The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology

by John W. Campbell Jr.

  Johnny, in his deliberate manner, said: “I know one sing. Zat is ze firs’ hetress fire I have seen.”

  Inglehart looked at Johnny, then at the conflagration. “My gosh!” he said. “We ought to feel the radiation here, oughtn’t we? Heatless fire is right. Another superscientific joke, you suppose?”

  “We can rook around,” said Johnny. Turning their backs on the conflagration, they began searching among the shrubbery and railings along Elm Street.

  “Woof!” said Johnny. “Come here, Bruce!”

  In a patch of shadow stood Professor Ira Methuen and a tripod whereon was mounted a motion-picture projector. It took Johnny a second to distinguish which was which.

  Methuen seemed uneasily poised on the verge of flight. He said: “Why, hello, Johnny, why aren’t you asleep? I just found this… uh… this projector—”

  Johnny, thinking fast, slapped the projector with his paw. Methuen caught it as it toppled. Its whir ceased. At the same instant the fire went out, vanished utterly. The roar and crackle still came from the place where the fire had been. But there was no fire. There was not even a burned place in the roof, off which gallons of water were still pouring. The fire department looked at one another foolishly.

  While Johnny’s and Inglehart’s pupils were still expanding in the sudden darkness, Methuen and his projector vanished. They got a glimpse of him galloping around the College Street comer, lugging the tripod. They ran after him. A few undergraduates ran after Johnny and Inglehart, being moved by the instinct that makes dogs chase automobiles.

  They caught sight of Methuen, lost him, and caught sight of him again. Inglehart was not built for running, and Johnny’s eyesight was an affair of limited objectives. Johnny opened up when it became evident that Methuen was heading for the old Phelps mansion, where he, Johnny, and several unmarried instructors lived. Everybody in the house had gone to see the fire. Methuen dashed in the front door three jumps ahead of Johnny and slammed it in the bear’s face.

  Johnny padded around in the dark with the idea of attacking a window. But while he was making up his mind, something happened to the front steps under him. They became slicker than the smoothest ice. Down the steps went Johnny, bump-bump-bump.

  Johnny picked himself up in no pleasant mood. So this was the sort of treatment he got from the one man—But then, he reflected, if Methuen was really crazy, you couldn’t blame him.

  Some of the undergraduates caught up with them. These crowded toward the mansion—until their feet went out from under them as if they were wearing invisible roller skates. They tried to get up, and fell again, sliding down the slight grade of the crown of the road into heaps in the gutter. They retired on hands and knees, their clothes showing large holes.

  A police car drove up and tried to stop. Apparently neither brakes nor tires would hold. It skidded about, banged against the curb once, and finally stopped down the street beyond the slippery zone. The cop—he was a fairly important cop, a captain—got out and charged the mansion.

  He fell down, too. He tried to keep going on hands and knees. But every time he applied a horizontal component of force to a hand or knee, the hand or knee simply slid backward. The sight reminded Johnny of the efforts of those garter snakes to crawl on the smooth concrete floor of the Central Park Zoo monkey house.

  When the police captain gave up and tried to retreat, the laws of friction came back on. But when he stood up, all his clothes below the waist, except his shoes, disintegrated into a cloud of textile fibers.

  “My word!” said the English zoologist, who had just arrived. “Just like one of those Etruscan statues, don’t you know!”

  The police captain bawled at Bruce Inglehart: “Hey, you, for gossakes gimmie a handkerchief!”

  “What’s the matter; got a cold?” asked Inglehart innocently.

  “No, you dope! You know what I want it for!”

  Inglehart suggested that a better idea would be for the captain to use his coat as an apron. While the captain was knotting the sleeves behind his back, Inglehart and Johnny explained their version of the situation to him.

  “Hm-m-m,” said the captain. “We don’t want nobody to get hurt, or the place to get damaged. But suppose he’s got a death ray or sumpm?”

  “I don’t sink so,” said Johnny. “He has not hurt anybody. Jus’ prayed jokes.”

