The Fredric Brown Megapack (17 page)

III

Milton Hale, Ph.D., eminent physicist, had finished broadcasting and the program was off the air.

“Thank you very much, Dr. Hale,” said the radio announcer. The yellow light went on and stayed. The mike was dead. “Uh—your check will be waiting for you at the window. You—uh—know where.”

“I know where,” said the physicist. He was a rotund, jolly-looking little man. With his busy white beard he resembled a pocket edition of Santa Claus. His eyes winkled, and he smoked a short stubby pipe.

He left the soundproof studio and walked briskly down the hall to the cashier’s window. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said to the girl on duty there. “I think you have two checks for Dr. Hale.”

“You are Dr. Hale?”

“I sometimes wonder,” said the little man. “But I carry identification that seems to prove it.”

“Two checks?”

“Two checks. Both for the same broadcast, by special arrangement. By the wav, there is an excellent revue at the Mabry Theater this evening.”

“Is there? Yes, here are your checks, Dr. Hale. One for seventy-five and one for twenty-five. Is that correct?”

“Gratifyingly correct. Now about that revue at the Mabry?”

“If you wish, I’ll call my husband and ask him about it,” said the girl. “He’s the doorman over there.”

Dr. Hale sighed deeply, but his eyes still twinkled. “I think he’ll agree,” he said. “Here are the tickets, my dear, and you can take him. I find that I have work to do this evening.”

The girl’s eyes widened, but she took the tickets.

Dr. Hale went into the phone booth and called home. His home, and Dr. Hale, were both run by his elder sister. “Agatha, I must remain at the office this evening,” he said.

“Milton, you know that you can work just as well in your study here at home. I heard your broadcast, Milton. It was wonderful.”

“It was sheer balderdash, Agatha. Utter rot. What did I say?”

“Why, you said that—uh—that the stars were—I mean, you were not—”

“Exactly, Agatha. My idea was to avert panic on the part of the populace. If I’d told them the truth, they’d have worried. But by being smug and scientific, I let them get the idea that everything was—uh—under control. Do you know, Agatha, what I mean by the parallelism of an entropy-gradient?”

“Why—not exactly.”

“Neither did I.”

“Milton, tell me, have you been drinking?”

“Not y— No, I haven’t. I really can’t come home to work this evening, Agatha, I’m using my study at the university, because I must have access to the library there, for reference. And the star-charts.”

“But, Milton, how about that money for your broadcast? You know it isn’t safe for you to have money in your pocket, especially when you’re feeling like this.”

“It isn’t money, Agatha: It’s a check, and I’ll mail it to you before I go to the office. I won’t cash it myself. How’s that?”

“Well—if you must have access to the library, I suppose you must. Good-bye, Milton.”

* * * *

Dr. Hale went across the street to the drug store. There he bought a stamp and envelope and cashed the twenty-five dollar check. The seventy-five dollar one he put into the envelope and mailed.

Standing beside the mailbox, he glanced up at the early evening sky—shuddered, and hastily lowered his eyes. He took the straightest possible line for the nearest double Scotch.

“Y’ain’t been in for a long time, Dr. Hale,” said Mike, the bartender.

“That I haven’t, Mike. Pour me another.”

“Sure. On the house, this time. We had your broadcast tuned in on the radio just now. It was swell.”

“Yes.”

“It sure was. I was kind of worried what was happening up there, with my son an aviator and all. But as long as you scientific guys know what it’s all about, I guess it’s all right. That was sure a good speech, Doc. But there’s one question I’d like to ask you.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Dr. Hale.

“These stars. They’re moving, going somewhere. But where are they going? I mean, like you said, if they are.”

“There’s no way of telling that, exactly, Mike.”

“Aren’t they moving in a straight line, each one of them?” For just a moment the celebrated scientist hesitated.

“Well—yes and no, Mike. According to spectroscopic analysis, they’re maintaining the same distance from us, each one of them. So they’re really moving—if they’re moving—in circles around us. But the circles are straight, as it were. I mean, it seems that we’re in the center of those circles, so the stars that are moving aren’t coming closer to us or receding.”

“You could draw lines for those circles?”

“On a star-globe, yes. It’s been done. They all seem to be heading for a certain area of the sky, but not for a given point. They don’t intersect.”

“What part of the sky they going to?”

“Approximately between Ursa Major and Leo, Mike. The ones farthest from there are moving fastest, the ones nearest are moving slower. But darn you, Mike, I came in here to forget about stars, not to talk about them. Give me another.”

“In a minute, Doc. When they get there, are they going to stop or keep on going?”

