Including Venture Science Fiction

SPECIAL RAy BRADBURY SECTION Introduction 5 Bradbury: Prose Poet in the Age of Space WILLIAM F. NOLAN 7 Bright Phoenix RAY BRADBURY 23 To the Chicago Abyss RAY BRADBURY 30 Index to Works of Ray Bradbury WILLIAM F. NOLAN 40 Mrs. Pigafetta Swims Well R. BRETNOR 52 Ferdinand Feghoot: LXII GRENDEL BRIARTON 58 Newton Said JACK THOMAS LEAHY 59 Underfollow JOHN JAKES 65 Now Wakes the Sea J. G, BALLARD 76 Watch the Bug-Eyed Monster DON WHITE 86 Treaty In Tartessos KAREN ANDERSON 91 Books AVRAM DAVIDSON 96 Science: Just Mooning Around ISAAC ASIMOV 100 No Trading Voyage (verse) DORIS PITKIN BUCK 111 Nifia Sol FELIX MARTI-IBANEZ 113 In this issue • .• Coming next month 4 F&Sf Marketplace 129 Cover by ]oe Mugnaini (see page 4)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Volume 24, No. 5, Whole No. 144, May 1963. Published monthly by Mel'cury Press, Inc., at 40¢ a cop;y. Amutal s11bscriptio11 $4.50 in U. S. and Possessions, $5.00 in Canada and the Pan American Union; $5.50 in all other countries. P11blication office, 10 Ferry Street, Concord, N. H. Editorial and general mail sho11ld be sent to 341 East 53rd St., New York 22, N. Y. Seco"d Class postage paid at Concord, N. H. Printed in U. S. A. © 1963 by Mercury Press, Inc. All rights~ including translations into other languages, reserved. Submi.tsions must be accom­ panied bf stamped, self-addressed ell'uelopes; the P~tblislwr assumes no responsibility for return o 1wsolicited manuscripts.

Joseph W. Ferman, PUBLISHER Avram Davidson, EXECUTIVE EDITOR Isaac Asimo1•, SCIEXCE EDITOR Edward L. Ferman, MA!-!AGING EDITOR In this issue . • • . . . are two never-before-published stories by RAY BRADBURY, one of them especially written for this Special Issue, plus definitive profile and index by Bradbury authority WILLIAM F. NOLAN. Old favorite R. BRETNOR is back, as is new favorite DON WHITE-both with funny pieces. Fine poets KAREN ANDER­ SON and DORIS PITKIN BUCK are here with fine prose and poetry, and JOHN JAKES returns after long absence with a tale of interplanetary public relations. From England, J. G. BALLARD reports in with a tale of an illusion which was all too real; new­ comer JACK LEAHY makes his first show with a blend of Fantasy and Science Fiction which will both charm and jolt you, and Dr. FELIX MARTI-IBANEZ takes us on an enchanted trip to far Peru. Coming next month • • • . . . is POUL ANDERSON's full-length short novel, NO TRUCE WITH KINGS, full of rocketing action which will sweep you along with it. We have a zestful short by VANCE AANDAHL, and-have you ever heard of CON PEDERSON? He has been "missing" for six years. Maybe publication of his story will "find" him.

ABOUT THE COVER Dominating the cover is The Illustrated The new Man from the book of the same title. Next is the planet Mars hanging full in the sky to symbolize The Martian Chroni­ Heinlein I cles. Also in the sky is a man with green A master of science fiction­ wings who is Uncle Einer from Brad­ winner of the Hugo Award­ is at his best in this thrilling bury's story of the same name. Under him and hilarious new novel. It's is the legendary figure of Icarus (see page all about a danger-crammed 22). To the left of the Illustrated Man space journey from Mars to we see the paper-eostumed figure of the Venus in an age when each planet boasts a Macy's and a burning man in Fahrenheit 45L In the Hilton! lower left corner we find the central most ctil character in Bradbury's story "Skele­ PODIAYNE OF MARS ton," M. Munigant, playing on a thigh­ by Robert A. Heinlein bone fife. In the far background lies a Martian city, and in the right foreground $3.50 at all bookstores a centaur representing a Picasso sand­ drawing in Bradbury's Medicine For G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Melancholy tale "A Season of Calm \Veather." 4 INTRODUCTION We do not remember the time of year, let alone the year itself, but it was about that period when we bought a sack of Bull Durham for five cents and a clay "T.D.'' pipe for three cents and climbed into a friend's attic to have our first smoke. Another friend showed us a copy of WEIRD TALES and said, "This story-this one here-have you read it?'' \Ve denied having done so, we demurred when he pressed it on us; we thought we were above WEIRD TALES and its jejune and listless recapitulation of vampires and werewolves and women who glowed in the dark. "You have to read it," he insisted-and so, we did. The story dazzled, it was a diamond on a dust-heap, it was prose that danced and soared and sang, it was by no one we had ever heard of before'-someone named Ray Bradbury-someone whose magic hand gave life and light to pages long fallen on weary days . . . A decade passed before we heard his name again and we zealously pressed our informant with questions. "He lives in Venice, [California]" we were told. "Looks like a football play­ er. Won't drive an automobile-says they kill people, ha ha ha.'' We met him, he spoke of the marvelous opportunity Science Fic­ tion afforded to critics of the social scene, he spoke-with what was more like wonder than indignation-of the habit of the Bev­ erly Hills police of regarding all nocturnal strollers as putative criminal lunatics-comments which even then were growing into his story, The Pedestrian: which many have been naive enough to consider merely fiction. Soon after that we departed on some semi-private iliad half-way around the world, did not meet Ray Bradbury again for another decade. (The Bradbury family, which left Ven\ce long before it became part of the Seacoast of Bohemia, includes four enchanting daughters and his gracious and accom· plished wife, Maggie, who is studying to become a medical labora­ tory technician.) Long before then, though, all the world had heard of him. Arguments as to whether his stories are Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Science Fantasy, belong-we hold-to the realm of taxonomy, and little interest us. The difficulty of "classi­ fying" him, the very richness of his talents, perhaps even a mea­ sure of envy at the extent of his unparalleled success, have tended s to obscure to some the great and genuine contribution which Ray Bradbury has made to our field and to our time. To the world at large-or that portion of it which does not move its lips when it reads-Science Fiction means Ray Bradbury. It is our opinion that he has proven worthy of his responsibility, and we are honored and pleased by the opportunity to present to you this Special Ray Bradbury Issue. Assisting him and . us in its preparation are William F. Nolan, worthy Boswell and bibliog­ rapher, and Joseph Mugnaini, the talented and distinctive artist who has graced many of Mr. Bradbury's books with his covers. - Avram Davidson

"/ am excited and pleased about all this. Thank God I can still be excited and hap­ py about such events. When my blood slows .and my hea1·t 1·e{uses to jump with elation at nice occasions, I shall stop writing forever." -RDB 6 William F. Nolan, who last appeared here as the author of ONE OF THOSE DAYS (May 1962), is a prolific professional whose writings include screenplays and hardcover books as well as short stories. He is perhaps most widely known as a chronicler of the automobile and those who drive it, but he is also acknowledged to be the world's "Number One Brad­ bury Fan," and this despite Ray Bradbury's known antipathy towards the horseless carriage. This is probably the longest article on Ray Bradbury ever to have appeared; certainly, it is the most comprehensive.

BRADBURY: Prose Poet In The Age Of Space

by William F. Nolan

I'vE KNOWN RAY BRADBURY FOR currently owns a warmly-fur­ over a dozen years. When I met nished, rambling upstairs-down­ him, in June of 1950, a stairs house in Cheviot Hills, large month after The Martian Chron- enough for his family and their icles had been published, he was two automobiles, one of which is living modestly in Venice, Cali- a Thunderbird, prized by his wife fornia, and his first daughter, Su- Maggie, who drives it with elan. san, was less than eight months Bradbury still refuses to learn to old. Now Susan is a young lady of handle a car, just as he steadfastly thirteen, with three sisters, and refuses to board a jet-and these Ray is one of the most famous and are perhaps his last "holdouts" popular contemporary writers in against the atomic age in which America, having gained an inter- he lives. In 19 55, when the Brad­ national reputation with the bury clan was beset with mumps, Chronicles (which has sold more Ray allowed his girls to rent a TV than a million copies) and the set. Once the Monster was in­ manv books whicl1 followed. He stalled the battle was lost; the set 7 8 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION was soon purchased. For years off into space on a tremendous Ray even fought to keep tele­ voyage of survival. Nothing must phones out of his house, and now be allowed to stop this voyage, our periodically changes his phone last great wilderness trek." number to offset a host of unwant­ These are the words of a space ed calls which cut into his writing age moralist, and Bradbury has time. often demonstrated his deep con­ "His has consistently been the cern for mankind's future in the voice of the poet raised against the stories he has written. Aldous mechanization of mankind," a crit­ Huxley calls him "one of the most ic once declared, and this fear of visionary men now writing in any engulfment has often been echoed field," and an English reviewer in his stories. Bradbury has never added to this image: "He sees man mistrusted machines, yet he has standing like Faustus, god-like always mistrusted the men who power in his grasp, but aware of use them. his own mortal frailty." "The machines themselves are In person, Ray is anything but empty gloves," he has often stated. a sombre moralist; he is, in fact, "And the hand that fills them is disarmingly cheerful, with a live­ always the hand of man. This ly sense of humor, often wild, hand can be good or evil." Brad­ sometimes ribald, an ebullient bury elaborates: "Today we stand fast-talking fellow whose enthusi­ on the rim o~ Space, and man, in asms tend to overwhelm the meek. his immense tidal motion, is about At 42, he seems much younger, to flow out toward far new worlds even with his heavy glasses, and . . . but he must conquer the his personality strikes sparks in seed of his own self-destruction. any room. The warmth he gener­ Man is half-idealist, half-destroy­ ates is contagious and always wel­ er, and the real and terrible fear come. But he is also very sensitive, is that he can still destroy himself is easily hurt, and is quick to an­ before reaching for the stars. I see ger if he feels that he has been un­ man's self-destructive half, the justly dealt with in a situation. blind spider fiddling in the venom­ A prime example of Bradbury ous dark, dreaming mushroom­ the Outraged in action was his suit cloud dreams. Death solves all, it against the fa?\ed TV show, "Play­ whispers, shaking a handful of house 90." A few seasons back, atoms like a necklace of dark when this show was at its height, beads ... We are now in the it presented a 90-minute drama, greatest age in history, and we will A Sound of Different Drummers, soon be capable of leaving our dealing with a time in the future home planet behind us, of going when censorship ruled and the BRADBURY: PROSE POET IN THE AGE OF SPACE 9 "Bookmen" were called out to burn Evening Post Stories (seven the houses of those who defied times), Best One-Act Plays, Best their society by secreting books. Detective Stories, Best Humor, Bradbury exploded when he saw Esquire Treasury, Harper's Read­ this show, called his lawyer and er, Prize Articles, Great Stories immediately sued "Playhouse 90n About Show Business, The Silver and the network for plagiarism. Treasury of Light Verse, Best From This show, he declared, was sim­ Mademoiselle, Golden Treasury of ply a re-written version of his own Children's Literature, Treasury of Fahrenheit 451. After a pitched Ribaldry, Britannica Library of legal battle, Ray eventually Great American Writing. achieved victory in the higher It is Bradbury's greatest pride courts and received a handsome that his fiction is now being select­ settlement. "Most of us would nev­ ed regularly for high school and er dream of trying to sue that out­ college texts such as New Horizons fit," admitted one Hollywood writ­ Through Reading and Literature er, "but Bradbury not only sued, he and Modern English Readings. won I This is like trying to pin To date, some 15 textbooks have down Khrushchev for slander!" reprinted his stories, and on the In New Maps of Hell, Kingsley contents page his name stands Amis calls Bradbury "the Louis next to Poe and Thurber and Hem­ Armstrong of science fiction," and ingway and Steinbeck and Saroy- explains this by saying: "He is the an. one practitioner well known by Listed in Who's Who in Amer­ name to those who know nothing ica and in Twentieth Century Au­ whatever about his field." This is thors, Ray has soared far beyond certainly true. No other sf writer the field which nurtured him, and has reached so vast an audience, it is no longer correct to attach the and it is doubtful that any writer, label "science fiction" to his work. whatever his field, has been an­ Of his 2 3 7 published stories, only thologized more than Bradbury. 1 00 could legitimately be counted His work has appeared in over 130 in the sf category; another 4 3 are anthologies, including the follow­ pure fantasy and the remaining ing: Best American Short Stories 94 are "straight" stories set in Ire­ (four times), 0. Henry Memorial land or Illinois or Mexico. Of Award Prize Stories (twice), Best course, these include his crime Science Fiction Stories (five yarns as well as several offbeat times), Best From Fantasy and items which all but defy classifi­ Science Fiction (twice), Best cation. Short-Short Stories (three times), Bradbury has never claimed to Year's Best SF (twice), Saturday be a science fiction writer in the 10 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION strict sense of the term, and agrees ence fiction writer. He can func­ with Isaac Asimov who stated: "In tion as a moralist of -the space age, my opinion, Ray does not write and show us the dangers and the science fiction; he is a writer of risks, and possibly help us avoid social fiction." And, as Time mag­ costly mistakes when we reach new azine put it: "Bradbury's elf of worlds ..." fantasy is obviously only one ele­ Bradbury has been bitterly at­ ment in a larger talent that in­ tacked for the improper use of sci­ cludes passion, irony and wisdom." ence in some of his hooks, and one In October of 1950, in discuss­ angry reader protested: "The man ing The Martian Chronicles, is a mechanical moron, an engi­ Bradbury declared: "I've never neering imbecile who knows no really called myself a sf writer, practical physics, whose chemis­ other people have. In fact, I tried try is an abomination and whose to get Doubleday to take the sf em­ ridumentary notions of electron­ blem off the book." ics are badly short-circuited." However, despite such honest Ray's reply to such criticism: ,declarations, Ray has always ad­ "It is all too easy for an emo­ mired and defended the field of tionalist to go astray in the eyes science fiction, and feels that it of the scientific, and surely my affords a writer the widest possible work could never serve as a hand­ range in which to deliver serious hook for mathematicians. Some­ social commentary. In this respect, how, though, I am compensated Bradbury has utilized the field as a by allowing myself to believe that "sounding board," and as a kind of while the scientific expert can tell "stage setting" for his parables of you the exact size, location, pulse, the future. musculature and color of the Writing in The Nation, regard­ heart, we emotionalists can find ing science fiction, he stated: and touch it quicker." "There are few literary fields, it Emotion has always been the seems to me, that deal so strikingly key to Bradbury's work. He writes with themes that vitally concern out of the primary emotions: love, us all today. There are few more joy, hate, fear, anger. "Find out exciting genres, there are none what excites and delights you, or fresher or so full of continually re­ what angers you most, tllen get it newed and renewable concepts. It down on paper," he advises the is the field of ideas, where you may neophyte writer. "After all, it is set up and knock down your own your individuality that you want political and religious states. There to isolate. Work from the subcon­ are no boundaries, no taboos scious; store up images, impres­ or restrictions to hold back the sci- sions, data-then dip into this BRADBURY: PROSE POET I~ THE AGE OF SPACE 11 'well of self' for your stories. The However, as a boY, I felt a much characters you choose will be parts closer kinship to' an ancestor of of yourself. I am -all the people mine, Mary Bradbury, who was in all my books. They are mir­ tried as a witch in Salem during ror reflections, three times or the seventeenth century." a dozen times removed and re­ Indeed, young Ray's hyper-ac­ ,·ersed from myself. So, the trick tive imagination was whetted by is: feed the subconscious, fill the his Aunt Neva, who read to him well." from the wonderous books of L. Who is the real Ray Bradbury? Frank Baum when he was seven as What kind of man has been he mentally followed the yellow formed, and from what back­ brick road to the enchanting land ground, in Jlis 4 2 years of life? of Oz. His mother read Poe to him "I was born on a Sunday after­ each evening by candlelight when noon in August," says Ray, "while he was eight, and he was soon old my father and brother were at­ enough to discover Tarzan of the tending a baseball game on the Apes and John Carter of Mars as other side of town." he delightedly perused his Uncle The town was Waukegan, Illi­ Bion's collection of Edgar Rice nois; the year was 1920-and Burroughs. Mrs. Bradbury was having her "I loved Tarzan," says Ray, fourth child. Ray's brother, Leon­ "and began cutting out the Bur­ ard, four years his senior, would roughs comic strips and pasting grow up with him. But Leonard's them in a huge scrapbook. I had al­ twin brother, Samuel, had died at ready started collecting Buck Rog­ the age of two. A sister, Elizabeth, ers comics in 1928, continuing had died at one year. So this new this through '3 7. I also saved Flash baby, Ray Douglas, was the last Gordon panels, and Prince Val­ child Esther Moberg Bradbury iant was another favorite. I still would bear and raise. have all these beautifully-drawn "My father, Leonard Spauld­ comic adventures down in the cel­ ing Bradbury, was a power line­ lar carefully packed away in an man for Public Service," says Ray. old trunk; When I want to re­ "He came from a family of news­ capture that era. I just tip back paper editors and printers. My the lid." grandfather and great grandfather Magic entered his life in 19 31, formed Bradbury & Sons, and pub­ when the eleven-year-old boy at­ lished two northern Illinois news­ tended a local stage show which papers at the turn of the century, featured Blackstone, the famed so you might say that publishing magician. Ray was invited on­ and writing were in my blood. stage, where he was duly pre- 12 FANTASY AXD SCIENCE FICTION sented with a live rabbit from the mates," while drawings of skele­ conjurer's tall silk hat. Over­ tons and cobwebbed castles filled whelmed with such wizardry, his school notebooks. young Bradbury announced to his The fear of death has been a re­ parents that he would soon be­ current theme in Bradbury's work, come the world's greatest magi­ and this fear took root in Ray's cian. childhood. He admits: "A good "Our house became a jumble of part of my young life was spent dice cabinets and ghost boxes," he anticipating a merciless doom that recalls. "I sent away to Chicago for might descend the day before some my magic kit, put on a paper personal triumph or happiness was moustache and made a top hat fulfilled." When he was seven, out of cardboard. Then I'd per­ playing at the shore of. a summer form at Oddfellows' Halls and lake, he had seen his cousin almost American Legion meetings-and, drown (an experience which he at home, I talked Dad into assist­ later transferred into fictional terms ing me in a mental telepathy rou­ in The Lake). And when his tine put on for captive relatives. brother failed to return until very They accepted quietly rather than late one evening from the dark ra­ have me play the violin, my other vine near their horne, Ray was talent!" swe that Death had claimed him. Laboriously, each afternoon for (This incident was vividly recre­ a full year, young Ray wrote down ated in The Night.) the dialogue from Chandu the Ma­ In 19 3 2 the Bradburys moved gician's radio program. And when to Arizona, and the boy fell under a traveling carnival came to town the influence of a neighbor's col­ on Labor Day Bradbury made the lection of pulp science fiction mag­ acquaintance of "Mr. Electrico," azines. Here were Amazing Stories an unfrocked minister who sold and Wonder Stories with their the boy a trick vase into which lurid covers and incredible prose. flowers vanished. Here were giant ants, bug-eyed "Lon Chaney was my idol," says monsters, scaly Things from an­ Ray. "I tried to imitate his genius other world and daring, raygun­ for disguise, dressing as a bat with wielding spacemen who calmly black-velvet wings which I cut rescued terrified maidens from from my grandmother's opera cape, alien clutches. \ or making use of jute sacking and "Of course I was hooked," ad­ uncorded rope in turning myself mits Ray. "I was creating my own into a gorilla." Bradbury gleefully fantasies on brown rolls of butcher recalls hanging in night trees "to paper by then, writing in pencil­ scare hell out of my little class- until, on my tw~lfth birthday, I BRADBURY: PROSE POET IK THE AGE OF SPACE 13 was given a toy-dial typewriter. I reer and moved with his family to then switched over to this ma­ California. Upon discoveri11.g that chine, which typed only capitals, the girl next door owned "an hon­ and began writing sequels to the est-to-god typewriter," Ray began stories I'd read. It was then I de­ dictating stories to her at a furious termined to become a writer be­ rate. cause I couldn't imagine a more Attending Los Angeles High, wonderful life. In fact, I still Bradbury began to see his budding can't!" literary efforts printed in the Bradbury's amateur stage ap­ school paper, The Blue & White, pearances in Illinois as a purveyor and two of his poems were pub­ of magic had revealed an aptitude lished in student pamphlets. He for acting, and although he'd now also wrote several plays in which, given up the idea of becoming a as he says, "I made dam sure I got professional magician he was fas­ juicy lead roles. These parts were cinated by radio performers. He always tailor-made for a five foot, began to hang around the local ten inch, slightly fat, bespectacled Arizona station, KGAR, in the youth!" hope that he would be hired, brag­ Under Jennet Johnson, he took ging to school chums that they'd a class in creative writing, and be­ soon be hearing his voice on their gan to read the work of Heming­ radios. way and Thomas Wolfe, both of "Eventually KGAR's resistance whom were to prove strong influ­ crumbled," says Ray, "and I was ences on his style. By skipping assigned the job of reading the lunch twice a week for several comic section over the air to the months he managed to save kids each Saturday night." The enough to buy his first genuine boy put in five months at this job, typewriter, and began shooting off and attempted to change his voice stories to The Saturday Ere1zing for each character from Tailspin Post and Harper's. ("They shot Tommy to Jiggs and Maggie. ("I them right back, which seemed in­ even assumed a thick German ac­ sane to me. How, I wondered, cent for the Katzenjammer Kids.") could they possibly tum down the After the comic-reading stint had work of a mature seventecn-vear- ended Bradbury became sound-ef­ old author?") · fects man and bit player on other In September of 19 3 7, Brad­ programs, frustrated only because bury attended his first meeting of he could not write the scripts for the Los Angeles Science Fiction each show. League, and this proved to be a In 1934, when Ray was four­ decisive step toward his profes­ teen, he left his budding radio ca- sional writing career. Here were FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION other young men and women in­ haunting the doorsteps of the lo­ fected with the same fantasy vi­ cal professionals, many of whom rus; here was understanding and belonged to the club," says Ray. "I instant social acceptance. T. Bruce was desperate to learn the secrets Yerke, who had invited Ray to the of the pros, and would pop up club, described him as "a wild­ with a new story nearly every haired, enthusiastic individual week which I passed around for who endeared himself to all of us, criticism and advice from Hank though he was often the recipient Kuttner to Leigh Brackett to Ed of assaults with trays and ham­ Hamilton to Bob Heinlein to Ross mers by infuriated victims of his Rocklynne to Jack Williamson to endless pranks." Henry Hasse, all of whom were in­ Forrest J. Ackennan, who was credibly kind and patient with me one of the club's pioneer members, and with these dreadful early ef­ characterizes the teen-age Brad­ forts. In fact, the above-named bury as "well-nigh impossible authors grew lean and rangy from . . . a noisy kid with a broad countless flights through the rear sense of humor, who did endless exits of walk-up apartments when imitations of Adolf Hitler, W. C. Bradbury would suddenly appear Fields and FDR . • • The cal­ at the front door with a new manu­ louses on the knees of us oldtimers script in his teeth." in the club come from kneeling Ray graduated from L.A. High every night. and saying 'Thank in '38, and immediately took a God we didn't drown him!' " job hawking newspapers from the It was Ackerman who encour­ corner of Olympic and Norton, aged Ray to submit a short sf story, which netted him a bare $1 0 a HoUerbochen's Dilemma, for the week. Out of this meagre sum, and club's mimeo-magazine, Imagina­ what he could winnow out of his tion. This appeared in the Janu­ parents, he rented an empty room ary, 1938, issue and offered no in a local office building, installed hint whatever of Bradbury's origi­ a table and chair, and carted in nal talent. Nor did the majority of his typewriter. the other short pieces which Ray "I spent the hours between the feverishly penned for a handful of morning and evening editions local fanzines (those earnestly­ pounding away at that machine," edited amateur publications which he says. "I also kep_t my hand in a columnist for the New Republic acting, having joined Loraine astutely termed "a peculiar blend Day's Little Theatre group. But of Screen Romances and Partisan the writing took up most of my Review"). time; I just filled the pages-with "During this period I began descriptions, images, bits of narra- BRADBURY: PROSE POET IN THE AGE OF SPACE 15 tive, character sketches, impres­ "Howe\'er," says Ray, "when sions, dialogue and stories. I was several more months passed with getting rid of a lot of dead weight, no checks in the mail I began to learning as I went, trying to clear doubt my ability to actually crack the deck for professional work." a paying market. By June of 1941 By the summer of '39, as an out­ I had told myself that if I hadn't let for some of this material, Brad­ made a sale by my twenty-first bury launched his own fanzine, birthday I'd quit beating my head Futuria Fantasia. Here, under his against the wall." own name and four pseudonyms Just a month before he turned (Guy Amory, Ron Reynolds, An­ twenty-one, in late July, a check thony Corvais and Doug Rogers), arrived for $2 7. 50 from Super he filled the pages with articles, Science Stories in payment for a poetry, satires and half a dozen story Ray had plucked from the short stories. Heinlein, Kuttner, pages of Fufa and re-written with Rocklynne, Hannes Bok, Acker­ Henry Hasse. This was Pendu­ man, Yerke, Hasse, and Damon lum, and it appeared that Novem­ Knight also contributed brief items ber under the double byline. to "FuFa," but despite editor "My end of the check came to Bradbury's plea for financial aid $13.75," says Ray, "and it seemed to continue the publication ("Con­ like a million to me! I walked tributions will be happily fondled away from the Little Theatr(! and sewed up in a green velvet group for good; acting was behind sack.") FuFa died after 4 issues. me. By God, I was a writer[ When Emerging from the protective 1941 ended I had written 52 womb of sf fandom, Bradbury stories in 52 weeks, and had achieved definite, if somewhat made three sales with the help of shaky, professional status in No­ my agent Julius Schwartz." vember of 1940 with It's Not the In 1942, on the basis of anoth­ Heat, It's the Hu-, a satirical er half-dozen story sales, Ray left slap at cliches which appeared in his. newspaper job to apply him­ Script, a West Coast slick which self to full-time production. He'd also gave other talented but un­ invaded the pages of Weird Tales, known writers (among them Wil­ and it was here that his unique liam Saroyan) their first break. talent would flourish. With his The fact that the magazine was second story for this magazine, unable to pay for material at that The Wind, printed early in '43, point in its uncertain existence in he began to examine his own no way diminished Bradbury's fears and childhood memories in immense joy at seeing his name at order to fashion emotionally-real last set in professional type. fantasies. And by December of 1(> F.-1.:-o;T!I.SY AND SCIENCE FICTION that year his first quality science lates Bradbury. "With Grant fiction story appeared, King of Beach, who was a good friend as the Gray Spaces, a warm, moving well as an excellent ceramic ar­ account of a boy who left friends tist, I planned to make a collection and family behind to become a of Mexican masks which would be rocket pilot. Ray Bradbury was taken over by the L.A. County already making his mark as a high­ Museum. I knew that I would ly-original creator within the sf­ have to make some slick-paper fantasy field, but his course was sales, to the higher-paying mar­ still uncertain. kets, in order to earn the extra Confused and directionless, money. Since I had been appear­ Bradbury was simultaneously pro­ ing regularly in the pulps I was ducing very good and very bad afraid that the slick magazine edi­ work. The type of non-gimmick, tors would be prejudiced against non-scientific sf he wanted to using my real name. So I bundled write met stiff resistance among off three new stories as 'William editors. The only editorial encour­ Elliott,' -and, on three successive agement and help he ever received days, I got checks from Collier's, came from the detective pulps. Mademoiselle and Charm! Which Sf editors advised him to "con­ gave me more than enough for our form," to write a more standard­ trip. I immediately wrote each ized formula story if he wished to editor, telling him my real name, sell. Bowing to pressure, he pro­ and it turned out none of them duced three painfully-obvious imi­ had ever heard of Ray Bradbury, tations of Leigh Brackett for and that they'd be delighted to re­ Planet, and plunged into the de­ store my byline. That was my tective magazines with trite, con­ crackthrough; the wall was down. ventional tales of crime and mur­ It was a tremendous week!" der. Only in Weird Tales did his That same year saw the pub­ work prove to be fresh and origi­ lication of Bradbury's powerful nal, and he was gaining an early treatment of racial conflict, set in following with stories such as The the realistic atmosphere of a base­ Sea Shell, The Lake and The Jar. ball park, The Big Black and Unfit for military service be­ White Game. Appearing in The cause of eye trouble, Bradbury American Mercury, the story was contributed to the war effort in selected by Martha\Foley for Best the forties by writing advertising American Short Stories of 1946- and radio plays for the Red Cross fulfilling a boyhood dream and and the Blood Bank. moving the young author into the "In late 194 5 I needed $5 00 to exclusive ranks of America's top finance a trip into Mexico," re- short storyists. BR.\DBURY: !'ROSE POET 1:\ THE .\GE OF SPACE 17 The trip into Mexico was both On the evening prior to his wed­ terrifying and rewarding. Brad­ ding day, Bradbury stacked up bury and Beach ended up at thousands of pages of manuscript, Guanajuato, and Ray's initial totalling some two million words, shock at viewing the underground and made a giant bonfire of them. standing mummies in that city ("It was all bad writing, stuff was reflected in a superb novelet, that needed burning, and I've nev­ The Next in Line, written (along er regretted destroying it.") with several other Mexico-based A week after his first daughter stories) back in California. "This was born Ray wrote a poetic tale, had been my first trip outside the Switch on the Night, 'in order, he States," says Ray. "The country says "to teach her not to fear the was strange and lonely, and we dark as I did as a boy." (This kept going in deeper, to the small, story was published as an award­ alien towns and villages. For a winning children's book in 19 55.) while, it seemed we'd never get The next major step in Brad­ back-and I put this fear into bury's rapidly-ascending career the novelet." had to do with Mars, and a series Marriage was "the next fearful of delicately-wrought, poetic tales step" in Bradbury's life, and his of the Red Planet. courtship of Marguerite Susan Mc­ "During the summer of '44, on Clure, a UCLA graduate, began in into the fall, I'd been reading a lot a most unusual fashion. of wonderful fiction by Wolfe, "Maggie worked in a down­ Steinbeck, Hemingway, Sinclair town bookstore," relates Bradbury. Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Jes­ "Each afternoon she'd watch this samyn West, Katherine Anne Por­ fellow come in, carrying a brief­ ter and Eudora Welty, and the case. He'd nose around, pick up idea came to me: Do a series of several books, discard them, then stories about .Mars, about the peo­ leave. When a number of vol­ ple there, and the coming of the umes were reported missing Mag­ Earthmen, and about the loneli­ gie was convinced she'd found the ness and terror of space. Over the thief: the suspicious-looking guy years the stories formed them­ with the briefcase-which was selves, inspired sometimes by po­ me! That's how we met. Luckily, etry which Mag would read aloud the missing books were recovered, to me on summer evenings-such and I ended up stealing Maggie." as And the Moon Be Still as Bright They were married in Septem­ -sometimes by essays or long ber of 194 7, just a month before conversations. In 1948 the whole Ray's first book, Dark Carnival, thing took abrupt shape for me, \\'as released by Arkham House. due entirely to a rejection." 18 FANTASY :\ND SCIENCE FICTION The rejection had come from and fashion from them stories as Farrar-Straus on a "mixed bag" of delicate as Farre's songs or Ce­ fiction which Bradbury had sub­ zanne's watercolors, is a very con­ mitted through his New York siderable achievement. It is hard agent. It was sent back with the to speak with restraint of these comment: "Too pulpish." extraordinary tales." Since some of the stories had Ray Russell, who was later to appeared in pulp magazines, Ray buy several of Bradbury's stories was sure that the decision reeked for Playboy, summed up the im­ of snobbery and, in a fury, he pact of the Chronicles: "Debate as packed his bags for New York. His we will the flaws in Bradbury's intention was to "meet a publisher work (what Kingsley Amis called, face to face" and settle the issue with cutting precision, 'that par­ of quality. ticular kind of sub-whimsical, "I ended up at Doubleday," he would-be poetical badness that says, "and although they liked my goes straight to the corny old heart work, they wanted a more unified of the Sunday reviewer'), it is im­ kind of book, with a single theme, possible to deny the uniqueness and right away the Martian tales of his position among sf writers: sprang to mind. Six months later Bradbury alone has achieved I turned in the final manuscript." 'mainstream eminence' without Overnight, with the release of ever really leaving the genre of his The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury beginnings. Instead of deserting became a major literary figure, and science fiction, he has elevated it, renowned critics. such as Chris- - along with himself." topher Isherwood, Clifton Fadi­ In 1952 director John Huston man and Gilbert Highet were indicated, in a letter to Bradbury, hailing his talent. that he hoped to interest a studio When the book was published in financing a film version of the in England, as The Silver Locusts, Chronicles-and this was very ex­ critic Angus Wilson declared: "For citing news to Ray, since Huston those who care about the future of was one of his "personal gods," a fiction in the English language director with whom he had this book is, I believe, one of the dreamed of working. As it turned most hopeful signs of the last out, this deal never materialized, twenty years • • ." but Huston did co~tact Bradbury And the venerable British jour­ in the fall of 19 5 3; calmly offer­ nal, Punch, said of his work: "To ing him the chance to do the take the paraphernalia of 'science screenplay on Moby Dick. fiction' -the rocket ships, the ro­ "I was staggered," says Ray. "As bots and galactic explorations • • • a boy, I had attempted to read the BRADBURY: PROSE. POET IN THE. AGE. OF SPACE. 19 book, but had given up. I told when John spotted a huge black Huston I'd give him a yes or no in bull nearby, glowering at us. Be­ the morning-and then plunged fore we could stop him, he'd into Melville, reading all night. whipped off his coat and was By dawn I knew I could do the waving it like a matador's cape in screenplay, and that September, the brute's face, shouting 'Ho, with Maggie, I headed for Ireland Toro, Ho-ohl' My God, we were on what was to become a pretty paralyzed. Finally the bull snort­ wild adventure." ed, shook his head and walked Bradbury's only real film ex­ away. John was actually disap­ perience involved an original pointed that he hadn't charged!" story he had worked on that year Huston has always been a no­ for Universal, The Meteor, which torious practical joker-and his the studio called It Came From jokes range from innocuous to vio­ Outer Space, and on which he had lently merciless. He once turned a done a long treatment used as the fancy dinner party in London into basis for the Harry Essex screen­ a furniture-wrecking free-for-all, play. Moby Dick was a far more hypnotized a Hollywood bigwig complex assignment, and involved he disliked into flapping his arms transferring the essence of Mel­ and crowing like a rooster, and ville to cinema terms. Naturally dumped a drunken member of his apprehensive on such a project, cast on the deserted deck of a ship Bradbury was unprepared for at sea. Bradbury, of course, was Huston's aggressive, wild person­ fair game during the filming of ality. Moby. - · "He says he is out to corrupt 'We were more than halfway me," Bradbury air-mailed from through the final version of the Dublin. "Huston looks fonvard to script," Bradbury relates, "when putting me on a horse, riding me John brought in a telegram he to hounds, jetting me in a speed­ said was from the head office at plane and generally burying me in Warners. It read: 'FIND WE dope, drinks and dames." CANNOT PROCEED WITH­ The wild, unpredictable Huston FILM UNLESS SEXY FEMALE met Ray in Dublin, and invited ROLE WRITTEN IN AT Bradbury to walk the Irish coun­ ONCE.' I crumpled the thing up tryside with him and a fellow­ and actually stamped on it. John writer, Peter Viertel (there to couldn't keep a straight face. I work on another film). saw him on the couch, doubled up Vividly recalling that first aft­ and laughing like a big monkey." ernoon with Huston, Ray says: Bradbury, however, managed to "'Ve were crossing an open field turn the tables neatly on a later 20 FA1\TASY AXD SCIENCE FICTIOX occasion. "John had invited a Ray spent six months in Ireland group of I 00% Lords and Ladies working on the screenplay, writ­ out to his Irish estate for dinner. ing and re-writing some 1500 He kept needling me to stay for pages to arrive at a final 134. the evening and I kept telling him Moby Dick, with minor script re­ I had nothing formal to wear. visions by Huston, was released in Well, he just kept needling me in 1956, and although this saga of front of Pete Viertel. Finally, when the Great White Whale was not John had stepped out of the room, the criti<:al success Ray had hoped Pete hustled me upstairs. 'Let's for, (due, in large part, to Greg­ show the bastard!' he chuckled, ory Peck's weak, inept perform­ and dug up an old plaid skirt, ance as Captain Ahab) the $5,- some black leggings, a fringed 000,000 film enhanced Brad­ purse, and a dinner jacket. 'Don't bury's reputation, paving the way you see?' he asked, 'Kilts!' When for other script work. the ultra-distinguished guests had "I was called into one of the arrived and John was in their big studios to re-work a fantasy midst playing the casual host, I script," says Ray, "and the pro­ came down the stairs. From the ducer asked me how I liked it after doorway, in a ringing voice, Pete I'd read the last page. 'Fine,' I announced me as 'Laird McBrad­ said, 'I ought to like it, because bury.' All the Lords and Ladies it's mine.' The guy had stolen one turned in my direction. I saw of my short stories, given the idea John's jaw drop three feet! A to another writer, then called me lovely moment.". in to do the final version, failing Then there was the afternoon to realize that I was the author of at Huston's Irish manor when a the original story he'd stolen! He telegram arrived to inform Brad­ ended up paying for the rights, bury that his first novel, Fahren­ and I got the hell out of there. heit 4 51, a bitterly-satirical story This anecdote, it seems to me, is of the book-burning future, had typical of Hollywood." been awarded a grant of $1 ,000 Bradbury's experience with from the National Institute of Arts Huston had supplied material for and Letters. ("John slapped me a basket of Irish stories and plays, on the shoulder and yelled 'It's in addition to providing him with found money, kid! And I've got the chance _to see., some of the just the place for it. Put every world's great cities: Venice, Rome, cent down on the nose of a good Florence, Milan and Paris. In the horse and you can double your summer of 19 57 London was add­ roll!' I was wise enough uot to fol­ ed to this list when Sir Carol low his advice.") Reed, the noted British director, BRADBURY: PROSE POET IN THE AGE OF SPACE. 21 sent for Bradbury in order to have Writers' Conferences coast-to­ him adapt his And the Rock Cried coast. In his "spare time" he paints Out into a full-length screenplay. in oil, and serves on Guild com­ "This has yet to be filmed," says mittees. ("If there were three of Ray, "but eventually it may be me I could keep all of us busy!"} done since Reed loved the script. As early as 1951 Ray was mak­ He ran into problems getting the ing 100 reprint sales each year, financial go-ahead. I had the same and his total is now in the thou­ kind of bad luck with the Chroni­ sands, with his work appearing in cles at MGl\1 in 1961 when I over a dozen languages in many worked for several months on a foreign publications such as Per­ 1.58-page screenplay based on the spektev, Europa, Crespi, Temps book. Now, in '63, this may be Modernes, Nuovi, Vitalino, and activated. Jean-Louis Barrault Hjemmet. (One of his stories, plans a stage version of the Chroni­ Mars is Heaven, has seen over 25 cles in Paris-and the French reprintings around the world.) 'new wave' director, Francois Truf­ Bradbury is a strong defender faut, is presently in the midst of of Los Angeles, and nothing an­ bringing Fahrenheit 451 to the noys him more than a New Yorker screen in '63. We'll have to see who speaks darkly of the "perils" what develops out of all this." of living near Hollywood. ("I can Bradbury always has several attest that a New York writer, literary irons in the fire, and even afraid for his virginity, can live in the projects which fail to mate­ Los Angeles and rarely, if ever, go rialize often pay him handsome to a wild cocktail party, be thrown dividends. (He got $10,000 from into a swimming pool with a the Shirley Temple TV show for blonde starlet wearing nothing an adaptation of The Rocket, and but her Fruit-of-the-Loom undies, another $10,000 option money or be compromised by a Salton on The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit Sea real estate promoter.") as a projected film. Neither story Ray hopes to finish his latest was produced.) novel Leviathan '99, which he In addition to his books, poems calls "Moby Dick in the f~ture," by (he has a file drawer of these the end of '63, and a new collec­ which he is polishing for eventual tion of his short stories will also release), short stories, TV and be issued about that time. He has film scripts, plays and articles another 100,000 words of Illinois Bradbury "keeps in mental trim" material which will eventually by lecturing at least twice a month. form another book, and more of He has spoken to PTA groups, his plays may later be collected luncheon clubs, college classes and between hard covers. 22 FANTASY Al'D SCIEKCE FICTIO:-' Bradbury is indeed a prose poet tide in print each month over the in the age of space, a man pos­ past 2 3 years, he expects to do at sessed by the beauty of the written least that well over the next two word; his work reflects a passion decades. for the shape and sound and pre­ "Success is a continuing proc­ cise rhythms of the language­ ess," he says. "Failure is a stop­ and he has been able to translate page. The man who keeps moving this passion into imaginative lit­ and working does not fail." erature of a very high order. Hav­ Ray Douglas Bradbury is still ing averaged one new story or ar- moving-and succeeding.

