The Third Science Fiction Megapack Read online

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Cover artwork copyright © 2011 by Andrew Doran / Fotolia.

  “The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity,” by Fritz Leiber, originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Copyright © 1962 by Mercury Press.

  “Time Bum,” by C.M. Kornbluth, originally appeared in Fantastic, January/February 1953. Copyright © 1953 by C.M. Kornbluth.

  “The Human Equations,” by Dave Creek, originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2002. Copyright © 2002 by Dave Creek. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Gun,” by Philip K. Dick, originally appeared in Planet Stories, September 1952.

  “Not Stupid Enough,” by George H. Scithers, originally appaered in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, May 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Conde Nast. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

  “Jackpot,” by E.C. Tubb, copyright © 1962, 2004 by E.C. Tubb. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

  “The Killing Streets,” by Colin Harvey, originally appeared in Interzone. Copyright 2009 by Colin Harvey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Moon Dive,” by Sydney J. Bounds, copyright © 2003 by Sydney J. Bounds. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

  “Charon’s Curse,” by John Glasby Copyright © 2004 by John Glasby. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

  “The Hunted Heroes,” by Robert Silverberg, originally appeared in Amazing Stories September 1956.

  “Night of the Squealers,” by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin, originally appeared in Punktown: Third Eye. Copyright 2004 by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

  “Chaos,” by John Russell Fearn, is reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

  “And Happiness Everlasting,” by Gerald Warfield, originally appeared in Timelines: Stories Inspired by HG Wells’ The Time Machine. Copyright © 2011 by Gerald Warfield. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The 7th Order,” by Jerry Sohl, originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952.

  “Monkey on his Back,” by Charles V. De Vet, originally appeared in Galaxy magazine, June 1960.

  “The Calm Man,” by Frank Belknap Long, originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, May 1954.

  “Alien Still Life,” by John Gregory Betancourt, is copyright © 2012 by John Gregory Betancourt. In very different form, parts of it are incorporated in the opening chapters of his novel Pacifica (cowritten with Linda E. Bushyager).

  “A Question of Courage,” by J. F. Bone, originally appeared in Amazing Stories, December 1960.

  “Angels and Moths” by Costi Gurgu, originally appeared in Ages of Wonder. Copyright © 2009 by Constantinos Gurgu. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Second Landing,” by Murray Leinster, originally appeared in Thrilling Wonder, Winter 1954. Copyright © 1953 by Standard Magazines, Inc.

  “The Einstein-Rosen Hunter-Gatherer Society,” by George S. Walker, originally appeared in Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly #8 (April 2008). Copyright © 2008 by George S. Walker. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Wind,” by Charles L. Fontenay, originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, April 1959.

  “Star Mother,” by Robert F. Young, originally appeared in Amazing Stories, January 1959.

  “The Sky Is Falling,” by Lester Del Rey, originally appeared in Galaxy. Copyright © 1954, 1963 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.

  THE MAN WHO MADE FRIENDS WITH ELECTRICITY, by Fritz Leiber

  When Mr. Scott showed Peak House to Mr. Leverett, he hoped he wouldn’t notice the high-tension pole outside the bedroom window, because it had twice before queered promising rentals—so many elderly people were foolishly nervous about electricity. There was nothing to be done about the pole except try to draw prospective tenants’ attention away from it—electricity follows the hilltops and these lines supplied more than half of the juice used in Pacific Knolls.

  But Mr. Scott’s prayers and suave misdirections were in vain—Mr. Leverett’s sharp eyes lit on the “negative feature” the instant they stepped out on the patio. The old New Englander studied the short thick wooden column, the 18-inch ridged glass insulators, the black transformer box that stepped down voltage for this house and a few others lower on the slope. His gaze next followed the heavy wires swinging off rhythmically four abreast across the empty gray-green hills. Then he cocked his head as his ears caught the low but steady frying sound, varying from a crackle to a buzz, of electrons leaking off the wires through the air.

  “Listen to that!” Mr. Leverett said, his dry voice betraying excitement for the first time in the tour. “Fifty thousand volts if there’s five! A power of power!”

