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In THE EARLY ASIMOV I mentioned the fact that there were eleven stories that I had never succeeded in selling. What’ s more, said I in that book, all eleven stories no longer existed and must remain forever in limbo.

However, Boston University collects all my papers with an assiduity and determination worthy of a far better cause, and when they first began to do so back in 1966, I handed them piles and piles of manuscript material I didn’t look through.

Some eager young fan did, though. Boston University apparently allows the inspection of its literary collections for research purposes, and this young fan, representing himself as a literary historian, I suppose, got access to my files. He came across the faded manuscript of Big Game, a thousand-word short-short which I had listed in THE EARLY ASIMOV as the eleventh and last of my lost rejections.

Having read THE EARLY ASIMOV, the fan recognized the value of the find. He promptly had it reproduced and sent me a copy. And I promptly saw to it that it got into print. It appeared in BEFORE THE GOLDEN AGE.

When I read the manuscript of Big Game, however, I discovered that, in a way, it bad never been lost. I had salvaged it. Back in early 1950, Robert W. Lowndes, then publishing several science fiction magazines for Columbia Publications, and reveling in the science fiction boom of the period, asked me for a story. I must have remembered Big Game, written eight years earlier, for I produced DAY OF THE HUNTERS, which was an expanded version of the earlier story, and Had published it in the November 1950 issue of Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories.

DAY OF THE HUNTERS

It began the same night it ended. It wasn’t much. It just bothered me; it still bothers me.

You see, Joe Bloch, Ray Manning, and I were squatting around our favorite table in the corner bar with an evening on our hands and a mess of chatter to throw it away with. That’s the beginning.

Joe Bloch started it by talking about the atomic bomb, and what he thought ought to be done with it, and how who would have thought it five years ago. And I said lots of guys thought it five years ago and wrote stories about it and it was going to be tough on them trying to keep ahead of the newspapers now. Which led to a general palaver on how lots of screwy things might come true and a lot of for-instances were thrown about.

Ray said he heard from somebody that some big-shot scientist had sent a block of lead back in time for about two seconds or two minutes or two thousandths of a second - he didn’t know which. He said the scientist wasn’t saying anything to anybody because he didn’t think anyone would believe him.

So I asked, pretty sarcastic, how he came to know about it. - Ray may have lots of friends but I have the same lot and none of them know any big-shot scientists. But he said never mind how he heard, take it or leave it.

And then there wasn’t anything to do but talk about time machines, and how supposing you went back and killed your own grandfather or why didn’t somebody from the future come back and tell us who was going to win the next war, or if there was going to be a next war, or if there’d be anywhere on Earth you could live after it, regardless of who wins.

Ray thought just knowing the winner in the seventh race while the sixth was being run would he something.

But Joe decided different. He said, “The trouble with you guys is you got wars and races on the mind. Me, I got curiosity. Know what I’d do if I had a time machine?”

So right away we wanted to know, all ready to give him the old snicker whatever it was.

He said, “If I had one, I’d go back in time about a couple or five or fifty million years and find out what happened to the dinosaurs.”

Which was too bad for Joe, because Ray and I both thought there was just about no sense to that at all. Ray said who cared about a lot of dinosaurs and I said the only thing they were good for was to make a mess of skeletons for guys who were dopy enough to wear out the floors in museums; and it was a good thing they did get out of the way to make room for human beings. Of course Joe said that with some human beings he knew, and he gives us a hard look, we should’ve stuck to dinosaurs, but we pay no attention to that.

“You dumb squirts can laugh and make like you know something, but that’s because you don’t ever have any imagination,” he says. “Those dinosaurs were big stuff. Millions of all kinds - big as houses, and dumb as houses, too - all over the place. And then, all of a sudden, like that,” and he snaps his fingers, “there aren’t any anymore.”

How come, we wanted to know.

But he was just finishing a beer and waving at Charlie for another with a coin to prove he wanted to pay for it and he just shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. That’s what I’d find out, though.”

That’s all. That would have finished it. I would’ve said something and Ray would’ve made a crack, and we all would’ve had another beer and maybe swapped some talk about the weather and the Brooklyn Dodgers and then said so long, and never think of dinosaurs again.

Only we didn’t, and now I never have anything on my mind but dinosaurs, and I feel sick.

Because the rummy at the next table looks up and hollers, “Hey!”

We hadn’t seen him. As a general rule, we don’t go around looking at rummies we don’t know in bars. I got plenty to do keeping track of the rummies I do know. This fellow had a bottle before him that was half empty, and a glass in his hand that was half full.

He said, “Hey,” and we all looked at him, and Ray said, “Ask him what he wants, Joe.”

Joe was nearest. He tipped his chair backward and said, “What do you want?”

The rummy said, “Did I hear you gentlemen mention dinosaurs?”

He was just a little weavy, and his eyes looked like they were bleeding, and you could only tell his shirt was once white by guessing, but it must’ve been the way he talked. It didn’t sound rummy, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, Joe sort of eased up and said, “Sure. Something you want to know?”

He sort of smiled at us. It was a funny smile; it started at the mouth and ended just before it touched the eyes. He said, “Did you want to build a time machine and go back to find out what happened to the dinosaurs?”

I could see Joe was figuring that some kind of confidence game was coming up. I was figuring the same thing. Joe said, “Why? You aiming to offer to build one for me?”

The rummy showed a mess of teeth and said. “No, sir. I could but I won’t. You know why? Because I built a time machine for myself a couple of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what happened to the dinosaurs.”

Later on, I looked up how to spell “Mesozoic,” which is why I got it right. in case you’re wondering, and I found nut that the Mesozoic Era is when a11 the dinosaurs were doing whatever dinosaurs do. Rut of course at the time this is just so much double-talk to me, and mostly I was thinking we had a lunatic talking to us. Joe claimed afterward that he knew about this Mesozoic thing, but he’ll have to talk lots longer and louder before Ray and I believe him.

But that did it just the same. We said to the rummy to come over to our table. I guess I figured we could listen to him for a while and maybe get some of the bottle, and the others must have figured the same. But he held his bottle tight in his right hand when he sat down and that’s where he kept it. it. [sic]

Ray said, “Where’d you build a time machine?”

“At Midwestern University. My daughter and I worked on it together.”

He sounded like a college guy at that.

I said, “Where is it now? In your pocket?”

He didn’t blink; he never jumped at us no matter how wise we cracked. Just kept talking to himself out loud, as if the whiskey had limbered up his tongue and he didn’t care if we stayed or not.

He said, “I broke it up. Didn’t want it. Had enough of it.”

We didn’t believe him. We didn’t believe him worth a darn. You better get that straight. It stands to reason, because if a guy invented a time machine, he could clean up millions - he could clean up all the money in the world, just knowing what would happen to the stock market and the races and elections. He wouldn’t throw a11 that away, I don’t care what reasons he had. - Besides, none of us were going to believe in time travel anyway, because what if you did kill your own grandfather.

Well, never mind.

Joe said, “Yeah, you broke it up. Sure you did. What’s your name?”

But he didn’t answer that one, ever. We asked him a few more times, and then we ended up calling him “Professor.”

He finished off his glass and filled it again very slow. He didn’t offer us any, and we all sucked at our beers.

So I said, “Well, go ahead. What happened to the dinosaurs?”

But he didn’t tell us right away. He stared right at the middle of the table and talked to it.

“I don’t know how many times Carol sent me back - just a few minutes or hours - before I made the big jump. I didn’t care about the dinosaurs; I just wanted to see how far the machine would take me on the supply of power I had available. I suppose it was dangerous, but is life so wonderful? The war was on them - One more life?”

He sort of coddled his glass as if he was thinking about things in general, then he seemed to skip a part in his mind and keep right on going.

“It was sunny,” he said, “sunny and bright; dry and hard. There were no swamps, no ferns. None of the accoutrements of the Cretaceous we associate with dinosaurs,” - anyway, I think that’s what he said. I didn’t always catch the big words, so later on I’ll just stick in what I can remember. I checked all the spellings, and I must say that for all the liquor he put away, he pronounced them without stutters.

That’s maybe what bothered us. He sounded so familiar with everything, and it all just rolled off his tongue like nothing.

He went on, “It was a late age, certainly the Cretaceous. The dinosaurs were already on the way out - all except those little ones, with their metal belts and their guns.”

I guess Joe practically dropped his nose into the beer altogether. He skidded halfway around the glass, when the professor let loose that statement sort of sadlike.

Joe sounded mad. “What little ones, with whose metal belts and which guns?”

The professor looked at him for just a second and then let his eyes slide back to nowhere. “THC were little reptiles, standing four feet high. They stood on their hind legs with a thick tail behind, and they had little forearms with fingers. Around their waists were strapped wide metal belts, and from these hung guns. - And they weren’t guns that shot pellets either; they were energy projectors.”

“They were what’!” I asked. “Say, when was this? Millions of years ago?”

“That’s right,” he said. “They were reptiles. They had scales and no eyelids and they probably laid eggs. But they used energy guns. There were five of them. They were on me as soon as I got out of the machine. There must have been millions of them all over Earth - millions. Scattered all over. They must have been the Lords of Creation then.”

I guess it was then that Ray thought he had him, because he developed that wise look in his eyes that makes you feel like conking him with an empty beer mug, because a full one would waste beer. He said, “Look, P’fessor, millions of them, huh? Aren’t there guys who don’t do anything but find old bones and mess around with them till they figure out what some dinosaur looked like. The museums are full of these here skeletons, aren’t they? Well, where’s there one with a metal belt on him. If there were millions, what’s become of them? Where are the hones?”

The professor sighed. It was a real, sad sigh. Maybe he realized for the first time he was just speaking to three guys in overalls in a barroom. Or maybe he didn’t care.

He said, “You don’t find many fossils. Think how many animals lived on Earth altogether. Think how many billions and trillions. And then think how few fossils we find. - And these lizards were intelligent. Remember that. They’re not going to get caught in snow drifts or mud, or fall into lava, except by big accident. Think how few fossil men there are - even of these subintelligent apemen of a million years ago.”

He looked at his half-full glass and turned it round and round.

He said, “What would fossils show anyway? Metal belts rust away and leave nothing. Those little lizards were warm-blooded. I know that, but you couldn’t prove it from petrified bones. What the devil? A million years from now could you tell what New York looks like from a human skeleton? Could you tell a human from a gorilla by the bones and figure out which one built an atomic bomb and which one ate bananas in a zoo?”

“Hey,” said Joe, plenty objecting, “any simple bum can tell a gorilla skeleton from a man’s. A man’s got a larger brain. Any fool can tell which one was intelligent.”

“Really?” The professor laughed to himself, as if all this was so simple and obvious, it was just a crying shame to waste time on it. “You judge everything from the type of brain human beings have managed to develop. Evolution has different ways of doing things. Birds fly one way; bats Ay another way. Life has plenty of tricks for everything. - How much of your brain do you think you use. About a fifth. That’s what the psychologists say. As far as they know, as far as anybody knows, eighty per cent of your brain has no use at all. Everybody just works on way-low gear, except maybe a few in history. Leonardo da Vinci, for instance. Archimedes, Aristotle, Gauss, Galois, Einstein -”

I never heard of any of them except Einstein, but I didn’t let on. He mentioned a few more, but I’ve put in all I can remember. Then he said, “Those little reptiles had tiny brains, maybe quarter-size, maybe even less, but they used it all - every hit of it. Their hones might not show it, but they were intelligent; intelligent as humans. And they were boss of all Earth.”

