TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

BY

ARTHUR C. CLARKE



INGENIOUS, HILARIOus DELIGHTFUL stories
such as these could come only from a man
who has mastered both science and
fiction in short, from Arthur C. Clarke.

  In the smoky and comfortable gloom of the
White Hart pub "somewhere in London" the
fraternity of British scientists, SIP writers and
fans gather nightly to listen to the magnificent
stories of Harry Purvis. Whether you believe all
that Harry Purvis says or not (Mr. Clarke
doesn't commit himself), you will be
astonished, amused and amazed by his
hilarious tales of

.... a home-brew whiskey of explosive power

.... a meat-eating orchid with a vicious
disposition .... the curious fate of Ermintrude
Inch

  The mixture is definitely not "as before," and
the book is definitely surprising. For Mr. Clarke,
who has established a reputation for
impeccable science  both in his nonfiction and
his novels appears here in a new role: the
Baron Munchausen of science fiction.

 "A book by Clarke is always an event, and
this one is a first edition ex~uordineq....
Don't Miss.'"

 Eting FeabJres Syndicate

     BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE
NO N-lil CTI ON
INTERPLANETARY PLIGHT
the EXPLORATION Of SPACE
the COAST of CORAL
the REBPS of TAPROBANB
BOY BENEATH THE SFA (with Mike
Wilson)
the PIRST FIVE PATHOMS (with Mike
Wilson)
INDEX OCEAN ADVENTURB (with Mike
Wilson)
THE TREASURE OF the GREAT REBP
(with Mike Wilson)
THE CHALLBNOB of THE SPACESHIP
THE CHALLENOB of THE SEA
PROFILES of the FUTURE
VOICES PROM THE SKY
FICTION
PRELUDE TO SPACE
the SANDS OF MARS
AGAINST THE PALL OF NIGHT
ISLANDS IN the SKY
CHILDHOOD'S END
BXPBDI1lON TO EARTH
BARTHLIGHT
REACH FOR TOMORROW
the CITY AND THE STARS
TALES PROM the '~VHITB HART"
THE DEBP RANGE
the OTHER SHE of the SKY
ACROSS THE SEA of STARS
(Omnibus)
A PALL of MOONDUST
PROM the OCEAN, PROM the STARS
(Omnibus)
TALES of TEN WORLDS
DOLPHIN REEP
GLIDE PATH
PRBLUDB TO MARS (Omnibus)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (with Stanley
Kubrick)

This is an original novel not a reprint.

          TALES FROA\
              THE
          WHITE HART
       Arthur C. Clarke
  BALLANTINE BOOKS   NEW YORK
          An Irma Pa
               
             To Lew
and his Thursday night customers

"Silence Please," "Big Gatne Hunt,"
"Patent Pending" and "Armaments Race"
were copyrighted 1954 by Popular
Publications, Inc.; "What Goes Up" was
copyrighted l95S by Mercury Publishing,
Inc.; "The Next Tenants" and "Tho
Reluctant Orchid" were copyrighted
1956 by Renown Publishing Co., Inc.;
'mine Pacifist" was copyrighted 1956 by
King Size Magazines, Inc.; "The Ultimato
Melody" was copyrighted 1956 by Quinn
Pnblishing Company, Inc.; "Sleeping
Beauty" was copyrighted 1957 by Royal
Publication, Inc.; "Critical Mass" was
copyrighted 19S7 by Republic Feature
Syndicate, Inc.

   @), 1957, BY ARTHUR C CEDE

LIBRARY of CONGRESS CAT=OG
Cat NO. 56-12821 Printed in Canada.

  FIRST PRINTING, JANUARY, 1957
 SECOND PRINTING, OCTOBER, 1961
  THIRD PROVISO, NOVEMBER, 1966
    FOURTH PRONG, MARCn, 1969
   PIPTH GINO, SEPTEMBER, 1969
 SUCI.R PRINTING, MAP.CP~, 1970
  SEVENTH PRINIINO, SEPTEMBER,
1971
   EIGHTH PRINTlNO, JUNE, 1972
     BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.
101 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York
10003
        An Oh. Publisher
                
               PREFACE

  These stories were written in spurts and
spasms between 1953 and 1956 at such
diverse spots on the globe as New York,
Miami, Colombo, London, Sydney, and various
other locations whose names now escape me.
In some cases the geographical influence is
obvious, though curiously enough I had never
visited Australia when "What Goes Up...." was
written.

  It seems to me that there is room one
might even say a long unfelt want for what
might be called the "tall" science-fiction story.
By this I mean stories that are iraen tionally
unbelievable; not, as is too often the case,
unintentionally so. At the same time, I should
hate to say exactly where the Great Divide of
plausibility comes in these tales, which range
from the perfectly possible to the totally
improbable.

  In at least two cases, science has practically
caught up with me in the few years since I
wrote these stories. The technique described
in "Big Game Hunt" has already been used on
monkeys, so there is no reason to suppose
that it could not be adapted to other creatures.
For a more successful conclusion to this
particular hunt and the rest of the quotation
from Herman Melville I refer you to my novel
"The Deep Range."

  It is in the field touched upon in "Patent
Pending," however, that the most hair-raising
discovery has been made a discovery which
should stop anyone worrying about such
minor menaces as the hydrogen bomb. The
first of the work that may end our civilisation
will be found in James Old's article "Pleasure
Centers in the Brain" (Scientific Arnericarz,
October 1956). Briefly, it has been foumd that
an electric current flowing into a certain area
in the brain of a rat can produce intense pleas-
ure. So much so, in fact, that when the rat
learns that it can stimulate itself at will by
pushing a little pedal, it loses

                  v
                  
               PREPACB

interest in anything else even in food. I
quote: "Hungry rats ran faster to reach an
electric stimulator than they did to reach food.
Indeed, a hungry animal often ignored
available food in favor of the pleasure of
stimulating itself electrically. Some rats . . .
stimulated their brains more than 2,000 times
per hour for 24 consecutive hours!"

  The article concludes with these ominous
words: "Enough of the brain-stimulating work
has been repeated on monkeys . . . to indicate
that our general conclusions can very likely be
generalised eventually to human beings  with
modifications, of course."

Of course.

  Por the record (written, not
electroencephalographic) I believe the first
writers to use the theme of "Patent Pending"
were Pletcher Pratt and Laurence Manning,
back in the '30's. And quite recently, in "The
Big Ball of Wax," Shepherd Mead has given it
a much more ribald treatment than mine. I
thought his book very funny before I read Mr.
Old's article. You may still do so.

  Another item for which I cannot claim
originality is the newspaper quotation in "Cold
War." It is perfectly genuine. It may even have
been true.

  I must confess that, having chosen the title
of this volume some years ago, I was a little
disconcerted when Sprague de Camp and
Pletcher Pratt brought out their "Tales from
Gavagan's Bar." But as most of the odd go-
ings-on at Mr. Cohan's establishment are
concerned with the supernatural, I feel that
there is plenty of room for both
taverns especially as they are separated by
the width of the Atlantic.

  Finally, a word to any readers of my (pause
for modest cough) more serious works, who
may be distressed to find me taking the
universe so light-heartedly after my earlier
preoccupation with such themes as the
Destiny of Man and the Exploration of Space
(Advt.) My only excuse is that for some years
I've been irritated by critics who keep claiming
that science fiction and humor are
incompatible.

Now they have a chance to prove it and shut
up.

          .
vi

Contents

 PREFACE                     V
 SILENCE PLEASE              1
 BM GAME HUNT                13
 PATENT PENDING              19
 ARMAMENTS RACE              30
 CRITICAL MASS               38
 THE ULTIMATE MELODY         45
 THE PACIFIST                53
 THE NEXT TENANTS            63
 MOVING SPIRIT               73
 THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE
SEA                          86
 THE RELUCTANT ORCHID        103
 COLD WAR                    113
 WHAT GOES UP                120
 SLEEPING BEAUTY             1 3
1

THE DEFENESTRATION OF
ERMINTRUDE INCH 142

             SILENCE PLEASE

You COME upon the "White Hart" quite
unexpectedly in one of these anonymous little
lanes leading down from Fleet Street to the
Embankment. It's no use telling you where it is:
very few people who have set out in a determined
effort to get there have ever actually arrived. For
the first dozen visits a guide is essential: after that
you'll probably be all right if you close your eyes
and rely on instinct. Also to be perfectly
frank we don't want any more customers, at least
on our night. The place is already uncomfortably
crowded. All that I'll say about its location is that
it shakes occasionally with the vibration of
newspaper presses, and that if you crane out of
the window of the gent's room you can just see
the Thames.

  From the outside, is looks like any other pub as
indeed it is for five days of the week. The public
and saloon bars are on the ground floor: there are
the usual vistas of brown oalc panelling and
frosted glass, the bottles behind the bar, the
handles of the beer engines . . . nothing out of the
ordinary at all. Indeed, the only concession to the
twentieth century is the juke box in the public bar.
It was installed during the war in a laughable
attempt to make G.I.'s feel at home, and one of
the first things we did was to make sure there was
no danger of its ever working again.

  At this point I had better explain who "we" are.
That is not as easy as I thought it was going to be
when I started, for a complete catalogue of the
"White Hart's" clients would probably be
impossible and would certainly be excruciatingly
tedious. So all I'll say at this point is that "we" fall
into three main classes. First there are the
journalists, writers and editors. The journalists, of
course, gravitated here from Fleet Street. Those
who couldn't

  make the grade fled elsewhere: the tougher ones
remained. As for the writers, most of them heard
about us from other writers, came here for copy,
and got trapped.

1

      TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  Where there are writers, of course, there are
sooner or later editors. If Drew, our landlord,
got a percentage on the literary business done
in his bar, he'd be a rich man. (We suspect he
is a rich man, anyway.) One of our wits once
remarked that it was a common sight to see
half a dozen Indignant authors arguing with a
hard-faced editor in one corner of the "White
Hart", while in another, half a dozen indignant
editors argued with a hard-faced author.

  So much for the literary side: you will have,
I'd better warn you, ample opportunities for
close-ups later. Now let us glance briefly at
the scientists. How did they get in here?

  Well, Birkbeck College is only across the
road, and King's is just a few hundred yards
along the Strand. That's doubtless part of the
explanation, and again personal rec-
Dmmendation had a lot to do with it. Also,
many of our scientists are writers, and not a
few of our writers are scientists. Confusing,
but we like it that way.

  The third portion of our little microcosm
consists of what may be loosely termed
"interested laymen". They were attracted to the
"White Hart" by the general brouhaha, and
enjoyed the conversation and company so
much that they now cone along regularly every
Wednesday  which is the day when we all get
together. Sometimes they can't stand the pace
and fall by the wayside, but there's always a
fresh supply.

  With such potent ingredients, it is hardly
surprising that Wednesday at the "White Hart"
is seldom dull. Not only have some
remarkable stories been told there, but
remarkable things have happened there. For
example, there was the time when Professor ,
passing through on his way to Harwell, left
behind a briefcase containing well, we'd
better not go into that, even though we did so
at the time. And most interesting it was, too....
Any Russian agents will find me in the-corner
under the dartboard. I come high, but easy
terms can be arranged.

  Now Hat I've Andy though of the idea, it
seems astonishing to me that none of my
colleagues has ever got round to writing up
these stories. Is it a question of being so close
to the wood that they can't see the trees?

SILENCE PLEASE 3

Or is it lack of incentive? No, the last
explanation can hardly hold: several of them are
quite as hard up as I am, and have complained
with equal bitterness about Drew's "NO CREDIT"
rule. My only fear, as I type these words on my
old Remington Noiseless, is that John
Christopher or George Whitley or John Beynon
are already hard at work using up the best
material. Such as, for instance, the story of the
Fenton Silencer....

  I don't know when it began: one Wednesday
is much like another and it's hard to tag dates
on to them. Besides, people may spend a
couple of months lost in the "White Hart" crowd
before you first notice their existence. That had
probably happened to Harry Purvis, because
when I first came aware of him he already knew
the names of most of the people in our crowd.
Which is more than I do these days, now that I
come to think of it.

  But though I don't know when, I know exactly
how it all started. Bert Huggins was the catalyst,
or, to be more accurate, his voice was. Bert's
voice would catalyse anything. When he
indulges in a confidential whisper, it sounds like
a sergeant major dolling an entire regiment. And
when he lets himself go, conversation
languishes elsewhere while we all wait for those
cute little bones in the inner ear to resume their
accustomed places.

  He had just lost his temper with John
ChAstopher (we all do this at some time or
other) and the resulting detonation had
disturbed the chess game in progress at the
back of the saloon bar. As usual, the two
players were surrounded by backseat drivers,
and we all looked up with a start as Bert's blast
whammed overhead. When the echoes died
away, someone said: "I wish there was a way of
shutting him up."

  It was then that Harry Purvis replied: "There
is, you know."

  Not recognising the voice, I looked round. I
saw a small, neatly-dressed man in the late
thirties. He was smoking one of those carved
German pipes that always makes me think of
cuckoo clocks and the Black Forest. That was
the only unconventional thing about him: other-
wise he might have been a minor Treasury
official all

4 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

dressed up to go to a meeting of the Public
Accounts Committee.