  “Must be unusual atmospheric conditions today—normally you can’t hear a thing,” Mr. Scott responded lightly, twisting the truth a little.

  “You don’t say?” Mr. Leverett commented, his voice dry again, but Mr. Scott knew better than to encourage conversation about a negative feature. “I want you to notice this lawn,” he launched out heartily. “When the Pacific Knolls Golf Course was subdivided, the original owner of Peak House bought the entire eighteenth green and—”

  For the rest of the tour Mr. Scott did his state-certified real estate broker’s best, which in Southern California is no mean performance, but Mr. Leverett seemed a shade perfunctory in the attention he accorded it. Inwardly Mr. Scott chalked up another defeat by the damn pole.

  On the quick retrace, however, Mr. Leverett insisted on their lingering on the patio. “Still holding out,” he remarked about the buzz with an odd satisfaction. “You know, Mr. Scott, that’s a restful sound to me. Like wind or a brook or the sea. I hate the clatter of machinery—that’s the other reason I left New England—but this is like a sound of nature. Downright soothing. But you say it comes seldom?”

  Mr. Scott was flexible—it was one of his great virtues as a salesman.

  “Mr. Leverett,” he confessed simply, “I’ve never stood on this patio when I didn’t hear that sound. Sometimes it’s softer, sometimes louder, but it’s always there. I play it down, though, because most people don’t care for it.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Mr. Leverett said. “Most people are a pack of fools or worse. Mr. Scott, are any of the people in the neighboring houses Communists to your knowledge?”

  “No, sir!” Mr. Scott responded without an instant’s hesitation. “There’s not a Communist in Pacific Knolls. And that’s something, believe me, I’d never shade the truth on.”

  “Believe you,” Mr. Leverett said. “The east’s packed with Communists. Seem scarcer out here. Mr. Scott, you’ve made yourself a deal. I’m taking a year’s lease on Peak House as furnished and at the figure we last mentioned.”

  “Shake on it!” Mr. Scott boomed. “Mr. Leverett, you’re the kind of person Pacific Knolls wants.”

  They shook. Mr. Leverett rocked on his heels, smiling up at the softly crackling wires with a satisfaction that was already a shade possessive.

  “Fascinating thing, electricity,” he said. “No end to the tricks it can do or you can do with it. For instance, if a man wanted to take off for elsewhere in an elegant flash, he’d only have to wet down the lawn good and take twenty-five foot of heavy copper wire in his two bare hands and whip the other end of it over those lines. Whang! Every bit as good as Sing Sing and a lot more satisfying to a man’s inner needs.”

  Mr. Scott experienced a severe though momentary sinking of heart and even for one wildly frivolous moment considered welshing on the verbal agreement he’d just made. He remembered the red-haired lady who’d rented an apartmen
t from him solely to have a quiet place in which to take an overdose of barbiturates. Then he reminded himself that Southern California is, according to a wise old saw, the home (actual or aimed-at) of the peach, the nut and the prune; and while he’d had few dealings with real or would-be starlets, he’d had enough of crackpots and retired grouches. Even if you piled fanciful death wishes and a passion for electricity atop rabid anti-communist and anti-machine manias, Mr. Leverett’s personality was no more than par for the S. Cal. course.

  Mr. Leverett said shrewdly, “You’re worrying now, aren’t you, I might be a suicider? Don’t. Just like to think my thoughts. Speak them out too, however peculiar.”

  Mr. Scott’s last fears melted and he became once more his pushingly congenial self as he invited Mr. Leverett down to the office to sign the papers.

  Three days later he dropped by to see how the new tenant was making out and found him in the patio ensconced under the buzzing pole in an old rocker.

  “Take a chair and sit,” Mr. Leverett said, indicating one of the tubular modern pieces. “Mr. Scott, I want to tell you I’m finding Peak House every bit as restful as I hoped. I listen to the electricity and let my thoughts roam. Sometimes I hear voices in the electricity—the wires talking, as they say. You’ve heard of people who hear voices in the wind?”

