The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

THE SECOND MURRAY LEINSTER MEGAPACK

MURRAY LEINSTER

*

COPYRIGHT INFORMATON

“Evidence” originally appeared in
All-Story Weekly
, July 12, 1919.

Murder Madness
originally appeared as a 4-part serial in
Astounding Science Fiction
in 1930.

“The Ethical Equations” originally appeared in
Astounding Science Fiction
, June 1945.

“The Plants” originally appeared in
Astounding Science Fiction
, Jan. 1946.

“Friends” originally appeared in
Startling Stories
, January 1947.

The Laws of Chance” originally appeared in
Startling Stories
, March 1947.

“The Day of the Deepies” originally appeared in
Famous Fantastic Mysteries
, October 1947.

“Propagandist” originally appeared in
Astounding Science Fiction
, August 1947.

“West Wind” originally appeared as in
Astounding Science Fiction
, March 1948.

“Planet of Sand” originally appeared in
Famous Fantastic Mysteries
, Feb. 1948.

“The Night Before the End of the World” originally appeared in
Famous Fantastic Mysteries
, March 1948.

“This Star Shall Be Free” originally appeared in
Super Science Stories,
November 1949. Copyright © 1949 by Popular Publications, Inc.

“Cure for a Ylith” originally appeared in
Startling Stories
, November 1949.

“Keyhole” originally appeared in
Thrilling Wonder Stories
, December 1951.

“Overdrive” originally appeared in
Startling Stories
, January 1953.

“The Middle of the Week after Next” originally appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1952.

The Wailing Asteroid
originally appeared in 1960.

“Attention Saint Patrick” originally appeared in
Astounding Science Fiction
, January 1960.

*

EVIDENCE

(Originally Published in 1919)

It was hot. My pony jogged listlessly along, without interest or animation, while I was only concerned with the problem of getting to shade and water, but especially shade. The sun was hot enough to fry any one’s brains in his skull, and my saddle burned my hand if I touched it where the sun struck it. There was a trickling stream of perspiration down either cheek, and a third stream down my nose. From time to time I smudged the dust across my face in an attempt to stop the streams, but the action merely interrupted their course.

It was in this peculiarly Texan atmosphere that I came upon Jimmy Calton.

He was standing by the open hood of one of those mechanical miracles known as a “tin lizzy,” holding a sooted spark-plug in a cloth in one hand and attempting to clean it with the other. He was swearing the while, dispassionately, in a curious mingling of good Anglo-Saxon and ’dobe Spanish.

“Hello, Jimmy,” I said listlessly.

He looked up and nodded.

“Say, you look hot,” he observed. “Come on an’ ride a ways with me. Lizzy heah’ll be runnin’ in a minute, an’ you can tie yo’ pony on behind.”

“Going anywhere in particular?” I asked.

“Over t’ see th’ coroner,” he told me. “Ol’ Abe Martin got shot th’ other day an’ folks are sayin’ Harry Temple done it. They got ’im locked up, anyways.”

I dismounted stiffly and tied my pony to the rear of the machine, allowing him plenty of lead-rope. Jimmy finished wiping the last of the spark-plugs, apostrophizing the car in the mean time.

“You creakin’, growlin’, spark-plug-foulin’, blasted hunka tin,” he finished lyrically, and put down the hood.

He went to the crank and turned it half a dozen times. The engine caught, sputtered, and began to run with a pretentious roar.

Jimmy hastily reached for the wheel and adjusted the spark and throttle, then climbed in leisurely. With a grinding and a lurch we started off, my pony following docilely behind.

“Yes, tin, tin, tin,” said Jimmy, doing mysterious things with his feet:

I have scorned yuh and I’ve flayed yuh,

But by the guy who made yuh,

You are bettuh than a big car,

Hunka tin!

We slipped into the car’s second and highest speed, and began to run more smoothly. Jimmy looked behind to see that my pony was all right and began to roll a cigarette with his left hand, while expertly guiding the car around the numerous ruts and rocks in the roadway. I watched the process of cigarette-rolling without interest.

“I can’t seem to get the knack of that,” I remarked, when he had finished and was licking the edge of the paper to hold it in place.

“Imitatin’,” said Jimmy casually. “There ain’t any way that everybody can do. Nobody else I know rolls ’em like this. It’s jus’ easiest fo’ me. You’ll have to mess around till you find a way that fits yo’ fingers.”

“I’ll smoke tailor-made,” I said, “rather than bother with learning.”

“Jus’ like th’ new generation,” said Jimmy severely. Jimmy, it may be said, is thirty, but affects the authority of a man of eighty. “Wantin’ everything done by somebody else, or else by machin’ry. They even want theh thinkin’ done fo’ them.”

“It’s too hot to think down here.” I took off my hat and wiped the moisture off the sweat-band.

“Judgin’ by the little bit of it people do,” Jimmy remarked acridly, “most folks agree with you. Most people look at thinkin’ as somethin’ they was taught to do in schools, an’, as such, somethin’ t’ forget as soon as possible. From th’ folks that don’t think about th’ spigoty revoltosos jus’ across th’ border an’ are pained an’ surprised when th’ spigoties run off some o’ their cattle, down to th’ folks that ud rather buy cigarettes than bother thinkin’ up a way to roll ’em one-handed fo’ themselves, everybody’s jus’ th’ same. Why, ’twouldn’t surprise me none at all if most folks tol’ th’ truth jus’ because it’s too much trouble t’ think up a lie.”

