The Best of Sci-Fi-5

Hank takes the paper rather gingerly. “Seems like stealing,” he mumbles.

“Not when you stop to think,” says Mr. Wilier. “It’s for the Colony, for the ultimate good of humanity.” He puts a wrinkled hand confidentially on Hank’s arm. “My boy, this has come so suddenly to both of you as to be quite a severe shock, but you will adjust to it in time. Fate has selected you two young people to be of that dedicated band of psychical pioneers who will one day lift humanity from this slough of fear and pain and uncertainty in which it has wallowed ever since the first man lifted his face to the skies in wonder. Have faith in your own destiny.”

“Yeah,” says Hank, still doubtful. But Edie is gazing with shining eyes at Mr. Wilier.

“Oh!” she says. “Isn’t it wonderful, Hank?”

“Yeah,” says Hank.

“Well, then,” says Mr. Wilier, patting them both on the arm and pushing them gently to the metal ladder of a framework tower that stretches up alongside the ship. “Up you go. Don’t worry about the controls. This is built on a new, secret principle. It’s as easy to drive as a car.”

“Just a minute!” cries a sudden, ringing voice. They all hesitate and turn away from the ship. Approaching rapidly through the air from the northwest is something that can only be described as a scintillant cloud of glory. It swoops in for a landing before them and thins away to reveal a tall, handsome man in a tight sort of coverall of silver mesh.

“Up to your old tricks, again, Wilo, aren’t you?”, he barks at Mr. Wilier. “Can’t keep your hands off? Want everything your own way, don’t you?”

“Fools rush in,” says Mr. Wilier, “where angels fear to tread.”

“What?” demands Hank, looking from one to the other. “What’s all this about? Who’re you?”

“You wouldn’t understand if I told you,” says the tall man. “The point is, having psi-talents puts you under my protection. Half a dozen people a year I have to come chasing in and rescue. And all on account of him!” He glares at Mr. Wilier.

“I still don’t—” Hank begins.

“Of course not. How could you? If Wilo here had started leaving things alone as little as a hundred years ago, you humans would have developed into probationary members of Galactic Society by this time. Natural evolution. More psi-talents in every generation. Recognition of such. Alteration of local society. But no, not Wilo. The minute he discovers anyone with psi-talent he points them toward destruction . I have to save them. The only safe way to save them with Wilo around is to take them off the planet. Wilo knows this. So—no progress for humanity.”

Hank blinks a couple of times.

“But how come?” he cries, staring at Mr. Wilier. “He’s one himself! I mean, he can do all sorts of things Edie and I can’t do—”

“Nonsense!” says the tall man. “He’s just sensitive. An antenna, you might say. He can feel when real ones are sending.”

“But—the ash tray…” falters Edie.

“There, there, I scan you perfectly,” soothes the tall man. “Illusion. Nothing more. Even an ordinary intelligence can learn something in a hundred and eighty-four years and some months, after all. Wilo, Master Hypnotist. That’s the way he used to bill himself back in his days on the stage. He hypnotized you, just as he hypnotized these soldiers.”

“With a glance,” mutters Mr. Wilier darkly.

“Unfortunately very true,” says the tall man. He glares at Mr. Wilier again. “If it wasn’t for the fact that we truly advanced civilization members can’t harm anyone—!”

He turns back to Hank and Edie.

“Well,” he sighs heavily, “come along. This world will have to stay stuck in its present stage of development until something happens to Wilo, or he changes his mind.”

Edie stares at the old man.

“Oh, Mr. Wilier!” she says. “Why can’t you let people just go ahead and develop like Hank and I did?”

“Bah!” says Wilier. “Humbug!”

“But the world would be a much better place!”

“Young lady!” snaps Mr. Wilier. “I like it the way it is!” He turns his back on them.

“Come on,” says the tall man.

They take off. Mr. Wilier turns back to look at them as they ascend into the new rays of the just-risen moon and the New Mexico night sky, trailing clouds of glory as they go.

The clouds of glory light up the landscape.

“Bah!” says Mr. Wilier again. With a snap of his fingers he produces some flash paper which, at the touch of flame from a palmed match, flares brightly for a moment. It’s one tiny recalcitrant beacon of.stability and permanence in the whole of the madly whirling, wild and evolving universe.

Once upon a time, little children used to frighten naughty parents at bedtime with a radio program known as “The Shadow.” And out of those dim and dear days comes Bruce Elliott, who used to write the show—before he turned to comic books, mysteries, science fiction, magic, and heaven-knows-how-much-else, only to wind up respectably editing a happily not-too-respectable magazine duo.

For satire, fantasy, wit with spice, and all around fun, Gent and The Dude are giving some stiff competition these days to a magazine which will not be referred to here as Playboy. These excerpts from a still running series of historical frictions (Return of Parvo, Parvo Rides Again, etc.) by Jack Sharkey have been selected as those most appropriate to a family science-fantasy anthology.

The first robot was constructed by Max Roe and Harold Bott, in the year 1653, for exhibition at the World’s Fair at Istanbul (not Constantinople). It was a rather rough construction, consisting mainly of a tin hand to hold cards and a glass eye for viewing them. It had one function: to play poker. Max and Harold taught it everything they knew, taking great pains to root out a distressing habit it had of trying to fill inside straights, and soon it was a better player than either of them. It had a painted mouth which never changed expression, which came in handy when it was only bluffing.

Anyhow, they lugged it down to Istanbul (not Constantinople) for the Fair, and proceeded to set it up in the tent near the center of the exposition. After completing the job, they stepped around the corner to the brewer’s exhibit to sample the wares on display there, and to clean out the little reed pipe which they used to signal the robot to begin its play (alcohol was the perfect cleanser for it). [Hence the phrase, “To wet one’s whistle.”]

While they were gone, however, the paraphernalia of the next tent (that of Omar, the Trussmocker), was delivered to theirs by mistake, and when they returned they were horrified to discover that their robot was laden with barbells and other weights of enormous tonnage.

“Max!” gasped Harold, “we can’t lift up the lid to get at the starting switch!”

“Heavens,” Max groaned, “you’re right!”

“Say,” said a man in the crowd which had come to see the robot, “ain’t that thing gonna play poker for us?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Max, indicating the weighted-down lid. “We can’t get at the starting switch.”

“Can’t you do it by strength alone?” asked the man.

“Nope,” said Harold, sadly. “It’s going to take jacks or better to open.”

As most people know, the first man to fly was called Icarus, who should have had more sense. He and his father escaped from jail on an island (men of Alcatraz take note) by the expedient of attaching feathers to their arms with beeswax (it sounds reckless, I know, but this was before cellophane tape), and flapped away into the skies.