Amazing Vignettes Read online

  We are Reborn— (John Weston), May 1950

  We Grow Our Air! (Howard Gorman), February 1950

  When Callisto Took Over (E. Bruce Yaches), February 1952

  When the World Went Black (Salem Lane), September 1951

  When the World Went Mad, (Charles Recour), March 1952

  Who Plays with Fire . . . (Tom Lynch), July 1951

  Without Incident (Leslie Phelps), June 1950

  Women Won’t Work (Sam Dewey), March 1953

  Wrong Answer (Carter T. Wainwright), June 1950

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BY AUTHOR

  Arlen, Dee

  Mercurian Pendulum, March 1953

  Abbott, Stanley

  The Terrible Decade, February 1950

  Barry, Jon

  Times Don’t Change, April 1950

  Tomorrow’s Hero, July 1950

  Bad Luck Day, October 1950

  Boggs, Pete

  Nothing, August 1951

  Brady, Leo

  The Tomb Tappers, June 1950

  Burt, L.A.

  Atavism!, May 1950

  The Atomic Rainmaker, November 1950

  Cord, John

  “Coming Events . . .”, February 1950

  Cox, Ralph

  Build Your House of Dust!, December 1951

  Routine Patrol, May 1952

  Dewey, Sam

  Women Won’t Work, March 1953

  Elwood, Don

  Children Should Be Seen . . ., February 1950

  Gorman, Howard

  We Grow Our Air!, February 1950

  Greene, Guy

  Monorail Monster, February 1950

  Gunn, Lyle D.

  If the Sun Turned Green, December 1939

  Henley, Edward

  Marbles in the Mud, February 1950

  Hill, Joseph

  Skin Deep, February 1950

  Ultimate Evolution, February 1950

  Boomerang!, February 1950

  Space Wreck!, February 1950

  Visitor to the Future, February 1950

  Karney, William

  Space-Jaloppies, March 1950

  Satellite Greed, July 1950

  Cylinders of Death, November 1950

  Kedzie, A.T.