BRADBURY FILM WINS ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION ICARUS MONTGOLFIER WRIGHT, an 18 minute semi­ animated film _based on Ray Bradbury's FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION short story (May 1956) was awarded an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nomina­ tion as one of five outstanding cartoon shorts produced in 1962. The film, released by Format Films, with a screenplay by Bradbury and George Clayton Johnson, was two years in the making. It consists of 200 tempera paintings by Joe Mugnaini, who did the cover illustration for this issue. Mug­ naini drew 1,000 preliminary sketches before starting to work on the final paintings which appear in the film with a narration read by James Whitmore and Ross Mai'tin. The film has already had two screenings at the White House, and will be entered in several upcoming foreign film festivals. It has been hailed by writers in the various aerospace industries as the "first real aesthetic film response to the Space Age." Ray Bradbury calls this story, the first of the tandem, "a curiosity. I wrote it [he says] back in 1947-48 and it remained in· my files over the years, going out only a few times to quality markets like Harper's Bazaar or The Atlantic Monthly, where it was dismissed. It lay in my files and collected about it many ideas. These ideas grew large and became .. .. FAHREN­ HEIT 451." Mr. Bradbury is modest; more than a curiosity, it is, indeed, "a new, unpublished story, freshened with a revi­ sion" especially for this Special Issue. Perhaps the idea also requires freshening, that books have a life beyond their own pages, that they become part and portion of everyone who reads them, and thus can never really be destroyed. The words we commonly say, the thoughts we commonly think-how much, how many of them, have had their origin in books which we take for granted? The author concludes: "Some of your readers, I hope,"will interested in this [story] because it was the starting point for one of my longer, and popular, works. I also hope they enjoy it as a single pure experience, to itself."

BRIGHT PHOENIX

by Ray Bradbury

ONE DAY IN APRIL, 2022, THE years before, stood Jonathan great library door slammed flat Barnes. shut. Thunder. Seeing his bravado momentar­ Hello, I thought. ily in pause, I recalled ten thou­ At the bottom step glowering up sand Veterans speeches sprayed at my desk, in a United Legion from his mouth, the endless wind­ uniform which no longer hung as whipped flag parades he had hus­ neatly upon him as it had twenty tled, panted through, the grease- 23 24 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION cold _chicken and green-pea pa­ myriad of white pages stopped but­ triot banquets he had practically terflying under far green lamps in cooked himself; the civic drives the big stone rooms. Faintly, a few stillborn in his hat. books thudded shut. Now Jonathan Barnes stomped Reading people lifted their se­ up the creaking main library steps, rene faces. Their eyes, made ante­ giving each the full downthrust of lope by the time and weather of his power, weight and new author­ this place, pleaded for silence to ity. His echoes, rushed back from return, as it always must when a the vast ceilings, must have tiger has come and gone from a shocked even him into better man­ special fresh-water spring, as this ners, for when he reached my surely was. Looking at these up­ desk, ··I felt his warmly liquored turned, gentle faces I thought of breath stir mere whispers on my my forty years of living, working, face. even sleeping here among hidden "I'm here for the books, Tom." lives and vellumed, silent, and I turned casually to check some imaginary people. Now, as always, index cards. "When they're ready, I considered my library as a cool we'll call you." cavern or fresh, ever-growing for­ "Hold on," he said. "Wait-" est into which men passed from "You're here to pick up the the heat of the day and the fever of Veterans Salvage books for hos- motion to refresh their limbs and pital distribution?" . bathe their minds an hour in the "No, no," he cried. "I'm here for grass-shade illumination, in the all the books." · sound of small breezes wandered I gazed at him. out from the turning and turning "Well," he said, "most of them." of the pale soft book pages. Then, "Most?'' I blinked once, then better focussed, their ideas re­ bent to riffie the files. "Only ten hung upon their frames, their volumes to a person at a time. Let's flesh made easy on their bones, see. Here! Why, you let your card men might walk forth into the expire when you were twenty blast-furnace of reality, noon, years old, thirty years ago. See?" I mob-traffic, improbable senes­ held it up. cence, inescapable death. I had Barnes put both hands on the seen thousands careen into my li­ desk and leaned his great bulk brary starved and l~ve well-fed. I upon them. "I see you are inter­ had watched lost people find them­ fering." His face began to color, selves. I had known realists to his breath to husk and rattle. "I dream and dreamers to come awake don't need a card for my work!" in this marble sanctuary where si­ So loud was his whisper that a lence was a marker in each book. BRIGHT PHOENIX 25 "Yes," I said at last. "But it will mit. I wish only silence as you only take a moment to re-register work." you. Fill out this -new card. Give The readers at the tables had two reliable references-" leapt up at the storm of feet. I "I don't need references," said patted the air. They sat back down Jonathan Barnes, "to bum books!" and did not glance up again at "Contrarily," said I. ''You'll these men crammed into their need even more, to do that." tight dark char-smeared suits who "My men are my references. stared at my mouth now as if they They're waiting outside for the disbelieved my cautions. Barnes books. They're dangerous." nodded. The men moved softly, on "Men like that always are." tip-toe, through the big library "No, no, I mean the books, rooms. With extra care, with prop­ idiot. The books are dangerous. er stealth, they raised the win­ Good God, no two agree. All the dows. Soundlessly, whispering, damn double-talk. All the lousy they collected books from the babel and slaver and spit. So, shelves to toss down toward the we're out to simplify, clarify, hew evening yard below. Now and to the line. We need-" again they scowled at the readers "To talk this over," said I, tak­ who calmly went on leafing ing up a copy of Demosthenes, through their books, but made no tucking it under my arm. "It's move to seize these volumes, and time for my dinner. Join me, continued emptying the shelves. please-" "Good," said I. I was half way to the door "Good?" asked Barnes. when Barnes, wide-eyed, suddenly ''Your men can work without remembered the silver whistle you. Take five." hung from his blouse, jammed it And I was out in the twilight to his wet lips, and gave it a so quickly he could only follow, piercing blast. bursting with unvoiced questions. The library doors burst wide. A We crossed the green lawn where flood of black charcoal-burnt uni­ a huge portable Hell was drawn up formed men collided boisterously hungrily, a fat black tar-daubed upstairs. oven from which shot red-orange I called, softly. and gaseous blue flames into which They stopped, surprised. men were shoveling the wild birds, "Quietly," I said. the literary doves which soared Barnes seized my arm. "Are you crazily down to flop broken­ opposing due process?" winged, the precious flights poured "No," I said. "I won't even ask from every window to thump the to see your property invasion per- earth, to be kerosene-soaked and 26 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION -- chucked in the gulping furnace. mendous experiment. A test town. As we passed this destructive if If the burning works here, it'll colorful industry, Barnes mused. work anywhere. We don't bum ev­ "Funny. Should be crowds, a erything, no, no. You noticed, my thing like this. But . . . no men cleaned only certain shelves crowd. How do you figure?" and categories? We'll eviscerate I left him. He had to run to about 49 point 2 percent. Then catch up. we'll report our success to the In the small cafe across the overall government committee-" street we took a table and Barnes, "Excellent," I said. irritable for no reason he could Barnes eyed me. "How can you say, called out, "Service! I've got to be so cheerful?" get back to work!" "Any library's problem," I said, Walter, the proprietor, strolled "is where to put the books. You've over, with some dog-eared menus. helped me solve it." Walter looked at me. I winked. "I thought you'd be Walter looked at Jonathan afraid.'' Barnes. "I've been around Trash Men Walter said: " 'Come with me all my life.'' and be my love, and we will all the "I beg pardon?" pleasures prove.' " "Burning is burning. Whoever "What?" Jonathan Barnes does it is a Trash Man.'' blinked. · "Chief Censor, Green Town "Call me Ishmael," said Wal­ Illinois, damn it!" ter. A new man, a waiter, came with "Ishmael," I said. 'We'll have the coffee pot steaming. coffee to start.'' "Hello, Keats," I said. Walter came back with the cof­ " 'Season of mists and mellow fee. fruitfulness'" said the waiter. "'Tiger, tiger, burning bright,'' "Keats?" said the Chief Censor. he said. "In the forests of the "His name isn't Keats.'' night.'" "Silly of me," I said. "This is a Barnes stared after the man who Greek restaurant. Right, Plato?" walked away, casually. "What's The waiter refilled my cup. eating him? Is he nuts?" " 'The people have always some "No," I said. "But go on with champion whom thczy set over what you were saying back at the them and nurse into greatness library. Explain.'' . . . This and no other is the "Explain?" said Barnes. "My root from which a tyrant springs; God, you're all sweet reason. All­ when he first appears he is a pro­ right, I will explain. This is a tre- tector.'" BRIGHT PHOENIX 27 Barnes leaned forward to squint Barnes was on his feet, yelling, at the waiter, who did not move. the 'cigar' was torn from my Then Barnes busied himself blow­ mouth, stomped on, and the Chief ing on his coffee, "As I see it, our Censor was out the door, almost in plan is simple as one and one one motion. make two ..." I could only follow. The waiter said, " 'I have hardly On the sidewalk, Barnes col­ ever known a mathematician who lided with an old man who was was capable of reasoning.' " entering the cafe. The old man al­ "Damn it!" Barnes slammed his most fell. I grabbed his arm. cup down. "Peace! Get away while "Professor Einstein," I said. we eat, you, Keats, Plato, Hol­ "Mr. Shakespeare," he said. dridge, that's your name. I remem­ Barnes fled. ber now, Holdridge! What's all I found him on the lawn by the this other junk?" old and beautiful library where "Just fancy," said I. "Conceit." the dark men, who wafted kero­ "Damn fancy, and to hell wtth sene perfume from their every mo­ conceit, you can eat alone, I'm tion, still dumped vast harvestings getting out of this madhouse." of gun-shot dead pigeon, dying And Barnes gulped his coffee as pheasant books, all autumn gold the waiter and proprietor watched and silver from the high windows. and I watched him gulping and But . . . softly. And while this across the street the bright bonfire still, almost serene, pantomime in the gut of the monster device continued, Barnes stood scream­ burnt fiercely. Our silent watching ing silently, the scream clenched caused Barnes to freeze at last in .his teeth, tongue, lips, cheeks, with the cup in his hand and the gagged back so none could hear. coffee dripping off his chin. "Why? But the scream flew out of his Why aren't you yelling? Why wild eyes in flashes and was helu aren't you fighting me?" for discharge in his knotted fists, "But I am fighting." I said, tak­ and shuttled in colors about his ing the book from under my arm. face, now pale, now red as he I tore a page from DEMOS­ glared at me, at the cafe, at the THENES, let Barnes see the damned proprietor, at the terrible name, rolled it into a fine Havana waiter who now waved amiablv cigar shape, lit it, puffed it, and back at him. The Baal incinerato~ said, " Though a man escape ev­ rumbled its appetite, spark-burnt ery other danger, he can never the lawn. Barnes stared full at the wholly escape those who do not blind yellow-red sun in its raving want such a person as he is to stomach. exist.' " "You •••" I called up easily 28 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION at the men who paused. "City Or­ crashed like guillotines, chiming dinance. Closing time is nine their panes. sharp. Please be done by then. The dark men, bewildered, Wouldn't want to break the law­ came out and down the steps. Good evening, Mr. Lincoln." "Chief Censor." I handed him "Four score," said a man, pass­ a key which he would not take, so ing, "and seven years-" I forced his fist shut on it. "Come "Lincoln?'' The Chiif Censor back tomorrow, observe silence, turned slowly. "That's Bowman. finish up." Charlie Bowman. I know you, · The Chief Censor let his bullet­ Charlie, come back here, Charlie, hole gaze, his emptiness, search Chuck!" without finding me. But the man was gone and cars "How • • • how long has this drove by and now and again as the gone on ••• ?" burning progres~d men called to "This?" me and I called back and whether "This • • • and • • • that • • • it was "Mr. Poet" or hello to some and them." small bleak stranger with a name He tried but could not nod at like Freud, each time I called in the cafe, the passing cars, the good humor and they replied, Mr. quiet readers descending from the Barnes twitched as if another ar­ wann library now, nodding as row had pierced, sunk deep in his they passed into cold dark, friends, quivering bulk and he were dying one and all. His blind man's rictal slowly of a hidden seepage of fire gaze ate holes where my face was. and raging life. And still no His tongue, anesthetized, stirred: crowd gathered to watch the com­ "Do you think you can all fool motion. me, me, me?" Suddenly, for no discernible I did not answer. reason, Mr. Barnes shut his eyes, "How can you be sure," he said, opened his mouth wide, gathered "I won't burn people, as well as air and shouted, "Stop!" books?" The men ceased shoveling the I did not answer. books out the window, above. I left him standing in the com­ "But," I said. "It's not closing plete night. time , . ," Inside, I checked out the last "Closing time! Everybody out!" volumes of those ·1eaving the li­ Deep holes had eaten away the brary now with night come on and center of Jonathan Barnes eyes. shadows everywhere and the great Within, there was no bottom. He Baal machinery churning smoke, seized the air. He pushed down. its fire dying in the spring grass Obediently, all the windows where the Chief Censor stood like BRIGHT PHOENIX 29 a poured cement statue, not seeing a night better than we could e\u his men drive off. His fist sudden­ have hoped for. ly flew high. Something swift and At nine, I went out to pick up bright flew up to crack the front the thrown front door key. I let the door glass. Then Barnes turned last reader, an old man, out with and walked after the Incinerator me, and as I was locking up, he as it trundled off, a fat black fun­ took a deep breath of the cool air, eral urn unraveling long tissues looked at the town, the spark­ and scarves of black bunting burnt lawn, and said: smoke and fast-vanishing crepe. "Will they come back again, I sat listening. ever?" In the far rooms, filled with "Let them. \\Te're ready for them soft jungle illumination, there was aren't we?" a lovely autumnal turning of The old man took my hand. leaves, faint sifts of breathing, in­ " 'The wolf also shall dwell with finitesimal quirks, the gesture of a the lamb, and the leopard shall lie hand, the glint of a ring, the in­ down with the kid; and the calf telligent squirrel blink of an eye. and the young lion and the fading Some nocturnal voyager sailed be­ together.' " tween the half-empty stacks. In We moved down the steps. porcelain serenity, the rest-room "Good evening, Isaiah," I said. waters flowed down to a still and "Mr. Socrates," he said. "Good distant sea. My people, my friends, night.'' one by one, passed from the cool And each walked his own wa,·, marble, the green glades, out into in the dark. ·

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City ...... • . . • . . . • • . • • . • • • • • ...... • . . Zone ...... State ...... History is not just a chronicle of dynasties, battles, economic trends, great men. Culture is more than great books, great poems, paintings, operas, sculpture. Histoiy and culture are also ten thousand and one things of the sort which Dr. John­ son termed "the bread and tea of life;" ten thousand and one things usually beneath the notice af the scholar or the peda­ gogue ... fust os the very vernacular languages once were. If we had been asked the intellectual background of the years of our childhood we might have referred to the sepia photo­ graphs of Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier and Emerson, which hung on the classroom walls of our grammar-school; it took Jack Keruoac to remind us that the same background was also, at least equally, perhaps predominantly, shaped by King Kong, Frankenstein, and The Shadow. It is to what we may call the vernacular, as distinct from the classical, element of our civilization that Ray Bradbury turns in this the second of his stories for this issue. The conJunction of the two of them is no accident. Says their author: "BRIGHT PHOENIX deals with a book-burning future, with an intellectual solution to the problem. It is a more grandiose scheme and profect. CHI­ CAGO ABYSS deals, instead, with the mediocre, the things not needed but needed, not missed but missed ... the much more day-to-day, quiet need for junk." It is the scintillating funk (as the old man of the story calls it) which it hurts to do without, hurts to remember-think! Be honest! To a world without either, would you rather call back Rembrandt-or fresh-roasted coffee? Society cracks, crumbles, totters at the precipice. What can save it? The Four Freedoms? Science? Remembrance of books past, suggests the Ray Bradbury of BRIGHT PHOENIX. The Ray Bradbury of the second story suggests it may be . . . something else altogether, and his suggestion here is well worth considering. Follow him, then; follow him now,

