“We’ll take them in,” the other Leiter said. “Soldiers, surround them. Make certain that—”
“Run!” Erick cried. He struck out, knocking the rod from the Senior Leiter’s hand. They were all running, soldiers shouting, flashing their lights, stumbling against each other in the darkness. Erick dropped to his knees, groping frantically in the bushes. His fingers closed over the handle of the case and he leaped up. In Terran he shouted to Mara and Jan.
“Hurry! To the car! Run!” He set off, down the slope, stumbling through the darkness. He could hear soldiers behind him, soldiers running and falling. A body collided against him and he struck out. Someplace behind him there was a hiss, and a section of the slope went up in flames. The Leiter’s rod—
“Erick,” Mara cried from the darkness. He ran toward her. Suddenly he slipped, falling on a stone. Confusion and firing. The sound of excited voices.
“Erick, is that you?” Jan caught hold of him, helping him up. “The car. It’s over here. Where’s Mara?”
“I’m here,” Mara’s voice came. “Over here, by the car.”
A light flashed. A tree went up in a puff of fire, and Erick felt the singe of the heat against his face. He and Jan made their way toward the girl. Mara’s hand caught his in the darkness.
“Now the car,” Erick said. “If they haven’t got to it.” He slid down the slope into the ravine, fumbling in the darkness, reaching and holding onto the handle of the case. Reaching, reaching—
He touched something cold and smooth. Metal, a metal door handle. Relief flooded through him. “I’ve found it! Jan, get inside. Mara, come on.” He pushed Jan past him, into the car. Mara slipped in after Jan, her small agile body crowding in beside him.
“Stop!” a voice shouted from above. “There’s no use hiding in that ravine. We’ll get you! Come up and—”
The sound of voices was drowned out by the roar of the car’s motor. A moment later they shot into the darkness, the car rising into the air. Treetops broke and cracked under them as Erick turned the car from side to side, avoiding the groping shafts of pale light from below, the last furious thrusts from the two Leiters and their soldiers.
Then they were away, above the trees, high in the air, gaining speed each moment, leaving the knot of Martians far behind.
“Toward Marsport,” Jan said to Erick. “Right?”
Erick nodded. “Yes. We’ll land outside the field, in the hills. We can change back to our regular clothing there, our commercial clothing. Damn it—we’ll be lucky if we can get there in time for the ship.”
“The last ship,” Mara whispered, her chest rising and falling. “What if we don’t get there in time?”
Erick looked down at the leather case in his lap. “We’ll have to get there,” he murmured. “We must!”
For a long time there was silence. Thacher stared at Erickson. The older man was leaning back in his chair, sipping a little of his drink. Mara and Jan were silent.
“So you didn’t destroy the City,” Thacher said. “You didn’t destroy it at all. You shrank it down and put it in a glass globe, in a paperweight. And now you’re salesmen again, with a sample case of office supplies!”
Erickson smiled. He opened the briefcase and reaching into it he brought out the glass globe paperweight. He held it up, looking into it. “Yes, we stole the City from the Martians. That’s how we got by the lie detector. It was true that we knew nothing about a destroyed City.”
“But why?” Thacher said. “Why steal a City? Why not merely bomb it?”
“Ransom,” Mara said fervently, gazing into the globe, her dark eyes bright. “Their biggest City, half of the Council—in Erick’s hand!”
“Mars will have to do what Terra asks,” Erickson said. “Now Terra will be able to make her commercial demands felt. Maybe there won’t even be a war. Perhaps Terra will get her way without fighting.” Still smiling, he put the globe back into the briefcase and locked it.
“Quite a story,” Thacher said. “What an amazing process, reduction of size—A whole City reduced to microscopic dimensions. Amazing. No wonder you were able to escape. With such daring as that, no one could hope to stop you.”
He looked down at the briefcase on the floor. Underneath them the jets murmured and vibrated evenly, as the ship moved through space toward distant Terra.
