Classic Audiobook Collection - Nice Girl With 5 Husbands by Fritz Leiber ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

Nice Girl With 5 Husbands by Fritz Leiber audiobook. Genre: scifi Tom Dorset arrives at a secluded artists' retreat in the desert hoping the quiet will cure his creative drought. Instead, he meets Lois Wolver, a bright, disarming young woman who casually introduces a complication that stops Tom cold: she has five husbands. Before Tom can decide whether he has stumbled onto a joke, a cult, or a scandal, Lois invites him into the orbit of the Wolvers' tight-knit household - a deliberate experiment in love, loyalty, and shared living that treats jealousy as a problem to be solved rather than a fate to be endured. Drawn by attraction, curiosity, and a nagging sense that his own assumptions about romance are too small, Tom finds himself negotiating rules he does not understand, personalities that do not fit any familiar mold, and a community that can feel both tender and faintly menacing. As the desert heat presses in and Tom's outsider status becomes harder to ignore, he must decide what he truly wants from intimacy, from art, and from the stories he tells himself about what a 'normal' life should be. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:32:20) Chapter 02 (01:08:06) Chapter 03 (01:39:10) Chapter 04 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nice Girl with Five Husbands by Fritz Liber. To be given paid up leisure and find yourself unable to create is unpleasant for any artist. To be stranded in a cluster of desert cabins with a dozen lonely people in the same predicament only makes it worse. So Tom Dorset was understandably irked with himself and the Tosker Brown Vacation Fellowships as he climbed with the sun into the valley of red stones. He accepted the chafing of his camber strap against his shoulder as the nagging of a conscience. He agreed with the disparaging hisses of the grains of sand rutsched by his sneakers, and he wished that the occasional breezes, which faintly echoed the same criticisms,

could blow him into a friendlier, less jealous age. He had no way of knowing that just as there are winds that blow through space, so there are winds that blow through time. Such winds may be strong or weak. The strong ones are rare and seldom blow for short distances, or more of us would know about them. What they pick up is almost always whirled far into the future or past. This has happened to people. There was Ambrose Beers. who walked out of America and existence.

There are thousands of others who have disappeared without a trace, though many of these may not have been caught up by time tornadoes, and I do not know if a time gale blew across the deck of the Marie Celeste. Sometimes a time wind is playful, snatching up an object, sporting with it for a season and then returning it unharmed to its original place. Sometimes we may be blown about by whimsical time winds without realizing it. Memory, for example, is a tiny time breeze, so weak that it can ripple only the mind. A very few time winds are like the monsoon, blowing at fixed intervals, first in one direction, then the other.

Such a time wind blows near a balancing rock in a valley of red stones in the American Southwest. Every morning at ten o'clock, it blows a hundred years into the future, every afternoon at two it blows a hundred years into the past. Quite a number of people have unwittingly seen time winds in operation. They are misty spots on the sea's horizon, or wavery patches over desert sands. There are mirages and will-o'-the-wisps and ice-blinks. And there are dust devils, such as Tom Dorset, walked into, near the balancing rock. It seemed to him no more than a spiteful upgust of sand,

against which he closed his eyes until the warm granules stopped peppering the lids. He opened them to see the balancing rock had silently fallen and lay a quarter buried. No, that couldn't be, he told himself instantly. He had been preoccupied. He must have passed the balancing rock and held its image in his mind.

despite this rationalization he was quite shaken the strap of his camera slipped slowly down his arm without his feeling it and just then there stepped around the giant bobbin of the rock an extraordinarily pretty girl with hair the same pinkish copper color she was barefoot and wearing a pale blue play-suit rather like a grecian tunic but most important as she stood there towing his rough shadow in the sand there was a complete naturalness about her an absence of sharp edges as if her personality had weathered without aging just as the valley seemed to have taken another step toward eternity in the space of an instant she must have assumed something of the same gentleness in him for her faint surprise faded and she asked him as easily as if he were a friend of five-year standing tell me now do you think a woman can love just one man all her life and a man just one woman tom dorset made a dazed sound his mind searched wildly i do she said looking at him as calmly as at a mountain. I think a man and woman can be each other's world, like Tristan and Eelstolt, or Frederick and Catherine.

Those old authors were wise. I don't see why on earth a girl has to spread her love around, no matter how enriching the experiences may be. You know, I agree with you, Tom said, thinking he'd caught her idea. It was impossible not to catch your casualness. I think there's something cheap about the... the way everybody's supposed to run after sex these days.

I don't mean that exactly. Tenderness is beautiful, but—she pouted. A big family can be vastly crushing. I wanted to declare today a holiday, but they outvoted me. Jock said it didn't chime with our mood cycles. But I was angry with them, so I put on my clothes— Put on—to make it a holiday, she explained bafflingly. and I walked here for a tantrum.

She stepped out of Tom's shadow and hopped back. Oh, the sand's getting hot, she said, rubbing the grains from the pale and uncramped toes. You go barefoot a lot, Tom guessed. No, mostly digitals, she replied, and took something shimmering from a pocket at her hip, and drew it on her foot. It was a high-angled, transparent moccasin with five separate tides. toes. She zipped it shut with the speed of a car trick, then similarly gloved the other foot. Again, the metal-edged slit down the front seemed to close itself.

"'I'm behind on the fashions,' Tom said curiously. "'They were walking side by side now, the way she'd come and he'd been going. How does that zipper work?' "'Magnetic. They're on all my clothes. Very simple.' She parted her tunic at the waist, then let it zip together. Clever, Tom remarked with a gulp. There seemed no limits to this girl's naturalness. I see you're a button, man, she said.

You actually believe it's possible for a man and woman to love just each other? His chuckle was bitter. He was thinking of Eleanor Murphy at Tusker Brown, and a bit about cold-faced Miss Tosker herself. I sometimes wonder if it's possible for anyone to love anyone. You haven't met the right girls, she said. Girl, he corrected. She grinned at him.

You make me think you really are a monogamist. What group do you come from? Let's not talk about that, he requested. He was willing to forego knowing how she'd guessed he was from, an art group, if he could be spared talking about vacation fellowships in those nervous little cabins. "'My group's very nice on the whole,' the girl said. "'But at time they can be nefandously exasperating.'

Jock's the worst, quietly guiding the rest of us like an analyst. How I loathe that man! But Larry's almost as bad with his shame-faced bumpuousness, as if we'd all sneaked off on a jar-ride to Venus. And there's Jo Kichi at the opposite extreme. Forever scared he won't distribute his affection equally, dividing it up into mean little packets like candy for jealous children who would scream if they got one chewy less.

And then there's Sasha and Ernest. Who were you talking about, Tom asked. My husband's, she shook her head dolefully, to find five more difficult men would be positively Martian. Tom's mind backtracked frantically, searching all conversations at Tusker Brown for gossip about cultists in the neighborhood. It found nothing and embarked on a wider search. There were the Mormons.

Was that the word that had sounded like Martian? But it wasn't Mormon husbands who were plural. And then there was Oneida. Weren't husbands and wives both plural there? But that was nineteenth-century New England. Five husbands, he repeated. She nodded. He went on.

Do you mean to say five men have got you alone somewhere up here? To be sure not, she replied. There are my co-wives. Co-wives? Co-wives, she said more slowly. They can be facerosely exasperating, Tom's mind did some more searching. And yet you believe in monogamy?

She smiled, only when I'm having tantrums. It was civilized of you to agree with me. But I actually do believe in monogamy, he protested. She gave his hand a little squeeze. You are nice, but let's rush now. I finish my tantrum and I want you to meet my group. You can fresh yourself with us. As they hurried across the heated sands, Tom Dorset felt for the first time a twinge of uneasiness.

There was something about this girl, more than her strange clothes and the odd words she used now and then, something almost, though ghost, didn't wear, digital's, spectral. They scrambled up a little rise, digging their footgear into the sand, until they stood on a long flat, and there, serpentining round two great clumps of rock, was a mini-windowed adobe ranch house with a roof like fresh soot. Oh, they've put on their clothes, his companion exclaimed with pleasure. They've decided to make it a holiday after all. Tom spotted a beard in the group swarming out to meet them.

Its cultish look gave him a momentary feeling of superiority, followed by an equally momentary apprehension. The five husbands were certainly husky. Then both feelings were swallowed up in the swirl of introduction. He told his own name, found that his companions was Lois Wover. Then smiling faces began to bob toward his. His hands were shaken. His cheeks were kissed.

He was even spun around like blind man's bluff. so that he lost track of the husbands and failed to attach Machel, Rachel, Simone, and Joyce to the right owners. He did notice that Jokiki was an Oriental, with the skin as tight as enameled China, and that Rachel was a tall, slim, negro girl, and someone said, Joyce isn't a wolver, she's just visiting.

He got a much clearer impression of the clothes than the names. They were colorful, costly-looking, and mostly Egyptian. and cretion in inspiration. Some of them would have been quite immodest, even compared to Miss Tosker's famous play-suits, except that the wearers didn't seem to feel so. There goes the middle-morning rocket!

One of them eagerly cried. Tom looked up with the rest, but his eyes caught the dazzling sun. However, he heard a faint roaring that quickly sank in volume and pitch, and it reminded him that the army had a rocket-testing range in this area. He had little interest in science, but he hadn't known they were on a daily schedule. Do you suppose it's off the track? he asked anxiously. Not a chance, someone told him, the beard, he thought.