30 TO THE CHICAGO ABYSS by Ray Bradbury

UNDER A PALE APRIL SKY IN A low-letter can! Compressed air. faint wind that blew out of a Hisss! Vacuum pack. Ssst! Like a memory of winter, the old man snake!" shuffled into the almost empty The woman snapped her head park at noon. His slow feet were about as if slapped to stare in bandaged with nicotine-stained dreadful fascination at the old swathes, his hair was wild, long, man's moving tongue. and grey as was his beard which "The scent, the odor, the smell. enclosed a mouth which seemed Rich, dark, wonderous Brazilian always atremble with revelation. beans, fresh ground!" Now he gazed back as if he Leaping up, reeling as if gun­ had lost so many things he could shot, the woman tottered. not begin to guess there in the The old man flicked his eyes tumbled ruin, the toothless skyline wide. "No! 1-" of the city. Finding nothing he But she was running, gone. shuffled on until he found a bench The old man sighed and walked where sat a woman alone. Examin­ on through the park until he ing her, he nodded and sat to the reached a bench where sat a young far end of the bench and did not man completely involved with look at her again. wrapping dried grass in a small He remained, eyes shut, mouth square of thin tissue paper. His working, for three minutes, head thin fingers shaped the grass ten­ moving as if his nose were print­ derly, in an almost holy ritual, ing a single word on the air. Once trembling as he rolled the tube, written, he opened his mouth to put it to his mouth, and, hypnoti­ pronounce it in a clear, fine cally, lit it. He leant back, squint­ ,·oice: ing deliciously, communing with "Coffee." the strange rank air in his mouth The woman gasped and sti- and lungs. The old man watched fened. the smoke blow away on the noon The old man's gnarled fingers wind and said: tumbled in pantomime on his un­ "Chesterfields." seen lap. The young man gripped his "Twist the key! Bright red, yel- knees, tight. 31 32 FANTASY A~D SCIENCE FICTION "Raleighs," said the old man. "It was never nice." The young "Lucky Strikes." man stood suddenly. "What's The young man stared at him. wrong with you?" "Kent. Kools. Marlboro,'' said "I remember limes, and lemons, the old man, not looking at him. that's what's wrong with me. Do "Those were the names. White, you remember oranges?" red, amber packs grass-green, sky­ "Damn rights. Oranges, hell. blue, pure gold with the red slick You calling me a liar? You want small ribbon that ran around the me to feel bad? You nuts? Don't top that you pulled to zip away you know the law? You know I the crinkly cellophane, and the could tum you in, you?" blue government tax-stamp-" "I know, I know,'' said the old "Shut up,'' said the young man. man, shrugging. "The weather "Buy them in drug-stores, foun­ fooled me. It made me want to tains, subways-" compare-" "Shut upl" "Compare rumors, that's what "Gently,'' said the old man. "It's they'd say, the Police, the Special just, that smoke of yours made me Cops, they'd say it, rumors, you think-" trouble-making bastard, you-" "Don't think!" The young man He seized the old man's lapels jerked so violently his home-made which ripped so he had to grab an­ cigarette fell in chaff to his lap. other handful, yelling down into "Now look what you made me his face. do!" 'Why don't I just blast the liv­ "I'm sorry. It was such a nice ing Jesus out of you. I ain't hurt friendly day-" no one in so long, I-" "I'm no friend!" He shoved the old man. Which "We're all friends now, or why gave hip1 the idea to pummel and live?" when he pummeled he began to "Friends?" the young man punch and punching made it easy snorted, aimlessly plucking at the to strike and soon he rained blows shredded grass and paper. "Maybe upon the old man who stood like there were 'friends' back in 1970, one caught in thunder and down­ but now-" poured storm, using only his fin­ "1970. You must have been a gers to ward off the blows that baby then. They still had Butter­ fleshed his cheeks, shiJ.ulders, his fingers then in bright yellow brow, his chin, as the young man wrappers. Baby Ruths. Clark Bars shrieked cigarettes, moaned can­ in orange paper. Milky Ways dies, yelled smokes, cried sweets ... swallow a universe of stars, until the old man fell to be kick­ comets, meteors. Nice-" rolled and shivering. The young TO THE CHICAGO ABYSS 33 man stopped and began to cry. At by, a look of pale weariness and the sound, the old man, cuddled, curiosity on his long face. clenched into his pain, took his "Fool," he said again. fingers away from his broken The old man gasped. "You were mouth and opened his eyes to gaze there, all the time, and did noth­ with astonishment at his assailant. ing?" The young man wept. "\Vhat, fight one fool to sa\'e "Please . . ." begged the old another? No." The stranger helped man. him up and brushed him off. "I do The young man wept louder, my fighting where it pays. Come tears falling from his eyes. on. You're going home with me." "Don't cry," said the old man. The old man gasped again. "\Ve won't be hungry forever. We'll "Why?" ; rebuild the cities. Listen, I didn't "That boy'll be back with the mean for you to cry, only to think police any second. I don't want where are we going, what are we you stolen away, you're a very doing, what've we done? You precious commodity. I've heard of weren't hitting me. You meant to you, looked for you for days now. hit something else, but I was Good Grief, and when I find you handy. Look, I'm sitting up. I'm you're up to your famous tri~ks. okay." What did you say to the boy made The young man stopped crying him mad?" and blinked down at the old man "I said about oranges and lem­ who forced a bloody smile. ons, candy, cigarettes. I was just "You ... you can't go getting ready to recollect in detail around," said the young man, wind-up toys, briar-pipes and back­ "making people unhappy. I'll find scratchers, when he dropped the someone to fix you!" sky on me." "Wait!" The old man struggled "I almost don't blame him. Half to his knees. "No!" of me wants to hit you, itself. But the young man ran wildly Come on, double-time. There's a off out of the park, yelling. siren, quick!" · Crouched alone, the old man And they went swiftly, another felt his bones, found one of his way, out of the park. teeth lying red amongst the strewn gravel, handled it sadly. He drank the home-made wine "Fool," said a voice. because it was easiest. The food The old man glanced over and must wait until his hunger over­ up. came the pain in his broken A lean man of some forty years mouth. He sipped, nodding. stood leaning against a tree near- "Good, many thanks, good." 34 FASTASY :\ND SCIENCE FICTION The stranger who had walked "These twenty-eight peas re­ him swiftly out of the park sat mind me, of a film I saw as a across from him at the flimsy din­ child. A comedian-do you know ing room table as the stranger's the word?-a funny man met a wife placed broken and mended lunatic in a midnight house in plates on the worn cloth. this film and-" "The beating," said the hus­ The husband and wife laughed band,, at last. "How did it hap­ quietly. pen?" "No, that's not the joke yet, sor­ At this, the wife almost dropped ry," the old man apologized. "The a plate. lunatic sat the comedian down to "Relax," said the husband. "No an empty table, no knives, no one followed us. Go ahead, old forks, no food. 'Dinner is served!' man, tell us,. why do you behave he cried. Afraid of murder, the like a saint panting after martyr­ comedian fell in with the make dom? You're famous, you know. believe. 'Great!' he cried, pretend­ Everyone's heard about you. Many ing to che\v steak, vegetables, des­ would like to meet you. Myself, sert. He bit nothings. 'Fine!' he first, I want to know what makes swallowed air. 'Wonderfull' Eh you tick. Well?" ... you may laugh now." But the old man was only en­ But the husband and wife, tranced with the vegetables on the grown still, only looked at their chipped plate before him. Twen­ sparsely strewn plates. ty-six, no, twenty-eight peas! He The old man shook his head counted the impossible sum! He and went on. "The comedian, bent to the incredible vegetables thinking to impress the mad-man, like a man praying over his quiet­ exclaimed, 'And these spiced est beads. Twenty-eight glorious brandy peaches! Superb!' 'Peach­ green peas, plus a few graphs of es?' screamed the madman, draw­ half-raw spaghetti announcing ing a gun. 'I served no peaches! that today business was fair. But You must be insane!' And shot the under the line of pasta, the comedian in the behind!" cracked line of the plate showed The old man, in the silence where business for years now was which ensued, picked up the first more than terrible. The old man pea and weighed its lovely bulk hovered counting above the food upon his bent tin fdrk. He was like a great and inexplicable buz­ ~bout to put it in his mouth when zard, crazily fallen and roosting in this cold apartment, watched There was a sharp rap on the by his samaritan hosts until at last door. he said: "Special police!" a voice cried. TO THE CHICAGO ABYSS 35 Silent but trembling, the wife not TWENTY THOUSAND hid the extra plate. DOLLARS, no, no, but . . . five The husband rose calmly to incredible cans of real not imita­ lead the old man to a wall where a tion soup, and ten, count them, panel hissed open and he stepped ten brilliant circus-colored cans in and the panel hissed shut and of exotic vegetables like string he stood in darkness hidden away beans and sun-yellow corn! Think as, beyond, unseen, the apartment of it! Thinkl door opened. Voices murmured ex­ There was a long silence in citedly. The old man could imag­ which the old man almost thought ine the Special Policeman in his he heard faint murmurs of stom­ midnight blue .uniform, with achs turning uneasily, slumbered drawn gun,_ entering to see only but dreaming of dinners much the flimsy furniture, the bare finer than the hairballs of old illu­ walls, the echoing linoleum floor, sion gone nightmare and politics the glassless, cardboarded-over gone sour in the long twilight windows, this thin and oily film since A.D., Annihilation Day. of civilization left on an empty "Soup. Vegetables," said the po­ shore when the storm tide of war lice voice, a final time. "Fifteen went away. solid-pack cans!" "I'm looking for an old man," The door slammed. said the tired voice of authority The boots stomped away beyond the wall. Strange, thought through the ramshackle tenement the old man, even the Law sounds pounding coffin lid doors to stir tired now. "Patched clothes-" other Lazarus souls alive to cry But, thought the old man, I aloud of bright tins and real soups. thought everyone's clothes were The poundings faded. There was a patched! "Dirty. About eighty last banging slam. years old . . ." but isn't every­ And at last the hidden panel one dirty, everyone old? the old whispered up. The husband and man cried out, to himself. "If you wife did not look at him as he turn him in, there's a weeks ra­ stepped out. He knew why and tions as reward," said the police wanted to touch their elbows. voice. "Plus ten cans of vegetables, "Even I," he said gently. "Even five cans of soup, bonus." I was tempted to turn myself in, Real tin cans with bright to claim the reward, to eat the printed labels, thought the old soup ..." man. The cans flashed like meteors Still they would not look at rushing by in the· dark over his him. eyelids. What a fine reward! Not "Why," he asked. "Why didn't TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, you hand me over? Why?" 36 FANTASY Al'\D SCIENCE FICTIO:-; The husband, as if suddenly re­ considering our losses. I found the membering, nodded to his wife. more I remembered, the more I She went to the door, hesitated, could remember! Depending on her husband nodded again, impa­ who I sat down with I remem­ tiently, and she went out, noiseless bered imitation Bowers, dial tele­ as a puff of cobweb. They heard phones, refrigerators, kazoos (you her rustling along the hall, ever play a kazoo?!), thimbles, scratching softly at doors, which bicycle clips, not bicycles, no, but opened to gasps and murmurs. bicycle clips/ isn't that wild and 'What's she up to? What are strange? Anti-macassars. Do you you up to?" asked the old man. know them? Never mind. Once a "You'll find out. Sit. Finish man asked me to remember just your dinner," said the husband. the dashboard dials on a Cadillac. "Tell me why you're such a fool I remembered. I told him in de­ you make us fools who seek you tail. He listened. He cried great out and bring you here." tears down his face. Happy tears? "Why am I such a fool?" The or sad? I can't say. I only remem­ old man sat. The old man ber. Not literature, no, I never had munched slowly, taking peas one a head for plays or poems, they at a time from the plate which had slip away, they die. All I am, been returned to him. "Yes, I am a really, is a trash-heap of the medi­ fool. How did I start my foolish­ ocre, the third-best hand-me-down ness? Years ago I looked at the useless and chromed-over slush ruined world, the. dictatorships, and junk of a race-track civiliza­ the desiccated states and nations, tion that ran 'last' over a precipice. and said, "What can I do? Me, a So all I offer really is scintillant weak old man, what? Rebuild a junk, the clamored-after chronom­ devastation? Hal But lying half eters and absurd machineries of a asleep one night an old phono­ never-ending river of robots and graph record played in my head. robot-mad owners. Yet, one way or Two sisters named Duncan sang another, civilization must get out of iny childhood a song called back on the road. Those who can REMEMBERING. 'Remembering, offer fine butterfly poetry, let is all I do, dear, so try and re­ them remember, let them offer. member, too.' I sang the song and Those who can .weave and build it wasn't a song but a way of life. butterfly nets, let therlt weave, let What did I have to offer a world them build. My gift is smaller that was forgetting? My memory! than both, and perhaps contempti­ How could this help? By offering ble in the long hoist, climb, jump a standard of comparison. By tell­ toward the old and amiably silly ing the young what once was, by peak. But I must dream myself TO THE CHICAGO ABYSS 37 worthy. For the things, silly or not, sort of unqualified mercy. Can I that people remember are the do all this? One can only try." things they will search for again. The old man rummaged the last I will, then, ulcerate their half­ pea, with the last words, in his dead desires with vinegar-gnat mouth, while his samaritan host memory. Then perhaps they'll rat­ simply looked at him with gently tle bang the Big Clock together amazed eyes, and far off up again, which .is the city, the state, through the house people moved, and then the World. Let one man doors tapped open and shut, and want wine, another lounge chairs, there was a gathering outside the a third a batwing glider to soar the door of this apartment where now March winds on and build bigger the husband said: electro-pterodactyls to scour even "And you asked why we didn't greater winds, with even greater tum you in? Do you hear that out peoples. Someone wants moron there?" Christmas trees and some wise "It sounds like everyone in the man goes to cut them. Pack this all apartment house-" together, wheel in want, want in "Everyone. Old man, old fool, wheel, and I'm just there to oil do you remember-motion pic­ them, but oil them I do. Ho, once ture houses, or better, drive-in I would have raved, 'only the best movies?" is best, only quality is true!' But The old man smiled. "Do you?" roses grow from blood manure. "Almost. Look, listen, today, Mediocre must be, so most-excel­ now, if you're going to be a fool, if lent can bloom. So I shall be the you want to run risks, do it in the best mediocre there is and fight all aggregate, in one fell blow. Why who say slide under, sink back, waste your breath on one, or two, dust-wallow, let brambles scurry or even three if-" over your living grave. I shall pro­ The husband opened the door test the roving apeman tribes, the and nodded outside. Silently, one sheep-people munching the far at a time, and in couples, the peo­ fields prayed on by the feudal land­ ple of the house entered. Entered baron \volves who rarefy them­ this room as if entering a syna­ selves in the few skyscraper sum­ gogue or church or the kind of mits and horde unremembered church known as a movie or the foods. And these villains I will kind of movie known as a drive-in, kill with canopener and cork­ and the hour was growing late in screw. I shall run them down the day, with the sun going down with ghosts of Buick, Kissel-Kar, the sky, and soon in the early eve­ and Moon, thrash them with lico­ ning hours, in the dark, the room rice whips until they cry for some would be dim and in the one light 38 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTI0:-1 the voice of the old man would goes west once a month. Once you speak and these would listen and leave here, keep moving, forget hoid hands and it would be like you met or know us. I'll give you a the old days with the balconies small list of people like ourselves. and the dark, or the cars and the A long time from now, look them dark, and just the memory, the up, out in the wilderness. But, for words, of popcorn, and the words God's sake, in the open, alone, for for the gum and the sweet drinks a year, declare a moratorium. and candy, but the words, any­ Keep your wonderful mouth shut. way, the words ••. _ And here-" The husband gave And while the people were com­ him a yellow card. "A dentist I ing in and settling on the Boor, know. Tell him to make you a new and the old man watched them, set of teeth that will only open at incredulous that he ®d sum­ meal times." moned them here without know­ A few people, hearing, laughed, ing, the husband said: and the old man laughed quietly "Isn't this better than taking a and the people were in now, doz­ chance in the open?" ens of them, and the day was late, "Yes. Strange. I hate pain. I and the husband and wife shut the hate being hit and chased. But my door and stood by it and turned tongue moves. I must hear what it and waited for this last special has to say. But this is better." time when the old man might "Good." The husband pressed a open his mouth. red ticket into his palm. "When The old man stood up. this is all over, an hour from now, His audience grew very still. here is a ticket from a friend of mine in Transportation. One train The train came, rusty and loud crosses the country each week. at midnight, into a suddenly snow­ Each weel{ I get a ticket for some filled station. Under a cruel dust­ idiot I want to help. This week, ing of white, the ill-washed peo­ it's you." ple crowded into and through the The old man read the destina­ ancient chair cars mashing the old tion on the folded red paper: man along the corridor and into "CHICAGO ABYSS," and ad­ an empty compartment that had ded, "Is the Abyss still there?" once been a -lavatory. Soon the "This time next year Lake Mich­ floor was a solid mass iQf bed-roll igan may break through the last on which sixteen peopie twisted crust and make a new lake in the and turned in darkness, fighting pit where the city once was. their way into sleep. There's life of sorts around the The train rushed forth to white crater rim, and a branch train emptiness. TO THE CHICAGO ABYSS 39 The old man thinking: "quiet, sifts of sUence came down the shut up, no, don't speak, nothing, night air outside, tunneled by no, stay still, think! careful! avalanche train. The travelers, cease!" found himself now swayed, very deep in invoiced terror, joggled, hurled this way and that numbed by flight, slept each sepa­ as he half-crouched against a wall. rate, but the boy did not take his He and just one other were up­ eyes away and at last the old man right in this monster room of leaned forward, softly. dreadful sleep. A few feet away, "Sh. Boy. Your name?" similarly shoved against the wall, "Joseph." sat an eight year old boy with a The train swayed and groaned drawn sick paleness escaping from in its sleep, a monster floundering his cheeks. Full awake, eyes bright, through timeless dark toward a he seemed to watch, he did watch, mom that could not be imagined. the old man's mouth. The boy "Joseph .••"The old man sa­ gazed because he must. The train vored the word, bent forward, his hooted, roared, swayed, yelled, eyes gentle and shining. His face and ran. filled with pale beauty. His eyes Half an hour passed ln a thun­ widened until they seemed blind. derous grinding passage by night He gazed at a distant and hidden under the snow-hidden moon, and thing. He cleared his throat ever so the old man's mouth was tight­ softly. "Ah ..." nailed shut. Another hour, and The train roared round a curve. still boned shut. Another hour, The people rocked in their snow­ and the muscles around his cheeks ing sleep. began to slacken. Another, and his "Well, Joseph," whispered the lips parted to whet themselves. old man. He lifted his fingers soft­ The boy stayed awake. The boy ly in the air. "Once upon a time saw. The boy waited. Immense . . ."

In our ]uly issue ••• ROBERT HEINLEIN'S newest novel, GLORY ROAD AN INDEX TO THE WORKS OF RAY BRADBURY

Compiled and arranged by William F. Nolan in the following sections:

Published Books Original Stories: 1940-1'962 Poems Original Screen Treatment Original TV Stories Book Introductions -Non-Fidion: Auto-biographical and Misc. Seleded Material on Ray Bradbury

PUBLISHED BOOKS ------4> 1. DARK CARNIVAL-Arkham House, 1947-313 pages (limited to 3000) The Homecoming Interim Skeleton Jack-In-the-Box The Jar The Scythe The Lake Let's play "Poison" The Maiden Uncle Einar The Tombstone The Wind The S~qUing People The Night The Emissary There Was an Old Woman The Traveler The Dead Man The Small Assassin The Man Upstairs The Crowd The Night Sets ·~. Reunion Cistern The Handler The Next in Line The Coffin 2. THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES-Doubleday, 1950-220 pages (Note: Titles in Italics indicate interim bits and bridge passages.) 41 AN INDEX TO THE WORKS OF RAY BRADBURY 41 Rocket Summer The Musicians Ylla Way in the Middle of the Air The Summer Night The Naming of Names The Earth Men Usher II The Taxpayer The Old Ones The Third Expedition The Martian And the Moon Be Still As Bright The Luggage Store The Settlers The Off Season The Green Morning The W atehers The Locusts The Silent Towns Night Meeting The Long Years The Shore There Will Come Soft Rains lnterim The Million Year Picnic 3. THE ILLUSTRATED MAN-Doubleday, 1951-252pages Prologue-The Illustrated Man The Exiles The Veldt No Particular Night or Morning Kaleidoscope The Fox and the Forest The Other Foot The Visitor The Highway The Concrete Mixer The Man Marionettes Inc. The Long Rain The City The Rocket Man Zero Hour The Fire Balloons The Rocket The Last Night of the World Epilogue-(lll. Man completed) 4. TIMELESS STORIES FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW-Bantam, 1952-304p. Contains introduction and The Pedestrian by Bradbury-plus 25 other stories by various authors. Edited by Bradbury. 5. THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN-Doubleday, 1953-250 pages The Fog Hom The Big Black and White Game The Pedestrian A Sound of Thunder The April Witch The Great Wide World Over There The Wilderness Powerhouse The Fruit at the Bottom of the En La Noche Bowl Sun and Shadow Invisible Boy The Meadow The Flying Machine The Garbage Collector The Murderer The Great Fire The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind Hail and Farewell I See You Never The Golden Apples of the Sun Embroidery 42 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION 6. FAHRENHEIT 451-Ballantine, 1953-200 pages Original edition contains title novel plus two stories: The Playground and And the Rock Cried Out: This book was later released with these stories removed, with no title change. 7. THE OCTOBER COUNTRY-Ballantine, 1955-306 pages Contains 15 stories reprinted from DARK CARNIVAL, most of them re-written, plus four stories: The Dwarf, The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse, Touched With Fire and The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone. 8. SWITCH ON THE NIGHT-Pantheon, 1955-50 pages A book for children, illustrated by Madeleine Gekiere. 9. THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO AND OTHER IMPROBABLE STORIES -Bantam, 1956-210 pages Contains intro by Bradbury-plus title novella and 11 other stories by various authors. Edited by Bradbury. 10. DANDELION WINE-Doubleday, 1957-281 pages Contains the following short stories, plus new material, re-written to form a "novel." Illumination The Green Machine Dandelion Wine· The Trolley Summer in the Air Statues The Season of Sitting The Window The Night The Swan The Lawns of Summer The Whole Town's Sleeping Tile Happiness Machine Good-by, Grandma Season of Disbelief Dinner at Dawn The Last, the Very Last 11. AMEDICINEFORMELANCHOLY-Doubleday, 1959-240pages In a Season of Calm Weather Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed The Dragon The Smile A Medicine for Melancholy The First Night of Lent The End of the Beginning The Time of Going Away The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit All Summer in a Day \ Fever Dream The Gift The Marriage Mender The Great Collision of Monday Last The Town Where No One Got Off The Little Mice A Scent of Sarsaparilla The Shore Line at Sunset Icarus Montgolfier Wright The Strawberry Window The ·Headpiece The Day it Rained Forever AN INDEX TO THE WORKS OP JL\Y BRADBURY 43 12. THE DAY IT RAINED FOREVER-Rupert Hart-Davis, England, 1959-254 pages . Published overseas, this book contains 18 stories from A MEDICINE FROM MELANCHOLY, plus Referent, Almost the End of the World, Here There Be Tygers, Perchance to Dream-along with And the Rock Cried Out.

13. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES-Simon and Schuster, 1962-317 pages A fantasy novel.

14. R IS FOR ROCKET-Doubleday, (Young Adults Series), 1962- 233 pages Contains a selection of I 7 Bradbury stories from other books, aimed at the young adult. Its main value lies in the inclusion of a long novelet, Frost and Fire, which is the first book printing of the Planet story, The Creatures That Time Forgot. Also, for the first time in a Bradbury collection, is the title story, R is for Rocket (King of the Gray Spaces). Foreword by Bradbury.

15. THE ANTHEM SPRINTERS-Dial Press, 1963-128 pages Contains five one-act plays (four of them set in Ireland): The First Night of Lent; The Great Collision of Monday Last; Stop, Con­ sider, Think, Dol; The Anthem Sprinters; The Meadow.

ORIGINAL STORIES (including 2 novels)------~

1940 The Candle, Weird Tales, Novem· ber It's Not the Heat, It's the Hu-, Script, Nov. 2 1943 1941 The Piper, Thrilling Wonder Sto­ To Make a Long Story Much, Much ries, Feb. Shorter, Script, July 5 The Wind, Weird Tales, March Pendulum ( w /Hasse), Super Scl· Subterfuge, Astonishing Stories, ence Stories, Nov. April The Crowd, Weird Tales, May 1942 Gabriel's Horn ( w /Hasse), Captain Future, Spring Eat, Drink and be Wary, Astound­ The Scythe, WeirdTaks,'July ing SF, July Doodad, Astounding SF, Sept. 44 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FlCTIO::-; And Watch the Fountains, Astound­ Feb. Ing SF, Sept. Hell's Half Hour, New Detective, Promotion to Satellite, Thrlning March ~onderS~s,Fall The Tombstone, Weird Tales, March The Ducker, ~eirdTales, Nov. Skeleton, Script,April28 King of the Gray Spaces (R is for The Watchers, Weird Tales, May Rocket), Famous Fantastic Mys­ Dead Men Rise up Never, Dime teries, Dec. Mystery, July Corpse Carnival (as "D. R. Banet"), 1944 Dime Mystery, July The Sea Shell, ~eirdTales, Jan. The Dead Man, ~eird Tales, July Reunion, ~eir.d Tales, March The Big Black and White Game, The Monster Maker, Planet Stories, American Mercury, Aug. Spring Skeleton (not same as Script story), I, Rocket, Amazing S~s, May ~eirdTales, Sept. The Lake, ~eirdTales, May The Long Way Home, Dime Mys­ There Was an Old Woman,~eird tery,Nov. Tales, July The Invisible Boy, Mademoiselle, Killer, Come Back to Me, Detective Nov. Tales, July The Long Night, New Detective, 1946 July Final Victim (w/Hasse), Amazing Yesterday I Lived, Detective Fiction, Stories, Feb. Aug. The Traveler, ~eirdTales, March Morgue Ship, Planet Stories, Sum­ One Timeless Spring, Collier's, mer April13 The Trunk Lady, Detective Tales, The Miracles of Jamie, Charm, April Sept. The Smiling People, ~eird Tales, Bang! You're Dead, ~eird Tales, May Sept. Defense Mech, Planet Stories, Spring Half-Pint Homicide, Detective Tales, Rocket Skin, Thrilling ~onder St., Nov. Spring The Jar, ~eirdTales, Nov. Her Eyes, Her Lips, Her Limbs (as It Burns Me Up, Dime Mystery, "Wm. Elliott"), Californian, June Nov. Chrysalis, Amazing Stories, July Undersea Guardians, Amazing Sto­ The Night, Weird Tales, July ries, Dec. The Electrocution (as "William El­ Four-Way Funeral, Detective Tales, liott"), Californian, Aug. Dec. Lorelei of the Red Mist (\v/Brack­ Lazarus Come Forth, Planet Stories, ett), Planet Stories, Summer Winter The Million Year Picnic, Planet Stories, Summer 1945 The Homecoming, Mademoiselle, The Poems, ~eird Tales, Jan. 'oct. I'm Not so Dumb, Detective Tales, The Creatures That Time Forgot AN INDEX TO THE WORKS OF RAY BRADBURY 45 (Frost and Fire), Planet Storiss, And the Moon be Still as Bright, Fall Thrilling Wonder Stories, June Let's Play Poison, Weird Tales, Nov. The Earth Men, Thrilling Wonder The SmaU Assassin, Dime Mystery, Stories, Aug. Nov. Piller of Fire, Planet Stories, Sum­ A Careful Man Dies, New Det«:tive, mer Nov. The Long Years (Dwellers in. Si­ lence), Maclean's Magazine 1947 (Canada) Sept. IS The Handler, Weird Tales, Jan. FeYer Dream, Weird Tales, Sept. The Man Upstairs, Harper's, March End of Summer, Script, Sept. Tomonow and Tomorrow, Fantastic Mars is Heaven (The Third Expe­ Adventures, May dition), Planet Stories, Fall The Cistern, Mademoiselle, May Referent (as "Brett Sterling"), Rocket Summer, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Oct. Spring The Square Pegs, Thrilling Wonder Interim, Weird Tales, July Stories, Oct. Wake for the Living (The Coffin), The Women, Famous Fantastic Mys­ _ Dime Mystery, Sept. · teries, Oct. El Dia De Muerte (The Day of Touch and Go (The Fruit at the Death), Touchstone, Fall Bottom of the Bowl), Detective Interim (Time Intervening), Epoch, Book Mag., Nov. Fall The Visitor, Startling Stories, Nov. Zero Hour, Planet Stories, Fall The Off Season, Thrilling Wonder I See You Never, New Yorker, N. 8 Stories, Dec. The Irritated People, ThrilUng The Spring Night (Summer Night), Wonder Stories, Dec. · The Arkham Sampler, Winter The Emissary Asleep in Armageddon (Perchance Uncle Einar ~ to Dream), Planet Stories, Win­ The Next in Line in DARK ter The Maiden CARNIVAL The Meadow, in BEST ONE ACT The Night Sets PLAYS of 1947-48 ] ack-in-the-Box 1949 1948 The Candy Skull, Dime Mystery, The Silence, Super Science Stories, Jan. Jan. The Shape of Things, Thrilling The Man, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Wonder Stories, Feb. Feb. The October Game, Weird Tales, Tbe Great Fire, Seventeen, March March The Silent Towns, Charm, March Powerhouse, Charm, March Marionettes, Inc., Startling Stories, The Black Ferris, Weird Tales, May March Jonah of the -Jove Run, Planet Sto- The Concrete Mixer, Thrilling Won­ ries, Spring der Stories, April 46 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION I, Mars, Super Science Stories, April The Illustrated Man, Esquire, July The Lonely Ones, StardJng Stories, Way in the Middle of the Air, Other July Worlds, July Changeling, Super Science Stories, Purpose (The City), Startling Sto­ July ries, July The One Who Waits, The Arkham The Window, Collier's, Aug. 5 Sampler, Summer Death-by-Rain (The Long Rain), The Naming of Names (Dark They Planet Stories, Summer Were, and Golden-Eyed), Thrill­ The Whole Town's Sleeping, ·Mc­ ing Wonder Stories, Aug. Call's, Sept. Holiday, The Arkham Sampler, Au­ The World the Children Made (The tumn Veldt), Sat. Eve. Post, Sept. 23 The Mad Wizards of Mars (The Death Wish, Planet Stories, Fall Exiles), Maclean's M.agaz.ine, Season of Disbelief, ColUer's, Nov. Sept. 15 25 Kaleidoscope, Thrilling Wonder Sto­ The Bonfire, Torquasian Times, ries, Oct. Winter Impossible (The Martian), Super Th G M . in THE Science Stories, Nov. . e reen . ornmg f MARTIAN A Blade of Grass, Thrilling Wonder Night Meeting CHRONICLES Stories, Dec. 1951 1950 The Fireman (early version of FAH­ I'll Not Look for Wine (Ylla), Mac­ RENHEIT 451), Galaxy SF, Feb. lean's Magazine, Jan. I The Last Night of the World, Es­ All on a Summer's Night, Today, quire, Feb. Jan. 22 The Other Foot, New Story, March Payment in Full, Thrilling Wonder The Green Machine, Argosy (Eng­ Stories, Feb. land), March Outcast of the Stars (The Rocket), In This Sign (The Fire Balloons), Super Science Stories, March l magi nation, April Punishment Without Crime, Other The Pumpernickel, Collier's, May Worlds, March 19 Carnival of Madness (Usher II), These Things Happen, McCall's, Thrilling Wonder Stories, April May Miss Bidwell, Charm, April The Screaming Woman, Today, There Will Come Soft Rains, Col­ May27 . lier's, May 6 The Rocket Man, Maclea-li~s Maga­ To the Future (The Fox and the zine, May Forest), Collier's, May 13 The Beast From ~0,000 Fathoms The Highway (as "Leonard Spauld- (The Fog Horn), Sat. Evening ing"); Copy, Spring , Post, June 23 Forever and the Earth, Planet Sto· The Pedestrian, The Reporter, Aug. ries, Spring 7 AN INDEX TO THE WORKS OF RAY lllADBURY 47 A Little Journey, Galaxy SF, Aug. Time in Thy Flight, Fantastic Uni­ Embroidery, Marvel SF, Nov. -rerse, June-July No Particular Night or Morning, in, The Millioneth Murder (And the THE ILLUSTRATED MAN Rock Cried Out), Manhunt, Sept. The Illustrated Man (special book The Garbage CoDecctor, The Nation, prologue), in THE ILLUSTRAT­ Oct. 10 · ED MAN A Scent of Summer (Scent of Sarsa­ Here There Be Tygers, in NEW parilla), Argosy (England), Oct. TALES OF SPACE AND TIME The Playground, Esquire, Oct. The Golden Apples of the Sun, 1952 Planet Stories, Nov. The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind, The April Witch, Sat. Evening Post, Epoch, Winter AprilS The Flying Machine, in THE GOL­ The Wilderness, Today, April 6 DEN APPLES OF THE SUN The Lawns of Summer, Nation's FAHRENHEIT 4 51 (A novel) Business, May Love Contest (as "Leonard Doug­ 1954 las"), Sat. Evexing Post, May 21 A Piece of Wood, Esquire, June The Marriage Mender, Collier's, A Sound of Thunder, Collier's, June Jan. 22 28 The Dwarf, Fantastic, Jan.-Feb. The Smile, Fantastic, Summer Dinner at Dawn, Everywoman's Cora and the Great Wide World Mag., Feb. (The Great Wide World Over All Summer in a Day, Mag. of Fan­ There), Maclean's, Aug. 15 tasy and SF, March The Tombling Day, Shanandoah, Interval in Sunlight, Esquire, March Autumn The Watchful Poker Chip (of H. A Flight of Ravens, California Quar­ Matisse), Beyond, March terly, Winter Shopping for Death (Touched With Torrid Sacrifice (En La Noche), Fire), Maclean's Magazine, June Cavalier, Nov. 1 The Gift, Esquire, Dec. At Midnight, in the Month of June, Ellery Queen's Mystery Mag., 1953 - June They Knew What They Wanted, Sun and Shadow, The Reporter, Sat. Evening Post, June 26 March 17 The Wonderful Death of Dudley Hail and Farewell, Today, March 29 Stone, Charm, July Bullet With a Name, Argosy, April The Swan, Cosmopolitan, Sept. The Murderer, Argosy (England), June 1955 Dandelion Wine; Gourmet, June And So Died Riabouchinska, The The Last, the Very Last, The Re­ Saint Detective Mag., June-July porter, June 2 48 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION The Trolley, Good Housekeeping, The Great Collision of Monday Last, July Contact #I The Dragon, Esquire, Aug. The Mice, Escapade, Oct. 1959 The Strawberry Window, in STAR SF STORIES-#3 The Shoreline at Sunset, Mag. of SWITCH ON THE NIGHT, (chil­ Fantasy and SF, March dren's book) A Wild Night in Galway, Harper's, Aug. 1956 Statues, Offbeat #4 A Medicine for Melancholy, in Summer in the Air (The Sound of A MEDICINE FOR MELAN­ Summer Running), Sat. E"Pening CHOLY Post, Feb. 18 Icarus Montgolfier Wright, Mag. of 1960 Fantasy and SF, May Next Stop, the Stars (The End of Forever Voyage, Sat. Evening Post, the Beginning), Maclean's Mag­ Jan.9 azine, Oct. 27 Death and the Maiden, Mag. of The Time of Going Away, TheRe­ Fantasy and SF, March porter, Nov. 29 The Drummer Boy of Shiloh, Sat. Evening Post, April30 1957 The Best of All Possible Worlds, Playboy, Aug. In a Season of Calm Weather, Play­ Very Late in the Evening, Playboy, boy, Jan. Dec. Illumination, The Reporter, May 16 Good-by, Grandma, ~· Evening 1961 Post,May25 The Day it Rained Forever, Har­ The Begger on the Dublin Bridge, per's,July Sat. Evening Post, Jan. 14 The Happiness Machine, Sat. Ew­ The Illustrated Woman, Playboy, ning Post, Sept. 14 March Almost the End of the World, The Reporter, Dec. 26 1962

1958 A Miracle of Rare Device, Playboy, Jan. The Headpiece, Lilliput (England), Nightmare Carousel, Mademoiselle, May Jan. , The Town Where No One Got Off, Perhaps We are Going Away, Top- Ellery Queen's Mystery Mag., per,Jan. - Oct. The Prehistoric Producer, Sat. Eve­ The Magic White Suit (Wonderful ning Post, June 23 Ice Cream Suit), Sat. Evening Tread Lightly to the Music, Cava­ Post, Oct. 4 lier, Oct. AN INDEX TO THE WORKS OF ItA Y BRADBURY 49 Come Into My Cellar, Galaxy SF, SOMETHING WICKED THIS Oct. WAY COMES (a novel) The Machineries of Joy, Playboy, Dec.