  “Yes, I have,” Mr. Scott admitted a bit uncomfortably and then, recalling that Mr. Leverett’s check for the first quarter’s rent was safely cleared, was emboldened to speak his own thoughts. “But wind is a sound that varies a lot. That buzz is pretty monotonous to hear voices in.”

  “Pshaw,” Mr. Leverett said with a little grin that made it impossible to tell how seriously he meant to be taken. “Bees are highly intelligent insects, entomologists say they even have a language, yet they do nothing but buzz. I hear voices in the electricity.”

  He rocked silently for a while after that and Mr. Scott sat.

  “Yep, I hear voices in the electricity,” Mr. Leverett said dreamily. “Electricity tells me how it roams the forty-eight states—even the forty-ninth by way of Canadian power lines. Electricity goes everywhere today—into our homes, every room of them, into our offices, into government buildings and military posts. And what it doesn’t learn that way it overhears by the trace of it that trickles through our phone lines and over our air waves. Phone electricity’s the little sister of power electricity, you might say, and little pitchers have big ears. Yep, electricity knows everything about us, our every last secret. Only it wouldn’t think of telling most people what it knows, because they believe electricity is a cold mechanical force. It isn’t—it’s warm and pulsing and sensitive and friendly underneath, like any other live thing.”

  Mr. Scott, feeling a bit dreamy himself now, thought what good advertising copy that would make—imaginative stuff, folksy but poetic.

  “And electricity’s got a mite of viciousness too,” Mr. Leverett continued. “You got to tame it. Know its ways, speak it fair, show no fear, make friends with it. Well now, Mr. Scott,” he said in a brisker voice, standing up, “I know you’ve come here to check up on how I’m caring for Peak House. So let me give you the tour.”

  And in spite of Mr. Scott’s protests that he had no such inquisitive intention, Mr. Leverett did just that.

  Once he paused for an explanation: “I’ve put away the electric blanket and the toaster. Don’t feel right about using electricity for menial jobs.”

  As far as Mr. Scott could see, he had added nothing to the furnishings of Peak House beyond the rocking chair and a large collection of Indian arrow heads.

  Mr. Scott must have talked about the latter when he got home, for a week later his nine-year-old son said to him, “Hey, Dad, you know that old guy you unloaded Peak House onto?”

  “Rented is the only proper expression, Bobby.”

  “Well, I went up to see his arrow heads. Dad, it turns out he’s a snake-charmer!”

  Dear God, thought Mr. Scott, I knew there was going to be something really impossible about Leverett. Probably likes hilltops because they draw snakes in hot weather.

  “He didn’t charm a real snake, though, Dad, just an old extension cord. He squatted down on the floor—this was after he showed me those crumby arrow heads—and waved his hands back and forth over it and pretty soon the end with the little box on it started to move around on the floor and all of a sudden it lifted up, like a cobra out of a basket. It was real spooky!”

  “I’ve seen that sort of trick,” Mr. Scott told Bobby. “There’s a fine thread attached to the end of the wire pulling it up.”

  “I’d have seen a thread, Dad.”

  “Not if it were the same color as the background,” Mr. Scott explained. Then he had a thought. “By the way Bobby, was the other end of the cord plugged in?”

  “Oh it was, Dad! He said he couldn’t work the trick unless there was electricity in the cord. Because you see, Dad, he’s really an electricity-charmer. I just said snake-charmer to make it more exciting. Afterwards we went outside and he charmed electricity down out of the wires and made it crawl all over his body. You could see it crawl from part to part.”

  “But how could you see that?” Mr. Scott demanded, struggling to keep his voice casual. He had a vision of Mr. Leverett standing dry and sedate, entwined by glimmering blue serpents with flashing diamond eyes and fangs that sparked.

  “By the way it would make his hair stand on end, Dad. First on one side of his head, then on the other. Then he said, ‘Electricity, crawl down my chest,’ and a silk handkerchief hanging out of his top pocket stood out stiff and sharp. Dad, it was almost as good as the Museum of Science and Industry!”

