Carmody asked, «But if my memory of what happened on the Moon is false, what did happen?»
«Look at the green light in the center of the panel before you.»
Carmody looked.
He remembered. He remembered everything. The truth duplicated everything he had remembered before up to the moment when, walking toward the completed shelter with the whisky bottle, he had looked up toward the ringwall of Hell Crater.
He had looked up, but he hadn’t seen anything. He’d gone on into the shelter, rigged the airlock. Anna had joined him and they’d turned on the oxygen to build up an atmosphere.
It had been a wonderful thirteen-day honeymoon. He’d fallen in love with Anna and she with him. They’d got perilously close to arguing politics once or twice, and then they’d decided such things didn’t matter. They’d also decided to stay married after their return to Earth, and Anna had promised to join him and live in America. Life together had been so wonderful that they’d delayed leaving until the last moment, when the Sun was almost down, dreading the brief separation the return trip would entail.
And before leaving, they’d done certain things he hadn’t understood then. He understood now that they were the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. They’d removed all evidence that they’d ever actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember falsely and tell after returning to Earth.
He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those arrangements, even while they had been making them.
But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of those thirteen days together.
«Thanks, Junior,» he said hurriedly.
He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a delay of minutes that didn’t seem like minutes, he heard the President’s voice.
«Carmody, Mr. President,» he said. «I’m going to call you on that reward you offered me. I’d like to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I’d like a fast plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna.»
President Saunderson chuckled. «Thought you’d change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I’m not sure you’ll want that plane. There’s word from Russia that—uh—Mrs. Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a strato-rocket. If you hurry, you can get to the landing field in time to meet her.»
Carmody hurried and did.
TOO FAR
R. Austin Wilkinson was a bon vivant, man about Manhattan, and chaser of women. He was also an incorrigible punster on every possible occasion. In speaking of his favorite activity, for example, he would remark that he was a wolf, as it were, but that didn’t make him a werewolf.
Excruciating as this statement may have been to some of his friends, it was almost true. Wilkinson was not a werewolf; he was a werebuck.
A night or two nights every week he would stroll into Central Park, turn himself into a buck and take great delight in running and playing.
True, there was always danger of his being seen but (since he punned even in his thoughts) he was willing to gambol on that.
Oddly, it had never occurred to him to combine the pleasures of being a wolf, as it were, with the pleasures of being a buck.
Until one night. Why, he asked himself that night, couldn’t a lucky buck make a little doe? Once thought of, the idea was irresistible. He galloped to the wall of the Central Park Zoo and trotted along it until his sensitive buck nose told him he’d found the right place to climb the fence. He changed into a man for the task of climbing and then, alone in a pen with a beautiful doe, he changed himself back into a buck.
She was sleeping. He nudged her gently and whispered a suggestion. Her eyes opened wide and startled. «No, no, a dozen times no!»
«Only a dozen times?» he asked, and then jeered. «My deer,» he whispered, «think of the fawn you’ll have!»
Which went too far. He might have got away with it had his deer really been only a doe, but she was a weremaid—a doe who could change into a girl—and she was a witch as well. She quickly changed into a girl and ran for the fence. When he changed into a man and started after her she threw a spell over her shoulder, a spell that turned him back to a buck and froze him that way.
Do you ever visit the Central Park Zoo? Look for the buck with the sad eyes; he’s Wilkinson.
He is sad despite the fact that the doe-weremaid, who is now the toast of New York ballet (she is graceful as a deer, the critics say) visits him occasionally by night and resumes her proper form.
But when he begs for release from the spell she only smiles sweetly and tells him no, that she is of a very saving disposition and wants to keep the first buck she ever made.
MAN OF DISTINCTION
There was this Hanley, Al Hanley, and you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that he was ever going to amount to much. And if you’d known his life history, up to the time the Darians came you’d never have guessed how thankful you’re going to be—once you’ve read this story—for Al Hanley.
At the time it happened Hanley was drunk. Not that that was anything unusual—he’d been drunk a long time and it was his ambition to stay that way although it had reached the stage of being a tough job. He had run out of money, then out of friends to borrow from. He had worked his way down his list of acquaintances to the point where he considered himself lucky to average two bits a head on them.
He had reached the sad stage of having to walk miles to see someone he knew slightly so he could try to borrow a buck or a quarter. The long walk would wear off the effects of the last drink—well, not completely but somewhat—so he was in the predicament of Alice when she was with the Red Queen and had to do all the running she could possibly do just to stay in the same place.
And panhandling strangers was out because the cops had been clamping down on it and if Hanley tried that he’d end up spending a drinkless night in the hoosegow, which would be very bad indeed. He was at the stage now where twelve hours without a drink would give him the bull horrors, which are to the D. T.’s as a cyclone is to a zephyr.
D. T.’s are merely hallucinations. If you’re smart you know they’re not there. Sometimes they’re even companionship if you care for that sort of thing. But the bull horrors are the bull horrors. It takes more drinking than most people can manage to get them and they can come only when a man who’s been drunk for longer than he can remember is suddenly and completely deprived of drink for an extended period, as when he is in jail, say.
The mere thought of them had Hanley shaking. Shaking specifically the hand of an old friend, a bosom companion whom he had seen only a few times in his life and then under not-too-favorable circumstances. The old friend’s name was Kid Eggleston and he was a big but battered ex-pug who had more recently been bouncer in a saloon, where Hanley had met him naturally.
But you needn’t concentrate on remembering either his name or his history because he isn’t going to last very long as far as this story is concerned. In fact, in exactly one and one-half minutes he is going to scream and then faint and we shall hear no more of him.