“How the devil do I know, Mike? They started suddenly, all at the same time, and with full original velocity—I mean, they started out at the same speed they’re going now—without warming up, so to speak—so I suppose they could stop as unexpectedly.”

He stopped just as suddenly as the stars might. He stared at his reflection in the mirror back of the bar as though he’d never seen it before.

“What’s the matter Doc?”

“Mike!”

“Yes, Doc?”

“Mike, you’re a genius.”

“Me? You’re kidding.”

Dr. Hale groaned. “Mike, I’m going to have to go to the university to work this out. So I can have access to the library and the star-globe there. You’re making an honest man out of me, Mike. Whatever kind of Scotch this is, wrap me up a bottle.”

“It’s Tartan Plaid. A quart?”

“A quart, and make it snappy. I’ve got to see a man about a dog-star.”

“Serious, Doc?”

Dr. Hale sighed audibly. “You brought that on yourself, Mike. Yes, the dog-star is Sirius. I wish I’d never come in here, Mike. My first night out in weeks, and you ruin it.”

* * * *

He took a cab to the university, let himself in, and turned on the lights in his private study and in the library. Then he took a good stiff slug of Tartan Plaid and went to work.

First, by telling the chief operator who he was and arguing a bit, he got a telephone connection with the chief astronomer of Cole Observatory.

“This is Hale, Armbruster,” he said. “I’ve got an idea, but I want to check my facts before I start to work on it. Last information I had, there were four hundred and sixty-eight stars exhibiting new proper motion. Is that still correct?”

“Yes, Milton. The same ones are still at it, and no others.”

“Good. I have a list, then. Has there been any change in speed of motion of any of them?”

“No. Impossible as it seems, it’s constant. What is your idea?”

“I want to check my theory first. If it works out into anything, I’ll call you.” But he forgot to.

It was a long, painful job. First, he made a chart of the heavens in the area between Ursa Major and Leo. Across that chart he drew four hundred and sixty-eight lines representing the projected path of each of the aberrant stars. At the border of the chart, where each line entered, he made a notation of the apparent velocity of the star—not in light years per hour—but in degrees per hour, to the fifth decimal.

Then he did some reasoning.

“Postulate that the motion which began simultaneously will end simultaneously,” he told himself. “Try a guess at the time. Let’s try ten o’clock tomorrow evening.”

He tried it and looked at the series of positions indicated upon the chart. No. Try one o’clock in the morning. It looked almost like—sense!

Try midnight.

That did it. At any rate, it was close enough. The calculation could be only a few minutes off one way or the other, and there was no point now in working out the exact time. Now that he knew the incredible fact.

He took another drink and stared at the chart grimly.

A trip into the library gave Dr. Hale the further information he needed. The address!

Thus began the saga of Dr. Hale’s journey. A useless journey, it is true, but one that should rank with the trip of the message to Garcia.

He started it with a drink. Then, knowing the combination, he rifled the safe in the office of the president of the university. The note he left in the safe was a masterpiece of brevity. It read:

TAKING MONEY. EXPLAIN LATER

Then he took another drink and put the bottle in his pocket. He went outside and hailed a taxicab. He got in. “Where to, sir?” asked the cabby.

Dr. Hale gave an address.

“Fremont Street?” said the cabby. “Sorry, sir, but I don’t know where that is.”

“In Boston,” said Dr. Hale. “I should have told you, in Boston.”

“Boston? You mean Boston, Massachusetts? That’s a long way from here.”

“Therefore, we better start right away,” said Dr. Hale reasonably. A brief financial discussion and the passing of money, borrowed from the university safe, set the driver’s mind at rest, and they started.

It was a bitter cold night for March, and the heater in the cab didn’t work any too well. But the Tartan Plaid worked superlatively for both Dr. Hale and the cabby, and by the time they reached New Haven, they were singing old-time songs lustily.

“Off we go, into the wide, wild yonder…” their voices roared.

* * * *

It is regrettably reported, but possibly untrue that, in Hartford, Dr. Hale leered out of the window at a young woman waiting for a late streetcar and asked her if she wanted to go to Boston. Apparently, however, she didn’t, for at five o’clock in the morning, when the cab drew up in front of 614 Fremont Street, Boston, only Dr. Hale and the driver were in the cab.

Dr. Hale got out and looked at the house. It was a millionaire’s mansion, and it was surrounded by a high iron fence with barbed wire on top of it. The gate in the fence was locked, and there was no bell button to push.

But the house was only a stone’s throw from the sidewalk, and Dr. Hale was not to be deterred. He threw a stone. Then another. Finally he succeeded in smashing a window.

