Hal Annas

“ Zoo! Take this precious nickel, handle it carefully and with due reverence, seal it in a tube, send it through the pneumatic to the armored transport, have them place a hundred men armed to the teeth about it, and escort it solemnly and without undue ostentation to the Universal Bank, that institution which covers eight square miles and towers ten thousand feet into the air, and deposit it with proper ceremony to my account. I shall be the wealthiest man on this planet and the envy of every creature in the galaxy. ”

“ Fillmore put a cigarette into his mouth, concentrated on the tip of it until it flared into flame, then resumed thinking for a total of two seconds.
"I have it," he said at last. "I'll pull out a strand of my hair, seal it in a ten-ton safe and ship it to Cynthia by armored tube. That is the greatest expression of love any man can possibly make." ”

“ Why don't you bring the matter before the Council?"
"They wouldn't listen. They don't like change. Most of them are aged, and they still think in terms of light and energy. Imagine that in a modern world! Men content to travel at the mere speed of light! Can't get over the idea that breaking through the energy barrier was just like breaking through the sound barrier." ”

“ Like idiots they have been pointing the tube away from themselves and holding the butt near their bodies. Turn off the machine. The sight of those dead men and the smell of blood is offensive."
Zitts sat in gloomy silence until the woman spoke again. "Then you'll bring the murderer to justice?" she ventured quietly.
Zitts shook his head. "I'm interested in the weapon, not the murderer. Such a weapon is far beyond our science. We have only rays which kill without noise. That weapon makes a terrific bang. Seems far more fitting than silence, especially in murders resulting from hate. ”

“ He tossed off the balance of the drink, set the glass on the table and made a sweeping gesture. "They're all alike," he said brutally. "Fickle and treacherous. Deceivers. Always flinging their sex around."
"Not all women," she countered. "Take this Professor Madigan who discovered that new adhesion force."
"A woman?"
"Of course. Professor Madigan is a scholarly young woman. Her sex appeal might not win a beauty contest, but she discovered a perfectly wonderful man-catcher." ”

“ Fillmore said. "I've been working on it myself. Gave it nine seconds solid thought yesterday. If I hadn't been interrupted I might have got it. You're thinking about pure reasoning before the fact."
"Exactly. What are your conclusions?"
"It's possible. The square of nothing equals nothing. When you put nothing times nothing on paper it comes out minus infinity or infinity minus. Thus you have something. Take a mind without a fact and let it confront nothing. Almost at once it will raise nothing to the power of six. ”

“ She doesn't think of you as her dream man, but she does think of you as being everything she wants in a man. You'll let her come to the laboratory, won't you?"
"No."
"But she does at least want to see you. Do you know you are the only man out of thousands who exactly meets her requirements? Even to those crinkles in your forehead when you frown. And even to being stubborn about things." ”

“ The woman shook her head sadly. "I have a private atmosphere-runabout, a house with seventeen rooms in Florida, a ranch in California with ten thousand domesticated descendants of movie stars grazing on it, a plantation on Venus where I keep a herd of poets, a million acres of arable land on Uranus, a crater on the moon, and a chunk of what's left of the ice at the North Pole. But I have nothing whatever valuable."
"No property on Mars?"
"A single canal, but it's worthless. It's filled with billions and billions of barrels of oil. ”

“ But we were fast building strength and when they turned toward the Solar System we met them well out. They had not expected so much strength and were turned back.
"Then the race began to build up, and the struggle has been going on since. The tide has turned first one way and then the other, but the populace of Earth has slaved and starved itself to produce ships and man them, and to make better weapons, and the time is drawing near—Sue, I'm not supposed to talk to you like this."
"But, Al, I've heard all those things before: that all we need is just more time, more work and sacrifices." ”

“ Flushed and hot, Cornith reached to his breast pocket for a handkerchief. He was astonished to find a large Spanish rose protruding from the pocket. He held it in his hand and stared at it in stunned silence. Lucy Hollowell extended a small white hand and took the rose from him. She held it against her cheek until he saw that her lips and the rose were the same color. Then she fastened it in her platinum hair where its warm red petals contrasted brilliantly.
"Er, uh. I was saying—" Cornith began lamely.
"That she's a bag of bones," a voice behind him finished. ”

“ One look at you and anybody'd know you've got this magnetism. That's why I had to be so brutal. It was the only way I could resist and keep my woman-hating integrity. I can feel your magnetism now. It's getting stronger. ”