And then Joe came up with something that was really good. For a while I was sure that he had the professor and I was awfully glad he came out with it. He said, “Look, P’fessor, if those lizards were so damned hot, why didn’t they leave something behind? Where are their cities and their buildings and all the sort of stuff we keep finding of the cavemen, stone knives and things. Hell, if human beings got the heck off of Earth, think of the stuff we’d leave behind us. You couldn’t walk a mile without falling over a city. And roads and things.”

But the professor just couldn’t he stopped. He wasn’t even shaken up. He just came right back with, “You’re still judging other forms of life by human standards. We build cities and roads and airports and the rest that goes with us - but they didn’t. They were built on a different plan. Their whole way of life was different from the ground up. They didn’t live in cities. They didn’t have our kind of art. I’m not sure what they did have because it was so alien I couldn’t grasp it - except for their guns. Those would be the same. Funny, isn’t it. - For all I know, maybe we stumble over their relics every day and don’t even know that’s what they are.”

I was pretty sick of it by that time. You just couldn’t get him. The cuter you’d be, the cuter he’d be.

I said, “Look here. How do you know so much about those things? What did you do; live with them? Or did they speak English? Or maybe you speak lizard talk. Give us a few words of lizard talk.”

I guess I was getting mad, too. You know how it is. A guy tells you something you don’t believe because it’s all cockeyed, and you can’t get him to admit he’s lying.

But the professor wasn’t mad. He was just filling the glass again, very slowly. “No,” he said, “I didn’t talk and they didn’t talk. They just looked at me with their cold, hard, staring eyes - snake’s eyes - and I knew what they were thinking, and I could see that they knew what I was thinking. Don’t ask me how it happened. It just did. Everything. I knew that they were out on a hunting expedition and I knew they weren’t going to let me go.”

And we stopped asking questions. We just looked at him, then Ray said, “What happened? How did you get away?”

“That was easy. An animal scurried past on the hilltop. It was long - maybe ten feet - and narrow and ran close to the ground. The lizards got excited. I could feel the excitement in waves. It was as if they forgot about me in a single hot flash of blood lust - and off they went. I got back in the machine, returned, and broke it up.”

It was the flattest sort of ending you ever heard. Joe made a noise in his throat. “Well, what happened to the dinosaurs?”

“Oh, you don’t see? I thought it was plain enough. - It was those little intelligent lizards that did it. They were hunters - by instinct and by choice. It was their hobby in life. It wasn’t for food; it was for fun.”

“And they just wiped out all the dinosaurs on the Earth?”

“All that lived at the time, anyway; all the contemporary species. Don’t you think it’s possible? How long did it take us to wipe out bison herds by the hundred million? What happened to the dodo in a few years? Supposing we really put our minds to it, how long would the lions and the tigers and the giraffes last? Why, by the time I saw those lizards there wasn’t any big game left - no reptile more than fifteen feet maybe. All gone. Those little demons were chasing the little, scurrying ones, and probably crying their hearts out for the good old days.”

And we all kept quiet and looked at our empty beer bottles and thought about it. All those dinosaurs - big as houses - killed by little lizards with guns. Killed for fun.

Then Joe leaned over and put his hand on the professor’s shoulder, easylike, and shook it. He said, “Hey, P’fessor, but if that’s so, what happened to the little lizards with the guns? Huh? - Did you ever go back to find out?”

The professor looked up with the kind of look in his eyes that he’d have if he were lost.

“You still don’t see! It was already beginning to happen to them. I saw it in their eyes. They were running out of big game- the fun was going nut of it. So what did you expect them to do? They turned to other game - the biggest and most dangerous of all - and really had fun. They hunted that game to the end.”

“What game?” asked Ray. He didn’t get it, but Joe and I did.

“Themselves,” said the professor in a loud voice. “They finished off all the others and began on themselves - till not one was left.”

And again we stopped and thought about those dinosaurs - big as houses - all finished off by little lizards with guns. Then we thought about the little lizards and how they had to keep the guns going even when there was nothing to use them on but themselves.

Joe said, “Poor dumb lizards.”

“Yeah,” said Ray, “poor crackpot lizards.”

And then what happened really scared us. Because the professor jumped up with eyes that looked as if they were trying to climb right out of their sockets and leap at us. He shouted, “You damned fools. Why do you sit there slobbering over reptiles dead a hundred million years. That was the first intelligence on Earth and that’s how it ended. That’s done. But we’re the second intelligence - and how the devil do you think we’re going to end?”

He pushed the chair over and headed for the door. But then he stood there just before leaving altogether and said: “Poor dumb humanity! Go ahead and cry about that.”

=====

The story, alas, seems to have a moral, and, in fact, ends by pounding that moral over the reader’s head. That is bad. Straightforward preaching spoils the effectiveness of a story. If you can’t resist the impulse to improve your fellow human beings, do it subtly.

Occasionally I overflow and forget this good maxim. DAY OF THE HUNTERS was written not long after the Soviet Union had exploded its first fission bomb. It had been bad enough till then, knowing that the United States might be tempted to use fission bombs if sufficiently irritated (as in 1945). Now, for the first time, the possibility of a real nuclear war, one in which both sides used fission bombs, had arisen.

We’ve grown used to that situation now and scarcely think of it, but in 1950 there were many who thought a nuclear war was inevitable, and in short order, too. I was pretty bitter about that - and the bitterness shows in the story.* [* Mankind's suicide seems now, a quarter century after DAY OF THE HUNTERS was written, to be more likely than ever, but for different reasons.]

DAY OF THE HUNTERS is also told in the framework of a conversation, by the way. This one takes place in a bar. Wodehouse’s stories about Mulliner, the stories set in Gavagan’s Bar by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, and Clarke’s stories about the White Hart were all set in bars, and I’d read them a11 and loved them.

It was inevitable, therefore, that someday I would tell a story in the form of a bar conversation. The only trouble is that I don’t drink and have hardly ever sat in a bar, so I probably have it all wrong.

My stay in Boston quickly proved to be no barrier to my literary career. (In fact, nothing since my concentration on my doctoral research in 1947 has proved to be a barrier.)

After two months in a small sublet apartment (of slum quality) very close to the school, we moved to the suburbs - if you want to call it that. Neither my wife nor I could drive a car when we came to Boston so we had to find a place on the bus lines. We got one in the rather impoverished town of Somerville - an attic apartment of primitive sort that was unbelievably hot in the summer.

There I wrote my second novel, THE STARS, LIKE DUST (Doubleday, 1951), and while there a small, one-man publishing firm, Gnome Press, put out a collection of my positronic robot stories, I, ROBOT, in 1950, and the first portion of my Foundation stories as FOUNDATION in 1951.* [* Gnome Press did not do well with these books or with FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE and SECOND FOUNDATION, which they published in 1951 and 1952. To my great relief, therefore, Doubleday, playing the role of White Knight on my behalf, pressured Gnome Press into relinquishing these books in 1962. Doubleday handled them thereafter and succeeded in earning (and is still continuing to earn) very substantial sums out of all of them for myself and for themselves.]

In 1950 I learned to drive an automobile, and in 1951 we even had a son, rather to our surprise. After nine years of marriage we had rather come to the opinion that we were doomed to he childless. Late in 1950, however, it turned out that the explanation to some rather puzzling physiological manifestations was that my wife was pregnant. The first person to tell me that that must be so, I remember, was Evelyn Gold (she was then Mrs. Horace Gold). I laughed and said, “No, no,” but it was yes, yes, and David was horn on August 20, 1951.

Having thus become prolific in books and having made a start in the direction of automobiles and offspring, I was ready for anything and began to accept all kinds of assignments.

Among the many science fiction magazines of the early 1950s, for instance, there was one called Marvel Science Fiction. It was the reincarnation of an earlier Marvel that had published nine issues between 1938 and 1941. The earlier magazine had specialized in stories that accented sex in a rather heavy-handed and foolish manner.* [* In a very indirect way this eventually led to my writing a story called Playboy and the Slime God which appeared in the March 1961 Amazing stories and was then included in my collection NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES under the much better title What Is This Thing Called Love?

After Marvel was revived in 1950 (it lasted only for another half-dozen issues) I was asked for a story. I might have recalled the unsavory history of the magazine and refused to supply one, but I thought of a story I couldn’t resist writing because, as all who know me are aware, I am an incorrigible punster.* [* I once asked a girl named Dawn if she had ever used one of those penny weighing machines on a trip to Florida she was telling me about. She said, “No. Why?” and I said because there was a song written about it. She said, “What are you talking about?” and I said, “Haven’t you heard ’Weigh Dawn Upon the Swanee river’?” and she chased me for five blocks before I got away.] The story was SHAH GUIDO G. and it appeared in the November 1951 issue of Marvel.

SHAH GUIDO G.

Once every year Philo Plat returned to the scene of his crime. It was a form of penance. On each anniversary he climbed the barren crest and gazed along the miles of smashed metal, concrete, and bones.

The area was desolate. The metal crumplings were still stainless and unrusted, their jagged teeth raised in futile anger. Somewhere among it all were the skeletons of the thousands who had died, of all ages and both sexes. Their skully sightlessness, for all he knew, was turning empty, curse-torn eye holes at him.

The stench had long since gone from the desert, and the lizards held their lairs untroubled. No man approached the fenced-off burial ground where what remained of bodies lay in the gashed crater carved out in that final fall.

Only Plat came. He returned year after year and always, as though to ward off so many Evil Eyes, he took his gold medal with him. It hung suspended bravely from his neck as he stood on the crest. On it was inscribed simply, “To the Liberator!”

This time, Fulton was with him. Fulton had been a Lower One once in the days before the crash; the days when there had been Higher Ones and Lower Ones.

Fulton said, “I am amazed you insist on coming here, Philo.”

Plat said, “I must. You know the sound of the crash was heard for hundreds of miles; seismographs registered it around the world. My ship was almost directly above it; the shock vibrations caught me and flung me miles. Yet all I can remember of sound is that one composite scream as Atlantis began its fall.”

“It had to be done.”

“Words,” sighed Plat. “There were babies and guiltless ones.”

“No one is guiltless.”

“Nor am I. Ought I to have been the executioner?”

“Someone had to be.” Fulton was firm. ’Consider the world now, twenty-five years later. Democracy re-established, education once more universal, culture available for the masses, and science once more advancing. Two expeditions have already landed on Mars.”

“I know. I know. But that, too, was a culture. THC called it Atlantis because it was an island that ruled the world. It was an island in the sky, not the sea. It was a city and a world all at once, Fulton. You never saw its crystal covering and its gorgeous buildings. It was a single jewel carved of stone and metal. It was a dream.”

“It was concentrated happiness distilled out of the little supply distributed to billions of ordinary folk who lived on the Surface.”

“Yes, you are right. Yes, it had to be. But it might have been so different, Fulton. You know,” he seated himself on the hard rock, crossed his arms upon his knees and cradled his chin in them, “I think, sometimes, of how it must have been in the old days, when there were nations and wars upon the Earth. I think of how much a miracle it must have seemed to the peoples when the United Nations first became a real world government, and what Atlantis must have meant to them.

“It was a capital city that governed Earth but was not of it. It was a black disc in the air, capable of appearing anywhere on Earth at any height; belonging to no one nation, but to all the planet; the product of no one nation’s ingenuity but the first great achievement of all the race - and then, what it became!”

Fulton said, “Shall we go? We’ll want to get back to the ship before dark.”