After a brief interval, a man appeared in the window. A butler, Dr. Hale decided.

“I’m Dr. Milton Hale,” he called out. “I want to see Rutherford R. Sniveley, right away. It’s important.”

“Mr. Sniveley is not at home, sir,” said the butler. “And about that window—”

“The devil with the window,” shouted Dr. Hale. “Where is Sniveley?”

“On a fishing trip.”

“Where?”

“I have orders not to give that information.”

Dr. Hale was just a little drunk, perhaps. “You’ll give it just the same,” he roared. “By orders of the President of the United States!”

The butler laughed. “I don’t see him.”

“You will,” said Hale.

He got back in the cab. The driver had fallen asleep, but Hale shook him awake. “The White House,” said Dr. Hale.

“I—huh?”

“The White House, in Washington,” said Dr. Hale. “And hurry!” He pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket. The cabby looked at it, and groaned. Then he put the bill into his pocket and started the cab.

A light snow was beginning to fall.

As the cab drove off, Rutherford R. Sniveley, grinning, stepped back from the window. Mr. Sniveley had no butler.

If Dr. Hale had been more familiar with the peculiarities of the eccentric Mr. Sniveley, he would have known Sniveley kept no servants in the place overnight but lived alone in the big house at 614

Fremont Street. Each morning at ten o’clock, a small army of servants descended upon the house, did their work as rapidly as possible, and were required to depart before the witching hour of noon. Aside from these two hours of every day, Mr. Sniveley lived in solitary splendor. He had few, if any, social contacts.

Aside from the few hours a day he spent administering his vast interests as one of the country’s leading manufacturers, Mr. Sniveley’s time was his own, and he spent practically all of it in his workshop, making gadgets.

Sniveley had an ashtray which would hand him a lighted cigar any time he spoke sharply to it, and a radio receiver so delicately adjusted that it would cut in automatically on Sniveley-sponsored programs and shut off again when they were finished. He had a bathtub that provided a full orchestral accompaniment to his singing therein, and he had a machine which would read aloud to him from any book which he placed in its hopper.

His life may have been a lonely one, but it was not without such material comforts. Eccentric,
yes,
but Mr. Sniveley could afford to be eccentric with a net income of four million dollars a year. Not bad for a man who’d started life as the son of a shipping clerk.

Mr. Sniveley chuckled as he watched the taxi drive away, and then he went back to bed and to the sleep of the just.

“So somebody has figured things out nineteen hours ahead of time,” he thought. “Well, a lot of good it will do them!”

There wasn’t any law to punish him for what he’d done.

Bookstores did a land-office business that day in books on astronomy. The public, apathetic at first, was deeply interested now. Even ancient and musty volumes of Newton’s
Principia
sold at premium prices.

The ether blared with comment upon the new wonder of the skies. Little of the comment was professional, or even intelligent, for most astronomers were asleep that day. They’d managed to stay awake for the first forty-eight hours from the start of the phenomena, but the third day found them worn out mentally and physically and inclined to let the stars take care of themselves while they—the astronomers, not the stars—caught up on sleep.

Staggering offers from the telecast and broadcast studios enticed a few of them to attempt lectures, but their efforts were dreary things, better forgotten. Dr. Carver Blake, broadcasting from KNB, fell soundly asleep between a perigee and an apogee.

Physicists were also greatly in demand. The most eminent of them all, however, was sought in vain. The solitary clue to Dr. Milton Hale’s disappearance, the brief note, “Taking money. Explain later, Hale,” wasn’t much of a help. His sister Agatha feared the worst.

For the first time in history, astronomical news made banner headlines in the newspapers.

IV

Snow had started early that morning along the northern Atlantic seaboard and now it was growing steadily worse. Just outside Waterbury, Connecticut, the driver of Dr. Hale’s cab began to weaken.

It wasn’t human, he thought, for a man to be expected to drive to Boston and then, without stopping, from Boston to Washington. Not even for a hundred dollars.

Not in a storm like this. Why, he could see only a dozen yards ahead through the driving snow, even when he could manage to keep his eyes open. His fare was slumbering soundly in the back seat. Maybe he could get away with stopping here along the road, for an hour, to catch some sleep. Just an hour. His fare wouldn’t ever know the difference. The guy must be loony, he thought, or why hadn’t he taken a plane or a train?

Dr. Hale would have, of course, if he’d thought of it. But he wasn’t used to traveling and besides, there’d been the Tartan Plaid. A taxi had seemed the easiest way to get anywhere—no worrying about tickets and connections and stations. Money was no object, and the plaid condition of his mind had caused him to overlook the human factor involved in an extended journey by taxi.