The Collection (7 page)

As nearly as possible, he was keeping his mind a blank, lest
its telepathic ability detect consciousness in him. And with his mind blanked
out that way, the impact of its thoughts upon his mind was shattering.

He felt sheer horror at the
alienness,
the
differentness
of those thoughts, conveying things that he felt but could not understand
or express, because no terrestrial language had words, no terrestrial brain had
images to fit them. The mind of a spider, he thought, or the mind of a praying
mantis or a Martian sand-serpent, raised to intelligence and put in telepathic
rapport
with human minds, would be a homely familiar thing, compared to this.

He understood now that the Entity had been right: Man or
Roller, the universe was not a place that could hold them both.

Closer. Carson waited until it was only feet away, until its
clawed tentacles reached out....

Oblivious to agony now, he sat up, raised and flung the
harpoon with all the strength that remained to him. As the Roller, deeply
stabbed by the harpoon, rolled away, Carson tried to get to his feet to run
after it. He couldn’t do that; he fell, but kept crawling.

It reached the end of the rope, and he was jerked forward by
the pull on his wrist. It dragged him a few feet and then stopped. Carson kept
going, pulling himself towards it hand over hand along the rope. It stopped
there, tentacles trying in vain to pull out the harpoon. It seemed to shudder
and quiver, and then realized that it couldn’t get away, for it rolled back
towards him, clawed tentacles reaching out.

Stone knife in hand, he met it. He stabbed, again and again,
while those horrid claws ripped skin and flesh and muscle from his body.

He stabbed and slashed, and at last it was still.

***

A bell was ringing, and it took him a while after he’d
opened his eyes to tell where he was and what it was. He was strapped into the
seat of his scouter, and the visiplate before him showed only empty space. No
Outsider ship and no impossible planet.

The bell was the communications plate signal; someone wanted
him to switch power into the receiver. Purely reflex action enabled him to
reach forward and throw the lever.

The face of Brander, captain of the
Magellan,
mother-ship
of his group of scouters, flashed into the screen. His face was pale and his
black eyes glowing with excitement.

‘Magellan
to Carson,’ he snapped. ‘Come on in. The
fight’s over. We’ve won!’

The screen went blank; Brander would be signalling the other
scouters of his command.

Slowly, Carson set the controls for the return. Slowly,
unbelievingly, he unstrapped himself from the seat and went back to get a drink
at the cold-water tank. For some reason, he was unbelievably thirsty. He drank
six glasses.

He leaned there against the wall, trying to think.

Had
it happened? He was in good health, sound,
uninjured. His thirst had been mental rather than physical; his throat hadn’t
been dry.

He pulled up his trouser leg and looked at the calf. There
was a long white scar there, but a perfectly healed scar; it hadn’t been there
before. He zipped open the front of his shirt and saw that his chest and
abdomen were criss-crossed with tiny, almost unnoticeable, perfectly healed
scars.

It
had
happened!

The scouter, under automatic control, was already entering
the hatch of the mothership. The grapples pulled it into its individual lock,
and a moment later a buzzer indicated that the lock was airfilled. Carson
opened the hatch and stepped outside, went through the double door of the lock.

He went right to Brander’s office, went in, and saluted.

Brander still looked dazed. ‘Hi, Carson,’ he said. ‘What you
missed; what a show!’

‘What happened, sir?’

‘Don’t know, exactly. We fired one salvo, and their whole
fleet went up in dust! Whatever it was jumped from ship to ship in a flash,
even the ones we hadn’t aimed at and that were out of range! The whole fleet
disintegrated before our eyes, and we didn’t get the paint of a single ship
scratched!

‘We can’t even claim credit for it. Must have been some
unstable component in the metal they used, and our sighting shot just set it
off. Man, too bad you missed all the excitement!’