The assurance of the tones gave him a possible solution. Scientists came from all over the world these days, and might have all sorts of advanced ideas. This could be a group working at a nearby atomic project and leading to a world. its peculiar private life on the side. As they eddied toward the house, he heard Lois remind someone. But you finally did declare it a holiday. And a husband, who looked like a gay pharaoh, respond, I had another sea at the mood charts, and I found a suitable surge I missed.

Meanwhile, the beard, a black one, had taken Tom in charge. Tom wasn't sure of his name, but he had a tan skin, a green sarong and a fiercely jovial expression. The swimming pools around there, the landing spots on the other side, he began, then noticed Tom gazing at the sooty roof. Sun power cells, he explained proudly, they store all the current we need. Tom felt his idea confirmed. "'One day you don't use atomic power,' he observed lightly.

The beard nodded. We've been asked that. Matter of aesthetics. Why waste sunlight or use hard radiations needlessly? Of course you might feel differently. What's your group, did you say? Tosker Brown, Tom told him, adding when the beard frowned, the fellowship people, you know?

I don't, the beard confessed. Where are you located? Tom briefly described the ranch house and cabins at the other end of the valley. Comic, I can't place it. The beard shrugged. Here come the children. A dozen naked youngsters raced around the ranch house, followed by a woman in a vaguely African dress opened down the sides.

Yours? Tom asked. Ours, the beard answered. Sit on home. Regarde de vestment. No need to practice kids. This is a holiday, the beard told him. Tom, Helen, he said, introducing the woman with the air-conditioned, garment. Her turn today to companion Dekinder.

One of the latter wrapped on the beard's knee. May we show the stranger our things? Instantly the others joined in pleading. The beard shot an inquiring glance at Tom, who nodded. A moment later the small troop was hurrying him toward a spacious lean-to at the end of the ranch house. It was chuck full of strange toys, rocks and plants, Small animals in cages and out, and the oddest model airplanes are submarines.

But Tom was given no time to look at any one thing for long. See my crystals? I grew them. Smell my mutated gardenius. Tell now, isn't there a difference? There didn't seem to be, but he nodded. Look at my squabets. This referred to some long-eared white squirrels, nibbling carrots and nuts. Here's my newest model spaceship, a deep,

The S-57-B. Notice the detail. The oldest boy shoved one of the submarine affairs in his face. Tom felt like a figure that is being tugged about in a rococo painting by wide pink ribbons in the chubby hands of naked cherubs. Except that these cherubs were slim and tanned, fantastically energetic, and apparently of depressingly high IQ. What the scientist did to children. He missed Lois and was grateful for the single little girl, solemnly skipping rope in a corner and paying no attention to him.

The odd lingo, she repeated, stuck in his mind. Giklo, ayo, ricko gisso, giss-o, gick-low, ayo. Suddenly the air was filled with soft chimes. Lunch! the children shouted and ran away. Tom followed at a soberer pace along the wall of the ranch house. He glanced at the huge windows, curious about the living and sleeping arrangements of the wolvers, but the panes were strangely darkened. Then he entered the wide doorway through which the children had scampered, and his curiosity

turned to wonder. A resilient green floor that wasn't flat, but sloped up toward the white of the far wall like a breaking wave. Chairs like giant's hands tenderly cupped. little tables growing like mushrooms and broad-leafed plants out of the green floor, a vast picture window showing the red rocks. Yet it was the wood-panel walls that electrified his artistic interest. They blossomed with fruits and flowers, deep and poignantly carved in several styles.

He had never seen such work. He became aware of a silence and realized that his host's and hostesses were smiling at him from around a long table. Moved by a sudden humility, he knelt and unlaced his sneakers and added them to the pile of sandals and digitals by the door. As he rose, a soft and comic piping started, and he realized that beyond the table the children were lined up solemnly puffing at little wooden flutes and recorders. He saw the empty chair at the table and went toward it, conscious for the moment of

nothing but his dusty feet. He was disappointed that Lois wasn't sitting next to him, but the food reminded him that he was hungry. There was a charming little steak, striped black and brown with perfection, and all sorts of vegetables and fruits, one or two of which he didn't recognize. Flown from Africa, someone explained to him.

The sly scientists, he thought, living beyond their security curtain in the most improbable world. When they were sitting with coffee and wine, and the children had finished their concert and were busy at another table, he asked, How do you manage all this?

Jock, the gay Pharaoh, shrugged. It's not difficult. Rachel, the slim negro, chuckled in her throat. We're just people, Tom. He tried to phrase his question without mentioning money. What do you all do?

Jocke's a uranium miner, Larry the beard, answered briskly, taking over. Rachel's an algae farmer. I'm a rocket pilot. Lois, although pleased at this final confirmation of his guess, Tom couldn't help feeling a surge of uneasiness. Sure you should be telling me these things? Larry laughed. Why not?

Lois and Chukiki have been exchanged workers in China the last six months. "'Mostly digging ditches,' Chokiki put in with a smile. "'And Sasha's in an assembly plant. "'Helen's a psychiatrist. "'Oh, we just do ordinary things. "'Now we're on grand vacation.' "'Grand vacation?' "'When all of us have a vacation together,' Larry explained.

"'What do you do?' "'I'm an artist,' Tom said, taking out a cigarette. "'But what else?' Larry asked. Tom felt an angry embarrassment. Just an artist. He mumbled, cigarette in mouth, digging in his pockets for a match. Hold on, said Joyce beside him, and pointed a silver pencil at the tip of the cigarette. He felt a faint thrill in his lips and then started back coughing.

Cigarette was lighted. Please mutate my poppy seeds, Mommy. A little girl had darted to Joyce from the children's table. "'You're a very dirty little girl,' Joyce told her without reproof. "'Hold them out.' She briefly directed the silver pin at the clay pellets on the grimy little palm. The little girl shivered delightedly. "'I love ultrasonics. They feel so funny!' she scampered off.

Tom cleared his throat. "'I must say, I'm tremendously impressed with the wood carvings. I'd like to photograph them.' "'Oh, Lord!' "'What's the matter?' Rachel asked. "'I lost my camera somewhere.' "'Camara?' Chokiki showed interest. "'You mean one for stills?'

"'Yes. "'What kind?' "'A Laika,' Tom told him. "'Jokiki seemed impressed. "'That is interesting. "'I've never seen one of those old ones.' "'Tom's a button man,' Lois remarked "'by way of explanation, apparently.

Was the camera in a brown case? You dropped it where we met. We can get it later. Good. I'd really like to take those pictures, Tom said. Incidentally, who did the carvings? We did, Jock said, together. Tom was grateful that the scamper of the children out of the room saved him from having to reply.

He couldn't think of anything but a grunt of astonishment. The conversation split into a group of. of chats about something called a psych machine, trips to Russia, the planet Mars, and several artists Tom had never heard of. He wanted to talk to Lois, but she was one of the groups gabbling about Mars like children. He felt suddenly uneasy and out of things, and neither Rachel's depreciating remarks about her section of the wood carvings, nor Joyce's interesting smiles helped much. He was glad when they all began.

to get up. He wandered outside and made his way to the children's lean to, feeling very depressed. Once again he was the center of a friendly, naked cluster, except for the same solemn-faced little girl skipping rope. A rather malicious but not very hopeful whim prompted him to ask the youngest, what's one and one? Ten? The shaver answered glibly. Tom felt pleased. It could also be, too, the oldest bar remarked.

I'll say, Tom agreed. What's the population of the world? About 700 million. Tom nodded noncommittally, and, grabbing at the first long word that he thought of, turned to the eldest girl. What's poliomyelitis? Never heard of it.

she said. The solemn little girl kept droning the same ridiculous chant. Geek-low, I-O, reek-o, geese-o. His ego eased. Tom went outside and there was Lois. What's the matter? She asked. Nothing, he said.

She took his hand. Have we pushed ourselves at you too much? Has our jabbering bothered you? We're a loud-mouthed family, and I didn't think to ask if you were loaning. Loaning? Solituding. In a way, he said. They didn't speak for a moment.

Then, are you happy, Lois, in your life here? He asked. Her smile was instant. Of course. Don't you like my group? He hesitated. They make me feel rather no good, he said. and then admitted,

"'But in a way, I'm more attracted to them than any people I've ever met.' "'You are?' Her grip on his hand tightened. "'Then why don't you stay with us for a while? I like you. It's too early to propose anything. But I think you have a quality our group lacks. You could see how you fit in.

And there's Joyce. She's just visiting, too. You wouldn't have to loan unless you wanted.' before he could think there was a rhythmic rush of feet and the wolvers were around him we're swimming simone announced lois looked at tom inquiringly he smiled his willingness started to mention he didn't have trunks then realized that wouldn't be news here he wondered whether he would blush jock fell in beside him as they rounded the ranch house larry's been telling me about your group at the other into the valley. It's comic, but I've whirled down the valley a dozen times and never spotted any sort of place there. What's it like? A ranch house and several cabins? Jock frowned. Comic I never saw it. This face cleared. How about whirling over there? You could point it out to me.

It's really there, Tom said uneasily. I'm not making it up. Of course. "'Worse,' Jock assured him. "'It was just an idea.' "'We could pick up your camera on the way,' Lois put in. "'The rest of the group had turned back from the huge Oval Pool "'and the dark blue and flashing thing beyond it, "'and stood gay-colored against the pool's pale blue shimmer. "'How about it?' Jock asked.