POEMS Death in Mexico, California Quarterly, 19 54 A Dublin Limerick, THE SILVER TREASURY OF LIGHT VERSE, 19 57 Harvest, Science Fair, 1962

ORIGINAL SCREEN TREATMENT ------~ The Meteor (It Came From Outer Space), 19 53

ORIGINAL TELEVISION STORIES ------~ The Bullet Trick, Jane Wyman Theater, 1956 I Sing the Body Electric, Twilight Zone, 1962 The Jail, Alcoa Premiere; 1962 Note: Many of Bradbury's stories have been adapted to television, but Bradbury has only written 13 scripts: 10 adaptations plus the three originals listed above.

BOOK INTRODUCTIONS------~ to Theodore Sturgeon's WITHOUT SORCERY, 1948 to Zero Hour in MY BEST SF STORY, 1949 to.Yllain THE OUTER REACHES, 1951 to his .edited collection TIMELESS STORIES FOR TODAY AND TOMOR- ROW, 1951 to his edited collection THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO, 1956 to Jules Verne's MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, 1959 to Jules Verne's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, 1962 to Jules Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, 1962 (This intro was called The Ardent Blasphemers.) NON-FICTION ------

AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL BradburyonaBat, WeirdTales,Nov.1943 What Can a Writer Say, Weird Tales, Jan. 1945 Feature Flash: Ray Bradbury, Planet Stories, Fall194 7 Author, Author, The Fanscient, Winter 1949 Where Do You Get Your Ideas?, Etaoin Shrdlu, April 19 50 A Few Notes on the Martian Chronicles, Rhodomagnetic Digest, May 1950 50 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Where Do I Get My Ideas?, Book News, Summer 19 50 The Season of Sitting, Charm, Aug. 19 51 Magic, Magicians, Carnival and Fantasy, Ray Bradbury Review, 1952 Sketch for TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORS, Supplement I, I 9 55 Paris by Stop Watch, Mademoiselle, March 1960

MISC.

Report on the Convention, Science Fiction Mag., 19 39 Propaganda Via Music, Science Fictlox Mag., 1940 Of Callouses and Corns, Script, March 8, 1941 Like it or Lump it, Script, June 7, 1941 Science and Science Fiction, Ray Bradlntry Review, 1952 No Man is an Island, speech printed in booklet in 1952 by National Women's Comm. Brandeis Univ. Of Her we Sing (in letters section), Harper's, Sept. 1952 Mr. Bradbury Talks Back, The Nation, Nov. 29, 1952 Day After Tomorrow: Why Science Fiction?, The Nation, May 2, 1953 Marvels and Miracles-Pass it On!, New York Times Magazine, March 20, 1955 The First Night of Lent, Playboy, March 19 56 TheJoyofWriting, TheWriter,Oct.1956 Zen and the Art of Writing, TheWTiter, Oct. 19 58 Thoughts While Sleeping at My Machine, Daily Variety, Nov. 4, 1958 In Defense of Los Angeles, Gentlemen's Quarterly, March 1959 Literature in the Space Age, California Librarian, July 1960 A Serious Search for Weird Worlds, Life, Oct. 24, 1960 -from a Symposium on Creative Writing, Four Quarters, Jan. 1961 Los Angeles: Almost in Orbit, Carte Blanche, Spring 1961 How to Keep and Feed a Muse, The Writer, July 1961 Boredom as a Way of Life, Los Angeles, Sept. 1962 Cry the Cosmos, Life, Sept. 14, 1962 Letters to a Young, Aspiring Author, printed as a booklet by the San Antonio Public Library, 1962

SELECTED MATERIAL ON RAY BRADBURY------~ The Market is Not the Story, by R. Walton Williams, Writer's Markets, March 1948 .. Fantasy's Prodigy by Walt Gillings, Fantasy Review, (England) Summer 1949 Morals From Mars, by Richard Donovan, The Reporter, June 26, 1951 Talk With Mr. Bradbury, by Harvey Breit ,New York Times Book Review, Aug. 5, 1951 The Case Against Bradbury, by Edward Wood, Journal of SF, Falll9 51 Bradbury, Ray (Douglas)-no byline, Current Biography, June 1953 A;\" INDEX TO THE WORKS OF RAY BRADBURY 51 The Bradbury Years, by William F. Nolan, Inside, September 1953 What Makes Bradbury "Burn"?, by Sam Moskowitz, Amazing, October 1961 Writing as Self Discovery, by F. A. Rockwell, Author & Journalist, Feb. 1962 The Magic World of Ray Bradbury, by Charles Davenport, Los Angeles, March 1962 THE RAY BRADBURY REVIEW,,. a 64-page booklet edited by W. F. Nolan in 1952, dealing with the life and work of Bradbury. Contains articles by Chad Oliver, Anthony Boucher, Henry Kuttner, etc. as well as a complete index (through 19 51) listing reprints, radio sales, TV sales, anthology selections, etc. Also fiction and non-fiction by Bradbury.

1000 PAGES OF GOOD READING-ONLY $1.00 Take advantage of an unusual warehouse clearance and send us $1.00 for nine (9) different back issues of FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION. You can't go wrong at this price, so fill in the coupon below im­ mediately. (Sorry, at this low price, no orders for specific issues can be filled. The 9 magazines will be our selection.)

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• Copies of this booklet are still available, for $1.00 each, from Nolan at 2400 N. Keystone, Burbank, California. The life of R. Bretnor is filled with interesting details of the sort which make editors-writing-introductions rub their hands; the character of R. Bretnor is filled with stem ethics which produce comments such as, "Where a writer is concerned, the work should be the whole thing, and the personality of the writer should be kept out of it." We heartily disagree, but R. Bretnor is so much bigger than we are that we dare not dis­ obey. License is given us only to mention that he c;llects Siamese cats, Japanese swords, and hand-guns; has translated the first book about cats, Les Chats by Fran~ois-Augustin Pa­ radis de Moncrif (Thomas Yoseloff and the Golden Cockerel Press, $20 in cloth, $40 in morocco); edited the critical sympo­ sium Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning And Its Future (Coward-McCann, 1953); is the author of the article on sci­ ence fiction in the new Encyclopedia Britannica; and is not unconnected with The Exceedingly Strange Career of Ferdi­ nand Feghoot. And now, gentles; on to the story of Pietro, the singing fisherman-of Joe, his musical engineer-and that most fatal of femmes fatales (Hark! Is that a porpoise off the star­ board bow?), of whom it must suffice for now to say that

Mrs. Pigaletta Swims Well

by R. Bretnor

MR. CoASTGUARD, THIS IS wHAT the porpoises. It is also because has happened to Pietro Pugliese, Pietro has been famou~-:- who is captain of the fishing boat You do not know? You have not ll Trovatore, of Monterey. Me, heard how one time he is the great Joe Tonelli, I am his engineer. I tenore? Yes, in Rome, Naples, know. Venice-even in La Scala in Mi­ It is because of Mrs. Pigafetta, lano. Do, re, mi, fa-like so, only from Taranto. It is her fault. Also with more beauty. Caruso, Gigli- 52 .MRS. PIGAFETTA SWIMS WELL 53 those fellows can only make a do? I want him to feel good. I tell squeak alongside Pietro, I tell you. him he is great. I cry, Bravissimol So what, you say? It is impor· At last he speaks, as from the tant. It is why Mrs. Pigafetta be· grave. "Joe, it is as you say. It is comes his landlady. It is whY she true I am a great man. Even the hides his clothes so that he cannot angels do not have a voice like me. run away like her first husband And now-" His chest goes up and who maybe is in Boston. It is why down. "-it is this voice which the porpoises- cooks my goose! Almost, I lose all Okay, Mr. Coastguard, okay. I hope. But I say, 'Joe is my good will tell one thing at one time. I friend. Maybe he can help-'" will begin when first I hear Pietro Then, Mr. Coastguard, I hear sing, last Tuesday night. the story. His papa is a fisherman. He calls to me when he is at the Once, they come to Naples. While wheel. Our hold is full of fish. The Pietro mends the nets, he sings. sea is smooth. The moon hangs in He is young, handsome. A rich the sky like a fine oyster. But I can marchesa hears him. And it is see that he is still not happy. He done! A year-the world is at his has not been happy for two months. feet. He has a palace, a gold watch, All the time he shakes his head. mistresses-yes, principessas, girls He sighs. from the ballet, the wives of mil· I am worried. I ask if maybe he lionairesl He sings. All-kings, has a bad stomach, but he does not _queens, cardinals-they cry with reply. All at once, his head is joy. Even the English often clap thrown back-his mouth is open their hands. -he sings! It is from the last act He is an innocent. He does not of Tosca, in the jail. They are know the other singers bum with going to execute this guy, and he jealousy. He does not know the is singing goodbye to the soprano, critics envy him. They plot. Al­ who is his girl. You know? That is ways they say bad things. One day why it is sad. there is no place for him to sing! I am full of surprise. Never Ah, he is wounded to the heart. He have I heard a voice so rich-like goes away. He takes a cabin on a the best zabaglione, made with egg litde ship. For two days, without a yolk, sugar, sweet wine. Also it is fee, he sings to the waves, the pas· strong, like a good foghorn. Even sengers, the crew. But he is be· the mast trembles. trayedl 'Ehe sea has envy too. I listen to the end. I look at There comes a storm. Those peo· him. His face is to the moon. He pie on the ship are stupid fools. weeps! Slowly, many tears roll They say it is his fault. They­ down his cheeks. What would you they throw him overboard I 54 FANTASY AND SCIE!\"CE FICTION He tells me this. Again he sighs. She teaches me to swim. We sit on "I cannot swim. I fight against the the rocks in the sun, and we sing waves. I call aloud the names of to each· other-La Forza del Des­ many saints. I sink! But I am not tina, Pagliacci, Rigoletto. My love afraid. When I come up, I sing! has made me deaf. I do not notice Again the water swallows me. that her contralto has the sound of Then-all is black. My friend, brass. Imagine it!" when I awake I think that I am Then, in one moment, Pietro's dead. But I am not. I am in Mrs. eyes are opened. A day comes Pigafetta's house." when Mrs. Pigafetta pushes him Mr. Coastguard, it is a miracle! away. She lets him kiss her neck, The ship is near Taranto. There is her ear-that is all! He does not this island. And on it is the pen­ understand. He asks, "Carissima, zione of Mrs. Pigafetta, for ship­ my sweet lobster, what is wrong?" wrecked sailors. She has heard the She pushes him some more. fine voice of Pietro in the storm. She makes her lips thin. She says, She has rescued him. It is nothing "No, no, Pietro miol We must for Mrs. Pigafetta. She swims marry in the Church." well. Even as Pietro tells me this, his He wakes-'and she is sitting face is sad. "At once, all is changed. there, all wet. He is surprised to It comes to me that her voice is see her. He makes the sign of the loud, of poor quality. Besides, I cross, but she says nothing. There am Pietro Pugliese-there is my is love in her eyes. public. I must not stay always And she is beautiful. Not thin, with one woman. I make a long like a young girl, but plump and face. I ask about her first husband, strong, with fine hips-wide like Pigafetta. I ask her, 'He is dead?' so. Her lips are red. Her hair is And she laughs at me. She shrugs. black, done up on top. It shines 'He is in Boston. It is the same.' " like it has olive oil on it. Besides, From the wheelhouse of ll Tro­ she is a woman of experience- vatore, Pietro looks to port, to Still, when Pietro tells me this, starboard. There is light from the he grinds his teeth. "Why do I . moon on the waves. All over, por­ stay with her, my friend? It is be­ poises are playing- cause at first I am in love. It is a "Ah, she is stubborn! She makes madness. All night, all day-such me afraid. I see I have a great passion. There are two sailors problem, with much trouble. Why? there, Greeks; she does not speak You ask me why? Joe, I have one to them. Each month she makes more reason I cannot marry Mrs. them pay. But me-one month, Pigafetta in the Church. It is be­ two months, three-! get no bill. cause-" ~IRS. PIGAFETIA SWIMS WELL 55 He moves his hand to show me. When he tells this, he shakes his His voice shakes. fist at the porpoises in the sea. "-because Mrs. Pigafetta is a "That is when I know that I must woman only from here up. From be more smart than Mrs. Pigafetta. here down, she is a fish!" Again, I sing to her. I praise her voice. And all the time I watch. Okay, Mr. Coastguard, you do Ah, she is vain! Two, three times a not believe. It is because, like me, day she puts on her best hat. She you have never seen a woman like sits at her mirror. She looks at Mrs. Pigafetta. A mermaid? That herself one way, then another. is what I ask Pietro. He says no, She smiles. It is a large hat, with that it is different. Mrs. Pigafetta many feathers, much fruit on the is a woman of experience- tqp." The days pass. Always she Mr. Coastguard, you ask why pushes him away. Always she says, does she want a hat? But why not? "No, we must marry in the Where she puts the hat she is a Church." woman, not a fish. He argues. "If we are married, Okay. Pietro makes a plan. He sometime we have a son. You promises that they will marry in think I want my son to be a stur­ the Church. After that, she does geon, a big sea-bass, perhaps a not say, "No, no." She does not flounder? I do not know your fam­ push. But every time she asks ily." when they will marry, he delays. She laughs. She tells him this "Now? My pretty perch, my cannot be. She says, "Our son can sea-anemone! It is the tourist sea­ be a bosun in the navy, no worse. son. You will be kidnaped for your Even so, he must know his papa. lovely silver tail-sold in the That is why I push you away." black market to rich Americans!" Soon Pietro tries to escape. He For weeks it is like that. At last sees a sailing boat. He shouts at it, she loses patience. "You say we go and runs along the shore. After to Rome. You promise a cathedral. that, Mrs. Pigafetta takes his You even tell me I will meet this clothes. She hides them in her Rossellini. Baht Tomorrow you house, which is made in a large will swim with me to Taranto. cave in the rocks. The priest will marry us." She is But he is brave. Twice more he very angry. "You say it is not safe. tries. He swims at night. Each All right! There is a church by the time, the porpoises swim with water. I will bring a long dress. I him. They turn him back, like will wear perfume. No one will dogs with a sheep. They are her .know." friends. Pietro pretends that he is 56 FANTASY AND SCIENCE. FICTION pleased. He kisses her. Then he That is why there has been a looks sad. "But, cara mia, there is sadness on Pietro's soul. The por­ -there is one small thing." He poises are Mrs. Pigafetta's friends. points at it. "You cannot possibly He knows that they will tell her be married in this hat." where he is. She weeps. She tells him if he I say, "Have courage! Taranto loved her he would like her hat. is a long way. The porpoises will He kisses her again. He protests not want to go so far. It will take his love. It is only that the hat is many months for her to come." out of fashion. The women in the His tears fall like rain. "No, town will laugh at her. Besides, no," he cries. "The porpoises shout the sea has spoiled it. Then he to each other through the sea. tells his plan. They will swim to­ Also, there is the Panama Canal. gether, but she will wait for him She swims well. She will be here in the water. He will buy her a soon!" new hat. "Joe, I am smart," Pietro says. Mr. Coastguard, the sea is full "I know that she is mad with love. of porpoises. They play. They leap In the morning, we swim to Ta­ into the air. There are more now. ranto. She gives me back my Also they seem more glad. clothes. I put them on. I leave her "Joe, look!" Pietro grabs my arm. in the water. Quickly, I take a "That is how they are when she is train. Then I come to America. I near. I tell you, she comes to­ buy this boat, ll Trovatore. I night! You must help me, Joel" make an oath-". I say to him, "Have no fear. I Again the tears fall. "My friend, do not let her take you back. I I know that if I keep this oath I will do what you want." will be safe. Four years, I do not He embraces me. He says, "I sing. Then, two months ago, you have a plan. Maybe once more I go to visit your papa. While you can be more smart than Mrs. Piga­ are gone, I bring a lady on the fetta. You remember one week ago, boat. Ah, she is beautiful-the when we are in San Pedro, I go wife of an old man who has a ashore? Okay, I go to buy a hat. It bank. She gives me wine. And­ is a fine hat, the new style, green, and for one moment I forget! I with bright things th~ hang down sing for her. From Don Giovanni, and a long plume from the top." from La Traviata. But suddenly The box is in the wheelhouse. she points her finger at the sea. I He opens it. "I have paid eighteen look-and my heart is dead! I see dollars. Maybe when you give her the porpoises. They, too, are lis­ this fine hat she is ashamed and tening!" will go away." MRS. PIGAFETIA SWIMS WELL 57 "Me?" I say. Suddenly, Pietro starts to trem· "Yes, yes! We watch the por· ble. He whispers, "She is nearf" poises so I can tell when she has He crouches by the mast. We call come real close. We bring Nick for Nick to hold the wheel. I take from the galley to hold the wheel. the rope- You tie me to themast-" And then-crash! bang!­ I ask, "Why must I tie you to something hits ll Trcwatore a great the mast?" blow on the bottom. The stern lifts He looks over his shoulder. He in the air. I fall. Pietro cries aloud. makes his voice low. "Because it is What is it? A great fish? A a smart trick, made by a Greek. whale? I do not know. Next thing, You tie me to the mast with lots of I hear my engine. It runs fast­ rope, good and strong. You wait on faster, faster! It screams- deck. She calls out from the sea, ! forget Pietro! I forget all but 'Pietro mio, where are you?' I sing my engine. I got to it like a mama a little bit. She comes more quick· to her child who is hurt. Nick is ly. She grabs the rail. She wants to there too. He shouts, "What is climb aboard-Joe, that is when wrong?" I shout back, "A fish has you must think well! You must broken the propeller!" I turn the say, 'Mrs. Pigafetta, it is nice engine off. meeting you. Pietro has bought for We look to see if there is a bad you this hat. It is expensive. It is a leak. Maybe for five minutes we token of his love. But he cannot look. Then, all at once-1 remem­ go with you to your house.' Then ber! We leap up to the deck- · you must tell her something so she The boat has stopped in the goes away." water. It rocks gently. All is still. For two hours, we talk about The porpoises have gone. I guess what I must tell to Mrs. Pigafetta. the big fish has gone too. And Sometimes Pietro weeps. Some­ Pietro? He is not there any more. times he is angry. But at last I get Across the deck, there is sea a good thought. I say, "I will tell water. In a strip-wide like so­ her that I tie you up because you it is wet. Also, on the deck there are crazy in the head with love­ is the box. Next to it is a hat. But, that you try to jump into the sea­ Mr. Coastguard, it is not the fine that you believe a fat porpoise is hat Pitero buys down in San Pe· Mrs. Pigafetta." dro. Here, look at it! See how it is It is now very late. The moon out of fashion? See the flowers, has fallen in the sky. There are the fruit? See how it has been more porpoises even than before. spoiled by the sea? They swim around ll Trcwatore. Ah, when we see it, we are just All the time, they look at us. like you. At first we have no 58 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION words. Then, to port, to starboard, is not Pietro's voice. It is a con· we ~;bout loudly, "Pietro! Where tralto-with the sound of brass. are you, Pietro? Answer usl Come No, Mr. Coastguard, I do not back!" think that you will find Pietro. It There is no answer. Only, far is too late. Mrs. Pigafetta is a away, we hear this voice singing. woman of experience. She swims It is strong and full of joy. But it well.

Through Time And Space With Ferdinand Feghoot: LXII

In 3945, Ferdinand Feghoot invented his Para-Time Traveller, which enabled him to visit legendary and mythological figures in those eras when they might have existed. He immediately sought out Paul Bunyan, whom he found in the middle para-1800's, busily logging off and draining the Great Dakota Swamp. "Say, am I glad to see you!" boomed Bunyan. "I got a problem, and I know you can help me. But first I'll show you around." They spent the rest of the day inspecting the vast logging camp, and ended up at the gigantic combined bunk-house and inn Paul had built at ·the edge of the marsh for his men and the hordes of tourists who flooded there. Proudly, he displayed his ingenious system of conduits for pressurizing the upper stories, the mile-wide sheet of metal he used as a frying pan, and his gravy vats-each over a hundred yards in diameter. "And right there's my problem," he announced gloomily, point­ ing at thousands of strange stick-like creatures flitting over the vats. "I had to figure out how to keep stirring the gravy so's to keep it from burning, so I crossed canoe paddles with dragonflies and trained the young 'uns to fly like you see. Now everyone wants to know what I call 'em, and I just c_an't think of a name fo)ks'll re- member. Feghoot, can you?" · "Marsh In flying sauce oars," said Ferdinand Feghoot.

-GRENDEL BRIARTON (with thanks to Richard Olcott) "Nature, and Nature's laws, lay veiled in night," sang the poet Pope; "God said, Let Newton be. And all was light." Since then, and largely lately, men have been looking behind the veil. Jack Leahy is instructor in what the University of Wash­ 'ington chooses to call its "Humanistic-Social Studies Depart­ ment," has written a novel (SHADOWS ON THE WATER, Knopf, 1960), and short stories for the Kenyon, San Francisco, and other Reviews. There are many ways of regarding the Old Learning in relation to the New, Mr. Leahy's is here for you to read, and as forlight. • • •

NEWTON SAID

by Jack Thomas Leahy

IT HAD BEEN A POOR DAY FOR ing turned himself into a toad, he Mr. Peaseblossom, but as be sat in had not only forgot the magical the dark comfortable interior of incantation for removing warts, his cave, watching the last dying but he had even forgotten how to moments of the evening fade turn himself back into an elf. Mr. away from him, he reflected that Peaseblossom sat, squatted rather, things had not been going well for on all webbed fours, his emerald three or four hundred years now. eyes gleaming in the early moon­ Ever since Newton had been hom. light, waiting until midnight Today, for example, Mr. Pease­ would transform him back to his blossom had turned himself into a natural shape. toad in order to help his favorite Footsteps in the cave awakened midwife rid herself of warts. The Mr. Peaseblossom from his angry gods knew, there weren't many revery. That would be Newton, midwives left anymore, and when going down to the stream to wash Mr. Peaseblossom saw his chance out his beakers and test-tube. to be of aid, he was there on the HFather!" Newton said, "You spot with his spirits of woodbine, look exactly like a toad!" his crushed musk-rose, his newts "Yes, I know. I forgot the In· and hedge-hogs. But today, hav- cantation again." 59 60 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION "You must be more careful," and bottles and wires: nothing Newton said, a bit patronizingly. could come out of that! "Yesterday you were almost eaten "You're just oldfashioned," Mrs. by a cow." Peaseblossom had said. "All the "The Clover Chthonian," Mr. Wizards are doing it nowadays." Peaseblossom moaned. "I meant That made Mr. Peaseblossom so to give a four leaf clover to a mad, he forthwith turned himself charming Nibelung that I met. into a blue Rere-rere mouse. For luck, you know. They haven't Nevertheless, Newton got his been doing so well since Siegfried. chemistry set, and the next thing This one was working as a gas sta­ Mr. Peaseblossom knew, his son tion attendant." wanted to be an Atomic Physicist. "And instead of .the Chthonian, At first, even though he was you recited the Mudpuppy Myo­ apprehensive, Mr. Peaseblossom mancy." thought his son would grow out of "Yes," Mr. Peaseblossom hung it and return to the good old his head. "I turned myself into a things: the myrrh, moonstone and bed of clover." mandrake would lure Newton "Ah!" Newton said. "The old back. There was even a sort of charms aren't working so well," and fascination in watching Newton he made his way to the mouth of playing with his bottles and test­ the cave, his vials and tubes tubes, although that was amateur tinkling like silver bells in the compared to when Mr. Peaseblos­ moonlight. som had captured Succubus in a "Young brat!" Mr. ~easeblossom cloven tree. Those had been the croaked after his son. "The gods days. Just to show his son what knew it was an evil day when your was what, Mr. Peaseblossom mother gave you that chemistry turned Newton into a demi-pup­ set." But only the thin tinkling of pet, right as he stood there hold­ the bells and Newton's low laught­ ing his vials of smoking, steaming er drifted back to him. bubbles. Pure fury came upon Mr. - "Just you wait," Newton had Peaseblossom, and he flicked his said to him, looking very foolish. long gummy tongue at passing in­ Mr. Peaseblossom had laughed sects of the night. He had warned then, but it seemed as if hardly- a Mrs. Peaseblossom that she was hundred years had passed before playing with. danger when she Newton, mixing things together, gave Newton the set. An Alchemy blew the entire top right off the outfit yes. A pot or two plus some cave and utterly destroyed a old chunks of copper had never month's harvest of moonbeams. hurt anyone. But all of these tubes Mr. Peaseblossom, making his NEWTON SAID 61 way through the smoke and tum­ "Ahl'" bled wreckage, came upon his son, "Kites, keys and apples." triumphantly clutching a Bask. "I beg your pardon?" the psy­ "I'm going to call it dynamite." chiatrist said. Newton said. "Kites, keys and apples," Mr. Things had begun to go wrong Peaseblossom said again, "and with Mr. Peaseblossom's Incanta­ there's a steaming teakettle that tions from that moment. Uttle keeps popping in and out." things at first, like a batch of "This is indeed interesting!" newts created with three eyes, or the doctor said, writing rapidly on falling off a bat's back, a thing his notepad. "Mind telling me Mr. Peaseblossom had never done how you fit into all of this?" before. 'Well, it always begins the "You've been working too hard,'~ same way," Mr. Peaseblossom be­ his wife told him. "Perhaps you gan. "I am stringing dew-drops ought to see a psychiatrist." That from the moon into a necklace of seemed to be a good idea to Mr. silver when suddenly the moon Peaseblossom, so forthwith he turns into a kite and the dew­ called up a psychiatrist and made drops become a long string qf an appointment. wire, and my wand is suddenly a The very next day, Mr. Pease­ key.'' blossom lay on the psychiatrist's ''Yes?" couch and explained his troubles. "There is a tremendous flash of. There was something wrong with light, a tingling in my anil, and his Amulets, he told the stem man an apple falls on my head.'' who faced him from across the "My word," the psychiatrist desk. He mentioned the three­ said, "these are strange dreams to eyed newts and falling off the be sure.'' He hesitated for a mo­ bat's back, and the fact that his ment. ''You, uh, mentioned a tea­ owl's bed seemed rather lumpy. kettle?" "Don't sleep well, do you?" the 'With a popping lid," Mr. stem man asked. Peaseblossom said. "Just after the Mr. Peaseblossom nodded un· apple lands on my head, Newton happily. comes walking past, carrying the "Bad dreams, I suppose?" teakettle.'• He nodded again. "Newton?" "Mind telling me about them," "My son," Mr. Peaseblosso~ the doctor said and took up his said, somewhat irritated. "He al­ notepad. ways has a terrible grin on his "There's one dream that keeps face." recumng. •.." "Ahl" the doctor said, smiling a 62 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION little. "Tell me, Mr. Peaseblossom, "What was that you said?" the exactly when do you have these doctor asked quickly. bad dreams?" "Saphire-eyed newt." "In my sleep, of course." "And your son's name?" "No, no. I mean, when you "Newton, I told you." have the dreams, does anything un­ "Ahl" The psychiatrist wrote on usual happen during the day?" his notepad Classic Case Mis­ "Nooo . . ." Mr. Peaseblossom placed Wishfullfillment, and then, said slowly, scratching his chin. as he regarded Mr. Peaseblossom: "Nothing unusual. Just Newton wishes son to be saphire-eyed playing with his Chemistry set newt. like always. He ha5 an absurd "Youve been working too hard idea that he wants to be an Atomic lately," the psychiatrist said. His Physicist. Can you imagine?" voice was kind. ''You have to take "You resent that?" the psychia­ it easy. After all, there aren't as trist asked intently. He leaned many Elves around as there used forward, peering closely at Mr. to be." Peaseblossom. "Oh, I know. I know," Mr. "I am an Elf," Mr. Peaseblos­ Peaseblossom lamented. som proudly said. "My father be­ "Best to take up some hobby, fore me was an Elf and his father golf or bowling. Perhaps an eve­ before that, all the way back to the ning or two in the woodshop. Do beginning of time. Think what you worlds of good;_ would happen if it got out about "Fiddlesticks!" shouted Mr. Newton. Why, it WQuld ruin my Peaseblossom. "You're as crazy as standing in the community. The Newton. Woodworking! Ha!" and Society of Elves would censure puffing himself up, he shouted me." He dabbed with his handker­ triumphantly at the heavens: chief at ·the moisture in his eyes. "Sharibri Abracabrada!" but know­ "There, there," the doctor con­ ing,, e~n while he was in the soled. "Its not really such a trag­ midst of his wild yell that some­ edy, you know. Why, some of the how he had gotten the syllables best wizards are doing it nowa­ mixed, so that instead of becoming days." a fierce golden eagle, he ended up "That's what my wife said!" a purple blow-fish, his throat bal­ Mr. Peaseblossom shouted at him, looning in and out as Be stared "and its a bunch of poppycock! through his pop-eyes at the sternly Charlatans and quacks! They propped doctor before him. couldn't even conjure up a decent "There, you see," the psychia­ Levitation. They couldn't trans­ trist said kindlv, "You've tired mogrophie a saphire-eyed newt!" yourself out." · NEWTON SAID 63 Now, as a toad cowering in the Mr. Peaseblossom yelled. "A test dark recesses of his cave, Mr. between you and me to find out Peaseblossom thought back on his who's boss around here." hundreds of years of indignity "O.K. dad," said Newton tired­ and decided that the time had ly. "If you want to play games, I finally come for a showdown. He gueS& its all right with me." He had accomplished great things in picked up his tubes and things his time, and no son of his was and put them in a suitcase. going to get away with such fool­ 'Where do want to have your ishness. He waited for slow mid­ test," he asked.· night, watching with great emer­ "lbe desert, under the morn­ ald eyes as the full midsummer ing moon," said Mr. PeasebloiSOm. moon climbed. high into the lazy But if Newton marched off sky. Finally, it was time, and bravely, Mr. Peaseblossom trem­ there! Mr. Peaseblossom was his bled as he hurried back and set­ old self again, standing upright tled on his toadstool. Things had and proud on a drooping toad- gone wrong lately, but never, nev­ stool. · er had he used the Supreme In­ "Newton!" he shouted loudly cantation, the final call of woe and into the darlmess. wonder to the gods. Now he in­ "I'm down in the lab, Dad," his tended to conjure up Puck, Robin son's voice came back to him. Goodfellow, Ariel, all of the spir­ Mr. Peaseblossom hopped nim­ its so that together they might call bly off the toadstgol and made forth the Greater one, who in his his way to Newton's laboratory. power would show young Newton "Dad!" Newton said. "You're an a thing or two. Mr. Peaseblossom Elf again." shivered, thinking of the possi- "Indeed," Mr. Peaseblossom bilities of his power. · said. "I om an Elf again, full of The father and son met as the magic and poetry. There are gold­ moon hung half suspended in the en candlesticks on the moon." western sky, gleaming brightly "Aw, dad," Newton said. "Not over the rolling sea of frozen sand. that old stuff again." "Ded, this is silly,'' Newton "All right! All right!" Mr. said. · Peaseblossom roared at him. "We'll see," said Mr. Pease­ "You're getting too big for your blossom, and immediately went pants. The time has come to find into his Incantation. "0 Hail, 0 out what's what." Dreadful Spirits! 0 Hail, Puck, "O.K." Newton said. "\Vhat's Ariel, Troilus, Satanachial Come what?" to the magic words! Cornel Cornel" "A test, that's what's what," And saying that, l\1r. Pease- 64 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIOX blossom held up his hands te the twirling of knobs and the desert sky and shouted the final words: was as silent as death as Newton "Bogomils, Brimstone and Iyon­ pushed a button and, for the first senaoui!" There was a sudden time, SP.oke. blinding, deafening explosion, "Let · there be light," Newton and when time and space and said, and there was light, a light sky came back, Mr. Peaseblossom greater than a thousand, a million held in his hand a tiny shivering suns, a light that spread from bow-legged, cross-eyed field mouse. horizon to horizon, rising to the "Oberon?" Mr. Peaseblossom top of the sky and then in an in­ asked. stant contracting itself into a great "Squeek," the mouse said, and ball of fire just as a momentous showing its stomach, died from thunderclap of sound seemed to simple fright. Mr. Peaseblossom revibrate through the very heavens sat in the sand staring at the. dead and the giant mushrooming cloud mouse while his son got up. that covered the earth. "My tum now, dad," Newton "There, you see what I've done," said. Newton said proudly to his father, Mr. Peaseblossom stared at him. but when he turned, Mr. Pease­ Newton went about pouring blossom was nowhere to be found. together his mixtures, weighing Newton searched back and forth them, taking their temperatures, and called again and again, but holding them to the moon. There all he found in the charred, were no words, no Incantations. glazed desert was a broken Just this silent fury of activity, stemmed c;owslip, slowly being this silent motion. Finally there covered by the black ash that fell was a great twisting of wire and a from the darkened sky.

