Tuttle nodded, 'It's solid enough, now - though it flicks on and off eight hundred thousand times a second. I got the idea from the stroboscopic lamp. You know them - they flash on and off so rapidly that it gives all the impression of steady illumination.
'And so it is with the hull. It's not on long enough to buckle space. It's not off long enough to allow appreciable leakage of the atmosphere. And the net effect is a strength better than steel.'
He paused and added slowly, 'And there's no telling how far we can go. Speed up the intermission effect. Have the field flick off and on millions of times per second - billions of times. You can get fields strong enough to hold an atomic explosion. My lif ework!'
Captain Everett pounded the other's shoulder. 'Snap out of it, man. Think of the landing on Ganymede. The devil! It will be great publicity. Think of Orloff's face, for instance, when he finds he is to be the first passenger in history ever to travel in a spaceship with a force-field hull. How do you suppose he'll feel?'
Hal Tuttle shrugged. 'I imagine he'll be rather pleased.'
With 'Not Final!' I completed my third year as a Writer -three years since my initial trip to Campbell 's office. In that time I had earned just a hair short of a thousand dollars (not as bad as it sounds in days when college tuition was only four hundred dollars a year) and I had about a quarter of that in my savings account.
Still, you can see that there was nothing in that financial record to lead me to think that writing was a possible way of making a living - especially since I had no dream of ever writing anything but magazine science fiction.
On June 10, 1941, in the course of a talk with Fred Pohl, I mentioned my frustration at not being able to make a sale to Unknown. Fred said he had a good idea for a fantasy, and from that it was a short step to an agreement to go halfies. We'd talk the idea over, I would write it, and we'd split the sale, if any, fifty-fifty.
Fred must have been willing because (as I found out three days later) his magazines were doing poorly and he was being relieved of his editorial position.
It was too bad, of course, but not an irredeemable catastrophe. Pohl had had nearly two years of valuable editorial experience, and the time would come when this would stand him in good stead in a much more important and longer-enduring role as editor of Galaxy, which during the 1950s and 1960s was to compete with Astounding for leadership in the field.
As for myself, I could scarcely complain. Pohl had accepted eight of my stories (over a quarter of those I had written and nearly half of those I had sold up to then). Of these, six had already been published and one ('Super-Neutron') was safely slated for publication in the forthcoming issue of Astonishing. That left the ninth, 'Christmas on Ganymede.' It was not yet paid for, nor had it actually been set in type, and, regretfully, Pohl had to return it. However, I sold it within two weeks to Thrilling Wonder Stories for a little more than Pohl would have been able to pay me, so no harm was done even there. -And though I regretted the loss of a market, Pohl had safely seen me through the period during which I developed to the point where Campbell and Astounding itself could become my major market.
At first, when 'Christmas on Ganymede' was returned, I thought it was because the Pohl magazines had been suspended altogether. If the publishers had intended that, they changed their minds. Astonishing continued a couple of years, until it was killed by the World War II paper shortage. Super Science Stones survived World War II and even a little past the 1940s, and was yet to publish one more story of mine.
But back to June 10- Taking Fred's fantasy idea, I wrote the story entirely on my own, calling it 'Legal Rights.' Once again, though, a collaboration didn't succeed. On July 8, Campbell rejected it, the first rejection I had received from him in half a year.
By that time, though, Fred was agenting again. I gave him the story, rather shamefacedly, and forgot about it. He changed the name to 'Legal Rites' (much better) and rewrote it quite a bit. Seven years later, he actually-sold it.
Legal Rites (with James.MacCreigh) [14]
Already the stars were out, though the sun had just dipped under the horizon, and the sky of the west was a blood-stuck gold behind the Sierra Nevadas.
'Hey!' squawked Russell Harley. 'Come back!'
But the one-lunged motor of the old Ford was making too much noise; the driver didn't hear him. Harley cursed as he watched the old car careen along the sandy ruts on its half-flat tires. Its taillight was saying a red no to him. No, you can't get away tonight; no, you'll have to stay here and fight it out.
Harley grunted and climbed back up the porch stairs of the old wooden house. It was well made, anyhow. The stairs, though half a century old, neither creaked beneath him nor showed cracks.
Harley picked up the bags he'd dropped when he experienced his abrupt change of mind - fake leather and worn out, they were - and carted them into the house. He dumped them on a dust-jacketed sofa and looked around.
It was stifling hot, and the smell of the desert outside had permeated the room. Harley sneezed.
'Water,' he said out loud. 'That's what I need.'
He'd prowled through every room on the ground floor before he stopped still and smote his head. Plumbing - naturally there'd be no plumbing in this hole eight miles out on the desert! A well was the best he could hope for -
If that.
It was getting dark. No electric lights either, of course. He blundered irritatedly through the dusky rooms to the back of the house. The screen door shrieked metallically as he opened it. A bucket hung by the door. He picked it up, tipped it, shook the loose sand out of it. He looked over the 'back yard' - about thirty thousand visible acres of hilly sand, rock and patches of- sage and flame-tipped ocotillo.
No well.
The old fool got water from somewhere, he thought savagely. Obstinately he climbed down the back steps and wandered out into the desert. Overhead the stars were blinding, a million million of them, but the sunset was over already and he could see only hazily. The silence was murderous. Only a faint whisper of breeze over the sand, and the slither of his shoes.
He caught a glimmer of starlight from the nearest clump of sage and walked to it. There was a pool of water, caught in the angle of two enormous boulders. He stared at it doubtfully, then shrugged. It was water. It was better than nothing. He dipped the bucket in the little pool. Knowing nothing of the procedure, he filled it with a quart of loose sand as he scooped it along the bottom/When he lifted it, brimful, to his lips, he spat out the first mouthful and swore violently.
Then he used his head. He set the bucket down, waited a, second for the sand grains to settle, cupped water in his hands, lifted it to his lips…
Pat. HISS. Pat. HISS. Pat. HISS -
'What the hell!' Harley stood up, looked around in abrupt puzzlement. It sounded like water dripping from somewhere, onto a red-hot stove, flashing into sizzling steam. He saw nothing, only the sand and the sage and the pool of tepid, sickly water.
Pat. HISS -
Then he saw it, and his eyes bulged. Out of nowhere it was dripping, a drop a second, a sticky, dark drop that was thicker than water, that fell to the ground lazily, in slow defiance of gravity. And when it struck each drop sizzled and skittered about, and vanished. It was perhaps eight feet from him, just visible in the starlight.