"'A whirl before we bathe?' "'Two or three said yes beside Lois, "'and Jock led the way toward the helicopter "'that Tom now saw standing. bending beyond the pool, its beetle body is blue as a scarab, its veins flashing silver. The others piled in. Tom followed as casually as he could, trying to suppress the pounding of his heart. "'Wonder why you don't go by rocket?' he remarked lightly.

Jock laughed for such a short trip. The veins began to thrum. Tom sat stiffly, gripping the sides of the seat, then realized that the others had sunk back lazily in the cushions. There was a moment of strain, and they were falling ahead and up. Looking out the side, Tom saw for a moment the sooty roof of the ranch house and the blue of the pool and the pinkish umber of tanned bodies. Then the helicopter lurched gently around.

Without warning, a miserable uneasiness gripped him. A desire to cling mixed with the same. an urge to escape. He tried to convince himself it was fear of the height. He heard Lois tell Jock, That's the place down by that rock that looks like a wrecked spaceship. The helicopter began to fall forward. Tom felt Lois's hand on his. You haven't answered my question, she said. What? he asked Dully.

Whether you'll stay with us, at least for a while. He looked at her. Her smile was a comfort. He said, If I possibly can. What could possibly stop you? I don't know, he answered abstractedly. You're strange, Lois told him.

There's a weight of sadness in you, as if you lived in a less happy age, as if it weren't 2050. Twenty? He repeated, awakening from his thoughts with a jerk. What's the time? He asked anxiously. To, Jock said.

The word sounded like a knell. You need cheering, Lois announced firmly. Amid a wush of air rebounding from Earth, they jumped gently down. Lois faltered out. Come on, she said. Tom followed her. Where? He asked, stupidly, looking around at the red rocks through the settling sand cloud stirred by the veins.

Your camera! She told him laughing. Over there. Come on, I'll race you. He started to run with her, and then his uneasiness got beyond his control. He ran faster and faster. He saw Lois catch her foot on a rock and go down sprawling, but he couldn't stop. He ran desperately around the rock and into a gust of up-wirling sand that terrified him with his suddenness.

He tried to escape from the stinging, blinding gust, But there was the nightmarish fright that his wild strides were carrying him nowhere. Then the sand settled. He stopped running and looked around him. He was standing by the balancing rock. He was gasping. At his feet the rusty brown leather of the camera case peeped from the sand. Lois was nowhere in sight.

Neither was the helicopter. The valley seemed different, raw, one might almost have said younger. Hours after dark, he trailed into Tosker Brown. Curtained lights still glowed from a few cabins. He was foot-sore, bewildered, frightened. All afternoon and through the twilight and into the moonlit evening that turned the red-rock's black, he had searched the valley. Nowhere had he been able to find the soot-roofed ranch house of the wolvers.

He hadn't even been able to locate the rock like a giant bobbin where he'd met Lois. During the next days he often returned to the valley, but he never found anything. And he never happened to be near the balancing rock when the time winds blew at ten and two, though once or twice he did see dust devils. Then he went away and eventually forgot. In his casual reading, he ran across popular science articles describing the binary system of numbers used in electronic calculating machines where one in one make ten.

He always skipped them. And more than once, he saw the four equations expressing Einstein's generalized theory of gravitation. G-I-K-L-O-I-O-R-I-K-O-G-I-S-O." End of Nice Girl with Five Husbands A Pale of Air by Fritz Liber. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. The story was published in Galaxy Science Fiction December, 1951. Pa had sent me out to get an extra pail of air.

I just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked from my fingers when I saw the thing. You know, at first I thought it was a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady's face, all glowing in the dark, and looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I've never seen a live young lady before. Except in the old magazines. Sis is just a kid, and Ma is pretty sick and miserable.

And he gave me such a start that I dropped the pail. Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on earth was dead, except Pah and Ma and sis and you? Even at that I don't suppose I should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty bad ones to judge from the way she bugs her eyes out at nothing and just screams and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the nest. Pa says it's natural we should react like that sometimes. When I'd recovered the pail and could look again at the opposite apartment,

I got an idea what Ma might be feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn't a young lady at all, but simply a light, a tiny light that moves stealthily from window to window, just as if one of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate why the earth had gone away from the sun and maybe to hunt down something to torment or terrify now that the earth didn't have the sun's protection. I tell you, the thought of it gave me the creeps. I just stood there shaking and almost froze on my feet and did frost my helmet so solid on the inside

that I couldn't have seen the light even if it had come out at one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go back inside. Pretty soon I was feeling my familiar way through the thirty or so blankets and rugs. Pah had hung around to slow down the escape of air from the nest, and I wasn't quite so scared. I began to hear the tick-ticking of the clocks in the nest and knew I was getting back into air, because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I put. pushed through the last blankets.

Paa's got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat, and came into the nest. Let me tell you about the nest. It's low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is covered with thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets, and the blankets roofing it touch Pa's head. He tells me it's inside a much bigger room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling. Against one of the blanket walls is a big set of shelves with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a whole row of clocks.

Pause very fussy by keeping them wound. He says we must never forget time, and without a sun or moon that would be easy to do. The fourth wall has blankets all over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go out. It keeps us from freezing and duster. a lot more besides. One of us must always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarm and we can use them to remind us. In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa. I think of that when she gets difficult. But now there's me to help, and sis too. It's Pa who is the

chief guardian of the fire, though. I always think of him that way. A tall man sitting cross-legged, frowning anxiously at the fire. His lined face goes. golden in its light, and every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians into the fire sometimes in the very old days, a vessel virgins he calls them, although there was unfrozen air all around them and you didn't really need one. He was sitting just that way now, though he got up quick to take the pill from me and bawl me

out for loitering. He'd spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she joined in picking on me. She's always trying to get the load off her feelings, Pa explains. He shut her up pretty fast. Sis let off a couple of silly squeals, too. Pa handled the pail of air and a twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the nest, you could really feel its coldness.

It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames cringed away from it as. Pa put it down close by the fire. Yet it's that glimmery white stuff in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pod like to seal the whole place, but he can't. Buildings too earthquake twisted and besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke.

Pah says air is tiny molecules that fly away like a flash if there isn't something to stop them. We have to watch sharp not to let the air run low. Pah always keeps a big reserve supply of it in buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra cold and cans of food and other things, such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip and get it through a door to outside. You see, when the earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so everywhere, and then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making

another white blanket sixty or seventy feet thick, maybe. Of course, all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time. First drop out was the carbon dioxide. When you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe for good, and make the fire go out. Next, there's the nitrogen, which doesn't count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket. On top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that keeps us

alive. Pa says we live better than Kings ever did, breathing pure oxygen, but we're used to it and don't notice. Finally, at the very top, there's a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases and neat separate layers, like Pussy Cafe, Pa laughingly says, whatever that is. I was busting to tell them all about what I'd seen, and so as soon as I ducked out of my helmet, and while I was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away Ma got nervous and began making eyes at the entry slits in the blankets and wringing her hands together, the hand where she lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good one as usual.

I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me, scaring her, and wanted to explain it all away quickly. Yet could see I wasn't fooling. "'And you watch this light for some time, son?' he asked when I finished. I hadn't said anything about first thinking it was the young lady's face. Somehow that part embarrassed me. Long enough for it to pass five windows and go to the next floor. And it didn't look like stray electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused on a glowing crystal or anything like that?

He wasn't just making up those ideas. Odd things happen in a world that's about as cold as can be. And just when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A slimy stuff comes crawling toward the nest, just like an animal snuffling for heat. That's the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of lightning, not even paw could figure where it came from, hit the nearby steeple, and crawled up and down it for weeks until the glow finally died. Not like anything I ever saw, I told.

him. He stood for a moment, frowning. Then I'll go out with you and you show it to me, he said. Ma raised a howl at the idea of being left alone, and Siss joined in too, but Pa quieted them. We started climbing into our outside clothes. Mine had been warming by the fire. Pa made them.

They have plastic headpieces that were once big, double-duty transparent food cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a little while, long enough for our trips for water and cold and food and so on." Ma started moaning again. "'I've always known there was something outside there waiting to get us. I felt it for years. Something that's part of the cold and hates our warmth and wants to destroy the nest. It's been watching us all this time and now it's coming for us.

get you, and then come from me. Don't go, Harry." Pa had everything on but his helmet. He knelt by the fireplace and reached in and shook the long metal rod that goes up the chimney and knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it. Once a week he goes up on the roof to check if it's working all right. That's our worst trip, and Pa won't let me make it alone. "'Sys,' Pa said quietly, "'come watch the fire.' keep an eye on the air too if it gets low or doesn't seem to be barling fast enough fetch you another bucket from behind the blanket but mind your hands use the cloth to pick up the bucket sis quit helping ma be frightened and came over and did as she was told ma quieted down pretty suddenly though her eyes were still kind of wild as she watched pa fix on his helmet tight and pick up a pail and the two of us go out Pa led the way and I took hold of his belt.