DON'T MISS •••

HEINLEIN'S new nHel, GWRY ROAD, beginning in our

]uly issue (on sale June 4) lntroductio111 to John Jakes' UNOERFOLLOW This sad, sad story of Pendennis, whose ancient and elegant name couldn't disguise the fact, that he was a fifth-rate flack on Mica II for the Earthies, rrulrks the _first appearance in F&SF of John Jakes since September 1954. We are pleased to have him back. In the nine years following his very first sale Mr. Jakes has sold about 30 books(". .. inscrutable private eyes, historicals heavy with gore, a couple of .juveniles, and a western .. .")and 130 stories. He has also worked for a pro­ prietary drug outfit as product advertising rrulnager, and for an ad agency; if any detectable cynicism in UNDERFOL­ LOW regarding the improvement of public irrulges is discern­ able, weU ..• He was also tenn#&afed as English teacher by a university we shaU heavily disguise as Buckeye State when BSU professors learned that he was writing s•••••e F• • • • •n: so much for Academic Freedom on the part of acad­ emicians. After a long absence from SF, says Mr. J., he "woke up to the fact . • • that it is one of the few mediums left where you can have some plain fun writing . . . play occa­ sional tricks with words and think curious thoughts on blank yellow papers." He adds that he has a wife, four children, a garden snake, and an unspecific number of dogs, cats, and something called "kissing gouramis." We know nothing about these last, but it wouldn't surprise us to learn that they are kept as pets by the Blue Men of Mica II. 65 UNDERFOLLOW

by Job Jakes

\VHEN WOULD THE FJlEIGHT OF­ drink again, it would be the finish. fice call? On the solido screen colored Unless the freight oflice called, lights twinkled. Through his ear he couldn't force Dorothy to coop­ button came the scratchy voice of erate. Unless Dorothy cooperated, the translator, talking Earthie for he couldn't get to see Tiql. Unless the benefit of Mica II's commercial he saw Tiql in persoa, he didn't colony. As always, when the Mi­ stand a chance of havi"8 the old cans tried to render their speech in blue fool satisfy his request. All Pendennis' native tongue, the re­ the letters he'd sent Tiql had gone sult never quite made sense: unanswered, probably because "Next episode in continually they were written in Earthie. But drama. Heroes of Vegan Assem­ unless Tiql satisfied his request, he bly, under the program name was done for. Those Who Cannot Be Pol­ Pendennis sighed. He was <45 luted." and almost all fat. He sprawled be­ It was the most popular drama­ fore the solido set in his apart­ tic show on Mican solido. In ment near the rocket port. Every cabalese oi the Earthie Lobby time a rocket fired off, the waDs Corps to which Pendennis be­ shook. Stinking. fumes seeped un­ longed the program title was Un­ der the door day and night. Still, deefs. The Earthies were the Pendennis couldn't live anywhere Deefs, short for defilers. Penden­ else. The blue men of Mica II dis­ nis received his pittance of a sal­ criminated against Earthies, con­ ary for trying to improve what was sidered them inferior since the known as the public image of the Micans had conquered the Earth­ Deefs. ies a hundred years ago. They Twenty years ago he'd been on said they had a funny smell, too. top, pressagenting for top Earthie While the solido warmed up toy companies. Booze and some in­ Pendennis sneaked a look at the nocent blackmail and a ·'$hort ro­ locked liquor cabinet. He'd carried mance with nurf-addiction had it all the way out here ten months reduced him to scrambling after ago. In ten months he hadn't this one last chance on Mica II. touched a drop. He was tryill8 He'd gotten the job in the Lobby very hard. He knew if he began to Corps through a long-suffering 66 UNDERFOLLOW 67 friend. And he was close to losing solido translator through the plug. it. An angry cable from the Chief OR the screen appeared a dimen­ Lobbyist lay crumpled at his feet. sioaal model of an Earthie rocket It said: rushing along among studio-built WHAT ACTION IMPROVING stars. Unwholesome purple gasses EARTBIE IMAGE ON UNDEEFS? gushed from its stem. The olfac­ REPORT WEEKEST, REPEAT tor track smelled like dead skunk. WEEKEST. HOPSFORD. The rocket hull vanished in a What the hell did Hopsford, neat wipe. The scowling Penden­ light years away back on Earthie, ais was treated to a view of the understand about the difficulties Earthie captain picking his nose of even communicating with the with his lime-colored hand. The Micans, let alone convincing them Undeef serial writers always gave their script writers treated Earth­ Earthies skins of a funny hue but ies in the most unfair way? Think­ never, naturally, the light sea blue ing this purple thought, .Penden­ of the Micans themselves. The nis heard the jangly musical in­ Earthie captain'~ face, a carica­ terlude, reminiscent of broken ture of cruelty, had been created glass being rattled ill' a box, that from polymer film sprayed over a opened every Undeef episode. native actor's head. Did · Hopsford know, for in­ Pendennis wished for a drink, stance, that it had taken Penden­ stifled his urge. Light sprayed into nis a month just to get it straight the room. His burly wife Bella with the authorites what a lobbyist marched in, stretching a coiled ll'as? The sense got lost in transla­ spring exercise device back and tion. The l\1icans were so God­ forth. damned literal. They had his "Jimmy, when you comin' to occupation listed on the books as dinner?" entry-haller. Straightening it out, "Quiet, Bella. I gotta make Pendennis had to swallow the notes about the Undeefs." cheerful abuse they heaped on him "You and them Undeefs. Ten because the Earthie system was a months you been watchin'. You single sun but the Vegan Assembly haven't got in to see that old blue was sixty. They had trouble un­ jerk yet. The Earthies are still derstanding him because the eatih' their victims for stew." Earthie tongue was a semi-dead "Bella, leave me be. I told you a item any more, dead as Pendennis' hundderd times, Culture Minister job security if he didn't report Tiql is hard to reach. On my some progress in less than a week. budget I can't throw no parties or "Subsequent segment is story nothing like that." numeral six plus eight," said the "Yah, you can't even throw de- 68 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIO:S cent chow on the table for your slim truth. Against -superior forces, fambly. Packaged soy again to­ the Earthies had indeed sunk to Dl'ght" • some low tricks before giving up Fuming, Pendennis ignored and signing the treaty that got her. With an obscene reproof Bella them psyched into passivity. The left. Pendennis yearned more fer­ Earthies had then retreated with vently than ever for a jolt of indignity to their own system. booze. No, mustn't. He must get Only in the last ten years had the action out of Tiql. Even an inter­ Assembly allowed them to resume view would help. He studied the trading with the outer worlds, and screen. :finally to lobby to improve their The episodes of the popular Mi­ public image. can serial were set a hundred On the screen, the Undeefs in­ years in the past. At that time, filtrated the Earthie ship. While Earthie rockets had been explor­ one of them tried to retuni some ing beyond the limits of their own bribe money, he accidentally system. They encountered the frightened all the villains into mighty Vegan Assembly. Before coronaries (the repellant ill health they realized the size of the As-­ and neuroticism of the Earthie sembly, Earthie went to war. And captain and crew having been quickly capitulated, helpless Ull­ planted early in the episode). der the psychic ·drugs of the be­ "Popper?" nevolent Assembly worlds. The With irritation Pendennis saw plot of the current episode, fic­ his son Morey, an oatmeal-faced tional as they all wer~, featured aJI child of twelve whom he thorough­ Earthie effort to export narcotic ly despised. baby food to a sub-planet of the "Gwan, eat your dinner, Morey, First Group of Assembly stan. I gotta make my ,notes." The · Earthies exerted extreme "I don't want dinner, Popper. pressure-bribes, terrorism-on Mums is mad. Everything's nasty." the local authorities of the planet "Gwan, get out! All the time being sabotaged. Their malevolent bothering-" · scheme seemed about to succeed. "But there's a. call on the visor, Then, a spectrum on the screen Popper." announced the arrival of the Vegan "Goddam it, why didn't you say Assembly's incorruptible hard core SO .';)" '... of secret agents, a dedicated mixed He sailed past his son: Ori the bag of creatures from eight worlds, visor screen a sea-blue Mican, his known collectively as Those Who voice coming through the transla­ Cannot Be Polluted. Pendennis tor, inquired with contempt wheth­ knew the series was founded on er he was J. Pen dennis. UNDERFOLLOW I 69 "Yeah, yeah, whacha got? A worked up and down the seams of package?" her skirt. "You bastard. I almost The Mican glanced at a mani­ s1took it." fest. "Single consignment. That is "A.w, Dorothy! Admit you love to say, parcel incorporation butter the &tuff." touched repeatly." Dorothy licked her lips. "How "That's butter pats, you-" Pen­ mUch is there?" dennis controlled himself. "Uh, Pendennis sat down and lighted thanks a lot. Be right down to col­ a pressed paper cigar, the only lect it." kind lte could afford. "Couldn't He ran for the tube. Bella say. I ordered three grumpkins' dogged him as he struggled into worth. With supply and demand, his outercoat, asking questions. the price goes up and down. Now He found himself smiling, even don't be mad. Ain't you glad you patting her lardy shoulder. 8Qtta a friend like Jimmy Penden­ "Honbun, listen. Jimmy's gonna nis who gets a lobbyist's customs pull it out after all. By next week immunity? Whacha waiting for? we'll have a new_ assignment on Open it." . some decent world where they Eyes glowing with a mixture of treat Earthies like humans." disgust and excitement, Dorothy Bella's jeers echoed down the ripped off the brown wrap and tube. He didn't care. He felt then the fake butter yellow plastic flushed, powerful. There might be shell beneath. A half dozen phials a chance. A chance at more mon­ spilled out. Twelve orange caps ey. A chance to really shake the gleamed in each phial. Dorothy's thirst. face darkened. Heedless of stares of contempt "Damn you, Jimmy. Look at from Micans along the pedes­ that label! I told you Congrega­ trian airpaths, Pendennis walked tionalist, Congregationalist/ Those rapidly until he reached the freight are Hebraicapsl" office. Then he proceeded to a An unfriendly expression came grubby apartment fronting the on his face. "Dorothy, you make city sewage canal. The Earthie me tired. D9pe is dope and one re­ girl who opened the door was ligious vision is just like the next. young and pasty. She had straight Why can't you get the same kick brown hair, limp eyes and no out of a Jew. dream? It's all the bust. same chemical to start with. Jees, "Here it is, Dorothy honey." He talk about ingratitude. I go to extended the square brown pack­ lotsa trouble, risk smuggling them age. "Gwan, take it." out from Earthie and you-hell, Dorothy smiled. Her fingers at least swallow one and see." 70 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Dorothy hesitated. She glanced about truth and neither do the at the caps again, eyes watering. people you work for. They only "Well, I might try just one. But scream so much about how noble if I'm caught doing what you ask the Earthies are so the millions of " morons turning out the toys won't "Listen I" He seized her shoul· revolt. For God's sake, why can't ders with surprising strength. we ever admit that maybe some· "Stop playin' games with Jimmy. body is better than an Earthie ?" We made a deal. I get you these, "Because it ain't true!" you work me in to see Tiql. You're Dorothy didn't reply. Unable-to a seventh-class liaison assistant in keep her eyes off the phials, she the Culture Ministry, ain't you? wtscrewed one, swallowed three of All it takes is for you to sneak in the capsules, shuddering. Penden· when the Mican secretary goes nis laughed. He walked around, out for her ceremonial washrag. A hunting a place to extinguish his stroke of the pen, I'm on the ap­ pressed paper cigar, while she pointment calendar where I been mewed and moaned and gnashed tryin' to get for months. Dorothy her teeth. When he faced her I'm not kidding. I'm fighting for again, her expression was beatific. Jimmy's life. Hell, even if they ind "Tomorrow!" Pendennis whis· out afterward-" pered in her ear. "Next day latest. "I'd be shipped home! I couldn't In the morning I gotta be on the stand the toy factory again." calendar for the morning, right Pendennis regularly issued after the ceremonial washrag. press releases which no news­ They're in the best mood then. sheets on Mica' II ever printed, Unnerstand me good, Dorothy?" about the Earthie plastic toy fac­ Dorothy could merely give a tory, which represented 88% of dumb nod, falling into a chair, the GEP. He was affronted. shuddering with visions. "What's wrong with them toys?'' At the door Pendennis paused 'They're fifth rate! Just like to extend a finger. "If I show up we're fifth rate. We couldn't face and can't get in, hon, the customs up to it when we met the Vegan men will hear something." He Assembly, so we attacked them raised his voice. "Unnerstand?" and-" Dorothy gave a feeble nod, "Shaddup! You been brain beating her fists on her knees. washed! I won't listen to dirty­ Tears ~treamed down her cheeks, lies!" tears of· shame or holy ecstacy, Dorothy's laugh was weak, sad. Pendennis couldn't tell which. He "You're paid to act that way, paid cared less as he stepped into the to put on pressure. You don't care night. UNDERFOLLOW 71 Even the fumes of the sewage The movements of Tiql's lips, canal didn't depress him any of course, didn't correspond to the longer. He was set, absolutely set. Earthie words. There was a twelve Dorothy had given him not only second delay in translation trans­ hope, but an idea. Perhaps Earthie mission each time either of them needed a new brochure explaining spoke. the marvels of their toy and novel­ "Uh, your worship," Pendennis ty industry. The toys and novelties said, careful of his speech so the broke apart in several months even mechanical translator would make .if they sat on a shelf, and this in his meaning perfectly clear, "I tum created the economic stabil­ realize you have lots of duties. ity of steady prOduction. A new You prolly forgot." brochure would bolster the Earthie "No concern. Proceed for a image, clarify the fact that Earth­ small interval of my schedule." ies sustained themselves without "Uh, your exaltedness, I come outside assistance. He'd cable here on a matter of truth. Repre­ Hopsford the idea. Along with the senting your-uh-subjects, the news of his success with Tiql, Earthies. I gotta favor to ask of which he felt was inevitable now. this here Culture Ministry." Three mornings later, forgiving Tiql regarded him studiously. Dorothy an extra day's delay be­ "If approaching for purposes of cause he felt so swollen with suc­ wish gratification, why lack you cess, Pendennis was ushered into equipment? Such as our tongue?" the unnerving presence of Minis­ Why the hell don't you know ter Tiql. how to speak Earthie? Pendennis The Mican was unusually tall wanted to shout. But he knew he for his race. Like all of his fellows, mustn't. He smarted under the he could not nictitate. Under his realization that such a retort sea-blue stare Pendennis tried wouldn't hold water anyway. Who valiantly to stay calm as he plugged should learn who's language, the in his ear button. Tiql's boneless conquerors or the conquered? fingers did the same. "Sire, I really ain't-ain't good Then the minister examined his at languages." calendar, a gleiuning crystal sphere "Is indeed," Tiql said reflective­ floating several inches above the ly, "that the reason, your inability? polished metal slab behind which Or is it, on the part of Earthies, he reclined on four cushions, the difficult achievement of the pos­ symbol of ministerial rank. ture of genuine humility of the in­ "Indeed your name appears ferior and beaten? Boast, we never freshly on the calendar and in my do. Still, cannot you yourselves ,head, Earthie." face truth? Speaking of the Vegan 72 FANTASY AND SCIEJ\CE FICTION Assembly, isn't it objective fact "Where lies objection? Not in that we are of higher moral pur­ Earthie defeat. That is truth." pose, not to mention brain stature, "Naw, we lost, we lost, I admit than a world devoted to devices of it. But we're all time underdogs." lace?" Tiql's fingers punched. indenta­ "What was that, sir?" Pesde­ tions into a soft muddy tablet of nis clutched the ear button. Hl..ace? kidney shape. "Permit a scroll I don't get-" copy for permanency. Let us re­ "Accept correction," Tiq) re­ peat. Objection is role of Earthies sponded, "Substitute frill." The as, you said, underfollow ?" floating garment about his chitin­ "Dog! Dog!" Pendennis wanted ous shoulders lifted a little, as jf to smash the goddam translation in disdain. machine, wherever it was. "Uh, A hot pink flush rose ill Pen­ erase that and leave me explain dennis's cheeks. "I know we're otherwise. It's not that we think nothing in your estimatioa, your we can change history. But-Jeez, worship. However, truth is truth. Earthies have dignity too." Earthies are da-awful tired of "Many dignified plastic gim­ being painted worse thaa they mys, Earthie-made displayed at . , are. our free duty port, yes," agreed "Complaint features our mu­ Tiql. "Find ready acceptance in seum of art? I was unknowios that therapeutic clinics among our few this ministry currently bad ex­ head cripples. Please allow more hiltits representing your type." recording." Again he punched m. • Why the hell did the traDSia­ dentations. "Our solido dis­ tion machines have ·to be !10 ~ pleases?" dam unimaginative? Why dicha't ''Yeah, your apex. It ain't fair they comprehend all the zip and lor the Earthie villains in the En­ Oavor of Earthie, a tongue that deefs to be such dirty rotten bas­ lent its color even to the animated people, all time. To lose all time." plastic talking dolls produced by 'What is goal of requesting? great Earthie companies like Gen­ · Truth? Or commercialism?'' Mot and Uniliver? "Jeez, your illumination, of "Painted, your highmost? I did­ course we gotta keep up the ego n't mean anything about art. Fig­ to keep 'em turning out all those ure of-1 mean, it's about tbat swell toys at FoMoCo a1;1d Sheloil there solido show, Tho!le Who and the other Earthie factories, but Cannot Be Polluted." we didn't kill that many Vegansl" "Clarified." Tiql laced his fin­ "Bothers it not you when, mak­ gers into a blue knot whose intri­ ing such request, yoy come here cacy he studied with great care. without learning our tongue?" UNDERFOLLOW 73 Same old chestnut again! Pen· Though he was wincing at the dennis had worked himself into a cruel word, Pendennis still bab­ frenzy. He pounded on the slab, bled outrageous thanks while knowing· he might be throwing the leaving the chamber. What if the whole venture out the window but old blue jelly did despise him, de­ helpless in his rage: "I don't ast spise his pleading? He'd still ad­ much of your scripters. Just-" mitted Micans were scrupulously He thought quickly. "-in one epi· fair. What the hell did Pendennis sode, show the other side of the care whether he got baited for not Earthies." He slipped a quivering being humble enough to learn the smile on his lips. "Honest, is that tongue? He'd produced results, too much?" hadn't he? Beyond his dreams. Tiql raised a hand. Was he He poured out his success in a playing games? The voice in the lengthy and costly cable to Hops­ earplug sounded in measured ford, a cable written in a tone of fashion: "The ministry prides in braggadocio. He'd won. Won. fairness. Give me all of your wish The Pendennis family, Jimmy and I will transmit it to the epi· and Bella and Morey, gathered sodic creator of Those Who Can· around the solido on the evening not Be Polluted." So saying, he of the second Undeef episode fol· produced a fresh kidney tablet. lowing the interview. Pendennis Wanting to sob with relief, had rented an expensive image­ Pendennis said, "Any way it copy unit so as to make a perma­ wants-your writer wants to work nent recording of his success to it out'll be swell. We shouldn't be ship back to Hopsford, who had beat all the time. It's not fair. Is already cabled news of a possible that too much?" opening as Sector Director of Lob­ "No." byists for the First Group stars. Pendennis almost fell over. Pending, naturally, Hopsford's re­ "Continue with requesting." view of the evidence of the Mican "I mean, you unnerstand what success. I'm asking? That we come out on Also in Pendennis' pocket was top once?" Afraid to lose what a communication from the Cul­ he'd miraculously gained thus far, ture Ministry informing him in Pendennis mumbled "That's all." Earthie that Tiql had fulfilled his Tiql gestured in dismissal. promise and transmitted Penden­ "Time ending. In spite of your nis' requests intact to the scripter. never bothering the study of our With a tight, scratchy feeling of tongue, we are fair to a scruple. expectation, Pendennis dialled the The sop to Earthies may be ex· solido up. pected publicly in a fortnight." Came the twinkling scraps of 74 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION color. The buzzing of the traDSJa­ hasp on the ship's automatic ven­ tor through the earpiece. "'Next tral exit. episode in continually drama. _He­ The lieutenant showed his back roes of Vegan Assembly, under to the camera, asking his comrade the program name-" Pendennis how the cloak draped from that smiled and made an effort to ]is­ ugle. The surly :repairman re­ ten. He was constantly seduced vealed his Earthie coarseness and away by dreams of new pi'osperity. his contempt for officers by imitat­ Besides, the imagecopy hummed ing the lieutenant's stance. The on the Boor, clacked its r-.Jays, two stood abreast a moment, fac­ getting it all down. ing away from the lens, displaying This time the Earthies had been their other sides. equipped with skins the shade of Pendennis began to grow nerv­ stale orange peelings. Aboanl ous. His palms itched. He found their space vessel they carried himself glancing unbidden at the large vats of a Surian drinking locked liquor cabinet. liquid loaded with a crippling spi­ The plot twisted this way, that nal virus they intended to intro­ way. Another Earthie, ordered to duce into the public reservoirs of a · stand watch after the vessel land­ large city in the Second Gronp. ed and the crew unbolted drums Same old wild garbage, Penden­ of virus fluid from the hold, had nis thought. Stuff like that never been planted early in the episode happened. Well, practically never. as being excessively frail, con­ In the show's opening segments tinually tired. At his watch sta­ he saw no overt sign that his re­ tion he grew so drowsy he had to quests had been ·met. But he sneak off to his bunk for a nap, guessed the scripter had to set up plainly demonstrating to the Mi­ the plot in the usual phony pat­ can children viewing that no tern; the scripter would come Earthie had the slightest concern through by the end. Tiql had for the welfare of anyone but him­ promised. self. Pendennis was breathing In addition to its usual collec­ hard, straining forward in his tion of stereotyped assassins, the chair, suspicion dawning, an Earthie craft carried one officer agony of suspicion. who was abnormally vain. So vain Fast cut to the bunk where the that he posed and preened :re­ malingerer slept. ~ peatedly in his new kneelengtb A comrade shook him awake. cloak while plans were hatched. Rude Earthie horseplay, offensive At one point the lieutenant paused to genteel Micans. The sleeping beside another Earthie with a Earthie declared that for the first torch. The latter was repairing a time in the whole miserable trip, UNDE.RFOLLOW 75 he felt swell, he felt tiptop, not her Popper was smashing at the the least bit beat. liquor box like a madman. When Oh the bastard, thought Pen­ Morey got courage enough to peer dennis. The blue bastard. Fair to back in there, Popper was tilting a scruple. Understanding perfect­ a quart and the whole Bat was ly. But making sure the scripter awash with the smell of Earthie didn't, by giving him a translation booze. of an alien interview, a transla­ The solido clattered with the tion made with scrupulous fair­ story's climax. The dereliction of ness, but intact, unexplicated, not the Earthie on watch gave the allowing for those common confu­ Undeefs the chance to surround sions like calling a lobbyist an en­ the enemy craft. The Earthies try-hailer- tried to battle out through the A moisure congealed in Pen­ ventral hatch. The Undeefs had dennis' eyes, making it impossible it ringed. So with their rays, like for him to see. I shoulda learned desperate animals, the Earthies it, he thought, hitching across the burned their way upward through Boor, finding his legs refused to layers of metal and insulation into function, that he must crawl. He the neat trap set for them, and hated me because I dint learn his died with the rays of other Un­ lousy-ah, hell, hell. Open, open, deefs sizzling them the second damn thing- · they cut through the hull and "Popper? Popper, what's came out on top-backsides to wrong?" the viewer. Pendennis didn't hear. Morey A rocket took off from the port. fled to the bedroom to try to com­ The walls shook and Pendennis fort the sobbing Bella. Try to tell cried between mouthfuls.

ATOMIC REACTION

I fear the addition Of nuclear fission For running the home might alarm us. If we're late with the bill, The serviceman will Come in and proceed to disarm us. -RoN WEBB Here is a moving and a beautiful st01y about a man who .. walked beside the evening seafand dreamed a dream that could not be," by England's /.G. Ballard. Also England's is the curious 17th Century prophet, Lodowicke Muggleton, who thought that Heaven was only six miles away, and wrote of .. yesterday becoming his own tomo"ow."