  The Wager, March 1950

  The Iapetan Night Shade, April 1950

  “Look—New Hands!”, May 1950

  Homesickness, June 1950

  The Ambusher, August 1950

  Kelly, Ralph

  Is this Our Future? . . ., February 1950

  Lanes, Salem

  The Link, February 1950

  Into Exile . . ., June 1950

  When the World Went Black, September 1951

  Pioneer to Venus, October 1951

  No Monument So Proud!, December 1951

  Lasher, George

  Devil on the Moon, August 1951

  Lathrop, Walter

  The Nth Millenium, May 1950

  Linn, Merritt

  The Martian Rocket, April 1951

  Lurie, June

  Dance of Death, November 1946

  Chance, March 1950

  After Armageddon, March 1953

  Lynch, Tom

  Who Plays with Fire . . ., July 1951

  Matthew, Milton

  No Man is Ever Alone!, August 1951

  Miller, Sandy

  Refuge!, March 1950

  “Hot-Rod Hellies”, May 1950

  Gone But Not Forgotten, July 1950

  The Inscrutable God, October 1950

  Moore, John McCabe

  10,000 Years of Dreams, October 1946

  Overman, Sid

  No Glamor in Space, March 1953

  Overman, Sol

  Martian Milestone, October 1952

  Owen, Lee

  The Vanishment, March 1950

  The Deeps, March 1950

  Shadow . . ., March 1950

  Obstacle!, March 1950

  Chance Meeting, April 1950

  The Barrier, May 1950

  Spacemen Don’t Primp, October 1952

  Prison on Luna, March 1953

  Phelps, Leslie

  Malignant Mentor, March 1950

  End of an Era, May 1950

  Without Incident, June 1950

  Two Full Years to Pay, July 1950

  The Ultra Welfare State, August 1950

  Pillar, Frank

  . . . And Not Heard!, February 1950

  Recour, Charles

  Going Home . . ., March 1950

  That’s Telling ’Em!, April 1950

  The Double-Cross, May 1950

  The Final Stalemate, June 1950

  They Didn’t Walk Away . . ., July 1950

  The Mammoth Sleeper, October 1950

  One Man’s Epitaph, July 1951

  Out of the Darkness . . ., August 1951

  When the World Went Mad, March 1952

  Escape to Eternity, June 1952

  The Man Who Couldn’t Quit, July 1952

  Pig in a Poke, March 1953

  Samson, Robert

  Mutant Menace, February 1950

  Sinclair, Ramsey

  The Diamond Cosmos, April 1950

  The Vestal Attack, May 1950

  Runway!, June 1950

  Small, Roy

  They Stayed Up All Night, March 1952

  Standish, Lynn

  Conqueror!, March 1950

  The Lost Chord, May 1950

  Dr. Farrell’s Frankenstein, May 1950

  The Time-Shopper, May 1950

  The Universal Brain, June 1950

  The Final Weapon . . ., October 1950

  Surprise!, October 1950

  The Bull-Headed Gyroscope, October 1950

  The Ultimate Solvent, November 1950

  Easy Does It . . ., November 1950

  Once Upon a Time . . ., January 1951

  Interstellar Piracy!, January 1951

  Stanton, H.R.

  Sun-Stuff, March 1950

  Sleeper Awaken!, April 1950

  Wainwright, Carter T.

  All that Glitters is Not Chrome, April 1950

  Wrong Answer, June 1950

  Lunar Priority Claim, November 1950

  Landing on Loki, January 1951

  Ward, Arnold

  Uncle Sammy and the Snakes, May 1942

  Satanic Satellite (Cal Webb), December 1950

  Weston, John

  Mercurian Madness, March 1950

  We are Reborn—, May 1950

  Heli-Cab Hack, June 1950

  Yaches, E. Bruce

  Pirates Out of Space, October 1951

  Flaherty’s Lucky Day, November 1951

  When Callisto Took Over, February 1952

  [untitled], January 1953

  1939

  If the Sun Turned Green

  Lyle D. Gunn

  ON DECEMBER 4th of that year, people saw the first sign of the change. The sun was tinged with green!

  A few paused to wonder; most hurried on about their day’s affairs.

  But on the following day the sight was more arresting. Over the great solar orb, as if it were a snake’s eye, a thin green membrane had blinked shut!

  Through it, very faintly, shone the normal yellow light. As the week wore on, that too vanished. The sun was a solid green disk—like a space-port looking out on some distant corner of space where Nature had run wild!

  In the nightmarish glow that had taken the place of accustomed daylight, the alarm of the public grew. There was no word from the great observatories. That silence spread panic. Religious fanatics proclaimed that the Day of Judgment had come!

  Meanwhile, another phenomenon went almost unregarded. People expect the unexpected where the weather is concerned. But the world was steadily growing warmer.

  Christmas parties were held outdoors on verdant lawns. Trees put out new leaves and flowers blossomed in a second Spring. And on New Year’s Day, an iceberg was sighted from the boardwalk at Atlantic City!

  No longer could the public be
kept in ignorance. The polar ice caps were melting!

  As the oceans began to rise, hurried orders were given to evacuate all coastal cities. But the task of moving the millions inland produced a crisis in transportation facilities. Food shortages developed—and to the tens of thousands who died of starvation were added those trapped when the first huge tidal waves raced down Manhattan’s canyons!

  On the high plateaus above the new Inland Sea, refuge was found at last under the green sun. And there science’s last uncertain word was heard. The color of the sun was the effect of increased output of heat—and it was possibly on the way to the “blue heat” point of such stars as Rigel with its temperature of 16000° Absolute!

  No one had ever known what maintained the sun’s great mass of six billion trillion tons in its fine thermodynamic balance between the opposing forces of gravity and radiation pressure. And now no one could say where a new balance would be found.

  But the word of the scientists was not needed to show that the sun was getting still hotter! The plateaus were turning into steaming jungles!