“ Fillmore sighed. "She's almost perfect in that respect. Doesn't have to have her mind erased but once every six weeks. Nine power intelligence but she holds it back. That way she doesn't come anywhere near a nervous breakdown oftener than once in six weeks."
"Domestic type?"
"Definitely. Regular homebody. Never been out of the solar system. She's the kind that likes a quiet picnic on Mars and will settle for the moon when Mars is crowded. Besides, she's interested largely in warts and mice. Studies them all the time. Knows how to grow warts on anybody." ”

“ Zitts drew a deep breath and went on: "If a solitary genius of the latter half of the twentieth century had had the godlike stature to create a work with only one murder in it, instead of dozens, he would be immortal and today worshipped by the protagonists of moderation and hated by the antagonists who maintain, and not without reason, that all of the characters in such stories, and especially the detective, should come to a violent and horrible end on page three." ”

“ Sue's mother said.
"What are they?" Sue asked.
"Our ships, of course. From every part of the globe. They'll circle the planet constantly. They are the final inner ring. Under them is nothing but the ground defenses."
"Are there more ships farther out?"
"Certainly. Those up there are comparable to the Fourth Sector on a cosmograph. Sectors Three, Two and One will extend out beyond Pluto's orbit. They are probably fighting now. Listen! There's the warning. We must go to the shafts."
At that moment Alfred Wilson appeared. ”

“ And getting only three thousand dollars for twenty-nine minutes of that sort of slave labor! Scandalous! I'll bet you can't afford more than a hundred vacations a year. We might as well be back in the dark age of the twentieth century. I've been advocating a one-minute work-day for the past decade, one day a month, two months a year. What good is civilization if it doesn't provide something for the poor working man? And people call me a visionary, with Utopian ideas! Bah! If I'm not mistaken, you're the man with the seat of his intelligence in the back of his lap! ”

“ Pupsie gathered himself for a leap at the chief rat, but Zoo sprang between him and the viewplate and shut off the machine.
"No, no," Zitts cautioned. "His smell is on the weapon, of course. But he merely examined it. Use your head now and tune in the machine yourself and find the murderer."
Nodding, Pupsie moved close to the machine, switched it on and began tuning radarlike by sniffing and twisting the dials. Almost at once his eyes lighted and his tongue lolled out and his muscles stiffened for action. The blonde woman held her breath, expecting to view the murderer. ”

“ We assume that the wetness weighed half an ounce."
"I don't like skinny females."
"We have another one, less brilliant, but who meets all physical requirements other than weighing a hundred and twenty-three pounds and four ounces."
"Too fat. Can't stand fat women."
"Would you permit Lucy Hollowell to gain half an ounce consciously? She can do it in a few hours. Has a brilliant mind. Can regulate her own glandular flow."
"No. I don't want to marry a woman who is always thinking about her weight, and if she starts now—"
"You're very exacting, Mr. Cornith!" ”

“ We know that they spread through the Milky Way millions of years ago. They wiped out life in their paths and colonized. There is evidence to indicate they struck the Solar System at that time. There are things to show they denuded Mars and attenuated its atmosphere. Earth may not have been sufficiently developed then to interest them. We don't know. We know that when Earth began colonizing the planets of other suns in our own galaxy the Andromedians didn't take much notice at first. But as our strength grew they decided we were a threat. ”

“ Just as the machine was turned on a loud bang sounded in the room, and the woman gasped as the view lit up and showed four uniformed ratcatchers sprawled on the floor of what was obviously the ratcatchers' lair. Zitts snorted in disgust.
"Zoo!" he called. "Get in touch with the chief rat of the ratcatchers and tell him I said those men have clearly ignored my advice. Tell him I said to caution the next men who experiment with that weapon. Tell him to see that they hold the tube next to their bodies, and tell him for the sake of safety to have six men line up behind one another. ”

“ Lucy said understandingly. "You still think those examinations and tests and specifications are stupid. I understand. And you put in a lot of things you didn't want. But I had to meet the requirements, and my reactions and responses had to be some actual part of me, not ad lib. I can change them in time."
"She's very understanding, Mr. Cornith, and eager to please."
"But it's all nonsense," Cornith insisted.
"Of course it is," Lucy said sympathetically. "It isn't right for you to have to marry a girl who meets all of the requirements you didn't want. ”

“ Not having any intelligence to burn them out, the people of those days could live as long as they wished. Or at least that's the way it's figured. Once in a while, about every two or three weeks, just as we erase our minds so we won't burn up too quick, those people would get together and begin killing one another. ”