It's a funny thing. I'm not afraid to go by myself. But when Pa's along I always want to hold on to him. Habit, I guess. And then there's no denying that this time I was a bit scared. You see, it's this way. We know that everything is dead out there. Pa heard the last radio voices fade away years ago, and had seen some of the last

folks die who weren't as lucky or well-protected as us. So we knew that if there was something groping around out there, it couldn't be anything human or friendly. Beside that, there's a feeling that comes with it always being night. Cold night. Pah says there used to be some of that feeling even in the old days, but then every morning the sun would come and chase it away. I have to take his word for that.

Not ever remembering the sun as being anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when the dark star snatched us away from the sun, and by now it's dragged us out beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto, Pa says, and taken us farther all the time. I found myself wondering whether there mightn't be something on the dark star that wanted us, and if that was why it had captured the earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor, and I followed Paa out on the balcony.

I don't know what the city looked like in the old days, but now it's beautiful. The starlight lets you see it pretty well. There's quite a bit of light in those steady points speckling the blackness above. Pa says the stars used to twinkle once, but that was because there was air. We're on a hill, and the shimmery plain drops away from us and then flattens out, caught up into neat squares by the troughs that used to be streets. I sometimes make by mashed potatoes look like it, before I pour on the gravy. Some taller buildings push up out of the feathery plain,

topped by rounded caps of air crystals, like the fur hood ma wears only whiter. On those buildings you can see the darker squares of windows, underlined by white dashes of air crystals. Some of them are on a slim, For many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all the rest that happened when the dark star captured the earth. Here and there a few icicles hang, water icicles from the first days of the cold, other icicles of frozen air that melted on the roofs and dripped and froze again. Sometimes one of those icicles will catch the light of a star and send it to you so brightly you think the star has swooped into the city.

That was one of the things Pa had been thinking of when I told him about the light. But I had thought of it myself first and no it wasn't so. He touched his helmet to mine so we could talk easier, and he asked me to point out the windows to him. But there wasn't any light moving around inside them now or anywhere else. To my surprise, Pa didn't bawl me out and tell me I'd been seeing things. He looked all around quite a while after filling his pale, and just as we were going inside, he whipped around without warning as if to take some

peeping thing off guard. I could feel it, too. The old piece was gone. There was something lurking out there, watching, waiting, getting ready. Inside, he said to me, touching helmets, If you see something like that again, son, don't tell the others. Your ma's sort of nervous these days, and we owe her all the feeling of safety we can give her. Once—it was when your sister was born.

I was ready to give up and die. But your mother kept me trying. Another time she kept the fire going a whole week all by herself when I was sick. Nursed me and took care of the two of you, too. You know that game we sometimes play, sitting in a square in the nest, tossing a ball around? Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed to your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight,

and hope there will be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave. His talking to me that way made me feel grown up and good, but it didn't wipe away the thing outside from the back of my mind, or the fact that Paa took it seriously. It's hard to hide your feelings about such a thing. When we got back in the nest and took off our outside clothes, Pa laughed all about it and told him it was nothing and kidded me for having such an imagination,

but his words fell flat. He didn't convince Ma and sis any more than he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling the courage ball. something had to be done and almost before I knew what I was going to say. I heard myself asking Pa to tell us about the old days and how it all happened. He sometimes doesn't mind telling that story, and Cess and I sure like to listen to it, and he got my idea. So we were all settled around the fire in a wink, and Ma pushed up some cans to thaw for supper,

and Pa began. Before he did, though, I noticed him casually get a hammer from the shelf and lay it down beside him. It was the same old story as always. I think I could recite the main threat of it in my sleep, though Pa always puts in a new detail or two and keeps improving it in spots. He told us how the earth had been swinging around the sun never so steady and warm, and the people on it fixing to make money and wars and have a good time and get power and

and treat each other right or wrong. When, without warning, there comes charging out of space this dead star, this burned-out sun, and upsets everything." You know, I find it hard to believe in the way those people felt, any more than I can believe in the swarming number of them. Imagine people getting ready for the horrible sort of war they were cooking up, wanting it even—or at least wishing it were over so as to end. their nervousness.

As if all folks didn't have to hang together and pool every bit of warmth just to keep alive. And how can they have hoped to end danger any more than we can hope to end the cold? Sometimes I think Paa exaggerates and makes things out too black. He's crossed with us once in a while and was probably crossed with all those folks. Still, some of the things I read in the old magazine sound pretty wild. He may be right." The dark star, as Pa went on telling it, rushed in pretty fast and there wasn't much time to get ready.

At the beginning they tried to keep it a secret for most people. But then the truth came out, what with the earthquakes and floods. Imagine oceans of unfrozen water. And people seeing stars blotted out by something on a clear night. they thought it would hit the Sun, and then they thought it would hit the Earth. There was even the start of a rush to get to a place called China, because people thought the Star would hit on the other side, but then they found it wasn't going to hit either side, but was going to come very close to the Earth.

Most of the other planets were on the other side of the Sun and didn't get involved. The Sun and the Newcomer fought over the Earth for a little while, pulling it this way, and that, like two dogs growling over a bone, Pa described it this time, and then the newcomer won and carried us off. The sun got a consolation prize, though. At the last minute he managed to hold on to the moon. That was the time of the monster earthquakes and floods, twenty times worse than anything before.

It was also the time of the big jerk, as Pa calls it, when all earth got yanked suddenly. just as Pa had done to me once or twice, grabbing me by the collar to do it, when I've been sitting too far from the fire. You see, the dark star was going through space faster than the sun and in the opposite direction, and it had to wrench the world considerably in order to take it away. The big jerk didn't last long. It was over as soon as the Earth was settled down in its new orbit around the dark star, but it was pretty terrible while it lasted.

Paul says that all sorts of cliffs and buildings toppled, oceans slopped over. Swamps and sandy deserts gave great sliding surges that buried nearby lands. Earth was almost jerked out of its atmosphere blanket, and the air got so thin in spots that people keeled over and fainted, though of course at the same time they were getting knocked down by the big jerk, and maybe their bones broke or skulls cracked. We've often asked Pa how people acted during that time, whether they were scared or brave or crazy or stunned, or all four. But he's sort of leery on the subject, and he was again tonight.

He says he was mostly too busy to notice. You see, Pa and some scientist friends of his had figured out part of what was going to happen. They'd known we'd get captured and our air would freeze. And they'd been working like mad to fix up a palest. place with airtight walls and doors and insulation against the cold and big supplies of food and fuel and water and bottled air. But the place got smashed in the last earthquakes, and all Pah's friends were killed then and in the big jerk.

So he had to start over and throw the nest together quick without any advantages, just using any stuff he could lay his hands on. I guess he's telling pretty much the truth when he says he didn't have any time to keep and eye on how other folks behaved, either then or in the big freeze that followed. Followed very quick, you know, both because the dark star was pulling us away very fast, and because Earth's rotation had been slowed in the tug-of-war, so that the nights were ten old nights long. Still, I've got an idea of some things that happened from the frozen folk I've seen.

A few of them in other rooms in our building. Others clustered around the furnaces and the basements where we go to the—we're going to for coal. In one of the rooms an old man sits stiff in a chair, with an arm and leg and splints. In another a man and woman are huddled together in a bed with heaps of covers over them. You can just see their heads peeking out close together. And in another, a beautiful young lady is sitting with a pile of wraps huddled around her, looking hopefully toward the door, as if waiting for someone who never came back with warmth

and food. They're all still and stiffest statues, of course, but just like life. Pa showed them to me once in quick winks of his flashlight, when he still had a fair supply of batteries and could afford to waste a little light. They scared me pretty bad and made my heart pound, especially the young lady. Now with Pa telling his story for the umpteenth time to take our minds off another scare, I got the thinking of the frozen folk again. All of a sudden, I got an idea that scared me worse than anything yet.

You see, I'd just remembered the face I'd thought I'd seen in the window. I'd forgotten about that on account of trying to hide it from the others. What? I asked myself, if the frozen folk were coming to life. What if they were like the liquid helium that got a new lease on life and started crawling toward the heat just when you thought it's much. molecules ought to freeze solid forever. Or like the electricity that moves endlessly when it's just about as cold as that. What if the ever-growing cold, with the temperature creeping down the last few degrees to

the last zero, had mysteriously awakened the frozen folk to life, not warm-blooded life, but something icy and horrible? That was a worse idea than the one about something coming down from the dark start. to get us. Or maybe I thought both ideas might be true. Something coming down from the dark store and making the frozen folk move, using them to do its work. That would fit with both things I'd seen, the beautiful young lady and the moving star-like

light. The frozen folk, with minds from the dark star behind their unwinking eyes, creeping, crawling, their way, following the heat to the nest. I tell you, that thought gave me a very bad turn, and I wanted very badly to tell the others my fears. But I remembered what Pa had said and clenched my teeth and didn't speak. We were all sitting very still. Even the fire was burning silently. There was just a sound of Paa's voice and the clocks.

And then, from beyond the blankets, I thought I heard a tiny noise. My skin tightened all over me. Pa was telling about the early years in the nest, and had come to the place where he philosophizes. So I asked myself then, he said, What's the use of going on? What's the use of dragging it out for a few years? Why prolong a doomed existence of hard work and cold? and loneliness.

The human race is done. The earth is done. Why not give up? I asked myself. And all of a sudden I got the answer." Again I heard the noise. Louder this time. A kind of uncertain shuffling tread coming closer.