“We still have quite a way to go,” Jan said. “You’ve heard our story, Thacher. Why not tell us yours? What sort of line are you in? What’s your business?”
“Yes,” Mara said. “What do you do?”
“What do I do?” Thacher said. “Well, if you like, I’ll show you.” He reached into his coat and brought out something. Something that flashed and glinted, somethig slender. A rod of pale fire.
The three stared at it. Sickened shock settled over them slowly.
Thacher held the rod loosely, calmly, pointing it at Erickson. “We knew you three were on this ship,” he said. “There was not doubt of that. But we did not know what had become of the City. My theory was that the City had not been destroyed at all, that something else had happened to it. Council instruments measured a sudden loss of mass in that area, a decrease equal to the mass of the City. Somehow the City had been spirited away, not destroyed. But I could not convince the other Council Leiters of it. I had to follow you alone.”
Thacher turned a little, nodding to the men sitting at the bar. The men rose at once, coming toward the table.
“A very interesting process you have. Mars will benefit a great deal from it. Perhaps it will even turn the tide in our favor. When we return to Marsport I wish to begin work on it at once. And now, if you will please pass me the briefcase—”
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford
“I have something to show you,” Doc Labyrinth said. From his coat pocket he gravely drew forth a matchbox. He held the matchbox tightly, his eyes fixed on it. “You’re about to see the most momentous thing in all modern science. The world will shake and shudder.”
“Let me see,” I said. It was late, past midnight. Outside my house rain was falling on the deserted streets. I watched Doc Labyrinth as he carefully pushed the matchbox open with his thumb, just a crack. I leaned over to see.
There was a brass button in the matchbox. It was alone, except for a bit of dried grass and what looked like a bread crumb.
“Buttons have already been invented,” I said. “I don’t see much to this.” I reached out my hand to touch the button but Labyrinth jerked the box away, frowning furiously.
“This isn’t just a button,” he said. Looking down at the button he said, “Go on! Go on!” He nudged the button with his finger. “Go on!”
I watched with curiosity. “Labyrinth, I wish you’d explain. You come here in the middle of the night, show me a button in a matchbox, and—”
Labyrinth settled back against the couch, sagging with defeat. He closed the matchbox and resignedly put it back in his pocket. “It’s no use pretending,” he said. “I’ve failed. The button is dead. There’s no hope.”
“Is that so unusual? What did you expect?”
“Bring me something.” Labyrinth gazed hopelessly around the room. “Bring me—bring me wine.”
“All right, Doc,” I said getting up. “But you know what wine does to people.” I went into the kitchen and poured two glasses of sherry. I brought them back and gave one to him. We sipped for a time. “I wish you’d let me in on this.”
Doc put his glass down, nodding absently. He crossed his legs and took out his pipe. After he had lit his pipe he carefully looked once more into the matchbox. He sighed and put it away again.
“No use,” he said. “The Animator will never work, the Principle itself is wrong. I refer to the Principle of Sufficient Irritation, of course.”
“And what is that?”
“The Principle came to me this way. One day I was sitting on a rock at the beach. The sun was shining and it was very hot. I was perspiring and quite uncomfortable. All at once a p
ebble next to me got up and crawled off. The heat of the sun had annoyed it.”
“Really? A pebble?”
“At once the realization of the Principle of Sufficient Irritation came to me. Here was the origin of life. Eons ago, in the remote past, a bit of inanimate matter had become so irritated by something that it crawled away, moved by indignation. Here was my life work: to discover the perfect irritant, annoying enough to bring inanimate matter to life, and to incorporate it into a workable machine. The machine, which is at present in the back seat of my car, is called The Animator. But it doesn’t work.”
We were silent for a time. I felt my eyes slowly begin to close. “Say, Doc,” I began, “isn’t it time we—”
Doc Labyrinth leaped abruptly to his feet. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s time for me to go. I’ll leave.”
