Robert Heinlein - The Number of the Beast

I said, "Try mine, Zebbie. My comcredit is good; I predeposit."

A female voice this time: "-not a valid number. Puh-lease refer to your card and try again. This is a recording."

Then my husband got a second female voice: "-try again. This is a recording."

Deety said, "I don't have one. Pop and I use the same number."

"It doesn't matter," Cap'n Zebbie said bitterly. "These aren't glitches. We've been scrubbed. Unpersons. We're all dead."

I didn't argue. I had suspected that we were dead since the morning two weeks earlier when I woke up in bed with my cuddly new husband. But how long had we been dead? Since my party? Or more recently?

I didn't care. This was a better grade of heaven than a Sunday School in Terre Haute had taught me to expect. While I don't think I've been outstandingly wicked, I haven't been very good either. Of the Ten Commandments I've broken six and bent some others. But Moses apparently had not had the last Word from on High-being dead was weird and wonderful and I was enjoying every minute... or eon, as the case may be.

Being too close to a fireball can worry a man-

Zeb:

Not being able to phone from my car was my most frustrating experience since a night I spent in jail through mistake (I made the mistake). I considered grounding to phone-but the ground did not seem healthy. Even if all of us were presumed dead, nullifying our comcredit cards so quickly seemed unfriendly; all of us had high credit ratings.

Canceling Sharpie's comcredit without proof of death was more than unfriendly; it was outrageous as she used the predeposit method.

I was forced to the decision that it was my duty to make a military report; I radioed NORAD, stated name, rank, reserve commission serial number, and asked for scramble for a crash priority report.

-and ran into "correct" procedure that causes instant ulcers. What was my clearance? What led me to think that I had crash priority intelligence? By what authority did I demand a scramble code? Do you know how many screwball calls come in here every day? Get off this frequency; it's for official traffic only. One more word out of you and I shall alert the civil sky patrol to pick you up.

I said one more word after I chopped off. Deety and her father ignored it; Hilda said, "My sentiments exactly!"

I tried the Federal Rangers Kaibab Barracks at Jacob Lake, then the office at Littlefieldand back to Kaibab. Littlefield didn't answer; Jacob Lake answered: "This is a recording. Routine messages may be recorded during beep tone. Emergency reports should be transmitted to Flagstaff HQ. Stand by for beep tone....eep!... Beep!... Beep!. .

I was about to tell Gay to zip my tape-when the whole world was lighted by the brightest light imaginable.

Luckily we were cruising south with that light behind us. I goosed Gay to flank speed while telling her to tuck in her wings. Not one of my partners asked a foolish question, although I suspect that none had ever seen a fireball or mushroom cloud.

"Smart Girl."

"Here, Boss."

"DR problem. Record true bearing light beacon relative bearing astern. Record radar range and bearing same beacon. Solve latitude longitude beacon. Compare solution with fixes in perms. Confirm."

"Program confirmed."

"Execute."

"Roger Wilco, Zeb. Heard any new ones lately?" She added at once, "Solution. True bearing identical with fix execute-coded 'Gay Deceiver take us home.' True range identical plus-minus zero point six klicks."

"You're a smart girl, Gay."

"Flattery will get you anywhere, Zeb. Over."

"Roger and out. Hang onto your hats, folks; we're going straight up." I had outraced the shock wave but we were close to the Mexican border; either side might send sprint birds homing on us. "Copilot!"

"Captain."

"Move us! Out of this space!"

"Where, Captain?"

"Anywhere! Fast!"

"Uh, can you ease the acceleration? I can't lift my arms."

Cursing myself, I cut power, let Gay Deceiver climb free. Those vernier controls should have been mounted on arm rests. (Designs that look perfect on the drawing board can kill test pilots.)

"Translation complete, Captain."

"Roger, Copilot. Thank you." I glanced at the board: six-plus klicks heightabove-ground and rising-thin 6ut enough air to bite. "Hang onto our lunch, Sharpie!" I leaned us backwards while doing an Immelman into level flight, course north, power still off. I told Gay to stretch the glide, then tell me when we had dropped to three klicks H-above-G.

What should be Phoenix was off to the right; another city-Flagstaff?- farther away, north and a bit east; we appeared to be headed home. There was no glowing cloud on the horizon. "Jake, where are we?"

"Captain, I've never been in this universe. We translated ten quanta positive Tau axis. So we should be in analogous space close to ours-ten minimum intervals or quanta."

"This looks like Arizona."

"I would expect it to, Captain. You recall that one-quantum translation on this axis was so very like our own world that Deety and I confused it with our own, until she picked up a dictionary."

"Phone book, Pop."

"Irrelevant, dear. Until she missed the letter 'J' in an alphabetical list. Ten quanta should not change geological features appreciably and placement of cities is largely controlled by geography."

"Approaching three klicks, Boss." -

"Thanks, Gay. Hold course and H-above-G. Correction! Hold course and absolute altitude. Confirm and execute."

"Roger Wilco, Zeb."

I had forgotten that the Grand Canyon lay ahead-or should. "Smart Girl" is smart, but she's literal-minded. She would have held height-above-ground precisely and given us the wildest roller-coaster ride in history. She is very flexible but the "garbage-in-garbage-out" law applies. She had many extra fail-safes-because I make mistakes. Gay can't; anything she does wrong is my mistake. Since I've been making mistakes all my life, I surrounded her with all the safeguards I could think of. But she had no program against wild rides-she was beefed up to accept them. Violent evasive tactics had saved our lives two weeks ago, and tonight as well. Being too close to a fireball can worry a man-to death.

"Gay, display map, please."

The map showed Arizona-our Arizona; Gay does not have in her gizzards any strange universes. I changed course to cause us to pass over our cabin site-its analog for this space-time. (Didn't dare tell her: "Gay, take us home!"-for reasons left as an exercise for the class.) "Deety, how long ago did that bomb go off?"

"Six minutes twenty-three seconds. Zebadiah, was that really an A-bomb?"

"Pony bomb, perhaps. Maybe two kilotons. Gay Deceiver."

"I'm all ears, Zeb."

"Report time interval since radar-ranging beacon."

"Five minutes forty-four seconds, Zeb."

Deety gasped. "Was I that far off?"

"No, darling. You reported time since flash. I didn't ask Gay to range until after we were hypersonic."

"Oh. I feel better."

"Captain," inquired Jake, "how did Gay range an atomic explosion? I would expect radiation to make it impossible. Does she have instrumentation of which I am not aware?"

"Copilot, she has several gadgets I have not shown you. I have not been holding out-any more than you held out in not telling me about guns and ammo you-"

"My apologies, sir!"

"Oh, stuff it, Jake. Neither of us held out; we've been running under the whip. Deety, how long has it been since we killed that fake ranger?"

"That was seventeen fourteen. It is now twenty-two twenty. Five hours six minutes,"

I glanced at the board; Deety's "circadian clock" apparently couldn't be

jarred by anything; Gay's clock showed 0520 (Greenwich) with "ZONE PLUS SEVEN" display. "Call it five hours-feels like five weeks. We need a vacation."