  Somehow, civilized man managed to survive that first plunge back to primitive conditions, to hold his own against the beasts that lurked in every copse of giant ferns, the snakes that silently dropped down from overhanging branches. But the temperature kept rocketing, until the surface of the earth became a veritable furnace! No man could breathe that searing air and live!

  Then into the earth man went, and for a while was safe in burrows beneath the mountains. There he brought forth his children in darkness, tried to preserve his last vestiges of humanity.

  But still the sun grew hotter.

  Visibly now it was expanding, becoming a monstrous shapeless blue-green blob. The face of the earth was one barren, blackened ruin.

  And then the earth itself began to go.

  The very elements that made it up began to fuse! Great fissures opened in the ground and molten metals poured in on man in his last refuge! All life was wiped out. . . .

  There is little more to tell. From the space-ships in which a fortunate few had been able to flee far out beyond the orbit of Jupiter, the end was seen as the earth reverted to a glowing, incandescent ball-circling a green sun.

  1942

  Uncle Sammy and the Snakes

  Arnold Ward

  “LOOKS kinda queer,” said the blue-eyed postal inspector. “Think we oughta open it up?”

  “It’s an innocent enough looking affair,” said the gray-haired boss, raising his glasses to his forehead and staring at a package postmarked from Spain. “But the regulations say we’s got to open it; so open it we must.”

  The clerk picked up the travel-worn, tan-colored box and shook is questioningly. He read the label for the fourth time: “To the Curator of Reptiles, Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.” Then he shook his head in resignation and started to open the box. “It sounds like somethin’ alive, all right,” he said as he nervously fingered the wrapping.

  Oddly enough the opening of an unusual package creates suspense for even postal inspectors, and ten or twelve other package priers had gathered around in cautious awe to watch what might be the unveiling of almost anything, alive or dead, in the reptile or snake family. Working slowly, carefully, the blue-eyed clerk pulled back the last covering. Nothing happened. A sigh of relief went through the group. The gray-haired boss cleaned his glasses for the fifth time and anxiously looked into the box. Suddenly he jerked back with a start. A whopping ocellated lizard poked its head through the wrapper. It jumped out of the box onto the inspection bench, stuck its tongue out a few times like lizards sometimes will, and scurried off for a tour of inspection.

  An hour later Mr. Ocellated Lizard was once more interned “for the duration.” His tour of inspection had been far from peaceful what with inspectors chasing him around with brooms, waste baskets, and what-have-you. But he just blinked a few times and stuck his tongue out some more and figured that only humans could act so foolish; and, after all, he was a lizard and would have to make allowances.

  Eventually Mr. Ocellated Lizard did reach the curator at the Field Museum. But escapades such as his made a deep impression on Dr. Howard K. Gloyd, director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. Dr. Gloyd is widely known among herpetologists for streamlining snake transportation with what is now called a “Snake Pullman.” This bit of reptile advancement consists of a box with neatly screened openings at each end and “safety doors.” These doors are two hinged lids, the outer one wooden, the inner one screen or wire. The curious inspector of things like poisonous snakes can take a peek without opening the box completely and giving the snake a chance to take a bite or two. Furthermore, when the express agent sees the words “Snake Pullman” he feels everything is under control and he is not apt to refuse the parcel as has been the case often in the past.

  Up until recently members of the snake family have been riding the mails in comparative happiness. Now, after having numerous snakes take sample bites out of various and sundry postal inspectors, Uncle Sammy has decided he will have nothing more to do with any member of the snake tribe. This means you can’t send your pet rattlesnake by mail. You’ve got to send it by express—and then they might refuse you unless you’ve got a “Snake Pullman” handy.

  Museums, zoos, and reptile fanciers, strangely enough, find snakes and lizards about the easiest of all animals to ship. Uncle Sammy has no objection to the shipping of reptiles (such as lizards and turtles) through the mails. In shipping these cold blooded animals either by express or mail very little care is needed once they have been incarcerated in their cages. These creatures can survive for days, even weeks, without food or even water, so that they can travel without too much hardship. Furthermore, the lizard family can live on astonishingly little air, and although metal cans must always be perforated, paper wrappings and wooden boxes seem to admit sufficient air without any extra holes for that purpose.

