He played the episode back mentally over and over, trying to correct it to run as it should have. Finally he succeeded, at least in his mind. He saw what his attitude should have been. He should have kept his shoulders squared and his vocal cords loose, and faced Mr. Southfield confidently. Now he saw how to do it.
He walked erectly and firmly behind Mr. Demarest, and allowed a haughty half-smile to play on his lips.
He felt armed to face Mr. Southfield all by himself— or, since it seemed Mr. Southfield was not the Regional Director after all, even to face the Regional Director!
They stopped in front of a large double door guarded by an absolutely motionless man with a gun.
“Men,” said Mr. Demarest with cheerful innocence, “I wish you luck. I wish you all the luck in the world.”
Cal looked suddenly stricken but said, with casualness that didn’t fool even Albert, “Wouldn’t you like to come in with us?”
“Oh, no. Mr. Southfield told me only to bring you here. I’d be overstepping my bounds if I did any more. But all the good luck in the world, men!”
Cal said hearty goodbyes. But when he turned back to Albert he said, Despairing: “The brushoff.”
Albert could hardly take it in. “But— we get to make our presentation to the Regional Director, don’t we?”
Boersma shrugged hopelessly, “Don’t you see, Albert? Our presentation won’t be good enough, without Demarest. When Mr. Southfield sent us on alone he was giving us the brushoff.”
“Cal—are you going to back out too?”
“I should say not! It’s a feather in our cap to have got this far, Albert. We have to follow up just as far as our abilities will take us!”
Albert went to the double door. He worried about the armed guard for a moment, but they weren’t challenged. The guard hadn’t even blinked, in fact.
Albert asked Cal, “Then we do still have a chance?”
“No, we haven’t got a chance.”
He started to push the door open, then hesitated again. “But you’ll do your best?”
“I should say so! You don’t get to present a proposition to the Regional Director every day.”
With determination, Albert drew himself even straighter, and prepared himself to meet an onslaught twice as overbearing as Mr. Southfield’s. One single thought was uppermost in his mind: defending his sales resistance. He felt inches taller than before; he even slightly looked down at Cal and his pessimism.
Cal pushed the door open and they went in.
* * * *
The Regional Director sat alone in a straight chair, at a plain desk in a very plain office about the size of most offices.
The Regional Director was a woman.
She was dressed about as any businesswoman might dress; as conservatively as Miss Drury. As a matter of fact, she looked like Miss Drury, fifteen years older. Certainly she had the same black hair and gentle oval face.
What a surprise! A pleasant surprise. Albert felt still bigger and more confident than he had outside. He would certainly get on well with this motherly, unthreatening person!
She was reading from a small microfilm viewer on an otherwise bare desk. Obviously she had only a little to do before she would be free. Albert patiently watched her read. She read very conscientiously, that was clear.
After a moment she glanced up at them briefly, with an apologetic smile, then down again. Her shy dark eyes showed so much! You could see how sincerely she welcomed them, and how sorry she was that she had so much work to do—how much she would prefer to be talking with them. Albert pitied her. From the bottom of his heart, he pitied her. Why, that small microfilm viewer, he realized, could perfectly well contain volumes of complicated Corporation reports. Poor woman! The poor woman who happened to be Regional Director read on.
Once in a while she passed one hand, wearily but determinedly, across her face. There was a slight droop to her shoulders. Albert pitied her more all the time. She was not too strong—she had such a big job—and she was so courageously trying to do her best with all those reports in the viewer!
Finally she raised her head.
It was clear she was not through; there was no relief on her face. But she raised her head to them.
Her affection covered them like a warm bath. Albert realized he was in a position to do the kindest thing he had ever done. He felt growing in himself the resolution to do it. He would!
He started toward the door.
Before he left she met his eyes once more, and her smile showed such appreciation for his understanding!
Albert felt there could be no greater reward.
* * * *
Out in the park again he realized for the first time that Cal was right behind him.
They looked at each other for a long time.
Then Cal started walking again, toward the subway. “The brushoff,” he said.
“I thought you said you’d do your best,” said Albert. But he knew that Cal’s “I did” was the truth.
They walked on slowly. Cal said, “Remarkable woman.... A real master. Sheer virtuosity!”
Albert said, “Our society certainly rewards its most deserving members.”
That one single thought was uppermost in his mind, all the long way home.
<
* * * *
SPARKIE’S FALL
by Gavin Hyde
Readers of the (very) short-lived Star Science Fiction Magazine will remember a tender and delicate story of a boy and a chess-playing brain, Nor the Moon by Night.That was Gavin Hyde’s first story; here is his second; as different from the first as night from day, and showing a versatility, as well as a talent, that makes us eagerly await numbers three to infinity.
