Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (36 page)

“Well—not entirely. We’ve been lying low, you might say. Maybe it’s an accident—and again, maybe it’s not.”

I said with great interest, “What do you mean, sheriff? Surely…?”

As I have mentioned, the sheriff is a mild man, and looks more like an insurance salesman than a law-enforcement officer. But at the moment a rather dogged and unpleasant expression stiffened his features.

“I’ve been doing a bit of investigating, and a bit of thinking. And I’ve got to admit I’m puzzled.”

“How so?”

“Well, there’s no question but what Dr. Patcher was killed with a meteorite. That chunk of rock was a funny kind of nickel—iron mixture, and showed a peculiar set of marks under the microscope. Professor Doheny said meteorite it was, and no doubt about it.”

“Oh?” I said, sipping my coffee.

“There’s no question but what a streak of fire was seen shooting down out of the sky at about the time Dr. Patcher was killed.”

“Yes, I believe so. In fact, I saw it myself. Quite an impressive phenomenon.”

“I thought at first that a meteorite would be hot, and I wondered why Patcher’s hair wasn’t singed, but I find that when a meteor comes down, only a little bit of the surface heats up and glows off, but the rest stays icy-cold.”

“Right,” I said cordially. “Exactly right.”

“But let’s suppose,” said the sheriff, looking at me sidewise with an expression I can only call crafty, “let’s suppose that someone wanted to kill poor old Dr. Patcher—”

I shook my head doubtfully. “Far-fetched.”

“—and wanted to fake the murder so that it looked like an accident, how would he go about it?”

“But—who would want to do away with Patcher?”

The sheriff laughed uneasily. “That’s what’s got us stumped. There’s no one with a speck of motive—except, possibly, yourself.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Of course, of course. But we were just—”

“Why should I want to kill Dr. Patcher?”

“I hear,” said the sheriff, watching me sidelong, “that he was a hard man to get along with.”

“Not when you understood his foibles.”

“I hear that you and he had a few bust-ups over the work up at the observatory?”

“Now that,” I said with feeling, “is pure taradiddle. Naturally, we had our differences. I felt, as many of my colleagues did, that Patcher was entering upon his dotage, and it shows in the rather trivial nature of the work he was doing.”

“Exactly what was the work, Professor? In words of one syllable?”

“Well,” and I laughed, “he was actually going over the sky with a fine-tooth comb, looking for novae, and I’ll admit that occasionally it was a vexation, when I had important work to do—”

“Er, what is your work, Professor?”

“I am conducting a statistical count of the Cepheid variables in the Great Nebula of Andromeda.”

“Ah, I see,” said the sheriff. “Pretty tough job, sounds like.”

“The work is progressing now, of course. But certainly you don’t think—you can’t assume—”

The sheriff waved his hand. “We don’t assume anything. We just, well, call it figure a little.”

“How could I, how could anyone, control what might literally be called a bolt from the blue?”

“Ah, now we’re getting down to brass tacks. How could you, indeed? I admit I racked my brains, and I think I’ve got it puzzled out.”

“My dear sheriff, are you accusing—”

“No, no, sit still. We’re just talking things over. I was telling you how you could—if you wanted, mind you,
if
you wanted—fake a meteor.”

“Well,” I asked in fine scorn, “how could I fake a meteor?”

“You’d need something to make a good streak of light. You’d need something to get it up there. You’d need a way of setting it off at the right time.”

“And?”

“Well, the first could be a good strong old-fashioned sky-rocket.”

“Why—theoretically, I suppose so. But—”

“I thought of all kinds of things,” said the sheriff. “Airplanes, balloons, birds—everything except flying fish. The answer has to be one thing: a kite. A big box kite.”

“I admire your ingenuity, sheriff. But—”

“Then you’d need some way to send this thing off, and aim it right. Now I may be all wet on this—but I imagine that you had the rocket fixed with a couple of wire loops over the string, so that it would follow the string to the ground.”

“Sheriff, I—”

“Now as for setting it off—why that’s a simple matter. I could probably rig up something of the sort myself. A wrist-watch with the glass off, a flashlight battery, a contact stuck on the dial, insulated from the rest of the watch, so that when the minute hand met it, the circuit would open. Then you’d use magnesium floss and magnesium tape to start the fuse of your rocket, and that’s practically the whole of it.”

