The Best of L Sprague De Camp Part 4

"It'll take all day fa me to get the candle and stuff and do that, and we gotta do something about poor Vuinon. . . ."

Brock noticed that the en-tire staff was now lined up on the catwalk. His beloved was well down the line, almost out of sight around the curve. At that angle the refraction made her look as broad as she was tall. He wondered if she'd look like that naturally after they'd been married a while. He'd known it to happen. No, he meant if they got married. You couldn't expect a girl to marry a man who lived under water.

While Sugden and Baritz still bickered, he had an idea. But how to communicate it? Then he saw a remora lying below him. He splashed to attract the attention of those above and sank down slowly. He grabbed the fish in both hands and kicked himself over to the gla.s.s. The remora's nose-or, to be exact, its undershot lower jaw -made a visible streak on the pane. He rolled over on his back and saw that he was understood; Sugden was calling for someone to go down to the floor and read his message.

His attempt at writing was hampered by the fish's vigorous efforts to escape. But he finally got scrawled on the gla.s.s in large wobbly capitals: "2 WEIGHTED STEPLADDERS-i WEIGHTED PLANK-i DRY TOWEL."

While they were getting these, he was reminded by his stomach that he'd bad no solid food for eighteen hours or thereabouts. He glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch, which, not being waterproof, had stopped. He handed it up, hoping that somebody would have the sense to dry it out and take it to a jeweler.

The stepladders were lowered into the tank. Brock set them a few feet apart and placed the plank across their tops. Then he lay on his back on the plank, his face a few inches below the surface. He dried his hands on the towel, and by c.o.c.king one leg up he could hold a pad out of water against his knee and write on it.

He explained tersely about the accident and his subsequent seizure and told what had happened chemically to his lung tissues. Then he wrote: "As this is first experiment on living organism, don't know when effect will pa.s.s if ever. Want lunch."

Baritz called to him: "Don't you want us to take the shoks out fuist?" Brock shook his head. The claims of his stomach were imperious, and he had a vague hope of solving his problem without disturbing the fish. Then too, though he'd have hated to admit it, he knew that everybody knew that the sharks weren't man-eaters, and he didn't want to seem afraid of them. Even a sensible man like Vernon Brock will succ.u.mb to a touch of bravado in the presence of his woman, actual or potential.

He relaxed, thinking. Sugden was ordering the staff back to its work. Dumville had to leave, but promised to be back. By and by the faithful Baritz appeared with what Brock hoped was food. Brock's position struck him as an uncomfortable one for eating, so he rolled off the plank and stood on the bottom of the tank. Then he couldn't reach the surface with his hand. Baritz thrust a lamb chop on the end of a stick down to him. He reached for it-and was knocked aside by a glancing blow from something heavy and sandpapery. The lamb chop was gone-or not quite gone; the larger shark had it over in a corner. The shark's jaws worked, and the bone sank slowly to the bottom, minus its meat.

Baritz looked helplessly at Sugden. "We betta not try meat again- those shok can smell it, and they might get dangerous if we got them wuiked up."

"Guess we'll have to get the net and haul them out," said Sugden. "I don't see how he could eat mashed potatoes under water."

Brock swam up and went through the motions of peeling and eating a banana. After Baritz had made a trip for bananas Brock satisfied his hunger, though he found that swallowing food without getting a stomachful of salt water required a bit of practice.

The crowd in front of the tank was larger, if anything. The little man with the wry nose was still there. His scrutiny made Brock vaguely uneasy. He'd always wondered what a fish on exhibit felt like, and now, by George, he knew.

If he could get out and do a few months' research, he might be able to find how to counteract the effect of the lung gas. But how could he perform experiments from where he was? Maybe he could give directions and have somebody else carry them out. That would be awkward, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life as an exhibit, loyal as he was to the Aquarium. A better idea might be to rig up some sort of diver's helmet to wear out of water with the water inside-if he couki find a way of oxygenating the water.

Baritz appeared again and put his head down close to the water. "Hey, Vuinon!" he said, "G.o.d's coming down here!"

