Tales From the Spaceport Bar Read online

  On the whole, while Kuttner did produce some routine work, he distinguished himself from the usual run of pulpsters by leaving behind a large body of genuinely superior work, including the novel

  Fury, the story-cycle Mutant, and a host of shorter works, many of which can be found in the collection The Best of Henry Kuttner. Most of Kuttner’s later efforts were collaborations with his wife, C. L. Moore, to the extent that neither of them could remember who wrote what.

  GETTING EVEN

  by Isaac Asimov

  "Two grams, perhaps. One-fourteenth of an

  ounce....”

  I got even,” said Griswold grimly, from the depths of the armchair. He was sipping at his Scotch-and-Soda.

  It was his fourth one, and I suppose he was just a little bit relaxed, so to speak, or he might not have been telling us about it. It was raining outside and the four of us were relaxing in the library of the Union Club.

  I said, "With whom? Why? How?”

  That’s when he told us the story. Baranov and Jennings were there, too. They can bear witness to this.

  It’s not exactly a unique problem in some ways [said Griswold] and I suppose it happens all the time—the little inventor being cheated by the giant corporation. Still, if it’s a giant corporation, there’s at least no human being you can blame and hate.

  What if it is a human being?

  No use going into all the wearisome details, because that’s not really the essence of the story. I had an ingenious idea and I couldn’t put it into action because I didn’t have the capital, so a friend of a friend of mine recommended a source of capital.

  As a result, I got ten thousand dollars to perfect the notion and build a model for a man named Felix Hammock. He supplied the money, so he promoted it and marketed it and apparently made ten million dollars at least. What I got was the original ten thousand.

  I went to see the fellow. He met me in his office, all honey-sweet; listened with sympathy; and suggested that first I ought to see a lawyer and then he’d be glad to talk to me again.

  So I did. The lawyer looked at the papers I had signed and asked me if I had taken legal advice before signing them. I said I hadn’t. I needed the money and it had looked all right to me. He sighed. He said that Felix Hammock was a well-known promoter and that the papers always looked all right and they were—for Felix Hammock.

  "Mr. Griswold,” he said, "we could fight this in court. I figure it might take two years and cost seventy or eighty thousand dollars. And I don’t think you’ll get anything out of it except publicity and sympathy. That might get you a job with some firm that could use an ingenious tinkerer—or it might not, if you come to be viewed as a troublemaker. If you say you’ll take it to court, I’ll take the case but only with a heavy retainer. If you say you won’t take it to court, then I’ll say good-bye and charge you fifty dollars for my advice.-

  I paid the fifty dollars and called up Hammock to see him again. I had no reason to think he wasn’t a reasonable fellow. He even seemed so, for he invited me to his home in Fairfield County.

  It was a mansion. I’m not much on description, but it was the kind of house you wouldn’t think even millionaires could afford. He was well-protected, too. Electrified fences. Security guards. Like that.

  The house itself seemed infinite in size and laden with objets d’art. There were Picassos and Chagalls and other paintings that Hammock assured me were originals and well-insured. There were first editions and Tiffany lamps and I don’t know what all. He was a collector and that’s how he stored the money he made out of me and others like me—and in an inflation-proof way at that.

  We had dinner, just he and I, and two bodyguards in the room.

  Over the Brandy I pointed out that he had made thousands for every dollar he had paid me. Should I not have my share?

  "No, no, my good Griswold,” he said, smiling genially. "Not a penny. Why should I worry about the matter? I am not legally bound to pay you anything.”

  "I am not speaking from the standpoint of the law,” I said, "but from justice.”

  "Nor in justice, either,” he said. "See here. I risk money on many projects and not all succeed. Sometimes I put out ten thousand to a man like you and a hundred thousand additional on promotion—I say nothing about time—and lose it all. Do you suppose that the gentleman to whom I pay ten thousand ever comes to me and says, 'Poor Mr. Hammock, you have lost so much on my stupid idea that I simply must give you back part of the money I have made out of you.’

  "No, not once. —But let me be a good judge of values and a clever promoter and quickly each one who has sold his idea to me wants to get his share of the product of my brain and my initiative. No, no, my friend, I have paid you all I will pay you.

  "After all, look around you. I live like a prince and I enjoy it, but it costs a vast amount of money. If I began giving out money to each beggarly fellow who whines 'Justice! Justice!’ you can imagine that I could not support my way of life.”

  And he showed me out, still smiling.

  Of course, there was something in what he said. Still, if his brain and his initiative could reward him and leave nothing for me, then it was only fair that my brain and my initiative should strip him of what he had gained. —If it could.

  Yes, if it could.

  The very notion he had bought from me (I couldn’t really call it "stolen” after his explanation) could be extended farther, and very boldly, too. I won’t tell any of you just how because it is much too dangerous for the world.

  It could be extended to tap unusual energies. It required only a slight but very ingenious modification to enable my device to tap supernatural energies.

