“Impossible. There isn’t a radiation put on the air that hasn’t been tested very carefully in the bio labs. We’re neither fools nor knaves.”
“Maybe you don’t test ’em long enough. I’m not talking about a few hours, or a few weeks; I’m talking about the cumulative effects of years of radiant frequencies pouring through the tissues. What does that do?”
“Why, nothing—I believe.”
“You believe, but you don’t know. Nobody has ever tried to find out. F’rinstance—what effect does sunlight have on silicate glass? Ordinarily you would say ‘none,’ but you’ve seen desert glass?”
“That bluish-lavender stuff? Of course.”
“Yes. A bottle turns colored in a few months in the Mojave Desert. But have you ever seen the windowpanes in the old houses on Beacon Hill?”
“I’ve never been on Beacon Hill.”
“O.K., then I’ll tell you. Same phenomena—only it takes a century or more, in Boston. Now tell me—you savvy physics—could you measure the change taking place in those Beacon Hill windows?
“Mm-m-m—probably not.”
“But it’s going on just the same. Has anyone ever tried to measure the changes produced in human tissue by thirty years of exposure to ultra short-wave radiation?”
“No, but—”
“No ‘buts.’ I see an effect. I’ve made a wild guess at a cause. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’ve felt a lot more spry since I’ve taken to invariably wearing my lead overcoat whenever I go out.”
Stevens surrendered the argument. “Maybe you’re right, Doc. I won’t fuss with you. How about Waldo? Will you take me to him and help me handle him?”
“When do you want to go?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Now?”
“Suits.”
“Call your office.”
“Are you ready to leave right now? It would suit me. As far as the front office is concerned, I’m on vacation; nevertheless, I’ve got this on my mind. I want to get at it.”
“Quit talking and git.”
They went topside to where their cars were parked. Grimes headed toward his, a big-bodied, old-fashioned Boeing family landau. Stevens checked him. “You aren’t planning to go in that? It ’u’d take us the rest of the day.”
“Why not? She’s got an auxiliary space drive, and she’s tight. You could fly from here to the Moon and back.”
“Yes, but she’s so infernal slow. We’ll use my ‘broomstick.’ ”
Grimes let his eyes run over his friend’s fusiformed little speedster. It’s body was as nearly invisible as the plastic industry could achieve. A surface layer, two molecules thick, gave it a refractive index sensibly identical with that of air. When perfectly clean it was very difficult to see. At the moment it had picked up enough casual dust and water vapor to be faintly seen—a ghost of a soap bubble of a ship.
Running down the middle, clearly visible through the walls, was the only metal part of the ship—the shaft, or, more properly, the axis core, and the spreading sheaf of deKalb receptors at its terminus. The appearance was enough like a giant witch’s broom to justify the nickname. Since the saddles, of transparent plastic, were mounted tandem over the shaft so that the metal rod passed between the legs of the pilot and passengers, the nickname was doubly apt.
“Son,” Grimes remarked, “I know I ain’t pretty, nor am I graceful. Nevertheless, I retain a certain residuum of self-respect and some shreds of dignity. I am not going to tuck that thing between my shanks and go scooting through the air on it.”
“Oh, rats! You’re old-fashioned.”
“I may be. Nevertheless, any peculiarities I have managed to retain to my present age I plan to hang onto. No.”
“Look—I’ll polarize the hull before we raise. How about it?”
“Opaque?”
“Opaque.”
Grimes slid a regretful glance at his own frumpish boat, but assented by fumbling for the barely visible port of the speedster. Stevens assisted him; they climbed in and straddled the stick.
“Atta boy, Doc,” Stevens commended, “I’ll have you there in three shakes. That tub of yours probably won’t do over five hundred, and Wheelchair must be all of twenty-five thousand miles up.”
“I’m never in a hurry,” Grimes commented, “and don’t call Waldo’s house ‘Wheelchair’—not to his face.”
