But he spoke with so much confidence that I knew he was only talking so that Nature Boy’s Pa would know we weren’t giving up.
Personally, I could see no hope. If you couldn’t get him out the way he had gotten in, there didn’t seem to be any other way. There were no doors into that other place.
“Gentlemen,” said Butch’s Pa, “I have a small idea.”
We all turned and waited.
“This gun,” he said, “is used to keep down the number of halflings. It ruptures the wall between the two worlds sufficiently to let a bullet through. There might be an adaptation made of it, and we can do that later, or have someone do it for us, if that be necessary. But it seems possible to me we could use the gun itself.”
“But we don’t want to shoot the boy,” the sheriff protested. “What we want to do is get him out.”
“I have no intention, sir, of shooting him. There will be no bullet in the gun. All we’ll use is the device to rupture the curtain or whatever it may be that lies between the worlds. And I can—what is the word?—tinker, I believe. I can tinker up the gun so that rupture will be greater.”
He sat down on the ground and began working on the gun, shifting prisms here and there and adjusting tiny mirrors.
“There is just one thing,” he said. “The rupture will last for but a moment. The boy must be immediate to take advantage of it. He must leap outward instantly the rupture should appear.”
He turned to me. “Steve, can you communicate with him?”
“Communicate?”
“Talk to him. With signs, perhaps? Or the reading of the lips? Or some other way?”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“Please, would you do it then?”
So I put on my glasses and looked around until I found Nature Boy. I had quite a time making him understand what we planned to do. It wasn’t any easier to talk with him with all those crazy halflings standing all around him and making motions at me and pointing at the live-it, then tapping their own heads.
I was sweating plenty, for I was afraid that I had not got it all across to him, but I knew that any more of it would do no more than confuse him.
So I told Butch’s Pa that we were all set, and Butch’s Pa handed Butch the gun, and the rest stepped back a ways, and there was Butch with the gun and me standing right behind him. And there was Nature Boy standing in that other place, and a bunch of those silly halflings clustered all about him, and they sure didn’t know about the alien gun or they’d not have been standing there. And Nature Boy looked like someone who’d been stood against a wall and was being executed without even any blindfold.
Out of the tail of my eye, I saw Fancy Pants floating off to one side of us, and he was the saddest-looking sack you ever saw.
Suddenly there was a strange white flash of brilliance as all the prisms and the mirrors moved on the gun that Butch was holding. He had pulled a trigger, or whatever it was.
For a second, straight in front of us, a funny sort of hole seemed to open up in the place that should not have been there at all—a jagged, ragged hole that appeared in nothingness. And I caught sight of Nature Boy jumping through the hole the second it stayed open.
And there he was, staggering a bit from the jump that he had made—only he was not alone. He had one of the halflings with him!
He had him by the wrist in a good tight grip and it was plain to see that he had jerked him through with him, for the halfling did not seem at all happy about what had happened to him. I saw at once that it was the halfling who had the live-it on his head.
Butch pushed the halfling toward me and he said: “Here, Steve. It was the only way I could get your live-it back.”
I saw that Butch was letting go of the halfling and I grabbed quick by the other wrist and was somewhat surprised to find that he was solid. I would not have been astonished if my hand had gone right through him, for he still had that swirl-smoky look about him, although it seemed to me he might be hardening up a bit and becoming more substantial.
Pa moved over close beside me, saying, “You be careful, Steve!”
“Aw, he’s all right,” I said. “He’s not even trying to get away from me.”
Someone raised a shout and I whirled around and stared.
A half-dozen of the halflings had grabbed hold of the edges of that door into the other world, and they were tugging for dear life so it would stay open, and pouring out of it was that entire herd of halflings! They were shoving and pushing and scrambling to get through, and there were a lot more of them, it seemed to me, than I had thought there were.
We just stood there and watched them until they all were through. We didn’t do a thing because there was not a thing we could do. And they stood there in a bunch, packed tight together, staring back at us.
The sheriff came alongside Pa. He pushed back his hat until it roosted on his neck. You could see that the sheriff was flabbergasted and I enjoyed it, for it had been apparent from the very first that the sheriff hadn’t believed a word he’d heard about the halflings.
I don’t know, maybe he still was thinking that it might be nothing but some sort of alien joke. You could see, without half trying, that the sheriff didn’t cotton to any aliens.
“How come,” he asked suspiciously, “that this one here has got a live-it on?”
So I told him and he blinked at me, dazed and dumfounded, but he said nothing back. I sure had shut him up.
Fancy Pants’ Pa had floated up while I was telling it and he said I told the truth, for he’d been there and seen it.
Everyone began to talk at once, but Fancy Pants’ Pa floated up a little higher and held up his hand to command attention.
“Just a moment, if you please,” he said. “Before we get down to more serious business, I have something you must hear. As you may suspect, knowing the episode of the skunk, my family undoubtedly has a great deal to answer for in this incident.”
A human saying things like that would sound silly and pompous, but Fancy Pants’ Pa could get away with it.