He headed for the door. I caught up with him. “About the machine,” I said. “Don’t give up hope. Maybe you’ll get it to work some other time.”
“The machine?” He frowned. “Oh, the Animator. Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll sell it to you for five dollars.”
I gaped. There was something so forlorn about him that I didn’t feel like laughing. “For how much?” I said.
“I’ll bring it inside the house. Wait here.” He went outside, down the steps and up the dark sidewalk. I heard him open the car door, and then grunt and mutter.
“Hold on,” I said. I hurried after him. He was struggling with a bulky square box, trying to get it out of the car. I caught hold of one side, and together we lugged it into the house. We set it down on the dining table.
“So this is the Animator,” I said. “It looks like a Dutch oven.”
“It is, or it was. The Animator throws out a heat beam as an irritant. But I’m through with it forever.”
I took out my wallet. “All right. If you want to sell it, I might as well be the one who buys it.” I gave him the money and he took it. He showed me where to put in the inanimate matter, how to adjust the dials and meters, and without any warning, he put on his hat and left.
I was alone, with my new Animator. While I was looking at it my wife came downstairs in her bathrobe.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Look at you, your shoes are soaked. Were you outside in the gutter?”
“Not quite. Look at this oven. I just paid five dollars for it. It animates things.”
Joan stared down at my shoes. “It’s one o’clock in the morning. You put your shoes in the oven and come to bed.”
“But don’t you realize—”
“Get those shoes in the oven,” Joan said, going back upstairs again. “Do you hear me?”
“All right,” I said.
It was at breakfast, while I was sitting staring moodily down at a plate of cold eggs and bacon, that he came back. The doorbell commenced to ring furiously.
“Who can that be?” Joan said. I got up and went down the hall, into the living room. I opened the door.
“Labyrinth!” I said. His face was pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
“Here’s your five dollars,” he said. “I want my Animator back.”
I was dazed. “All right, Doc. Come on in and I’ll get it.”
He came inside and stood, tapping his foot. I went over and got the Animator. It was still warm. Labyrinth watched me carrying it toward him. “Set it down,” he said. “I want to make sure it’s all right.”
I put it on the table and the Doc went over it lovingly, carefully, opening the little door and peering inside. “There’s a shoe in it,” he said.
“There should be two shoes,” I said, suddenly remembering last night. “My God, I put my shoes in it.”
“Both of them? There’s only one now.”
Joan came from the kitchen. “Hello, Doctor,” she said. “What brings you out so early?”
Labyrinth and I were staring at each other. “Only one?” I said. I bent down to look. Inside was a single muddy shoe, quite dry, now, after its night in Labyrinth’s Animator. A single shoe—but I had put two in. Where was the other?
I turned around but the expression on Joan’s face made me forget what I was going to say. She was staring in horror at the floor, her mouth open.
Something small and brown was moving, sliding toward the couch. It went under the couch and disappeared. I had seen only a glimpse of it, a momentary flash of motion, but I knew what it was.
“My God,” Labyrinth said. “Here, take the five dollars.” He pushed the bill into my hands. “I really want it back, now!”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Give me a hand. We have to catch the damn thing before it gets outdoors.”
Labyrinth went over and shut the door to the living room. “It went under the couch.” He squatted down and peered under. “I think I see it. Do you have a stick or something?”
“Let me out of here,” Joan said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
“You can’t leave,” I said. I yanked down a curtain rod from the window and pulled the curtain from it. “We can use this.” I joined Labyrinth on the floor. “I’ll get it out, but you’ll have to help me catch it. If we don’t work fast we’ll never see it again.”
I nudged the shoe with the end of the rod. The shoe retreated, squeezing itself back toward the wall. I could see it, a small mound of brown, huddled and silent, like some wild animal at bay, escaped from its cage. It gave me an odd feeling.
“I wonder what we can do with it?” I murmured. “Where the hell are we going to keep it?”
“Could we put it in the desk drawer?” Joan said, looking around. “I’ll take the stationery out.”