“I’ll remember,” Stevens promised. He fumbled, apparently in empty air; the hull suddenly became dead black, concealing them. It changed as suddenly to mirror bright; the car quivered, then shot up out of sight.
Waldo F. Jones seemed to be floating in thin air at the center of a spherical room. The appearance was caused by the fact that he was indeed floating in air. His house lay in a free orbit, with a period of just over twenty-four hours. No spin had been impressed on his home; the pseudo gravity of centrifugal force was the thing he wanted least. He had left earth to get away from its gravitational field; he had not been down to the surface once in the seventeen years since his house was built and towed into her orbit; he never intended to do so for any purpose whatsoever.
Here, floating free in space in his own air-conditioned shell, he was almost free of the unbearable lifelong slavery to his impotent muscles. What little strength he had he could spend economically, in movement, rather than in fighting against the tearing, tiring weight of the Earth’s thick field.
Waldo had been acutely interested in space flight since early boyhood, not from any desire to explore the depths, but because his boyish, overtrained mind had seen the enormous advantage—to him—in weightlessness. While still in his teens he had helped the early experimenters in space flight over a hump by supplying them with a control system which a pilot could handle delicately while under the strain of two or three gravities.
Such an invention was no trouble at all to him; he had simply adapted manipulating devices which he himself used in combating the overpowering weight of one gravity. The first successful and safe rocket ship contained relays which had once aided Waldo in moving himself from bed to wheelchair.
The deceleration tanks, which are now standard equipment for the lunar mail ships, traced their parentage to a flotation tank in which Waldo habitually had eaten and slept up to the time when he left the home of his parents for his present, somewhat unique, home. Most of his basic inventions had originally been conceived for his personal convenience, and only later adapted for commercial exploitation. Even the ubiquitous and grotesquely humanoid gadgets known universally as “waldoes”—Waldo F. Jones’s Synchronous Reduplicating Pantograph, Pat. #296,001,437, new series, et al—passed through several generations of development and private use in Waldo’s machine shop before he redesigned them for mass production. The first of them, a primitive gadget compared with the waldoes now to be found in every shop, factory, plant, and warehouse in the country, had been designed to enable Waldo to operate a metal lathe.
Waldo had resented the nickname the public had fastened on them—it struck him as overly familiar—but he had coldly recognized the business advantage to himself in having the public identify him verbally with a gadget so useful and important.
When the newscasters tagged his spacehouse “Wheelchair,” one might have expected him to regard it as more useful publicity. That he did not so regard it, that he resented it and tried to put a stop to it, arose from another and peculiarly Waldo-ish fact: Waldo did not think of himself as a cripple.
He saw himself not as a crippled human being, but as something higher than human, the next step up, a being so superior as not to need the coarse, brutal strength of the smooth apes. Hairy apes, smooth apes, then Waldo—so the progression ran in his mind. A chimpanzee, with muscles that hardly bulge at all, can tug as high as fifteen hundred pounds with one hand. This Waldo had proved by obtaining one and patiently enraging it into full effort. A well-developed man can grip one hundred and fifty pounds with one hand. Waldo’s own grip, straining until the sweat sprang out, had never reach
ed fifteen pounds.
Whether the obvious inference were fallacious or true, Waldo believed in it, evaluated by it. Men were overmuscled canaille, smooth chimps. He felt himself at least ten times superior to them.
He had much to go on.
Though floating in air, he was busy, quite busy. Although he never went to the surface of the Earth his business was there. Aside from managing his many properties he was in regular practice as a consulting engineer, specializing in motion analysis. Hanging close to him in the room were the paraphernalia necessary to the practice of his profession. Facing him was a four-by-five color-stereo television receptor. Two sets of co-ordinates, rectilinear and polar, crosshatched it. Another smaller receptor hung above it and to the right. Both receptors were fully recording, by means of parallel circuits conveniently out of the way in another compartment.
The smaller receptor showed the faces of two men watching him. The larger showed a scene inside a large shop, hangarlike in its proportions. In the immediate foreground, almost full size, was a grinder in which was being machined a large casting of some sort. A workman stood beside it, a look of controlled exasperation on his face.