“So,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “I now announce to you that my malefactor son, for the forthcoming thirty days, must walk upon his feet. He must not float an inch. If the punishment does not seem sufficient—”
“It’s enough,” Pa cut in. “The boy has to learn his lesson, but there is no use being harsh with him.”
“Now, sir,” said Nature Boy’s Pa, being very formal, “it is not necessary—”
“I insist,” Fancy Pants’ Pa said. “I really must insist. It can be no other way.”
“Say,” bawled the sheriff, “will someone explain to me what this is all about?”
“Sheriff,” Pa said to him, “your understanding of this matter is of no great importance and it would take too long to explain. We have more important business we should be attending to.” He turned around a bit so he faced the crowd. “Well, gentlemen, what do we do next? It appears to me that we have some guests. And remembering that these critters are bearers of good luck, it would seem to me we should treat them as kindly as we can.”
“Pa,” I said, tugging at his coat sleeve, “I know how we can get them over on our side. Every one of them wants a live-it set.”
“That’s right,” spoke up Nature Boy. “All the time I was in there, they pestered me and pestered me about how to get the sets. All the time they squabbled over who would get to use Steve’s set next.”
“You mean,” the sheriff asked, in a weak voice, “that these things can talk?”
“Why, sure they can,” said Nature Boy. “They learn a lot more back in that world of theirs than you could ever guess.”
“Well, now,” Pa said with a lot of satisfaction, “if that is all they want, it’s not too great a price for us to pay to get us some good luck. We’ll just buy a lot of live-it sets. We can probably get them wholesale—”
“B
ut if we get the live-its,” objected Butch’s Pa, “they’ll just lie around and use them and be of no help to us at all. They won’t need us any more. They’ll have all these patterns they need from the live-it sets.”
“Well, anyhow,” said Pa, “even if that should be true, we’ll get them off our necks. They won’t pester us with this bad luck they commit.”
“It won’t do us any good however you look at it,” declared Butch’s Pa, who had a mighty low opinion of the halflings. “They all live together. That’s the way it’s always been. They never helped an entire neighborhood, but just one man or family in the neighborhood. A whole tribe of them comes in and they give one family all the benefit. You couldn’t get them to split up and work for all of us.”
“If you jerks would listen,” said the halfling with the live-it on his head, “I can get you straightened out.”
It was a shock, I tell you, to hear him speak at all. He was the kind of thing you’d figure shouldn’t speak at all—just a sort of dummy. And the way he spoke and the tone he used made it even worse. It was the way Andy Carter always talked—either wild and blustering, or out of the corner of his mouth, sarcastic. After listening to Andy all these years, that poor halfling didn’t know any different.
Everyone just stood there, staring at the halfling who had spoken, while all the other halflings were nodding their heads in such mad agreement with him that I thought they’d snap their necks.
Pa was the first one to get his feet back under him.
“Go ahead,” he said to the halfling. “We all are listening.”
“We’ll make a deal with you,” said the halfling, using ornery words but speaking most respectful, “but you’ll have to level with us, see? We’ll work hard for you and guard against mishap, but we got to have the live-its and no mistake about it. One for each of us—and if I was you, mister, I wouldn’t try to chisel.”
“Well, now,” said Pa, “that sounds fair enough. But you mean all of us?”
“All of you,” the live-it halfling said.
“You mean you will split up?” asked Pa. “Each of us will have at least one of you? You won’t all live together any more?”
“I think, sir,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “that we can depend on that. I believe I understand what this gentleman is thinking. It is something that happened with the human race on Earth.”
“What happened here on Earth?” asked Pa, sort of flabbergasted.
“Why,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “the elimination of the need for social clustering. There was a time when the human race found it necessary to congregate in families and tribes for companionship and entertainment. Then the race got the record player and the radio and TV and there was less need for get-togethers. A man had entertainment of his own in his home. He need not move beyond his living room to be entertained. So the spectator and group sports simply petered out.”
“And you think,” asked Pa, “that the same thing will happen with the halflings if we gave them live-its?”
“Certainly,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa. “We supply them, as it were, entertainment for the home, personal entertainment. There will be no further need for tribal living.”
“You said it, pal!” the halfling said enthusiastically.
All the rest of them were nodding in agreement.
“But it’s still no good,” yelped Butch’s Pa, getting real riled. “They’re in this world now, and how do you get them back? And while they’re here, can they do anything for us?”
“You can stop shooting off your mouth right now,” the halfling said to Butch’s Pa with utmost respect. “We can’t do anything here for you, that’s sure. In this world of yours, we can’t see ahead. And to do you any good, we have to see ahead.”
“You mean that if we give you live-its, you’ll go back home again?” asked Pa.
“Sure,” said the halfling. “Back there is our home. Just try to keep us from it.”
“We won’t even try,” Pa said. “We might even push you back. We’ll give you the live-its and you get back there and start to work for us.”
“We’ll work for you hard,” said the halfling, “but not all the time. We take out some time for looking at the live-it. That all right with you?”