Plat went on, “In a way. I suppose it was inevitable. The human race never did invent an institution that didn’t end as a cancer. Probably in prehistoric times, the medicine man who began as the repository of tribal wisdom ended as the last bar to tribal advance. In ancient Rome, the citizen army -”

Fulton was letting him speak - patiently. It was a queer echo of the past. And there had been other eyes upon him in those days, patiently waiting, while he talked.

“- the citizen army that defended the Romans against all comers from Veii to Carthage, became the professional Praetorian Guard that sold the Imperium and levied tribute on all the Empire. The Turks developed the Janissaries as their invincible advance guard against Europe and the Sultan ended as a slave of his Janissary slaves. The barons of medieval Europe protected the serfs against the Northmen and the Magyars, then remained six hundred years longer as a parasite aristocracy that contributed nothing.”

Plat became aware of the patient eyes and said, “Don’t you understand me?”

One of the bolder technicians said, “With your kind permission, Higher One, we must needs be at work.”

“Yes, I suppose you must.”

The technician felt sorry. This Higher One was queer, but he meant well. Though he spoke a deal of nonsense, he inquired after their families, told them they were fine fellows, and that their work made them better than the Higher Ones.

So he explained, “You see, there is another shipment of granite and steel for the new theater and we will have to shift the energy distribution. It is becoming very hard to do that. The Higher Ones will not listen.”

“Now that’s what I mean. You should make them listen.”

But they just stared at him, and at that moment an idea crawled gently into Plat’s unconscious mind.

Leo Spinney waited for him on the crystal level. He was Plat’s age but taller and much more handsome. Plat’s face was thin, his eyes were china-blue, and he never smiled. Spinney was straight-nosed with brown eyes that seemed to laugh continuously.

Spinney called, “We’ll miss the game.”

“I don’t want to go, Leo. Please.”

Spinney said, “With the technicians again? Why do you waste your time?”

Plat said, “They work. I respect them. What right have we to idle?”

“Ought I to ask questions of the world as it is when it suits me so well’?”

“If you do not, someone will ask questions for you someday.”

“That will be someday, not this day. And, frankly, you had better come. The Sekjen has noticed that you are never present at the games and he doesn’t like it. Personally, I think people have been telling him of your talks to the technicians and your visits to the Surface. He might even think you consort with Lower Ones.”

Spinney laughed heartily, but Plat said nothing. It would not hurt them if they consorted with Lower Ones a bit more, learned something of their thinking. Atlantis had its guns and its battalions of Waves. It might learn someday that that was not enough. Not enough to save the Sekjen.

The Sekjen! Plat wanted to spit. The full title was “Secretary-General of the United Nations.” Two centuries before it had been an elective office; an honorable one. Now a man like Guido Garshthavastra could fill it because he could prove he was the son of his equally worthless father.

“Guido G.” was what the Lower Ones on the Surface called him. And usually, with bitterness, “Shah Guido G.,” because “Shah” had been the title of a line of despotic oriental kings. The Lower Ones knew him for what he was. Plat wanted to tell Spinney that, but it wasn’t time yet.

The real games were held in the upper stratosphere, a hundred miles above Atlantis, though the Sky-Island was itself twenty miles above sea-level. The huge amphitheater was filled and the radiant globe in its center held all eyes. Each tiny one-man cruiser high above was represented by its own particular glowing symbol in the color that belonged to the fleet of which it was part. The little sparks reproduced in exact miniature the motions of the ships.

The game was starting as Plat and Spinney took their seats. The little dots were already flashing toward one another. skimming and missing, veering.

A large scoreboard blazoned the progress of the battle in conventional symbology that Plat did not understand. There was confused cheering for either fleet and for particular ships.

High up under a canopy was the Sekjen, the Shah Guido G. of the Lower Ones. Plat could barely see him but he could make out clearly the smaller replica of the game globe that was there for his private use.

Plat was watching the game for the first time. He understood none of the finer points and wondered at the reason for the particular shouts. Yet he understood that the dots were ships and that the streaks of light that licked out from them on frequent occasions represented energy beams which, one hundred miles above, were as real as flaring atoms could make them. Each time a dot streaked, there was a clamor in the audience that died in a great moan as a target dot veered and escaped.

And then there was a general yell and the audience, men and women up to the Sekjen himself clambered to its feet. One of the shining dots had been hit and was going down - spiraling,, spiraling. A hundred miles above, a real ship was doing the same; plunging down into the thickening air that would heat and consume its specially designed magnesium alloy shell to harmless powdery ash before it could reach the surface of the Earth.

Plat turned away. “I’m leaving, Spinney.”

Spinney was marking his scorecard and saying, “That’s five ships the Greens have lost this week. We’ve got to have more.” He was on his feet, calling wildly, “Another one!”

The audience was taking up the shout, chanting it.

Plat said, “A man died in that ship.”

“You bet. One of the Green’s hest too. Damn good thing.” “Do you realize that a man died.”

“They’re only Lower Ones. What’s bothering you?”

Plat made his slow way out among the rows of people. A few looked at him and whispered. Most had eyes for nothing but the game globe. There was perfume all about him and in the distance, occasionally heard amid the shouts, there was a faint wash of gentle music. As he passed through a main exit, a yell trembled the air behind him.

Plat fought the nausea grimly.

He walked two miles, then stopped.

Steel girders were swaying at the end of diamagnetic beams and the coarse sound of orders yelled in Lower accents filled the air.

There was always building going on upon Atlantis. Two hundred years ago, when Atlantis had been the genuine seat of government, its lines had been straight, its spaces broad. But now it was much more than that. It was the Xanadu pleasure dome that Coleridge spoke of.

The crystal roof had been lifted upward and outward many times in the last two centuries. Each time it had been thickened so that Atlantis might more safely climb higher; more safely withstand the possible blows of meteoric pebbles not yet entirely burnt by the thin wisps of air.

And as Atlantis became more useless and more attractive, more and more of the Higher Ones left their estates and factories in the hands of managers and foremen and took up permanent residence on the Sky-Island. All built larger, higher, more elaborately.

And here was still another structure.

Waves were standing by in stolid, duty-ridden obedience. The name applied to the females - if, Plat thought sourly, they could be called that - was taken from the Early English of the days when Earth was divided into nations. There, too, conversion and degeneration had obtained. The old Waves had done paper work behind the lines. These creatures, still called Waves, were front-line soldiers.

It made sense, Plat knew. Properly trained, women were more single-minded, more fanatic, less given to doubts and remorse than ever men could be.

They always had Waves present at the scene of any building, because the building was done by Lower Ones, and Lower Ones on Atlantis had to he guarded. Just as those on the Surface had to he cowed. In the last fifty years alone, the long-range atomic artillery that studded the underside of Atlantis had been doubled and tripled.

He watched the girder come softly down, two men yelling directions to each other as it settled in place. Soon there would be no further room for new buildings on Atlantis.

The idea that had nudged his unconscious mind earlier in the day gently touched his conscious mind.

Plat’s nostrils flared.

Plat’s nose twitched at the smell of oil and machinery. More than most of the perfume-spoiled Higher Ones, he was used to odors of all sorts. He had been on the Surface and smelled the pungence of its growing fields and the fumes of its cities.

He said to the technician, “I am seriously thinking of building a new house and would like your advice as to the best possible location.”

The technician was amazed and electrified. “Thank you, Higher One. It has become so difficult to arrange the available power.”

“It is why l come to you.”

They talked at length, Plat asked a great many questions and when he returned to crystal level his mind was a maze of speculation. Two days passed in an agony of doubt. Then he remembered the shining dot, spiraling and spiraling, and the young, wondering eyes upon his own as Spinnev said, “They’re only Lower Ones.”

He made up his mind and applied for audience with the Sekjen.

The Sekjen’s drawling voice accentuated the boredom he did not care to hide. He said. “The Plats are of good family, yet you amuse yourself with technicians. I am told you speak to them as equals. I hope that it will not become necessary to remind you that your estates on the Surface require your care.”

That would have meant exile from Atlantis, of course.

Plat said, “It is necessary to watch the technicians, Sire. They are of Lower extraction.”

The Sekjen frowned. “Our Wave Commander has her job she takes care of such matters.”

“She docs her best, I have no doubt, Sire, but I have made friends with the technicians. They are not safe. Would I have any other reason to soil my hands with them, but the safety of Atlantis.”

The Sekjen listened. First, doubtfully; then, with fear on his soft face. He said, “I shall have them in custody -”

“Softly, Sire,” said Plat. “We cannot do without them meanwhile, since none of us can man the guns and the antigravs. It would be better to give them no opportunity for rebellion. In two weeks the new theater will be dedicated with games and feasting.”

“And what do they intend then?” “I am not yet certain, Sire. But I know enough to recommend that a division of Waves be brought to Atlantis. Secretly, of course, and at the last minute so that it will be too late for the rebels to change any plans they have made. They will have to drop them altogether, and the proper moment, once lost, may never be regained. Thereafter, I will learn more. If necessary, we will train new men. It would be a pity, Sire, to tell anyone of this in advance. If the technicians learn our countermeasures prematurely, matters may go badly.”

The Sekjen, with his jeweled hand to his chin, mused - and believed.

Shah Guido G., thought Philo Plat. In history, you’ll go down as Shah Guido G.

Philo Plat watched the gaiety from a distance. Atlantis’s central squares were crawling black with people. That was good. He himself had managed to get away only with difficulty. And none too soon, since the Wave Division had already cross-hatched the sky with their ships.

They were maneuvering edgily now, adjusting themselves into final position over Atlantis’s huge, raised air field, which was well able to take their ships all at once.

The cruisers were descending now vertically, in parade formation. Plat looked quickly toward the city proper. The populace had grown quieter as they watched the unscheduled demonstration, and it seemed to him that he had never seen so many Higher Ones upon the Sky-Island at one time. For a moment, a last misgiving arose. There was still time for a warning.

And even as he thought that he knew that there wasn’t. The cruisers were dropping speedily. He would have to go hurry if he were himself to escape in his own little craft. He wondered sickly, even as he grasped the controls, whether his friends on the Surface had received his yesterday’s warning, or would believe it if they had received it. If they could not act quickly the Higher Ones would yet recover from the first blow, devastating though it was.

He was in the air when the Waves landed, seven thousand five hundred tear-drop ships covering the airfield like a descending net. Plat drove his ship upward, watching -

And Atlantis went dark. It was like a candle over which a mighty hand was suddenly cupped. One moment it blazed the night into brilliance for fifty miles around; the next it was black against blackness.

To Plat the thousands of screams blended into one thin, lost shriek of fear. He Red, and the shock vibrations of Atlantis’s crash to Earth caught his ship and hurled it far.

He never stopped hearing that scream.

Fulton was staring at Plat. He said, “Have you ever told this to anyone?”

Plat shook his head.

Fulton’s mind went back a quarter century, too. “We got your message, of course. It was hard to believe, as you expected. Many feared a trap even after report of the Fall arrived. But - well, it’s history. The Higher Ones that remained, those on the Surface, were demoralized and before they could recover, they were done.

“But tell me,” he turned to Plat with sudden, hard curiosity. “What was it you did’! We’ve always assumed you sabotaged the power stations.”

“I know. The truth is so much less romantic, Fulton. The world would prefer to believe its myth. Let it.”

“May I have the truth?”

“If you will. As I told you, the Higher Ones built and built to saturation. The antigrav energy beams had to support a weight in buildings, guns, and enclosing shell that doubled and tripled as the years went on. Any requests the technicians might have made for newer or bigger motors were turned down, since the Higher Ones would rather have the room and money for their mansions and there was always enough power for the moment.