  The captain thought for a few seconds of ringing up headquarters and having them send an emergency truck. But the credit for overpowering a dangerous maniac singlehanded was too tempting. He said: “How’ll we get into the place, if he can make everything so slippery?”

  They thought. Johnny said: “Can you get one of zose sings wiss a wood stick and a rubber cup on end?”

  The captain frowned. Johnny made motions. Inglehart said: “Oh, you mean the plumber’s friend! Sure. You wait. I’ll get one. See if you can find a key to the place.”

  The assault on Methuen’s stronghold was made on all fours. The captain, in front, jammed the end of the plumber’s friend against the rise of the lowest front step. If Methuen could abolish friction, he had not discovered how to get rid of barometric pressure. The rubber cup held, and the cop pulled himself, Inglehart and Johnny after him. By using the instrument on successive steps, they mounted them. Then the captain anchored them to the front door and pulled them up to it. He hauled himself to his feet by the door handle, and opened the door with a key borrowed from Dr. Wendell Cook.

  At one window, Methuen crouched behind a thing like a surveyor’s transit. He swiveled the thing toward them, and made adjustments. The captain and Inglehart, feeling their shoes grip the floor, gathered themselves to jump. But Methuen got the contraption going, and their feet went out from under them.

  Johnny used his head. He was standing next to the door. He lay down, braced his hind feet against the door frame, and kicked out. His body whizzed across the frictionless floor and bowled over Methuen and his contraption.

  The professor offered no more resistance. He seemed more amused than anything, despite the lump that was growing on his forehead. He said: “My, my, you fellows are persistent. I suppose you’re going to take me off to some asylum. I thought you and you”—he indicated Inglehart and Johnny—“were friends of mine. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.”

  The captain growled: “What did you do to my pants?”

  “Simple. My telelubricator here neutralizes the interatomic bonds on the surface of any solid on which the beam falls. So the surface, to a depth of a few molecules, is put in the condition of a supercooled liquid as long as the beam is focused on it. Since the liquid form of any compound will wet the solid form, you have perfect lubrication.”

  “But my pants—”

  “They were held together by friction between the fibers, weren’t they? And I have a lot more inventions like that. My soft-speaker and my three-dimensional projector, for instance, are—”

  Inglehart interrupted: “Is that how you made that phony fire, and that whatchamacallit that scared the people at the dinner? With a three-dimensional projector?”

  “Yes, of course, though, to be exact, it took two projectors at right angles, and a phonograph and amplifier to give the sound effect. It was amusing, wasn’t it?”

  “But,” wailed Johnny, “why do you do zese sings? You trying to ruin your career?”

  Methuen shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Johnny, as you’d know if you were in my… uh… condition. And now, gentlemen, where do you want me to go? Wherever it is, I’ll find something amusing there.”

  Dr. Wendell Cook visited Ira Methuen on the first day of his incarceration in the New Haven Hospital. In ordinary conversation Methuen seemed sane enough, and quite agreeable. He readily admitted that he had been the one responsible for the jokes. He explained: “I painted your and Dalrymple’s face with a high-powered needle sprayer I invented. It’s a most amusing little thing. Fits in your hand and discharges through a ring on your finger. With your thumb you can regulate the amount of aceto
ne mixed in with the water, which in turn controls the surface tension and therefore the point at which the needle spray breaks up into droplets. I made the spray break up just before it reached your face. You were a sight, Cook, especially when you found out what was wrong with you. You looked almost as funny as the day I painted those feet on my rubbers and substituted them for yours. You react so beautifully to having your dignity pricked. You always were a pompous ass, you know.”

  Cook puffed out his cheeks and controlled himself. After all, the poor man was mad. These absurd outbursts about Cook’s pompousness proved it. He said sadly: “Dalrymple’s leaving tomorrow night. He was most displeased about the face-painting episode, and when he found that you were under observation, he told me that no useful purpose would be served by his remaining here. I’m afraid that’s the end of our endowment. Unless you can pull yourself together and tell us what’s happened to you and how to cure it.”