Carson managed a sickly ghost of a grin, for it would be
days before he’d be over the impact of his experience, but the captain wasn’t
watching.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. Common sense, more than modesty, told
him he’d be branded as the worst liar in space if he ever said any more than
that. ‘Yes, sir, too bad I missed all the excitement....’

Imagine ghosts, gods and devils.

Imagine hells and heavens, cities floating in the sky and
cities sunken in the sea.

Unicorns and centaurs. Witches, warlocks, jinns and banshees.

Angels and harpies. Charms and incantations. Elementals, familiars,
demons.

Easy to imagine, all of those things: mankind has been imagining
them for thousands of years.

Imagine spaceships and the future.

Easy to imagine; the future is really coming and there'll be
spaceships in it.

Is there then anything that's
hard
to imagine?

Of course there is.

Imagine a piece of matter and yourself inside it, yourself
aware, thinking and therefore knowing you exist, able to move that piece of
matter that you're in, to make it sleep or wake, make love or walk uphill.

Imagine a universe—infinite or not, as you wish to picture
it—with a billion, billion, billion suns in it.

Imagine a blob of mud whirling madly around one of those
suns.

Imagine yourself standing on that blob of mud, whirling with
it, whirling through time and space to an unknown destination. Imagine!

Although there was no way in which he could have known it,
Lorenz Kane had been riding for a fall ever since the time he ran over the girl
on the bicycle. The fall itself could have happened anywhere, any time; it
happened to happen backstage at a burlesque theater on an evening in late
September.

For the third evening within a week he had watched the act
of Queenie Quinn, the show's star stripper, an act well worth watching, indeed.
Clad only in blue light and three tiny bits of strategically placed ribbon,
Queenie, a tall blond built along the lines of a brick whatsit, had just
completed her last stint for the evening and had vanished into the wings, when
Kane made up his mind that a private viewing of Queenie's act, in his bachelor
apartment, not only would be more pleasurable than a public viewing but would
indubitably lead to even greater pleasures. And since the finale number, in which
Queenie, as the star, was not required to appear, was just starting, now would
be the best time to talk to her with a view toward obtaining a private viewing.

He left the theater and strolled down the alley to the stage
door entrance. A five-dollar bill got him past the doorman without difficulty
and a minute later he had found and was knocking upon a dressing room door
decorated with a gold star. A voice called out "Yeah?" He knew better
than to try to push a proposition through a closed door and he knew his way
around back-stage well enough to know the one question that would cause her to
assume that he was someone connected with show business who had a legitimate
reason for wanting to see her. "Are you decent?" he asked.

"'Sta minute," she called back, and then, in just
a minute, "Okay."

He entered and found her standing facing him, in a brightred
wrapper that beautifully set off her blue eyes and blond hair. He bowed and
introduced himself, then began to explain the details of the proposition he
wished to offer.

He was prepared for initial reluctance or even refusal and
ready to become persuasive even, if necessary, to the extent of four figures,
which would certainly be more than her weekly take—possibly more than her monthly
take—in a burlesque house as small as this one. But instead of listening
reasonably, she was suddenly screaming at him like a virago, which was
insulting enough, but then she made the very serious mistake of taking a step
forward and slapping him across the face. Hard. It hurt.

He lost his temper, retreated a step, took out his revolver
and shot her in the heart.

Then he left the theater and took a taxi home to his apartment.
He had a few drinks to soothe his understandably ruffled nerves and went to
bed. He was sleeping soundly when, at a little after midnight, the police came
and arrested him for murder. He couldn
^'
t understand it.

***

Mortimer Mearson, who was possibly if not certainly the best
criminal attorney in the city, returned to the clubhouse the next morning after
an early round of golf and found waiting for him a message requesting him to
call Judge Amanda Hayes at his earliest convenience. He called her at once.

"Good morning, Your Honoress," he said.
"Something gives?"

^"
Something gives, Morty. But if you
^'
re
free the rest of the morning and can drop around to my chambers, you
^'
ll
save me going into it over the telephone.
^"

^"
I
^'
ll be with you within an hour,
^"
he told her. And he was.