“The technicians, as I said, had already reached the stage where they were disturbed at the construction of single buildings. I questioned them and found exactly how little margin of safety remained. They were waiting only for the completion of the new theater to make a new request. They did not realize, however, that, at my suggestion, Atlantis would be called upon to support the sudden additional burden of a division of Wave cavalry in their ships. Seven thousand five hundred ships, fully rigged!

“When the Waves landed, by then almost two thousand tons, the antigrav power supply was overloaded. The motors failed and Atlantis was only a vast rock, ten miles above the ground. What could such a rock do but fall.”

Plat arose. Together they turned back toward their ship.

Fulton laughed harshly. “You know, there is a fatality in names.” “What do you mean?”

“Why, that once more in history Atlantis sank beneath the Waves.”

=====

Now that you’ve read the story, you’ll notice that the whole thing is for the purpose of that final lousy pun, right? In fact, one person came up to me and, in tones of deep disgust, said, “Why, SHAH GUIDO G. is nothing but a shaggy-dog story.”

“Right,” I said, “and if you divide the title into two parts instead of three, you get SHAHGUI DOG, so don’t you think I know it?”

In other words, the title is a pun, too.

With David on his way, we obviously couldn’t remain in that impossible Somerville apartment. Since I could now drive a car, we were no longer bound to the bus lines and could look farther afield. In the spring of 1951 we moved into an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts, therefore. It was a great improvement over the earlier apartment, though it, too, was pretty hot in the summer.

There were two very small built-in bookcases in the living room of the apartment and I began using that for a collection of my own books in chronological order. I got up to seventeen books while I was in that apartment. When my biochemistry textbook came out in 1952 I placed it with the rest in its proper order. It received no preferential treatment. I saw no way in which a scientific textbook could lay claim to greater respectability than a science fiction novel.

If I had ambitions, in fact, it was not toward respectability. I kept wanting to write funny material.

Humor is a funny thing, however -

All right, humor is a peculiar thing, if you have a prejudice against a witty play on words. There is no way of being almost funny or mildly funny or fairly funny or tolerably funny. You are either funny or not funny and there is nothing in between. And usually it is the writer who thinks he is funny and the reader who thinks he isn’t.

Naturally, then, humor isn’t something a man should lightly undertake; especially in the early days of his career when he has not yet learned to handle his tools. - And yet almost every beginning writer tries his hand at humor, convinced that it is an easy thing to do.

I was no exception. By the time I had written and submitted four stories, and had, as yet, sold none, I already felt it was time to write a funny story. I did. It was Ring Around the Sun, something I actually managed to sell and which was eventually included in THE EARLY ASIMOV.

I didn’t think it was successfully funny even at the time it was written. Nor did I think several other funny stories I tried my hand at, such as Christmas on Ganymede (also in THE EARLY ASIMOV) and Robot AL-76 Goes Astray (included in THE REST OF THE ROBOTS, Doubleday, 1964) were really funny.

It wasn’t till 1952 that (in my own mind only; I say nothing about yours) I succeeded. I wrote two stories, BUTTON, BUTTON and THE MONKEY’S FINGER, in which I definitely thought I had managed to do it right. I was giggling all the way through each one, and I managed to unload both on Startling Stories, where they appeared in successive issues, BUTTON, BUTTON in the January 1953 issue and THE MONKEY’S FINGER in the February 1953 issue.

And, Gentle Reader, if you don’t think they’re funny, do your best not to tell me so. Leave me to my illusions.

BUTTON, BUTTON

It was the tuxedo that fooled me and for two seconds I didn’t recognize him. To me, he was just a possible client, the first that had whiffed my way in a week - and he looked beautiful.

Even wearing a tuxedo at 9:45 A.M. he looked beautiful. Six inches of bony wrist and ten inches of knobby hand continued on where his sleeve left off; the top of his socks and the bottom of his trousers did not quite join forces; still he looked beautiful.

Then I looked at his face and it wasn’t a client at all. It was my uncle Otto. Beauty ended. As usual, my uncle Otto’s face looked like that of a bloodhound that had just been kicked in the rump by his best friend.

I wasn’t very original in my reaction. I said, “Uncle Otto!”

You’d know him too, if you saw that face. When he was featured on the cover of Time about five years ago (it was either ’57 or ’58), 204 readers by count wrote in to say that they would never forget that face. Most added comments concerning nightmares. If you want my uncle Otto’s full name, it’s Otto Schlemmelmayer. But don’t jump to conclusions. He’s my mother’s brother. My own name is Smith.

He said, “Harry, my boy,” and groaned.

Interesting, but not enlightening. I said, “Why the tuxedo?”

He said, “It’s rented.”

“All right. But why do you wear it in the morning?”

“Is it morning already?” He stared vaguely about him, then went to the window and looked out.

That’s my uncle Otto Schlemmelmayer. I assured him it was morning and with an effort he deduced that he must have been walking the city streets all night.

He took a handful of fingers away from his forehead to say, “But I was so upset, Harry. At the banquet -”

The fingers waved about for a minute and then folded into a quart of fist that came down and pounded holes in my desk top. “But it’s the end. From now on 1 do things my own way.”

My uncle Otto had been saying that since the business of the “Schlemmelmayer Effect” first started up. Maybe that surprises you. Maybe you think it was the Schlemmelmayer Effect that made my uncle Otto famous. Well, it’s all how you look at it.

He discovered the Effect back in 1952 and the chances are that you know as much about it as I do. In a nutshell, he devised a germanium relay of such a nature as to respond to thoughtwaves, or anyway to the electromagnetic fields of the brain cells. He worked for years to build such a delay into a flute, so that it would play music under the pressure of nothing but thought. It was his love, his life, it was to revolutionize music. Everyone would be able to play; no skill necessary - only thought.

Then, five years ago, this young fellow at Consolidated Arms, Stephen Wheland, modified the Schlemmelmayer Effect and reversed it. He devised a field of supersonic waves that could activate the brain via a germanium relay, fry it, and kill a rat at twenty feet. Also, they found out later, men.

After that, Wheland got a bonus of ten thousand dollars and a promotion, while the major stockholders of Consolidated Arms proceeded to make millions when the government bought the patents and placed its orders.

My uncle Otto? He made the cover of Time.

After that, everyone who was close to him, say within a few miles, knew he had a grievance. Some thought it was the fact that he had received no money; others, that his great discovery had been made an instrument of war and killing.

Nuts! It was his flute! That was the real tack on the chair of his life. Poor Uncle Otto. He loved his flute. He carried it with him always, ready to demonstrate. It reposed in its special case on the back of his chair when he ate, and at the head of his bed when he slept. Sunday mornings in the university physics laboratories were made hideous by the sounds of my uncle Otto’s flute, under imperfect mental control, flatting its way through some tearful German folk song.

The trouble was that no manufacturer would touch it. As soon as its existence was unveiled, the musicians’ union threatened to silence every demiquaver in the land; the various entertainment industries called their lobbyists to attention and marked them off in brigades for instant action; and even old Pietro Faranini stuck his baton behind his ear and made fervent statements to the newspapers about the impending death of art.

Uncle Otto never recovered.

He was saying, “Yesterday were my final hopes. Consolidated informs me they will in my honor a banquet give. Who knows, I say to myself. Maybe they will my flute buy.” Under stress, my uncle Otto’s word order tends to shift from English to Germanic.

The picture intrigued me.

“What an idea,” I said. “A thousand giant flutes secreted in key spots in enemy territories blaring out singing commercials just flat enough to -”

“Quiet! Quiet!” My uncle Otto brought down the flat of his hand on my desk like n pistol shot, and the plastic calendar jumped in fright and fell down dead. “From you also mockery? Where is your respect?”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Otto.”

“Then listen. I attended the banquet and they made speeches about the Schlemmelmayer Effect and how it harnessed the power of mind. Then when I thought they would announce they would my flute buy, they give me this!”

He took out what looked like a two-thousand-dollar gold piece and threw it at me. I ducked.

Had it hit the window, it would have gone through and brained a pedestrian, but it hit the wall. I picked it up. You could tell by the weight that it was only gold plated. On one side it said: “The Elias Hancroft Sudford Award” in big letters, and “to Dr. Otto Schlemmelmayer for his contributions to science” in small letters. On the other side was a profile, obviously not of my uncle Otto. In fact, it didn’t look like any breed of dog; more like a pig.

“That,” said my uncle Otto, “is Elias Bancroft Sudford, chairman of Consolidated Arms!”

He went on, “So when I saw that was all, I got up and very politely said: ’Gentlemen, dead drop!’ and walked out.”

“Then you walked the streets all night.” I filled in for him, “and came here without even changing your clothes. You’re still in your tuxedo.”

My uncle Otto stretched out an arm and looked at its covering. “A tuxedo?” he said.

“A tuxedo!” I said.

His long, jowled checks turned blotchy red and he roared, “I come here on something of first-rate importance and you insist on about nothing but tuxedos talking. My own nephew!”

I let the fire burn out. My uncle Otto is the brilliant one in the family, so except for trying to keep him from falling into sewers and walking out of windows, we morons try not to bother him.

I said, “And what can I do for you, Uncle?”

I tried to make it sound businesslike; I tried to introduce the lawyer-client relationship.

He waited impressively and said, “I need money.”

He had come to the wrong place. I said, “Uncle, right now I don’t have -”

“Not from you,” he said.

I felt better.

He said, “There is a new Schlemmelmayer Effect; a better one. This one I do not in scientific journals publish. My big mouth shut I keep. It entirely my own is.” He was leading a phantom orchestra with his bony fist as he spoke.

“From this new Effect,” he went on, “I will make money and my own flute factory open.”

“Good,” I said, thinking of the factory and lying.

“But I don’t know how.”

“Bad,” I said. thinking of the factory and lying.

“The trouble is my mind is brilliant. I can conceive concepts beyond ordinary people. Only, Harry, I can’t conceive ways of making money. It’s a talent I do not have.”

“Bad,” I said, not lying at all.

“So I come to you as a lawyer.”

I sniggered a little deprecating snigger.

“I come to you,” he went on, “to make you help me with your crooked, lying, sneaking, dishonest lawyer’s brain.”

I filed the remark, mentally, under unexpected compliments and said, “I love you, too, Uncle Otto.”

He must have sensed the sarcasm because he turned purple with rage and yelled, “Don’t be touchy. Be like me, patient, understanding, and easygoing, lumphead. Who says anything about you as a man? As a man, you are an honest dunderkopf, but as a lawyer, you have to be a crook. Everyone knows that.”

I sighed. The Bar Association warned me there would be days like this.

“What’s your new Effect, Uncle Otto?” I asked.

He said, “I can reach back into Time and bring things out of the past.”

I acted quickly. With my left hand I snatched my watch out of the lower left vest pocket and consulted it with all the anxiety I could work up. With my right hand I reached for the telephone.

“Well, Uncle,” I said heartily, “I just remembered an extremely important appointment I’m already hours late for. Always glad to see you. And now, I’m afraid I must say good-bye. Yes, sir, seeing you has been a pleasure, a real pleasure. Well, good-bye. Yes, sir -”

I failed to lift the telephone out of its cradle. I was pulling up all right, but my uncle Otto’s hand was on mine and pushing down. It was no contest. Have I said my uncle Otto was once on the Heidelberg wrestling team in ’32?

He took hold of my elbow gently (for him) and I was standing. It was a great saving of muscular effort (for me).

“Let’s” he said, “to my laboratory go.”

He to his laboratory went. And since I had neither the knife nor the inclination to cut my left arm off at the shoulder, I to his laboratory went also....