NOW WAKES THE SEA

by J. G. Ballard

AGAIN AT NIGHT MASON HEARD ing, estimating the sea's rate of the sounds of the approaching progress. Each night it moved a sea, the mufHed thunder of the few yards nearer, as the hissing long breakers rolling up the near­ black guillotine sliced across the by streets. Roused from his sleep, empty lawns, rivetting the f~nces he ran out into the moonlight, with staccato bolts of spray. where the white-framed houses For half an hour Mason stood like sepulchres among the watched the waves vault among washed concrete courts. Two hun­ the roof-tops. The luminous surf dred yards away the waves plunged cast a pale nimbus on the clouds and boiled, sluicing in and out racing overhead on the dark wind, across the pavement. A million and covered his hands with a vivid phosphorescent bubbles seethed waxy sheen. through the picket fences, and the At last the waves began to re­ broken spray filled the air with the cede, and the deep roaring bowl wine-sharp tang of brine. of illuminated water withdrew Off-shore the deeper swells of down the emptying streets, dis­ the open sea surged across the gorging the lines of houses glisten­ roofs of the submerged houses, the ing in the moonlight. Mason ran white-caps cleft by the spurs of forwards across the exp\ring bub­ isolated chimneys. Leaping back bles, but the sea shrank away from as the cold foam stung his bare him into the fading light, disap­ feet, Mason glanced uneasily at pearing around the corners of the the house where his wife lay sleep- houses, sliding below the garage 76 NOW WAKES THE SEA 77 doors. He. sprinted to the end of trees outside the window. "I the road as a last fleeting glow was shouldn't worry. What's happen­ carried away across the sky beyond ing is really very simple. At night the spire of the church. Exhausted, I hear the sounds of a sea breaking Mason returned to his bed, the down the streets, I go out and sound of the dying waves filling watch the waves in the moonlight, his head as he slept. and then come back to bed." He paused, a faint Bush of fatigue on "I saw the sea again last night," his lean face. Tall and slimly he told his wife at breakfast. built, Mason was still convalesc­ Quietly, Miriam said: "Rich­ ing from the illness which had ard, the nearest sea is a thousand kept him at home for the previous miles away." She watched her hus­ six months. "It's curious, though," band silently for a moment, her he resumed, "the water is remark­ long pale fingers straying to the ably luminous, and I should guess coil of black hair lying against her that its salinity is well above nor­ neck. "Go out into the drive and mal-" look. There's no sea." "But Richard ...." Miriam "Darling, I saw it." looked around helplessly, her hus­ "Richard-!" band's calmness exhausting her. Mason stood up, with slow de­ "The sea isn't there, it's only in liberation raised his palms. "Mi­ your mind. No-one else can see it." riam, I felt the spray on my hands. Mason nodded, hands lost in The waves were breaking ~ound his pockets. "Perhaps no-one else my feet. I wasn't dreaming." has heard it yet." "You must have been." Miriam Leaving the breakfast room, he leaned against the door, as if try­ went into his study. The couch on ing to exclude the strange night­ which he had slept during his ill­ world of her husband which ness still stood against the corner, haunted the shadows in the bed­ his bookcase beside it. Mason sat room. With her long raven hair down, taking a large fossil mollusc framing her oval face, and the from a shelf. During the winter, scarlet dressing gown. open to re­ when he had been confined to bed, veal her slender neck and white the smooth trumpet-shaped conch, breast, -she reminded Mason of a with its endless associations of an­ Pre-Raphaelite heroine in an Ar­ cient seas and drowned strands, thurian pose. "Richard, you must had provided him with unlimited see Dr. Clifton. It's beginning to pleasure, a bottomless cornucopia frighten me." of image and reverie. Cradling it Mason smiled, his eyes search­ ,reassu~gly in his hands, as ex­ ing the distant roof-tops above the quisite and ambiguous as a frag- 78 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION ment of Greek sculpture found in The street, one of a dozen sub­ a dry river-bed, he reflected that it urban boulevards on the perime­ seemed like a capsule of time, the ter of the town, ran north-west for condensation of another universe, some three hundred yards and and he could almost believe that then joined the open square of the the midnight sea which haunted neighbourhood shopping centre. his sleep had been released from Mason shielded his eyes and the shell when he inadvertently looked out at the clock tower of scratched one of its helixes. the library and the church spire, Miriam followed him into the identifying the various protruber­ room and briskly drew the cur­ ances which had projected from tains, as if aware that Mason was the steep swells of the open sea. returning to the twilight world of All were in exactly the positions his sick-bed and reading lamp. he remembered. She took his shoulders in her The road shelved slightly as it hands. approached the shopping centre, "Richard, listen. Tonight, when and by a curious coincidence you hear the waves, wake me and marked the margins of the beach we'll go out together." which would have existed if the Gently, Mason disengaged him­ area had in fact been flooded. A self. "Whether you see it or not is mile or so from the town, this shal­ irrelevant, Miriam. The fact is low ridge, which formed part of that I see it." the rim of a large natural basin enclosing the alluvial plain be­ Later, walking down the street, low, culminated is a small chalk Mason reached the point where he outcropping. Although it was part­ had stood the previous night, ly hidden by the intervening watching the waves break and roll houses, Mason now recognised it towards him. The sounds of placid clearly as the promontory which domestic activity came from the had reared like a citadel above the houses he had seen submerged. sea. The deep swells had rolled The grass on the lawns was against its flanks, sending up im­ bleached by the July heat, and mense plumes of spray that fell several sprays rotated in the bright back with almost hypnotic slow­ sunlight, casting rainbows in the ness upon the ·receding water. At vivid air. Undisturbed since the night the promontory'-. seemed rain"5torms in the early spring, the larger and more gaunt, a huge on­ long summer's dust lay between eroded bastion against the sea. the palisades of the wooden fences One evening, Mason promised and silted against the water hy­ himself, he would go out to the drants. promontory and let the waves ~OW WAKES THE SEA 79 \Vake him as he slept on the peak. sound of waves outside the win­ A car moved past slowly, the dow and gone out to find the sea driver watching Mason curiously rolling across the neighbourhood as he stood motionlessly in the streets and houses. At first she had middle of the pavement, head merely smiled at him, accepting raised to the air. Not wishing to this illustration of his strange pri· appear any more eccentric than he vate world. Then, three nights la­ was already considered-the soli­ ter, she had woken to the sounds tary, abstracted husband of the of him latching the door on his beautiful but childless Mrs. Ma­ return, bewildered by his pump­ son (in addition he was honorary ing chest and tense perspiring secretary of the local astronomical face, his eyes lit by an uncanny society, a notorious gathering of light. cranks and stargazers)-Mason from then on she spent all day turned into the avenue which ran looking over her shoulder through along the ridge. As he approached the window for any signs of the the distant outcropping he glanced sea. What worried her as much as over the hedges for any signs of the vision itseH was Mason's com­ water-logged gardens or stranded plete calm in the face of this ter­ cars. The houses here had been al­ rifying unconscious apocalypse. most completely inundated by the flood water. Tired by his walk, Mason sat The first visions of the sea had down on a low ornamental wall, come to Mason only three weeks screened from the surrounding earlier, but he was already con­ houses by the rhododendron vinced of its absolute validity. He bushes. For a few minutes he recognised that after its nightly played with the dust at his feet, withdrawal the water failed to stirring the hard white grains leave any mark on the hundreds of with a branch. Although formless houses it submerged, and he felt and passive, the dust shared some­ no alarm for the people who thing of the same evocative qual­ should- have been drowned and ities of the fossil mollusc, radiat­ who were presumably, as he ing a curious compacted light. watched the luminous waves break In front of him, the road curved across the roof-tops, sleeping un­ and dipped, the incline carrying disturbed in the sea's immense it away onto the fields below. The liquid locker. Despite this para· chalk shoulder, covered by a man­ dox, it was his complete convic· tle of green turf, rose into the tion of the sea's reality that had clear sky. A metal shack had been made him admit to Miriam that erected on the slope, and a small he had woken one night to the group of figures moved about the 80 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION entrance of a mine shaft, adjust­ wife from the sea. "Miriam, don't ing a wooden hoist. Wishing that you understand? I might not actu­ he had brought his wife's car, Ma­ ally see it, in the literal sense. It son watched the diminutive fig­ might be • • ." he extemporised, ures disappear one by one into the "... an hallucination, or a shaft. dream." The image of this elusive pan­ Miriam shook her head, hands tomime remained with him all day clasped on the arms of the chair. in the library, overlaying his "I don't think it is. Anyway, I want memories of the dark waves rolling to find out." across the midnight streets. Mason lay back slowly on the bed. "I wonder whether you're ap­ What sustained Mason in the proaching this the right way-" face of this encroaching night­ Miriam sat forward. "Richard, mare was his conviction that oth­ you're taking it all so calmly, you ers would soon also become aware accept this vision as if it were a of the sea. strange headache. That's what When he went to bed that night frightens me. If you were really he found Miriam sitting fully terrified by this sea I wouldn't dressed in the armchair by the worry, but. . ." window, her face composed into Half an hour later, after he had an expression of calm determina­ given up his attempt to dissuade tion. Miriam from her vigil, he fell "What are you doing?" he asleep in the darkened room, Mi­ asked. riam's slim · face watching him "Waiting." from the shadows. "For what?" "The sea. Don't worry, simply Waves murmured, outside the ignore me and go to sleep. I don't windows the distant swish of rac­ mind sitting here with the light ing foam drew him from sleep, out." the deep muffied thunder of rollers "Miriam. . . ." Wearily, Ma­ and the sounds of deep water son took one of her slender hands drummed at his ears. Mason and tried to draw her from the climbed out of bed, and dressed chair. "Darling, what on earth will quickly as the hiss of receding this achieve?" water sounded up the o.street. In "Isn't it obvious?" the comer, under the glimmering Mason sat down on the foot of light reflected from the distant the bed. For some reason, not foam, Miriam lay asleep in the wholly concerned with the wish to armchair, a bar of moonlight protect her,' he wanted to keep his across her throat. NOW WAKES THE SEJ\ 81 His bare feet soundless on the ing douds, he saw the tal] pale pavement, Mason ran towards the figure of a· woman standing above waves, stumbled across the wet the sea on a stone parapet at the glistening tideline as one of the diff's edge, her black robe lifting breakers struck with a deep gut· behind her in the wind, her long tural roar. On his knees, Mason hair white in the moonlight. Far felt the cold bri11iant water, seeth­ below her feet, the luminous ing with animalcula, spurt across waves leapt and vaulted like acro­ his chest and shoulders, slacken bats. and then withdraw, sucked like an Mason ran along the pavement, immense gleaming floor into the momentarily losiag sight of her as mouth of the next breaker. His the road curved and the houses in­ wet suit clinging to him like a tervened. The water slackened, drowned animal, Mason stared and he caught a Jast glimpse of the out across the dark sea. In the woman's ice-white profile through fleeting moonlight the white the opalescent spray. Turning, the houses advancing into the water tide began to ebb and fade, and loomed like the paJazzos of a spec· with a last bubbling spasm the traJ Venice, mausoleums on the great sea shrank away between causeways of some huge island the emerging houses, draining the necropolis. Only the church spire night of its light and motion. was stiU visible. The water rode As the last bubbles flickered in. to its high tide, a further twen­ and dissolved on the damp pave­ ty yards down the street, the spray ment, Mason searched the head· carried almost to the Masons' land, but the strange numinous house. figure had gone. His damp clothes Mason waited for an interval dried themselves as he walked between two waves and then back through the empty streets, a waded through the shallows to the last tang of brine carried away off avenue which wound towards the the hedges on the midnight air. distant headland. By now the wa· ter had crossed the roadway, swHl· The next morning he told Mir­ ing over the dark ]awns and slap­ iam: "It was a dream, after all. I ping at the doorsteps. ·think the sea has gone now. Any­ Half a mile from the headland way, I saw nothing last night." he heard the great surge and sigh "Thank heavens, Richard. Are of the deeper water. Out of breath, you sure?" he leaned against a fence as the "I'm fairly certain." Mason cold foam cut across his Jegs, smiled encouragingly. "Thanks pulling him with its undertow. for keeping watch over me." Suddenly, illuminated by the rae- ''I'll sit up tonight as well." 82 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION She held up her hand to silence "Professor Goodhart, one of the his protests. "I insist. I feel all party of paleontologists. Appar­ right after last night, and I want ently they've uncovered an inter­ to drive this thing away, once and esting bone-bed." Fellowes ges­ for all." She frowned intently over tured at the collection of femurs the coffee cups. "It's strange, but and jaw-bone fragments. "With once or twice I think I heard the luck we may get a few pieces from sea too. It sounded very old and them." blind, like something waking Mason stared at the bones, again after millions of years." aware of a sudden closing parallax within his mind. On his way to the library, Mason made a detour towards the Each night, as the sea emerged chalk outcropping, and parked from the dark streets and the wave the car where he had seen the rolled further towards the Mason's moonlit figure of the white-haired horne, he would wake beside his woman watching the sea. The sleeping wife and go out into the sunlight fell on the pale turf, il­ surging air and wade through the luminating the mouth of the deep water towards the headland. mine-shaft, around which the There he would see the white­ same desultory activity was tak­ haired woman on the cliff's edge, ing place. her high face raised above the For the next fifteen minutes roaring spray, a pale glimmering Mason drove slowly in and out of nimbus which rode like the moon the tree-lined avenues, peering among the fleeing clouds. But al· over the hedges at the kitchen ways he failed to reach her before windows. Almost certainly she the tide turned, and would kneel would live in one of the nearby exhausted on the wet pavements as houses, probably still be wearing the last bubbles foamed and the her black robe beneath a house­ drowned streets rose from the coat. sinking waves. Later, at the library, he recog­ Once a police patrol car found nised a car he had seen on the him in its headlights _sJumped headland. The driver, an elderly against a gate-post in an open tweed-suited man of academic drive, and on another night he for­ manner, was examining the dis­ got to close the front door after play cases of local geological finds. himself when he returned. All "Who was that?" he asked Pel­ through breakfast Miriam watched lowes, the keeper of antiquities, him with her old wariness, notic· as the car drove off. I've seen him ing the tell-tale shadows which on the chalk cliffs." encircled his eyes like manacles. NOW WAK,ES THE SEA R3 "Richard, I think you should woman on the cliff's edge who stop going to the library. You look seemed to beckon to him. But like worn out. It isn't that sea dream all women Miriam believed that again?" there was room for only one Mason shook his head, forcing enigma in her husband's life. By a tired smile from his face. "No, an inversion of logic he felt that that's finished with. Perhaps I've his dependence on his wife's pri­ been over-working." vate income, and the loss of self­ Miriam held his hands. "Did respect, gave him the right to you fall over yesterday?" She ex­ withhold something of himself amined Mason's palms. "Darling, from her. they're still raw! You must have "Richard, what's the matter?" grazed them only a few minutes In his mind the spray opened ago. Can't you remember even"? like an immense diaphanous fan Abstracted, Mason invented and the enchantress of the waves some tale to satisfy )ler, then car­ turned towards him with her ried his coffee into the study and burning eyes. stared at the morning haze which lay across the roof-tops, a soft lake Waist-high, the sea pounded of opacity that followed the same across the lawns in a seething contours as the midnight sea. The whirlpool. Mason pulled off his mist dissolved in the sunlight, jacket and flung it away into the and for a moment the diminishing water, and then waded out into reality of the normal world reas­ the street. Higher than ever before, serted itself, filling him with a the waves had at last reached his poignant nostalgia. house, breaking over the doorstep, Without thinking, he reached but Mason had forgotten his wife. out to the fossil conch on the book­ His whole attention was fixed shelf, but involuntarily his hand upon the headland, which was withdrew before touching it. lashed by a continuous storm of Miriam stood beside him. spray, almost obscuring the figure "Hateful thing," she commented. standing on its crest. "Tell me, Richard, what do you As Mason pressed· on, some­ think caused your dream?" times sinking to his chin, shoals Mason shrugged. "Perhaps it of luminous algae swarmed in the was a sort of memory . . ." His water around him, their brilliant wife's cool, elegant face was phosphorescence stinging his legs, watching him intently. He won­ and his eyes smarted in the harsh dered whether to tell Miriam of saline air. He reached the lower the waves which he still heard in slopes of the headland almost ex­ his sleep, and of the white-haired hausted, and fell to his knees. 84 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION High above, he could hear the sounds of the sea booming above spray singing as it cut through him in its hurtling darkness. the coigns of the cliff's edge, the deep base of the breakers over­ After listening intently to the layed by the high treble of the policeman's description, Professor keening air, entwining itself Goodhart shook his head. through the long white strands of "I'm afraid not, sergeant. We've the woman's hair like the chords been working on the bed all week, of a harp. no-one's fallen down the shaft." Carried by the music, Mason One of the flimsy wooden rails was climbed the flank of the headland, swinging loosely in the crisp air. a thousand reflections of the moon "But thank you for warning me. dancing in the breaking sea. As he I suppose we must build a heavier reached the crest, the fluttering railing, if this fellow is wandering of the long black robe hid the around in his sleep." woman's face, but he could see her "I don't think he'll bother to tall erect carriage and slender come up here," the sergeant said. hips. Suddenly, without any ap­ "It's quite a climb." As an after­ parent motion of her limbs, she thought he added: "Down at the moved away along the parapet. library where he works they said ''Wait!" you'd found a couple of skeletons His shout was lost on the surg­ in· the shaft yesterday. I know it's ing air. Mason ran forwards, and only two days since he disap­ the figure turned and stared back peared, but one of them couldn't at him. Her white hair swirled possibly be his?" The sergeant around her face like· a spume of shrugged. "If there was some nat- silver steam and then parted to re­ ural acid, say . . . " · veal an, angular skull-like face "Ingenious, sergeant, but I'm with empty eyes and notched sorry to disappoint you." Profes­ mouth. A hand, like a bundle of sor Goodhart drove his heel into white sticks, clawed towards him, the chalky turf. "Pure calcium car­ and the figure loomed through the bonate, about a mile thick, laid whirling darkness like a gigantic down during the Triassic Period bird. 200 million years ago when there Unaware whether the scream was a large inland sea here. The came from his own mouth or from skeletons we found yesterday, a this spectre, Mason stumbled back, man's and a woman's, belong to before he could catch himself two Cro-Magnon·fisher people who tripped over a wooden railing and lived on the shore just before it in a cackle of chains and pulleys dried up. I wish I could oblige fell backwards into the shaft, the you with a corpus delicti, though :'\0\V W.\KES THE SEA S5 it's quite a problem to understand looked out at the endless stretch how these Cro-Magnon relics of placid suburban homes. found their way into the bone-bed. "Apparently there was an an­ This shaft wasn't sunk until about cient sea here once. A million thirty years ago." He smiled at the years ago. Who would believe it? policeman. "Still, that's my prob­ He picked a crumpled flannel lem, not your's." jacket off the back seat. "That re­ Returning to the police car, minds me," he said, sniffing at the the sergeant shook his head. fabric. "I know what this coat of "Nothing." As they drove off he Mason's smells of-brine." Herewith another story by the author of "Eril, Ethel, Maude, Zelda, Kitty, Tulip and Vanessa and the Leprechaun," god­ helpus (rejected). He says it represents his reaction to stories beginning, "Zlat was the best novaship pilot in the 81 gal­ axies." It is funny.

WATCH THE BUG-EYED MONSTER

by Don White

ZLAT WAS THE BEST NOVASBIP tact lens, in order not to frighten pilot in the 81 galaxies. He could too many inhabitants of friendly tweet and woof his way through trading stars (though they were the high fidelity of outer space in usually hideous, too). a parsec flat. Zlat wasn't so much a drunk· He drank. ard as a dunkard. It was an acci· Drink, as such, was an un- dent. Making a tricky touch down known commodity on Aldebaran on the soundwave shores of green· III Z. Zlat and every other pseudo- sanded Andromeda, he had al­ podian on the pale pink planet most collided with a millenia! lacked anything to get drunk with comet. He had let the ship down -no stomach, no actually organic badly-dunking it, and himself brain . . . not a kidney amongst into the sea. them. Let's face it, the people ol Zlat lay there, clinging onto Aldebaran III Z are eyeballs on the plasto-rung of his novaship, legs. . blaspheming, as waves of fresh They were a happy enough water washed over him .• Then he community. An eyeball on legs stopped blaspheming and started can look pretty good to another giggling and became bloodshot all eyeball on legs. Although on inter- over. His legs tried to run in every galactic trips, Aldebaran III direction at once. Z-ians wore metallic casings or The Andromedan trade man­ shells, a sort of lead-shielded con- ager rescued him, and despite his 86 WATCH THE BUG-EYED l-WNSTER R7 meagre knowledge of the Aldeba­ Strawberry Hills in the Horsehead ran III Z language, he knew that Nebula that his addiction to the the national anthem Zlat was shower overcame his normally singing was not the version sung 200% novaship drive reflexes. In at the intergalactic Olympics. the middle of an apparently nor­ Zlat was right as rain-no!-1 mal thrust, he woofed when he mean, back to 20/20 vision after ought to have tweeted, came out of a day at the Zelda City Inorgan­ the wrap anti-gravitationally, ma­ icising Center. terialising in the back bar of the But, poor Zlat. The damage "Rex" in Sydney, Australia, where was done. On the very next visit it was Saturday night. to Andromeda, he threw out his Zlat climbed out of his poly­ metallic casing contact-lens-like thene novaship and lay bloodshot suit and got the Zelda City Clean­ and snuffiing on a bar-stool. liness-is-next-to-Galactic-Suprema­ He was lucky. cy Committee to install a shower He had materialised in the one in his nova ship. place in the world, at the one It was quite an occasion. Zlat time in the world where blood­ was the Connnittee"s first non­ shot eyeballs on legs are accepted Andromedan convert to their cam­ as a matter of course. paign (not counting Andromedan Beside Zlat sat a sad-faced Lunes). young man with long blonde hair When the last hurrah had died with short black roots. He was away, and the robots had cleared drinking Pink Ladies. Lots of away the very last ticker tape Pink Ladies. Zlat threw out the Committee's The sad-faced young man tank of acidual-optrex ("clean looked down at the giggling Zlat, body, clean mind!") and surrepti­ wiped two dripping tears from his tiously refilled it with fresh water, eyes (smudging his mascara in from the crystal Andromedan sea. the process), and said: "Hello, And so, by stabilising between darls, Have a Pink Lady." tweet and woof, he could soak for Zlat giggled, and hiccoughed. an hour or two under the influ­ "Earthman, know that I am Zlat, ence-of a cold shower. of Aldebaran III Z, licensed citi­ Giggling, and just a little zen and holder of the belt of the bloodshot, he would hi-fi back into Ding of Dong." base-late-making sure his no­ "Oh, you camp thing!" giggled vaship was sealed. He even in­ the pale young man. 'Well, I'm sisted on servicing the vessel him­ Vernon Veil, but all my friends self-to hide his guilty secret. call me Valerie." He stifled a sob. It was on Zlat's third visit to "Are you my friend?" FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION "I am friend of no earthman," Z-ians are pretersexual. At pro­ Zlat replied, erupting into another genising time I fertilise myself." fit of the giggles. "Know that I "Oh, you naughty thing," am the best novaship pilot in the squealed Vernon. 81 galaxies." "Tell you a secret," hiccoughed "That must be nice," said Ver­ Zlat, confidentially. "You won't non-Valerie. "I'm a female im­ have any more troubles after No­ personator at the 'Taboo'. And, oh, vember 15th, 1963. That's the Zlat. I'm so unhappy." And he date we're gain' invade Earth. began to weep. Take over completely!" Zlat's membraneous adhesions Zlat and Valerie giggled togeth­ went out to Valerie-Vernon with er over this. sympathy. In no time at aD, they "Anyway, mus' be going," said were the best of friends, Valerie Zlat. "Cargo of quick-freeze Zy­ drowning his-her sorrows in Pink gote juice to deliver. Nice knowin' Ladies, pausing between sips to you, friend." scatter drops of ice-cold fresh wa­ "I'd come with you, Zlat, get ter on the shivering-with-anticipa­ away from it all, etcetera," said tion eyeball with legs that was the pale young man. "But the Zlat. world tour of 'Nonentities of Valerie went on with his life 1961' starts 'n a fortnight. Any­ story: ". • . and that was the end way," he giggled, "don't think I'd of Duncan, though I still wonder be very good at fertilising myself." if he'll ever come back, if only for Two and a half parsecs later, his bell-bottoms and his Japanese Zlat was under armed guard in camera. But then . ·• • then I met the seldom-used truth cell at mili­ Desmond," he sighed. "But, Zlat, tary headquarters in Qwertyuiop, he's just like all the others. He the capital. doesn't understand me. Why, I Truth-commander Queeg strode even have reason to believe that to­ irritably about the cell, clicking night," he broke down long enough his toe-knuckles. "Best kept secret to swallow a Pink Lady whole and of the military millenium," Queeg scatter more water on the almost was saying, "and you spill your de~rious-with-joy Zlat, "tonight be inorganic guts to a pansy at an may be out with a .•• a WOM­ Australian swill party." AN!" "Leige one," said Z}flt, blood­ "No!" said Zlat. shot only in the right retina, and ''Yes!" sighed Valerie-Vernon. using the most flattering com­ "Do you have troubles like this mander-title he could remember where you come from?'' from his school-machine days. "Unthinkable! Aldebaran III "Lei~ one, this Valerie-Vernon WATCH THE BUG-EYED MONSTER f\9 will not remember our conversa­ vanity, goodness me, no. But tion. He was drinking an earth­ sometimes the mirror lied "and an beverage called Pink Ladies, a artiste (to quote the recorded con­ form of alcoholic drug made to versation) must know that she dull the senses, to invite forget­ looks her best". fulness. And, Leige one, if he did It was Zlat who saved the day, tell, he would not be believed." the least he could do after the "Oh, eyeballs!" snapped Queeg. mess he'd got everybody into. "Not by earth's stupid ones, of. "You know," he mused, soberly. course not. But his story would "The lead-shield contact lens suits receive great newspaper commu­ we trader pilots wear on distant nication publicity across the plan­ stars, are not unlike a machine on et, and one or two who do suspect, earth called the Photomat. A sign would read it and would KNOW. outside this machine says 'Four No, Zlat, this Vernon-Valerie is Smiling Snaps-4/ -.'The earth­ dangerous to Aldebaran III Z. He man enters the machine, draws a must be found, and removed. He­ curtain, presses a button, and a she-it is a menace to our plans for concealed eye permanently re­ a mighty future." cords the earthman's likeness, in In the Qwertyuiop citadel that four different poses. If Valerie­ night, representatives of the mili­ Vernon is photographed every tary and the citizenry of Aldeba­ week, the law of averages rules ran III Z watched the tape of that he MUST at one time or an­ Zlat's experiences at the back bar other, use a Photomat machine.'' of the 'Rex', drawn from Zlat's Slageep of the Intelligence Bu­ drugged corneal-memory cham­ reau took it from there. "1 ,000 of hers. our best private eyeballs disguised Frame-seconds of Valerie-Ver­ as Smiling Snap machines posi­ non were stabilised and stored for tioned at Sydney, Brisbane, Thurs­ future reference, the conversation day Island, Singapore . . . and recorded. don't forget Madame Arthur's "This world tour he talks of," Club in Paris . . . everywhere on said Queeg urgently, "means that earth where Vernon-Valerie might our plan of capture must encom­ wish to be photographed.'' pass the entire planet." "They could be stationed at One other important point Zero Twenty parsecs," Queeg said emerged from the colour-taped excitedly, cracking his toe-knuck­ memory searcher. les. "When Vernon-Valerie steps Valerie-Vernon had his photo­ inside . • . instant recognition, graph taken regularly every week. pre-set contra-signal, and all pri­ Without fail. Not for the sake of vate eyeballs return." 90 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION "And a good time to do field (". . . don't disturb yourself, reconnaissance," put in Slageep, Miss Stedman . . . now, what did "some of the recent tele-recon the eyeball on legs do next? ...) films aren't the best." Australians thought it a lark Operation Smiling Snaps was when Smiling Snaps turned out put to the motion, seconded, Xrays, in four different poses. thirded, the national anthem was Citizens of Philadelphia, Osaka sung. The proper version. Zlat and Glasgow still prize their tri­ was allowed to go free, but dimensional colour photos. stripped of his belt of the Ding of For a week in Boston, one Dong. Smiling Snap. eyeball only issued "By the way," said Queeg, out pictures of the subject's thoughts of the side of his iris, "any of that . . . and then it was banned. ..." he looked to left and right Suddenly, Smiling Snap ma­ ". . . that fresh water left?'' chines weren't everywhere after all, but back to normal . . . you Everybody remembers the seem­ know, the ones in Woolworths ing sudden glut of Smiling Snap where you can't get your money machines. They were everywhere, back if they go wrong, and so on. all at once. I believe they're treating Ver­ The very urgency of Operation non very well. Zlat adopted him 'Smiling Snaps meant that a num­ into his own household where he's ber of Slageep's private eyeballs preparing a monogram called received the briefest of briefings, 'Self-Fertilising can be . Fun.' Of as a result of which quite a few course, it can't be published until photo-conscious earthlings were after the Aldeba-ranian occupation removed feebly from Photomats to of Earth. Mental Hospitals. Bet it'll be a best-seller. It is appropriate that this Magazine, which has often occupied itself with fictional speculations concerning humanoids ( fu­ ture variety), should also devote space and attention to hu­ manoids (extinct variety). Extinct, so far as we know, at any rate. Karen Anderson, whose burgeoning talents gat{e us a previously unsuspected insight into the sphinx situation (LANDSCAPE WITH SPHINXES, F&SF, Nov. 1962), re­ turns here and now with a cunningly wrought relation about centaurs.

TREATY IN TARTESSOS

by Karen Anderson

IRATZABAL's HOOFS WERE SHOD thides eyed the centaur with disfa­ with bronze, as befitted a high vor, from his unbarbered hair to chief, and heavy gold pins held the particularly clumsy bandage the coils of bright sorrel hair on on his off fetlock. He straightened top of his head. In this morning's self-consciously in his sea-purple battle, of course, he had used cloak and pipeclayed linen tunic. wooden pins which were less like- "Greetings, most noble Iratza­ ly to slip out. As tonight was a hal," he said, bowing. "Will you ceremonial occasion, he wore a enter my tent?" coat of aurochs hide dyed blue The centaur returned the bow with woad, buttoned and cinched awkwardly. "Glad to, most noble with hammered gold. Kynthides." he said. As he went in He waved his spear high to the man realized with a little sur­ show the green branches bound to prise that the centaur emissary its head as he entered the humans' was only a couple of fingers' camp. No one spoke, but a guard breadth taller than himself. grunted around a mouthful of It was darker inside the tent barley-cake and jerked his thumb .than out, despite the luxury of toward the commander's tent. three lamps burning at once. "I Standing in his tent door, Kyn- hope you've dined well? May I of- 91 92 FANTASY Al"D SCIEKCE FICTIO"' fer you anything?" Kynthides "More or less." He swished his asked politely, with considerable tail across the bandaged fetlock, misgivings. The centaur probably and flies scattered. "I run most of wouldn't know what to do with a the territory from here up through barley loaf, and as for wine­ Goikokoa Etchea-what men call well, there wasn't a drop within Pyrene's Mountains-and across five miles of camp. Or there had to the Inland Sea. Half a dozen better not be. tribes besides mine hunt through "That's decent of you, but I'm here, but they stand aside for us. full up," said Iratzabal. "The boys We could lick any two of them found a couple of dead . . . uh, with our eyes shut. Now, you take buffalo, after the battle, and we an outfit like the Acroceraunians had a fine barbecue." -1 don't run them, but they've Kynthides winced. Another heard of me, and I can tell them to yoke of draft oxen gone! Well, knuckle under or face my boys and Com Mother willing, the war yours. But that shouldn't be neces­ would be settled soon. It might sary. I'm going to get them a good even be tonight. "Won't you, cr cut." ... Sit? Lie down? Er, make "Well, remember that if the vourself comfortable." communities don't like promises I · lratzabal lowered himself to make in their names, they won't the ground with his feet under honor them," said the man. He him, and Kynthides sank grate­ slid his fingers through the combed fully into a leather-backed chair. curls of his dark-brown beard and He had been afraid the discussion wished he could ignore the cen­ would be conducted standing up. taur's odor. The fellow smelled like "I got to admit you gave us a a saddle-blanket. If he didn't good fight today, for all you're such want to wash, he could at least use lightweights," the centaur said. perfume. "First, we ought to con­ "You generally do. If we don't get sider the reasons for this war, and things settled somehow, we could after that ways to settle the dis­ go on like this till we've wiped pute." each other out." "The way I see it," the centaur "We realize that too," said the began, "is, you folks want to pin man. "I've been asked by the heads down the comers of a piece of of every village in T artessos, not country and sit on it. We don't un­ to mention communities all the derstand ground belonging to way back to Thrace, to make some somebody." reasonable settlement with you. "It began," Kynthides said stif­ Can you speak for centaurs in fly, "with that riot at the wed­ those areas?" ding." TREATY 1;-.; T~RTESSOS 93 "That was just what set things rabbit and pheasant nesting. Field­ off," said Iratzabal. "There'd been planting ruins the game in a dis­ a lot of small trouble before then. trict." I remember how I was running "Can't you hunt away from down a four-pointer through an farm districts?" asked Kynthides. oak wood one rainy day, with my "We have our families to support, nose full of the way things smell little babies and old people. There when they're wet and my mind on are too many of us to let the crops haunch of venison. The next thing go and live by hunting, even if I knew I was in a clearing planted there were as much game as the with one of those eating grasses, land could support." twenty pounds of mud on each "Where can we hunt?" hoof and a pack of tame wolves shrugged the centaur. "Whenever worrying my hocks. I had to kill we come through one of our regu­ two or three of them before I got lar districts, we find more valleys away, and by then there were men under plow than last time, more throwing spears and shouting trees cut and the fields higher up 'Out! Out!' in what they thought the slope. Even in Goikokoa was Eskuara." Etchea, what's as much my tribe's "We have to keep watchdogs home as a place can be, little and arm the field hands, or we fields are showing up." A swirl of wouldn't have a stalk of grain lamp smoke veered toward him, standing at harvest timet" and he sniffed it contemptuous­ "Take it easy. I was just telling ly. "Sheep fat! The herds I find you, the war isn't over a little thing aren't deer any more, they're like some drunks breaking up a sheep, with a boy pi-pipping away wedding. Nor they wouldn't have, on a whistle-and dogs again." if the wine hadn't been where "If you'd pick out your territory they could get at it. There's blame and stay on it, then no farmers on both sides." would come in," said Kynthides. The man half rose at this, but "It's contrary to our nature to leave caught himself. The idea was to land unused because somebody stop the war, not set it off afresh. plans to hunt through it next "At any rate, it seems we can't get autumn." along with each other. Men and "But, big as Goikokoa Etchea is, centaurs don't mix well." it won't begin to feed us year "We look at things different round! We've got to have ten times ways, said Iratzabal. "You see a as much, a hundred times if you're piece of open country, and all you talking of Scythia and Illyria and can think of is planting a crop on all." it. We think of deer grazing it, or "I live in Thessaly myself," 94 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Kynthides pointed out. "I have to even had the right kind of toad­ think of Illyria. What we men stools." really want is to see all you cen­ "Toadstools?" To make poison taurs completely out of Europe, with?" cried Kynthides, his hand resettled in Asia or the like. twitching toward the neatly band­ Couldn't you all move out of Sar­ aged spear-jab on his side. matia and the lands to the east? "Poison[" Iratzabal ducked his Nobody lives there. It's all empty head and laughed into his heavy steppes." sorrel beard. "That's a good one, "Sarmatia! Maybe it looks emp­ poison from toadstools! No, to eat. ty to a farmer, but I've heard from Get a glow on at the Moon Dances the boys in Scythia. The place is -same way you people do with filling up with Achaians, six feet wine. Though I can't see why you tall, each with twenty horses big use stuff that leaves you so sick the enough to eat either one of us for next day." breakfast, and they can ride those "Once you've learned your ca­ horses all night and fight all day. pacity, you needn't have a hang­ By Jainco, I'm keeping away from over," Kynthides said with a feel­ them." ing of superiority. "But this place 'Well, there's hardly anybody you're talking of-" in Africa. Why don't you go there?" "Well, my pal said it wasn't the man suggested. much use to men, but centaurs "If there was any way of us all would like it. Lots of mountains, getting there-" all full of little tilted meadows, "Certainly there is! _We have but no flat country to speak of. ships. It would take a couple of Not good to plow up and sow with years to send you all, but-" barley or what-not. Why not tum "If we could get there, we that over to us, since you can't wouldn't like it at all. That's no send any big colonies there any­ kind of country for a centaur. Hot, way?" dry, game few and far between.....: 'Wait a minute. Are you talk­ no thanks. But you're willing to ing about Kypros' last expedi­ ship us all to some other place?" tion?" "Any place! That is, within "That's the one my pal sailed reason. Name it." under," nodded Iratzabal. "Just before war broke out in "No, by the Com Mother! How earnest, I got chummy with a lad can I tum that place over to you? who'd been on one of those ex­ We've barely had a look at it our­ ploring voyages you folks go in for. selves! There may be tin and am­ He said he'd been to a place that ber to rival Thule, or pearls, or was full of game of all kinds, and sea-purple. We have simply no TREATY IN TARTESSOS 95 idea of what we'd be giving you." there's not a blade still standing. "And there may be no riches at And you'll get no harvest in, above all. Did this, guy Kypros say he'd what you grab off the stem and eat seen any tin or pearls? If he did, running. How are the granaries, he didn't teD a soul of his crew. Kynthides? Will there be any seed And I'm telling you, if we don't go corn left by spring?" there we don't go anyplace. I can The man dropped into his chair start the war again with two words." and took his head in trembling The man sprang to his feet, hands. ''You've got us where we white-lipped. "Then start .the war hurt. We can't survive that kind of . again! We may not have been warfare. 'But how can I promise winning, but by the Mother, we land that isn't mine? It belongs to weren't losing!" Kypros' backers, if anyone." Iratzabal heaved himself up­ "Pay them off in the grain that right. "You can hold out as long as won't be spoiled. Fix up the de­ we give you pitched battles. But tails any way it suits you. I'm not wait till we turn to raiding! You'll trying to make it hard on you­ have fields trampled every night, we can kick through with a rea­ and snipers chipping at you every sonable number of pelts and such day. You won't dare go within to even the bargain." bowshot of the woods. We'll chivy He looked up. "All right, Irat­ your herds through your drops till zabal,'' he said wearily. "You can they've run all their fat off and have Atlantis."