"I beg your pardon?" I said.

  He took no notice, but made some delicate
adjustments to his pipe. It was then that I
noticed that it wasn't, as I'd thought at first
glance, an elaborate piece of wood carving. It
was something much more sophisticated a
contraption of metal and plastic like a small
chemical engineering plant. There were even
a couple of minute valves. My God, it was a
chemical engineering plant....

  I don't goggle any more easily than the next
man, but I made no attempt to hide my
curiosity. He gave me a superior smile.

  "All for the cause of science. It's an idea of
the Biophysics Lab. They want to find out
exactly what there is in tobacco smoke hence
these filters. You know the old
argument~does smoking cause cancer of the
tongue, and if so, how? The trouble is that it
takes an awful lot of  er distillate to identify
some of the obscurer bye-products. So we
have to do a lot of smoking."

  "Doesn't it spoil the pleasure to have all this
plumbing in the way?"

  "I don't know. You see, I'm just a volunteer.
I don't smoke."

  "Oh," I said. For the moment, that seemed
the only reply. Then I remembered how the
conversation had started.

  "You were saying," I continued with some
feeling, for there was still a slight tintinus in
my left ear, "that there was some way of
shutting up Bert. We'd all like to hear it if that
isn't mixing metaphors somewhat."

  "I was thinking," he replied, after a couple of
experimental sucks and blows, "of the ill-fated
Fenton Silencer. A sad story yet, I feel, one
with an interesting lesson for us all. And one
day who knows.? someone my

perfect it and earn the blessings of the
world."

Suck, bubble, bubble, plop....

"Well, let's hear the story. When did it
happen?"

He sighed.

"I'm almost sorry I mentioned it. Still, since you
insist

SILENCE PLEASE 5

 and, of course, on the understanding that it
doesn't go beyond these walls."

"Er of course."

  "Well, Rupert Fenton was one of our lab
assistants. A very bright youngster, with a good
mechanical background, but, naturally, not very
well up in theory. He was always making
gadgets in his spare time. Usually the idea was
good, but as he was shaky on fundamentals the
things hardly ever worked. That didn't seem to
discourage him: I think he fancied himself as a
latter-day Edison, and imagined he could make
his fortune from the radio tubes and other
oddments Iying around the lab. As his tinkering
didn't interfere with his work, no-one objected:
indeed, the physics demonstrators did their
best to encourage him, because, after all, there
is something refreshing about any form of
enthusiasm. But no-one expected he'd ever get
very far, [because I don't suppose he could
even integrate e to the x."

"Is such ignorance possible?" gasped someone.

  "Maybe I exaggerate. Let's say x e to the x.
Anyway, all his knowledge was entirely
practical rule of thumb, you know. Give him a
wiring diagram, however complicated, and he
could make the apparatus for you. But unless it
was something really simple' like a television
set, he wouldn't understand how it worked. The
trouble was, he didn't realise his limitations.
And that, as you'll see, was most unfortunate.

  "I think he must have got the idea while
watching the Honours Physics students doing
some experiments in acoustics. I take it, of
course, that you all understand the
phenomenon of interference?"

"Naturally," I replied.

  "HeyI" said one of the chess-players, who had
given up trying to concentrate on the game
(probably because he was losing.) "I don't."

  Purvis looked at him as though seeing
something that had no right to be around in a
world that had invented penicillin.

  "In that case," he said coldly, "I suppose I had
better do some explaining." He waved aside our
indignant pro

6 TALES PROM TEIEWHITE HART

tests. "No, I insist. It's precisely those who
don't understand these things `~ho need to be
told about them. If someone had only
explained the theory to poor Fenton while
there was still time...."

  He looked down at the now thoroughly
abashed chessplayer.

  "I do not know,' he began, "if you have ever
considered the nature of sound. Suffice to say
that it consists of a series of waves moving
through the air. Not, however, waves like those
on the surface of the search dear no! Those
waves are up and down movements. Sound
waves consist oil alternate compressions and
rarefactions."

"Rare-what?"

"Rarefactions."

"Don't you mean 'rarefications'?"

  "I do not. I doubt if such a word exists, and
if it does, it shouldn't," retorted Purvis, with the
aplomb of Sir Alan Herbert dropping a
particularly revolting neologism into his
killing-bottle. "where was I? Explaming sound,
of course. When we make any sort of noise,
from the faintest whisper to that concussion
that went past just now, a series of pressure
changes moves through the air. Have you ever
watched shunting engines at work on a siding?
You see a perfect example of the same kind of
thing. There's a long line of goods-wagons, all
coupled together. One end gets a bang, the
first two trucks move together and then you
can see the compression wave moving right
along the line. Behind it the reverse thing
happens the rarefaction  I repeat,
rarefactior' as the tmcks separate again.

  "Things are simple enough when there is
only one source of sound only one set of
waves. But suppose you have two
wave-patterQS, moving in the same direction?
That's when interference arises, and there are
lots of pretty experiments in elementary
physics to demonstrate it. All we need worry
about here is the fact which I think you will
all agree is perfectly obvious that if one could
get two sets of waves exactly out of step, He
total result would be precisely zero. The
compression pulse of one sound wave would
be on top of the rarefaction of another net
result no change and hence no sound. To

SILENCE PLEASE 7

go back to my analogy of the line of wagons,
it's as if you gave the last truck a jerk and a
push simultaneously. Nothing at all would
happen.

  "Doubtless some of you will already see what
I am driving at, and will appreciate the basic
principle of the Fenton Silencer. Young Fenton,
I imagine, argued in this manner. 'This world of
ours,' he said to himself, 'is too full of noise.
There would be a fortune for anyone who could
invent a really perfect silencer. Now, what would
that imply . . . ?'

  "It didn't take him long to work out the
answer: I told you he was a bright lad. There
was really very little in his pilot model. It
consisted of a microphone, a special amplifier,
and a pair of loudspeakers. Any sound that
happened to be about was picked up by the
mike, amplified and inverted so that it was
exactly out of phase with the original noise.
Then it was pumped out of the speakers, the
original wave and the new one cancelled out,
and the net result was silence.

  "Of course, there was rather more to it than
that. There had to be an arrangement to make
sure that the cancelling wave was just the right
intensity otherwise you might be worse off
than when you started. But these are technical
details that I won't bore you with. As many of
you will recognise, it's a simple application of
negative feed-back."

  "Just a moment!" interrupted Eric Maine. Eric,
I should mention, is an electronics expert and
edits some television paper or other. He's also
written a radio play about space-flight, but that's
another story. "Just a moment! There's
something wrong here. You couldn't get silence
that way. It would be impossible to arrange the
phase . . ."

  Purvis jammed the pipe back in his mouth.
For a moment there was an ominous bubbling
and I thought of the first act of "Macbeth". Then
he fixed Eric with a glare.

  "Are you suggesting," he said frigidly, "that
this story is untrue?"

  "Ah well, I won't go as far as that, but . . ."
Eric's voice trailed away as if he had been
silenced himself. He pulled an old envelope out
of his pocket, together with an

8 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

assortment of resistors and condensers that
seemed to have got entangled in his
handkerchief, and began to do some figuring.
That was the last we heard from him for some
time.

  "As I was saying," continued Purvis calmly,
"that's the way Fenton's Silencer worked. His
first model wasn't very powerful, and it
couldn't deal with very high or very low notes.
The result was rather odd. When it was
switched on, and someone tried to talk, you'd
hear the two ends of the spectrum a faint
bat's squeak, and a kind of low rumble. But he
soon got over that by using a more linear
circuit (dammit, I can't help using some
technicalities!) and in the later model he was
able to produce complete silence over quite a
Large area. Not merely an ordinary room, but
a full-sized hall. Yes....

  "Now Fenton was not one of these secretive
inventors who won't tell anyone what they are
trying to do, in case their ideas are stolen. He
was all too willing to talks He discussed his
ideas with the staff and with the students,
whenever he could get anyone to listen. It so
happened that one of the first people to whom
he demonstrated his improved Silencer was a
young Arts student called I think Kendall,
who was taking Physics as a subsidiary
subject. Kendall was much impressed by the
Silencer, as well he might be. But he was not
thinking, as you may have imagined, about its
commercial possibilities, or the boon it would
bring to the outraged ears of suffering hu-
manity. Oh dear no! He had quite other ideas.

  "Please permit me a slight digression. At
College we have a flourishing Musical Society,
which in recent years has grown in numbers to
such an extent that it can now tackle the less
monumental symphonies. In the year of which
I speak, it was embarking on a very ambitious
enterprise. It was going to produce a new
opera, a work by a talented young composer
whose name it would not be fair to mention,
since it is now well-known to you all. Let us
call hun Edward Unhand. I've forgotten the title
of the work, but it was one of these stark
dramas of tragic love which, for some reason
I've never been able to understand, are
supposed to be less ridiculous with a musical

SILENCE PLEASE 9

accompaniment than without. No doubt a good
deal depends on the music.

  "I can still remember reading the synopsis
while waiting for the curtain to go up, and to
this day have never been able to decide
whether the libretto was meant seriously or not.
Let's see the period was the late Victorian era,
and the main characters were Sarah Stampe,
the passionate postmistress, Walter Partridge,
the saturnine gamekeeper, and the squire's
son, whose name I forget. It's the old story of
the eternal triangle, complicated by the vil-
lager's resentment of change in this case, the
new telegraph system, which the local crones
predict will Do Things to the cows' milk and
cause trouble at lambing time.

  "Ignoring the frills, it's the usual drama of
operatic jealousy. The squire's son doesn't
want to marry into the Post Ofhce, and the
gamekeeper, maddened by his rejection, plots
revenge. The tragedy rises to its dreadful cli-
max when poor Sarah, strangled with parcel
tape, is found hidden in a mail-bag in the Dead
Letter Department. The villagers hang Partridge
from the nearest telegraph pole, much to the
annoyance of the linesmen. He was supposed
to sing an aria while he was being hung: that is
one thing I regret missing. The squire's son
takes to drink, or the Colonies, or both: and
that's that.

  "I'm sure you're wondering where all this is
leading: please bear with me for a moment
longer. The fact is that while this synthetic
jealousy was being rehearsed, the real thing
was going on back-stage. Fenton's friend
Kendall had been spurned by the young lady
who was to play Sarah Stampe. I don't think he
was a particularly vindictive person, but he saw
an opportunity for a unique revenge. Let us be
frank and admit that college life does breed a
certain irresponsibility and in identical circum-
stances, how many of us would have rejected
the same chance?

  "I see the dawning comprehension on your
faces. But we, the audience, had no suspicion
when the overture started on that memorable
day. It was a most distinguished gathering:
everyone was there, from the Chancellor
down

10 TARES FROM THE WHITE HART

wards. Deans and professors were two a
penny: I never did discover how so many
people had been bullied into coming. Now that
I come to think of it, I can't remember what I
was doing there myself.

  "The overture died away amid cheers, and, I
must admit, occasional cat-calls from the more
boisterous members of the audience. Perhaps
I do them an injustice: they may have been the
more musical ones.

  "Then the curtain went up. The scene was
the village square at Doddering Sloughleigh,
circa 1860. Enter the heroine, reading the
postcards in the morning's mail. She comes
across a letter addressed to the young squire
and promptly bursts into song.

  "Sarah's opening aria wasn't quite as bad as
the overture, but it was grim enough. Luckily,
we were to hear only the first few bars....

  "Precisely. We need not worry about such
details as how Kendall had talked the
ingenuous Fenton into it  if, indeed, the
inventor realised the use to which his device
was being applied. All I need say is that it was
a most convincing demonstration. There was
a sudden, deadening blanket of silence, and
Sarah Stampe just faded out like a TV
programme when the sound is turned off.
Everyone was frozen in their seats, while the
singer's lips went on moving silently. Then she
too realised what had haps pened. Her mouth
opened in what would have been a piercing
scream in any other circumstances, and she
fled into the wings amid a shower of
postcards.

  "Thereafter, the chaos was unbelievable. For
a few minutes everyone must have thought
they had lost the sense of hearing, but soon
they were able to tell from the behaviour of
their companions that they were not alone in
their deprivation. Someone in the Physics
Department must have realised the truth fairly
promptly, for soon little slips of paper were
circulating among the V.I.P.'s in the front row.
The Vice~hancellor was rash enough to try
and restore order by sign-language, waving
frantically to the audience from the stage. By
this time I was too sick with laughter to
appreciate such fine details.

"There was nothing for it but to get out of the
hall,

SILENCE PLEASE 1 1

which we all did as quickly as we could. I think
Kendall had fled he was so overcome by the
effect of the gadget that he didn't stop to switch
it off. He was afraid of staying around in case
he was caught and lynched. As for
Fenton alas, we shall never know his side of
the story. We can only reconstruct the
subsequent events from the evidence that was
left.

  "As I picture it, he must-have waited until the
hall was empty, and then crept in to disconnect
his apparatus. We heard the explosion all over
the college."

"The explosion?" someone gasped.