My uncle Otto’s laboratory is down a corridor and around a corner in one of the university buildings. Ever since the Schlemmelmayer Effect had turned out to be a big thing, he had been relieved of all course work and left entirely to himself. His laboratory looked it.

I said, “Don’t you keep the door locked anymore?”

He looked at me slyly, his huge nose wrinkling into a sniff. “It is locked. With a Schlemmelmayer relay, it’s locked. I think a word - and the door opens. Without it, nobody can get in. Not even the president of the university. Not even the janitor.”

I got a little excited, “Great guns, Uncle Otto. A thought-lock could bring you -”

“Hah! I should sell the patent for someone else rich to get? After last night? Never. In a while, I will myself rich become.”

One thing about my uncle Otto. He’s not one of these fellows you have to argue and argue with before you can get him to see the light. You know in advance he’ll never see the light.

So I changed the subject. I said, “And the time machine?”

My uncle Otto is a foot taller than I am, thirty pounds heavier, and strong as an ox. When he puts his hands around my throat and shakes, I have to confine my own part in the conflict to turning blue.

I turned blue accordingly.

He said. “Ssh!”

I got the idea.

He let go and said, “Nobody knows about Project X.” He repeated, heavily, “Project X. You understand?”

I nodded. I couldn’t speak anyway with a larynx that was only slowly healing.

He said, “I do not ask you to take my word for it. I will for you a demonstration make.”

I tried to stay near the door.

He said, “Do you have a piece of paper with your own handwriting on it?”

I fumbled in my inner jacket pocket. I had notes for a possible brief for a possible client on some possible future day.

Uncle Otto said, “Don’t show it to me. Just tear it up. In little pieces tear it up and in this beaker the fragments put.”

I tore it into one hundred and twenty-eight pieces.

He considered them thoughtfully and began adjusting knobs on a - well, on a machine. It had a thick opal-glass slab attached to it that looked like a dentist’s tray.

There was a wait. He kept adjusting.

Then he said, “Aha!” and I made a sort of queer sound that doesn’t translate into letters.

About two inches above the glass tray there was what seemed to be a fuzzy piece of paper. It came into focus while I watched and - oh, well, why make a big thing out of it? It was my notes. My handwriting. Perfectly legible. Perfectly legitimate.

“Is it all right to touch it?” I was a little hoarse, partly out of astonishment and partly because of my uncle Otto’s gentle ways of enforcing secrecy.

“You can’t,” he said, and passed his hand through it. The paper remained behind, untouched. He said, “It’s only an image at one focus of a four-dimensional paraboloid. The other focus is at a point in time before you tore it up.”

I put my hand through it, too. I didn’t feel a thing.

“Now watch,” he said. He turned a knob on the machine and the image of the paper vanished. Then he took out a pinch of paper from the pile of scrap, dropped them in an ashtray, and set a match to it. He flushed the ash down the sink. He turned a knob again and the paper appeared, but with a difference. Ragged patches in it were missing.

“The burned pieces?” I asked.

“Exactly. The machine must trace in time along the hypervectors of the molecules on which it is focused. If certain molecules are in the air dispersed - pff-f-ft!”

I had an idea. “Suppose you just had the ash of a document.”

“Only those molecules would be traced back.”

“But they’d be so well distributed,” I pointed out, “that you could get a hazy picture of the entire document.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

The idea became more exciting. “Well, then, look, Uncle Otto. Do you know how much police departments would pay for a machine like this. It would be a boon to the legal -”

I stopped. I didn’t like the way he was stiffening. I said, politely, “You were saying, Uncle?”

He was remarkably calm about it. He spoke in scarcely more than a shout. “Once and for all, nephew. All my inventions I will myself from now on develop. First I must some initial capital obtain. Capital from some source other than my ideas selling. After that, I will for my flutes a factory to manufacture open. That comes first. Afterward, afterward, with my profits I can time-vector machinery manufacture. But first my flutes. Before anything, my flutes. Last night, I so swore.

“Through selfishness of a few the world of great music is being deprived. Shall my name in history as a murderer go down? Shall the Schlemmelmayer Effect a way to fry men’s brains he? Or shall it beautiful music to mind bring? Great, wonderful, enduring music?”

He had a hand raised oracularly and the other behind his hack. The windows gave out a shrill hum as they vibrated to his words.

I said quickly, “Uncle Otto, they’ll hear you.”

“Then stop shouting,” he retorted.

“But look,” I protested, “how do you plan to get your initial capital, if you won’t exploit this machinery?”

“I haven’t told you. I can make an image real. What if the image is valuable?”

That did sound good. “You mean, like some lost document, manuscript, first edition - things like that?”

“Well, no. There’s a catch. Two catches. Three catches.”

I waited for him to stop counting, but three seemed the limit. “What are they?” I asked.

He said, “First, I must have the object in the present to focus on or I can’t locate it in the past.”

“You mean you can’t get anything that doesn’t exist right now where you can see it?”

“Yes.”

“In that case, catches two and three are purely academic. But what are they, anyway?”

“I can only remove about a gram of material from the past.”

A gram! A thirtieth of an ounce!

“What’s the matter? Not enough power?”

My uncle Otto said impatiently, “It’s an inverse exponential relationship. All the power in the universe more than maybe two grams couldn’t bring.”

This left things cloudy. I said, “The third catch?”

“Well.” He hesitated. “The further the two foci separated are, the more flexible the bond. It must a certain length be before into the present it can he drawn. In other words, I must at least one hundred fifty years into the past go.”

“I see,” I said (not that I really did). “Let’s summarize.”

I tried to sound like a lawyer. “You want to bring something from the past out of which you can coin a little capital. It’s got to he something that exists and which you can see, so it can’t be a lost object of historical or archaeological value. It’s got to weigh less than a thirtieth of an ounce, so it can’t he the Kullinan diamond or anything like that. It’s got to be at least one hundred and fifty years old, so it can’t be a rare stamp.”

“Exactly,” said my uncle Otto. “You’ve got it.”

“Got what?” I thought two seconds. “Can’t think of a thing,” I said. “Well, good-bye, Uncle Otto.”

I didn’t think it would work, but I tried to go.

It didn’t work. My uncle Otto’s hands came down on my shoulders and I was standing tiptoe on an inch of air.

“You’ll wrinkle my jacket, Uncle Otto.”

“Harold,” he said. “As a lawyer to a client, you owe me more than a quick good-bye.”

“I didn’t take a retainer,” I managed to gargle. My shirt collar was beginning to fit very tightly about my neck. I tried to swallow and the top button pinged off.

He reasoned, “Between relatives a retainer is a formality. As a client and as an uncle, you owe me absolute loyalty. And besides, if you do not help me out I will tie your legs behind your neck and dribble you like a basketball.”

Well, as a lawyer, I am always susceptible to logic. I said, “I give up. I surrender. You win.”

He let me drop. And then - this is the part that seems most unbelievable to me when I look back at it all - I got an idea.

It was a whale of an idea. A piperoo. The one in a lifetime that everyone gets once in a lifetime.

I didn’t tell Uncle Otto the whole thing at the time. I wanted a few days to think about it. But I told him what to do. I told him he would have to go to Washington. It wasn’t easy to argue him into it, but, on the other hand, if you know my uncle Otto, there are ways.

I found two ten-dollar bills lurking pitifully in my wallet and gave them to him.

I said, “I’ll make out a check for the train fare and you can keep the two tens if it turns out I’m being dishonest with you.”

He considered. “A fool to risk twenty dollars for nothing you aren’t,” he admitted. He was right, too....

He was back in two days and pronounced the object focused. After all, it was on public view. It’s in a nitrogen-filled, air-tight case, but my uncle Otto said that didn’t matter. And back in the laboratory, four hundred miles away. the focusing remained accurate. My uncle Otto assured me of that, too.

I said, “Two things, Uncle Otto, before we do anything.”

“What? What? What?” He went on at greater length, “What? What? What? What”

I gathered he was growing anxious. I said, “Are you sure that if we bring into the present a piece of something out of the past, that piece won’t disappear out of the object as it now exists?”

My uncle Otto cracked his large knuckles and said, “We are creating new matter, not stealing old. Why else should we enormous energy need?”

I passed on to the second point. “What about my fee?” You may not believe this, but I hadn’t mentioned money till then. My uncle Otto hadn’t either, but then, that follows.

His mouth stretched in a bad imitation of an affectionate smile. “A fee?”

“Ten per cent of the take,” I explained, “is what I’ll need.”

His jowls drooped. “But how much is the take?”

“Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. That would leave you ninety.”

“Ninety thousand - Himmel! Then why do we wait?”

He leaped at his machine and in half a minute the space above the dentist’s tray was agleam with an image of parchment.

It was covered with neat script, closely spaced, looking like an entry for an old-fashioned penmanship prize. At the bottom of the sheet there were names: one large one and fifty-five small ones.

Funny thing! I choked up. I had seen many reproductions, but this was the real thing. The real Declaration of Independence!

I said, “I’ll be damned. You did it.”

“And the hundred thousand?” asked my uncle Otto, getting to the point.

Now was the time to explain. “You see, Uncle, at the bottom of the document there are signatures. These are the names of great Americans, fathers of their country, whom we all reverence. Anything about them is of interest to all true Americans.”

“All right,” grumbled my uncle Otto, “I will accompany you by playing the ’Stars and Stripes Forever’ on my flute.”

I laughed quickly to show that I took that remark as a joke. The alternative to a joke would not hear thinking of. Have you ever heard my uncle Otto playing the “Stars and Stripes Forever” on his flute?

I said, “But one of these signers, from the state of Georgia, died in 1777, the year after he signed the Declaration. He didn’t have much behind him and so authentic examples of his signature was about the most valuable in the world. His name was Button Gwinnett.”

“And how does this help us cash in?” asked my uncle Otto, his mind still fixed grimly on the eternal verities of the universe.

“Here,” I said, simply, “is an authentic, real-life signature of Button Gwinnett, right on the Declaration of Independence.”

My uncle Otto was stunned into absolute silence, and to bring absolute silence out of my uncle Otto, he’s really got to be stunned!

I said, “Now you see him right here on the extreme left of the signature space along with the two other signers for Georgia, Lyman Hall and George Walton. You’ll notice they crowded their names although there’s plenty of room above and below. In fact, the capital G of Gwinnett runs down into practical contact with Hall’s name. So we won’t try to separate them. We’ll get them all. Can you handle that?”

Have you ever seen a bloodhound that looked happy? Well, my uncle Otto managed it.

A spot of brighter light centered about the names of the three Georgian signers.

My uncle Otto said, a little breathlessly, “I have this never tried before.”

“What!” I screamed. Now he told me.

“It would have too much energy required. I did not wish the university to inquire what was in here going on. But don’t worry! My mathematics cannot wrong be.”

I prayed silently that his mathematics not wrong were.

The light grew brighter and there was a humming that filled the laboratory with raucous noise. My uncle Otto turned a knob, then another, then a third.

Do you remember the time a few weeks back when all of upper Manhattan and the Bronx were without electricity for twelve hours because of the damndest overload cut-off in the main power house? I won’t say we did that, because I am in no mood to be sued for damages. But I will say this: The electricity went off when my uncle Otto turned the third knob.

Inside the lab, all the lights went nut and I found my self on the floor with a terrific ringing in my ears. My uncle Otto was sprawled across me.

We worked each other to our feet and my uncle Otto found a flashlight.

He howled his anguish. “Fused. Fused. My machine in ruins is. It has to destruction devoted been.”

“But the signatures?” I yelled at him. “Did you get them?”

He stopped in mid-cry. “I haven’t looked.”