"Good morning again, Your Judgeship," he said.
"Now please take a deep breath and tell me just what it is that
gives."

^"
A case for you, if you want it. Succinctly,
a man was arrested for murder last night. He refuses to make a statement, any
statement, until he has consulted an attorney, and he doesn't have one. Says
he's never been in any legal trouble before and doesn't even know any
attorneys. Asked the chief to recommend one, and the chief passes the buck to
me on said recommendation."

Mearson sighed. "Another free case. Well, I suppose
it's about time I took one again. Are you appointing me?
^"

"Down, boy," said Judge Hayes. "Not a free
case at all. The gentleman in question isn't rich, but he's reasonably
well-heeled. A fairly well-known young man about town,
bon vivant,
what
have you, well able to afford any fee you wish to charge him, within reason.
Not that your fee will probably
be
within reason, but that's between you
and him, if he accepts you to represent him.
^"

^"
And does this paragon of virtue—most obviously
innocent and maligned—have a name?"

"He does, and you will be familiar with it if you read
the columnists. Lorenz Kane.
^"

^"
The name registers. Most
obviously
innocent.
Uh—I didn
^'
t see the morning papers. Whom is he alleged to have
killed? And do you know any of the details?
^"

^"
It
^'
s going to be a toughie,
Morty boy," the judge said.
^"
I don
^'
t think
there
^'
s a prayer of a chance for him other than an insanity plea.
The victim was a Queenie Quinn—a stage name and no doubt a more valid one will
come to light—who was a stripper at the Majestic. Star of the show there. A
number of people saw Kane in the audience during her last number and saw him
leave right after it during the final number. The doorman identifies him and
admits having—ah—admitted him. The doorman knew him by sight and that's what
led the police to him. He passed the doorman again on his way out a few minutes
later. Meanwhile several people heard a shot. And a few minutes after the end
of the show, Miss Quinn was found dead, shot to death, in her dressing
room."

^"
Hmmm,
^"
said Mearson.
^"
Simple
matter of his word against the doorman
^'
s. Nothing to it. I
^'
ll
be able to prove that the doorman is not only a pathological liar but has a
record longer than Wilt-the-Stilt's arm."

^"
Indubitably, Morty. But. In view of his
relative prominence, the police took a search warrant as well as a warrant for
arrest on suspicion of murder when they went to get him. They found, in the
pocket of the suit he had been wearing, a thirty-two caliber revolver with one
cartridge fired. Miss Quinn was killed by one bullet fired from a thirty-two
caliber revolver. The very
same
revolver, according to the ballistics
experts of our police department, who fired a sample bullet and used a
comparison microscope on it and the bullet which killed Miss Quinn.
^"

^"
Hmmm and double hmm,
^"
Mearson said.
^"
And you say that Kane has made no statement
whatsoever except to the effect that he will make no statement until he has
consulted with an attorney of his choice?
^"

^"
True, except for one rather strange remark
he made immediately after being awakened and accused. Both of the arresting
officers heard it and agree on it, even to the exact wording. He said, `My God,
she must have been real!' What do you suppose he could possibly have meant by
that?
^"

^"
I haven
^'
t the faintest, Your
Judgeship. But if he accepts me as his attorney, I shall most certainly ask
him. Meanwhile, I don
^'
t know whether to thank you for giving me a
chance at the case or to cuss at you for handing me a very damned hot
potato."

"You like hot potatoes, Morty, and you know it.
Especially since you'll get your fee win or lose. I'll save you from making
wasted motions in one direction, though. No use trying for bail or for a habeas
corpus writ. The D.A. jumped in with both feet the moment the ballistics report
came up heads. The charge is formal, murder in the first. And the prosecution
doesn
^'
t need any more case than they have; they're ready to go to
trial as soon as they can pressure you into it. Well, what are you waiting
for?"