I couldn't breathe. Life's always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold, Pa was saying. The Earth's always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don't matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers. You've seen pictures of those, but I can't describe how they feel.

the fires glow. It makes everything else worthwhile, and that's as true for the last man as the first. And still the steps kept shuffling closer. It seemed to me that the inmost blanket trembled and bulged a little, just as if they were burned into my imagination, I kept seeing those peering frozen eyes. So right then and there, Pa went on, and now I was. I could tell that he heard the steps, too, and was talking loud so maybe we wouldn't hear them. Right then and there I told myself that I was going on as if we had all eternity out of us. I'd have children and teach them all I could.

I'd get them to read books. I'd plan for the future, try to enlarge and seal the nest. I'd do what I could to keep everything beautiful and growing. I'd keep alive my feeling of wonder even at the cold and the dark and the distant stars. But then the blanket actually did move and lift, and there was a bright light somewhere behind it. Pa's voice stopped and his eyes turned to the widening slit, and his hand went out until it touched and gripped the handle of the hammer beside him.

In through the blanket stepped the beautiful young lady. She stood there looking at us the strangest way, and she carried something bright and unwinking in her hand. And two other faces peered over her shoulders, men's faces, white and staring. Well, my heart couldn't have been stopped for more than four or five beats, before I realized she was wearing a suit and helmet like Pa's homemade ones, only fancier, and that the men were, too, and that the frozen folk certainly wouldn't be wearing those. Also I noticed that the bright thing in her hand was just a kind of flashlight.

The silence went on while I swallowed hard a couple of times, and after that there was all sorts of jabbering and commotion. They were simply people, you see. We hadn't been the only ones to survive. We just thought so for natural enough reasons. These three people had survived, and quite a few others with them. And when we found out how they survived, Paul let out the biggest whoop of joy. They were from Los Alamos, and they were getting their heat and power from atomic energy.

Just using the uranium and plutonium intended for bombs, they had enough to go on for thousands of years. They had a regular little airtight city with airlocks and all. They even generated electric light and grew plants and animals by it. At this, Paul let out a second whoop, waking maw from her faint. But if we were flabbergasted at them. They were double flabbergasted at us. One of the men kept saying,

"'But it's impossible, I tell you. You can't maintain an air supply without hermetic ceiling. It's simply impossible.' That was after he had got his helmet off and was using our air. Meanwhile, the young lady kept looking around at us as if we were saints and telling us we'd done something amazing, and suddenly she broke down and cried. They'd been scouting for survivors, but they never expected to find any in a place like this.

They had rocket ships at Los Alamos and plenty of chemical fuel. As for liquid oxygen, all you had to do was go out and shovel the air blanket at the top level. So after they got things going smoothly at Los Alamos, which had taken years, they decided to make some trips to likely places where there might be other survivors. No good trying long-distance radio signals, of course, since there was no atmosphere to carry them around the curve of the earth. Well, they'd found other colonies at Argonne and Brookhaven and way around the world at Harwell and Tonatova. And now they'd been given our city a look, not really expecting to find anything, but they

had an instrument that noticed the faintest heat waves, and it had told them there was some something warm down there, so they'd landed to investigate. Of course, we hadn't heard them land, since there was no air to carry the sound, and they'd had to investigate around quite a while before finding us. Their instruments had given them a wrong steer, and they'd wasted some time in the building across the street. By now all five adults were talking like sixty. Pa was demonstrating to the men how he worked the fire and got rid of the

ice and the chimney and all that. Ma had perked up wonderfully and was showing the young lady her cooking and sewing stuff, and even asking about how the women dressed at Los Alamos. The strangers marveled at everything and praised it to the skies. I could tell from the way they wrinkle their noses that they found the nest a bit smelly, but they never mentioned that at all and just asked bushels of questions. In fact, there was so much talking and excitement that Pa forgot about things, and it wasn't until they were all getting groggy that he looked and found the air had all boiled away in the pail. He got another bucket of air quick from behind the blankets.

Of course, that started them all laughing and jabbering again. The newcomers even got a little drunk. They weren't used to so much oxygen. Funny thing, though, I didn't do much talking at all. And sis hung on to Ma all the time and hit her face when anybody looked at her. I felt pretty uncomfortable and disturbed myself, even about the young lady. Glimping her outside there, I had all sorts of mushy thoughts, but now I was just embarrassed and scared of her, even though she tried to be nice as anything to me.

I sort of wished they'd all quit crowding the nest and let us be alone and get our feelings straightened out. And when the newcomers began to talk about our all going to Los Alamos, as if that was taken for granted, I could see that something of the same feeling struck Ma and Pa too. Pa got very silent all of a sudden, and Ma kept telling the young lady, but I wouldn't know how to act there and I haven't any clothes. The strangers were puzzled like anything at first, but then they got the idea, as Paa kept saying, it just doesn't. doesn't seem right to let this fire go out." Well, the strangers are gone, but they're coming back.

It hasn't been decided yet just what will happen. Maybe the nest will be kept up as what one of the strangers called a survival school, or maybe we will join the pioneers who are going to try to establish a new colony at the uranium mines at Great Slave Lake or in the Congo. Of course, now that the strangers are gone, I've been thinking a lot about law. Salimos and those other tremendous colonies. I have a hankering to see them for myself. You ask me, Pa wants to see them, too.

He's been getting pretty thoughtful, watching Ma and Sis perk up. It's different now that we know others are alive, he explains to me. Your mother doesn't feel so hopeless anymore. Neither do I, for that matter, nor having to carry the whole responsibility for keeping the human race going, so to speak. It scares a person. I looked around at the blanket walls and the fire in the pails of air boiling away, and Ma insists sleeping in the warmth and the flickering light.

It's not going to be easy to leave the nest, I said, wanting to cry, kind of. It's so small and there's just the four of us. I get scared at the idea of big places and a lot of strangers. He nodded and put another piece of coal on the fire. then he looked at the little pile and grinned suddenly and put a couple of handfuls on just as if it was one of our birthdays or christmas you'll quickly get over that feeling son he said the trouble with the world was that it kept getting smaller and smaller till it ended with just the nest now it'll be good to have a real huge world again the way it was in the beginning i guess he's right you think the very big of the very big end it just the nest you think the big of it's just the nest you think the best you'll be good to have a real huge world again the way it was in the beginning i guess he's right you think the beautiful young lady will wait for me till i grow up i'll be twenty in only ten years end of a pail of air by fritz the last letter by fritz liber this liby vogue's recording is in the public domain this story was first published in galaxy science fiction june nineteen fifty eight the last letter

on tenth month one twenty four fifty seven a d at exactly nine a m planetary federation time but with a permissible error of a millionth of a second either way in the fifth sub-level of new new york robot postal station sixty eight black sorter gulped down ten thousand pieces of first-class mail this breakfast tidbit did not agree with the mail sorting machine It was as if a robust dog had been fed a large chunk of good red meat with a strict nine pill in it. Black Sartar's innards went, "'Rr, clunk!' a blue electric glow enveloped him, and he began to shake as if he might break loose from the concrete. He desperately spat back over his shoulder a single envelope, gave a great, hoff, and blew out toward the sorting tubes,

a medium-sized snowstorm consisting of the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces of first-class male chewed to confetti. Then still convulsed, he snapped up a fresh ten thousand and proceeded to chomp and grind on them. Black Sartar was rugged. The reject envelope was tonged up by the red subsurter, who growled deep in his throat, set a very bad word, and passed it to yellow rerouter, who passed it to green rerouter, who passed it to brown study, who passed it to pink wastebasket. Unlike black sorter, pink wastebasket was very delicate, though highly intuitive, the machine equivalent of a right Russian countess.

She was designed to scan in 3,137 codes, route special delivery space mail to interplanetary liners by message rocket and distinguish nines from upside-down sixes. Pink waist-backet haughtily inhaled the offending envelope, and almost instantly turned a bright crimson and began to tremble. After a few minutes, small atomic flames started to flicker from her midsection. White Nurse Maid Seven and Greasy Joe both received Pink Wastebasket's distress signal and got there as fast as their wheels could roll them, but the high-born machine's malady was beyond their simple skills of oil can and electroshock. They summoned other machine-tending and repairing machines, one's far more expert than themselves, but all were baffled. It was clear that pink waistbasket, who continued to tremble and flicker uncontrollably, was suffering from the equivalent of a major psychosis with severe psychosomatic symptoms.

She spat a stream of filthy ions at gray psychiatrist, not recognizing her old friend. Meanwhile, the paper blizzard from Black Sorter was piling up in great drifts between the dark pillars of the sub-level and flurries had reached Pink Wastebasket's aristocratic area. An expedition of sturdy machines, headed by two hastily summoned snowplows, was dispatched to immobilize Black Sorter at all costs. Pink Wastebasket, quivering like a demented hool-dancer, was clearly approaching a crisis.

Finally, gray psychiatrist, after consulting with Green Surgeon, and even then with an irritated reluctance, as if he were calling in a witch doctor, summoned a human being. The human being walked respectfully around Pink Wastmaskets several times, and then gave her a nervous little poke with a rubber-handled probe. Pink Wastasket gently regurgitated her last snack, turned dead white, gave a last flicker and shake, and expired.