He looked, and I closed my eyes. The disappearance of a hundred thousand dollars is not an easy thing to watch.

He cried, “Ah, ha!” and I opened my eyes quickly. He had a square of parchment in his hand some two inches on a side. It had three signatures on it and the top one was that of Rutton Gwinnett.

Now, mind you, the signature was absolutely genuine. It was no fake. There wasn’t an atom of fraud about the whole transaction. I want that understood. Lying on my uncle Otto’s broad hand was a signature indited with the Georgian hand of Rutton Gwinnett himself on the authentic parchment of the honest-to-God, real-life Declaration of Independence.

It was decided that my uncle Otto would travel down to Washington with the parchment scrap. I was unsatisfactory for the purpose. I was a lawyer. I would be expected to know too much. He was merely a scientific genius, and wasn’t expected to know anything. Besides, who could suspect Dr. Otto Schlemmelmayer of anything but the most transparent honesty.

We spent a week arranging our story. I bought a book for the occasion, an old history of colonial Georgia, in a secondhand shop. My uncle Otto was to take it with him and claim that he had found a document among its leaves; a letter to the Continental Congress in the name of the state of Georgia. He shrugged his shoulders at it and held it out over a Bunsen flame. Why should a physicist be interested in letters? Then he became aware of the peculiar odor it gave off as it burned and the slowness with which it was consumed. He beat out the flames but saved only the piece with the signatures. He looked at it and the name Button Gwinnett had stirred a slight fiber of memory.

He had the story cold. I burnt the edges of the parchment so that the lowest name, that of George Walton, was slightly singed.

“It will make it more realistic,” I explained. “Of course, a signature, without a letter above it, loses value, but here we have three signatures, all signers.

My uncle Otto was thoughtful. “And if they compare the signatures with those on the Declaration and notice it is all even microscopically the same, won’t they fraud suspect?”

Certainly. But what can they do? The parchment is authentic. The ink is authentic. The signatures are authentic. They’ll have to concede that. No matter how they suspect something queer, they can’t prove anything. Can they conceive of reaching through time for it? In fact, I hope they do try to make a fuss about it. The publicity will boost the price.”

The last phrase made my uncle Otto laugh.

The next day he took the train to Washington with visions of flutes in his head. Long flutes, short flutes, bass flutes, flute tremolos, massive flutes, micro flutes, flutes for the individual and flutes for the orchestra. A world of flutes for mind-drawn music.

“Remember,” his last words were, “the machine I have no money to rebuild. This must work.”

And I said, “Uncle Otto, it can’t miss.”

Ha!

He was back in a week. I had made long-distance calls each day and each day he told me they were investigating.

Investigating.

Well, wouldn’t you investigate? But what good would it do them?

I was at the station waiting for him. He was expressionless. I didn’t dare ask anything in public. I wanted to say, “Well, yes or no?” but I thought, let him speak.

I took him to my office. I offered him a cigar and a drink. I hid my hands under the desk but that only made the desk shake too, so I put them in my pocket and shook all over.

He said, “They investigated.”

“Sure! I told you they would. Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha?”

My uncle Otto took a slow drag at the cigar. He said, “The man at the Bureau of Documents came to me and said, ’Professor Schlemmelmayer,’ he said, ’you are the victim of a clever fraud.’ I said, ’So? And how can it a fraud be? The signature a forgery is?’ So he answered, ’It certainly doesn’t look like a forgery, but it must be!’ ’And why must it be?’ I asked.”

My uncle Otto put down his cigar, put down his drink, and leaned across the desk toward me. He had me so in suspense, I leaned forward toward him, so in a way I deserved everything I got.

“Exactly,” I babbled, “why must it be? They can’t prove a thing wrong with it, because it’s genuine. Why must it he a fraud, eh? Why”

My uncle Otto’s voice was terrifyingly saccharine. He said, “We got the parchment from the past?”

“Yes. Yes. You know we did.” “Over a hundred fifty years in the past. You said -”

“And a hundred fifty years ago the parchment on which the Declaration of Independence was written pretty new was. No?”

I was beginning to get it, but not fast enough.

My uncle Otto’s voice switched gears and became a dull, throbbing roar, “And if Button Gwinnett in 1777 died, you Godforsaken dunderlump, how can an authentic signature of his on a new piece of parchment be found?”

After that it was just a case of the whole world rushing backward and forward about me.

I expect to be on my feet soon. I still ache, but the doctors tell me no bones were broken.

Still, my uncle Otto didn’t have to make me swallow the damned parchment.

=====

If I had hoped to be recognized as a master of humor as a result of these stories, I think I failed.

L. Sprague de Camp, one of the most successful writers of humorous science fiction and fantasy, had this to say about me in his science Fiction Handbook (Hermitage House, 1953), which, as you see, appeared not long after these (in my opinion) successful forays into humor:

“Asimov is a stoutish, youngish-looking man with wavy brown hair, blue eyes, and a bouncing, jovial, effervescent manner, esteemed among his friends for his generous, warm-hearted nature. Extremely sociable, articulate, and witty, he is a perfect toastmaster. This vein of oral humor contrasts with the sobriety of his stories.”

Sobriety!

On the other hand, twelves [sic] years later, Groff Conklin included BUTTON, BUTTON, in his anthology 13 Above the Niqht (Dell, 1965) and he said, in part, “When the Good Doctor... decides to take a day off and be funny, he can be very funny indeed....”

Now, although Groff and Sprague were both very dear friends of mine (Groff is now dead, alas), there is no question but that in this particular case I think Groff shows good taste and Sprague is nowhere.

Incidentally, before I pass on I had better explain that “generous, warm-hearted nature” crack by Sprague, which may puzzle those who know me as a vicious, rotten brute.

Sprague’s prejudice in my favor is, I think, all based on a single incident.

It was back in 1942, when Sprague and I were working at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It was wartime and we needed badges to get in. Anyone who forgot his badge had to buck the bureaucracy for an hour to get a temporary, was docked an hour’s pay, and had the heinous misdeed entered on his record.

As we walked up to the gate on this particular day Sprague turned a pastel shade of green and said. “I forgot my badge!” He was up for a lieutenancy in the Navy and he was afraid that even a slight flaw in his civilian record might have an adverse effect on the whole thing.

Well, I wasn’t up for anything at all, and I was so used to being sent to the principal’s office during my school days that being yelled at by the authorities had no terrors for me.

So I handed him my badge and said, “Go in, Sprague, and pin this on your lapel. They’ll never look at it.” He went in, and they didn’t, and I reported myself as having forgotten my badge and took my lumps.

Sprague has never forgotten. To this day, he goes around telling people what a great guy I am, despite the fact that everyone just stares at him in disbelief. That one impulsive action has given rise to a lifetime of fervent pro-Asimov propaganda. Cast your bread upon the waters-

But, let’s move onward.

THE MONKEY'S FINGER

“Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes,” said Marmie Tallinn, in sixteen different inflections and pitches, while the Adam's apple in his long neck bobbed convulsively. He was a science fiction writer.

“No,” said Lemuel Hoskins, staring stonily through his steel-rimmed glasses. He was a science fiction editor.

“Then you won't accept a scientific test. You won't listen to me. I'm outvoted, eh?” Marmie lifted himself on his toes, dropped down, repeated the process a few times, and breathed heavily. His dark hair was matted into tufts, where fingers had clutched.

“One to sixteen,” said Hoskins.

“Look,” said Marmie, “what makes you always right? What makes me always wrong?”

“Marmie, face it. We're each judged in our own way. If magazine circulation were to drop, I'd be a flop. I'd be out on my ear. The president of Space Publishers would ask no questions, believe me. He would just look at the figures. But circulation doesn't go down; it's going up. That makes me a good editor. And as for you-when editors accept you, you're a talent. When they reject you, you're a bum. At the moment, you are a bum.”

“There are other editors, you know. You're not the only one.” Marmie held up his hands, fingers outspread. “Can you count? That's how many science fiction magazines on the market would gladly take a Tallinn yarn, sight unseen.”

“Gesundheit,” said Hoskins.

“Look,” Marmie's voice sweetened, “you wanted two changes, right? You wanted an introductory scene with the battle in space. Well, I gave that to you. It's right here.” He waved the manuscript under Hoskin's nose and Hoskin moved away as though at a bad smell.

“But you also wanted the scene on the spaceship's hull cut into with a flashback into the interior,” went on Marmie, “and that you can't get. If I make that change, I ruin an ending which, as it stands, has pathos and depth and feeling.”

Editor Hoskins sat back in his chair and appealed to his secretary, who throughout had been quietly typing. She was used to these scenes.

Hoskins said, “You hear that, Miss Kane? He talks of pathos, depth, and feeling. What does a writer know about such things? Look, if you insert the flashback, you increase the Suspense; you tighten the story; you make it more valid.”

“How do I make it more valid?” cried Marmie in anguish. “You mean to say that having a bunch of fellows in a spaceship start talking politics and sociology when they're liable to be blown up makes it more valid? Oh, my God.”

“There's nothing else you can do. If you wait till the climax is past and then discuss your politics and sociology, the reader will go to sleep on you.”

“But I'm trying to tell you that you're wrong and I can prove it. What's the use of talking when I've arranged a scientific experiment-”

“What scientific experiment?” Hoskins appealed to his secretary again. “How do you like that, Miss Kane. He thinks he's one of his own characters.”

“It so happens I know a scientist.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Arndt Torgesson, professor of psychodynamics at Columbia.”

“Never heard of him.”

“I suppose that means a lot,” said Marmie, with contempt. “You never heard of him. You never heard of Einstein until your writers started mentioning him in their stories.”

“Very humorous. A yuk. What about this Torgesson?”

“He's worked out a system for determining scientifically

the value of a piece of writing. It's a tremendous piece of work. It's-it's-”

“ And it's secret?”

“Certainly it's secret. He's not a science fiction professor. In science fiction, when a man thinks up a theory, he announces it to the newspapers right away. In real life, that's not done. A scientist spends years on experimentation sometimes before going into print. Publishing is a serious thing.”

“Then how do you know about it? Just a question.”

“It so happens that Dr. Torgesson is a fan of mine. He happens to like my stories. He happens to think I'm the best fantasy writer in the business.”

“ And he shows you his work?”

“That's right. I was counting on you being stubborn about this yam and I've asked him to run an experiment for us. He said he would do it if we don't talk about it. He said it would be an interesting experiment. He said-”

“What's so secret about it?”

“Well-” Marmie hesitated. “Look, suppose I told you he had a monkey that could type Hamlet out of its head.”

Hoskins stared at Marmie in alarm. “What are you working up here, a practical joke?” He turned to Miss Kane. “When a writer writes science fiction for ten years he just isn't safe without a personal cage.”

Miss Kane maintained a steady typing speed.

Marmie said, “You heard me; a common monkey, even funnier-looking than the average editor. I made an appointment for this afternoon. Are you coming with me or not?”

“Of course not. You think I'd abandon a stack of manuscripts this high”-and he indicated his larynx with a cutting motion of the hand-”for your stupid jokes? You think I’ll play straight man for you?”

“If this is in any way a joke, Hoskins, I’ll stand you dinner in any restaurant you name. Miss Kane's the witness.”

Hoskins sat back in his chair. “You’ll buy me dinner? You, Marmaduke Tallinn, New York's most widely known tapeworm-on-credit, are going to pick up a

check?”

Marmie winced, not at the reference to his agility in

overlooking a dinner check, but at the mention of his name in all its horrible trysyllabicity. He said, “I repeat. Dinner on me wherever you want and whatever you want. Steaks, mushrooms, breast of guinea hen, Martian alligator, anything.”

