The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  Olliver would never rule a system now, only the tiniest world.

  But all three of them were dead. He heard Olliver scream madly with rage and saw him come running over the horizon for a shot at him. Crag laughed and ducked back into blackness. He ran into Evadne, who had followed him. He caught her quickly as he crashed into her. He said, "Give me the heater, quick," and took it from her hand.

  He could sec Olliver standing there, heater in hand, just where the spaceship had been, peering into the darkness, trying to see where to shoot them. But he could sec Olliver and Olliver, on the day side, couldn't see him.

  He'd rather have had his metal hand to throw-he was used to using that and could hit a man's head at twenty or thirty feet. But the heater-gun would serve now; Olliver wasn't even ten feet away and he couldn't miss.

  He didn't miss. The missile shattered Olliver's helmet.

  Crag walked forward into the light, keeping between Evadne and Olliver so she wouldn't have to see. A man whose helmet has been shattered in space isn't a pleasant sight.

  He reached down and got the disintegrator out of Olliver's pocket. He used it.

  Evadne came up and took his arm as he stood there, looking upward, seeing a distant gleam of sunlight on an object that was still moving away from them. He wished now he hadn't thrown the spaceship so hard; had he tossed it lightly it might conceivably have returned before the air in his and Evadne's spacesuits ran out. But he couldn't have been sure he could get Olliver before Olliver, who had a loaded heater, could get him. And when the asteroid got small enough, the night side would no longer have been a protection. You can hide on the night side of a world-but not when it gets as small as a basketball.

  Evadne said, "Thanks, Crag. You were-Is wonderful too hackneyed a word?"

  Crag grinned at her. He said, "It's a wonderful word." He put his arms around her.

  And then laughed. Here he was with two hundred thousand credits-a fortune-in his pocket and the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And her arms were around him too and-you can't even kiss a woman in a spacesuit! Any more than you can spend a fortune on an asteroid without even a single tavern on it.

  An asteroid that was now less than ten yards in diameter.

  Evadne laughed too, and he was glad, very glad of that.

  It was funny-if you saw it that way-and it made things easier in this last moment that she could see it that way too.

  He saw she was breathing with difficulty. She said, "Crag-my dear-this suit must not have had its tank fully charged with oxygen. I'm afraid I can't-stay with you much longer."

  He held her tighter. He couldn't think of anything to say.

  She said, "But we stopped him, Crag. Someday humanity will get itself out of the mess it's in now. And when it does, there'll still-be an Earth-for it to live on."

  "Was he right, Evadne? I mean, about your being a member of some secret organization?"

  "No. He either made that up or imagined it. I was just his wife, Crag. But I'd stopped loving him months ago. I knew, though, he planned to buy or steal that gadget of Eisen's-he'd have got it somehow, even if we hadn't helped him. And I suspected, but didn't know, that he was planning something-bad. I stayed with him so I'd have a chance to try to stop him if-I was right."

  She was breathing harder. Her arms tightened around him. She said, "Crag, I want that gadget. I'll use it on myself; I won't ask you to. But it will be sudden and painless, not like this." She was fighting for every breath now, but she laughed again. "Guess I'm lying, Crag. I'm not afraid to die either way. But I've seen people who died this way and they're-well-I don't want you to see me-like that. I'd-rather-“

  He pressed it into her hand. He tightened his arms one last time and then stepped quickly back because he could hear and see how much pain she was in now, how every breath was becoming agony for her. He looked away, as he knew she wanted him to.

  And when he looked back, after a little while, there was nothing there to see; nothing at all.

  Except the disintegrator itself, lying there on a sphere now only six feet across. He picked it up. There was still one thing to do. Someone, sometime, might find this collapsed asteroid, attracted to it by the fact that his detector showed a mass greater than the bulk shown in a visiplate. If he found the gadget clinging there beside it—

  He was tempted to use it instead, to take the quicker way instead of the slower, more painful one. But he took it apart, throwing each tiny piece as far out into space as he could. Maybe some of them would form orbits out there and maybe others would fall hack. But no one would ever gather all the pieces and manage to put them together again.

