Big Book of Science Fiction Read online

  “Show me what? I haven’t time to play now, Molly. I’ll attend to Mewhu when we get a roof over our heads again.”

  “But it’s for you!”

  “What is?”

  “The thing in the tree.”

  “Oh, all right.” Prompted more by laziness than by curiosity, Jack climbed back down the ladder. Molly was waiting. Mewhu was not in sight.

  “Where is he?”

  “By the tree,” she said with exaggerated patience, taking his hand. “Come on. It’s not far.”

  She led him around the house and across the bumpy track that was euphemistically known as a road. There was a tree down on the other side. He looked from it to the house, saw that in line with the felled tree and his damaged roof were more broken trees, where something had come down out of the sky, skimmed the tops of the trees, angling closer to the ground until it wiped the top off his house and had then risen up and up—to where?

  They went deeper into the woods for ten minutes, skirting an occasional branch or fallen treetop, until they came to Mewhu, who was leaning against a young maple. He smiled, pointed up into the tree, pointed to his arm, to the ground. Jack looked at him in puzzlement.

  “He fell out of the tree and broke his arm,” said Molly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, he just did, Daddy.”

  “Nice to know. Now can I get back to work?”

  “He wants you to get the thing in the tree!”

  Jack looked upward. Hung on a fork two-thirds of the way up the tree was a gleaming object, a stick about five feet long with a streamlined shape on each end, rather like the wingtip tanks of a P-80. “What on earth is that?”

  “I dunno. I can’t— He tol’ me, but I dunno. Anyway, it’s for you, so you don’t ... so you don’t—” She looked at Mewhu for a moment. The alien’s silver mustache seemed to swell a little. “—so you don’t have to climb the ladder so much.”

  “Molly—how did you know that?”

  “He told me, that’s all. Gosh, Daddy, don’t be mad. I don’t know how, honest; he just did, that’s all.”

  “I don’t get it,” muttered Jack. “Anyhow—what’s this about that thing in the tree? I’m supposed to break my arm too?”

  “It isn’t dark.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Molly shrugged. “Ask him.”

  “Oh. I think I catch that. He fell out of the tree because it was dark. He thinks I can get up there and get the whatzit without hurting myself because I can see what I am doing. He also flatters me. Or is it flattery? How close to the apes does he think we are?”

  “What are you talking about, Daddy?”

  “Never mind . . . why am I supposed to get that thing, anyway?”

  “Uh—so’s you can jump off the roof.”

  “That is just silly. However, I do want a look at that thing. Since his ship is gone, that object up there seems to be the only artifact he brought with him except his clothes.”

  “What’s an artifact?”

  “Second cousin to an artichoke. Here goes nothin’.” And he swung up into the tree. He had not climbed a tree for years, and as he carefully chose his way, it occurred to him that there were probably more efficient ways of gaining altitude. An escalator, for example. Why didn’t escalators grow on trees?

  The tree began to shiver and sway with his weight. He looked down once and decided instantly not to do it again. He looked up and was gratified to see how close he was to the object he was after. He pulled himself up another three feet and was horrified at how far away it was, for the branches were very small up here. He squirmed upward, reached, and his fingers just brushed against the shank of the thing. It had two rings fastened to it, he noticed, one each side of the center, large enough to get an arm through. It was one of these which was hung up on a branch. He chinned himself, then, with his unpracticed muscles cracking, took one hand off and reached.

  The one-hand chinning didn’t come off so well. His arms began to sag. The ring broke off its branch as his weight came on it. He was immediately surrounded by the enthusiastic crackling of breaking shrubbery. He folded his tongue over and got his teeth on it. Since he had a grip on Mewhu’s artifact, he held on . . . even when it came free. He began to fall, tensed himself for the bone-breaking jolt he would get at the bottom.

  He didn’t get it

  He fell quite fast at first, and then the stick he was holding began to bear him up. He thought that it must have caught on a branch, by some miracle—but it hadn’t! He was drifting down like a thistle seed, hanging from the rod, which in some impossible fashion was supporting itself in midair. There was a shrill, faint whooshing sound from the two streamlined fixtures at the ends of the rod. He looked down, blinked sweat out of his eyes, looked again. Mewhu was grinning a broad and happy grin, and Molly was slack-jawed with astonishment.

  The closer he came to the ground the slower he went. When, after what seemed an eternity, he felt the blessed pressure of earth under his feet, he had to stand and pull the rod down. It yielded slowly, like an eddy current brake. Dry leaves danced and whirled under the end pieces.

  “Gee, Daddy, that was wonderful!”

  He swallowed twice to wet down his dry esophagus, and pulled his eyes back in. “Yeah. Fun,” he said weakly.

  Mewhu came and took the rod out of his hand, and dropped it. It stayed perfectly horizontal, and sank slowly down to the ground, where it lay. Mewhu pointed at it, at the tree, and grinned.

  “Just like a parachute. Oh, gee, Daddy!”