Black Coroner recorded the immediate cause of her. of death as tinkering by a human being. The human being, a bald and scrawny one named Putsheltar, picked up the envelope responsible for all the trouble, stared at it incredulously, opened it with trembling fingers, scanned the contents briefly, gave a great shriek,

and ran off at top speed, forgetting to hop on his perambulator, which followed him making anxious clucking noises. The nearest human representative of the Solar Bureau of Investigation, a rather wooden-looking man named Crumbine, also bald, recognized Potts Shelter as soon as the latter came gasping into his office, squeezing through the door while it was still dilating. The human beings, whose work took them among the top brass, as the upper echelon machines were sometimes referred to, formed a kind of human elite. Just one big, nervous family. Sit down, Pot Shelter, the SBI man said. Hold still a second so the chair can grab you.

Hitch on to the hookah and choose a tranquilizer from the tray of your elbow. Whatever deviation you've uncovered can't be that much of a danger to the planets. I imagine that when you leave this office, the solar battle fleet will still be orbiting peacefully around Luna. I seriously doubt that. Potts Shelter gulped a large, large, lavender pill and took a deep breath. Crumbine, a letter turned up in the first-class mail this morning. Great Scott!

It is a letter from one person to another person. Good Lord! The flow of advertising has been seriously interfered with. At a modest estimate, three hundred million pieces of expensive first-class advertising have already been chew to rags, and I'm not sure these steel helms, God bless them, have the trouble in hand. Judas Priest! Naturally the poor machines weren't able to cope with a letter. It was utterly outside their experience, beyond the furthest reach of their programming.

It threw them into a terrible spasm. Pink waist-basket is dead, and at this very instant, if we're lucky, three police machines of the toughest blued steel are holding down black sorter and putting a muzzle on him. Great, Scott! It's incredible, Pichelter! And pink waistbasket dead? Take another tranquilizer, Pichelter, and hand over the tray. Crumbine received it with trembling fingers, started to pick up a big pink pill, but drew back his hand from it in sudden revulsion.

at its color, and swallowed two blue oval ones instead. The man was obviously fighting to control himself. He said, unsteadily, I almost never take doubles, but this news you bring. Oh, good Lord, I seem to recall a case where someone tried to send a sound tape through the mails, but that was before my time. Incidentally, is there any possibility that this is a letter sent by one year? group of persons to another group? A hive or a therapy group or a social club?

That would be bad enough, of course, but no. Just one single person sending to another. Pott Shelter's expression said in grimly solicitous lines. I can see you don't quite understand, Crumbine. This is not a sound tape, but a letter written in letters. you know, letters, characters like books. Don't mention books in this office. Crumbine drew himself up angrily and then slumped back.

Excuse me, Potschelter, but I find this very difficult to face squarely. Do I understand you to say that one person has tried to use the mails to send a printed sheet of some sort to another? Worse than that? A written letter? Written? I don't recognize the word. It's a way of making characters, a farming visual equivalence of sound

without using electricity. The writer, as he's called, employs a black liquid and a pointed stick called a pin. I know about this because one hobby of mine is ancient means of communication. Crumbine frowned and shook his head. "'Communication is a dangerous business, Pitchelter, especially at the personal level.

"'With you and me it's all right, because we know what we're doing.' He picked up a third blue tranquilizer. But with most of the hive folk, person to person, communication is only a morbid form of advertising, a dangerous travesty of normal newscasting. "'Cathorcess without the analyst, recitation without the teacher. a perversion of promotion employed in betraying and subverting. The frown deepened as he put the blue pill in his mouth and shoot it. But about this pin, do you mean the fellow glues the pointed stick to his tongue and then speaks?

And the black liquid traces the vibrations on the paper? A primitive non-electrical oscilloscope? Sloppy but conceivable. and producing a record of sorts of the spoken word. No, no, Crumbine! Pied Sheltor nervously popped a square orange tablet into his mouth. It's a hand-written letter. Crumbine watched him.

I never mixed tranquilizers, he boasted absently. Hand-written, eh? You mean that the message was imprinted on a hand? and the skin or the entire hand afterward detached, and sent through the mails in the fashion of a Martian reproach? A grisly find indeed, Pottsilter. You still don't quite grasp it, Crumbine. The fingers of the hand move the stick that applies the ink, producing a crude imitation of the printed word. Diabolical!

Crumbine smashed his fist down on the desk, so that the four phones and two-score microphones rattled. I tell you, Putschelter, the SBI is ready to cope with the subtlest modern deceptions. But when fiends search out and revive tricks from the pre-atomic cave era, it's almost too much. But, great Scott, I dally, while the planets are in danger. What's the sender's code on this hellish letter? no code potshelter said darkly proffering the envelope the return address is handwritten crumbine blanched as his eyes slowly traced the uneven lines in the upper left-hand corner from richard row two one five west tenth street horizontal two eight three seven rocket court vertical five thirty seven new New York, 319, New York, Columbia, Terra.

Oh, Crumbine said, shivering. Those crawling characters, those letters, as you call them, those things, barely enough like print to be readable. They seem to be on the verge of awakening all sorts of horrid racial memories. I find myself thinking of fur-clad witch-doctors, dipping long-pointed sticks in bubbling black cauldrons. No wonder pink waste basket couldn't take it. Brave girl.

Firming himself behind his desk. He pushed a number of buttons and spoke long numbers and meaningful alphabetical symbols into several microphones. Banks of colored lights around the desk began to blink, like a theater marquee sending Morse code, while phosphorescent arrows crawled purposefully across maps and space charts and through three-dimensional street diagrams. There, he said at last, the sender of the letter is being apprehended and will be brought directly here.

We'll see what sort of man this Richard Rowe is, if we can assume he's human. Seven precautionary cordons are being drawn around his population station, three composed of machines, two of SBI agents, and two consistent. of human and mechanical medical combat teams. Same goes for the intended recipient of the letter. Meanwhile, a destroyer squadron of the solar fleet has been detached to orbit over New New York. In case it becomes necessary to Z-bomb,

Pichelter asked grimly. Crumbine nodded. With all those villains lurking outside the solar system in their invisible black ships, With planets sighed in their hearts, we can't be too careful. One word transmitted from one spy to another, and anything may happen. And we must bomb before they do so as to contain our losses. Better one city destroyed than a traitor on the loose who may destroy many cities.

One hundred years ago, three person-to-person postcards went through the mails. just three postcards, Potts Shelter, and Fifth went Schenectady, Hoboken, Cicero, and Walla Walla. Here, long as you're mixing them, try one of these oval blues. I find him best for steady swallowing. Bells jangled. Crumbine grabbed up two phones, holding one to each ear. Potts Shelter picked up a third. The ringing continued.

Crumbine started to wedge one of his phones under his. his chin, knotted sharply at Potts Shelter, and then toward a cluster of microphones at the end of the table. Pot Shelter picked up a fourth phone from behind them. The ringing stopped. The two men listened, looking doped. Crumbine with an eye fixed on the sweep second-hand of the large wall-clock. When it had made one revolution he cradled his phones.

Potts Shelter followed suit. I do like the simplicity of the new-on-the-hour puffy-loaf phono commercial, the latter remarked thoughtfully. The bread that's lighter than air. Nice. Crumbine nodded. I hear they've had to add mass to the lead foil wrapping to keep the loaves from floating off the shelves. Fact. He cleared his throat. Too bad we can't listen to more funno commercials.

But even when there isn't a crisis on the agenda, I find I have to. to budget my listening time one minute per hour strikes a reasonable balance between duty and self-indulgence the nearest wall began to sing mr j augustus crumbine we y'all think you're fine fine now out of the skyy blue come some telegrams for you the wall opened to a small heart-shaped toward the center and a sheaf of pale yellow envelopes arced out and plopped on the middle of the desk. Crumbine started to leaf through them, scanning the little transparent windows. "'Heathronic soap, better homes and landing platforms, psycho-blinkers, your girl next door, poppy-woppies, poopsie-whoopsies.' He started to open an envelope, then, after a quick look around, and an apologetic smile

at Pott Shelter dumped them all on the disposal hopper, which gargled briefly. After all, there is a crisis this morning, he said in a defensive voice. Pite Shelter nodded absently. I can remember back before personalized delivery and rhyming robots, he observed. But how I'd miss them now! So much more disungay than the hives with their non-personalized radio, TV, and stereo advertising. For that matter, I believe there are some backward areas on Terra, where the great advertising potential of telephones and telegrams hasn't been fully realized, and they are still used in part

for personal communication. Now, me, I've never in my life sent or received a message except on my walkie-talkie. He patted his breast pocket. Crumbine nodded, but he was a trifle-shocked and inclined to revise his estimate of Pott Shelter's social status. Crumbine conducted his own social correspondence solely by telepathy. He shared with three other SBI officials a private telepath, a charming albino girl named Agnes. Yes, it's a very handsome walkie-talkie, he assured Pots Shelter a little falsely. "'Suit you. I like the upswept antenna.'

He drummed on the desk and swallowed another blue tranquilizer. "'Damn it! What's happened to those machines? They ought to have the two spies here by now? Did you notice that the second the intended recipient of the letter, I mean, seems to be female?' Another good Terran name, too, Jane Doe, hive in Upper Manhattan. He began to tap the envelope sharply against the desk. Damn it, where are they? Excuse me, Pitchelter said hesitantly,

but I'm wondering why you haven't read the message inside the envelope. Crumbine looked at him blankly. Great Scott. I assumed that at least it was in some secret code, of course. Normally I'd have asked you to have pink waistbasket to try her skill on. it, but his eyes widened and his voice sank. "'You don't mean to tell me that it's.' Pitchelter nodded grimly.