  He finished, and the world he lived on was less than a yard in diameter now and it was still shrinking. He disconnected his gravplates because there wasn't any use trying to stand on it. But it was as heavy as it had ever been; there was still enough gravitational pull to keep him bumping gently against it. Of course he could push himself away from it now and go sailing off into space. But he didn't. Somehow, it was companionship.

  A small world, he thought, and getting smaller.

  The size of an orange now. He laughed as he put it into his pocket.

  PART TWO

  THE CRIME STORIES

  INTRODUCTION

  The pulps, those gaudy-covered, cheap-paper, jack-of-all-fiction magazines that flourished during the first half of this century, provided a training ground for dozens of writers who eventually went on to bigger and better literary endeavors. William E. Barrett, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Horace McCoy, and Tennessee Williams wrote for them. So did Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Max Brand, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Zane Grey, Robert Heinlein, John Jakes, Louis L'Amour. And so did John Dickson Carr, Raymond Chandler, Erie Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, John D. MacDonald, Rex Stout, Cornell Woolrich--and Fredric Brown.

  Brown was working as a proofreader for the Milwaukee Journal when he sold his first pulp story, "The Moon for a Nickel," to Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine in 1938. This first taste of success was all the impetus he needed; before long he was selling regularly to a wide variety of pulp markets--crime stories to Clues, Detective Fiction Weekly, Detective Tales, Dime Mystery, Phantom Detective, Popular Detective, The Shadow, Strange Detective Mysteries, Ten Detective Aces, Thrilling Mystery; science fiction and fantasy stories in Astounding, Captain Future, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Unknown, Weird Tales; even a couple of westerns to Western Short Stories. By 1948, his success in the pulp marketplace--coupled with the novels he had begun to publish in 1947 with The Fabulous Clipjoint, winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar as Best First Novel of that year--allowed him to devote his full time to writing.

  He continued to sell to the pulps until their paperback original- and TV-induced demise in the early 50s--in all, publishing more than 150 stories in that voracious medium. Although fantasy and science fiction were his professed first love, the bulk of his output was in the mystery and detective field: upward of 100 stories. Some three-score of these were reprinted in his two hardcover mystery collections, Mostly Murder (1953) and The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders (1963). Several others--novelettes and novellas, for the most part--were later expanded or combined into novels. For instance, "The Santa Claus Murders" (Detective Story, October 1942) became Murder Can Be Fun (1948); "The Gibbering Night" (Detective Tales, July 1944) and "The Jabberwocky Murders" (Thrilling Mystery, Summer 1944) were combined into Night of the Jabberwock (1950); "Compliments of a Fiend" (Thrilling Detective, July 1945) was developed into 1949's The Bloody Moonlight (not into the 1950 novel also called Compliments of a Fiend, as some people suppose); and "Obit for Obie" (Mystery Book, October 1946) became The Deep End (1952).

  But there are still more than 60 of Fredric Brown's pulp stories that have never been reprinted anywhere since their original magazine publications, or have only appeared in obscure anthologies or in digest crime magazines in the 50s and 60s. To be sure, some of these stories are badly dated; and others, writt
en hurriedly for money and under deadline pressure, are of mediocre or poor quality. Still, more than a few have merit, some considerably so. Minor Brown they may be, but they are nonetheless deserving of disinterment from their crumbling pulp tombs for the enjoyment of modern readers. Seven of these comprise this long-overdue book--the first but not, Dennis McMillan and I both hope, the last such collection.

  My personal favorite here is "The Spherical Ghoul" (Thrilling Mystery, January 1943), which has a typically wild and wonderful Brown plot--its ingredients include a morgue at night, a horribly disfigured corpse, mayhem aplenty, and a classic locked-room mystery--and one of the cleverest (if outrageous) central gimmicks you're likely to come across anywhere. It puzzles me why Brown failed to include it in either of his own collections. And why no one (except The Saint Magazine in 1962, and yours truly in a 1981 horror anthology called The Arbor House Necropolis) has ever bothered to reprint it.