“He’s the best you’ve got,” Waldo stated to the two men in the smaller screen. “To be sure, he is clumsy and does not have the touch for fine work, but he is superior to the other morons you call machinists.”
The workman looked around, as if trying to locate the voice. It was evident that he could hear Waldo, but that no vision receptor had been provided for him. “Did you mean that crack for me?” he said harshly.
“You misunderstand me, my good man,” Waldo said sweetly “I was complimenting you. I actually have hopes of being able to teach you the rudiments of precision work. Then we shall expect you to teach those butterbrained oafs around you. The gloves, please.”
Near the man, mounted on the usual stand, were a pair of primary waldoes, elbow length and human digited. They were floating on the line, in parallel with a similar pair physically in front of Waldo. The secondary waldoes, whose actions could be controlled by Waldo himself by means of his primaries, were mounted in front of the power tool in the position of the operator.
Waldo’s remark had referred to the primaries near the workman. The machinist glanced at them, but made no move to insert his arms in them. “I don’t take no orders from nobody I can’t see,” he said flatly. He looked sidewise out of the scene as he spoke.
“Now, Jenkins,” commenced one of the two men in the smaller screen.
Waldo sighed. “I really haven’t the time or the inclination to solve your problems of shop discipline. Gentlemen, please turn your pickup, so that our petulant friend may see me.”
The change was accomplished; the workman’s face appeared in the background of the smaller of Waldo’s screens, as well as in the larger. “There—is that better?” Waldo said gently. The workman grunted.
“Now . . . your name, please?”
“Alexander Jenkins.”
“Very well, friend Alec—the gloves.”
Jenkins thrust his arms into the waldoes and waited. Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life. Jenkins bit his lip, as if he found unpleasant the sensation of having his fingers manipulated by the gauntlets he wore.
Waldo flexed and extended his fingers gently; the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism. “Feel it, my dear Alec,” Waldo advised. “Gently, gently—the sensitive touch. Make your muscles work for you.” He then started hand movements of definite pattern; the waldoes at the power tool reached up, switched on the power, and began gently, gracefully, to continue the machining of the casting. A mechanical hand reached down, adjusted a vernier, while the other increased the flow of oil cooling the cutting edge. “Rhythm, Alec, rhythm. No jerkiness, no unnecessary movement. Try to get in time with me.”
The casting took shape with deceptive rapidity, disclosed what it was—the bonnet piece for an ordinary three-way nurse. The chucks drew back from it; it dropped to the belt beneath, and another rough casting took its place. Waldo continued with unhurried skill, his finger motions within his waldoes exerting pressure which would need to be measured in fractions of ounces, but the two sets of waldoes, paralleled to him thousands of miles below, followed his motions accurately and with force appropriate to heavy work at hand.
Another casting landed on the belt—several more Jenkins, although not called upon to do any work in his proper person, tired under the strain of attempting to anticipate and match Waldo’s motions. Sweat dripped down his forehead, ran off his nose, accumulated on his chin. Between castings he suddenly withdrew his arms from the paralleled primaries. “That’s enough,” he announced.
“One more, Alec. You are improving.”
“No!” He turned as if to walk off. Waldo made a sudden movement—so sudden as to strain him, even in his weight-free environment. One steel hand of the secondary waldoes lashed out, grasped Jenkins by the wrist.
“Not so fast, Alec.”
“Let go of me!”
“Softly, Alec, softly. You’ll do as you are told, won’t you?” The steel hand clamped down hard, twisted. Waldo had exerted all of two ounces of pressure.
Jenkins grunted. The one remaining spectator—one had left soon after the lesson started—said, “Oh, I say, Mr. Jones!”
“Let him obey, or fire him. You know the terms of my contract.”
There was a sudden cessation of stereo and sound, cut from the Earth end. It came back on a few seconds later. Jenkins was surly, but no longer recalcitrant. Waldo continued as if nothing had happened. “Once more, my dear Alec.”