Hand-written, too, yes. Crumbine winced. I keep trying to forget that aspect of the case. He dug out the message with shaking fingers, fumbled it open, and read. "'Dear Jane.' it must surprise you that i know your name for our hives are widely separated do you recall day before yesterday when your guided tour of grand central spaceport got stalled because the guide blew a fuse i was the young man with hair in the tour behind yours you were a little frightened and a group mistress was reassuring you the machine spoke your name since then i have been unable to forget you when i go to sleep i do you i do you dream of your face, looking up sadly at the mistress's kindly photocells.

I don't know how to get in touch with you, but my grandfather has told me stories his grandfather told him that his grandfather told him about young men writing what he calls love letters to young ladies. So I am writing you a love letter. I work at a first-class advertising house, and I will slip this love-letter into an outgoing ten thousand pack and hope. Don't be frightened of me, Jane. I am no caveman except for my hair. I am not insane.

I am emotionally disturbed, but in a way that no machine has ever described to me. I want only your happiness. Sincerely Richard Rowe. Crumbine slumped back in his chair, which braced itself manfully against him, and looked long and thoughtfully at Pitchelter. Well, if that's a code, it's certainly a fiendishly subtle one. You'd think he was talking to his girl next door. Pitchelter nodded wonderingly.

I only read as far as where they were planning to blow up Grand Central Spaceport and all the guides in it. Judas Priest, I think I have it, Crumbine shot up. It's a pilot-advert. advertisement boy next door or that kind of thing printed to look like handwriting which would make all the difference and the pilot copy got mailed by accident which would mean there is no real richard rowe at that instant the door dilated and two blue detective engines hustled a struggling young man into the office he was slim rather handsome had a bushy head of hair that had somehow survived Evolution and radioactive fallout, and across the chest and back of his paper singlet, was neatly stamped Richard Rowe. When he saw the two men, he stopped struggling and straightened up.

"'Excuse me, gentlemen,' he said, "'but these police machines must have made a mistake. I've committed no crime.' Then his gaze fell on the hand-addressed envelope on Crumbine's desk, and he turned pale. Crumbine laughed harshly. Ha, no crime, not at all, merely using the mails to communicate. Ha! The young man shrank back.

I'm sorry, sir. Sorry, he says. Do you realize that your insane prank has resulted in the destruction of perhaps a half-billion pieces of first-class advertising? in the strangulation of a postal station and the paralysis of Lower Manhattan, in the mobilization of SBI reserves, the demoth-balling of two divisions of G.I. machines, and the redeployment of the solar battle fleet. Good Lord, boy. Why did you do it? Richard Raoul continued to shrink, but he squared his shoulders.

I'm sorry, sir, but I just had to. I just had to get in touch with Jane Doe. A girl from another hive? A girl you'd merely gazed at because a guide happened to blow a fuse? Crumbine stood up shaking an angry finger. Great Scott, boy, where was your girl next door? Richard Rao stared bravely at the finger, which made him look a trifle cross-eyed. She died, sir, both of them.

But there should be at least. least six. I know, sir. But of the other four, two have been shipped to the Adirondacks on vacation, and two recently got married and haven't been replaced. Pied Shelter, a far-away look in his eyes, said softly, "'I think I'm beginning to understand.' But Crumbine thundered on at Richard Rowe with,

"'Good Lord, I can see you've had your troubles, boy. It isn't often we have these shortages of girls next door, so that temporarily a boy can't marry the girl next door as he always should. But Judas Priest! Why didn't you take your troubles to your psychiatrist, your groupmaster, your socializer, your queen mother? My psychiatrist is being overhauled, sir, and his replacement short circuits every time he hears the word trouble. My groupmaster and socializer are on vacation duty in the Adirondacks. My queen mother is busy replacing girls next door.

Yes, it all fits, Potts Shelter proclaimed excitedly. Don't you see Crumbine? Except for a set of mischances that would only occur once in a billion billion times, the letter would never have been conceived or sent. You may have something there, Crumbine concurred. But in any case, boy, why did you written this? this letter to this particular girl what is there about jane doe that made you do it well you see sir she's just then the door redilated and a blue matron machine conducted a young woman into the office she was slim and she had a head of hair that would have graced a museum beauty while across the back and well chest is an inadequate word of her paper shimmies

Jane Doe was silk-screened in the palest pink. Crumbine did not repeat his last question. He had to admit to himself that it had been answered fully. Putschelter whistled respectfully. The blue detective engines gave hard-boiled grunts. Even the blue matron machine seemed awed by the girl's beauty. But she had eyes only for Richard Rowe. "'My grand central man!' she breathed in amazement.

"'The man I've dreamed of ever since. "'My man with hair!' "'She noticed the way he was looking at her, and she breathed harder. "'Oh, darling, what have you done?' "'I tried to send you a letter.' "'A letter?' "'For me?' "'Oh, darling!'

"'Crumbine cleared his throat. "'Ah, pot shelter. I'm going to wind this up fast. Miss Doe, could you transfer to this young man's hive? Oh, yes, sir. Mine has an overplus of girls next door. Good. Mr. Rao, there's a sky pilot two levels up.

Look for the usual white collar just below the photo cells. Marry this girl and take her home to your hive. If your queen mother objects, refer her to a pot shelter here. He cut short the young people's thanks. "'Just one thing,' he said, wagging a finger at row. "'Don't written any more letters.' "'Why ever would I?' Richard answered. "'Already my action is beginning to seem like a mad dream.'

"'Not to me, dear,' Jane corrected him. "'Oh, sir, could I have the letter he sent me? "'Not to do anything with, not to show anyone, just to keep.' "'Well, I don't know.' Crumbine began. "'Oh, please, sir. Well, I don't know why not, I was going to say. Here you are, Miss.

Just see that this husband of yours never riddons another.' He turned back, as the contracting door shut the young couple from view. "'You were right, Potts Shelter,' he said briskly. "'It was one of those combinations of mischances that come up only once in a billion billion times, but we're going to have to issue recommendations for new procedures and safeguards that will reduce the possibilities to one in a trillion trillion. It will undoubtedly up the Terran income tax a healthy percentage, but we can't have something like this happening again.

Every boy must marry the girl next door, and the first-class males must not be interfered with. the advertising must go through. I'd almost like to see it happen again, Putshiltor murmured dreamily. If there were another Jane Doe in it. Outside Richard and Jane had halted to allow a small cortege of machines to pass. First came a squad of police machines with blacks sorter in their midst, unmistled and docile enough, though still gnashing his teeth softly. Then stretched out.

horizontally and borne on the shoulders of gray psychiatrist black coroner white nursemaid seven and greasy joe there passed the slim form of pink waist-basket snow-white in death the machines were keening softly mournfully round about the black pillars little mech-mops were scurrying like mice cleaning up the last of the first-class male bits of confetti richard winced at this evidence of his aberration. But Jane squeezed his hand comfortingly, which produced in him a truly amazing sensation that changed his whole appearance. "'I know how you feel, darling,' she told him.

"'But don't worry about it. Just think, dear. I'll always be able to tell your friend's wives something no other woman in the world can boast of, that my husband once wrote me a letter. End of The Last Letter by Fritz-Liber. A Bad Day for Sales by Fritz-Liber. This Libre-Vox recording is in the public domain. This story was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953.

A Bad Day for Sales. The big bright doors of the office building parted with a pneumatic whoosh, and Robbie glided on to Times Square. The crowd that had been watching the fifty-foot-tall girl on the clothing billboard get dressed, or reading the latest news about the hot truce, scrawl itself in your high script, hurried to look. Robey was still a novelty. Robey was fun.

For a little while yet he could steal the show. But the attention did not make Roby proud. He had no more emotions than the peasant. pink plastic giantess, who dressed and undressed endlessly whether there was a crowd or the street was empty, and who never once blinked her blue mechanical eyes. But she merely drew business while Roby went out after it, for Roby was the logical conclusion of the development of vending machines. All the earlier ones had stood in one place, on a floor or hanging on a wall, and blankly

delivered merchandise in return for coins, whereas Roby searched for customers. He was the demonstration model of a line of sales robots to be manufactured by schuler vending machines, provided the public invested enough in stocks to give the company capital to go into mass production. The publicity Roby drew stimulated investments handsomely. It was amusing to see the TV and newspaper coverage of Roby's selling, but not a fraction as much sun as being approached personally by him. Those who were usually bought anywhere from one to five hundred chairs, if they had any money, and foresight enough to see that sales robots would eventually be on every street and highway in the country. Roby radared the crowd, found that it surrounded

him solidly and stopped. With a carefully built-in sense of timing, he waited for the tension and expectation to mount before he began talking. "'Say, ma, he doesn't look like a robot at all,' a child said. "'He looks like a turtle.' Which was not completely inaccurate. The lower part of Roby's body was a metal hemisphere, hemmed with sponge rubber, and not quite touching the sidewalk. The upper was a metal box with black holes in it.

The box could swivel and duck. A chromium-bright-hoop skirt with a turret on top. Reminds me too much of the little Joe paratanks, a legless veteran of the Persian War muttered, and rapidly rolled himself away on wheels rather like Robies. His departure made it easier for some of those who knew about Roby to open a path in the crowd. Robey headed straight for the gap. The crowd whooped.