“ It's devilship. We've prepared surprises for them, but they've given us the worst. It doesn't kill the sperm, it paralyzes it or puts it in a sort of suspended state. Think of it! A boy two years old now will be infertile until he's about fifty-two. Then, if he's healthy, the sperm will revive. Our studies indicate he will be perfectly able to become a father. But by that time hardly a woman on Earth will be able to produce the ovum. ”

“ Striding down the corridor on long thin legs, Art Fillmore mentally glanced over the news and his wide brow puckered. "Scientists to awaken twentieth century man," the mental beam proclaimed. "Dark age to yield untold volumes of ignorance." ”

“ Marriage was seldom discouraged, but it was urged only on those who came up to certain specifications. The purpose was to improve mankind in order that man might hold his own in a solar system that was even now reaching out toward the stars. The system had long been in effect on Mars, but owing to the colder climate and the thinner atmosphere, Mars had less than a tenth the population of earth. ”

“ To free the body of gravity will slow down the cellular breakdown. In ten years you won't age as much as you would in one in a field of gravity. Is it clear?"
"Will that postpone the change of life?"
"Medical science is certain that it will. It devolves upon aging."
"Does that mean that I'll—"
"It does, Sue. It means that about fifty years from now when the sperm revives in men, you women will have children again."
"But Al, we'll be—"
"No, Sue. We'll feel and look about as we ordinarily would in our twenties. And thousands, millions of ships, will soon be released to be converted. ”

“ That's the reason my people live so long. Don't burn ourselves up in infancy thinking. But that doesn't mean you may not be right in teaching your children, when you have them tomorrow, everything right at the start. With a fourteen power intelligence, your people are by nature compelled to do a lot of thinking, and it's your duty, as a citizen, to begin early. Had any startling thoughts lately?"
Fillmore sighed. "Just the normal ones. Figured out a simple method, just before dozing off to sleep last night, to transfer this planet to an orbit about another sun. ”

“ When a fellow felt in an ill humor he could destroy a politician with that weapon. The bang of it would immediately cheer him up."
The woman leaned across the desk and tears came into her eyes. "If you don't catch the man who killed my almost best husband," she sobbed brokenly, "I won't be able to get married more than a couple more times. Suspicion would fall on me and I don't know but two men who would marry a murderess."
Zitts softened somewhat. "And if I do catch the murderer?" ”

“ Nowhere on the planet could she pass as a man, dressed as she was in denims and sweater. Young men wore purple uniforms; those in logistics wore brown.
Dismissing caution, she walked rapidly toward the buildings of the Center. And now she became very careful of her thoughts. She knew that youths developed remarkably at the Centers. They had to if they were to survive out among the stars in that long chain of ships stretched across the course of the Zeehites. The boys were said to be telepathic. She didn't know for sure. She knew only that girls had to be careful of their thoughts around boys. ”

“ I can't afford anything better, not and save anything. I've got less than a billion put aside right now, hardly enough to invest in an enterprise outside the solar system. Poverty! How that secretary of mine lives so high on her pittance, I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't consorting mentally with somebody on some planet on the edge of space. Not that I'm narrow-minded. A woman with looks like hers deserves the best, but allowing a man on the edge of space to think about her is going pretty far, and I'm a stickler for the convention. ”

“ Lacks an ounce of being the right weight."
The willowy blonde behind the desk blinked blue eyes and frowned. "But Mr. Cornith," she insisted, "you fit Miss Lucy Hollowell's specifications perfectly. She even specified that the man must be very exacting, meticulous and choosy. Certainly you are being all of that when you quibble over an ounce in her weight."
Cornith picked up the specification sheet in his muscular right hand. He studied it out of thoughtful brown eyes. "This doesn't look right," he said. "I'll admit that I have strong features, but I'm not handsome." ”

“ A princess on Mars is said to own a chunk of it as big as my thumb, set in a pendant. It was captured in the Martian war with Saturn."
"It's probably a phony," Zitts pointed out. "The Martians are too smart to let a woman wear that precious stuff. A piece that big could be made into the nucleus of a webbing which would trap enough sunlight and moisture from the orbit of Mars to turn every sandy plain on that planet into fertile land." ”

“ Girls from devastated areas are to go to factories in the East. You must regain your strength quickly."
From the local Council she learned only that the full extent of the losses would not be known for weeks. Fighting had been intense between Earth and the orbit of Mars and there was still some confusion. It appeared that Mars, the Moons of Jupiter and the stations beyond Saturn's orbit had suffered heavily. The brunt of the strike, she was told, had been absorbed inside the orbit of Mars, and Earth and its satellite escaped what might have been fatal blows. ”