  "Of course. I shudder to think what a narrow
escape we all had. Another dozen decibels, a
few more phone  and it might have happened
while the theatre was still packed. Regard it, if
you like, as an example of the inscrutable
workings of providence that only the inventor
was caught in the explosion. Perhaps it was as
well: at least he perished in the moment of
achievement, and before the Dean could get at
him."

"Stop moralising, man. What happened?"

  "Well, I told you that Fenton was very weak on
theory. If he'd gone into the mathematics of the
Silencer he'd have found his mistake. The
trouble is, you see, that one can't destroy
energy. Not even when you cancel out one train
of waves by another. All that happens then is
that the energy you've neutralized accumulates
somewhere else. It's rather like sweeping up all
the dirt in a room at the cost of an unsightly
pile under the carpet.

  "When you look into the theory of the thing,
you'll find that Fenton's gadget wasn't a
silencer so much as a collector of sound. All
the time it was switched on, it was really
absorbing sound energy. And at that concert, it
was certainly going hat out. You'll understand
what I mean if you've ever looked at one of
Edward England's scores. On top of that, of
course, there was all the noise the audience
was making or ] should say was trying to
make  during the resultant panic. The total
amount of energy must have been terrific, and
the poor Silencer had to keep on sucking it up.
Wheri did it go? Well' I don't know the circuit
details probably into the condensers of the
power

12 TAT ES FROM THE WHITE HART

pack. By the time Fenton started to tinker with
it again, it was like a loaded bomb. The sound
of his approaching footsteps was the last
straw, and the overloaded apparatus could
stand no more. It blew up."

  For a moment throne said a word' perhaps
as a token of respect for the late Mr. Fenton.
Then Eric Maine, who for the last ten minutes
had been muttering in the corner over his
calculations, pushed his way through the ring
of listeners. He held a sheet of paper thrust
aggressively in front of him.

  "Hey!" he said. "I was right all the time. The
thing couldn't work. The phase and amplitude
relations...."

Purvis waved him away.

  "That's just what I've explained," he said
patiently. "You should have been listening. Too
bad that Fenton found out the hard way."

  He glanced at his watch. For some reason,
he now seemed in a hurry to leave.

  "My goodness! Time's getting on. One of
these days, remind me to tell you about the
extraordinary thing we saw through the new
proton microscope. That's an even more
remarkable story."

  He was half way through the door before
anyone else could challenge him. Then George
Whitley recovered his breath.

  "Look here," he said in a perplexed voice.
"How is it that we never heard about this
business?"

  Purvis paused on the threshold, his pipe now
burbling briskly as it got into its stride once
more. He glanced back over his shoulder.

  "There was only one thing to do," he replied.
"We didn't want a scandal~e mortuis nil nisi
bonum, you know. Besides, in the
circumstances, don't you think it was highly
appropriate to ah hush the whole business
up? And a very good night to you all."

            BIG GAME HUNT

AtTHouGH BY general consent Harry Purvis
stands unrivalled among the "White Hart"
clientele as a purveyor of remarkable stories
(some of which, we suspect, may be slightly
exaggerated) it must not be thought that his
position has never been challenged. There
have even been occasions when he has gone
into temporary eclipse. Since it is always
entertaining to watch the discomfiture of an
expert, I must confess that I take a certain glee
in recalling how Professor Hinckelberg
disposed of Harry on his own home ground.

  Many visiting Americans pass through the
"White Hart" in the course of the year. Like the
residents, they are usually scientists or literary
men, and some distinguished names have
been recorded in the visitors' book that Drew
keeps behind the bar. Sometimes the
newcomers arrive under their own power,
diffidently introducing themselves as soon as
they have the opportunity. (There was the time
when a shy Nobel Prize winner sat
unrecogrused in a corner for an hour before he
plucked up enough courage to say who he
was.) Others arrive with letters of introduction,
and not a few are escorted in by regular cus-
tomers and then thrown to the wolves.

  Professor Hinckelberg glided up one night in
a vast fish-tailed Cadillac he'd borrowed from
the fleet in Grosvenor Square. Heaven only
knows how he had managed to insinuate it
through the side streets that lead to the "White
Hart", but amazingly enough all the fenders
seemed intact. He was a large lean man, with
that HenryPord-Wilbur-Wright kind of face that
usually goes with the slow, taciturn speech of
the sun-tanned pioneer. It didn't in Professor
Hinckelberg's case. He could tank like an L.P.
record on a 78 turntable. In about ten seconds
we'd discovered that he was a zoologist on
leave of absence from a North Virginia college,
that he was attached to the Office of Naval
Research on some project to do with 13

14 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

plankton, that he was tickled pink with London
and even liked Lnglish beer, that he'd heard
about us through a letter in Science but
couldn't believe we were true, that Stevenson
was O.K. but if the Democrats wanted to get
back they'd better import Winston, that he'd
dike to know what the heck was wrong with- all
our telephone call boxes and could he retrieve
the small fortune in coppers of which they had
mulcted him, that there seemed to be a lot of
empty glasses around and how about filling
them up, boys?

  On the whole the Professor's shock-tactics
were well received, but when he made a
momentary pause for breath I thought to
myself "Harry'd better look out. This guy can
talk rings round him." I glanced at Purvis, who
was only a few feet away from me, and saw
that his lips were pursed into a slight frown. I
sat back luxuriously and awaited results.

  As it was a fairly busy evening, it was quite
sometime before Professor Hinckelberg had
been introduced to everybody. Harry, usually
so forward at meeting celebrities, seemed to
be keeping out of the way. But eventually he
was cornered by Arthur Vincent, who acts as
informal club secretary and makes sure that
everyone signs the visitors' book.

  "I'm sure you and Harry will have a lot to talk
about" said Arthur, in a burst of innocent
enthusiasm. "You're both scientists, aren't you?
And Harry's had some most extraordinary
things happen to him. Tell the Professor about
the time you found that U 235 in your letter-
box...."

  "I don't think," said Harry, a tribe too hastily,
"that Professor ah Hinckelberg wants to
listen to my little adventure. I'm sure he must
have a lot to tell us."

  I've puzzled my head about that reply a good
deal since then. It wasn't in character. Usually,
with an opening like this, Purvis was up and
away. Perhaps he was seizing up the enemy,
waiting for the Professor to make the first
mistake, and then swooping in to the kill. If
that was the explanation, he'd misjudged his
man. He never

BIG GAME HUNT 15

had a chance, for Professor Hinckelberg made
a jetassisted take-off and was immediately in
full flight.

  "Odd you should mention that," he said. "I've
just been dealing with a most remarkable case.
It's one of these things that can't be written up
as a proper scientific paper, and this seems a
good time to get it off my chest. I can't often do
that, because of this darned security but so
far no-one's gotten round to classifying Dr.
Grinnell's experiments, so I'll talk about them
while I can."

  Grinnell, it seemed was one of the many
scientists trying to interpret the behaviour of
the nenous system in terms of electrical
circuits. He had started, as Grey Walter,
Shannon and others had done, by making
models that could reproduce the simpler
actions of living creatures. His greatest success
in this direction had been a mechanical cat that
could chase mice and could land on its feet
when dropped from a height. Very quickly,
however, he had branched off in another
direction owing to his discovery of what he
called "neural induction". This was, to simplify
it greatly, nothing less than a method of
actually controlling the behaviour of animals.

  It had been known for many years that all the
processes that take place in the mind are
accompanied by the production of minute
electric currents, and for a long time it has been
possible to record these complex fluctuations
 though their exact interpretation is still
unknown. Grinnell had not attempted the
intricate task of analysis; what he had done was
a good deal simpler, though its achievement
was still complicated enough. He had attached
his recording device to various animals, and
thus been able to build up a small library, if one
could call it that, of electrical impulses
associated with their behaviour. One pattern of
voltage might correspond to a movement to the
right, another with travelling in a circle, another
with complete stillness, and so on. That was an
interesting enough achievement, but Grinnell
had not stopped there. By "playing back" the
impulses he had recorded, he could compel his
subjects to repeat their previous actions
whether they wanted to or not.

16 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  That such a thing might be possible in
theory almost any neurologist would admit, but
few would have believed that it could be done
in practice owing to the enormous complexity
of the nervous system. And it was true that
Grinnell's first experiments were carried out on
very low forms of life, with relatively simple
responses.

  "I saw only one of his experiments," said
Hinckelberg. "There was a large slug crawling
on a horizontal piece of glass, and half a
dozen tiny wires led from it to a control panel
which Grinnell was operating. There were two
dials  that was all and by suitable
adjustments he could make the slug move in
any direction. To a layman, it would have
seemed a trivial experiment, but I realised that
it might have tremendous implications. I
remember telling Grinnell that I hoped his
device could never be applied to human
beings. I'd been reading Orwell's "1984" and I
could just imagine what Big Brother would do
with a gadget like this.

  "Then, being a busy man, I forgot all about
the matter for a year. By the end of that time,
it seems, Grinnell had improved his apparatus
considerably and had worked up to more
complicate`] organisms, though for technical
reasons he had restricted himself to
invertebrates. He had now built up a
substantial store of 'orders' which he could
then play back to his subjects. You might think
it surprising that such diverse creatures as
worms, snails, insects, crustaceans and so on
would be able to respond to the same
electrical commands, but apparently that was
the case.

  "If it had not been for Dr. Jackson, Grinnell
would probably have stayed working away in
the lab for the rest of his life, moving steadily
up the animal kingdom. Jackson was a very
remarkable man I'm sure you must have seen
some of his films. In many circles he was
regarded as a publicity-hunter rather than a
real scientist, and academic circles were
suspicious of him because he had far too
many interests. He'd led expeditions into the
Gobi Desert, up the Amazon, and had even
made one raid on the Antarctic. From each of
these trips he had returned with a best-selling
book and a few miles of Kodachrome.

BIG GAME HUNT 17

And despite reports to the contrary, I believe
he had obtained some valuable scientific
results, even if they were slightly incidental.

  "I don't know how Jackson got to hear of
Grinnell's work, or how he talked the other man
into cooperating. He could be very persuasive,
and probably dangled vast appropriations
before Grinnell's eyes for he was the sort of
man who could get the ear of the trustees.
Whatever happened, from that moment Grinnell
became mysteriously secretive. All we knew
was that he was building a much larger version
of his apparatus, incorporating all the latest
refinements. When challenged, he would
squirm nervously and say 'We're going big
game hunting.'

  "The preparations took another year, and I
expect that Jackson who was always a
hustler must have been mighty impatient by
the end of that time. But at last everything was
ready. Grinnell and all his mysterious boxes
vanished in the general direction of Africa.

  "That was Jackson's work. I suppose he
didn't want any premature publicity, which was
understandable enough when you consider the
somewhat fantastic nature of the expedition.
According to the hints with which he had as
we later discovered carefully mislead us all,
he hoped to get some really remarkable
pictures of animals in their wild state, using
Grinnell's apparatus. I found this rather hard to
swallow, unless Grinnell had somehow
succeeded in linking his device to a radio
transmitter. It didn't seem likely that he'd be
able to attach his wires and electrodes to a
charging elephant....

  "They'd thought of that, of course, and the
answer seems obvious now. Sea water is a
good conductor. They weren't going to Africa at
all, but were heading out into the Atlantic. But
they hadn't lied to us. They were after big
game, all right. The biggest game there is....

  "We'd never have known what happened if
their radio operator hadn't been chattering to
an amateur friend over in the States. From his
commentary it's possible to guess the
sequence of events. Jackson's ship it was
only a small yacht, bought up cheaply and
converted for the expedition was Iying-to not
far from the Equator off the

18 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

west coast of Africa, and over the deepest part
of the Atlantic. Grinnell was angling: his
electrodes had been lowered into the abyss,
while Jackson waited impatiently with his
camera.

  "They waited a week before they had a
catch. By that bme, tempers must have been
rather frayed. Then, one afternoon on a
perfectly calm day, Grinnell's meters started to
jump. Something was caught in the sphere of
influence of the electrodes.

  "Slowly, they drew up the cable. Until now,
the rest of the crew must have thought them
mad, but everyone must have shared their
excitement as the catch rose up through an
those thousands of feet of darkness until it
broke surface. Who can blame the radio
operator if, despite Jackson's orders, he felt
an urgent need to talk things over with a friend
back on the safety of dry land?

  "I won't attempt to describe what they saw,
because a master has done it before me. Soon
after the report came in, I turned up my copy
of 'Moby Dick' and re-read the passage; I can
sUll quote it from memory and don't suppose
I'll ever forget it. This is how it goes, more or
less:

  " 'A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length, of a
glancing cream~olour, lay floating on the
water, innumerable long arms radiating from
its centre, curling and twisting like a nest of
anacondas, as if blindly to catch at any
hapless object within reach.'

  "Yes: Grinnell and Jackson had been after
the largest and most mysterious of ad living
creatures the giant squid. Largest? Almost
certainly: Bathyteuthis may grow up to a
hundred feet long. He's not as heavy as the
sperm whales who dine upon him, but he's a
match for them in length.

  "So here they were, with this monstrous
beast that no human being had ever before
seen under such ideal conditions. It seems
that Grinnell was calmly putting it through its
paces while Jackson ecstatically shot off yards
of film. There was no danger, though it was
twice the size of their boat. To Gnnnell, it was
just another mollusc that he could control like
a puppet by means of his knobs and dials
When he had finished, he would let it return to
its normal

PATENT PENDTNG 19

depths and it could swim away again, though it
would probably have a bit of a hangover.