Brock was interested, though not by the theological aspects of the statement G.o.d, better known as J. Roosevelt 'Whitney, was the president of the New York Zoological Society, and the boss of Mmnegerode, the director of the Aquarium (in Bermuda at the moment). Minnegerode was Sugden's boss. G.o.d, the head of this hierarchy, owned among other things a bank and a half, ~i% of a railroad, and the finest walrus mustache in Greater New York.

Baritz put on his child-frightening grin. "Say, Vuinon, I just thought. We can advatise you as the only muimaid in captivity!"

Brock throttled an impulse to pull his helper into the tank, and motioned for his pad. He wrote: "The male of 'mermaid' is 'merman,' you ape!"

"Okay, a muiman, unless the gas changed more than ya lungs. Oh, good aftanoon, Mista Whitney. Here he is in this tank. Anything I can do, Mista Whitney?"

The famous mustache floated above the water like a diving seagull. "How ah you, my deah boy? Ah you making out all right? Don't you think we'd bettah get the sharks out right away? They're perfectly harmless, of course, of course, but you might accidentally jostle one and get nipped, ha-ha."

Brock, who at thirty-two was pleased rather than irked at being called "my boy," nodded. J. R. started to get to his feet not noticing that one foot was planted on Brock's rolled-up ap.r.o.n, while the toe of the other was caught in it. Brock received a tremendous impact of sound and current and through the sudden cloud of bubbles saw J. R.'s ma.s.sive rear descending on him. He caught the man and shoved him up. As the s.h.i.+ny pink head cleared the surface, he heard a terrified scream of "Glugg-blubb-Oh Cod, get me out! The sharks! Get me out, I say!" Brock boosted and Baritz and Sugden heaved. The dripping deity receded down the catwalk, to Brock's distorted vision broadening to something like a Daily Worker cartoon of Capital. He wished he knew whether J. R. would be angry or whether he'd be grateful for the boost. If he inquired about the ap.r.o.n it might be embarra.s.sing.

The cold was biting Brock's innards, and the bananas seemed to have turned into billiard b.a.l.l.s in his stomach. The little man with the nose was still there, although it was nearly closing time. Brock climbed onto his plank and wrote directions: "Raise temperature of feed water slowly. Get me thermometer. Will signal when temperature is right. Should be about ~o F. Run more air lines into tank to make up for lowering oxygen saturation point. Put sharks in reserve tank for present; warmth might harm them, and I need all oxygen in tank."

By 9 P.M. all was done. The tearful Miss Engholm had been shooed away. Baritz volunteered to spend the night, which proved the most uncomfortable of Brock's experience. He couldn't sleep because of the constant muscular effort required to work his lungs. He tried to think his way out of the mess, but his thoughts became more and more confused. He began to imagine things: that the little man with the nose had been there for no good, for instance. Just what, he couldn't think, but he was sure it was something. Again and again he wondered what time it was. At first he aroused Baritz to tell him at intervals, but toward 2 o'clock Sam went to sleep on the catwalk, and Brock hadn't the heart to awaken him.

G.o.d, would the night never end? Well, what if it did? Would he be any better off? He doubted it. He looked at his hands, at the skin of his fingers swollen and wrinkled by soaking. A crazy idea grew on him with the force of an obsession. His hands would turn into fins. He'd grow scales.

It was getting light. Then all these people would come back to torment him. Yes, and the little man with the nose. The little man would put a worm on a hook and catch him and eat him for supper. .

Under sufficiently strange circ.u.mstances the human mind is often thrown out of gear and spins ineffectually without definite relations.h.i.+p to external things. Perhaps that is because of a weakness in the structure of the mind, or perhaps it is a provision by nature to disconnect it to avoid stripped gears when the load is too heavy.

People were coming in; it must be after 9 o'clock. People on the catwalk overhead were talking, but he couldn't understand them. His lungs weren't working right. Or rather his gill. But that was wrong. He was a fish, wasn't he? Then what could be wrong with them? All these people who had it in for him must have turned off the oxygen. No, the air lines were still shooting their streams of tiny bubbles into the tank. Then why this suffocating feeling? He knew; that wasn't air in the air lines; it was pure nitrogen or helium or something. They were trying to fool him. Oh G.o.d, if he could only breathe! Maybe he had the fish's equivalent of asthma. Fish came to the surface and gulped sometimes; he'd try that. But he couldn't; his experiences of the preceding day had given him a conditioned reflex against sticking his head out, which his shattered reason was unable to overcome.