I accepted his rebuke in the matter of cigarettes meekly and said nothing.

“It’s a fac’,” said Jimmy, with an air of mournful pity for a race fallen so low. “I saw in a book th’ other day that th’ best lyin’ is th’ lie that’s near th’ truth. Ain’t that ridiculous? That’s jus’ justifyin’ laziness. Ef folks’ve got th’ goods on yuh, an’ yuh can’t get away from th’ truth, then it’s all right t’ dilute th’ truth until it’s harmless, but otherwise a good lie beats th’ almost-truth nine ways from Sunday.

“Only it’s a lot o’ trouble thinkin’ up a good lie, an’ fortifyin’ it with accumulative evidence”—Jimmy rolled those two words off his tongue with some satisfaction—“accumulative evidence like a good lie ought t’ have.”

He fell silent for a while, doing marvels of steering in the avoidance of obstacles and depressions in the really horrible road.

“An’ thinkin’,” he said suddenly, presently. “Folks don’t like thinkin’. Anybody with any sense ud know Harry Temple wouldn’t’ve shot ol’ Abe Martin. Harry Temple has got a bank-account in th’ Farmers and Ranchers Bank, an’ it ain’t in reason that he’d go an’ shoot anybody t’ steal their roll.

“Ol’ Abe sold off six hundred steers, an’ got th’ money fo’ them. He was ol’-fashioned an’ didn’t believe in banks, so he took th’ money home with ’im. An’ somebody went an’ shot him an’ took th’ roll. But Harry Temple, with a bank-account in th’ Farmers and Ranchers Bank—it ain’t reasonable that he’d go an’ shoot anybody fo’ to steal their money. Ef he’s any like I am, he’s too busy wonderin’ ef somebody is goin’ t’ steal his money to go stealin’ somebody else’s.”

Jimmy said this last with an air of virtue that made me smile. Jimmy is much too good a poker-player to be worried about his money. I know he owns one small ranch he never goes near, bought out of the proceeds of a colossal game still remembered along the border.

“But they think he did it?” I asked.

“Sho they do,” said Jimmy scornfully. “They’s goin’ aroun’ sayin’ they know he did. That’s toro, o’ course.”

One of Jimmy’s individualities is his habit of translating American slang into ’dobe Spanish and using it in his conversation.

“What are you going to see the coroner for?”

“They’s holdin’ a inquest,” said Jimmy. “I’m sort o’ goin’ t’ horn in a little, I reck’n. These folks are too lazy t’ do any thinkin’. Ef I see a chance, I’m goin’ to do some head-work fo’ them. Theah’s Abe Martin’s place right ahead.”

We turned in the gate and swung up to the house. Half a dozen cars, most of them of the same make as Jimmy’s, clustered about the front, and there were a dozen or more ponies tethered close by the porch, dozing in the baking heat. It was quite a pretentious place, built in the old-fashioned style of the days when a rancher was almost a baron in his own right. Two big barns and a huge stable behind the house almost dwarfed the dwelling proper, and quite hid it from the rear.

Jimmy eased his car in among the others, snapped the switch, and alighted. Three or four of the men about the door nodded to him and told him the inquest had not started, but that it would begin shortly. Once he found that out, Jimmy plunged into an intricate and technical discussion of patented attachments for his machine, and I drifted off into the house.

It was a very old house, and built with old-fashioned disregard for space. I gathered, however, that the housekeeping done in it was but sketchy. Half a dozen of his riders made it their headquarters, with old Abe Martin. They bunked there, and a cook prepared the meals for all of them. There was a long table with a checked, red tablecloth on it—the room was empty now except for buzzing flies—where they had their meals. On the day of the shooting, I learned, the men had all been away on their duties, and the cook had gone into town for supplies, so Abe Martin had been alone.

Presently I went out to look at the stables. They were huge, but not much used. Three or four ponies were in their stalls, and several more stalls seemed to be used from time to time, but most of them were without signs of recent use.

There had been a time when the place was the headquarters of a busy ranch, but since the time of fences the activity had lessened until only Abe Martin, his half-dozen riders, and the cook lived there. It was curious to see the dwelling-place, large in itself, dwarfed by its outbuildings.

A stir in the house called me inside. The inquest was evidently to be more or less of an informal affair, but there was none the less a determined and businesslike air behind it all. Those men meant to get at the bottom of the matter. The coroner seemed to be a conscientious individual, who took the evidence of the first witness with great exactitude, though he knew perfectly well beforehand just what the testimony would be. The whole inquiry, as a matter of fact, promised to be cut and dried in spite of Jimmy’s announced intention of “horning in.”

The first witness was the cook, who had discovered the body. He had come back from town, entered the house and discovered his employer dead on the floor of the hall.

He had been shot through the heart. A rider, whom the cook had hastily summoned, corroborated his testimony and added that the body was cold when he was called, proving that death had occurred some time before.

“Th’ evidence shows,” said the coroner casually, “that Abe was shot when there wasn’t nobody else in th’ house but him an’ th’ murderer. Th’ cashier of th’ Farmers and Ranchers Bank ain’t heah, but he has give me th’ information that Abe had over four thousan’ dollars on him when he was killed.

“That’s gone. Evidently he was shot fo’ his money. It’s part of th’ duties of a coroner’s jury t’ uncover any evidence that will help in solvin’ th’ problem of who th’ murderer might be. Miste’ Joe Harkness will take th’ stand.”