  "What one wouldn t give to get hold of that
film! Altogether apart from its scientific interest,
it would be worth a fortune in Hollywood. You
must admit that Jackson knew what he was
doing: he'd seen the limitations of Grinnell's
apparatus and put it to its most effective use.
What happened next was not his fault."

  Professor Hinckelberg sighed and took a
deep draught of beer, as if to gather strength
for the finale of his tale.

  "No, if anyone is to blame it's Grinnell. Or, I
should say, it was Grinnell, poor chap. Perhaps
he was so excited that he overlooked a
precaution he would undoubtedly have taken in
the lab. How otherwise can you account for the
fact that he didn't have a spare fuse handy
when the one in the power supply blew out?

  "And you can't really blame Bathyteuthis,
either. Wouldn't you have been a little annoyed
to be pushed about like this? And when the
orders suddenly ceased and you were your own
master again, you'd take steps to see it
remained that way. I sometimes wonder,
though, if Jackson stayed filming to the very
end...."

            PATENT PENDING

THERE ARE no subjects that have not been
discussed, at some time or other, in the saloon
bar of the "White Hart"  and whether or not
there are ladies present makes no difference
whatsoever. After all, they came in at their own
risk. Three of them, now I come to think of it,
have eventually gone out again with husbands.
So perhaps the risk isn't on their side at all....

  I mention this because I would not like you to
think that all our conversations are highly
erudite and scientific, and our activities purely
cerebral. Though chess is rampant, darts and
shove-ha/penny also nourish. The Times Literary
Supplement, the Saturday Review, the New

20 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

Statesman and the Atlantic Monthly may be
brought in by some of the customers, but the
same people are quite likely to leave with the
latest issue of Staggenng Stones of Pseu-
doscience.

  A great deal of business also goes on in the
obscurer corners of the pub. Copies of antique
books and magazines frequently change hands
at astronomical prices, and on almost any
Wednesday at least three well-known dealers
may be seen smoking large cigars as they lean
over the bar, swapping stories with Drew. From
time to time a vast guffaw announces the
denouement of some anecdote and provokes
a flood of anxious enquiries from patrons who
are afraid they may have missed something.
But, alas, delicacy forbids that I should repeat
any of these interesting tales here. Unlike most
things in this island, they are not for export....

  Luckily, no such restrictions apply to the
tales of Mr. Harry Purvis, B.Sc. (at least), Ph.D.
(probably) F.R.S. (personally I don't think so,
though it has been rumoured). None of them
would bring a blush to the cheeks of the most
delicately nurtured maiden aunts, should any
still survive in these days.

  I must apologise. This is too sweeping a
statement. There was one story which might, in
some circles, be regarded as a little daring. Yet
I do not hesitate to repeat it, for I know that
you, dear reader, will be sufficiently broad-
minded to take no offence.

  It started in this fashion. A celebrated Fleet
Street reviewer had been pinned into a corner
by a persuasive publisher, who was about to
bring out a book of which he had high hopes.
It was one of the riper productions of the deep
and decadent South a prime example of the
"and-then-the-house-gave-another-lurch-as-th
e-termites-finished-the-east-wing" school of
fiction. Eire had already banned it, but that is
an honour which few books escape nowadays,
and certainly could not be considered a
distinction. However, if a leading British
newspaper could be induced to make a stern
call for its suppression, it would become a
best-seller overnight....

Such was the logic of its publisher, and he was
using

PATENT PENDING 2 1

all his wiles to induce co-operation. I heard him
remark, apparently to allay any scruples his
reviewer friend might have, "Of course not! If
they can understand it, they can't be corrupted
any further!" And then Harry Purvis, who has an
uncanny knack of following half a dozen
conversations simultaneously, so that he can
insert himself in the right one at the right time,
said in his peculiarly penetrating and
non-interruptable voice: "Censorship does raise
some very difficult problems doesn't it? I've
always argued that there's an inverse
correlation between a country's degree of
civilisation and the restraints it puts on its
press."

  A New England voice from the back of the
room cut in: "On that argument, Paris is a more
civilised place than Boston."

  "Precisely," answered Purvis. For once, he
waited for a reply.

  "O.K." said the New England voice mildly. "I'm
not arguing. I just wanted to check."

  "To continue," said Purvis, wasting no more
time in doing so, "I'm reminded of a matter
which has not yet concerned the censor, but
which will certainly do so before long. It began
in France, and so far has remained there. When
it does come out into the open, it may have a
greater impact on our civilisation than the atom
bomb.

  "Like the atom bomb, it arose out of equally
academic research. Never, gentlemen,
underestimate science. I doubt if there is a
single field of study so theoretical, so remote
from what is laughingly called everyday life,
that it may not one day produce something that
will shake the world.

  "You will appreciate that the story I am telling
you is, for once in a while, second-hand. I got
it from a colleague at the Sorbonne last year
while I was over there at a scientific
conference. So the names are all fictitious: I
was told them at the time, but I can't remember
them now.

  "Professor ah Julian was an experimental
physiologist at one of the smaller, but less
impecunious, French universities. Some of you
may remember that rather unlilcely tale we
heard here the other week from that fellow
Hinckelberg, about his colleague who'd learned
how to control the behaviour of animals through
feeding the cor

22 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

rect currents into their nervous systems. Well,
if there was any truth in that story and frankly
I doubt it the whole project was probably
inspired by Julian's papers in Comptes
Rendus.

  "Professor Julian, however, never published
his most remarkable results. When you
stumble on something which is really terrific,
you don't rush into print. You wait until you
have overwhelming evidenc~unless you're
afraid that someone else is hot on the track.
Then you may issue an ambiguous report that
will establish your priority at a later date,
without giving too much away at the moment
like the famous cryptogram that Huygens put
out when he detected the rings of Saturn.

  "You may well wonder what Julian's
discovery was, so I won't keep you in
suspense. It was simply the natural extension
of what mar, has been doing for the last
hundred years. First the camera gave us the
power to capture scenes. Then Edison
invented the phonograph, and sound was
mastered. Today, in the talking film, we have a
kind of mechanical memory which would be
inconceivable to our forefathers. But surely the
matter cannot rest there. Eventually science
must be able to catch and store thoughts and
sensations themselves, and feed them back
into the mind so that, whenever it wishes, it
can repeat any experience in life, down to its
minutes" detail."

  "That's an old idea!" snorted someone. "See
the 'feelies' in 'Brave New World'."

  "All good ideas have been thought of by
somebody before they are realised," said
Purvis severely. "The point is that what Huxley
and others had talked about, Julian actually
did. My goodness, there's a pun there!
Aldous  Julian oh, let it pass!

  "It was done electronically, of course. You all
know how the encephalograph can record the
minute electrical impulses in the living
brain the so-called 'brain waves', as the
popular press calls them. Julian's device was
a much subtler elaboration of this well-known
instrument. And, having recorded cerebral
impulses, he could play them back again. It
sounds simple, doesn't it? So was the

PATENT PENDING 23

phonograph, but it took the genius of Edison to
think of it.

  "And now, enter the villain. Well, perhaps
that's too strong a word, for Professor Julian's
assistant Georges  Georges Dupin is really
quite a sympathetic character. It was just that,
being a Frenchman of a more practical turn of
mind than the Professor, he saw at once that
there were some milliards of francs involved in
this laboratory toy.

  "The first thing was to get it out of the
laboratory. The French have an undoubted flair
for elegant engineering, and after some weeks
of work with the full co-operation of the
Professor Georges had managed to pack the
"playback" side of the apparatus into a cabinet
no larger than a television set, and containing
not very many more parts.

  "Then Georges was ready to make his first
experiment. It would involve considerable
expense, but as someone so rightly remarked
you cannot make omelettes without breaking
eggs. And the analogy is, if I may say so, an ex-
ceedingly apt one.

  "For Georges went to see the most famous
gourmet in France, and made an interesting
proposition. It was one that the great man could
not refuse, because it was so unique a tribute
to his eminence. Georges explained patiently
that he had invented a device for registering
(he said nothing about storing) sensations. In
the cause of science, and for the honour of the
French cuisine, could he be privileged to
analyse the emotions, the subtle nuances of
gustatory discrimination, that took place in
Monsieur le Baron's mind when he employed
his unsurpassed talents? Monsieur could name
the restaurant, the chef and the menu
everything would be arranged for his
convenience. Of course, if he was too busy, no
doubt that well-known epicure, Le Compte de

  "The Baron, who was in some respects a
surprisingly coarse man, uttered a word not to
be found in most French dictionaries. 'That
cretin!' he exploded. 'He would be happy on
English cooking! No, I shall do it.' And forthwith
he sat down to compose the menu, while
Georges

24 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

anxiously estimated the cost of the items and
wondered if his bank balance would stand the
strain. . .- .

  "It would be interesting to know what the
chef and the waiters thought about the whole
business. There was the Baron, seated at his
favourite table and doing full justice to his
favourite dishes, not in the least inconveni-
enced by the tangle of wires that trailed from
his head to that diabolical-looking machine in
the corner. The restaurant was empty of all
other occupants, for the last thing Georges
wanted was premature publicity. This had
added very considerably to the already
distressing cost of the experiment. He could
only hope that the results would be worth it.

  "They were. The only way of proving that, of
course, would be to play back Georges'
'recording'. We have to take his word for it,
since the utter inadequacy of words in such
matters is all too well-known. The Baron was a
genuine connoisseur, not one of those who
merely pretend to powers of discrimination
they do not possess. You know Thurber's
'Only a naive domestic Burgundy, but I think
you'll admire its presumption.' The Baron
would have known at the first sniff whether it
was domestic or not  and if it had been
presumptions he'd have smacked it down.

  "I gather that Georges had his money's
worth out of that recording, even though he
had not intended it merely for personal use. It
opened up new worlds to him, and clarified the
ideas that had been forming in his ingenious
brain. There was no doubt about it: all the
exquisite sensations that had passed through
the Baron's mind during the consumption of
that Lucullan repast had been captured, so
that anyone else, however untrained they
might be in such matters, could savour them
to the full. For, you see, the recording dealt
purely with emotions

intelligence did not come into the picture at all.
The Baron needed a lifetime of knowledge and
training before he could experience these
sensations. But once they were down on tape,
anyone, even if in real life they had no sense
of taste at all, could take over from there

"lhink of the glowing vistas that opened up
before

PATENT PENDING 25

Georges' eyes! There were other meals, other
gourmets. There were the collected
impressionsl1 the vintages of Europe what
would connoisseurs not pay for them? When
the last bottle of a rare wine had been
broached, its incorporeal essence could be
preserved, as the voice of Melba can travel
down the centuries. For, after all, it was not the
wine itself that mattered, but the sensations it
evoked....

  "So mused Georges. But this, he knew, was
only a beginning. The French claim to logic I
have often disputed, but in Georges' case it
cannot be denied. He thought the matter over
for a few days: then he went to see his petite
dame.

  " 'Yvonne, ma chew,' he said, 'I have a
somewhat unusual request to make of you....' "

  Harry Purvis knew when to break off in a
story. He turned to the bar and called, "Another
Scotch, Drew." No-one said a word while it was
provided.

  "To continue," said Purvis at length, "the
experiment, unusual though it was, even in
France, was successfully carried out. As both
discretion and custom demanded, all was
arranged in the lonely hours of the night. You
will have gathered already that Georges was a
persuasive person, though I doubt if Mam'selle
needed much persuading.

  "Stifling her curiosity with a sincere but hasty
kiss, Georges saw Yvonne out of the lab and
rushed back to his apparatus. Breathlessly, he
ran through the playback. It worked not that
he had ever had any real doubts. Moreover do
please remember I have only my informant's
word for this it was indistinguishable from the
real thing. At that moment something
approaching religious awe overcame Georges.
This was, without a doubt, the greatest
invention in history. He would be immortal as
well as wealthy, for he had achieved something
of which all men had dreamed, and had robbed
old age of one of its terrors....

  "He also realised that he could now dispense
with Yvonne, if he so wished. This raised
implications that would require further thought.
Much further thought.

26 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "You will, of course, appreciate that I am
giving you a highly condensed account of
events. While all this was going on, Georges
was still working as a loyal employee of the
Professor, who suspected nothing. As yet,
indeed, Georges had done little more than any
research worker might have in similar
circumstances. HiS performances had been
somewhat beyond the call of duty, but could
all be explained away if need be.

  "The next step would involve some very
delicate negotiations and the expenditure of
further hard-won francs. Georges now had all
the material he needed to prove, beyond a
shadow of doubt, that he was handling a very
valuable commercial property. There were
shrewd business men in Paris who would jump
at the opportunity. Yet a certain delicacy, for
which we must give him full credit, restrained
Georges from using his second er recording
as a sample of the wares his machine could
purvey. There was no way of disguising the
personalities involved, and Georges was a
modest man. 'Besides,' he argued, again with
great good sense, 'when the gramophone
company wishes to make a disque, it does not
enregister the performance of some amateur
musician. That is a matter for professionals.
And so, ma foi, is this.' Whereupon, after a
further call at his bank, he set forth again for
Paris.