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R IS FOR ROCKET, Ray Bradbury, Or, you take for instance, this: Doubleday, $2.95 It came on great oiled, resilient, strid4lg legs. It towered thirty Seventeen of Bradbury's better feet above half of the trees, a SF stories are here in this new great evil god, folding its deli­ volume. Its trouble is that cate watchmaker's claws clo5e there are so few new Bradbury to its oily reptilian chest. Each SF stories in any collection of his lower leg was a piston, a thou­ (this one has a few new to book sand pounds of white bone, covers, anyway)-the chief virtue sunk in thick ropes of muscle, is that they are Bradbury stories. sheathed over in a gleam of And, as they stood, from a dis­ pebbled skin lik~ the mail of a tance they heard a roar. And the terrible warrior. Each thigh was monster came out of the rain. a ton of meat, ivory, and steel The monster was supported mesh. And from the great upon a thousand electric blue breathing cage of the upper legs. It walked swiftly and ter­ body those two delicate arms ribly. It struck down a leg with dangled out front, arms which a driving blow. Everywhere a might pick up and examine leg struck a tree fell and burned. men like toys, while the great Great whiffs of ozone filled the snake neck coiled. And the head rainy air, and smoke blew away itself, a ton of sculptured stone, and was broken up by the rain. lifted easily upon the sky. Its The monster was a half mile mouth gaped, exposing a fence wide and a mile high and it felt of teeth like daggers. Its eyes of the ground like a great blind rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of thing. Sometimes, for a mo­ all expression save hunger. It ment, it had no legs at all. And closed its mouth in a death then, in an instant, a thousand grin. It ran . . • , whips would fall out of its But I must resist. And I shall men­ belly, white-blue whips, to sting tion only one story, The Rocket the jungle. Ma.n, not because it is necessarily "There's the electric storm," said the best, but because I'd somehow one of the men. missed it before and it hit me a 96 BOOKS 97 blow just when I thought it was the sky" lands on the lawn of a only an excellent exercise in what fifteen-year old boy, and a man I might call "adumbrated nostal­ steps out wearing "As simple and gia." The wife and son of the rock­ perfect a uniform as could be et man see him seldom, of course. made, but with all the muscled His son lives chiefly for those few power of a universe behind it." days, but his wife has already And Chris at that moment knows learned to count him dead, shun­ he has been tapped by the Astro­ ning already in her mind what­ naut Board ... It doesn't happen ever planet it may be that he will that way-not yet. But the exist­ die upon-prepared, as she pre­ ence of the Adams-Von Braun pares her son, never to look again book is evidence (if more were on Mars. Or Venus. Or Jupiter or needed) that we are on our way. Saturn or Neptune. But he isn't The book has 243 pages, none of killed by any of them, not by any them fluff, comprising eight sec­ star to be avoided by looking else­ tions: The Evolution of Astro­ where in the sky. His ship, you nautics and Rocketry, Astronautics see, falls into the sun. "And the and the Natural Sciences, Astro­ sun was big and fiery and merci­ nautics and the Engineering Dis­ less, and it was always in the sky ciplines, Training For Astronauti­ and you couldn't get away from it." cal Career~, Careers in Industry, Bradbury not only knows how Careers in Research Institutes and things had to be, he knows how Universities, Careers in the Civil they will have to be. And so, how­ Service and Military Astronautics, ever familiar his past output and Astronautics and the Future. There however small his current output, is an appendix of Professional As­ he fills the sky and you cannot get tronautical, Rocket, and Related away from him. Societies; and one of Additional The cover, by the way, is by Sources of Career Information­ Joe Mugnaini, who has thrice re­ including a list of 2 2 of "the most ceived a Library of Congress important commercially produced award-1 would say, for just magazines· regularly diffusing as­ cause. tronautical information" (includ­ ing, for Heaven's sake, Space CAREERS IN ASTRONAUTICS AND Business Daily!). I had expected ROCKETRY, C. C. Adams and this whole approach all along, but Wemher Von Braun, McGraw­ its arrival still finds me slightly Hill, $6.95 dumbfounded. If I have not been In the title. story of the new fired for senility and incompe­ Ray Bradbury collection, R Is For tence I may yet be getting mail Rocket, "a _helicopter the color of addressed to The Magazine from 98 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Mars by some currently young tabs on the teen-age market, but person who was boosted on his so far as I know this "first author" way thither by reading this re­ has now produced the predicted view. The sun is in your right book. He is, of course, Robert A. hand and the moon is in your left. Heinlein, and the protagonist is Godspeed. Podkayne Fries. As far as I am concerned the book is a juvenile­ rooKAYNE OF MARS, Robert Hein· but it is a Heinlein juvenile. That lein, Putnam, $3.50 does not make it a space age Writing in The Magazine just Huckleberry Finn, of course. I one decade ago, Anthony Bouch­ have the temerity ("courage" er, reviewing the prior year in would be my own choice of words) books, said: "The chief new phe­ to admit that I didn't finish the nomenon of science fiction pub­ book. Until I was half-way through lishing in 19 52 has been the de­ I kept hoping that the author's velopment of the novel deliberate­ very authentic-sounding version of ly designed for the teen-age trade. a Mars-born teen-age girl's adven­ For some years Robert A. Heinlein tures was but the prelude to ..• has been working alone in this something. Then hope died. It was field; but in recent months ..• evidently only the prelude to a novels have appeared by other au­ Mars-born teen-age girl's further thors. c Since so many teen-agers adventures. There is, you see, a read nominally adult science fic­ certain problem of reader-identifi­ tion, one may wonder what need cation. If this book will bring there is for special teen-age books. young girls to read SF, hurray. The best of these answer that But your middle-aged, fatherly question: they differ from adult editor, though he concedes the au­ novels only in that their basic as­ thor's dexterity, is simply incap­ sumptions are a trifle simpler, for able of identifying with a space­ the benefit of those who have not kitten who uses expleti\'es like been reading science fiction steadi­ "Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel­ ly for twenty years, and that the frockey! Spit! and Daudruffl" hero is himself a teen-age boy, for and what's more, he ain't going to easier reader-identification with try. Not any more than he has, the protagonist's problems. (We'll anyway. Snel-frockey, indeed. venture the guess that there's a good market waiting, too, for the ANYTHING YOU CAN oo, Darrel T. first author who makes his pro­ Langart, Doubleday, $3.50 tagonist a teen-age girl.)" Darrel T. Langart seems to have Ten years have passed, during made a start at becoming the B. which I have not, admittedly, kept Traven of Science Fiction. Who BOOKS 99 be really is, nobody knows (or simple enough. It indicated a admits to knowing), except his certain sociomilitary class that agent-who will say only that was rigidly defined in one way Langart lives in St. Louis. The and very hazy in another. But fact that this is the only city which the meanings and relationships the book, set centuries in the fu­ of both "Walther" and "Mann­ ture, mentions in 20th century heim" were beyond him. What terms, lends color to the claim­ difference, for instance, be­ which is in any event irrelevant. tween a "Walther" and a "Wil­ What is relevant is that ANY­ liam?" Did a "Mannheim" out­ THING YOU CAN DO is that com­ rank a "Mandeville," or the oth­ parative rarity, a well-written, er way around? What functions absorbing, plausible SF adventure differentiated a "John Smith" story which neither insults the in­ from a "Peter Taylor?" He knew telligence nor makes demands -what a "john" was and what a upon it. It is a two-tined fork­ "smith" was, but "John Smith" one is the matter of getting was not, apparently, necessarily through to a hostile and highly in­ associated with sanitary plumb­ telligent alien, the Nipe, who, ing. hidden here on Earth, is both Besides its interesting and logi­ deadly dangerous and in posses­ cal construction and reconstruc­ sion of knowledge invaluable to tion of the history and mores of humanity. The other is the ques­ the Nipe race, the book has lots of tion of the physical and psychical zam-bang action. On the con side, relation between identical (hu­ it indicates little or no social man) twins. The always challeng­ change in terrestrial society cen­ ing matter of depicting non-hu­ turies from now, except the one man attitudes and thoughts, Lan­ of ethnic name conjunction gart handles rather well. ('Wang Kulichenko"), by now a •.. a name. Colonel Walther standard SF ploy. Patricia Sa­ Mannheim. The meaning of ville's striking jacket design shows the verbal symbolism was ·un­ that Doubleday can tum out good known to the [Nipe]. The pat­ covers. I'd begun to wonder. And terns of the symbolism were I enjoyed the book. even more evasive than the lan­ guage itself. "Colonel" seemed -Avram Davidson SCIENCE 0

The alchemists, gentlemen and scholars to a man (. • • well . . . almost to a man. There was the case of that cad, Dr. Dee. However, de mortuis nil desperandum. )-the al­ chemists referred to the Relation between the Moon and the Sun, as well as that between silver and gold, as The Fair White Maiden Wedded to the Ruddy Man. Isn't that beautiful? However, the alchemists don't seem to be writing like they used to, so, faux de mieux, here is our very own Dr. A. once more, who does manage to bring up one or two interesting points, once you get past all. those numbers.

JUST MOONING AROUND

by Isaac Asimov

ALMOST EVERY BOOK ON ASTRONOMY J HAVE EVER SEEN, LARGE or small, contains a little table of the Solar system. For each planet, there's given its diameter, its distance from the sun, its time of rotation, its albedo, its density, the number of its moons and so on. Since I am morbidly fascinated by numbers, I jump on such tables with the perennial hope of finding new items of information. Occa­ sionally, I am rewarded with such things as surface temperature or or· bital velocity, but I never really get enough. So every once in a while, when the ingenuity-circuits in my brain are purring along with reasonable smoothness, I deduce new types of data for myself out of the material on hand, and while away some idle hours. (At least I did this in the days when I had idle hours.) 100 JUST MOONING AROUND 101 I can still do it, however, provided I put the results into an article; so come join me and we will just moon around together in this fash­ ion, and see what turns up.

Let's begin this way, for instance- According to Newton, every object in the universe attracts every oth­ er object in the universe with a force (f) that is proportional to the product of the masses (mz and m,) of the two objects divided by the square of the distance (d) between them, center to center. We mul­ tiply by the gravitational constant (g) to convert the proportionality to an equality, and we have:

(equation 1)

This means, for instance, that there is an attraction between the Earth and the Sun, and also between the Earth and the Moon, and between the Earth and each of the various planets and, for that matter, between the Earth and any meteorite or piece of cosmic dust in the heavens. Fortunately, the Sun is so overwhelmingly massive compared with everything else in the Solar system, that in calculating the orbit of the Earth, or of any other planet, an excellent first approximation is at­ tained if only the planet and the Sun are considered, as though they were alone in the Universe. The effect of other bodies can be calculated later for relatively minor refinements. In the same way, the orbit of a satellite can be worked out first by supposing that it is alone in the Universe with its primary. It is at this point that something interests me. If the Sun is so much more massive than any planet, shouldn't it exert a considerable attrac­ tion on the satellite even though it is at a much greater distance from that satellite than the primary is. If so, just how considerable is "con­ siderable." To put it another way, suppose we picture a tug of war going on for each satellite, with its planet on one side of the gravitational rope and the Sun on the other. In this tug of war, how well is the Sun doing? ·I suppose astronomers have calculated such things, but I have never seen the. results reported in any astronomy text, or the subject even discussed, so I'll do it for myself. Here's how we can go about it. Let us call the mass of a satellite, m, the, mass of its primary (by which, by the way, I mean the planet it circles), mp and the mass of the Sun m,. The distance from the 102 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION satellite to its primary will be d, and the distance from the satellite to the Sun will be d .. The gravitational force between the satellite and its primary would be f, and that between the satellite and the Sun would be f.-and that's the whole business. I promise to use no other symbols in this article. From equation I, we can say that the force of attraction between a satellite and its primary would be:

f.= S:.~· (equation 2) while that between the same satellite and the Sun would be: f - gmm. I-([.2 (equation 3)

What we are interested in is how the gravitational force between satellite and primary compares with that between satellite and Sun. In other words we want the ratio f./f., which we can call the "tug-of-war value." To get that we must divide equation 2 by equation 3. The re­ sult of such a division would be: f,/f. = (m,/m.)(d./d,)2 (equation 4) In making the division, a number of simplifications have taken place. For one thing the gravitational constant has dropped out, which means we won't have to bother with an inconveniently small number and some inconvenient units. For another, the mass of the satellite has dropped out. (In other words, in obtaining the tug-of-war value, it doesn't matter how big or little a particular satellite is. The result would be the same in any case.) What we need for the tug of war value (f,./f.), is the ratio of the mass of the planet to that of the sun (m./m.) and the square of the ratio of the distance from satellite to Sun to the distance from satellite to primary (d./ d")2 • There are only six planets that have satellites and these, in order of decreasing order of distance from the Sun are: Neptune, Uranus, Sat­ urn, Jupiter, Mars and Earth. (I place Earth at the end, in:;tead of at the beginning as natural chauvinism would dictate, for my own rea­ sons. You'll find out.) For these, we will first calculate the mass-ratio and the results tum out as follows: JUST MOONING AROUND 103 Neptune 0.000052 Uranus 0.000044 Saturn 0.00028 Jupiter 0.00095 Mars 0.00000033 Earth 0.0000030 As you see, the mass ratio is really heavily in favor of the Sun. Even Jupiter, which is by far the most massive planet, is not quite one­ thousandth as massive as the Sun. In fact, all the planets together (plus satellites, planetoids, comets and meteoric matter) make up no more than 1/750 of the mass of the Sun. So far, then, the tug of war is all on the side of the Sun. However, we must next get the distance ratio and that favors the planet heavily, for each satellite is, of course, far closer to its primary than it is to the Sun. And what's more, this favorable (for the planet) ratio must be squared, making it even more favorable, so that in the end we can be reasonably sure that the Sun will lose out in the tug of war. But we'll. check, anyway.

Let's take Neptune, first. It has two satellites, Triton and Nereid. The average distance of each of these from the Sun is, of necessity, precisely the same as the average distance of Neptune from the Sun, which is 2,797,000,000 miles. The average distance of Triton from Neptune is, however, only 220,000 miles, while the average distance of Nereid from Neptune is 3,460,000 miles. If we divide the distance from the Sun by the distance from Nep­ tune for each satellite and square the result we get 162,000,000 for Triton and 655,000 for Nereid. We multiply each of these figures by the mass-ratio of Neptune to the Sun, and that gives us the tug-of-war value which is: Triton 8,400 Nereid 34 The conditions differ markedly for the two satellites. The gravita· tional influence of Neptune on its nearer satellite, Triton, is overwhelm­ ingly greater than the influence of the Sun on the same satellite. Triton is firmly in Neptune's grip. The outer satellite, Nereid, however, is at· tracted by Neptune considerably, but not overwhelmingly, more strong­ ly than by the Sun. Furthermore, Nereid has a highly eccentric orbit, the most highly eccentric of any satellite in the system. It approaches 104· FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIOX to within 800,000 miles of Neptune at one end of its orbit and re­ cedes to as far as 6 million miles at the other end. When most distant from Neptune, Nereid experiences a tug-of-war value as low as III For a variety of reasons (the eccentricity of Nereid's orbit, for one thing) astronomers generally suppose that Nereid is not a true satellite of Neptune, but is a planetoid which was captured by Neptune on the occasion of a too-close approach. Neptune's weak hold on Nereid certainly seems to support this. In fact, from the long astronomic view, the association between Neptune and Nereid may be a temporary one. Perhaps the disturbing effect of the Solar pull will eventually snatch it out of Neptune's grip. Triton, on the other hand, will never leave Neptune's company short of some catastrophe on a System-wide scale. ·

Ther~'s no point in going through all the details of the calculations for all the satellites. I'll do the work on my own (generous me) and feed you the results. Uranus, for instance, has five known satellites, all revolving in the planet of Uranus's equator and all considered true satellites by astronomers. Reading outward from the planet, they are: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. The tug-of-war values for these satellites are: Miranda 24,600 Ariel 9,850 Umbriel 4,750 Titania 1,750 Oberon I,050 All are safely and overwhelmingly in Uranus's grip and the high tug­ of-wat values fit with their status as true satellites. We pass on, then, to Saturn, which has nine satellites: Mimas, En­ celadus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Phoebe. Of these, the eight innermost revolve in the plane of Saturn's equator and are considered true satellites. Phoebe, the ninth, has a highly in­ clined orbit and is considered a captured planetoid. The tug-of-war values for these satellites are: Mimas I5,500 Enceladus 9,800 Tethys 6,400 Dione 4,I50 Rhea 2,000 JUST MOONING AROUND 105 Titan 380 Hyperion 260 Iapetus 45 Phoebe 3Jh Note the low value for Phoebe.

Jupiter has twelve satellites and I'll take them in two installments. The first five.: Amaltheia, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all re­ volve in the plane of Jupiter's equator and all are considered true satel­ lites. The tug-of-war values for these are: Amaltheia 18,200 Io 3,260 Europa 490 Ganymede 490 Callisto 160 and all are clearly in Jupiter's grip. Jupiter, however, has seven more satellites which have no official names, but which are commonly known by Roman numerals (from VI to XII) given in the order of their discovery. In order of distance from Jupiter, they are VI, X, VII, XII, XI, VIII, IX. All are small and with orbits that are eccentric and highly inclined to the plane of Jupiter's equator. Astronomers consider them captured planetoids. (Jupiter is far more massive than the other planets and is nearer the planetoid belt so it is not surprising that it has captured seven planetoids.) The tug-of-war results for these seven certainly bear out the cap- tured-planetoid notion, for the values are: VI 4.4 X 4.3 VII 4.2 XII 1.3 XI 1.2 VIII 1.03 IX 1.03 Jupiter's grip on these outer satellites is feeble indeed.

Mars has two satellites, Phobos and Deimos, each tiny and each very close to Mars. They rotate in the plane of Mars' equator, and are considered true satellites. The tug-of-war values are: 106 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIO"' Phobos 195 Deimos 32 So far, I have listed 30 satellites, of which 21 are cOnsidered true satellites and 9 are usually tabbed as (probably) captured planetoids. I would like, for the moment, to leave out of consideration the 31st satellite, which happens to be our own Moon (I'll get back to it, I promise) and summarize the 30 as follows: Number of satellites Planet True Captured Neptune 1 1 Uranus 5 0 Saturn 8 I Jupiter 5 7 Mars 2 0

It is unlikely that any additional true satellites will be discovered (though, to be sure, Miranda was discovered as recently as 1948). However, any number of tiny bodies, coming under the classification of captured planetoids may yet tum up, particularly once we go out there and actually look. But now let's· analyze this list in terms of tug-of-war values. Among the true satellites, the lowest tug-of-war value is that of Deimos, for which it is 32. On the other hand, among the nine satellites listed as captured, the highest tug-of-war value is that of Nereid with an av­ erage of 34. Let us accept this state of affairs and assume that the tug-of-war figure 30 is a reasonable minimum for a true satellite and that any satellite with a lower figure is, in all likelihood, a captured and prob­ ably temporary member of the planet's family. Knowing the mass of a planet and its distance from the Sun, we can calculate the distance from the planet's center at which this tug­ of-war value will be found. We can use equation 4 for the purpose, setting fp/f, equal to 30, putting in the known values for mp, m, and d, and then solving for dp. That will be the maximum distan~e at which we can expect to find a true satellite. The only planet that can't be handled in this way is Pluto, for which the value of mp is very un­ certain, but I omit Pluto cheerfully. We can also set a minimum distance at which we can expect a true satellite; or, at least, a true satellite in the usual form. It has been cal- JUST 1\lOONING AROUND 107 culated that if a true satellite is closer to its primary than a certain distance, tidal forces will break it up into fragments. Conversely, if fragments already exist at such a distance, they will not coalesce into a single body. This limit of distance is called the "Roche limit" and is named for the astronomer, E. Roche, who worked it out in 1849. The Roche limit i~ a distance from a planetary center equal to 2.44 times the planet's radius. So, sparing you the actual calculations, here are the results for the four outer planets: Distance of true satellite (miles from the center of the primary) Planet Maximum Minimum (tug-of-war = 30) (Roche limit) Neptune 3, 700,000 38,000 Uranus 2,200,000 39,000 Saturn 2,700,000 87,000 Jupiter 2,700,000 106,000 As you see, each of these outer planets, with huge masses and far distant from the competing Sun, has ample room for large and com­ plicated satellite systems within these generous limits, and the 21 true satellites all fall within them. Saturn does possess something within Roche's limit-its ring sys­ tem. The outermost edge of the ring system stretches out to a distance of 85,000 miles from Saturn's center. Obviously, the material in the rings could have been collected into a true satellite if it had not been so near Saturn. The ring system is unique as far as visible planets are concerned, but of course the only planets we can see are those of our own Solar system. Even of these, the only ones we can reasonably consider in connection with satellites (I'll explain why in a moment) are the four large ones. Of these, Saturn has a ring system and Jupiter just barely misses one. Its innermost satellite, Amaltheia is about II 0,000 miles from Jupi­ ter's center, with the Roche limit at I06,000 miles. A few thousand miles inward and Jupiter would have rings. I would like to make the suggestion therefore that once we reach outward to explore other stellar systems we will discover (probably to our initial amazement) that about half the large planets we find will be equipped with rings after the fashion of Saturn. 108 FASTASY AND SCIENCE FICTIOX Next we can try to do the same thing for the inner planets. Sirice the inner planets are, one and all, much less massive than the outer ones and much closer to the competing Sun, we might guess that the range of distances open to true satellite formation would be more lim­ ited, and we would be right. Here are the actual figures as I have calculated them. Distance of true satellite (miles from the center of the primary) Planet Maximum Minimum (tug-of-war= 30) (Roche limit) Mars 15,000 5,150 Earth 29,000 9,600 Venus 19,000 9,200 Mercury 1,300 3,800 Thus, you see, where each of the outer planets has a range of two million miles or more within which true satellites could form, the situ­ ation is far more restricted for the inner planets. Mars and Venus have a permissible range of but 10,000 miles. Earth does a little better, with 20,000 miles. ~· _ Mercury is the most interesting case. The maximum distance at which it can expect to form a natural satellite against the overwhelming competition of the near-by Sun is well within the Roche limit. It fol­ lows from that, if my r~asoning is correct, that Mercury cannot have a true satellite, and that anything more than a possible spattering of gravel is not to be expected. In actual .truth, no satellite has been located for Mercury but, as far as I know, nobQdy has endeavored to present a reason for this or treat it as anything other than an empirical fact. If any Gentle Reader, with a greater knowledge of astronomic detail than myself, will write to tell ine that I have been anticipated in this, and by whom, I will try to take the news philosophically. At the very least, I will confine my kick­ ing and screaming to the privacy of my study. Venus, Earth and Mars are better off than Mercury and do have a little room ,for true satellites beyond the Roche limit. It is not much room, however, and the chances of gathering enough material over so small a volume of space to make anything but a very tiny satellite is minute. And, as it happens, neither Venus nor Earth has any satellite at all (barring possible minute chunks of gravel) within the indicated Jimits, JUST ~100::\1!\G AROt.::\D 109 and Mars has two small satellites, one perhaps 12 miles across and the other 6, which scarcely deserve the name. It is amazing, and very gratifying to me, to note how all this makes such delightful sense, and how well I can reason out the details of the satellite systems of the various planets. It is such a shame that one small thing remains unaccounted for; one trifling thing I have ignored so far, but- WHAT IN BLAZES IS OUR OWN MOON DOING WAY OUT THERE? It's too far out to be a true satellite of the Earth, if we go by my beautiful chain of reasoning-which is too beautiful for me to aban­ don. It's too big to have been captured by the Earth. The chances of such a capture having been effected and the Moon then having taken up a nearly circular orbit about the Earth are too small to make such an eventuality credible. There are theories, of course, to the effect that the Moon was once much closer to the Earth ( \vithin my permitted limits for a true satel­ lite) and then gradually moved away as a result of tidal action. Well, I have an objection to that. If the Moon were a true satellite that originally had circled Earth at a distance of, say, 20,000 miles, it would almost certainly be orbiting in the plane of Earth's equator and it isn't. Well, then, if the Moon is neither a true satellite of the Earth, nor a captured one, what is it? This may surprise you, but I have an an­ swer; and to explain what that answer is, let's get back to my tug-of­ war determinations. There is, after all, one satellite for which I have not calculated it, and that is our Moon. We'll do that now.