“ Think what bliss could be achieved if the man could afford to go the maximum distance in one direction and send his wife twice that far in the other direction. I mean to say, happiness is next to the ultimate, and if they could be separated so far that no trace of one ever got back to the other—well, just think of it! ”

“ Zitts declared, "that every thought has a physical reaction. Sometimes it is only glandular. But it is a short step from observing the reactions to reading the thoughts. The reactions, of course, differ in different people. It would be necessary to catalogue your reactions before I could specifically read your every thought. But certain key reactions are fairly common, such as grief, fear, love, hate. In a glance you can tell whether a person is grieving, fearing, loving, hating. A study of reactions advances this talent remarkably. ”

“ If there were only a constant, it would prove out that matter would become pure energy at the speed of the constant. But it does not, for it must achieve the speed of the variable, and that cannot be achieved without traveling at a million different speeds. ”

“ The woman nodded assent and the Venusian girl touched a lever on the side of the desk which Zitts could not reach without stretching. Instantly a round white globe, lighted by a faint yellow glow at its center, rose out of an opening in the desk. The blonde woman, sitting close, drew back with a gasp.
"That's me," she said. "Inside the globe."
"Of course." Zitts cocked an eyebrow at Zoo who pointed at the vision. "Notice closely," Zitts went on. "Right there at the tip of Zoo's claws. You are standing on the moving carpet in a lower corridor of this building. ”

“ You're the only man in the nation with more than twelve power intelligence who isn't bald. If I didn't know you well I'd think you were effeminate. My wife got a mental glimpse of you once and said you were the handsomest man extant. It's those three strands of blond hair. Even the most beautiful woman in the world doesn't have more than six or seven. I'll bet you really projected those in a big way for Cynthia."
Fillmore felt the blood rising to his pale cheeks. ”

“ Zitts roared, displaying his customary impatience when another usurped the floor. "Zoo! Fetch forth the Longsnozzle. And while you're at it you can bracket this case as 'The Longsnozzle Event.' Mark that word 'Event!' I have a suspicion this is an insignificant case with not more than eight or ten murders involved."
"Eight or ten murders!" The blonde woman became deathly pale. "You mean, there is more than one murder?"
Zitts looked at the woman with pity in his brown eyes. "Woman, you evidently do not understand the psychology of murder. One always leads to another. It's always been that way. ”

“ Uranium, being useless except for fissionable purposes, is used for fertilizer in the mineral laboratories where iron is grown. Iron is no good for anything except food, and you can't put very much of it in ordinary food, and so it is dissolved into an iron vapor and freed in the atmosphere. Iron vapor gets heavier as it cools, and so it settles on top of the clouds and holds them close to the earth and keeps the warmth of the world from escaping. ”

“ You have suddenly remembered that one of your husbands is dead and the other is in the hands of the ratcatchers, and you are supposed to register sorrow. You do but it's feigned. Your thoughts are more on the way the man is staring at your figure. ”

“ Fillmore admitted. "Men have killed themselves for their wives, but that's nothing. They have given them planets, but that is nothing; they have showered them with stars, and that is very little because there are so many stars. But no man has ever given a woman, up until this time, a strand of his hair, largely because no man had any hair to give. ”

“ Zitts assured her with feeling. "May even be boring, with so few murders. Personally, I rarely take a case which doesn't offer the prospect of at least a hundred. They generally murder my suspects one after another, and for that reason I try to suspect as many as possible to keep the case interesting.
"Now, if you are prepared—"
The woman, fearful but dry-eyed, nodded in response.
"Pupsie! On your mark! Zoo! Switch on the machine." ”

“ I want the boys to understand the simpler mathematics, such as the theory of relativity and why it is possible to add numerals until you get an answer of zero square. Of course, not everyone can square zero, and it may take ten or fifteen seconds just to teach them that, but I don't want them to grow up to be two or three hours old and still be ignorant. ”

“ They do not know that a billion miles per second is considered slow in some laboratories. They may know it but they ignore it. Backward! Stupid! Even the ancients were better informed. They conceived varying dimensions, which is a step in the right direction. Actually we know that there is only one dimension and that is the mental dimension with diverse corridors. But in order to learn that, we had to discover, some fifty thousand years ago, upward of two thousand different dimensions. Then we integrated them and found that they all emanated from the mind. ”

“ A sun is a sun and it would take thirty seconds solid thought to improve on it, and I don't know anybody capable of that much sustained thought, and there's not much point in transferring this planet, now that we know how to renew the sun whenever it cools too much. ”