  "He did not go anywhere near the Place
Pigalle, because that was full of Americans
and prices were accordingly exorbitant.
Instead, a few discreet enquiries and some
understanding cab-drivers took him to an
almost oppressively respectable suburb, where
he presently found himself in a pleasant
waiting room, by no means as exotic as might
have been supposed.

  "And there, somewhat embarrassed, Georges
explained his mission to a formidable lady
whose age one could have no more guessed
than her profession. Used though she was to
unorthodox requests, this was something she
had never encountered in all her considerable
experience. But the customer was always right,
as long as he had the cash, and so in due
course everything was arranged. One of the
young ladies and her boy friend, an apache of
somewhat overwhelming masculinity, travelled
back with Georges

PATENT PENDING 27

to the provinces. At first they were, naturally,
somewhat suspicious, but as Georges had
already found, no expert can ever resist flatted.
Soon they were all on excellent terms. Hercule
and Susette promised Georges that they would
give him every cause for satisfaction.

  "No doubt some of you would be glad to have
further details, but you can scarcely expect me to
supply them. All I can say is that (;eorges or
rather his instrument  was kept very busy, and
that by the morning little of the recording
material was left unused. For it seems that
Hercule was indeed appropriately named....

  "When this piquant episode was finished,
Georges had very little money left, but he did
possess two recordings that were quite beyond
price. Once more he set off to Paris, where, with
practically no trouble, he came to terms with
some businessmen who were so astonished that
they gave him a very generous contract before
coming to their senses. I am pleased to report
this, because so often the scientist emerges
second best in his dealings with the world of
finance. I'm equally pleased to record that
Georges had made provision for Professor Julian
in the contract. You may sag cynically that it was,
after all, the Professor's invention, and that
sooner or later Georges would have had to
square him. But I like to think that there was
more to it than that.

  "The full details of the scheme for exploiting
the device are, of course, unknown to me. I
gather that Georges had been expansively
eloquent not that much eloquence was needed
to convince anyone who had once experienced
one or both of his play-backs. The market would
be enormous, unlimited. The export trade alone
could put France on her feet again and would
wipe out her dollar deficit overnight once
certain snags had been overcome. Everything
would have to be managed through somewhat
clandestine channels, for think of the hub-bub
from the hypocritical Anglo-saxons when they
discovered just what was being imported into
their countries. The Mother's Union, The
Daughters of the American Revolution, The
Housewives League, and all the religious
organisations would rise as one. The lawyers
were looking into the

 .        .

28 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

matter very carefully, and as far as could be
seen the regulations that still excluded Tropic
of Capricorn from the mails of the
English-speaking countries could not be
applied to this case for the simple reason
that no-one had thought of it. But there would
be such a shout for new laws that Parliament
and Congress would have to do something, so
it was best to keep under cover as long as
possible.

  "In fact, as one of the directors pointed out,
if the recordings were banned, so much the
better. They could make much more money on
a smaller output, because the price would
promptly soar and all the vigilance of the
Customs Officials couldn't block every leak. It
would be Prohibition all over again.

  "You will scarcely be surprised to hear that
by this time Georges had somewhat lost
interest in the gastronomical angle. It was an
interesting but definitely minor possibility of
the invention. Indeed, this had been tacitly
admitted by the directors as they drew up the
articles of association, for they had included
the pleasures of the cuisine among 'subsidiary
rights'.

  "Georges returned home with his head in the
clouds, and a substantial check in his pocket.
A chancing fancy had struck his imagination.
He thought of all the trouble to which the
gramophone companies had gone so that the
world might have the complete recordings of
the Fortyeight Preludes and Fugues or the
Nine Symphonies. Well, his new company
would put out a complete and definite se, of
recordings, performed by experts versed in the
most esoteric knowledge of East and West.
How many opus numbers would be required?
That, of course, had been a subject of
profound debate for some thousands of years.
The Hindu text-books, Georges had heard, got
well into three figures. It would be a most
interesting research, combining profit with
pleasure in an unexampled manner.... He had
already begun some preliminary studies, using
treatises which even in Paris were none too
easy to obtain.

  "If you think that while all this was going on,
Georges had neglected his usual interests, you
are all too right. He

PATENT PENDING 29

was working literally night and day, for he had
not yet revealed his plans to the Professor and
almost everything had to be done when the lab
was closed. And one of the interests he had
had to neglect was Yvonne

  "Her curiosity had already been aroused, as
any girl's would have been. But now she was
more than intrigued  she was distracted. For
Georges had become so remote and cold. He
was no longer in love with her.

  "It was a result that might have been
anticipated. Publicans have to guard against the
danger of sampling their own wares too
often I'm sure you don't, Drew and Georges
had fallen into this seductive trap. He had been
through that recording too many times, with
somewhat debilitating results. Moreover, poor
Yvonne was not to be compared with the
experienced and talented Susette. It was the old
story of the professional versus the amateur.

  "All that Yvonne knew was that Georges was
in love with someone else. That was true
enough. She suspected that he had been
unfaithful to her. And that raises profound
philosophical questions we can hardly go into
here.

  '`This being France, in case you had
forgotten, the outcome was inevitable. Poor
Georgesl He was working late one night at the
lab, as usual, when Yvonne finished him off with
one of those ridiculous ornamental pistols
which are de rigeur for such occasions. Let us
drink to his memory."

  "That's the trouble with an your stories," said
John Beynon. "You tell us about wonderful
inventions, and then at the end it turns out that
the discoverer was killed, so no-one can do
anything about it. For I suppose, as usual, the
apparatus was destroyed?"

  "But no," replied Purvis. "Apart from Georges,
this is one of the stories that has a happy
ending. There was no trouble at all about
Yvonne, of course. Georges' grieving sponsors
arrived on the scene with great speed and pre-
vented any adverse publicity. Being men of
sentiment as well as men of business, they
realised that they would have to secure
Yvonne's freedom. They promptly did this by
playing the recording to le Maire and le Prefet,
thus convincing them that the poor girl had
experienced irresistible

30 TALBS FROM THE WHITE HART

provocation. A few shares in the new company
clinched the deal, with expressions of the
utmost cordiality on both sides. Yvonne even
got her gun back."

"Then when " began someone else.

  "Ah, these things take time. There's the
question of mass production, you know. It's
quite possible that distribution has already
commenced through private very
private channels. Some of those dubious little
shops and notice boards around Leicester
Square may soon start giving hints."

  "Of course," said the New England voice
disrespectfulty, "you wouldn't know the name
of the company."

  You can't help adiniring Purvis at times like
this. He scarcely hesitated.

  "Le Societe Anonyme d'Aphrodite," he
replied. "And I've just remembered something
that will cheer you up. They hope to get round
your sticky mails regulations and establish
themselves before the inevitable congressional
enquiry starts. They're opening up a branch in
Nevada: apparently you can still get away with
anything there." He raised his glass.

  "To Georges Dupin," he said solemnly.
"Martyr to science. Remember him when the
fireworks start. And one other thing "

"Yes?" we all asked.

  "Better start saving now. And sell your TV
sets before the bottom drops out of the
market."

           ARMAMENTS RACE

As I'vs remarked on previous occasions,
no-one has ever succeeded in pinning-down
Harry Purvis, prize raconteur of the "White
Hart", for any length of time. Of his scientific
knowledge there can be no doubt but where
did he pick it up? And what justification is
there for the terms of familiarity with which he
speaks of so many Feltows of the Royat
Society? There are, it must be admitted, many

ARMAMENTS RACE 31

who do not believe a single word he says.
That, I feel, is going a little too far, as I recently
remarked somewhat forcibly to Bill Temple.

  "You're always gunning for Harry," I said, "but
you must admit that he provides entertainment.
And that's more Han most of us can say."

  "If you're being personal," retorted Bill, still
rankling over the fact that some perfectly
serious stories had just been returned by an
American editor on the grounds that they
hadn't made him laugh, "step outside and say
that again." He glanced through the window,
noticed that it was still snowing hard, and
hastily added, "not today, then, but maybe
sometime in the summer, if we're both here on
the Wednesday that catches it. Have another of
your favourite shots of straight pineapple
juice?"

  "Thanks," I said. "One day I'll ask for a gin
with it, just to shake you. I think I must be the
only guy in the White Hart who can take it or
leave it and leaves it."

  This was as far as the conversation got,
because the subject of the discussion then
arrived. Normally, this would merely have
added fuel to the controversy, but as Harry had
a stranger with him we decided to be polite
little boys.

  "Hello, folks," said Harry. "Meet my friend
Solly Blumberg. Best special effects man in
Hollywood."

  "Let's be accurate, Harry," said Mr. Blumberg
sadly, in a voice that should have belonged to
a whipped spaniel "Not in Hollywood. Out of
Hollywood."

Harry waved the correction aside.

  "All the better for you. Sol's come over here
to apply his talents to the British film industry."

  "There is a British film industry?" said Solly
anxiously. "No-one seemed very sure round the
studio."

  "Sure there is. It's in a very flourishing
condition, too. The Government piles on an
entertainments tax that drives it to bankruptcy,
then keeps it alive with whacking big grants.
That's the way we do things in this country.
Hey, Drew, where's the Visitor's Book? And a
double for both of us. Solly's had a terrible
time he needs a bit of building up."

32 TALES FkoMTHE WHITE HART

  I cannot say that, apart from his hang-dog
look, Mr. Blumberg had the appearance of a
man who had suffered extreme hardships. He
was neatly dressed in a Hart, Schaffner and
Marx suit, and the points of his shirt collar
buttoned down somewhere around the middle
of his chest. That was thoughtful of them as
they thus concealed something, but not
enough, of his tie. I wondered what the trouble
was. Not Un-American activities again, I
prayed: that would trigger off our pet
communist, who at the moment was peaceably
studying a chess-board in the corner.

  We all made sympathetic noises and John
said rather pointedly: "Maybe it'll help to get it
off your chest. It will be such a change to hear
someone else talking around here."

  "Don't be so modest, John," cut m Harry
promptly. "I'm not tired of hearing you yet. But
I doubt if Solly feels much like going through
it again. Do you, old man?"

"No," said Mr. Blumberg. "You tell them."

  ("I knew it would come to that," sighed John
in my ear.)

  "Where shall I begin?" asked Harry. "The
time Lillian Ross came to interview you?"

  "Anywhere but there," shuddered Solly. "It
really started when we were making the first
'Captain Zoom' serial."

  " 'Captain Zoom'?" said someone ominously.
"Those are two very rude words in this place.
Don't say you were responsible for that
unspeakable rubbish!"

  "Now boys!" put in Harry in his best
oil-on-troubledwaters voice. "Don't be too
harsh. We can't apply our own high standards
of criticism to everything. And people have got
to earn a living. Besides, millions of Icids like
Captain Zoom. Surely you wouldn't want to
break their little hearts and so near Xmas,
too!"

  "If they really liked Captain Zoom, I'd rather
break their little necks."

  "Such unseasonable sentiments! I really
must apologise for some of my compatriots,
Solly. Let's see, what was the name of the first
serial?"

ARMAMENTS RACE 3 3

"'Captain Zoom and the Menace from Mars'."

  "Ah yes, that's right. Incidentally, I wonder
why we always are menaced by Mars? I
suppose that man Wells started it. One day we
may have a big interplanetary libel action on
our hands unless we can prove that the
Martians have been equally rude about A.

  "I'm very glad to say that I never saw 'Menace
From Mars.' ("I did," moaned somebody in the
background. "I'm still trying to forget it.") but
we are not concerned with the story, such as it
was. That was written by three men in a bar on
Wilshire Boulevard. No-one is sure whether the
Menace came out the way it did because the
script writers were drunk, or whether they had
to keep drunk in order to face the Menace. If
that's confusing, don't bother. All that Solly was
concerned with were the special effects that the
director demanded.

  "First of all, he had to build Mars. To do this
he spent half an hour with 'The Conquest of
Space', and then emerged with a sketch which
the carpenters turned into an over-ripe orange
Boating in nothingness, with an improbable
number of stars around it. That was easy. The
Martian cities weren't so simple. You try and
think of completely alien architecture that still
makes sense. I doubt if it's possible if it will
work at all, someone's already used it here on
Earth. What the studio finally built was vaguely
Byzantine with touches of Frank Lloyd Wright.
The fact that none of the doors led anywhere
didn't really matter, as long as there was
enough room on the sets for the swordplay and
general acrobatics that the script demanded.

  "Yes Wordplay. Here was a civilisation
which had atomic power, death-rays,
spaceships, television and suchlike modern
conveniences, but when it came to a fight be-
tween Captain Zoom and the evil Emperor
Klugg, the clock went back a couple of
centuries. A lot of soldiers stood round holding
deadly-looking ray-guns, but they never did
anything with them. Well, hardly ever. Some-
times a shower of sparks would chase Captain
Zoom and singe his pants, but that was all. I
suppose that as the rays

34 TALES FROM THE HART

couldn't very well move faster than light, he
could always outrun them.