Was he going to die? Too bad, when he had been going to marry Miss Engholm and all. But he couldn't have married her anyway. He was a fish. The female fish lays her eggs, and then the male fish comes along and . . . His face twisted in an insane grin at the grotesque thought that struck him.

He was dying. He had to get oxygen. Why not go through the gla.s.s? But no, any intelligent fish knew better than to try to make holes in the gla.s.s. Then he saw the little man with the nose, standing and staring as he had yesterday. He thought, you'll never catch me on a hook and eat me for supper; you piscicide; I'm going to get you first. He fished out his jackknife and attacked the pane. A long scratch appeared on it, then another, and another. The gla.s.s sang softly. The people behind the little man were moving back nervously, but the little man still stood there. The song of the gla.s.s rose up-up-up. . .

The gla.s.s, with a final ping, gave and several tons of green water flung themselves into the concourse. For a fleeting second Brock, knife in hand, seemed to be flying toward the little man. Then the iron railing in front of the tank came up and hit his head.

He had a vague sense of lying on a wet floor, while a foot from his ringing head a stranded remora flopped helplessly. .

He was lying in bed, and Sugden was sitting beside him smoking. The old man said: "Lucky you didn't get a fractured skull. But maybe it was a good thing. It put you out during the critical period when your lungs were changing back to normal. They'd have had to dope you anyway, out of your head as you were."

"I'll say I was out of my head! Wait till I see your friend Dumville; I'll be able to describe a brand-new psychosis to him."

"He's a physiologist," replied Sugden, "not a psychologist. But he'll want to see you just the same.

"The doctor tells me you'll be out tomorrow, so I guess you're well enough to talk business. J. R. didn't mind the ducking, even after the exhibition he made of himself. But there's something more serious. Perhaps you noticed a small man with a crooked nose in front of the tank while you were there?"

"Did I notice him!"

"Well, you nearly drowned him when you let the water out of the tank. And he's going to sue us for damages-way up in five or six figures. You know what that means."

Brock nodded glumly. "I'll say I do. It means that I don't get your job when you retire next winter. And then I can't get ma- Never mind. Who is this little guy? A professional accident faker?"

"No; we investigated him. He was a trapeze artist in a circus until recently; he says he was getting too old for that work, but he didn't know any other. Then he hurt his back in a fall, and he's been on relief since. He just came in to watch you because he had nothing else to do."

"I see." Brock thought. "Say, I have an idea. Nurse! Hey, NURSE! My clothes! I'm going out!"

"No, you're not," said Sugden firmly. "Not till the doc says you can. That'll only be tomorrow, and then you can try out your idea. And I hope," he added grimly, "that it's better than the last one."

Two days later Brock knocked on Sugden's door. He knew that Sugden and J. R. were in there, and he could guess what they were talking about. But he had no fears.

"Morning, Mr. Whitney," he said.

"Oh-ah-yes, my deah boy. We were just talking about this most unfortunate-ah-"

"If you mean the suit, that's off."

"What?"

"Sure, I fixed it. Mr. Oscar Daly, the plaintiff, and I are going into a kind of partners.h.i.+p."

"Partners?"

"Yes, to exploit my discovery of lung conversion. I supply the technique so that he can exhibit himself in circuses as Oscar the Merman. He dopes himself with my gas and parks in a tank. Our only problem is the period when the effect of the gas wears off and the lungs return to normal. That, I think, can be licked by the use of any of several anesthetic drugs that slow down the metabolism. So, when the human fish begins to feel funny, he injects himself and pa.s.ses out peacefully, while his a.s.sistants fish him out and wring the water out of his lungs. There are a few technical details to work out on my alligators yet, but that'll be all right. I'll wear a gas mask. Of course," he added virtuously, "any monetary returns from the use of the process will go to the Zoological Society. Oscar says to send your lawyer over any time and he'll sign a release."

