C Kornbluth - His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

He freezes up as he sees my gun again. "Just tell me what number this needle is resting on, please. That's all I have to know."

"Okay. This dial?" He nods, so I casually put my gun in his side and bend over to look. It was a seven. "Lucky seven, doc," I says. "And I think your time's up. Turn around, please."

"Seven," he broods, seeming to forget all about me. "So it checks. The number proves it." Then, quick like a fox, he spins around and throws himself at a switch. Startled, I blazes away with the roscoe and some glass breaks.

"Look out!" yells Doc Ellenbogan. "You'll be caught—" And then I sees that there's something awful solid and black turning and growing in the middle of a piece of machinery. "Gas!" I thinks, whipping out a handkerchief and clamping it over my nose. I aimed straight at the doc this time, before running. But then the black thing explodes in one big rush and I'm flat on my back.

"I'm sorry I had to get you involved," says Ellenbogan. "How do you feel?" Then I see that I'm lying down inhaling smelling-salts that the doc is holding. Like a flash I reaches for my heater. But it's gone, of course.

Then I guess I says some nasty things to the doc, on account of even the Frank V. Coviccio West Side Social and Athletic Club don't use gas. And you know what louses they are.

"Don't misunderstand, please," says the doc with remarkable self-control, considering the names I applied to him. "Don't misunderstand.

I have your gun, and I'll give it back to you as soon as you understand clearly what has happened. Where, for instance, do you think you are?"

And there's something in his voice that makes me sit up and take notice. So help me, we ain't in his lab or anywhere near Columbia University that I can see. So I ask him what's cooking.

"The fourth dimension," he says, cold and quiet. So I look again. And this time I believe him. Because the sky, what there was of it, is the blackest black you could ever hope to see, and not a star in sight. The ground is kind of soft, and there's no grass to speak of, except a kind of hairy stuff in tufts. And I still don't know how we can see each other, the doc and me, because there isn't any light at all. He glows and so do I, I guess—anyway, that's what it looks like. "Okay, doc," I says. "I'll take your word for it."

So what does he do? He hands me back my gun! I check the roscoe for condition and aim it. "Mr. Reilly!" he says sharply. "What are you intending to do now?"

"Plug you like I was supposed to do," I reply. And instead of looking worried he only smiles at me as if I'm a worm or something. "Surely," he says, gentle and sweet, "there wouldn't be any point to that, would there?"

"I dunno about that, doc. But Lucco would damage me real bad if I didn't do the job I'm supposed to. So that's the way it is, I guess. You ready?"

"Look, Mr. Reilly," he snaps. "I don't take you for an especially bright person, but surely you must realize that this is neither the time nor the place for carrying out your plans. I don't want to lose my temper, but if you ever want to get back to your own world you'd better not kill me just yet. While I appreciate your professional attitude, I assure you that it would be the height of folly to do anything except take my orders. I have no weapons, Mr. Reilly, but I have a skull full of highly speciallized information and techniques which will be more valuable to you personally than my cadaver. Let's reach an understanding now, shall we?"

So I thinks it over. And Ellenbogan's right, of course. "Okay, doc," says little Matt. "I'm on your staff. Now tell me when do we eat—and what?"

"Try some of that grass," he says. "It looks nutritious." I picks a bunch of the grass and drop it in a hurry. The crazy stuff twists and screams like it was alive. "That was a bum steer, doc," I says. "Many more of those and we may part company abrupt-like. What about food and water?"

And the minute I think of water I get thirsty. You know how it is.

"There should be people around," he mutters looking over his shoulder.

"The preselector indicated protoplasm highly organized." I take him by the arm. "Look, doc," I says, "suppose you begin at the beginning and tell me just where we are and how we get back home and why you brought us here. And anything else that comes into your head. Now talk!"

"Of course," he says, mild and a little hurt. "I just thought you wouldn't be interested in the details. Well, I said this is the fourth dimension.

That is only approximately true. It is a cognate plane of some kind—

only one of the very many which exist side-by-side with our own. And of course I didn't mean to take you here with me; that was an accident. I called to you to get out of the way while you could, but the pressure belt caught you while you were busily carrying out your orders, which were to shoot me dead.

"And incidentally, it would have been better for you if you had escaped the belt, for I would have stayed in this plane as long as possible, and would have been as good as dead to you and your Mr. Lucco."

"It ain't that," I interjects. "It's mostly the reputation we got to maintain.

What if wise-guys like you—meaning no offense, doc—came in on us every day with heavy sugar to bet, and then welched? The business wouldn't be worth the upkeep in lead. Get me?"

"I—ah—think so," he says. "At any rate, the last-minute alterations I was making when you called on me were intended to take me into a selected plane which would support life. It happens that the coefficient of environment which this calls for is either three, four or seven. I was performing the final test with your kind assistance only a few minutes ago, if you remember. When you read 'seven' from the dial I realized that according to my calculations I would land in a plane already inhabited by protoplasmal forms. So, Mr. Reilly, here we are, and we'll have to make the best of it until I find equipment somehow or other to send you back into your world."

"That," I says, "is fair enough—hey, doc! What're them babies doing?" I am referring to certain ungainly things like centipedes, but very much bigger, which are mounted by several people each. They loom up on the horizon like bats out of hell, not exactly luminous but—well, I see them and there isn't any light from anywhere to see them by. They must be luminous, I think.

"Protoplasm," he says, turning white as a sheet. "But whether friendly or enemy protoplasm I don't know. Better get out your gun. But don't fire until you're positive—utterly, utterly positive—that they mean us harm. Not if I can help it do we make needless enemies."

Up scuttles one of the four centipedes. The driver of the awful brute looks down. He is dressed in a kind of buckskin shirt, and he wears a big brown beard. "Hello," he says, friendly-like. "Where did you chaps drop from?"

Doc Ellenbogan rallies quick. He says, "We just got here. My name's Ellenbogan and this is Mr. Reilly."

"Hmm—Irish," says the gent in the buckskins. I notice that he has an English accent. "Wanta make sumpn of it?" I ask, patting the roscoe.

"No—sorry," he says with a bright smile. "Let me introduce myself. I'm Peter DeManning, hereditary Knight of the Cross of Britain and possibly a Viscount. Our heraldry and honors got very confused about the fourth generation. We're descended from Lord DeManning, who came over way back in 1938."

"But this is only 1941!" protests the doc. Then he hauls himself up short.

"Foolish of me—time runs slower here, of course. Was it accidental—

coming over?"

"Not at all," answers the gent. "Old Lord Peter always hated the world—

thoroughly a misanthrope. So finally he gathered together his five favorite mistresses and a technical library and crossed the line into this plane. He's still alive, by the by. The climate of this place must be awfully salubrious. Something in the metabolism favors it."