  Soft-skinned frogs and salamanders have come to Chicago’s Field Museum all the way from Europe. All that was necessary to their shipment in safety was a metal can punctured with a few holes and filled with damp sphagnum moss. Karl P. Schmidt, curator of amphibians and reptiles at the museum, warns that the moss should be only damp—not wet.

  Express regulations require that snakes be shipped in a box with a screen wire covering. It’s okay to ship small specimens in lard or syrup pails with the cover wired on; but be mighty sure the cover is securely fastened. They may look frail, but they are terrifically powerful; so it’s best to put them in a cloth bag before placing them in a container.

  A few years ago the Field Museum was advised of the shipment of a snake from Texas which had the power to change color, and inasmuch as this capacity is unknown in snakes, members of the museum staff eagerly awaited the serpent’s arrival. The snake, however, didn’t know he was so rare. He saw a chance to push his wire covering aside and took it on the lam. You can guess the rest.

  1946

  10,000 Years of Dreams

  John McCabe Moore

  THE dark curls and the dark eyes of the little Spaniard glimmered under the fluorescents as he ran to throw the final switch. The little iris standing in the rapidly playing colored light must not die. This combination had to be right.

  The transformer changed pitch until the low hum passed the range of audibility. The ammeter still showed an almost immeasurable flow of current.

  “You see, Diaz,” said Dr, Vega, smoothing his tousled hair, “the interplay of energies has been one of the usual order of changes of energy patterns involved in the process of photosynthesis. These energies, however, have been reversed in their order, after the regular pattern was employed, the process being so rapidly reversed that the plant’s chemique has adapted itself to anabolism-catabolism equilibrium. To make sure that this equilibrium is permanently set up the reversal is carried on ten-thousand times every three-and-one-half minutes. At the conclusion of six hours of such chemique-reversing the process is cut off at the point of anabolic
ending energy. The switch I just threw over there cut off the ray-activators of the plant’s processes, simultaneously cutting in a flood of very, very simple energy. If the plant now accepts this energy as its cell-activator, it should be able to secure enough of the same form of energy from all but the most unusual of environments. With its cell-selectivity refined and accelerated by the equivalent of hundreds of lives, its chemique purified of the dross, it should be capable of resisting destruction by anything less than fire or deliberate dismemberment,”

  I, little bearded Diaz Martinez, swear by every blue hair on my chin that I believed the man no longer responsible. But I was there for the Argentine government, so I silenced the questions blundering up my throat, held my breath, and watched.

  “Now!” he said, pulling the master switch. (He moves with the speed of a frightened burro at all times, but in my state of tension, I nearly leapt over the hydroponics tank before me.) “If this plant does not show signs of wilting within the hour, we can consider that life has entered a new epoch!”

  Father and mother of a name of a name! That hour was longer than my first twenty years! Dr. Vega remained with a look fixed upon that blue iris that so transfigured himself that I often wonder whether the plant was not also transfigured. Almost I thought his own trunk had grown roots.

  At the end of the time the wizard brown hands pulled a leaf from the plant. A little hot plate adjusted to low heat was turned on, and the Doctor, as though it was his own body he laid there, put the leaf on the magnesium sheet that lay on the coils, and left it there a full half-hour.

  “You see, amigo, that leaf will not die! It does not wilt because it can not wilt!”

  It is three days now, since I laid my finger against that hot plate, and by St. Peter’s long white hair, I still carry the blister.

  For seven long weeks have I watched the comings and goings of that black-eyed magician. “So nothing will happen to him,” they told me when I stepped toward the door of the National Office of the Argentina Government Operatives. Name of the fallen angel! I have seen the brown leaf that the fall of an orange would crush to powder take on the color of spring and turn its face to the light.

  Dance of Death

  June Lurie

  AS THE auditorium lights dimmed, three persons nervously awaited the final rehearsal of the ballet: the composer of the score, the business manager, and Lady Eleanor Smith,