  The lead story, "Red-Hot and Hunted" (Detective Tales, November 1948), is also very good Brown. It utilizes one of his favorite themes: the madness, or apparent madness, of either the protagonist or another main character--in this case, a stage actor named Wayne Dixon who may or may not have murdered his wife. The hallmark of any Brown story, aside from its unusual plot, is the maintenance of a high level of suspense; "Red-Hot and Hunted" has this quality in abundance.

  "The Cat from Siam" (Popular Detective, September 1949) is another variation on the madness theme, with that same quality of suspense and a beautifully eerie tone. What Brown does with the Siamese cat of the title, and with such simple devices as a chess game, some gunshots in the dark, and a new kind of ratsbane, should provide a frisson or two.

  "Listen to the Mocking Bird" (G-Man Detective, November 1941) makes use--as does another of my favorite Brown shorts, "Whistler's Murder" (reprinted in The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders)--of old Vaudevillean characters; in this story, a mimic who specializes in bird calls. Its plot is both solidly plausible and satisfying, making the story one of his pre-World War II best.

  The flute was Fred Brown's favorite musical instrument; he played it often if not well, for pleasure and relaxation. His love for the flute and for music in general are evident in "Suite for Flute and Tommy-gun" (Detective Story, June 1942). Again, a clever plot and an unusual blending of its various components make this an above-average story.

  "The Moon for a Nickel" is hardly one of Brown's strongest yarns, but the fact that it was his first published fiction makes it important from the historical point of view. It also demonstrates that from the very first, he had all the tools that would later make him so successful--the fast-paced storyline, the wry style, the eye, ear, and feel for the unusual.

  Brown wrote relatively few stories featuring private detectives--prior, that is, to his creation of the team of Ed and Am Hunter in The Fabulous Clipjoint. "Homicide Sanitarium" (Thrilling Detective, May 1944) is one of those few, and another neglected gem. Any number of fictional private eyes have taken undercover jobs in sanitariums, but none for quite the same reason as pint-sized and newly married Eddie Anderson: he's hunting an escaped homicidal maniac, and what better place for a lunatic to hide, after all, than in a private loony-bin that allows its patients to come and go as they please? The plot twists are numerous and baffling, and the delightful surprise Brown springs on the final page is surprising indeed.

  Fredric Brown was one of the best storytellers of his time. These seven vintage tales from his pulp years may be minor, as noted earlier, but that doesn't diminish their value in any way. They're pure entertainment, from a writer who understood the meaning of that word as well as--if not better than--any producer of popular culture.

  What more could a reader ask?

  THE LITTLE LAMB

  She didn't come home for supper and by eight o'clock I found some ham in the refrigerator and made myself a sandwich. I wasn't worried, but I was getting restless. I kept walking to the window and looking down the hill toward town, but I couldn't see her coming. It was a moonlit evening, very bright and clear. The lights of the town were nice and the curve of the hills beyond, black against blue under a yellow gibbous moon. I thought I'd like to paint it, but not the moon; you put a moon in a picture and it looks corny, it looks pretty. Van Gogh did it in his picture The Starry Sky and it didn't look pretty; it looked frightening, but then again he was crazy when he did it; a sane man couldn't have done many of the things Van Gogh did.

  I hadn't cleaned my palette so I picked it up and tried to work a little more on the painting I'd started the day before. It was just blocked in thus far and I started to mix a green to fill in an area but it wouldn't come right and I realized I'd have to wait till daylight to get it right. Evenings, without natural light, I can work on line or I can mold in finishing strokes, but when color's the thing, you've got to have daylight. I cleaned my messed-up palette for a fresh start in the morning and I cleaned my brushes and it was getting close to nine o'clock and still she hadn't come.

  No, there wasn't anything to worry about. She was with friends somewhere and she was all right. My studio is almost a mile from town, up in the hills, and there wasn't any way she could let me know because there's no phone. Probably she was having a drink with the gang at the Waverly Inn and there was no reason she'd think I'd worry about her. Neither of us lived by the clock; that was understood between us. She'd be home soon.