When the repetition had been completed, Waldo directed, “Twenty times, wearing the wrist and elbow lights with the chronanalyzer in the picture. I shall expect the superposed strips to match, Alec.” He cut off the larger screen without further words and turned to the watcher in the smaller screen. “Same time tomorrow, McNye. Progress is satisfactory. In time we’ll turn this madhouse of yours into a modem plant.” He cleared that screen without saying good-by.
Waldo terminated the business interview somewhat hastily, because he had been following with one eye certain announcements on his own local information board. A craft was approaching his house. Nothing strange about that; tourists were forever approaching and being pushed away by his autoguardian circuit. But this craft had the approach signal, was now clamping to his threshold flat. It was a broomstick, but he could not place the license number. Florida license. Whom did he know with a Florida license?
He immediately realized that he knew no one who possessed his approach signal—that list was very short—and who could also reasonably be expected to sport a Florida license. The suspicious defensiveness with which he regarded the entire world asserted itself; he cut in the circuit whereby he could control by means of his primary waldoes the strictly illegal but highly lethal inner defenses of his home. The craft was opaqued; he did not like that.
A youngish man wormed his way out. Waldo looked him over. A stranger—face vaguely familiar perhaps. An ounce of pressure in the primaries and the face would cease to be a face, but Waldo’s actions were under cold cortical control; he held his fire. The man turned, as if to assist another passenger. Yes, there was another. Uncle Gus!—but the doddering old fool had brought a stranger with him. He knew better than that. He knew how Waldo felt about strangers!
Nevertheless, he released the outer lock of the reception room and let them in.
Gus Grimes snaked his way through the lock, pulling himself from one handrail to the next, and panting a little as he always did when forced to move weight free. Matter of diaphragm control, he told himself as he always did; can’t be the exertion. Stevens streaked in after him, displaying a groundhog’s harmless pride in handling himself well in space conditions. Grimes arrested himself just inside the reception room, grunted, and spoke to a mansized dummy waiting the
re. “Hello, Waldo.”
The dummy turned its eyes and head slightly. “Greetings, Uncle Gus. I do wish you would remember to phone before dropping in. I would have had your special dinner ready.”
“Never mind. We may not be here that long. Waldo, this is my friend, Jimmie Stevens.”
The dummy faced Stevens. “How do you do, Mr. Stevens,” the voice said formally. “Welcome to Freehold.”
“How do you do, Mr. Jones,” Stevens replied, and eyed the dummy curiously. It was surprisingly lifelike; he had been taken in by it at first, A “reasonable facsimile.” Come to think of it, he had heard of this dummy. Except in vision screen few had seen Waldo in his own person.
Those who had business at Wheelchair—no, “Freehold,” he must remember that—those who had business at Freehold heard a voice and saw this simulacrum.
“But you must stay for dinner, Uncle Gus,” Waldo continued. “You can’t run out on me like that; you don’t come often enough for that. I can stir something up.”
“Maybe we will,” Grimes admitted. “Don’t worry about the menu. You know me. I can eat a turtle with the shell.” It had really been a bright idea, Stevens congratulated himself, to get Doc Grimes to bring him. Not here five minutes and Waldo was insisting on them staying for dinner. Good omen!
He had not noticed that Waldo had addressed the invitation to Grimes alone, and that it had been Grimes who had assumed the invitation to be for both of them.
“Where are you, Waldo?” Grimes continued. “In the lab?” He made a tentative movement, as if to leave the reception room.
“Oh, don’t bother,” Waldo said hastily. “I’m sure you will be more comfortable where you are. Just a moment and I will put some spin on the room so that you may sit down.”
“What’s eating you, Waldo?” Grimes said testily. “You know I don’t insist on weight. And I don’t care for the company of your talking doll. I want to see you.” Stevens was a little surprised by the older man’s insistence; he had thought it considerate of Waldo to offer to supply acceleration. Weightlessness put him a little on edge.
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