“My dear sheriff,” I said with all my dignity, “if I were guilty of such a pernicious offense, how in the world would I dispose of the kite?”

“Well,” said the sheriff, scratching his chin, “I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose you could haul it down and burn it, together with the string.”

I was taken aback. Actually, I hadn’t thought of anything so simple. The kite I had blown up with half a stick of dynamite, fused to explode after the rocket had started down; the string I had soaked in a solution of potassium chlorate; it had burned to dust like a train of gunpowder. “Humph. Well, if you are accusing me of this crime you have conceived—”

“No, no, no!” cried the sheriff. “I’m not accusing anybody. We’re just sitting here chewing this thing over. But I admit I am wondering why you bought all that kite-string from Fuller’s Hardware about three weeks ago.”

I stared at him indignantly. “Kite-string? Nonsense. I bought that string at the request of Dr. Patcher himself, with which to tie up his sweet peas, and if you check at his home they’ll tell you the same story.”

The sheriff nodded. “I see. Well, just a point I’m glad to have cleared up. I understand you’re an amateur rock-hunter?”

“That’s perfectly true,” I said. “I have a small but not unrepresentative collection.”

“Any meteorites in the bunch?” the sheriff asked carelessly.

Just as carelessly I replied, “Why I believe so. One or two.”

“I wonder if I could see them.”

“Certainly, if you wish. I keep my collection out here, in the back rooms. I’m very methodical about all this; I don’t let the rocks intrude into the astronomy, or vice versa.”

“That’s how hobbies should be,” said the sheriff.

We went out upon the back-porch, which I have converted to a display room. On all sides are chests of narrow drawers, glass-topped tables where my choicest pieces are on view, geological charts, and the like. At the far end is my little laboratory, with my reagents, scales, and furnace. Midway is the file cabinet where I have indexed and catalogued each piece in my collection.

The sheriff glanced with an unconvincing show of interest along the trays and shelves. “Now, let’s see them meteorites.”

Although I knew their whereabouts to the inch, I made a move of indecision. “I’ll have to check in the catalogue; I’m afraid it’s slipped my mind.”

I pulled open the filing cabinet, flipped the dividers to M. “Meteorites—RG-17. Ah yes, right on here, sheriff. Case R, tray G, space 17. As you see, I’m nothing if not systematic…”

“What’s the matter?” asked the sheriff.

I suppose I was staring at the sheet of paper. It read:

RG-17-A—Meteorite—Nickel—iron

Weight—171 grams

Origin—Burnt Rock Ranch, Arizona

RG-17-B—Meteorite—Granitic stone

Weight—216 grams

Origin—Kelsey, Nevada

RG-17-C—Meteorite—Nickel—iron

Weight—1,842 grams

Origin—Kilgore, Mojave Desert

Meticulously, systematically, I had typed in red against RG-17-C:
Removed from collection, August 9
. Three days before Dr. Patcher had been killed by a meteorite weighing 1,842 grams.

“What’s the matter?” asked the sheriff. “Not feeling so good?”

“The meteorites,” I croaked, “are over here.”

“Let’s see that sheet of paper.”

“No—it’s just a memorandum.”

“Sure—but I want to see it.”

“I’ll show you the meteorites.”

“Show me that paper.”

“Do you want to see the meteorites or don’t you?”

“I want to see that paper.”

“Go to blazes.”

“Professor Sisley—”

I went to the tray, pulled it open. “The meteorites. Look at them!”

The sheriff stepped over, bent his head. “Hm. Yeah. Just rocks.” He cocked an eye at the sheet of paper I gripped in my hand. “Are you going to show me that paper or not?”

“No. It’s got nothing to do with this business. It’s a record of where I obtained these rocks. They’re valuable, and I promised not to reveal the source.”

“Well, well.” The sheriff turned away. I walked quickly to the toilet, locked the door, quickly tore the paper to shreds, flushed it down the drain.

“There,” I said, emerging, “the paper is gone. If it was evidence, it’s gone too.”