  "Still, those ornamental ray~guns gave
everyone quite a few headaches. It's funny
how Hollywood will spend endless trouble on
some minute detail in a film which is complete
rubbish. The director of Captain Zoom had a
thing about ray-guns. Solly designed the Mark
I, that looked like a cross between a bazooka
and a blunderbus. He was quite satisfied with
it, and so was the director for about a day.
And then the great man came raging into the
studio carrying a revolting creation of purple
plastic with knobs and lenses and levers.

  " 'Lookit this, Solly!' he puffed. 'Junior got it
down at the Supermarket they're being given
away with packets of Crunch. Collect ten lids,
and you get one. Hell, they're better than ours!
And they workl'

  "He pressed a lever, and a thin stream of
water shot across the set and disappeared
behind Captain Zoom's spaceship, where it
promptly extinguished a cigaret that had no
right to be burning there. An angry stage-hand
emerged through the airlock, saw who it was
had drenched him, and swiftly retreated,
muttering things about his Union.

  "Solly examined the ray-gun with annoyance
and yet with an expert's discrimination. Yes, it
was certainly much more impressive than
anything he'd put out. He retired into his office
and promised to see what he could do about

  "The Mark II had everything built into it,
including a television screen. If Captain Zoom
was suddenly confronted by a charging
hickoderm, all he had to do was to switch on
the set, wait for the tubes to warm up, check
the channel selector, adjust the fine tuning,
touch up the focus, twiddle with the Line and
Frame holds and then press the trigger. He
was, fortunately, a man of unbelievably swift
reactions.

  "The director was impressed, and the Mark
II went into production. A slightly different
model, the Mark IIa, was built for the Emperor
Klugg's diabolical cohorts. It would never do,
of course, if both sides had the same

ARMAMENTS RACE 35

weapon. I told you that Pandemic Productions
were sticklers for accuracy.

  "All went well until the first rushes, and even
beyond. While the cast was acting, if you can
use that word, they had to point the guns and
press the triggers as if something was really
happening. The sparks and flashes, however,
were put on the negative later by two little men
in a darkroom about as well guarded as Fort
Knox. They did a good job, but after a while the
producer again felt twinges in his
overdeveloped artistic conscience.

  " 'Solly,' he said, toying with the plastic horror
which had reached Junior by courtesy of
Crunch, the Succulent Cereal Not a Burp in a
Barrel 'Solly, I still want a gun that does
something.'

  "Solly ducked in time, so the jet went over his
head and baptised a photograph of Louella
Parsons.

  " 'You're not going to start shooting all over
againl' he wailed.

  " 'Nooo,' replied the producer, with obvious
reluctance. 'We'll have to use what we've got.
But it looks faked, somehow.' He ruffled
through the script on his desk, then brightened
up.

  " 'Now next week we start on Episode 54
"Slaves of the Slug-Men." Well, the Slug-Men
gotta have guns, so what I'd like you to do is
this '

  "The Mark III gave Solly a lot of trouble. (I
haven't missed out one yet, have I? Good.) Not
only had it to be a completely new design, but
as you'll have gathered it had to 'do
something'. This was a challenge to Solly's
ingenuity: however, if I may borrow from
Professor Toynbee, it was a challenge that
evoked the appropriate response.

  "Some high-powered engineering went into
the Mark m. Luckily, Solly knew an ingenious
technician who'd helped him out on similar
occasions before, and he was really the man
behind it. ('I'll say he wasl' said Mr. Blumberg
gloomily.) The principle was to use a jet of air,
produced by a small but extremely powerful
electric fan, and then to spray finely divided
powder into it. When the thing was adjusted
correctly, it shot out a most impressive

36 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

beam, and made a still more impressive noise.
The actors were so scared of it that their
performances became most realistic.

  "The producer was delighted for a full three
days. Then a dreadful doubt assailed him.

  " 'Solly,' he said, Those guns are too good.
The Slug-Men can beat the pants off Captain
Zoom. We'll have to give him something
better.'

  "It was at this point that Solly realised what
had happened. He had become involved in an
armaments race.

  "Let's see, this brings us to the Mark IV,
doesn't it? How did that work? oh yes, I
remember. It was a glorified oxy-acetylene
burner, with various chemicals injected into it
to produce the most beautiful flames. I should
have mentioned that from Episode 50~'Doom
on Deimos'  the studio had switched over
from black and white to Murkicolor, and great
possibilities were thus opened up. By squaring
copper or strontium or barium into the jet, you
could get any colour you wanted.

  "If you think that by this time the Producer
was satisfied, you don't know Hollywood.
Some cynics may still laugh when the motto
'Ars Gratia Artis' flashes on the screen, but
this attitude, I submit, is not in accordance
with the facts. Would such old fossils as
Michaelangelo, Rembrandt or Titian have
spent so much time, effort and money on the
quest for perfection as did Pandemic Pro-
ductions? I think not.

  "I don't pretend to remember all the Marks
that Solly and his ingenuous engineer friend
produced during the course of the serial.
There was one that shot out a stream of
coloured smoke-rings. There was the high-
frequency generator that produced enormous
but quite harmless sparks. There was a
particularly ingenious curved beam produced
by a jet of water with light reflected along
inside it, which looked most spectacular in the
dark. And finally, there was the Mark 12."

"Mark 13," said Mr. Bh~mberg.

  "Of course how stupid of me! What other
number could it have been! The Mark 13 was
not actually a portable weapon though some
of the others were port

ARMAMENTS RACE 37

able only by a considerable stretch of the
imagination. It was the diabolical device to be
installed on Phobos in order to subjugate Earth.
Though Solly has explained them to me once,
the scientific principles involved escape my
simple mind . . . However, who am I to match
my brains against the intellects responsible for
Captain Zoom? I can only report what the ray
was supposed to do, not how it did it. It was to
start a chain reaction in the atmosphere of our
unfortunate planet, making the nitrogen and the
oxygen in the air combing with highly
deleterious effects to terrestrial life.

  "I'm not sure whether to be sorry or glad that
Solly left all the details of the fabulous Mark 13
to his talented assistant. Though I've
questioned him at some length, all he can tell
me is that the thing was about six feet high and
looked like a cross between the 200 inch
telescope and an anti-aircraft gun. That's not
very helpful, is it?

  "He also says that there were a lot of radio
tubes in the brute, as well as a thundering great
magnet. And it was definitely supposed to
produce a harmless but impressive electric arc,
which could be distorted into all sorts of
interesting shapes by the magnet. That was
what the inventor said, and, despite everything,
there is still no reason to disbelieve him.

  "By one of those mischances that later turns
out to be providential, Solly wasn't at the studio
when they tried out the Mark 13. To his great
annoyance, he had to be down in Mexico that
day. And wasn't that lucky for you, Sollyl He
was expecting a long-distance call from one of
his friends in the afternoon, but when it came
through it wasn't the kind of message he'd
anticipated.

  "The Mark 13 had been, to put it mildly, a
success. No-one knew exactly what had
happened, but by a miracle no lives had been
lost and the fire department had been able to
save the adjoining studios. It was incredible, yet
the facts were beyond dispute. The Mark 13
was supposed to be a phony death-ray and it
had turned out to be a real one. Something had
emerged from the projector, and gone through
the studio wall as if it wasn't there. Indeed, a
moment later it wasn't. There was just a

38 TALE.S FROM THE WHITE HART

great big hole, beginning to smoulder round
the edges. And then the roof fell in....

  "Unless Solly could convince the F.B.I. that it
was all a mistake, he'd better stay the other
side of the border. Even now the Pentagon and
the Atomic Energy Commission were
converging upon the wreckage....

  "What would you have done in Solly's shoes?
He was innocent, but how could he prove it?
Perhaps he would have gone back to face the
music if he hadn't remembered that he'd once
hired a man who'd campaigned for Henry
Wallace, back in '48. That might take some
explaining away: besides, Solly was a little
tired of Captain Zoom. So here he is. Anyone
know of a British film company that might have
an opening for him? But historical films only
please. He won't touch anything more
up-to-date than cross-bows."

           CRITICAL 1\IASS

"DID r EVER tell you," said Harry Purvis
modestly, "about the time I prevented the
evacuation of southern England?"

  "You did not," said Charles Willis, "or if you
did, I slept through it."

  "WeD, then," continued Harry, when enough
people had gathered round him to make a
respectable audience. "It happened two years
ago at the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment near Clobham. You all know the
place, of course. But I don't think I've
mentioned that I worked there for a while, on
a special job I can't talk about."

  "That makes a nice change," said John
Wyndharn, without the slightest effect.

  "It was on a Saturday afternoon," Harry
began. "A beautiful day in late spring. There
were about six of us scientists in the bar of the
"Black Swan", and the windows were open so
that we could see down the slopes of Cloh
ham Hill and out across the country to
Upchester, about

CRITICAL MESS 39

thirty miles away. It was so clear, in fact, that
we could pick out the twin spires of Upchester
Cathedral on the horizon. You couldn't have
asked for a more peaceful day.

  "The staff from the Establishment got on
pretty well with the locals, though at first they
weren't at an happy about having us on their
doorsteps. Apart from the nature of our work,
they'd believed that scientists were a race
apart, with no human interests. When we'd
beaten them up at darts a couple of times, and
bought a few drinks, they changed their minds.
But there was still a certain amount of
half-serious leg~puUing, and we were always
being asked what we were going to blow up
next.

  "On this afternoon there should have been
several more of us present, but there'd been a
rush job in the Radioisotopes Division and so
we were below strength. Stanley Chambers, the
landlord, commented on the absence of some
familiar faces.

  " 'What's happened to an your pals todays" he
asked my boss, Dr. French.

  "'They're busy at the works,' French
replied we always caned the Establishment
"the Works", as that made it seem more homely
and less terrifying. 'We had to get some stuff
out in a hurry. They'll be along later.'

  " 'One day,' said Stan severely, 'you and your
friends are going to let out something you won't
be able to bottle up again. And then where win
we all be?'

  "'Half-way to the Moon,' said Dr. French. I'm
afraid it was rather an irresponsible sort of
remark, but silly questions like this always
made him lose patience.

  "Stan Chambers looked over his shoulder as
if he was judging how much of the hid stood
between him and Clobham. I guessed he was
calculating if he'd have time to reach the
cellar or whether it was worth trying anyway.

  " 'About these isotopes you keep sending
to the hospitals,' said a thoughtful voice. 'I was
at St. Thomas' last week, and saw them moving
some around in a lead safe that must have
weighed a ton. It gave me the creeps, won-
dering what would happen if someone forgot to
handle it properly.'

40 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  " 'We calculated the other day,' said Dr.
French, obviously still annoyed at the
interruption to his darts, 'that there was
enough uranium in Clobham to boil the North
Sea.'

  "Now that was a silly thing to say: and it
wasn't true, either. But I couldn't very well
reprimand my own boss, could I?

  "The man who'd been asking these
questions was sitting in the alcove by the
window, and I noticed that he was looking
down the road with an anxious expression.

  " 'The stuff leaves your place on trucks,
doesn't it?' he asked, rather urgently.

  " 'Yes: a lot of isotopes are short-lived, and
so they've got to be delivered immediately.'

  " 'Well, there's a truck in trouble down the
hill. Would it be one of yours?'

  "The dart-board was forgotten in the general
rush to the window. When I managed to get a
good look, I could see a large truck, loaded
with packing cases, careering down the hill
about a quarter of a mile away. From time to
time it bounced off one of the hedges: it was
obvious that the brakes had failed and the
driver had lost control. Luckily there was no
on-coming traffic, or a nasty accident would
have been inevitable. As it was, one looked
probable.

  "Then the truck came to a bend in the road,
left the pavement, and tore through the hedge.
It rocked along with diminishing speed for fifty
yards, jolting violently over the rough ground.
It had almost come to rest when it
encountered a ditch and, very sedately, canted
over on to one side. A few seconds later the
sound of splintering wood reached us as the
packing cases slid off to the ground.

  " 'That's that,' said someone with a sigh of
relief. 'He did the right thing, anning for the
hedge. I guess he'll be shaken up, but he
won't be hurt.'

  "And then we saw a most perplexing sight.
The door of the cab opened, and the driver
scrambled out. Even from this distance, it was
clear that he was highly agitated  Bough, in
the circumstances, that was natural enough.

CRITICAL MASS 41

But he did not, as one would have expected, sit
down to recover his wits. On the contrary: he
promptly took to his heels and ran across the
field as if ad the demons of hell were after him.

  "We watched open-mouthed, and with rising
apprehension, as he dwindled down the hid.
There was an ominous silence in the bar, except
for the ticking of the dock that Stan always kept
exactly ten minutes fast. Then someone said
'D'you think we'd better stay? I mean it's only
half a mile....'

  "There was an uncertain movement away from
the window. Then Dr. French gave a nervous
little laugh.

  "'We don't know if it Is one of our trucks,' he
said. 'And anyway, I was puking your legs just
now. It's completely impossible for any of this
stuff to explode. He's just afraid his tank's going
to catch fire.'

  "'Oh yesl' said Stan. 'Then why's he still
running? He's half-way down the hid now.'

  " 'I know!' suggested Charlie Evan, from the
Instruments Section. 'He's carrying explosives,
and is afraid they're going to go up.'