“There it goes!” Labyrinth scrambled to his feet. The shoe had come out, fast. It went across the room, heading for the big chair. Before it could get underneath, Labyrinth caught hold of one of its laces. The shoe pulled and tugged, struggling to get free, but the old Doc had a firm hold of it.
Together we got the shoe into the desk and closed the drawer. We breathed a sigh of relief.
“That’s that,” Labyrinth said. He grinned foolishly at us. “Do you see what this means? We’ve done it, we’ve really done it! The Animator worked. But I wonder why it didn’t work with the button.”
“The button was brass,” I said. “And the shoe was hide and animal glue. A natural. And it was wet.”
We looked toward the drawer. “In that desk,” Labyrinth said, “is the most momentous thing in modern science.”
“The world will shake and shudder,” I finished. “I know. Well, you can consider it yours.” I took hold of Joan’s hand. “I give you the shoe along with your Animator.”
“Fine.” Labyrinth nodded. “Keep watch here, don’t let it get away.” He went to the front door. “I must get the proper people, men who will—”
“Can’t you take it with you?” Joan said nervously.
Labyrinth paused at the door. “You must watch over it. It is proof, proof the Animator works. The Principle of Sufficient Irritation.” He hurried down the walk.
“Well?” Joan said. “What now? Are you really going to stay here and watch over it?”
I looked at my watch. “I have to get to work.”
“Well, I’m not going to watch it. If you leave, I’m leaving with you. I won’t stay here.”
“It should be all right in the drawer,” I said. “I guess we could leave it for a while.”
“I’ll visit my family. I’ll meet you downtown this evening and we can come back home together.”
“Are you really that afraid of it?”
“I don’t like it. There’s something about it.”
“It’s only an old shoe.”
Joan smiled thinly. “Don’t kid me,” she said. “There never was another shoe like this.”
I met her downtown, after work that evening, and we had dinner. We drove home, and I parked the car in the driveway. We walked slowly up the walk.
On the porch Joan paused. “Do we really have to go
inside? Can’t we go to a movie or something?”
“We have to go in. I’m anxious to see how it is. I wonder what we’ll have to feed it.” I unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Something rushed past me, flying down the walk. It disappeared into the bushes.
“What was that?” Joan whispered, stricken.
“I can guess.” I hurried to the desk. Sure enough, the drawer was standing open. The shoe had kicked its way out. “Well, that’s that,” I said. “I wonder what we’re going to tell Doc?”
“Maybe you could catch it again,” Joan said. She closed the front door after us. “Or animate another. Try working on the other shoe, the one that’s left.”
I shook my head. “It didn’t respond. Creation is funny. Some things don’t react. Or maybe we could—”
The telephone rang. We looked at each other. There was something in the ring. “It’s him,” I said. I picked up the receiver.
“This is Labyrinth,” the familiar voice said. “I’ll be over early tomorrow. They’re coming with me. We’ll get photographs and a good write-up. Jenkins from the lab—”
“Look, Doc,” I began.
“I’ll talk later. I have a thousand things to do. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He clicked off.
“Was it the Doctor?” Joan said.
I looked at the empty desk drawer, hanging open. “It was. It was him, all right.” I went to the hall closet, taking my coat off. Suddenly I had an eerie feeling. I stopped, turning around. Something was watching me. But what? I saw nothing. It gave me the creeps.
“What the hell,” I said. I shrugged it off and hung my coat up. As I started back toward the living room I thought I saw something move, out of the corner of my eye.
“Damn,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I looked all around me, but I could not pin anything down. There was the bookcase, the rugs, the pictures on the walls, everything as it always was. But something had moved.
I entered the living room. The Animator was sitting on the table. As I passed it I felt a surge of warmth. The Animator was still on, and the door was open! I snapped the switch off, and the dial light died. Had we left it on all day? I tried to remember, but I couldn’t be sure.
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories Page 34