The simulacron clicked its tongue impatiently. “I cannot continue forever in this petty bickering. The Lamberj-” Again he stopped, then said, “Have I your word of honor that this is all not a device inspired by the Lamberj people to delay us until-”
“My word of honor,” said the Secretary.
The Secretary of Science emerged, mopping his forehead and looking ten years younger. He said softly, “I told him his people could have it as soon as I obtained the President's formal approval. I don't think he'll object, or Congress, either. Good Lord, gentlemen, think of it; free power at our fingertips in return for a planet we could never use in any case.”
The Secretary of Defense, growing purplish with objection, said, “But we had agreed that only a Mizzarett-Lamberj war could explain their need for Jupiter. Under those circumstances, and comparing their military potential with ours, a strict neutrality is essential.”
“But there is no war, sir,” said the Secretary of Science. “The simulacron presented an alternate explanation of their need for Jupiter so rational and plausible that I accepted at once. I think the President will agree with me, and you gentlemen, too, when you understand. In fact, I have here their plans for the new Jupiter, as it will soon appear.”
The others rose from their seats, clamoring. “ A new Jupiter?” gasped the Secretary of Defense.
“Not so different from the old, gentlemen,” said the Secretary of Science. “Here are the sketches provided in form suitable for observation by matter beings such as ourselves.”
He laid them down. The familiar banded planet was there before them on one of the sketches: yellow, pale green, and light brown with curled white streaks here and there and all against the speckled velvet background ofspace. But across the bands were streaks of blackness as velvet as the background, arranged in a curious pattern.
“That,” said the Secretary of Science, “is the day side of the planet. The night side is shown in this sketch.” (There, Jupiter was a thin crescent enclosing darkness, and within that darkness were the same thin streaks arranged in similar pattern, but in a phosphorescent glowing orange this time.)
“The marks,” said the Secretary of Science, “are a purely optical phenomenon, I am told, which will not rotate with the planet, but will remain static in its atmospheric fringe.”
“But what is it?” asked the Secretary of Commerce. “You see,” said the Secretary of Science, “our solar system is now on one of their major trade routes. As many as seven of their ships pass within a few hundred million miles of the system in a single day, and each ship has the major planets under telescopic observation as they pass. Tourist curiosity, you know. Solid planets of any size are a marvel to them.”
“What has that to do with these marks?”
“That is one form of their writing. Translated, those marks read: 'Use Mizzarett Ergone Vertices For Health and Glowing Heat.'“
“You mean Jupiter is to be an advertising billboard?” exploded the Secretary of Defense.
“Right. The Lamberj people, it seems, produce a competing ergone tablet, which accounts for the Mizzarett anxiety to establish full legal ownership of Jupiter-in case of Lamberj lawsuits. Fortunately, the Mizzaretts are novices at the advertising game, it appears.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the Secretary of the Interior.
“Why, they neglected to set up a series of options on the other planets. The Jupiter billboard will be advertising our system, as well as their own project. And when the competing Lamberj people come storming in to check on the Mizzarett title to Jupiter, we will have Saturn to sell to them. With its rings. As we will be easily able to explain to them, the rings will make Saturn much the better spectacle.”
“And therefore,” said the Secretary of the Treasury, suddenly beaming, “worth a much better price.”
And they all suddenly looked very cheerful.
BUY JUPITER was not my original title for the story. I am usually indignant when an editor changes the title I have given a story, and change it back when it appears in one of my own collections and then mutter about it in the commentary. -But not this time.
I called the story It Pays, an utterly undistinguished title. Bob Mills, without even consulting me, quietly changed it to BUY JUPITER and I fell in love with that as soon as the change came to my attention. To a punster like myself, it is the perfect title for the story-so perfect that I have given it to this entire collection, which, as you know, is BUY JUPITER AND OTHER STORIES.
Bob Mills gets the credit.
During those early years in which, with a certain amount of uneasy horror, I was watching my science fiction writing begin to fall off, I would occasionally get into a state of blue funk.
Could it be that I could no longer write science fiction at all? Suppose I wanted to write science fiction-could I?
I was driving down to Marshfield, Massachusetts, on July 23, 1958, to begin a three-week vacation which I dreaded (1 dread all vacations).I deliberately set about thinking up a plot to keep my mind off that vacation and to see if I could. A STATUE FOR FATHER was the result. I sold it to a new magazine, Satellite Science Fiction, and it appeared in the February 1959 issue.
A Statue For Father
First time? Really? But of course you have heard of it. Yes, I was sure you had.
If you're really interested in the discovery, believe me, I'll be delighted-to tell you. It's a story I've always liked to tell, but not many people give me the chance. I've even been advised to keep the story under wraps. It interferes with the legends growing up about my father.
Still, I think the truth is valuable. There's a moral to it. A man can spend his life devoting his energies solely to the satisfaction of his own curiosity and then, quite accidentally, without ever intending anything of the sort, find himself a benefactor of humanity.
Dad was just a theoretical physicist, devoted to the investigation of time travel. I don't think he ever gave a thought to what time travel might mean to Homo sapiens. He was just curious about the mathematical relationships that governed the universe, you see.
Hungry? All the better. I imagine it will take nearly half an hour. They will do it properly for an official such as yourself. It ’ s a matter of pride.
To begin with, Dad was poor as only a university professor can be poor. Eventually, though, he became wealthy. In the last years before his death he was fabulously rich, and as for myself and my children and grandchildren-well, you can see for yourself.
They've put up statues to him, too. The oldest is on the hillside right here where the discovery was made. You can just see it out the window. Yes. Can you make out the inscription? Well, we're standing at a bad angle. No matter.
By the time Dad got into time-travel research the whole problem had been given up by most physicists as a bad job. It had begun with a splash when the Chrono-funnels were first set up.
Actually, they're not much to see. They're completely irrational and uncontrollable. What you see is distortedand wavery, two feet across at the most, and it vanishes quickly. Trying to focus on the past is like trying to focus on a feather caught in a hurricane that has gone mad.
They tried poking grapples into the past but that was just as unpredictable. Sometimes it was carried off successfully for a few seconds with one man leaning hard against the grapple. But more often a pile driver couldn't push it through. Nothing was ever obtained out of the past until-Well, I'll get to that.