  There was half of a jug of wine left and I poured myself a drink and sipped it, looking out the window toward town. I turned off the light behind me so I could better watch out the window at the bright night. A mile away, in the valley, I could see the lights of the Waverly Inn. Garish bright, like the loud jukebox that kept me from going there often. Strangely, Lamb never minded the jukebox, although she liked good music, too.

  Other lights dotted here and there. Small farms, a few other studios. Hans Wagner's place a quarter of a mile down the slope from mine. Big, with a skylight; I envied him that skylight. But not his strictly academic style. He'd never paint anything quite as good as a color photograph; in fact, he saw things as a camera sees them and painted them without filtering them through the catalyst of the mind. A wonderful draftsman, never more. But his stuff sold; he could afford a skylight.

  I sipped the last of my glass of wine, and there was a tight knot in the middle of my stomach. I didn't know why. Often Lamb had been later than this, much later. There wasn't any real reason to worry.

  I put my glass down on the windowsill and opened the door. But before I went out I turned the lights back on. A beacon for Lamb, if I should miss her. And if she should look up the hill toward home and the lights were out, she might think I wasn't there and stay longer, wherever she was. She'd know I wouldn't turn in before she got home, no matter how late it was.

  Quit being a fool, I told myself; it isn't late yet. It's early, just past nine o'clock. I walked down the hill toward town and the knot in my stomach got tighter and I swore at myself because there was no reason for it. The line of the hills beyond town rose higher as I descended, pointing up the stars. It's difficult to make stars that look like stars. You'd have to make pinholes in the canvas and put a light behind it. I laughed at the idea--but why not? Except that it isn't done and what did I care about that. But I thought awhile and I saw why it wasn't done. It would be childish, immature.

  I was about to pass Hans Wagner's place, and I slowed my steps thinking that just possibly Lamb might be there. Hans lived alone there and Lamb wouldn't, of course, be there unless a crowd had gone to Hans's from the inn or somewhere. I stopped to listen and there wasn't a sound, so the crowd wasn't there. I went on.

  The road branched; there were several ways from here and I might miss her. I took the shortest route, the one she'd be most likely to take if she came directly home from town. It went past Carter Brent's place, but that was dark. There was a light on at Sylvia's place, though, and guitar music. I knocked on the door and while I was waiting I realized that it was the phonograph and not a live guitarist.
It was Segovia playing Bach, the Chaconne from the D-Minor Partita, one of my favorites. Very beautiful, very fine-boned and delicate, like Lamb.

  Sylvia came to the door and answered my question. No, she hadn't seen Lamb. And no, she hadn't been at the inn, or anywhere. She'd been home all afternoon and evening, but did I want to drop in for a drink? I was tempted--more by Segovia than by the drink--but I thanked her and went on.

  I should have turned around and gone back home instead, because for no reason I was getting into one of my black moods. I was illogically annoyed because I didn't know where Lamb was; if I found her now I'd probably quarrel with her, and I hate quarreling. Not that we do, often. We're each pretty tolerant and understanding--of little things, at least. And Lamb's not having come home yet was still a little thing.

  But I could hear the blaring jukebox when I was still a long way from the inn and it didn't lighten my mood any. I could see in the window now and Lamb wasn't there, not at the bar. But there were still the booths, and besides, someone might know where she was. There were two couples at the bar. I knew them; Charlie and Eve Chandler and Dick Bristow with a girl from Los Angeles whom I'd met but whose name I couldn't remember. And one fellow, stag, who looked as though he was trying to look like a movie scout from Hollywood. Maybe he really was one.

  I went in and, thank God, the jukebox stopped just as I went through the door. I went over to the bar, glancing at the line of booths; Lamb wasn't there.

  I said, "Hi," to the four of them that I knew, and to the stag if he wanted to take it to cover him, and to Harry, behind the bar. "Has Lamb been here?" I asked Harry.