  "I had to scotch that one. 'There's no sign of
a fire, so what's he worried about now? And if
he was carrying explosives, he'd have a red flag
or something.'

  "'Hang on a minute,' said Stan. 'I'U go and get
my glasses.'

  "No one moved until he came back: no one,
that is, except the tiny figure far down the
hit/-side, which had now vanished into the
woods without slackening its speed.

  "Stan stared through the binoculars for an
eternity. At last he lowered them with a grunt of
disappointment.

  " 'Can't see much,' he said. 'The truck's tipped
over in the wrong direction. Those crates are an
over the place  some of them have busted
open. See if you can make anything of it.'

  "French had a long stare, then handed the
glasses to me. They were a very old-fashioned
model, and didn't help much. For a moment it
seemed to me that there was a curious haziness
about some of the boxes but that

42 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

didn't make sense. I put it down to the poor
condition of the lenses.

  "And there, I think, the whole business would
have fizzled out if those cyclists hadn't
appeared. They were puffing up the hill on a
tandem, and when they came to the fresh gap
in the hedge they promptly dismounted to see
what was going on. The truck was visible from
the road and they approached it hand in hand,
the girl obviously hanging back, the man
telling her not to be nervous. We could
imagine their conversation: it was a most
touching spectacle.

  "It didn't last long. They got to within a few
yards of the truck and then departed at high
speed in opposite directions. Neither looked
back to observe the other's progress; and they
were running, I noticed, in a most peculiar
fashion.

  "Stan, who'd retrieved his glasses, put them
down with a shaky hand.

" 'Get out the cars!' he said.

" 'But ' began Dr. French.

  "Stan silenced him with a glare. 'You damned
scientistsl' he said, as he slammed and locked
the till (even at a moment like this, he
remembered his duty) 'I knew you'd do it
sooner or later.'

  "Then he was gone, and most of his cronies
with him. They didn't stop to offer us a lift.

  " 'This is perfectly ridiculous!' said French.
'Before we know where we are, those fools will
have started a panic and there'll be hell to
pay.'

  "I knew what he meant. Someone would tell
the police: cars would be diverted away from
Clobham: the telephone lines would be
blocked with calls it would be like the Orson
Welles "War of the Worlds" scare back in 1938.
Perhaps you think I'm exaggerating, but you
can never underestimate the power of panic.
And people were scared, remember, of our
place, and were half-expecting something like
this to happen.

  "What's more, I don't mind telling you that by
this time we weren't any too happy ourselves.
We were simply unable to imagine what was
going on down there by the

CRITICAL MASS 43

wrecked truck, and there's nothing a scientist
hates more than being completely baffled.

  "Meanwhile I'd grabbed Stan's discarded
binoculars and had been studying the wreck
very carefully. As I looked, a theory began to
evolve in my mind. There was
some aura about those boxes. I stared until
my eyes began to smart, and then said to Dr.
French: 'I think I know what it is. Suppose you
ring up Clobham Post Office and try to intercept
Stan, or at least to stop him spreading rumours
if he's already got there. Say that everytfung's
under control there's nothing to worry about.
While you're doing that, I'm going to walk down
to the truck and test my theory.'

  "I'm sorry to say that no one offered to follow
me. Though I started down the road confidently
enough, after a while I began to be a little less
sure of myself. I remembered an incident that's
always struck me as one of history's most
ironic jokes, and began to wonder if something
of the same sort might not be happening now.
There was once a volcanic island in the Far
East, with a population of about 50,000. No one
worried about the volcano, which had Ibeen
quiet for a hundred years. Then, one day,
eruptions started. At first they were minor, but
they grew more intense hour by hour. The
people started to panic, and tried to crowd
aboard the few boats in harbour so that they
could reach the mainland.

  "But the island was ruled by a military
commandant who was determined to keep
order at all costs. He sent out proclamations
saying that there was no danger, and he got his
troops to occupy the ships so that there would
be no loss of life as people attempted to leave
in overloaded boats. Such was the force of his
personality, and the example of his courage,
that he calmed the multitude, and those who
had been trying to get away crept shame-faced
back le. their homes, where they sat waiting for
conditions to return to normal.

  "So when the volcano blew up a couple of
hours later, talking the whole island with it,
there weren't any survivors at all....

"As I got near the truck, I began to see myself
in the

44 TALES FROM TEIEWHITH HART

role of that misguided commandant. After all,
there are some times when it is brave to stay
and face danger, and others when the most
sensible thing to do is to take to the hills. But
it was too late to turn back now, and I was
fairly sure of my theory."

  "I know," said George Whiteley, who always
liked to spoil Harry's stories if he could. "It was
gas."

  Harry didn't seem at all perturbed at losing
his climax.

  "Ingenious of you to suggest it. That's just
what I did think, which shows that we can all
be stupid at times.

  "I'd got to within fifty feet of the truck when
I stopped dead, and though it was a warm day
a most unpleasant chill began to spread out
from the small of my back. For I could see
something that blew my gas theory to blazes
and left nothing at all in its place.

  "A black, crawling mass was writhing over
the surface of one of the packing cases. For a
moment I tried to pretend to myself that it was
some dark liquid oozing from a broken
container. But one rather well-known charac-
teristic of liquids is that they can't defy gravity.
This thing was doing just that: and it was also
quite obviously alive. From where I was
standing, it looked like the pseudopod of some
giant amoeba as it changed its shape and
thickness, and wavered to and fro over the
side of the broken crate.

  "Quite a few fantasies that would have done
credit to Edgar Allan Poe flitted through my
mind in those few seconds. Then I
remembered my duty as a citizen and my pride
as a scientist: I started to walk forward again,
though in no great haste.

  "I remember sniffing cautiously, as if I still
had gas on the mind. Yet it was my ears, not
my nose, that gave me the answer, as the
sound from that sinister, seething mass built
up around me. It was a sound I'd heard a
million times before, but never as loud as this.
And I sat down  not too close and laughed
and laughed and laughed. Then I got up and
walked back to the pub.

  "'Well,' said Dr. French eagerly, 'what is it?
We've got Stan on the line caught him at the
crossroads. But

IkB ULTIMATE MELODY 45

he won't come back until we can tell him what's
happening.'

  " 'Tell Stan,' I said, 'to rustle up the local
apiarist, and bring him along at the same time.
There's a big job for him here.'

  " 'The local what?' said French. Then his jaw
dropped. My God! You don't mean....'

  " 'Precisely,' I answered, walking behind the
bar to see if Stan had any interesting bottles
hidden away. 'They're settling down now, but I
guess they're still pretty annoyed. I didn't stop
to count, but there must be half a million bees
down there trying to get back into their busted
hives.' "

         TElE ULTIMATE MELODY

HAVE YOU ever noticed that, when there are
twenty or thirty people talking together in a
room, there are occasional moments when
everyone becomes suddenly silent, so that for
a second there's a sudden, vibrating emptiness
that seems to swallow up all sound? I don't
know how it affects other people, but when it
happens it makes me feel cold all over. Of
course, the whole thing's merely caused by the
laws of probability, but somehow it seems more
than a mere coinciding of conversational
pauses. It's almost as if everybody is listening
for something they don't know what. At such
moments I say to myself:

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near....

  That's how I feel about it, however cheerful
the company in which it happens. Yes, even if
it's in the "White Hart."

  It was like that one Wednesday evening when
the plac wasn't quite as crowded as usual. The
Silence came, as unexpectedly as it always
does. Then, probably in a de

46 TARES FROM THE WEnTs HART

liberate attempt to break that unsettling feeling
of suspense, Charlie Willis started whistling
the latest hit tune. I don't even remember what
it was. I only remember that it triggered off one
of Harry Purvis' most disturbing stones.

  "Charlie," he began, quietly enough. "That
darn tune's driving me mad. I've heard it every
time I've switched on the radio for the last
week."

There was a sniff from John Christopher.

  "You ought to stay tuned to the Third
Programme. Then you'd be safe."

  "Some of us," retorted Harry, "don't care for
an exclusive diet of Elizabethan madrigals. But
don't let's quarrel about that, for heavens sake.
Has it ever occurred to you that there's
something rather fundamental about hit
tunes?"

"What do you mean?"

  "Well, they come along out of nowhere, and
then for weeks everybody's humming them,
just as Charlie did then. The good ones grab
hold of you so thoroughly that you just can't
get them out of your head they go round and
round for days. And then, suddenly, they've
vanished again."

  "I know what you mean," said Art Vincent.
"There are some melodies that you can take or
leave, but others stick like treacle, whether you
want them or not."

  "Precisely. I got saddled that way for a whole
week with the big theme from the finale of
Sibelius Two even went to sleep with it
running round inside my head. Then there's
that 'Third Man' pieced di da di daa, di da, di
dua . . . Iook what that did to everybody."

  Harry had to pause for a moment until his
audience had stopped dithering. When the last
"Plonk!" had died away he continued:

  "Precisely! You all felt the same way. Now
what is there about these tunes that has this
effect? Some of them are great music--others
just banal, but they've obviously got something
in common."

"Go on," said Charlie. "We're waiting."

"I don't know what the answer is," replied
Harry.

THE ULTIMATE MELODY 47

"And what's more, I don't want to. For I know a
man who found out."

  Automatically, someone handed him a beer,
so that the tenor of his tale would not be
disturbed. It always annoyed a lot of people
when he had to stop in mid-9ight for a resin.

  "I don't know why it is," said Harry Purvis,
"that most scientists are interested in music, but
it's an undeniable fact. I've known several large
labs that had their OWQ amateur symphony
orchestras some of them quite good, too. As
far as the mathematicians are concerned, one
can think of obvious reasons for this fondness:
music, particularly classical music, has a form
which is almost mathematical. And then, of
course, there's the underlying theory harmonic
relations, wave analysis, frequency distribution,
and so on. It's a fascinating study in itself, and
one that appeals strongly to the scientific mind.
Moreover, it doesn't as some people might
think~reclude a purely aesthetic appreciation
of music for its own sake.

  "However, I must confess that Gilbert Listeis
interest in music was purely cerebral. He was,
primarily, a physioIogist, specialising in the
study of the brain. So when I said that his
interest was cerebral I meant it quite literaUy.
'Alexander's Ragtime Band' and the Choral
Symphony were all the same to him. He wasn't
concerned with the sounds themselves, but only
what happened when they got past the ears and
started doing things to the brain.

  "In an audience as well educated as this,"
said Harry, with an emphasis that made it
sound positively insulting, "there will be no-one
who's unaware of the fact that much of the
brain's activity is electrical There are, in fact,
steady pulsing rhythms going on all the time,
and they can be detected and analysed by
modern instruments. This was Gilbert Lister's
line of territory. He could stick electrodes on
your scalp and his amplifiers would draw your
brainwaves on yards of tape. Then he could ex-
amine them and ted you all sorts of interesting
things about yourself. Ultimately, he claimed, it
would be possible to identify anyone from their
encephalogram to

48 TALES FROM THE WHTTF HART

use the correct term more positively than by
fingerprints. A man might get a surgeon to
change his skin, but if we ever got to the stage
when surgery could change your brain well,
you'd have turned into somebody else,
anyway, so the system still wouldn't have
failed.

  "It was while he was studying the alpha, beta
and other rhythms in the brain that Gilbert got
interested in music. He was sure that there
must be some connexion between musical and
mental rhythms. He'd play music at various
tempos to his subjects and see what effect it
had on their normal brain frequencies. As you
might expect, it had a lot, and the discoveries
he made led Gilbert on into more
philosophical fields.

  "I obly had one good talk with him about his
theories. It was not that he was at all
secretive I've never met a scientist who was,
come to think of it but he didn't like to tally
about his work until he knew where it was
leading. However, what he told me was
enough to prove that he'd opened up a very
interesting line of territory, and thereafter I
made rather a point of cultivating him. My firm
supplied some of his equipment, but I wasn't
averse to picking up a little profit on the side.
It occurred to me that if Gilbert's ideas worked
out, he'd need a business manager before you
could whistle the opening bar of the Fifth
Symphony....

  '~or what Gilbert was trying to do was to lay
a scientific foundation for the theory of
hit-tunes. Of course, he didn't thinlr of it that
way: he regarded it as a pure research project,
and didn't look any further ahead than a paper
in the Proceedings of the Physical Society. But
I spotted its financial implications at once.
They were quite breath-taking.

  "Gilbert was sure that a great moody, or a hit
tune, made its impression on the mind
because in some way it fitted in with the
fundamental electrical rhythms going on tin
the brain. One analogy he used was 'It's like a
Yale key going into a lock the two patterns
have got to fit before anything happens.'

  "He tackled the problem from two angles. In
the first place, he took hundreds of the really
famous tunes in clas

THE ULTIMATE MELODY 4g

sical and popular music and analysed their
structure  their morphology, as he put it. This
was done automatically, in a big harmonic
analyser that sorted out all the frequencies. Of
course, there was a lot more to it than this, but
I'm sure you've got the basic idea.