  Next day Mr. Scott dropped by Peak House, but he got no chance to ask his carefully thought-out questions, for Mr. Leverett greeted him with, “Reckon your boy told you about the little magic show I put on for him yesterday. I like children, Mr. Scott. Good Republican children like yours, that is.”

  “Why yes, he did,” Mr. Scott admitted, disarmed and a bit flustered by the other’s openness.

  “I only showed him the simplest tricks, of course. Kid stuff.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Scott echoed. “I guessed you must have used a fine thread to make the extension cord dance.”

  “Reckon you know all the answers, Mr. Scott,” the other said, his eyes flashing. ‘But come across to the patio and sit for a while.”

  The buzzing was quite loud that day, yet after a bit Mr. Scott had to admit to himself that it was a restful sound. And it had more variety than he’d realized—mounting crackles, fading sizzles, hisses, hums, clicks, sighs. If you listened to it long enough, you probably would begin to hear voices.

  Mr. Leverett, silently rocking, said, “Electricity tells me about all the work it does and all the fun it has—dances, singing, big crackling band concerts, trips to the stars, foot races that make rockets seem like snails. Worries, too. You know that electric breakdown they had in New York? Electricity told me why. Some of its folks went crazy—overwork, I guess—and just froze. It was a while before they could send others in from outside New York and heal the crazy ones and start them moving again through the big copper web. Electricity tells me it’s fearful the same thing’s going to happen in Chicago and San Francisco. Too much pressure.

  “Electricity doesn’t mind working for us. It’s generous-hearted and it loves its job. But it would be grateful for a little more consideration—a little more recognition of its special problems.

  “It’s got its savage brothers to contend with, you see the wild electricity that rages in storms and haunts the mountaintops and comes down to hunt and kill. Not civilized like the electricity in the wires, though it will be some day.

  “For civilized electricity’s a great teacher. Shows us how to live clean and in unity and brother-love. Power fails one place, electricity’s rushing in from everywhere to fill the gap. Serves Georgia same as Vermont, Los Angeles same as Boston. Patriotic too—only revealed its greatest secrets to true-blue Amer
icans like Edison and Franklin. Did you know it killed a Swede when he tried that kite trick? Yep, electricity’s the greatest power for good in all the U.S.A.”

  Mr. Scott thought sleepily of what a neat little electricity cult Mr. Leverett could set up, every bit as good as Science of Mind or Krishna Venta or the Rosicrucians. He could imagine the patio full of earnest seekers while Krishna Leverett—or maybe High Electro Leverett—dispensed wisdom from his rocker, interpreting the words of the humming wires. Better not suggest it, though—in Southern California such things had a way of coming true.

  Mr. Scott felt quite easy at heart as he went down the hill, though he did make a point of telling Bobby not to bother Mr. Leverett any more.

  But the prohibition didn’t apply to himself. During the next months Mr. Scott made a point of dropping in at Peak House from time to time for a dose of “electric wisdom.” He came to look forward to these restful, amusingly screwy breaks in the hectic round. Mr. Leverett appeared to do nothing whatever except sit in his rocker in the patio, yet stayed happy and serene. There was a lesson for anybody in that, if you thought about it.

  Occasionally Mr. Scott spotted amusing side effects of Mr. Leverett’s eccentricity. For instance, although he sometimes let the gas and water bills go, he always paid up phone and electricity on the dot.

  And the newspapers eventually did report short but severe electric breakdowns in Chicago and San Francisco. Smiling a little frowningly at the coincidences, Mr. Scott decided he could add fortune-telling to the electricity cult he’d imaged for Mr. Leverett. “Your life’s story foretold in the wires!”—more novel, anyway, than crystal balls or Talking with God.

  Only once did the touch of the gruesome, that had troubled Mr. Scott in his first conversation with Mr. Leverett, come briefly back, when the old man chuckled and observed, “Recall what I told you about whipping a copper wire up there? I’ve thought of a simpler way, just squirt the hose at those H-T lines in a hard stream, gripping the metal nozzle. Might be best to use the hot water and throw a box of salt in the heater first.” When Mr. Scott heard that he was glad that he’d warned Bobby against coming around.