flashed back to their former positions instantaneously.
Investigation brought out that the description of one Elmer Smith, who had purchased that house six months before, corresponded with the description of Rutherford R. Sniveler, and undoubtedly Elmer Smith and Rutherford R. Sniveler were one and the same person.
In the attic was found a complicated network of four hundred and sixty-eight radio-type antennae, each antenna of different length and running in a different direction. The machine to which they were connected was not larger, strangely, than the average ham's radio projector, nor did it draw appreciably more current, according to the electric company's record.
By special order of the President of the United States, the projector was destroyed without examination of its internal arrangement. Clamorous protests against this high-handed executive order arose from many sides. But inasmuch as the projector had already been broken up, the protests were to no avail.
Serious repercussions were, on the whole, amazingly few.
Persons in general appreciated the stars more but trusted them less.
Roger Phlutter got out of jail and married Elsie.
Dr. Milton Hale found he liked Seattle and stayed there. Two thousand miles away from his sister, Agatha, he found it possible for the first time to defy her openly. He enjoys life more but, it is feared, will write fewer hooks.
There is one fact remaining which is painful to consider, since it casts a deep reflection upon the basic intelligence of the human race. It is proof, though, that the president's executive order was justified, despite scientific protest.
That fact is as humiliating as it is enlightening. During the two months and eight days during which the Sniveler machine was in operation, sales of Sniveley Soap increased nine-hundred-twenty per cent.
ANSWER
DwAn Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe—ninety-six billion planets—into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.
THE GEEZENSTACKS
One of the strange things about it was that Aubrey Walters wasn't at all a strange little girl. She was quite as ordinary as her father and mother, who lived in an apartment on Otis Street, and who played bridge one night a week, went out somewhere another night, and spent the other evenings quietly at home.
Aubrey was nine, and had rather stringy hair and freckles, but at nine one never worries about such things. She got along quite well in the not-too-expensive private school to which her parents sent her, she made friends easily and readily with other children, and she took lessons on a three-quarter-size violin and played it abominably.
Her greatest fault, possibly, was her predilection for staying up late of nights, and that was the fault of her parents, really, for letting her stay up and dressed until she felt sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Even at five and six, she seldom went to bed before ten o'clock in the evening. And if, during a period of maternal concern, she was put to bed earlier, she never went to sleep anyway. So why not let the child stay up?
Now, at nine years, she stayed up quite as late as her parents did, which was about eleven o'clock of ordinary nights and later when they had company for bridge, or went out for the evening. Then it was later, for they usually took her along. Aubrey enjoyed it, whatever it was. She'd sit still as a mouse in a seat at the theater, or regard them with little-girl seriousness over the rim of a glass of ginger ale while they had a cocktail or two at a night club. She took the noise and the music and the dancing with big-eyed wonder and enjoyed every minute of it.
Sometimes Uncle Richard, her mother's brother, went along with them. She and Uncle Richard were good friends. It was Uncle Richard who gave her the dolls.
"Funny thing happened today," he'd said. "I'm walking down Rodgers Place, past the Mariner Building—you know, Edith; it's where Doc Howard used to have his office—and something thudded on the sidewalk right behind me. And I turned around, and there was this package."
"This package" was a white box a little larger than a shoe box, and it was rather strangely tied with gray ribbon. Sam Walters, Aubrey's father, looked at it curiously.
"Doesn't look dented," he said. "Couldn't have fallen out of a very high window. Was it tied up like that?"
"Just like that. I put the ribbon back on after I opened it and looked in. Oh, I don't mean I opened it then or there. I just stopped and looked up to see who'd dropped it—thinking I'd see somebody looking out of a window. But nobody was, and I picked up the box. It had something in it, not very heavy, and the box and the ribbon looked like—well, not like something somebody'd throw away on purpose. So I stood looking up, and nothing happened, so I shook the box a little and—"
"All right, all right," said Sam Walters. "Spare us the blow-by-blow. You didn't find out who dropped it?"
"Right. And I went up as high as the fourth floor, asking the people whose windows were over the place where I picked it up. They were all home, as it happened, and none of them had ever seen it. I thought it might have fallen off a window ledge. But—"
"What's in it, Dick?" Edith asked.
"Dolls. Four of them. I brought them over this evening for Aubrey. If she wants them."
He untied the package, and Aubrey said, "Oooo, Uncle Richard. They're—they're lovely."
Sam said, "Hm. Those look almost more like manikins than dolls, Dick. Th
e way they're dressed, I mean. Must have cost several dollars apiece. Are you sure the owner won't turn up?"
Richard shrugged. "Don't see how he can. As I told you, I went up four floors, asking. Thought from the look of the box and the sound of the thud, it couldn't have come from even that high. And after I opened it, well—look—" He picked up one of the dolls and held it out for Sam Walters' inspection.
"Wax. The heads and hands, I mean. And not one of them cracked. It couldn't have fallen from higher than the second story. Even then, I don't see how—" He shrugged again.
"They're the Geezenstacks," said Aubrey.
"Huh?" Sam asked.
"I'm going to call them the Geezenstacks," Aubrey said. "Look, this one is Papa Geezenstack and this one is Mama Geezenstack, and the little girl one—that's—that's Aubrey Geezenstack. And the other man one, we'll call him Uncle Geezenstack. The little girl's uncle."
Sam chuckled. "Like us, eh? But if Uncle—uh—Geezenstack is Mama Geezenstack's brother, like Uncle Richard is Mama's brother, then his name wouldn't be Geezenstack."
"Just the same, it is," Aubrey said. "They're all Geezenstacks. Papa, will you buy me a house for them?"
"A doll house? Why—" He'd started to say, 'Why, sure," but caught his wife's eye and remembered. Aubrey's birthday was only a week off and they'd been wondering what to get her. He changed it hastily to "Why, I don't know. I'll think about it.''
***
It was a beautiful doll house. Only one-story high, but quite elaborate, and with a roof that lifted off so one could rearrange the furniture and move the dolls from room to room. It scaled well with the manikins Uncle Richard had brought.
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