Hoskins stood up and plucked his hat from the top of the filing cabinet.

“For a chance,” he said, “to see you unfold some of the old-style, large-size dollar bills you've been keeping in the false heel of your left shoe since nineteen-two-eight, I'd walk to Boston. ...”

Dr. Torgesson was honored. He shook Hoskin's hand warmly and said, “I've been reading Space Yarns ever since I came to this country, Mr. Hoskins. It is an excellent magazine. I am particularly fond of Mr. Tallinn's stories.”

“You hear?” asked Marmie. “I hear. Marmie says you have a monkey with talent, Professor.”

“Yes,” Torgesson said, “but of course this must be confidential. I am not yet ready to publish, and premature publicity could be my professional ruin.”

“This is strictly under the editorial hat, Professor.”

“Good, good. Sit down, gentlemen, sit down.” He paced the floor before them. “What have you told Mr. Hoskins about my work, Marmie?”

“Not a thing, Professor.”

“So. Well, Mr. Hoskins, as the editor of a science fiction magazine, I don't have to ask you if you know anything about cybernetics.”

Hoskins allowed a glance of concentrated intellect to ooze out past his steel-rims. He said, “Ah, yes. Computing machines-M.I.T.-Norbert Weiner-” He mumbled some more.

“Yes. Yes.” Torgesson paced faster. “Then you must know that chess-playing computers have been constructed on cybernetic principles. The rules of chess moves and the object of the game are built into its circuits. Given any position on the chess board, the machine can then compute all possible moves together with their consequence and choose that one which offers the highest probability of winning the game. It can even be made to take the temperament of its opponent into account.”

“Ah, yes,” said Hoskins, stroking his chin profoundly.

Torgesson said, “Now imagine a similar situation in which a computing machine can be given a fragment of a literary work to which the computer can then add words from its stock of the entire vocabulary such that the greatest literary values are served. Naturally, the machine would have to be taught the significance of the various keys of a typewriter. Of course, such a computer would have to be much, much more complex than any chess player.”

Hoskins stirred restlessly. “The monkey, Professor. Marmie mentioned a monkey.”

“But that is what I am coming to,” said Torgesson. “Naturally, no machine built is sufficiently complex. But the human brain--ah. The human brain is itself a computing machine. Of course, I couldn't use a human brain. The law, unfortunately, would not permit me. But even a monkey's brain, properly managed, can do more than any machine ever constructed by man. Wait! I'll go get little Rollo.”

He left the room. Hoskins waited a moment, then looked cautiously at Marmie. He said, “Oh, brother!”

Marmie said, “What's the matter?”

“What's the matter? The man's a phony. Tell me, Marmie, where did you hire this faker?”

Marmie was outraged. “Faker? This is a genuine professor's office in Fayerweather Hall, Columbia. You recognize Columbia, I hope. You saw the statue of Alma Mater on 116th Street. I pointed out Eisenhower's office.”

“Sure, but-”

“And this is Dr. Torgesson's office. Look at the dust.” He blew at a textbook and stirred up clouds of it. “The dust alone shows it's the real thing. And look at the title of the book; Psychodynamics of Human Behavior, by Professor Arndt Rolf Torgesson.”

“Granted, Marmie, granted. There is a Torgesson and this is his office. How you knew the real guy was on vacation and how you managed to get the use of his office, I don't know. But are you trying to tell me that this comic with his monkeys and computers is the real thing? Hah!”

“With a suspicious nature like yours, I can only assume

you had a very miserable, rejected type of childhood.”

“Just the result of experience with writers, Marmie. I have my restaurant all picked out and this will cost you a pretty penny.”

Marmie snorted, “This won't cost me even the ugliest penny you ever paid me. Quiet, he's coming back.”

With the professor, and clinging to his neck, was a very melancholy capuchin monkey.

“This,” said Torgesson, “is little Rollo. Say hello, Rollo.”

The monkey tugged at his forelock.

The professor said, “He's tired, I'm afraid. Now, I have a piece of his manuscript right here.”

He put the monkey down and let it cling to his finger while he brought out two sheets of paper from his jacket pocket and handed them to Hoskins.

Hoskins read, “ 'To be or not to be; that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a host of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more: and, by a sleep to say we-' “

He looked up. “Little Rollo typed this?”

“Not exactly. It's a copy of what he typed.”

“Oh, a copy. Well, little Rollo doesn't know his Shakespeare. It's 'to take arms against a sea of troubles.' “

Torgesson nodded. “You are quite correct, Mr. Hoskins. Shakespeare did write 'sea.' But you see that's a mixed metaphor. You don't fight a sea with arms. You fight a host or army with arms. Rollo chose the monosyllable and typed 'host.' It's one of Shakespeare's rare mistakes.”

Hoskins said, “Let's see him type.”

“Surely.” The professor trundled out a typewriter on a little table. A wire trailed from it. He explained, “It is necessary to use an electric typewriter as otherwise the physical effort would be too great. It is also necessary to wire little Rollo to this transformer.”

He did so, using as leads two electrodes that protruded an eighth of an inch through the fur on the little creature's skull.

“Rollo,” he said, “was subjected to a very delicate brain operation in which a nest of wires were connected to various regions of his brain. We can short his voluntary activities and, in effect, use his brain simply as a computer. I'm afraid the details would be--”

“Let's see him type,” said Hoskins. “What would you like?”

Hoskins thought rapidly. “Does he know Chesterton's 'Lepanto'?”

“He knows nothing by heart. His writing is purely computation. Now, you simply recite a little of the piece so that he will be able to estimate the mood and compute the consequences of the first words.”

Hoskins nodded, inflated his chest, and thundered, “White founts falling in the courts of the sun, and the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run. There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared; it stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard: it curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; for the inmost sea of all the world is shaken by his ships-”

“That's enough.” said Torgesson. There was silence as they waited. The monkey regarded the typewriter solemnly.

Torgesson said, “The process takes time, of course. Little Rollo has to take into account the romanticism of the poem, the slightly archaic flavor; the strong sing-song rhythm, and so on.”

And then a black little finger reached out and touched a key. It was a t.

“He doesn't capitalize,” said the scientist, “or punctuate, and his spacing isn't very reliable. That's why I usually retype his work when he's finished.”

Little Rollo touched an h, then an e and a y. Then, after a longish pause, he tapped the space bar.

“They,” said Hoskins. The words typed themselves out: “they have dared the white repub lics upthe capes of italy they have dashed the adreeatic roundthe lion of the sea; and the popehas throw n his arms abroa dfor agoni and loss and called the kings of chrissndom for sords about the cross.”

“My God!” said Hoskins.

“That's the way the piece goes then?” asked Torgesson. “For the love of Pete!” said Hoskins.

“If it is, then Chesterton must have done a good, consistent job.”

“Holy smokes!” said Hoskins.

“You see,” said Marmie, massaging Hoskins's shoulder, “you see, you see, you see. You see,” he added.

“I'll be damned,” said Hoskins.

“Now look,” said Marmie, rubbing his hair till it rose in clusters like a cockatoo's chest, “let's get to business. Let's tackle my story.”

“Well but-”

“It will not be beyond little Rollo's capacity,” Torgesson assured him. “I frequently read little Rollo parts of some of the better science fiction, including some of Marmie's tales. It's amazing how some of the yarns are improved.”

“It's not that,” said Hoskins. “Any monkey can write better SF than some of the hacks we've got. But the Tallinn story is thirteen thousand words long. It'll take forever for the monk to type it.”

“Not at all, Mr. Hoskins, not at all. I shall read the story to him, and at the crucial point we will let him continue.”

Hoskins folded his arms. “Then shoot. I'm ready.”

“I,” said Marmie, “am more than ready.” And he folded his arms.

Little Rollo sat there, a furry little bundle of cataleptic misery, while Dr. Torgesson's soft voice rose and fell in cadence with a spaceship battle and the subsequent struggles of Earthmen captives to recapture their lost ship.

One of the characters made his way out to the spaceship hull, and Dr. Torgesson followed the flamboyant events in mild rapture. He read:

“...Stalny froze in the silence of the eternal stars. His aching knee tore at his consciousness as he waited for the monsters to hear the thud and--”

Marmie yanked desperately at Dr. Torgesson's sleeve. Torgesson looked up and disconnected little Rollo.

“That's it,” said Marmie. “You see, Professor, it's just about here that Hoskins is getting his sticky little fingers into the works. I continue the scene outside the spaceship till Stalny wins out and the ship is back in Earth hands. Then I go into explanations. Hoskins wants me to break that outside scene, get back inside, halt the action for two thousand words, then get back out again. Ever hear such crud?”

“Suppose we let the monk decide,” said Hoskins.

Dr. Torgesson turned little Rollo on, and a black shriveled finger reached hesitantly out to the typewriter. Hoskins and Marmie leaned forward simultaneously, their heads coming softly together just over little Rollo's brooding body. The typewriter punched out the letter t.

“T,” encouraged Marmie, nodding. “T,” agreed Hoskins.

The typewriter made an a, then went on at a more rapid rate: “take action stalnee waited in helpless hor ror forair locks toyawn and suited laroos to emerge relentlessly--”

“Word for word,” said Marmie in raptures. “He certainly has your gooey style.”

“The readers like it.”

“They wouldn't if their average mental age wasn't-” Hoskins stopped.

“Go on,” said Marmie, “say it. Say it. Say their IQ is that of a twelve-year-old child and I'll quote you in every fan magazine in the country.”

“Gentlemen,” said Torgesson, “gentlemen. You'll disturb little Rollo.”

They turned to the typewriter, which was still tapping steadily: “-the stars whelled in ther mightie orb its as stalnees earthbound senses insis ted the rotating ship sto od still.”

The typewriter carriage whipped back to begin a new line. Marmie held his breath. Here, if anywhere, would come--

And the little finger moved out and made: * Hoskins yelled, “Asterisk!”

“Marmie muttered, “ Asterisk.” Torgesson said, “ Asterisk?”

A line of nine more asterisks followed.

“That's all, brother,” said Hoskins. He explained quickly to the staring Torgesson, “With Marmie, it's a habit to use a line of asterisks when he wants to indicate a radical shift of scene. And a radical shift of scene is exactly what I wanted.”

The typewriter started a new paragraph: “within the ship-”

“Turn it off, Professor,” said Marmie.

Hoskins rubbed his hands. “When do I get the revision Marmie?”

Marmie said coolly, “What revision?”

“You said the monk's version.”

“I sure did. It's what I brought you here to see. That little Rollo is a machine; a cold, brutal, logical machine.”

“Well?”

“And the point is that a good writer is not a machine. He doesn't write with his mind, but with his heart. His heart.” Marmie pounded his chest.

Hoskins groaned. “What are you doing to me, Marmie? If you give me that heart-and-soul-of-a-writer routine, I'll just be forced to turn sick right here and right now. Let's keep all this on the usual I'll-write-anything-for-money basis.”

Marmie said, “Just listen to me for a minute. Little Rollo corrected Shakespeare. You pointed that out for yourself. Little Rollo wanted Shakespeare to say, 'host of troubles,' and he was right from his machine standpoint. A 'sea of troubles' under the circumstances is a mixed metaphor. But don't you suppose Shakespeare knew that, too? Shakespeare just happened to know when to break the rules, that's all. Little Rollo is a machine that can't break the rules, but a good writer can, and must. 'Sea of troubles' is more impressive; it has roll and power. The hell with the mixed metaphor.

