"They would have given in; you've ruined my only chance."
"They would not have given in. And in a way, you've won; they know now that you're dissatisfied. Until now, they never dreamed a Ragusnik could be unhappy, that he could make trouble."
"What if they know? Now all they need do is hire an Outworlder anytime."
Lamorak shook his head violently. He had thought this through in these last bitter hours. "The fact that they know means that the Elseverians will begin to think about you; some will begin to wonder if it's right to treat a human so. And if Outworlders are hired, they'll spread the word that this goes on upon Elsevere and Galactic public opinion will be in your favor."
"And?"
"Things will Improve. In your son's time, things will be much better."
"In my son's time," said Ragusnik, his cheeks sagging. "I might have had it now. Well, I lose. I'll go back to the job."
Lamorak felt an overwhelming relief. "If you'll come here now, sir, you may have your job and I'll consider it an honor to shake your hand."
Ragusnik's head snapped up and filled with a gloomy pride. "You call me 'sir' and offer to shake my hand. Go about your business, Earthman, and leave me to my work, for I would not shake yours."
Lamorak returned the way he had come, relieved that the crisis was over, and profoundly depressed, too.
He stopped in surprise when he found a section of corridor cordoned off, so he could not pass. He looked about for alternate routes, then startled at a magnified voice above his head. "Dr. Lamorak do you hear me? This is Councillor Blei."
Lamorak looked up. The voice came over some sort of public address system, but he saw no sign of an outlet.
He called out, "Is anything wrong? Can you hear me?"
"I hear you."
Instinctively, Lamorak was shouting. "Is anything wrong? There seems to be a block here. Are there complications with Ragusnik?"
"Ragusnik has gone to work," came Blei's voice. "The crisis is over, and you must make ready to leave."
"Leave?"
"Leave Elsevere; a ship is being made ready for you now."
"But wait a bit." Lamorak was confused by this sudden leap of events. "I haven't completed my gathering of data."
Blei's voice said, "This cannot be helped. You will be directed to the ship and your belongings will be sent after you by servo-mechanisms. We trust- we trust-"
Something was becoming clear to Lamorak. "You trust what?"
"We trust you will make no attempt to see or speak directly to any Elseverian. And of course we hope you will avoid embarrassment by not attempting to return to Elsevere at any time in the future. A colleague of yours would be welcome if further data concerning us is needed."
"I understand," said Lamorak, tonelessly. Obviously, he had himself become a Ragusnik. He had handled the controls that in turn had handled the wastes; he was ostracized. He was a corpse-handler, a swineherd, an inside man at the skonk works.
He said, "Good-bye."
Blei's voice said, "Before we direct you, Dr. Lamorak-. On behalf of the Council of Elsevere, I thank you for your help in this crisis."
"You're welcome," said Lamorak, bitterly.
Insert Knob A in Hole B
Dave Woodbury and John Hansen, grotesque in their spacesuits, supervised anxiously as the large crate swung slowly out and away from the freight-ship and into the airlock. With nearly a year of their hitch on Space Station A5 behind them, they were understandably weary of filtration units that clanked, hydroponic tubs that leaked, air generators that hummed constantly and stopped occasionally.
"Nothing works," Woodbury would say mournfully, "because everything is hand-assembled by ourselves."
"Following directions," Hansen would add, "composed by an idiot."
There were undoubtedly grounds for complaint there. The most expensive thing about a spaceship was the room allowed for freight so all equipment had to be sent across space disassembled and nested. All equipment had to be assembled at the Station itself with clumsy hands, inadequate tools and with blurred and ambiguous direction sheets for guidance.
Painstakingly Woodbury had written complaints to which Hansen had added appropriate adjectives, and formal requests for relief of the situation had made their way back to Earth.
And Earth had responded. A special robot had been designed, with a positronic brain crammed with the knowledge of how to assemble properly any disassembled machine in existence.
That robot was in the crate being unloaded now and Woodbury was trembling as the airlock closed behind it.
Copyright (c) 1957 by Fantasy House, Inc.
"First," he said, "it overhauls the Food-Assembler and adjusts the steak-attachment knob so we can get it rare instead of burnt."
They entered the Station and attacked the crate with dainty touches of the demoleculizer rods in order to make sure that not a precious metal atom of their special assembly-robot was damaged.
The crate fell open!
And there within it were five hundred separate pieces-and one blurred and ambiguous direction sheet for assemblage.
The Up-to-Date Sorcerer
It always puzzled me that Nicholas Nitely, although a Justice of the Peace, was a bachelor. The atmosphere of his profession, so to speak, seemed so conducive to matrimony that surely he could scarcely avoid the gentle bond of wedlock.
When I said as much over a gin and tonic at the Club recently, he said, "Ah, but I had a narrow escape some time ago," and he sighed.
"Oh, really?"
"A fair young girl, sweet, intelligent, pure yet desperately ardent, and withal most alluring to the physical senses for even such an old fogy as myself."
I said, "How did you come to let her go?"
"Ihad no choice. "He smiled gently at me and his smooth, ruddy complexion, his smooth gray hair, his smooth blue eyes, all combined to give him an expression of near-saintliness. He said, "You see, it was really the fault of her fiance-"
"Ah, she was engaged to someone else."
"-and of Professor Wellington Johns, who was, although an endocrinolo-gist, by way of being an up-to-date sorcerer. In fact, it was just that-" He sighed, sipped at his drink, and turned on me the bland and cheerful face of one who is about to change the subject
I said firmly, "Now, then, Nitely, old man, you cannot leave it so. I want to know about your beautiful girl-the flesh that got away."
He winced at the pun (one, I must admit, of my more abominable efforts)
Copyright (c) 1958 by Mercury Press, Inc.
and settled down by ordering his glass refilled. "You understand," he said, "I learned some of the details later on."
Professor Wellington Johns had a large and prominent nose, two sincere eyes and a distinct talent for making clothes appear too krge for him. He said, "My dear children, love is a matter of chemistry."
His dear children, who were really students of his, and not his children at all, were named Alexander Dexter and Alice Sanger. They looked perfectly full of chemicals as they sat there holding hands. Together, their age amounted to perhaps 45, evenly split between them, and Alexander said, fairly inevitably, "Vive la chemie!"
Professor Johns smiled reprovingly. "Or rather endocrinology. Hormones, after all, affect our emotions and it is not surprising that one should, specifically, stimulate that feeling we call love."
"But that's so unromantic," murmured Alice. "I'm sure I don't need any." She looked up at Alexander with a yearning glance.
"My dear," said the professor, "your blood stream was crawling with it at that moment you, as the saying is, fell in love. Its secretion had been stimulated by"-for a moment he considered his words carefully, being a highly moral man-"by some environmental factor involving your young man, and once the hormonal action had taken place, inertia carried you on. I could duplicate the effect easily."