  “You keep away from it,” said Jack, familiar with youthful intonation. “Heaven knows what it is. It might go off, or something.”

  He looked fearfully at the object. It lay quietly, the hissing of the end pieces stilled. Mewhu bent suddenly and picked it up, held it over his head with one hand. Then he calmly lifted his feet and hung from it. It lowered him gently, butt first, until he sat on the ground, in a welter of dead leaves; for as soon as he picked it up, the streamlined end pieces had begun to blast again.

  “That’s the silliest thing I ever saw. Here—let me see it.” It was hovering about waist-high. He leaned over one of the ends. It had a fine round grille over it. He put out a hand. Mewhu reached out and caught his wrist, shaking his head. Apparently it was dangerous to go too near those ends. Garry suddenly saw why. They were tiny, powerful jet motors of some kind. If the jet was powerful enough to support a man’s weight, the intake must be drawing like mad—probably enough to snap a hole through a man’s hand like a giant ticket-puncher.

  But what controlled it? How was the jet strength adjusted to the weight borne by the device, and to the altitude? He remembered without pleasure that when he had fallen with it from the treetop, he had dropped quite fast, and that he went slower and slower as he approached the ground. And yet when Mewhu had held it over his head, it had borne his weight instantly and lowered him very slowly. And besides—how was it so stable? Why didn’t it turn upside down and blast itself and passenger down to earth?

  He looked at Mewhu with some increase of awe. Obviously he came from a place where the science was really advanced. He wondered if he would ever be able to get any technical information from his visitor—and if he would be able to understand it. Of course, Molly seemed to be able to—

  “He wants you to take it back and try it on the roof,” said Molly.

  “How can that refugee from a Kuttner opus help me?”

  Immediately Mewhu took the rod, lifted it, ducked under it, and slipped his arms through the two rings, so that it crossed his back like a water-bucket yoke. Peering around, he turned to face a clearing in the trees, and before their startled eyes, he leaped thirty feet in the air, drifted away in a great arc, and came gently to rest twenty yards away.

  Molly jumped up and down and clapped her hands, speechless with delight. The only words Garry could find were a reiterated, “Ah, no!” ‘

  Mewhu stood where he was, smiling his engaging smile, waiti
ng for them. They walked toward him, and when they were close, he leaped again and soared out toward the road.

  “What do you do with a thing like this?” breathed Jack. “Who do you go to, and what do you say to him?”

  “Le’s just keep him for a pet, Daddy.”

  Jack took her hand, and they followed the bounding, soaring silver man. A pet! A member of some alien race, from some unthinkable civilization—and obviously a highly trained individual, too, for no “man in the street” would have made such a trip. What was his story? Was he an advance guard? Or-—was he the sole survivor of his people? How far had he come? Mars? Venus?

  They caught up with him at the house. He was standing by the ladder. His strange rod was lying quiet on the ground. He was fascinatedly operating Molly’s yo-yo. When he saw them, he threw down the yo-yo, picked up his device, and slipping it across his shoulders, sprang high in the air and drifted down to the roof. “Eee-yu!” he said, with emphasis, and jumped off backward. So stable was the rod that, as he sank through the air, his long body swung to and fro.

  “Very nice,” said Jack. “Also spectacular. And I have to go back to work.” He went to the ladder.

  Mewhu bounded over to him, caught his arm, whimpering and whistling in his peculiar speech. He took the rod and extended it toward Jack.

  “He wants you to use it,” said Molly.

  “No, thanks,” said Jack, a trace of his tree-climbing vertigo returning to him. “I’d just as soon use the ladder.” And he put his hand out to it.

  Mewhu, hopping with frustration; reached past him and toppled the ladder. It levered over a box as it fell and struck Jack painfully on the shin.

  “I guess you better use the flyin’ belt, Daddy.”

  Jack looked at Mewhu. The silver man was looking as pleasant as he could with that kind of a face; on the other hand, it might just possibly be wise to humor him a little. Being safely on the ground to begin with, Jack felt that it might not matter if the fantastic thing wouldn’t work for him. And if it failed him over the roof—well the house wasn’t, very tall.

  He shrugged his arms through the two rings. Mewhu pointed to the roof, to Jack, made a jumping motion. Jack took a deep breath, aimed carefully, and, hoping the gadget wouldn’t work—jumped.

  He shot up close to the house—too close. The eave caught him a resounding thwack on precisely the spot where the ladder had just hit him. The impact barely checked him. He went sailing up over the roof, hovered for a breathless second, and then began to come down. For a moment he thought his flailing legs would find purchase on the far edge of the roof. He just missed it. All he managed to do was to crack the same shin, in the same place, mightily on the other eave. Trailing clouds of profanity, he landed standing—in Iris’ wash basket. Iris, just turning from the clothes line, confronted him.

  “Jack! What on earth are you ... get out of that! You’re standing right on my wash with your dirty . . . oh!”