  Ira Methuen laughed. “Pull myself together? I am all in one piece, I assure you. And I’ve told you what’s the matter with me, as you put it. I gave myself my own treatment. As for curing it, I wouldn’t tell you how even if I knew. I wouldn’t give up my present condition for anything. I at last realize that nothing really matters, including endowments. I shall be taken care of, and I will devote myself to amusing myself as I see fit.”

  Johnny had been haunting Cook’s office all day. He waylaid the president when the latter returned from the hospital.

  Cook told Johnny what had happened. He said: “He seems to be completely irresponsible. We’ll have to get in touch with his son, and have a guardian appointed. And we’ll have to do something about you, Johnny.”

  Johnny didn’t relish the prospect of the “something.” He knew he had no legal status other than that of a tamed wild animal. The fact that Methuen technically owned him was his only protection if somebody took a notion to shoot him during bear-hunting season. And he was not enthusiastic about Ralph Methuen. Ralph was a very average young schoolteacher without his father’s scientific acumen or whimsical humor. Finding Johnny on his hands, his reaction would be to give Johnny to a zoo or something.

  He put his paws on Miss Prescott’s desk and asked: “Hey, good-rooking, wirr you cawr up Bruce Ingrehart at ze Courier?”

  “Johnny,” said the president’s secretary, “you get fresher every day.”

  “Ze bad infruence of ze undergraduates. Wirr you cawr Mr. Ingrehart, beautifur?” Miss Prescott, who was not, did so.

  Bruce Inglehart arrived at the Phelps mansion to find Johnny taking a shower. Johnny was also making a horrible bawling noise. “Waaaaai” he howled. “Hoooooooo! Yrmrrr! Waaaaaaa!”

  “Whatcha doing?” yelled Inglehart.

  “Taking a bass,” replied Johnny. “Wuuummh!”

  “Are you sick?”

  “No. Jus’ singing in bass. People sing whire taking bass; why shouldn’t I? Yaaaaawaaa!”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake don’t. It sounds like you were having your throat cut. What’s the idea of these bath towels spread all over the floor?”

  “I show you.” Johnny came out of the shower, lay down on the bath towels and rolled. When he was more or less dry, he scooped the towels up in his forepaws and hove them into a corner. Neatness was not one of Johnny’s strong points.

  He told Inglehart about the Methuen situation. “Rook here, Bruce,” he said, “I sink I can fix him, but you wirr have to he’p me.”

  “O.K. Count me in.”

  Pop!

  The orderly looked up from his paper. But none of the buttons showed a light. So, presumably, none of the patients, wanted attention. He went back to his reading.

  Pop!

  It sounded a little like a breaking light bulb. The orderly sighed, put away his paper, and began prowling. As he approached the room of the mad professor, No. 14, he noticed a smell of limburger.

  Pop!

  There was no doubt that the noise came from No. 14. The orderly stuck his head in.

  At one side of the room sat Ira Methuen. He held a contraption made of a length of glass rod and assorted wires. At the other side of the room, on the floor, lay a number of crumbs of cheese. A cockroach scuttled out of the shadows and made for the crumbs. Methuen sighted along his glass rod and pressed a button. Pop! A flash, and there was no more cockroach.

  Methuen swung the rod toward the orderly. “Stand back, sir! I’m Buck Rogers, and this is my disintegrator!”

  “Hey,” said the orderly feebly. The old goof might be crazy, but after what happened to the roach—He ducked out and summoned a squad of interns.

  But the interns had no trouble with Methuen. He tossed the contraption on the bed, saying: “If I thought it mattered, I’d raise a hell of a stink about cockroaches in a supposedly sanitary hospital.”

  One of the interns protested: “But I’m sure there aren’t any here.”

  “What do you call that?” asked Methuen dryly, pointing at the shattered remains of one of his victims.

  “It must have been attracted in from the outside by the smell of that cheese. Phew! Judson, clean up the floor. What is this, professor?” He picked up the rod and the flashlight battery attached to it.