  Oh, don’t cry out. Just listen, and think a bit.

  There are any number of stories of people who have raised spirits by the proper incantations—and most of them are fiction, of Course. But are they all? And if so, what is the significance of the necessary words, gestures, chemical powders?

  Even if we grant that so-called magic succeeded in raising spirits and releasing paranormal powers, most of the description must be window dressing. A chandelier may cast a pleasant light, but the essence of the light is in the little filaments through which the current flows. All those glass pendants and curved brass rods and chains are beside the point. They may make the chandelier, but they don’t make the light.

  So I was looking for something that was not magic, but science. Something that would reach across a gap between our universe and another, and it wasn’t easy.

  But I didn’t mind sweating at it. I was determined to have my revenge on Hammock. I didn’t worry about injustice anymore. I could see I had been naive and stupid and deserved what I had gotten.

  It was just that he had talked of his brain and his initiative as though he felt I had none. I wanted to match mine against his, and I was absolutely resolved to do so and win.

  Finally, finally, I managed to jar the doorway open just the merest crack, just an infinitesimal amount. There was an odor that was very faint and not quite of brimstone—by which is usually meant sulfur dioxide—but that was faintly irritating. An alien atmosphere. And there was a flash of light, not blinding or frightening in any way, just a spark of an indeterminate color.

  And then, on my workbench, there was a figure; not red exactly, or black. Rather lavender, I should say. It was not frightening in any way; no horns, no tails, not really human, in fact—and very small. About two centimeters high. That’s less than an inch.

  It was as genial as Hammock had been. It had been called in from its world, wherever that, was, but it didn’t seem annoyed over it. It listened to me with attention. —No, it didn’t speak English. I don’t know what it spoke. I just understood what it was saying. And it understood me even before I spoke, I think. I imagine it was some kind of telepathy.

  It said, "It’s a long time since anyone has called on one of us, and I don’t recognize your system. It’s never been used before.”

  I tried to explain
and it said, "Ingenious. Most ingenious. But very inefficient. So you want to inflict a curse on this Hammock?”

  "I don’t know if 'curse’ is the right word,” I said. "I don’t want to kill him or hurt him in any way. I just want to get even. He deprived me of a fair share of the profits arising out of my own ingenuity, and I want to deprive him of those profits.”

  The spirit said, ”1 understand, but you see I am a small one of my kind. It was all you could get with your inefficient device. There isn’t much I can do.”

  "Can you make his stocks go down? Can you disrupt his business judgment? Can you riddle his house with termites?”

  The spirit said, "You have a fanciful notion of the powers of what you think of as magic. In our world, too, we have a law of conservation of energy. I can do only what I have energy for.”

  "What can you do, then? What do you have energy for?”

  “I can withdraw anything you wish from this world. All parts of your world are equally accessible to me, and I can obtain the necessary information from your computers. I can reach into his house or somewhere in his business connections to remove something that would represent a loss to him.”

  "Can you withdraw money from his safe? Documents he has? Some things that are extremely valuable? I don’t want them for myself. You can take them to your world if you wish.”

  The spirit said, "I can’t withdraw an unlimited amount. Only so much.”

  "How much?”

  'Two grams, perhaps. One-fourteenth of an ounce.”

  I said, "But it is impossible to withdraw so little and cause him any significant loss.”

  "1 regret that, but I am as helpless as you are to go against the laws of nature. Please think of something, for I cannot stay with you for long.”

  I thought! Good heavens, how I thought! I had perhaps ten minutes. I could withdraw something from his house, or his person, or his office, or anyone’s office—something that would not harm him physically, but would cause him financial loss. And enough financial loss.

  A diamond, perhaps; or a rare stamp, if he had a stamp collection. But that would only cost him thousands. He would laugh it off. I wanted to deprive him of at least ten million and I had ten minutes to think of it.

  Fortunately, I thought of it!

  If you want, you three can have ten minutes too, to see if you can think of what I thought. I would just as soon close my eyes for a moment—

  * * *

  Eh? Oh, yes, you want the finish of my story. How I got even.

  I managed to wangle another invitation to his house. I didn’t have to, but I wanted to see with my own eyes that it was missing and I wanted to see his face when he realized it. Of course, he could not imagine I had done it. How could he?

  It wasn’t easy getting that invitation. He had already had his fun with me. Still, I told him I had a modification of my idea that I wanted to sell for ten thousand more. I told him just enough to make him willing to risk one more invitation. I told him he didn’t have to feed me dinner this time.

  "Well,” he said, "tell me about this modification.” The bodyguards were with him, of course.

  I wandered in the direction of his paintings and stared at one of them, then at another, then at a third.

  "Well,” he said impatiently.

  I said, 'This is a Picasso original, I take it?”

  "Absolutely,” he said.

  "But it doesn’t have a signature.”

  "What?” he cried, rushing to the painting.