Sparkson was relieved to see the evening sky melt into the terrain of the planet where he had been forced down, slowly obliterating the forms of the aliens on each side of him. He had been looking forward to night because he had thought it over and he hoped—rather optimistically, he admitted to himself—that they might let him leave the rocket, or something.
Anything.
Anything was better than walking around the ship for the equivalent of three earth days, the only diversion being the mechanical Translator and that exasperating as hell as it tried to make sense of what the alien said and type it out for him on white little slips of paper: “NAME, I am worried. Could Sparkie (eat) (be nourished by) GARBLE?”
And then the answer: “!, (stop) (cease) (desist from) worrying, NAME. Sparkie is (in admirable condition) (fine) !”
It had taken him twenty years to get “Sparkie” out of his family’s vocabulary. And now the first two “people” he met in outer space called him Sparkie.
Just because they were bigger than he was!
They lay on each side of him, gigantic whales from an ocean of soot, their lights glowing handfuls of sand. Nothing came out, nothing went in.
There were just two.
Many of his controls had ceased to function when they had pulled him down between them. Others were as usual. He couldn’t take off, of course—except when that message came out of the Translator: “NAME, Sparkie might (desire) (want) (thirst for) exercise.”
He leapt to the chance—it was foolish of them to think that the ship was the man and needed exercise, but that foolishness might help him escape—but they had gone with him, limiting him to graceful figure eights. He tried turning out of one of them, away into space.
He was returned to his place, gently.
When they had captured him, naturally, his first move was to open communications with them through the radio. They received him well, with the help of the translator. They said hello, yes we know where you came from, hope you had a good trip, and then they were quiet.
He had asked them the first forty-nine questions on the checklist designed for making contact with aliens. Nothing. At the end he was yelling at them.
Then he forgot his briefings. “What’s the matter, battery gone dead?”
<
br /> They said only: “Time to rest, Sparkie.”
They were not exactly their last words, because while he was “exercising” he had asked if he could fire a nuclear missile, hoping to arouse a little more respect.
Then the one that always seemed subservient to the other said, “NAME, I am frightened. Sparkie might not (throw) (hurl) (eject) it free of his vessel. (Moreover) (Also) it might GARBLE the alignment of the GARBLE GARBLE.”
The other didn’t even answer that. “Fire away, Sparkie!”
So he threw the lever and there was a wondrous sun and a mushroom that would have turned Einstein over in his grave, certainly, if it had grown under him.
One said, “That’s (enough) (sufficient) for (period of time)!” And the other said, “Better than 4th of July, eh, Sparkie?”
“It sure is. How come you know about the 4th?” “We know what we need to know. Let us rest now.” Sparkson tried everything, even “I’m lonely!” But rest it was.
* * * *
He had slept, getting up to check gauges and read some incredibly garbled messages—conversations having nothing to do with him that the Translator apparently couldn’t begin to handle.
Now, with the coming of night, he stayed by the Translator. After an hour of darkness a short slip of paper appeared.
“Goodnight, NAME.”
Then another. “(Sweet) (Pleasant) (Gentle) dreams of mother, NAME.”
They were going to sleep. He sat sweating, staring at the slot, with his hands on each side of the gold-braided uniform cap on his head.
After a while some papers slid out of the Translator. Drowsily the aliens were communicating, like girls whispering secret, in bed.
“NAME—”
“?”
“It is (odd) (strange) (perplexing).”
“?”
“I am thinking of Sparkie’s mind ... NAME!”
“I am awake!”
“Sparkie is so (small) (weak) (defenseless).”
“(Hm) (Mm) (Mmm).”
“His mind is like a (piece) (sheet) of GARBLE. We think on the (bases) (conditions) (roots) of our experience, our perceptions which arc multiplied by (objects) (things) (forms of matter) which we have sensed. Sparkie must think with the (toys) (playthings) of his earth only. How can he understand us? What does he know of GARBLE, GARBLE or GARBLE for example, this (small) (weak) (defenseless) being? NAME!”
“! Go to sleep.”
That was all. He waited another hour. Then he read the bits of paper, in order. He read them over and over again, while the starless biblical darkness, one thing by God that was not among the forms of matter, offered him freedom.
So he was “(small) (weak) (defenseless)”?
He would show them.
He reviewed the gravity and atmospheric tables beside the suit, strapped nuclearms on each side, brought it closed around his body.
As he staggered, arms up and legs bent under the weight, he was made suddenly angry by an insistent tension at the back of his throat.