"Why, that's fine," said Whitney, "that's splendid, my boy. It makes a big difference." He looked significantly at Sugden.

"Thanks," said Brock. "And now, if you'll excuse me, Sam and I have some fish to s.h.i.+ft. So long, cheerio, and I hope you drop in often, Mr. Whitney." He went out, whistling.

"Oh, Vernon!" the head aquarist called after him. "Tomorrow's Sunday, and I'm driving my family out to Jones Beach. Like to come along for a swim?"

Brock stuck his grinning head back in. "Thanks a lot, Clyde, but I'm afraid I might carelessly take a deep breath under water. To be honest, the mere idea gives me the horrors. I've had enough swimming to last me the rest of my natural life!"

EMPLOYMENT.

R. F. D. No.

Carriesville, Indiana August 28, 1960

Dear George: Thanks for your information on the State Geological Survey, and for those civil service blanks. rye already sent them in.

If I land the job you'll probably be my boss, so you're ent.i.tled to an explanation of why I want to leave a well-paying private job and go to work for the state.

As you know, I was working for Lucifer Oil in x9g7 when the depression hit, and pretty quick I was out of a job, and with a family to support. Through one of the journals I got in touch with Gil Platt, my present employer, who was looking for an experienced geologist. You've probably heard of him-he started out in paleontology, but never worked ttp very high in that field because he was temperamentally unable to work under anybody. Then he took to inventing Prospecting devices, and for twenty years he's been as busy as a cat on fly paper, developing and patenting his gadgets and pursuing his paleo on the side. All the money he made in prospector royalties went into paleo expeditions and into litigation. In time he acc.u.mulated outstanding collections of patents, lawsuits pertaining thereto, and fossils.

About 1956 the Linvald Fund decided he'd done such good work as to deserve a little financial elbow room, and put him on their list. He'd designed a new prospector that looked quite wonderful, but that would take time and money to reduce to practice. So those monthly checks from Oslo were welcome.

Mrs. Staples and I were sorry to leave California for Indiana, both of us being natives of San Francisco, but in our business you can't be finicky about where you work.

I worked with Platt for about six months before we were ready to try it out. I'm not revealing any secrets by saying that it works by supersonic wave charting, like the old McCann prospector. The distinctive feature is that, by using two intersecting beams, Platt gets a stereoscopic effect and can chart the major discontinuities at any distance underground that he wants.

We tried it first mounted on a truck. We would set it for, say, two yards below the surface and buzz down the road to Fort Wayne- The truck purred down the outside lane of the concrete at a steady fifteen miles an hour. Car after car swung to the inside lane and buzzed past, honking. Kenneth Staples, at the wheel, leaned back and shouted through the opening in the back of the cab: "Hey, Gil! Haven't we about reached the end of that strip?"

Something in the way of an affirmative floated back into the cab. Staples ran the truck off the concrete, stopped it, and went around to the rear. He was a big, hard-looking, rather ugly man, on whom the elements had stamped a look of more than his thirty-five years. Under his stiff-brimmed engineer's hat he was very bald. He wore a hat whenever decency permitted. Men who go prematurely bald have, perhaps, a slightly greater tendency than others to select outdoor careers, or to join the army, where hats are kept on heads.

Inside the truck, a smaller, gray-haired man was bending over a machine. The top part of the machine included a long strip of graph paper carried over spools. Above the paper was poised a rank of little vertical pens. While the truck moved, these pens dropped down at intervals to make dots on the paper as it was reeled under them. The dots made irregular outlines and patterns.

Gilmore Platt said: "C'mere, Ken, and see what you think of this. I know what it is but I can't think."

Staples stared at the dots. "Looks to me like the outline of a piece out of a jigsaw puzzle."

"No. No. It isn't-I know what it is! It's a section of a skull! One of the Fe1id~, probably FelLi atrox, from the size. We'll have to dig it up!"

"That squiggle? Well, maybe. You're the paleo man. But you can't go digging holes in a State highway just because there's a fossil lion buried under it."

"But, Ken, a beautiful thing like that-"

"Take it easy, Gil. This little Pleistocene overlay runs back to your place. If we run the truck around your grounds for a few hours we ought to be able to find some fossils."