The sheriff shook his head a little mournfully. “I should have known better than to come calling so friendly-like. I should have had a gun and a search-warrant and my two big deputies. But now—” he paused, chewed thoughtfully at something inside his mouth.

“Well,” I asked impatiently, “are you going to arrest me or not?”

“Arrest you? No, Professor Sisley. We know what we know, you and I, but how will we get a jury to see it? You claim a meteorite killed Dr. Patcher, and a thousand people saw a meteor head toward him. I’ll say, Professor Sisley was mad at Dr. Patcher; Professor Sisley could have whopped Dr. Patcher with a rock, then fired his sky-rocket down from a kite. You’ll say, prove it. And I’ll say, Professor Sisley flushed a piece of paper down the toilet. And then the judge will bang his gavel a couple of times and that’s all there is to it. No, Professor, I’m not going to arrest you. My job wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. But I’ll tell you what I’m going to do—just like I told Doc Patcher when the head man before him died so sudden.”

“Well, go ahead, say it! What are you going to do?”

“It’s really not a great lot,” the sheriff said modestly. “I’m just going to let events take their course.”

“I can’t say as I understand your meaning.”

But the sheriff had gone. I blew my nose, mopped my brow, and considered the file which had so nearly betrayed me. Even at this juncture, I took a measure of satisfaction in the fact that it was system and method which had come so close to undoing me, and not the absent-mindedness which an ignorant public ascribes to men of learning.

I am senior astronomer at the observatory. My work is progressing. I have control of the telescope. I have the vastness of the universe under my finger-tips.

Young Katkus is developing well, although he currently displays a particularly irritating waywardness and independence. The young idiot thinks he is hot on the track of an undiscovered planet beyond Pluto, and if I gave him his head, he’d waste every minute of good seeing peering back and forth along the ecliptic. He sulks now and again, but he’ll have to wait his chance, as I did, as Dr. Patcher did before me, and, presumably, Dr. Kane before him.

Dr. Kane—I have not thought of him since the day his car went out of control and took him over the cliff. I must learn who preceded him as senior astronomer. A telephone call to Nolbert at Administration Hall will do the trick…I find that Dr. Kane succeeded a Professor Maddox, who drowned when a boat he and Dr. Kane were paddling capsized on Lake Niblis. Nolbert says the tragedy weighed on Dr. Kane to the day of his death, which came as an equally violent shock to the department. He had been computing the magnetic orientation of globular clusters, a profoundly interesting topic, although it was no secret that Dr. Patcher considered the work fruitless and didactic. It is sometimes tempting to speculate—but no, they all are decently in their graves, and I have more serious demands upon my attention. Such as Katkus, who comes demanding the telescope at the very moment when air and sky are at their best. I tell him quite decisively that off-trail investigations such as his must be conducted when the telescope is otherwise idle. He goes off sulking. I can feel no deep concern for his hurt feelings; he must learn to fit himself to the schedule of research as mapped out by the senior astronomer.

I saw the sheriff today; he nodded quite politely. I wonder what he meant, letting events take their course? Cryptic and not comfortable; it has put me quite out of sorts. Perhaps, after all, I was overly sharp with Katkus. He is sitting at his desk, pretending to check the new plates into the glossary, watching me from the corner of his eye.

I wonder what is passing through his mind.

Afterword to “The Absent-Minded Professor” (aka “First Star I See Tonight”)

[After] I read a book by Sir James Jeans,
The Universe Around Us
, I became involved with a new preoccupation: namely, identifying the stars. I obtained star charts. I would take a flashlight, cover it over with a red bandana, lie out in the sand a few hundred feet from the house, stare up into the sky and trace out the constellations. In due course I learned all the constellations and all the first magnitude stars, and many of the second magnitude stars. I find it hard to convey how much pleasure this pursuit gave me. The stars all became familiar, friends almost, and I rejoiced when, in the middle of the summer, Fomalhaut would appear over the southern horizon. Even now, as I write this, I can envision how the skies looked, aglow with those wonderful stars: Arcturus, Vega, Betelgeuse, Antares, Sirius, Achernar, Algol, Polaris…