Roeby glided very slowly down the path, deftly jogging aside whenever he got too close to ankles in Skylon or Soccasins. The rubber buffer on his hoop skirt was merely an added safeguard. The boy who had called Roby a turtle jumped in the middle of the path and stood his ground, grinning foxily. Roby stopped two feet short of him. The turret ducked. The crowd got quiet.

Hello, youngster, Roby said in a voice that was smooth as that of a TV store and was, in fact, a recording of one. The boy stopped smiling. Hello, he whispered. How old are you? Roby asked. Nine, no, eight.

That's nice, Roby. observed, a metal arm shot down from his neck stopped just short of the boy. The boy jerked back. For you, Roby said. The boy gingerly took the red polylop from the neatly fashioned blunt metal claws and began to unwrap it. Nothing to say, asked Roby. Uh, thank you. After a suitable pause, Roby continued. And now how about a nice, refreshing drink of poppy pop to go with your polylop? The boy lifted his eyes, but didn't stop licking the candy.

Roby waggled his claws slightly. Just give me a quarter and within five seconds. A little girl wriggled out of the forest of legs. Give me a polylop too, Roby, she demanded. Rita, come back here, a woman in the third rank of the crowd called Angrily. Roby scanned the newcomer gravely. His reference silhouettes were not good enough to let him distinguish the sex of children, so he merely repeated,

Hello, youngster. Rita! Give me a polylop! Disregarding both remarks, for a good salesman, is single-minded, and does not waste bait, Roby said willingly, I'll bet you read Junior Space-Killers, Now I have here.

Uh-uh, I'm a girl. He got a polylop? At the word girl, Roby broke off. Rather ponderously, he said, I'll bet you read G.G. Jones, Space Stripper. Now I have here the latest issue of that thrilling comic, not yet in the stationary vending machines. Just give me fifty cents, and within five,

Please let me through. I'm her mother. young woman in the front rank drawled over her powder-sprayed shoulder. I'll get her for you, and slithered out on six-inch platform shoes. Run away, children, she said nonchalantly, lifting her arms behind her head. She pirouetted slowly before Roby to show how much she did for her Bolero half-jacket and her form-fitting slacks that melted into skylon just above the knees. The little girl glared at her.

She ended the pirouette in profile. At this age level, Roby's reference silhouettes permitted him to distinguish sex, though with occasional amusing and embarrassing miscalls. He whistled admiringly. The crowd cheered. Someone remarked critically to a friend. It would go over better if he were built more like a real robot, you know, like a man. The friend shook his head.

This way it's subtler. No one in the crowd was watching the new sprint overhead as it scribbled. Ice pack for hot truce? Vanadin hence Russ may yield on Pakistan. Robey was saying, In the savage new glamor tent we have christened Mars blood, complete with spray applicator and fit all finger stalls, that mask each finger completely except for the nail.

Just give me five dollars. Uncrumpled bills may be fed into the revolving rollers you see beside my arm, and within five seconds, no thanks, Roby, the young woman yawned. Remember, Roby persisted, for three more weeks, seductivizing Mars blood will be unobtainable from any other robot or human vendor. No thanks. Roby scanned the crowd resourcefully. "'Is there any gentleman here?'

He began just as a woman elbowed her way through the front rank. "'I told you to come back,' she snapped at the little girl. "'But I didn't get my Pollylop. Who would care to?' "'Rita?' Roby cheated. Ow!' Meanwhile the young woman in the half Bolero had scanned the nearby gentleman

on her own. Deciding that there was less than a 50% chance of any of them accepting the proposition Robey seemed about to make, she took advantage of the scuffle to slither gracefully back into the ranks. Once again the path was clear before Roby. He paused, however, for a brief recapitulation of the more magical properties of Mars' blood, including a telling phrase about the passionate at claws of a Martian sunrise. But no one bought. It wasn't quite time. Soon enough, silver coins would be clinking, bills going through the rollers, faster than laundry,

and five hundred people struggling for the privilege of having their money taken away from them by America's first mobile sales robot. But there were still some tricks that Roby had to do free. And one certainly should enjoy those before starting the more expensive fun. So Roby moved on until he reached the curb. The variation in level was instantly sensed by his underscanters. He stopped. His head began to swivel.

The crowd watched in eager silence. This was Roby's best trick. Roby's head stopped swiveling. The scanners had found the traffic light. It was green. Robey edged forward, but then the light turned red. Roby stopped again, still on the curb. The crowd softly awed its delight.

It was wonderful to be alive and watching Roby on such an exciting day. Alive and amused in the fresh weather-controlled air between the lines of bright skyscrapers with their winking windows and under a sky so blue you could almost call it dark. But way, way up, where the crowd could not see, the sky was darker still. Purple dark with stars showing. And in that purple dark, a silver-green something, the color of a bud, plunged down at better than three miles a second. The silver-green was a newly-devil-green.

was a newly developed paint that foiled radar. Robey was saying, While we wait for the light, there's time for you youngsters to enjoy a nice, refreshing poppy pop. Or for you adults, only those over five feet tall are eligible to buy, to enjoy an exciting poppy pop fizz. Just give me a quarter, or in the case of adults, one dollar and a quarter. I'm licensed to dispense intoxicating liquors. And within five seconds—but that was not cutting it quite fine enough.

Just three seconds later, the silver-green bud blossomed over Manhattan into a globular orange flower. The skyscrapers grew brighter and brighter still, the brightness of the inside of the sun. The windows winked, blossoming white fire-flowers. The crowd around Roby bloomed, too. Their clothes puffed into petals of flame. Their heads of hair were torches. The orange flower grew, stem and blossom.

The blast came. The winking windows, shattered tier by tear, became black holes. The walls bent, rocked, cracked. A stony dandruff flaked from their cornices. The flaming flowers on the sidewalk were all leveled at once. Roby was shoved ten feet. His metal hoop skirt dimpled, regained its shape. The blast ended.

The orange flower grew vast, vanished overhead on its huge magic beanstalk. It grew dark and very still. The cornice dandruff pattered down. A few small fragments rebounded from the metal. hoop skirt. Robey made some small, uncertain movements, as if feeling for broken bones. He was hunting for the traffic light, but it no longer shown either red or green. He slowly scanned a full circle.

There was nothing anywhere to interest his reference silhouettes. Yet whenever he tried to move his underscanters warned him of low obstructions, it was very puzzling. The silence was disturbed by moans and a crackling sound, as faint at first as the scampering of distant rats. A seared man, his charred clothes fuming where the blast had blown out the fire, rose from the curb. Roby scanned him. "'Good day, sir,' Roby said. Would you care for a smoke? A truly cool smoke. Now I have here a yet unmarketed brand. But the customer had run away, screaming, and Roby never ran after customers, though he could

follow them at a medium-brisk roll. He worked his way along the curb where the man had sprawled, carefully keeping his distance from the low obstructions, some of which writhed now and then, forcing him to jog. Shortly he reached a fire hydrant. He scanned it. His electronic vision, though it still worked, had been somewhat. somewhat blurred by the blast. Hello, Youngster,

Roby said. Then after a long pause, Cat got your tongue? Well, I have a little present for you. A nice lovely polylop. Take it, youngster, he said after another pause. It's for you. Don't be afraid.

His attention was distracted by other customers, who began to rise up oddly here and there, twisting forms that confused his reference silhouettes and would not stay to be scanned properly. One cried, Water! But no quarter clinked in Roby's claws when he caught the word and suggested, How about a nice refreshing drink of poppy pop! The rat crackling of the flames had become a jungle muttering.

The blind windows began to wink fire again. A little girl marched, stepping neatly over arms and legs she did not look at. A white dress and the once taller bodies around her had shielded her from the brilliance and the blast. Her eyes were fixed on Roby. In them was the same imperious confidence, though none of the delight with which she had watched him earlier. "'Help me, Roby,' she said, I want my mother." "'Hello, youngster,' Roby said.

"'What would you like? Comics, Candy?' "'Where is she, Roby? Take me to her.' "'Balloons? Would you like to watch me blow up a balloon?' The little girl began to cry. The sound triggered off another of Roby's novelty circuits, a service feature that had brought in a lot of favorable publicity.

"'Is something wrong?' He asked, Are you in trouble? Are you lost? Yes, Roby. Take me to my mother. Stay right here, Roby said reassuringly, and don't be frightened. I will call a policeman.

He whistled shrilly twice. Time passed. Roby whistled again. The windows flared and roared. The little girl begged, Take me away, Roby. and jumped onto a little step in his hoop skirt. Give me a dime, Roby said.

The little girl found one in her pocket and put it in his claws. Your weight, Roby said, is 54 and one-half pounds. Have you seen my daughter? Have you seen her? A woman was crying somewhere. I left her watching that thing while I stepped inside. Rita! Roby, help me! The little girl began babbling at her. He knew I was lost. He even called the police, but they didn't come. He weighed me, too, didn't you, Roby? But Roby had gone off to pedal poppy-pop to the members of a rescue squad,

which had just come around the corner more robot-like in their asbestos suits than he in his metal skin. End of. A Bad Day for Sales by Fritz Sliber. End of the project. Nice Girl with Five Husbands by Fritz-Lyber. ever.