The average distance of the Moon from the Earth is 237,000 miles, and the average distance of the Moon from the Sun is 93,000,000 miles. The ratio of the Moon-Sun distance to the Moon-Earth distance is 392. Squaring that gives us 154,000. The ratio of the mass of the Earth to that of the Sun was given earlier in the article and is 0.000· 003. Multiplying this figure by 154,000 gives us the tug-of-war value, which comes out to: Moon 0.46 The Moon, in other words, is unique among the satellites of the Solar system in that its primary (we) loses the tug of war with the Sun. The Sun attracts the Moon twice as strongly as the Earth does. We might look upon the Moon, then, as neither... a true satellite of 110 FANTASY ~ND SCIENCE FICTION the Earth, nor a captured one, but as a planet in its own right, moving about the Sun in careful step with the Earth. To be sure, from within the Earth-Moon system, the simplest way of picturing the situation is to have the Moon revolve about the Earth; but if you were to draw a picture of the orbits of the Earth and Moon about the Sun exactly to scale, you would see that the Moon's orbit is everywhere concave to­ ward the Sun. It is always "falling" toward the Sun. All the other satellites, without exception, "fall" away from the Sun through part of their orbits, caught as they are by the superior pull of their primary­ but not the Moon. And consider this- The Moon does not revolve about the Earth in the plane of Earth's equator, as would be expected of a true satel­ lite. Rather, it revolves about the Earth in a plane quite close to that of the ecliptic; that is, to the plane in which the planets, generally, rotate about the Sun. This is just what would be expected of a planet. Is it possible then, that there is an intermediate point between the situation of the massive planet far distant from the Sun, whic~ de· velops about a single core, with numerous satellites formed; and that of the small planet near the Sun which develops about a single core with no satellites. Can there be a boundary condition, so to speak, in which there is condensation about two major cores so that a double planet is formed? Maybe Earth just hit the edge of the permissible mass and distance; a little too small, a little too close. Perhaps if it were better situated the two halves of the double planet would have been more of a size. Perhaps both might have had atmospheres and oceans and-life. Per· haps in other stellar systems with a double planet a greater equality is more usual. What a shame if we have missed that­ Or, maybe (who knows), what luck! NO TRADING VOYAGE

There being little or perhaps nothing now, no tithe no tittle to sell or barter, I cannot make the usual report on outgo or on intake but what I say may be not less important: On the fourth globe that circles great Pleione the inhabitants are grey, with cobalt eyes. They see all streams or waves sent out from any sun; so to them space is never night, not dun but dimly gleaming dawn, save where among charted immensities it dazzles with full daylight in a star. These beings live their lives in contemplation. That is their sole art. We passed Albireo and met the pirates haunting the nearby dust clouds. They loosed trained virlacs, taught to capture what can be held for slaves. They never maim. They bound us and then sold us in the markets of what is our Pole Star. Our tongues learned tunes of language from lipless mouths. We have been fed on flakes of scentless leel, have gnawed small raphor bones and watched Aldebaran, cursing is as we watched. We also quarried the arluk mines of Mira. 111 They sold us once again. I do not know what sun we headed for, what comet glow. We mutinied-then freed, headed the ship upon a half-guessed course to reach unknown Antares. Upon our way, we found one nameless world, a continented place of plants and insects where flowers outglory even Earth's. Through its black caves our band was led by vines­ tender as women, wise as Solomon. With their ringed tendrils they clasped our human hands and now in all worlds this hand of mine feels empty. We went on. About Antares there are many planets which to their cores are ocean. They have never heard even of islands. In bubbles sucked by vast nerhth beds from the upper air creatures like birds have being and live their span on never-tiring wings. The depths of green press each imprisoned· world into a sphere. Such calm and mindless beauty was like a het to snare us- yet we came through, whole and refreshed and young, to sing with mirth, a crew made ready for any voyaging · even return to the doomed cradle that its ghosts call Earth. -DORIS PITKIN BtJCB 112 Introduction to Felix Marti-Ibanez' NINA- SOL

Owing to the confusion of our so-called ace agent, Mr. Petti­ fogle (.whom we may dismiss), it was stated in the introduc­ tion to SENHOR ZUMBEIRA'S LEG (Dec. 1962) that Dr. Felix Marti-Ibanez came from Brazil. Dr. Felix Marti-Ibanez has the highest respect for Brazil, of whose Society of the His­ tory of Medicine he is an Honorary Member; but he comes from Spain, and was at one time its Undersecretary of Pub­ lic Health and Social Services. He has lived in the United States since 1939. Formerly Professor and Chairman of the Department of the History of Medicine at the New York M ed­ ical College, Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals, Dr. Marti­ Ibanez is the owner and editor of MD Medical N ewsmaga­ zine; and a totally-unsolicited testimonial from a Midwestern physician to us describes his editorials as "'sparkling." He is the author of a number of books, including THE PAGEANT OF MEDICINE (Fa"ar, Strauss, & Cudahy). This is his second story for F&SF; like its predecessor, it deals with South America, that sister-continent about which most of us know so shamefull little. But, whereas his previous tale was about the light and laughter of Brazil, in South America's east, his cu"ent account is of the light and shadow of Peru, land of the Incas and the west. It has been conjectured that Peru was none other than Ophir, whence Solomon fetched so much gold that "'silver was accounted as nothing"-and cer­ tainly it was the Conquistadors' greed for gold which brought Atahualpa, penultimate Inca, to his death, despite the incredi­ ble amounts of it he supplied them. Little gold is left in the earth of Peru but the gold of its sun is infinite. Dr. Ibanez's story has much the quality of legend; if it is not based on one, it may well become one. 113 NINA- SOL

by Felix Marti-lba~ez

spirit of the writer but also love for solitude that had brought me to the inn called Paradero de Ia Perricholi. While in Lima I had longed all the time for the Peru of the lofty mountains. For the Spanish conquerors Peru was Lima, a bejeweled town, the City of Kings, with its fabulous treas­ ures; for me Peru was still a leg­ end high up near the clouds, it was the puna, cosmic and abrupt, and the wandering llama, and the sky like polished metal. That accounts for my itinerary: a few days in Lima, just enough to fall in love with the beautiful city, small, perfumed and volup­ tuous like a senora criolla, then on to Juliaca and Cuzco, and thence by mule to the top of the Ara, a steep hill the very name of which held the promise of a legend. There I found the Paradero, a large house built of stone the color of green olives, with a vast hall that was at once hearth, dining room, and storage room for seeds, harnesses and fodder. Near the fire, which was never allowed to die out, sat two very old women, with as many colored skirts as an onion has layers, and a man-fa­ ther? brother?-cven older than NINA SOL 115 they. A brooding cat and a dog boiled potato was impaled. His that looked as if he had been silent voice was as warm and friendly for years lay sprawled at their as the fragrant steam escaping feet. The smell of feed, leather, from the huge blackened coffee­ nuts and old wine hovered for­ pot. ever in the air, and a pearly mist "Welcome! Pardon my greedi­ rose from a pot, eternally kept on ness, but I arrived very late last the fire as in a pagan ritual, and night and could get no dinner. mixed with the mumblings­ This meat is excellent and the cof­ whinings or prayers-of the old fee smells divine. Won't you sit women. down with me? There is enough This was what I wanted: si­ for two. I have invaded your re­ lence, solitude, time frozen into treat, but I shall disturb you little. days without yesterday or tomor­ I shall be outdoors all day, paint­ row. Thousands of feet below was ing. The yellows of this land­ the other Peru with its great cities scape are marvelous. What deli­ and its silver mountains; here cious potatoes! My name is Jorge drawing me like a magnet, there Mendoza. Please call me Jorge. was only the puna, a mysterious Some day my signature at the bot­ titanic prairie of grass and rock tom of a Peruvian landscape will where I could roam and dream be worth a great deal of money." and let the solitude soothe my H~ spoke quickly while devour­ nerves, tense and taut like violin ing the contents of his plate. His strings from being so much fin­ electric ebullience introduced such gered by the big cities. an incongruous note in the som­ It was with annoyance there­ ber, silent room that I had to fore that I saw another guest sit­ smile. I introduced myself and ting at the table, lustily attacking assured him that, since he was a sizable piece of roast meat. He going to paint and I was going to was on the threshold of the thir­ write, he would have no reason to ties, with a heavy head of hair the fear either competition or intru­ color of ripe corn and childlike sions from me. By the time we had eyes that sparkled like aquama­ finished our fourth cup of coffee rines. His clothes were simple, a we were chatting like old friends, mountaineer's outfit, like mine. and after a barrage of courteous Near him there was a wooden box protestations as to who should all spotted with paint of many have the last potato, we finally colors, a roll of canvas, and divided it in two. brushes. "What attracts a painter to this · He greeted me with a wide part of the country?" I asked him. smile and his fork, on which a "Light," he answered emphati- 116 FAXT:\SY AND SCIEXCE FICTION cally. "The mystery of light fasci­ Paradero was covered with gray nates me as it did Rembrandt, if grass, some stunted trees and I may be a little presumptuous. I massive rocks. A gentle slope led have traveled all over South to a wide esplanade where flocks America and never have I seen of llamas grazed. From here one anywhere such light as that of the went down to another wide step, Peruvian puna. Actually the light and then another and another, un­ here is all the same color, yellow, til the steplike projections reached but yellow in all shades. The the deep, distant valley, where grass is gray yellow, the llamas houses pressed together as if they dark yellow, the sun a burning had been poured from the heights yellow, even the sky is a faded in one heavy splash. One's gaze yellow. I want to paint that, a could reach very far, where the symphony of yellows, a canticle to land, dressed in green with brown the glorious yellow light of this and other spots, rose and fell and glorious land that it may bring then rose again to majestic heights joy to the weary people who live where it received a crown of in gray gloomy towns." snow. There was the odor of damp "It should be a· fascinating grass, the bleating of goats, and al­ challenge to transfer to canvas ways the faint tolling of bells the mysterious quality of the from the valley mingled with the puna," I said, a little wary of his soft sighs of the breezes from the enthusiasm. "In · my own way I peaks. intend to-" The day passed lazily and "Yes," he interrupted me abrupt­ quietly. I strolled around, medi­ ly, following the thread of his tated, read and made notes. At own thoughts, "the secret of the noon I had lunch alone at the puna is not silence or solitude. Paradero, served by one of the That is part of it, of course. But melancholy old women. After a the real secret is the light. And I short siesta, I was again engulfed am going to capture it with this," by the silence of the afternoon, and he kicked his box of paints. which though profound was not We took leave of each other oppressive. When I was about to with a handshake, but his d'Ar­ go in to dinner, I heard a shout tagnan attitude to fight alone the and suddenly saw the young entire realm of the puna irritated painter emerge from ·behind a me. When I went outside, I saw rock. He was out of breath and him walking in the distance, his looked exhausted, but he still hair a bright yellow against the burned with the fire of enthusi­ faded sky. asm. The narrow plateau around the "What a country! What light!" NINA SOL 117 he greeted me, flourishing a brush He stared at me and then at just as he had brandished his fork the canvases, and finally he rolled in the morning. "I have walked them up with a gesture of despair. miles and miles. I even forgot to "You are right. There's some­ eat. Color, color, color every­ thing missing. The light. The where, always the same and al­ light. It escapes me. I can!t mix ways different." the right colors. The customary "The puna reminds me of the method is inadequate. One would sea," I ventured coldly, for his re­ have to paint this light as Fra An· buff of tliat morning still rankled gelico painted heaven-on one's in my bosom. "It is infinite and it knees." can be cruel or kind, depending Seizing my arm he led me back on the time of day." to the house, and the welcome of "That is true," he granted, wip­ the dog and the smell of the stew ing off his sweat with a handker­ on the fire soon made me forget chief as big as a sheet. "The land the anxieties of the painter. here seems to move like the sea, I did not see him again for sev­ according to the light of every eral days. He always left before I hour of the day. It's the light that got up and returned after I had re­ does it. Such glorious light!" tired. As there was no electric He pressed my arm with his light, I fell into the habit of going hot hand. to bed early, following the custom "Let me show you something." of the proprietors of the inn. I He quickly unrolled two canvases never asked about him and they and showed them to me with the told me nothing. I would hear same gesture of pride with which him arrive before I feJI asleep, Chinese merchants must have dis­ and, listening to the noise of played their gorgeous silks before dishes, I imagined him devouring Suleiman the Magnificent. the supper they left him by the There was not much to them. fire. Then he would shut himself They were sketches, almost iden­ in his room next to mine and I tical, of a lot of grass with some would hear him mumbling and Jlamas grazing and a low sky ripping paper until I fell asleep. thick with clouds the color of The days passed sweet and sol­ chromium oxide. emn. I read aJI my books, I filled "What do you think?" he asked several notebooks with meticulous proudly. scribblings. "I began to think of 'Well, not bad." going back to Lima, and finally I ''Not bad!" He was really as· set a date for my return. tonished. One night, unable to sleep, I "Frankly, I have seen better." lit my candle and sat down to 118 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION write some letters. I had been and then at him. In his eyes I saw writing only a few minutes when an ironical sparkle. I heard the painter arrive. Con­ "You think it's a lot of nonsense trary to his habit, he came up­ and that I'm crazy, don't you?" stairs immediately. His boots I was about to reply that he had made the corridor shake. When he guessed my thoughts, but his fe­ reached my door he stopped and verish aspect held me back. knocked. I opened the door. "I wouldn't say that," I an­ "What luck to find you up! I swered cautiously. "In any case, saw the light in your room and it's quite different from anything could not resist the temptation of ~ have ever seen." having a chat with you. May I sit The canvas was covered with down?" patches of yellow of so vivid a hue I found him disturbingly that they cast a glow in the semi­ changed. He looked thin, almost darkness of the room. At first I emaciated, and there was a fever­ thought they were only random ish look in his eyes. I closed the strokes of the brush, but as I door. The room, quiet and peace­ studied the canvas further I ful before he came in, suddenly thought I detected amid the yel­ seemed to vibrate with the nerv­ low blotches vague shadows and ousness emanating from all his contours. Perhaps it was only my pores. imagination, but in those childish­ "I'm happy to see you," I said, looking blobs of vivid yellow I pouring two glasses of sherry, thought I perceived strangely dis­ which shimmered like two patches quieting figures and profiles. Sud­ of sun in the flickering light of the denly, without any warning, he candle. "You must be working rolled up the canvas. very hard. I haven't seen a trace "You are very diplomatic," he of you round the house in the past said sarcastically. "Of course, you few days." don't understand. How can you?'' He drank the sherry in one "Your forget," I replied, rather gulp. Above the feeble flame of piqued, "I'm only a writer with a the candle, which shed more superficial feeling for painting." shadows than light in the room, "Of course, of course." In the his reddened eyes gleamed dancing shadows cast by the leap­ strangely. In his glass a drop of ing flame of the candle, his face the golden liquid glittered like a looked as if it had escaped from pirate's doubloon. one of Goya's Caprichos. "But that "What do you think of this?" is no excuse for not recognizing he said suddenly, unrolling a can­ the marvelous when it's facing vas. I looked at it for a moment you." NINA SOL 119 I shrugged my shoulder and lazquez and the light in Rem­ poured two more glasses of sherry, brandt's paintings. His hobnailed determined not to be angry but boots had trod all the mountain also not to tolerate any more im­ paths, leaving behind, scattered pertinence. all over, tom pieces of canvas "Let's drink to your paintings," bright with colors. Every day he I suggested sarcastically. climbed new hills always search­ "Let's drink to her,'' be said ing for light and more light. Un­ with vehemence. til one afternoon • • • My glass stopped in mid-air. " ••. I had been walking all day "Her?" in no special direction," said "The NifUz Sol, the girl who in­ Jorge. "Both my feet and my spired this picture," he answered, thoughts were going round in cir­ and again he gulped down his cles. I went down a steep slope to drink. the bottom of a narrow valley "And just what does the picture wedged between two high walls of represent?" I inquired. rock. On all sides there was gray "The light of the puna." grass under a sun so luminous I drank my wine in silence. that because it was all light it gave "It's an incredible story," Jorge no warmth. If only I could mix said. ''You probably will not be­ the sun on my palette and dip my lieve me, but I must tell it to brushes in it, I kept thinking. I someone. Some day you will tell it walked the length of the narrow and no one will believe you either. dell and came to a natural rock But I have seen her, I have spoken staircase that went up the opposite to her, I shall see her tomorrow slope. I started the ascent. Half­ and every day. No, I am not way up I stopped. The side ·wall drunk, or perhaps I am-with was perforated, forming a win­ light. Listen. • • •" dow in the rock through which I The story issued from his lips could see a path winding down to slowly, hesitantly, as if it were a another little valley. On the other great effort to tell it. Jorge had side of the valley there was a come to the puna determined to small hill and atop the hill a little capture the light on his palette. house. And then, I saw her. For days he tried again and again "The hill was like any other to paint what he saw, but his hill around here except for its brushes could only capture the brilliant yellow color, so brilliant form of things, not their light. He that it glittered like burnished wanted the sun of the puna to be metal. Grass the color of new gold the protagonist of his pictures, as covered it completely. On top of the air is in Las Meninas of Ve- the hill there was a small platform 120 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION to which one climbed along a an arm. Her loose hair buttered in pathway covered with yellow peb­ the wind like a flaming banner. bles. In the middle of the plat­ She showed no surprise; indeed, form stood the little house with her greeting was the cheerful wel­ walls and roof of bright yellow come accorded to an expected straw. Yellow-hued flowers swayed guest. The wings of the wind in the breeze all around the house. brought me the merry twinkling In the midst of this blazing yel­ of her laughter. low paradise, silent and motion­ "I remained sitting astride the less, stood the girl. sk>ne window, unable to move, "At first I thought she was a breathing with difficulty. I can­ statue. My eyes were so blinded by not explain what I felt. My whole the sun, which reverberated on being urged me to go to the girl, the hill and on the house as on a but my body refused to move. My mirror, that I barely saw her sil­ eyes would have never withstood houette. But after a while, with the blazing light the hill exhaled my hands shading my eyes, I was under the sun. able to see her quite clearly. She "I must have sat there for was almost a child, dressed in a hours, watching her face turned sleeveless waist and a short skirt toward the sun, her eyes wide which glistened as if made of gold. open. Had she not waved to me, At first I thought she was wearing I would have thought her blind, so a helmet on her head, but then I completely undisturbed were her realized that it was her blond hair eyes by the sun. on which the sun broke into my­ "When the sun went down she riad luminous sparks. But what rose and simultaneously a flock of left me spellbound was her skin. yellow birds, up to then invisible I cannot give you even a remote but whose singing had been audi­ idea of the color of her arms, her ble all the time, took flight. For an bare legs, her face. They were of instant she stood surrounded by the same golden shade as the dozens of yellow flapping wings paradise that surrounded her, but like a flame surrounded by eager with a gossamer quality, a trans­ butterflies. She then looked at me, parency, an iridescence, that was waved her hand in farewell and not of this earth. It was as if she disappeared into the house. were standing on a blazing throne "Only then was I able to move. of gold and she herself was made Half blinded, my entire body of such fiery gold as mortal eyes burning from the sun, I fled from are not meant to look at and re­ the place. Instinct must have tain their sight. brought me here. It was night "'Vhcn she saw me, she waved when I arrived. NINA SOL 121 "The next day and the day after wildly, climbing the little path that and still another day I re· lined with yellow pebbles. turned to the opening in the rock. "When I reached the top of the And every day the same thing hill, the girl, smiling, motioned happened. Although at night, me to sit on the grass a few steps throughout the endless hours of fJ;Om where she herself was seated. insomnia, I swore to myself that Her fingers ·swiftly and with great the next day I would go up the skill kept on braiding the wicker. golden hill and talk to the Sun Birds sang softly all around us. I Girl, as soon as I reached the stared enraptured at her lovely window in the rock I was again face. Droplets of sun had fallen overcome by the same strange pa· in her eyes and her skin had a ralysis." golden luminescence. The painter mechanically " 'You seem surprised,' she fi­ picked up his glass. On the wall nally said in a musical Spanish. his lifted hand projected a mon­ "'I believe I'm dreaming,' I an­ strous shadow like that of a bat. swered in my faltering Spanish. Through the window the cool "'Why?' she laughed. 'I am night air brought a breath of san­ flesh and blood and there is noth­ ity and reality. The candle flick· ing strange about your presence ered wildly and our shadows here. I was expecting you.' danced a saraband on the walls. " 'You were expecting me?' The painter's eyes were burning " 'Of course. You looked at me coals in his shaded face. from afar long enough. It was "On the fourth day," he con· time you made up your mind to tinued, "as soon as I reached the come. But I was to blame. Only opening I realized that some­ today did I realize what held you thing was different. The girl, this back and I remedied it.' time wearing a cape, sat on the She ignored the astonishment grass weaving a wicker basket. The on my face. hill, the house, the flowers, every­ "'You are very sunburnt,' she thing was the same. Nevertheless, remarked. something had changed. The sun " 'It does not matter now that I was as brilliant as ever, yet I did am here. I don't know why, but not feel the strange sensation that I'm glad I came.' on the previous days had trans­ "'I know why you came. You're fixed me to the window. And be· looking for light and you came to fore I realized it I was running it.' She pointed to my paintbox. down the other side of the stone ·'Show me your pictures.' window, crossing the narrow val­ "I unrolled one of my canvases ley, and, with my heart beating and showed it to her. She looked 122 FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION at it from where she was seated. "Leaning toward me, she took " 'Just what do you want to my paintbox and pressed it against paint?' she asked. her breast as if it were a doll. She " 'I don't know. This land, the then gave it back to me. colors-they fascinate me.' "'You shall now paint the light, "Her laughter ran down my and to say the light is to say the spine like a rivulet of silver. sun.'" "'The colors! There is no color Jorge pointed to the canvas he on the puna. Only light.' had shown me. "'Everything here is yellow, all "This is what I have been paint­ shades of yellow and gold,' I pro­ ing ever since. It means nothing tested. to you, but I know that I am far " 'Everything here is sunlight,' on the road to capturing on my she corrected. 'You think it's yel­ palette the light of the sun.'' low because that has always been "Do you know who this girl is?" the color of the sun for painters. I asked in a skeptical tone. But there are no colors here. The "I don't know. I asked her once. house, the birds, the flowers, I my­ She laughed and answered, 'Does self-we all are soaked in light. one ask a rock or a mountain what Everything here is sun. This is it is? Does one ask the grass or the Peru, the land of the sun, and the light? I am as the puna, as the puna is the closest to the sun. condor, the llama and the alpaca, That is why you came here. With­ as the pumpkin and the casave-­ out knowing it, you have been we are all children of the Sun. following the sun, just as birds fly Pachacama gave life to the Sun thousands of miles also following and the Sun gave life to me, the the sun. You began seeking color Nina Sol. My brothers and sisters, for your paintings and you ended . the Quechaun ayllUa, worshipped seeking the sun.' · the Sun, and later the Incas had "'I would gladly give my life if a court of virgins, Vestals of the I could paint the light of the sun.' Sun. For many centuries my peo­ "'Whydon'tyou try?' ple lived under the laws of the " 'I have tried but I failed. The Sun. What glorious times those color escapes me. If one cannot were! They danced the kashua, even look at the sun, how can one and on their clothes, on their met­ paint it?' als, even in their liquor,' there was " 'I shall help you,' she said a drop of sun. with a mocking little laugh. 'I "'Mter the great massacre­ know nothing about painting but even the Sun was dyed vermillion I have trod many times the path -after the bearded men that came of light.' with sword and cross from across NINA SOL 123 the sea had impaled on their pikes measure time with that and vet the heads of the last Incas, the you called my ancestors savages.' City of Kings was born in the val­ "There was a sharp note of an­ ley, but the Sun was lost. Only ger in her voice. Your face, mine, this hill remains, by the will of the gets red when Bushed. Hers turned first god, Pachacama, and from it into a mask of incandescent gold. one day the lost empire will be " 'You presume to capture time born again.' " in that absurd little box!' she ex­ "The girl is mad!" I cried out, claimed. 'Don't you know yet that knocking down in my excitement time is reckoned not by duration my glass of Sherry. "Can't you see? but by intensity? One instant of She is playing the heroine in a tale happiness or of pain lasts longer of fantasy." than ten years of indifference.'' Jorge's face turned deadly pale. "Pointing to the sun, she said "At first," he answered, "I too, with deep fervor, 'There is the thought the same thing, but these measure of time. According to canvases-Can't you see? There is you, my age should be marked off light in them! Oh, I'm sure you're by that silly little instrument. wrong. I know you're wr~ng. What madness! Does the sun have When I'm with her I feel as if I an age? Throw away your little am in another world. When I set metal box and with it your fear of foot on the hill where she lives time!'" something happens-how shall I With a cry of anguish, Jorge explain it to you? Time does not tossed the watch on the table. exist there, it disappears in a "Why am I telling you all this? strange relativity, it becomes fused You can't possibly understand. with the clouds, with the sun. Can't you see that I am not the Please, try to understand." same man you met only a few He nervously pulled out of his days ago? The Sun Girl has pocket an old silver watch. changed my whole life. But you "See this watch? Today, when I probably don't even believe me. was with her, I took it out to look Why have I told you all this?" at the time. She asked me what it "Shall I tell you why?" I an­ was and when I told her she didn't swered. "Because you know that know what a watch was. She that poor girl is mad, that she's asked me to let her look at it and I playing the part of the Ophelia of placed it on the grass near her, for the puna, that she's no more a frag­ she never allows me to come too ment of sun than you or I.'' near her. She took it and examined What happened then still it and finally put it back on the makes me shiver. The dying can­ grass and said. 'How strange! You dle Bickered wildly with a hissing 124 FANTASY AI\D SCIEKCE FICTION noise and then went out, leaving "She said to me," he whispered, the room in total darkness. I got "that she carried within her the up to fetch another candle when sun of centuries, that she was all Jorge, grabbing my arm, cried out, light-la Nina Sol, she called "Look! The watch! On the table!" herself. Now I understand. When I had already seen it and wide· I showed her my picture-" He eyed I stared at it.In the darkness, stopped abruptly and then cried, the watch was an incandescent "My pictures, she touched them, ball of such radiance that my eyes she touched my box of paints-" could not bare to look at it for He seized the roll of canvases long. It was no longer a watch; it from the table and quickly un· was a tiny sun. rolled them. The same thing hap· Jorge snatched the watch from pened again. The canvases glowed the table and brought it close to with masses of light, a radiant his face. Above the brilliance the light, big round blobs of it, as if object exuded he looked at me with the canvases were soaked in sun. wild eyes. I passed my hand over them but "Now do you believe me?" he felt nothing, nor did the light ad· shouted. "Now do you believe in here to my skin. her? She held this watch in her Jorge burst out into wild laugh· hands for one moment only and ter, rolled up the pictures, and, look at it now! It's a sun, a minia· still laughing, left the room, the ture sun!" · roll under his arm and the watch "I am sure that we can explain in his hand. I remained facing the this rationally," I replied in a closed door, surrounded by dark· tremulous voic,:e. "Give me the ness, watching through the cracks watch." in the door a patch of bright light I took it in my hands with some slowly move away until it vanished fear, but the watch was cold to the completely. touch. The radiation of light was The next morning I woke up uniform on both crystal and silver. after a short restless sleep preced· The light was yellowish, like that ed by long hours of tossing. The of the sun on an autumn day. I smell of coffee was a reassuring rubbed it against my jacket and sign of reality. Jorge's door was then against my hands, but it p~ ajar and I could see that the young duced no phosphorescence, which painter had already left.· eliminated the explanation that I ate my breakfast with little a~ had occurred to me. petite, and spent the day walking Jorge was now standing close back and forth around the inn, to me and I could feel the intense wondering all the time where the heat exuded by his body. hill of the Sun Girl might be. In NINA SOL 125 daylight, the events of the night It was the face of one who had re­ before seemed like a dream. ceived divine grace. Impatiently I saw night come ''I'm going with her," he said down. Seated by the fire, the old quietly. "We shall be together for­ women whispered to each other. I ever, and I shall have what no oth­ asked questions. No one knew of er painter ever had. I shall have the hill of the sun nor of any other light." dwelling in the neighborhood, There was no maniac exalta­ but, then, they admitted that for tion in his voice. I tried to intro­ years th~y had not been beyond duce a note of reality into our the esplanade on which their llam­ strange dialogue. as grazed. "Did you tell the Sun Girl what I retired to my room and happened last night with the opened a book, which I made no watch and the paintings?" attempt to read. I was waiting for Jorge smiled a smile of pity, as the painter. It was not until much if he were far above the picayune later -that I heard a noise on the problems that worried me. floor below. I ran down the stairs. ''Yes, I told her," he answered Jorge was seated by the fire, his with a voice of condescension. "If eyes staring at the glowing embers. we dip an object in paint,' she When he saw me he greeted me said, 'does it not come out the color with a vague nod of the head and of the paint?' To anything she continued gazing at the fire. touches she gives her own light." "What happened today?" I "But how is it," I asked, making asked, sitting down next to him. an effort to speak of this fantastic Jorge was so self-absorbed that thing calmly, "that during the day I had to repeat my question. your Sun Girl does not shine like "I'm leaving tonight," he re­ the sun?" plied, kicking a burnt log, which "Because her light is scattered in fell apart shooting forth a shower the atmosphere as that of the sun of sparkling stars. itself,'' he replied. ''But," he added 'Where are you going? To impatiently, "I'm not concerned Lima?" about these petty problems that He turned to me and the sight trouble you so much. I'm not look­ of his face made me gasp. Gone ing for tricks. I am a painter who was the deranged look of the night all his life has looked for light and before, gone were the lines of ema­ now has found it. I have come for ciation, the hunted expression, the my things and I shall then go to anguish, the undefined doubts. her immediately. I shall live for­ His face was now radiant with ever on the hill of light with the peace. It was sweet and serene. Sun Girl. Together we shaH com- 126 FANTASY AND SCIE;);CE FICTION. plete each other. She has in her to solve the mystery. Heavy shoes flesh and soul the solar light that tramping down the stairs inter­ once was religion and law to her rupted my thoughts. Jorge came race. God has granted me what down, his knapsack on his shoul­ Rembrandt only adumbrated. He der, a handful of brushes .protrud­ has granted me light. If you," he ing like arrows from the quiver of added almost in a whisper, ''had a wandering archer. held in your hands, as I did today, "May I go with you part of the the hands of the Sun Girl, if, as I way?" I asked him when he held did, you had felt like Parsifal out his hand. holding the Holy Grail, you would He shrugged his shoulders. "I understand why I must return to won't mind it if you promise not her." to preach." He got up with a gesture of "Have no fear," I promised, finality that forbade further talk opening the door of the house. and walked toward the stairs. We walked a long time in si­ When he reached the stairs I ut­ lence. The night was cold and re­ tered a cry. In the darkness of the mote like a Nordic bride. The staircase, which laid beyond the stars were but a spangling dust circle of light cast by the fire, both scattered on the dark ftue of the his hands glowed with a bright sky. The puna was in deep sleep. yellow light. I saw them-two The only noise was made by our stars of golden fire with ten flam­ boots crushing the damp grass, ing ends-suspended in mid-air which shone like polished metal as he raised them close to his face under the pale moon, and the to examine them. wind, which panted like a tired "Does it frighten you?" he said alpaca. quietly. "I told you I' held her "Jorge," I finally said, "all this hands in mine. Tomorrow my must have a logical explanation." whole body will shine with the "Everything in life," he retorted same light as hers." mockingly, "has two explanations: A moment later I heard him the materialistic-call it scientific moving in his room on the Boor if you wish-which is neither above. I sat by the fire, biting on complete nor true, and the poetic, my dead pipe. The logs in the which gets to the innermost truth hearth snapped and crackled and of things. Freud never. knew as the brooding cat stared at me with much about dreams as Poe, nor severe eyes. I tried to marshal in doctors as much about love as my mind everything the painter Byron. I only know that my dream had told me, seeking in vain a has come true. I don't have to few straws of reality with which burden it with explanations." NI::-1:\ SOL 127 "Couldn't it be," I proceeded, "Think what you like," he said. ignoring his words, "that this hill "I only know that I have found the of light of yours contains an un­ source of light and to it I must go known radioactive mineral? As though I perish. A woman of time went by, everything on that light! The only survivor of the ex­ hill-rocks, flowers, birds-took tinct Vestals of the Sun. She will on the light of that mineral. Even give light even to my heart. Even a human being, after years of be­ if her embrace were followed by ing charged, like an electric bat­ death, can you imagine a more tery, with radioactivity, might glorious death for a painter? To have absorbed the light and might love the Sun Girl, to embrace her communicate it. If this is so, there body of light, to drink sunshine may be no danger for the girl, but from her lips! To die in the ern­ there might be for anyone who brace of the Sun, to have light carne in sudden close contact with within one-that is not death. her." That is life!" He stopped abruptly. "That's Only then did I realize that we all very fantastic," he interrupted were standing before the opening me angrily. in the barrier of rqck described by "It is not fantastic. You may be Jorge. He held out his hand and in danger. Look at your hands. I pressed it silently. The moon, She touched them only a moment stiff with cold, put on a shawl of and look how they glow. Tomor­ clouds, engulfing us in partial row they may become numb and darkness. The silence was hushed the next day they may fall off, and solemn like that of an empty burned by that satanic force that cradle. Suddenly Jorge gripped my now illuminates them. Have you arm with painful violence. thought of what might happen to "Look! Over there!'' he cried you when you come close to the hoarsely. Sun Girl, when you touch her, Opposite us, on the hill loom­ when you embrace her?" ing darkly on the other side of the "Be quiet!" he shouted. I paid passage, a statue of light had sud­ no attention to him. denly appeared. There was noth­ "Has it occurred to you that the ing frightening about it. Slender arms of the Sun Girl, or whoever and feminine, with flesh a shim­ the devil she is, might make you mering gold, it was like a block of burn horribly to death?" sun hewn into the glorious figure I thought he would attack me, of a woman. so furious did he look, but sudden­ "She's going away!" Jorge cried. ly his face relaxed and when he "She's going away!" spoke his voice was again quiet. The girl with a slow step disap- 128 FANTASY .AND SCIENCE FICTION peared down the other side of the When I reached his side, he hill. Jorge, shouting after her, looked at me with eyes filled with plunged through the darkness. I despair. heard him scrambling wildly down "She's gone, down there," he to the bottom of the passage and, said in a sobful voice. "She, too, hesitating no longer, I followed. must have been afraid, afraid to I shall never forget that night· harm me, to consume me in her marish race in the dark, scram· light. She didn't know that I bling from rock to rock, stumbling would gladly give my life to em· down, tearing my clothes and my brace the light of her flesh, to kiss flesh on the jagged stones. On my the sun from her lips. But I shall hands and knees, still lagging be· follow her-to the end of the hind Jorge, whom I could hear earth, if need be. Look." calling the Sun Girl in ~the dis· He pointed to the ground and tance, I crossed the bottom of the I cried out in amazement. Wher· passage and gropingly sought the ever the Sun Girl's feet had trod, way to the top of the hill. In the they had left footprints as small as dark shadows I suddenly saw the those of a child but resplendent in path lined with pebbles gleaming their golden light. with a faint yellow light leading to "If I fail to find her before day­ the golden doll's house above. break," Jorge added, I shall wait Panting, I reached the top of the until night returns, again and hill. Jorge stood motionless on the again. I shall not rest until I find edge of the platform, staring down her. For I do not want life without at the vast black chasm. her. Good-by, my friend. In the "Jorge," I called, running to· nights to come, until we meet, I ward him across a carpet of flow· shall be wandering after her." ers that glistened like golden And he disappeared down the crystal. trail of glowing footsteps.

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