  "In fact,” I said, "not one of them seems—”

  My spirit, before leaving, had taken with him less than two grams of paint flakes, and every single picture in his house was without a signature. Every one of them would require expensive and time-consuming authentication to have any value at all, and even then perhaps nothing like their true value. And if he tried to fake a robbery and collect from his insurance company, he would find that his signature, and theirs, was gone from all copies of the policy.

  He must easily have lost well over ten million dollars.

  -And I was even.

  Breathes there a fan with soul so dead as to not have already encountered and enjoyed the works of Isaac Asimov? We doubt it. Among the Good Doctor's over three hundred books is a collection of stories, The Union Club Mysteries, in which the redoubtable Griswold solves a series of puzzlers, most of which have to do with crime, espionage, and other traditionally mysterious subjects. "Getting Even" wasn’t included because, unlike all the others, it is a fantasy. Writes Asimov: "What I did was start a new series about that little demon. / have just written the eleventh in that series, but ’Getting Even’ isn’t included there, either, because it isn’t quite a member of the new series. It falls in between and while it generated both, it fits neither.”

  So the editors are especially proud to present this stray piece of Asimoviana, which most readers will not have seen, and which, unquestionably, fits into this book perfectly.

  WHAT GOES UP

  by Arthur C. Clarke

  ”... editors and science-fiction writers are forgathering...”

  One of the reasons why I am never too specific about the exact location of the White Hart is, frankly, because we want to keep it to ourselves. This is not merely a dog-in-the-manger attitude: we have to do it in pure self-protection. As soon as it gets around that scientists, editors, and science-fiction writers are forgathering at some locality, the weirdest collection of visitors is likely to turn up. Peculiar people with new theories of the universe, characters who have been "cleared” by Dianetics (God knows what they were like before), intense ladies who are liable to go all clairvoyant after the fourth gin—these are the less exotic specimens. Worst of all, however, are the Flying Saucerers: no cure short of mayhem has yet been discovered for them.

  It was a black day when one of the leading exponents of the Flying Saucer religion discovered our hideout and fell upon us with shrill cries of delight. Here, he obviously told himself, was fertile ground for his missionary activities. People who were already interested in spaceflight, and even wrote books and stories about its imminent achievement, would be a pushover. He opened his little black bag and produced the latest pile of sauceriana.

  It was quite a collection. There were some interesting photographs of flying saucers made by an amateur astronomer who lives right beside Greenwich Observatory, and whose busy camera has recorded such a remarkable variety of spaceships, in all shapes and sizes, that one wonders what the professionals next door are doing for their salaries. Then there was a long statement from a gentleman in Texas who had just had a casual chat with the occupants of a saucer making a wayside halt on route to Venus. Language, it seemed, had presented no difficulties: it had taken about ten minutes of arm-waving to get from "Me—Man. This—Earth” to highly esoteric information about the use of the fourth dimension in space travel.

  The masterpiece, however, was an excited letter from a character in South Dakota who had actually been offered a lift in a flying saucer, and had been taken for a spin round the Moon. He explained at some length how the saucer travelled by hauling itself along magnetic lines of force, rather like a spider going up its thread.

  It was at this point that Harry Purvis rebelled. He had been listening with a professional pride to tales which even he would never have dared to spin, for he was an expert at detecting the yield-point of his audience’s credulity. At the mention of lines of magnetic force, however, his scientific training overcame his frank admiration of these latter-day Munchausens, and he gave a snort of disgust.

  "That’s a lot of nonsense,” he said. "I can prove it to you—magnetism’s my speciality.”

  "Last week,” said Drew sweetly, as he filled two glasses of Ale at once, "you said that crystal structure was your speciality.”

  Harry gave him a superior smile.

  "I’m a general specialist,” he said loftily. "To get back to where I was before that interruption, the point I want to make is that there’s no such thin
g as a line of magnetic force. It’s a mathematical fiction —exactly on a par with lines of longitude or latitude. Now, if anyone said they’d invented a machine that worked by pulling itself along parallels of latitude, everybody would know that they were talking drivel. But because few people know much about magnetism, and it sounds rather mysterious, crackpots like this guy in South Dakota can get away with the tripe we’ve just been hearing.”

  There’s one charming characteristic about the White Hart—we may fight among each other, but we show an impressive solidarity in times of crisis. Everyone felt that something had to be done about our unwelcome visitor: for one thing, he was interfering with the serious business of drinking. Fanaticism of any kind casts a gloom over the most festive assembly, and several of the regulars had shown signs of leaving despite the fact that it was still two hours to closing time.

  So when Harry Purvis followed up his attack by concocting the most outrageous story that even he had ever presented in the White Hart, no one interrupted him or tried to expose the weak points in his narrative. We knew that Harry was acting for us all—he was fighting fire with fire, as it were. And we knew that he wasn’t expecting us to believe him (if indeed he ever did), so we just sat back and enjoyed ourselves.