The “(toys) (playthings)” of his earth indeed!
He opened the hatch.
He jumped to the surface of the ... the ...
Planet?
This?
Some hours later the Translator in the cold metal hum of the ship began to spit papers, violently.
Waves of magnetism, pulses of electric desire, like startled schools of fish in coral, swept the corridors.
A great rocking bellowing sound and a smell of sorrow spread skyward.
<
* * * *
STAR DESCENDING
by Algis Budrys
Mr. Budrys asks us to make clear that the title of this story is the editor’s, not his own. It may be that there’s a connotation that doesn’t belong; but the facts are clear. In publishing a fine new story by the author of Man of Earth and scores of other stories, short and long, STAR does not stoop. It beams with pride.
Inconspicuous in his half of the room, which was dark, Henry Walters watched his partner fraying down into tatters like a mooring line caught between hull and dock.
It was disquieting to see. Even if you ignored its concrete significance—if you ignored the fact that Stephenson might be fighting for Spot Dialogue’s life—then Stephenson became a symbol of all men at tenuous grips with all frustration. Henry Walters puffed nervously at his cigarette. His teeth were being set on edge.
In the lighted half of the room, Stephenson, standing beside Carmer’s chair, was starting at the beginning, again. Like all men at grips with all frustration, he had begun to abandon politeness as an obstructive luxury.
“What is your name?” Stephenson asked Carmer.
“Carmer.” He answered in a husky whisper.
Stephenson nodded. “That’s right. That’s good. Where were you this afternoon?” He sounded more like a police interrogator than a man addressing a client.
“At the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street.”
“Yes! That’s good, Mr. Carmer. Now—what were you doing?”
Henry Walters reflected that Stephenson was showing altogether too much eager expectation. They’d gotten this far a dozen times. Steve, of course, tended to unfounded optimism.
His own stomach muscles tightened, and he leaned forward to catch Carmer’s answer.
Carmer shook his head in despair. “I don’t know. Again, I don’t know.”
“But you do know, Mr. Carmer! You met a man named Dugan! You—”
Henry Walters had already smashed out his cigarette and passed a hand over the lighting controls. He stood up and interrupted Steve’s exasperation.
“Mr. Carmer ...” The lights came up around him. He shot Stephenson one disgusted look before Carmer had turned his head in response to the interjection. “Mr. Carmer, please accept our sincere apologies for your trouble. We’d like to try one thing more. Would you mind looking at a photographic record of your actions this afternoon?” He ignored Steve’s consternation. Getting this settled was more important that Carmer’s finding out that Spot Dialogue had eyes as well as ears.
Carmer fumbled at his wilting collar, leaving finger marks when he took his hand away to run it through his tousled hair. Henry Walters reflected that he’d be leaving fresh marks when he next fussed with the collar. But that hardly mattered.
“No,” Carmer said. “Uh—yes—uh, I mean, no—I would not mind.” Carmer’s personality, as well as Stephen’s, was sacrificing certain luxuries. In the effort to remember where its afternoon had gone, his mind was foregoing the ability to specify and stipulate.
The look Henry Walters gave Stephenson was dark with anger.
This whole interview had been against his better judgment. But they were in it, now—it might as well be done wholehog. He touched a desk switch. One end of the room became a stereographic stage.
It was the corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. Carmer was at the empty taxi stand in front of the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Raymond Building. A cab pulled up, and, as Carmer started for it, a passenger he hadn’t noticed straightened up from his slouch in the back seat, paid the driver, and got out. Recognition flickered over Carmer’s face, together with a relieved smile.
The other man turned around, saw and recognized Carmer, and stepped forward, holding out his hand.
“Well, hello there,” he said.
“Hello, Mr. Dugan,” Carmer replied. “I was just on my way home. Didn’t think I’d make it to your office in time, so I thought I’d see you tomorrow.” He shook his head at the cabby’s inquiring look, and the taxi pulled up to the head of the stand and parked, leaving the two of them on the corner.
Dugan smiled. “Small world. I came down to meet my wife. She’s doing some shopping, but I’m early. Let’s have a drink. Might do some business now. Never put off ‘til tomorrow.”
“All ri—” Carmer began.
The sound cut off first. A second later, the scene dissolved into a corruscating whirlpool that ago
nized their eyes for a moment before Henry Walters thumbed the switch and the room lights came back on.
He sighed under his breath and looked inquiringly at Carmer.
The perspiring man hunched in his chair. He shook his head dully. “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly, “but I can’t remember past that point. I don’t know what happened afterward.”
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