"It's a rodent. I thought it was a bear at first from the size of the skull, but now I see those front teeth."

"Right so far. But what rodent?"

Staples frowned at the little heap of bones beside the pit. "Seems to me the only North American rodent that size was the giant beaver, Castoroides."

"Fine! Fine! I'll make a paleontologist out of you yet. What's this bone?"

"Scapula."

"Right. That's easy though. This one?"

"Uh. . . humerus."

"No, ulna. But you're doing pretty well. Too bad there isn't more of this one. I think we've about cleaned it out. Do you realize what this means? Hitherto we've been confined to surface indications in barren country. Now we can ignore the surface and locate all the fossils in a given area within fifteen or twenty feet of it! Only that truck won't do. We need something to carry the prospector cross country. An airplane would fly too high and too fast. I have it, a blimp I"

"Yeah?" Staples looked a trifle startled. "Seems to me like a lot to spend on applying a new device. But it's the Fund's money, not mine."

In due course Platt took delivery on the Goodyear Company's good s.h.i.+p Darwin. After we learned how to fly it, we covered most of Indiana in a couple of months, and had located more fossils than we could dig up in fifty years. We made out a checklist of their locations and sent copies to all the museums and universities in the country. For the rest of the summer Indiana was one big bone hunters' convention. If you took a drive into the country, the chances were that you'd pa.s.s a field in which a couple of tough-looking parties were arguing with a farmer, and you'd know that they were probably paleontologists from the Field Museum or the University of California d.i.c.kering with the owner of the field for permission to dig. Though Indiana isn't a very rich state as far as fossil ver tebrates go. It's mostly Paleozoic with a little Pleistocene scattered around on top.

A friend of Platt's, a Dr. Wilhelmi of Zurich, arrived for a weekend. He was an archeologist and a dignified man. Staples felt a certain sympathy for him because he had even less hair than the geologist.

This Wilhelmi had been working in Anatolia, where he had found a carload of relics dating back to Tiridates the Great.

"You see, my fwiends," he explained, "they were mostly vessels and such of bwonze. Here is a picture of one as we found it. It is so corroded that it is nothing but a lump of oxide. Now, here is a picture of that one after we westored it by the anode pwocess."

"Say," said Staples, "are you sure that's the same one? The thing in the second picture looks like it was just fresh out of the shop."

"Ha-ha, that is witty. Yes, it is the same. We place it in an electwolytic bath, connected to one of the poles, and wun a current thwough. So all the copper and tin atoms in the oxide cwawl back to their pwoper places. It is quite wonderful to see."

After the Swiss gentleman had left, Platt went to Chicago for a consultation with his patent attorney. He returned looking thoughtful.

"Ken," he said, "let's play hooky for a few days."

Staples looked at him with a wary eye. "I suppose you mean to drop the prospector and work on your fossils for a while?"

"That's it exactly."

Thus it happened that the following day found them in the shop breaking a young Hyracodon-small hornless rhinoceros-out of its matrix. Staples remarked on what a dull piece the work was from a zoological point of view, compared to what it had been in times past.

"To some extent, yes," replied Platt. "Hand me the sh.e.l.lac, please. Though there may be a few whales left that haven't been turned into margarine and gun oil. We're living at the close of one of the many periodic extinctions of the larger forms. The only places you can find a fauna comparable with those of the Pleistocene is on a few preserves in Africa. And with our own bloodthirsty species infesting the earth, it's getting worse all the time. Hm-m-m. The left clavicle and left radius seem to be missing." He carefully chipped slivers of sandstone away with his needle. Being much more of a talker than his a.s.sistant, he continued: "I have an idea which, if it works, may do much to relieve the drabness of our present faun~. You heard Wilhelmi tell about restoring oxidized metal by the anode process. Well, why couldn't we work something like that on fossils?"

"You mean to grow a complete animal, hair and all, from a skeleton?"

"Why not? You know what extraordinary things they do in medicine nowadays-growing arms and legs on people who have lost their own."

"With all due respect, my dear employer, I think you're screwbox."