“Sure,” Pa agreed. “Sure, that’s O.K. with us.”
“All right,” said the halfling, “get us back where we belong.”
I turned around and walked out of the crowd, out to the edge of it. For it was all settled now and I had a belly full of it. It would be all right with me if we never had any more excitement in the neighborhood.
Up by the barn I saw Fancy Pants limping along on the ground. He was having a tough time walking. But I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. He had it coming.
I figured in just a little while I’d go up around the barn and clobber him for that time he mopped up the road with me.
It should be an easy job, I told myself, with him grounded by his Pa for thirty days.
Spaceship in a Flask
“Spaceship in a Flask” was purchased by Astounding Science Fiction early in 1941; they paid Cliff seventy-five dollars and published the story in July 1941. It is one of the many Simak stories that features a newspaperman protagonist, and it displays a bit of the culture of the era, which often included, among other things, crusty, streetwise reporters who lived in uneasy truces with mobsters—for a while.
—dww
Old Eli was plastered when I found him in the Sun Spot, one of the many disreputable dives situated against the walls of the domed city of New Chicago on the Twilight Belt of Mercury.
I had been afraid of that. As soon as I had heard the old Sunwarder was in town, I had set out to track him down by checking all the joints. The Sun Spot was the thirty-third.
Eli always was good for a story—the kind of a story the Solar Press ate up. No one in New Chicago believed a word he said, especially that yarn about being a couple of hundred years old. Some of the stuff he told about the Sunward side might be true, for few men ventured there, but the story about his age was just too much to swallow.
Most of his tales were alcoholic. He had to have a bit of glow to do much talking. But this time I saw he was pretty far gone.
He regarded me across the table with bleary eyes.
“I was a-comin’ to see you, son,” he cackled. “Kept thinkin’ all the time, ‘I gotta go see Sherm.’ “ He shoved the bottle at me. “Grab yourself a snort, son.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. Doctor’s orders. Got a lousy stomach.”
He guffawed in minor key and pounded the table in drunken mirth.
“I remember now. Doggone if I don’t. Always taking pills or something, ain’t you?”
“Capsules,” I said, icily. I can’t appreciate jokes about my stomach.
“Don’t need water nor nothin’ to wash them down,” he went on. “Just pop them into your mouth and swallow. Funniest danged thing I ever see. Me, I never took a pill without a heap of gaggin’.”
He hoisted the bottle and let it gurgle.
“What did you do this trip?” I asked.
“Not much of nothin’,” said Eli. “Couldn’t find a thing. This danged planet is getting’ too crowded. Too many prospectors runnin’ around. Bumped into a feller out there, I did. First time that has ever happened. Don’t like it. Have to go out to Pluto where a man’s got elbow room.”
He wrestled the bottle again and wiped his whiskers.
“Wouldn’t have come in at all ‘cept I had to bring Doc some of them salts of his.”
“What salts are those?” I asked.
“What! Ain’t I ever told you about them salts. Doc buys them off of me. Danged if I know why. Don’t seem to be good for nothin’.”
He reached into a bulging coat pocket, pulled forth a canvas bag and slung it on the table.
??
?Take a look,” he urged. “Maybe you can tell me what it is. Doc pays me good for it. Takes good care of me, too. Caught the fever out on Venus, long time ago. He gives me injections to fight it off.”
Eli stumbled a little over ‘injections’ but finally made it.
“Who is this Doc?” I asked quietly, afraid I’d scare him into silence. “One of the doctors here in town?”
“Nope. The big doc. The feller out at the sanitarium.”
“Dr. Vincent?”
“That’s the one,” said Eli. “Used to sell them to Dr. Anderson and Dr. Brown, too.”
I let that pass. It was just another one of old Eli’s tales. Both Anderson and Brown had been dead these many years, Anderson before Eli was born.
I opened the bag and poured part of its contents into one hand. Tiny, shining crystals winked, reflecting the lights above the bar.
“Took some to a chemist once,” said Eli, “but he said it wasn’t nothin’. Not valuable at least. Some peculiar combin … combi—”
“Combination.”
“That’s it. I didn’t tell him about Doc. Didn’t tell him nothin’. Thought maybe I’d made a find and could cash in on it. Thought maybe Doc was takin’ me for a ride. But the chemist said it wasn’t worth a thing. Offered to sell him some but he didn’t want any. Out of his line, he said.”
“Maybe you’d let me have some. Just a sample,” I suggested, still afraid of scaring him off. For I sensed, even then, that he was telling me something he shouldn’t tell.
He waved a generous hand.
“Take some. Take a lot. Take all you want.”
I felt in my pockets.
“I haven’t anything to put it in,” I said.
He cackled at me, hoisting the bottle.
“Fill up a couple of them pills of yours. Dump out the stuff that’s in them. Won’t do you any good. Likker’s the only thing for a touchy stomach.”
“Good idea,” I said, grinning at him.
I pulled three of the capsules apart, spilled out the powders, refilled them with the salts and carefully placed them in my vest pocket. The bag I shoved back across the table.