“Now, when you tell me to shift the scene, you're following mechanical rules on maintaining suspense, so of course little Rollo agrees with you. But I know that I must break the rules to maintain the profound emotional impact of the ending as I see it. Otherwise I have a mechanical product that a computer can turn out.”

Hoskins said, “But-”

“Go on,” said Marmie, “vote for the mechanical. Say that little Rollo is all the editor you'll ever be.”

Hoskins said, with a quiver in his throat, “ All right, Marmie, I'll take the story as is. No, don't give it to me; mail it. I've got to find a bar, if you don't mind.”

He forced his hat down on his head and turned to leave. Torgesson called after him. “Don't tell anyone about little Rollo, please.”

The parting answer floated back over a slamming door, “Do you think I'm crazy? ...”

Marmie rubbed his hands ecstatically when he was sure Hoskins was gone.

“Brains, that's what it was,” he said, and probed one finger as deeply into his temple as it would go. “This sale I enjoyed. This sale, Professor, is worth all the rest I've ever made. All the rest of them together.” He collapsed joyfully on the nearest chair.

Torgesson lifted little Rollo to his shoulder. He said mildly, “But, Marmaduke, what would you have done if little Rollo had typed your version instead?”

A took of grievance passed momentarily over Marmie's face. “Well, damn it,” he said, “that's what I thought it was going to do.”

=====

IN THE MONKEY'S FINGER, by the way, the writer and editor were modeled on a real pair, arguing over a real story in a real way.

The story involved was C-Chute, which had appeared in the October 1951 Galaxy (after the argument) and which was eventually included in my book NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES. I was the writer, of course, and Horace Gold was the editor.

Though the argument and the story are authentic, the people are caricatured. I am nothing at all like the writer in the story and Horace is certainly nothing at all like the editor in the story. Horace has his own peculiarities which are far more interesting than the ones I made' up for fictional purposes, and so have I-but never mind that.

Of all the stories I have written that have appeared once and then never again, this next is the one I talk about most. I have discussed it in dozens of talks and mentioned it in print occasionally, for a very good reason which I'll come to later.

In April 1953 I was in Chicago. I'm not much of a traveler and that was the first time I was ever in Chicago (and I have returned since then only once) .I was there to attend an American Chemical Society convention at which I was supposed to present a small paper. That was little fun, so I thought I would liven things up by going to Evanston, a northern suburb, and visiting the offices of Universe Science Fiction.

This magazine was then edited by Bea Mahaffey, an extraordinarily good-looking young woman. (The way I usually put it is that science fiction writers voted her, two years running, the editor to whom they would most like to submit.)

When I arrived in the office on April 7, 1953, Bea greeted me with great glee and at once asked why I had not brought a story for her with me.

“You want a story?” I said, basking in her beauty. .'I'll write you a story. Bring me a typewriter.”

Actually, I was just trying to impress her, hoping that she would throw herself into my arms in a spasm of wild adoration. She didn't. She brought me a typewriter.

I had to come through. Since the task of climbing Mount Everest was much in the news those days (men

had been trying to scale it for thirty years and the seventh attempt to do so had just failed) I thought rapidly and wrote EVEREST .

Bea read it, liked it, and offered me thirty dollars, which I accepted with alacrity. I promptly spent half of it on a fancy dinner for the two of us, and labored--with so much success to be charming, debonair, and suave that the waitress said to me, longingly, that she wished her son-in-law were like me.

That seemed hopeful and with a light heart I took Bea home to her apartment. I am not sure what I had in mind, but if I did have anything in mind that was not completely proper (surely not!) I was foiled. Bea managed to get into that apartment, leaving me standing in the hallway, without my ever having seen the door open.

EVEREST

In 1952 they were about ready to give up trying to climb Mount Everest. It was the photographs that kept them going.

As photographs go, they weren't much; fuzzy, streaked, and with just dark blobs against the white to be interested in. But those dark blobs were living creatures. The men swore to it.

I said, “What the hell, they've been talking about creatures skidding along the Everest glaciers for forty years. It's about time we did something about it.”

Jimmy Robbons (pardon me, James Abram Robbons) was the one who pushed me into that position. He was always nuts on mountain climbing, you see. He was the one who knew all about how the Tibetans wouldn't go near Everest because it was the mountain of the gods. He could quote me every mysterious manlike footprint ever reported in the ice twenty-five thousand feet up; he knew by heart every tall story about the spindly white creatures, speeding along the crags just over the last heart-breaking camp which the climbers had managed to establish.

It's good to have one enthusiastic creature of the sort at Planetary Survey headquarters.

The last photographs put bite into his words, though. After all, you might just barely think they were men.

Jimmy said, “Look, boss, the point isn't that they're there, the point is that they move fast. Look at that figure. It's blurred.”

“The camera might have moved.”

“The crag here is sharp enough. And the men swear it was running. Imagine the metabolism it must have to run at that oxygen pressure. Look, boss, would you have believed in deep-sea fish if you'd never heard of them? You have fish which are looking for new niches in environment which they can exploit, so they go deeper and deeper into the abyss until one day they find they can't return.

They've adapted so thoroughly they can live only under tons of pressure.”

“Well--”

“Damn it, can't you reverse the picture? Creatures can be forced up a mountain, can't they? They can learn to stick it out in thinner air and colder temperatures. They can live on moss or on occasional birds, just as the deep-sea fish in the last analysis live on the upper fauna that slowly go filtering down. Then, someday, they find they can't go down again. I don't even say they're men. They can be chamois or mountain goats or badgers or anything.”

I said stubbornly, “The witnesses said they were vaguely manlike, and the reported footprints are certainly manlike.”

“Or bearlike,” said Jimmy. “You can't tell.”

So that's when I said, “It's about time we did something about it.”

Jimmy shrugged and said, “They've been trying to climb Mount Everest for forty years.” And he shook his head.

“For gossake,” I said. “ All you mountain climbers are nuts. That's for sure. You're not interested in getting to the top. You're just interested in getting to the top in a certain way. It's about time we stopped fooling around with picks, ropes, camps, and all the paraphernalia of the Gentlemen's Club that sends suckers up the slopes every five years or so.”

“What are you getting at?”

“They invented the airplane in 1903, you know?”

“You mean fly over Mount Everest!” He said it the way an English lord would say, “Shoot a fox!” or an angler would say, “Use worms!”

“Yes,” I said, “fly over Mount Everest and let someone down on the top. Why not?”

“He won't live long. The fellow you let down, I mean.”

“Why not?” I asked again. “You drop supplies and oxygen tanks, and the fellow wears a spacesuit. Naturally.”

It took time to get the Air Force to listen and to agree to send a plane and by that time Jimmy Robbons had swiveled his mind to the point where he volunteered to be the one to land on Everest's peak. “After all,” he said in a half whisper, “I'd be the first man ever to stand there.”

That's the beginning of the story. The story itself can be told very simply, and in far fewer words.

The plane waited two weeks during the best part of the year (as far as Everest was concerned, that is) for a siege of only moderately nasty flying weather, then took off. They made it. The pilot reported by radio to a listening group exactly what the top of Mount Everest looked like when seen from above and then he described exactly how Jimmy Robbons looked as his parachute got smaller and smaller.

Then another blizzard broke and the plane barely made it back to base and it was another two weeks before the weather was bearable again.

And all that time Jimmy was on the roof of the world by himself and I hated myself for a murderer.

The plane went back up two weeks later to see if they could spot his body. I don't know what good it would have done if they had, but that's the human race for you. How many dead in the last war? Who can count that high? But money or anything else is no object to the saving of one life, or even the recovering of one body.

They didn't find his body, but they did find a smoke signal; curling up in the thin air and whipping away in the gusts. They let down a grapple and Jimmy came up, still in his spacesuit, looking like hell, but definitely alive.

The p.s. to the story involves my visit to the hospital last week to see him. He was recovering very slowly. The doctors said shock, they said exhaustion, but Jimmy's eyes said a lot more.

I said, “How about it, Jimmy, you haven't talked to the reporters, you haven't talked to the government. All right How about talking to me?”

“I've got nothing to say,” he whispered. “Sure you have,” I said. “You lived on top of Mount Everest during a two-week blizzard. You didn't do that by yourself, not with all the supplies we dumped along with you. Who helped you, Jimmy boy?”

I guess he knew there was no use trying to bluff. Or maybe he was anxious to get it off his mind.

He said, “They're intelligent, boss. They compressed air for me. They set up a little power pack to keep me warm. They set up the smoke signal when they spotted the airplane coming back.”

“I see.” I didn't want to rush him. “It's like we thought. They've adapted to Everest life. They can't come down the slopes.”

“No, they can't. And we can't go up the slopes. Even if the weather didn't stop us, they would!”

“They sound like kindly creatures, so why should they object? They helped you.”

“They have nothing against us. They spoke to me, you know. Telepathy.”

I frowned. “Well, then.”

“But they don't intend to be interfered with. They're watching us, boss. They've got to. We've got atomic power. We're about to have rocket ships. They're worried about us. And Everest is the only place they can watch us from!”

I frowned deeper. He was sweating and his hands were shaking.

I said, “Easy, boy. Take it easy. What on Earth are these creatures?”

And he said, “What do you suppose would be so adapted to thin air and subzero cold that Everest would be the only livable place on earth to them. That's the whole point. They're nothing at all on Earth. They're Martians.”

And that's it.

=====

And now let me explain the reason I frequently discuss

EVEREST. Naturally, I did not actually believe that there were Martians on Mount Everest or that anything would long delay the eventual conquest of the mountain. I just thought that people would have the decency to refrain from climbing it until the story was published.

But no! On May 29, 1953, less than two months after I had written and sold EVEREST, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood upon Everest's highest point and saw neither Martians nor Abominable Snowmen.

Of course, Universe might have sacrificed thirty dollars and left the story unpublished; or I might have offered to buy back the story. Neither of us made the gesture and EVEREST appeared in the December 1953 issue of Universe.

Since I am frequently called on to discuss the future of man, I can't help using EVEREST to point out what an expert futurist I am. After all, I predicted that Mount Everest would never be climbed, five months after it was climbed.

Nowadays it is quite fashionable to publish anthologies of original science fiction stories, and I rather disapprove of this. It drains off some of the stories and readers that might otherwise go to the magazines. I don't want that to happen. I think that magazines are essential to science fiction.

Is my feeling born of mere nostalgia? Does it arise out of the memory of what science fiction magazines meant to me in my childhood and of how they gave me my start as a writer? In part, yes, I suppose; but in part it is the result of an honest feeling that they do playa vital role.

Where can a young writer get a start? Magazines, appearing six or twelve times a year, simply must have stories. An anthology can delay publication till the desired stories come in; a magazine cannot. Driven by unswervable deadlines, a magazine must accept an occasional substandard story, and an occasional young writer gets a start while he is still perhaps of only marginal quality. That was how I got my start, in fact.

It means, to be sure, that the reader is subjected to an occasional amateurish story in the magazine, but the amateur writer who wrote it gets enough encouragement to continue working and to become (just possibly) a great writer.

When the anthologies of original science fiction first appeared, however, they were novelties. I never really thought they would come to much, and had no feeling of contributing to an impending doom when I wrote for them. In fact, since they paid better than the magazines usually did, I felt good about writing for them.

The first of the breed was New Tales of Space and Time, edited by Raymond J. Healy (Henry Holt, 1951),

and for it I wrote In a Good Cause-a story that was eventually included in NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES.

A few years later, August Derleth was editing an anthology of originals, and for it I wrote THE PAUSE.