  “Oh oh!” said Jack, and stepped backward out of the wash basket. His foot went into Molly’s express wagon, which Iris used to carry the heavy basket. To get his balance, he leaped —and immediately rose high in the air. This time his luck was better. He soared completely over the kitchen wing of the house and came to earth near Molly and Mewhu.

  “Daddy, you were just like a bird!”

  “I’m going to be just like a corpse if your mother’s expression means what I think it does.” He shucked off the “flyin’ belt” and dove into the house just as Iris rounded the corner. He heard Molly’s delighted “He went that way” as he plowed through the shambles of the living room and out the front door. As the kitchen door slammed he was rounding the house. He charged up to Mewhu, snatched the gadget from him, slipped it on and jumped. This time his judgment was faultless. He cleared the house easily although he came very near landing astride the clothesline. When Iris, panting and furious, stormed out of the house, he was busily hanging sheets.

  “Just what,” said Iris, her voice crackling at the seams, “do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just giving you a hand with the laundry, m’love,” said Jack.

  “What is that . . . that object on your back?”

  “Another evidence of the ubiquity of the devices of science-fiction,” said Jack blandly. “This is a multilateral, three-dimensional mass adjuster, or pogo-chute. With it I can fly like a gull, evading the cares of the world and the advances of beautiful redheads, at such times as their passions are distasteful to me.”

  “Sometime in the very near future, you gangling hatrack, I am going to pull the tongue out of your juke box of a head and tie a bowknot in it.” Then she laughed.

  He heaved a sigh of relief, went and kissed her. “Darling, I am sorry. I was scared silly, dangling from this thing. I didn’t see your clothes basket, and if I had I don’t know how I’d have steered clear.”

  “What is it, Jack? How does it work?”

  “I dunno. Jets on the ends. They blast hard when there’s a lot of weight pushing them toward the earth. They blast harder near the earth than up high. When the weight on them slacks off a bit, they throttle down. What makes them do it, what they are using for power—I just wouldn’t know. As far as I can see, they suck in air at the top and blow it out through the jets. And, oh yes—they point directly downward no matter which way the rod is turned.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Off a tree. It’s Mewhu’s. Apparently he used it for a parachute. On the way down, a tree branch speared through one of these rings and he slipped out of it and fell and broke his arm.”

  “What are we going to do with him, Jack?”

  “I’ve been worrying about that myself. We can’t sell him to a sideshow.” He paused, thoughtfully. “There’s no doubt that he has a lot that would be of value to humanity. Why—this thing alone would change the face of the earth! Listen—I weigh a hundred and seventy. I fell on this thing, suddenly, when I lost my grip on a tree and it bore my weight immediately. Mewhu weighs more than I do, judging from his build. It took his weight when he lifted his feet off the ground while holding it over his head. If it can do that, it or a larger version should be able, not only to drive, but to support ah aircraft. If for some reason that isn’t possible, the power of those little jets certainly could turn a turbine.”

  “Will it wash clothes?” Iris was glum.

  “That’s exactly what I mean! Light, portable, and more power than it has any right to have—of course it’ll wash clothes. And drive generators, and cars, and . . . Iris, what do you do when you have something as big as this?”

  “Call a newspaper, I guess.”

  “And have a hundred thousand people peeking and prying all over the place, and Congressional investigations, and what all? Uh . . . uh!”

  “Why not ask Harry Zinsser?”

  “Harry? I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “I never said that. It’s just that you and he go off in the corner and chatter about multitude amputation and debilities of reactance and things like that, and I have to sit, knit— and spit when I want someone’s attention. Harry’s all right.”

  “Gosh, honey, you’ve got it! Harry’ll know what to do. I’ll go right away.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind! With that hole in the roof? I thought you said you could have it patched up for the night at least. By the time you get back here it’ll be dark.”

  The prospect of sawing out the ragged hole in the roof was suddenly the least appealing thing in the world. But there was logic and an “or else” tone to what she said. He sighed and went off, mumbling something about the greatest single advance in history awaiting the whim of a woman. He forgot he was wearing Mewhu’s armpit altitudinizer, and only his first two paces were on the ground. Iris hooted with laughter at his clumsy walking on air. When he reached the ground, he set his jaw and leaped lightly up to the roof. “Catch me now, you and your piano legs,” he taunted cheerfully, ducked the lancelike clothes prop she hurled at him, and
went back to work.

  As he sawed, he was conscious of a hubbub down below.

  “Dah—dee! Mr-r-roo ellue—”

  He sighed and put down the saw. “What is it?”

  “Mewhu wants his flyin’ belt!”

  Jack looked at the roof, at the lower shed, and decided that his old bones could stand it if he had to get down without a ladder. He took the jet-tipped rod and dropped it. It stayed perfectly horizontal, falling no slower and no faster than it had when he had ridden it down. Mewhu caught it, deftly slipped his splinted arm through it—it was astonishing how careful he was of the arm, and yet how little it inconvenienced him—then the other arm, and sprang up to join Jack on the roof.

  “What do you say, fella?”