  Methuen waved a deprecating hand. “Nothing important. Just a little gadget I thought up. By applying the right e.m.f. to pure crown glass, it’s possible to raise its index of refraction to a remarkable degree. The result is that light striking the glass is so slowed up that it takes weeks to pass through it in the ordinary manner. The light that is thus trapped can be released by making a small spark near the glass. So I simply lay the rod on the window sill all afternoon to soak up sunlight, a part of which is released by making a spark with that button. Thus I can shoot an hour’s accumulated light-energy out the front end of the rod in a very small fraction of a second. Naturally when this beam hits an opaque object, it raises its temperature. So I’ve been amusing myself by luring the roaches in here and exploding them. You may have the thing; its charge is about exhausted.”

  The intern was stern. “That’s a dangerous weapon. We can’t let you play with things like that.”

  “Oh, can’t you? Not that it matters, but I’m only staying here because I’m taken care of. I can walk out any time I like.”

  “No you can’t, professor. You’re under a temporary commitment for observation.”

  “That’s all right, son. I still say I can walk out whenever I feel like it. I just don’t care much whether I do or not.” With which Methuen began tuning the radio by his bed, ignoring the interns.

  Exactly twelve hours later, at 10 A.M., Ira Methuen’s room in the hospital was found to be vacant. A search of the hospital failed to locate him. The only clue to his disappearance was the fact that his radio had been disemboweled. Tubes, wires, and condensers lay in untidy heaps on the floor.

  The New Haven police cars received instructions to look for a tall, thin man with gray hair and goatee, probably armed with death rays, disintegrators, and all the other advanced weapons of fact and fiction.

  For hours they scoured the city with screaming sirens. They finally located the menacing madman, sitting placidly on a park bench three blocks from the hospital and reading a newspaper. Far from resisting, he grinned at them and looked at his watch. “Three hours and forty-eight minutes. Not bad, boys, not bad, considering how carefully I hid myself.”

  One of the cops pounced on a bulge in Methuen’s pocket. The bulge was made by another wire contraption. Methuen shrugged. “My hyperbolic solenoid. Gives you a conical magnetic field, and enables you to manipulate ferrous objects at a distance. I picked the lock of the door to the elevators with it.”

  When Bruce Inglehart arrived at the hospital about four, he was told Methuen was asleep. That was amended to the statement that Methuen was getting up, and could see a visitor in a few minutes. He found Methuen in a dressing gown.

  Methuen said: “Hello, Bruce. They had me wrapped up in a wet sheet, like a mummy. It’s swell for naps; relaxes you
. I told ‘em they could do it whenever they liked. I think they were annoyed about my getting out.”

  Inglehart was slightly embarrassed.

  Methuen said: “Don’t worry; I’m not mad at you. I realize that nothing matters, including resentments. And I’ve had a most amusing time here. Just watch them fizz the next time I escape.”

  “But don’t you care about your future?” said Inglehart. “They’ll transfer you to a padded cell at Middletown—”

  Methuen waved a hand. “That doesn’t bother me. I’ll have fun there, too.”

  “But how about Johnny Black, and Dalrymple’s endowment?”

  “I don’t give a damn what happens to them.”

  Here the orderly stuck his head in the door briefly to check up on this unpredictable patient. The hospital, being short-handed, was unable to keep a continuous watch on him.

  Methuen continued: “Not that I don’t like Johnny. But when you get a real sense of proportion, like mine, you realize that humanity is nothing but a sort of skin disease on a ball of dirt, and that no effort beyond subsistence, shelter, and casual amusement is worth while. The State of Connecticut is willing to provide the first two for me, so I shall devote myself to the third. What’s that you have there?”

  Inglehart thought, “They’re right; he’s become a childishly irresponsible scientific genius.” Keeping his back to the door, the reporter brought out his family heirloom: a big silver pocket flask dating back to the fabulous prohibition period. His aunt Martha had left it to him, and he himself expected to will it to a museum.

  “Apricot brandy,” he murmured. Johnny had tipped him off to Methuen’s tastes.

  “Now, Bruce, that’s something sensible. Why didn’t you bring it out sooner, instead of making futile appeals to my sense of duty?”

  The flask was empty. Ira Methuen sprawled in his chair. Now and then he passed a hand across his forehead. He said: “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that I felt that way half an hour ago. O Lord, what have I done?”