But this was little comfort to Commander Pelham, who found himself once more in the direct path of the sleigh.
'Down!' he yelled, and dropped again.
The sleigh whi-i-ished overhead, came up against a huge boulder with a crack, bounced twenty-five feet into the air, came down with a rush and a bang and Olaf fell over the railing and out.
Santa Claus had arrived.
With a deep, shuddering breath, Olaf swung his bag over his shoulders, adjusted his beard and patted one of the silently suffering spinies on the head. Death might be coming - in fact; Olaf could hardly wait - but he was going to die on his feet nobly, like a Johnson.
Inside the shack, into which the Ossies had once more swarmed, a thump announced the arrival of Santa's bag on the roof, and a second thud the arrival of Santa himself. A ghastly face appeared through the makeshift hole in the ceiling.
'Merry Christmas!' it croaked, and tumbled through.
Olaf landed on his oxygen cylinders, as usual, and got them in the usual place.
The Ossies jumped up and down like rubber balls with the itch.
Olaf limped heavily toward the first stocking and deposited the garishly colored sphere he withdrew from his bag, one of the many that had originally been intended as a Christmas tree ornament. One by one he deposited the rest in every available stocking.
Having completed his job, he dropped into an exhausted squat, from which position he watched subsequent proceedings with a glazed and fishy eye. The jolliness and belly-shaking good humor, traditionally characteristic of Santa Claus, were absent from this one with remarkable thoroughness.
The Ossies made up for it by their wild ecstasy. Until Olaf had deposited the last globe, they had kept their silence and their seats. But when he had finished, the air heaved and writhed under the stresses of the discordant screeches that arose. In half a second the hand of each Ossie contained a globe.
They chattered among themselves furiously, handling the globes carefully and hugging them close to their chests. Then they compared one with another, flocking about to gaze at particularly good ones.
The frowziest Ossie approached Pelham and plucked at the commander's sleeve. 'Sannycaws good,' he cackled. 'Look, he leave eggs!' He stared reverently at his sphere and said: 'Pit-tier'n Ossie eggs. Must be Sannycaws eggs, huh?'
His skinny finger punched Pelham in the stomach.
'No!' yowled Pelham vehemently. 'Hell, no!'
But the Ossie wasn't listening. He plunged the globe deep into the warmth of his feathers and said:
'Pitty colors. How long take for little Sannycaws come out? And what little Sannycaws eat?' He looked up. 'We take good care. We teach little Scannycaws, make him smart and full of brain like Ossie.'
Pierce grabbed Commander Pelham's arm.
'Don't argue with them,' he whispered frantically. 'What do you care if they think those are Santa Claus eggs? Come on! If we work like maniacs, we can still make the quota. Let's get started.'
'That's right,' Pelham admitted. He turned to the Ossie. Tell everyone to get going.' He spoke clearly and loudly. 'Work now. Do you understand? Hurry, hurry, hurry! Come on!'
He motioned with his arms. But the frowzy Ossie had come to a sudden halt. He said slowly:
'We work, but Johnson says Kissmess come evvy year.'
'Isn't one Christmas enough for you?' Pelham rasped.
'No!' squawked the Ossie. 'We want Sannycaws next year. Get more eggs. And next year more eggs. And next year. And next year. And next year. More eggs. More little Sannycaws eggs. If Sannycaws not come, we not work.'
'That's a long time off,' said Pelham. 'We'll talk about it then. By that time I'll either have gone completely crazy, or you'll have forgotten all about it.'
Pierce opened his mouth, closed it, open his mouth, closed it, opened it and finally managed to speak.
'Commander, they want him to come every year.'
'I know. They won't remember by next year, though.'
'But you don't get it. A year to them is one Ganymedan revolution around Jupiter. In Earth time, that's seven days and three hours. They want Santa Claus to come every week.' 'Every week!' Pelham gulped. 'Johnson told them -' For a moment everything turned sparkling somersaults before his eyes. He choked, and automatically his eye sought Olaf.
Olaf turned cold to the marrow of his bones and rose to his feet apprehensively, sidling toward the door. There he stopped as a sudden recollection of tradition hit him. Beard a-dangle, he croaked:
'Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!' He made for the sleigh as if all the imps of Hades were after him. The imps weren't, but Commander Scott Pelham was.
In January of 1941 (the month in which I attained my majority), I undertook something new - a collaboration.
Fred Pohl, after all, was not merely an editor. He was also a budding writer. He has since come to be a giant in the field, but in those early days he was struggling along with only the sort of meager success I was having. Alone, and in collaboration with other Futurians, he turned out stories under a variety of pseudonyms. The one he used most frequently was 'James MacCreigh.'
As it happened, he had written, under that pseudonym, a small fantasy called 'The Little Man on the Subway,' which he apparently-had hopes for but couldn't get right. He asked me if I would rewrite it, and the request flattered me. Besides, I was still trying to get into Unknown, and if I couldn't do it on my own, maybe I could do it by way of a collaboration. I wasn't proud - at least as far as fantasy was concerned.
I took on the task and did it virtually at a sitting. Doing it easily didn't help, however. I submitted it to Campbell for Unknown on January 27, 1941, and he rejected it. I had to hand it back to Pohl.
Pohl, however, with the true agent's soul, never gave up, and in 1950, long after I had utterly forgotten it, he managed to place it with a small magazine called Fantasy Book.
The Little Man on the Subway (with James MacCreigh) [7]
Subway stations are places where people usually get out, so when no one left the first car at Atlantic Avenue station, Conductor Cullen of the I.R.T. began to get worried. In fact, no one had left the first car from the time the run to Flatbush had begun - though dozens were getting on all the time.
Odd! Very odd! It was the kind of proposition that made well-bred conductors remove their caps and scratch their heads. Conductor Cullen did so. It didn't help, but he repeated the process at Bergen Street, the next station, where again the first car lost not one of its population. And at Grand Army Plaza, he added to the headscratching process a few rare old Gaelic words that had passed down from father to son for hundreds of years. They ionized the surrounding atmosphere, but otherwise did not affect the situation.
At Eastern Parkway, Cullen tried an experiment. He carefully refrained from opening the first car's doors at all. He leaned forward eagerly, twisted his head and watched - and was treated to nothing short of a miracle. The New York subway rider is neither shy, meek nor modest, and doors that do not open immediately or sooner are helped on their way by sundry kicks. But this time there was not a kick, not a shriek, not even a modified yell. Cullen's eyes popped.
He was getting angry. At Franklin Avenue, where he again contacted the Express, he flung open the doors and swore at the crowd. Every door spouted commuters of both sexes and all ages, except that terrible first car. At those doors, three men and a very young girl got on, though Cullen could plainly see the slight bulging of the walls that the already super-crowded condition of the car had caused.