  "At the same time, he tried to see how the
resulting patterns of waves agreed with the
natural electrical vibrations of the brain.
Because it was Gilbert's theory and this is
where we get into rather deep philosophical
waters  that all existing tunes were merely
crude approximations to one fundamental
melody. Musicians had been groping for it down
the centuries, but they didn't l~now what they
were doing, because they were ignorant of the
relation between music and mind. Now that this
had been unravelled, it should be possible to
discover the Ultimate Melody."

  "Hubl" said John Christopher. "It's only a
rehash of Plato's theory of ideals. You
know all the objects of our material world are
merely crude copies of the ideal chair or table
or what-have-you. So your friend was after the
ideal melody. And did he find it?"

  "I'll tell you," continued Harry imperturably. "It
took Gilbert about a year to complete his
analysis, and then he started on the synthesis.
To put it crudely, he built a machine that would
automatically construct patterns of sound
according to the laws that he'd uncovered. He
had banks of oscillators and mixers in fact, he
modified an ordinary electronic organ for this
part of the apparatus  which were controlled
by his composing machine. In the rather
childish way that scientists like to name their
offspring, Gilbert had called this device Ludwig.

  "Maybe it helps to understand how Ludwig
operated if you think of him as a kind of
kaleidoscope, working with sound rather than
light. But he was a kaleidoscope set to obey
certain laws, and those laws so Gilbert
believed  were based on the fundamental
structure of the human mind. If he could get the
adjustments correct, Ludwig would be bound,
sooner or later, to arrive at the Ultimate Melody
as he searched through all the possible
patterns of music.

50 TALES FROM WHITE HART

  "I had one opportunity of hearing Ludwig at
work, and it was uncanny. The equipment was
the usual nondescript mess of electronics
which one meets in any lab: it might have been
a mock-up of a new computer, a radar gun-
sight, a traffic control system, or a ham radio.
It was very hard to believe that, if it worked, it
would put every composer in the world out of
business. Or would it? Perhaps not: Ludwig
might be able to deliver the raw material, but
surely it would still have to be orchestrated.

  "Then the sound started to come from the
speaker. At first it seemed to me that I was
listening to the fivefinger exercises of an
accurate but completely uninspired pupil. Most
of the themes were quite banal: the machine
would play one, then ring the changes on it bar
after bar until it had exhausted all the
possibilities before going on to the next.
Occasionally a quite striking phrase would
come up, but on the whole I was not at all
impressed.

  "However, Gilbert explained that this was
only a trial run and that the main circuits had
not yet been set up. When they were, Ludwig
would be far more selective: at the moment, he
was playing everything that came along  he
had no sense of discrimination. When he had
acquired that, then the possibilities were
limitless.

  "That was the last time I ever saw Gilbert
Lister. I had arranged to meet him at the lab
about a week later, when he expected to have
made substantial progress. As it happened, I
was about an hour late for my appointment.
And that was very lucky for me....

  "When I got there, they had just taken Gilbert
away. His lab assistant, an old man who'd
been with him for years, was sitting distraught
and disconsolate among the tangled wiring of
Ludwig. It took me a long time to discover
what had happened, and longer still to work
out the explanation.

  "There was no doubt of one thing. Ludwig
had finally worked. The assistant had gone off
to lunch while Gilbert was making the final
adjustments, and when he came back an hour
later the laboratory was pulsing with one long
and very complex melodic phrase. Either the
machine had stopped automatically at that
point, or Gilbert had

THE ULTIMATE MELODY 51

switched it over to REPEAT. At any rate, he had
been listening, for several hundred times at
least, to that same melody. When his assistant
found him, he seemed to be in a trance. His
eyes were open yet unseeing, his limbs rigid.
Even when Ludwig was switched off, it made no
difference. Gilbert was beyond help.

  "What had happened? Well, I suppose we
should have thought of it, but it's so easy to be
wise after the event. It's just as I said at the
beginning. If a composer, working merely by
rule of thumb, can produce a melody which can
dominate your mind for days on end, imagine
the effect of the Ultimate Melody for which
Gilbert was searching! Supposing it
existed and rm not admitting that it does it
would form an endless ring in the memory
circuits of the mind. It would go round and
round forever, obliterating all other thoughts. All
the cloying melodies of the past would be mere
ephemerae compared to it. Once it had keyed
into the brain, and distorted the circling
waveforms which are the physical
manifestations of consciousness itself that
would be the end. And that is what happened to
Gilbert.

  "They've tried shock therapy everything. But
it's no good; the pattern has been set, and it
can't be broken. He's lost all consciousness of
the outer world, and has to be fed intravenously.
He never moves or reacts to external stimuli, but
sometimes, they tell me, he twitches in a
peculiar way as if he is beating time....

  "I'm afraid there's no hope for him. Yet I'm not
sure if his fate is a horrible one, or whether he
should be envied. Perhaps, in a sense, he's
found the ultimate reality that philosophers like
Plato are always talking about. I really don't
know. And sometimes I find myself wondering
just what that infernal melody was like, and
almost wishing that I'd been able to hear it
perhaps once. There might have been some way
of doing it in safety: remember how Ulysses
listened to the song of the sirens and got away
with it . . .? But there'll never be a chance now,
of course."

"I was waiting for this," said Charles Willis
nastily. "I

52 TALBS FROM the WHITE HART

suppose the apparatus blew up, or something,
so that as usual there's no way of checking
your story."

  Harry gave him his best
more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger look.

  "The apparatus was quite undamaged," he
said severely. "What happened next was one of
those completely maddening things for which
I shall never stop blaming myself. You see, I'd
been too interested in Gilbert's experiment to
look after my firm's business in the way that I
should. I'm afraid he'd fallen badly behind with
his payments, and when the Accounts
Department discovered what had happened to
him they acted quickly. I was only off for a
couple of days on another job, and when I got
back, do you know what had happened?
They'd pushed through a court order, and had
seized all their property. Of course that had
meant dismantling Ludwig: when I saw him
next he was just a pile of useless junk. And all
because of a few pounds! It made me weep."

  "I'm sure of it," said Eric Maine. "But you've
forgotten Loose Fnd Number Two. What about
Gilbert's assistant? He went into the lab while
the gadget was going fun blast. Why didn't it
get him, too? You've slipped up here, Harry."

  H. Purvis, Esquire, paused only to drain the
last drops from his glass and to hand it silently
across to Drew.

  "Really!" he said. "Is this a
cross-examination? I didn't mention the point
because it was rather trivial. But it explains
why I was never able to get the slightest
inkling of the nature of that melody. You see,
Gilbert's assistant was a first-rate lab
technician, but he'd never been able to help
much with the adjustments to Ludwig. For he
was one of those people who are completely
tone-deaf. To him, the Ultimate Melody meant
no more than a couple of cats on a garden
wall."

  Nobody asked any more questions: we all, I
think, felt the desire to commune with our
thoughts. There was a long, brooding silence
before the "White Hart" resumed its usual
activities. And even then, I noticed, it was
every bit of ten minutes before Charlie started
whistling "La Ronde" again.

            THE PACIFIST

I GOT to the "White Hart" late that evening, and
when I arrived everyone was crowded into the
corner under the dartboard. All except Drew,
that is; he had not deserted his post, but was
sitting behind the bar reading the collected T.
S. Eliot. He broke off from "The Confidential
Clerk" long enough to hand me a beer and to
tell me what was going on.

  "Eric's brought in some kind of games
machine it's beaten everybody so far. Sam's
trying his luck with it now."

  At that moment a roar of laughter announced
that Sam had been no luckier than the rest, and
I pushed my way through the crowd to see
what was happening.

  On the table lay a flat metal box the size of a
checkerboard, and divided into squares in a
similar way. At the corner of each square was
a two-way switch and a little neon lamp: the
whole affair was plugged into the light socket
(thus plunging the dartboard into darkness)
and Eric Rodgers was looking round for a new
victim.

"What does the thing do?" I asked.

  "It's a modification of naughts and
crosses what the Americans call Tic-Tac-Toe.
Shannon showed it to me when I was over at
Bell Labs. What you have to do is to complete
a path from one side of the board to the
other  call it North to South by turning these
switches. Imagine the thing forms a grid of
streets, if you like, and these neons are the
traffic lights. You and the machine take turns
making moves. The machine tries to block your
path by building one of its own in the
East-West direction the little neons light up to
tell you which way it wants to make a move.
Neither track need be a straight line: you can
zig-zag as much as you like. All that matters is
that the path must be continuous, and the one
to get across the board first wins."

"Meaning the machine, I suppose?"

                 53
                  
54 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

"Well, it's never been beaten yet."

  "Can't you force a draw, by blocking the
machine's path, so that at least you don't
lose?"

"That's what we're trying: like to have a go?"

  Two minutes later I joined the other
unsuccessful contestants. The machine had
dodged all my barkers and established its own
track from East to West. I wasn't convinced
that it was unbeatable, but the game was
clearly a good deal more complicated than it
looked.

  EAc glanced round his audience when I had
retired. No-one else seemed in a hurry to move
forward.

  "Hal" he said. "The very man. What about
you, Purvis? You've not had a shot yet."

  Harry Purvis was standing at the back of the
crowd, with a far-away look in his eye. He
jolted back to earth as EAc addressed him, but
didn't answer the question directly.

  "fascinating things, these electronic
computers," he mused. "I suppose I shouldn't
tell you this, but your gadget reminds me of
what happened to Project Clausewitz. A
curious story, and one very expensive to the
American taxpayer."

  "Look," said John Wyn&am anxiously. "Before
you start, be a good sport and let us get our
glasses filled. Drewl"

  This important matter having been attended
to, we gathered round Harry. Only Charlie
Willis still remained with the machine,
hopefully trying his luck.

  "As you all know," began Harry, "Science with
a capital S is a big thing in the military world
these days. The weapons side rockets, atom
bombs and so on is only part of it, though
that's all the public knows about. Much more
fascinating, in my opinion, is the operational
research angle. You might say that's
concerned with brains rather than brute force.
I once heard it defined as how to win wars
without actually fighting, and that's not a bad
descAption.

  "Now you all know about the big electronic
computers that cropped up like mushrooms in
the 1950's. Most of them were built to deal with
mathematical problems, but

IkE PACIFIST 55

when you think about it you'll realise that War
itself is a mathematical problem. It's such a
complicated one that human brains can't handle
it there are far too many variables. Even the
greatest strategist cannot see the picture as a
whole: the Hitlers and Napoleons always make
a mistake in the end.

  "But a machine that would be a different
matter. A number of bright people realised this
after the end of the war. The techniques that
had been worked out in the building of ENIAC
and the other big computers could
revolutionise.

  "Hence Project Clausewitz. Don't ask me how
I got to know about it, or press me for too many
details. All that matters is that a good many
megabucks worth of electronic equipment, and
some of the best scientific brains in the United
States, went into a certain cavern in the
Kentucky Hills. They're still there, but things
haven't turned out exactly as they expected.

  "Now I don't know what experience you have
of highranking military officers, but there's one
type you've all come across in fiction. That's the
pompous, conservative, stick-in-th~mud
careerist who's got to the top by sheer pressure
from beneath, who does everything by rules and
regulations and regards civilians as, at the best,
unfriendly neutrals. I'll let you into a secret: he
actually exists. He's not very common
nowadays, but he's still around and sometimes
it's not possible to find a safe job for him. When
that happens, he's worth his weight in
plutonium to the Other Side.

  "Such a character, it seems, was General
Smith. No, of course that wasn't his real namer
His father was a Senator, and although lots of
people in the Pentagon had toed hard enough,
the old man's influence had prevented the
General from being put in charge of something
harmless, like the coast defence of Wyoming.
Instead, by miraculous misfortune, he had been
made the officer responsible for Project
Clausewitz.

  "Of course, he was only concerned with the
administrative, not the scientific, aspects of the
work. All might yet have been well had the
General been content to let

56 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

the scientists get on with their work while he
concentrated on saluting smartness, the
coefficient of renection of barrack floors, and
similar matters of military importance.
Unfortunately, he didn't.

  "The General had led a sheltered existence.
He had, if I may borrow from Wilde (everybody
else does) been a man of peace, except in his
domestic life. He had never met scientists
before, and the shock was considerable. So
perhaps it is not fair to blame him for
everything that happened.

  "It was a considerable time before he
realised the aims and objects of Project
Clausewitz, and when he did he was quite
disturbed. This may have made him feel even
less friendly towards his scientific staff, for
despite anything I may have said the General
was not entirely a fool. He was intelligent
enough to understand that, if the Project
succeeded, there might be more ex-generals
around than even the comb; aed boards of
management of American industry could
comfortably absorb.

  "But let's leave the General for a minute and
have a look at the scientists. There were about
fifty of them, as wed as a couple of hundred
technicians. They'd all been carefully screened
by the F.B.I., so probably not more than half a
dozen were active members of the Communist
Party. Though there was a lot of talk of
sabotage later, for once in a while the
comrades were completely innocent. Besides,
what happened certainly wasn't sabotage in
any generally accepted meaning of the word....

  "The man who had really designed the
computer was a quiet little mathematical
genius who had been swept out of college into
the Kentucky hips and the world of Security
and Priorities before he'd really realised what
had happened. He wasn't caned Dr.
Milquetoast, but he should have been and
that's what I'U christen him.

  "To complete our cast of characters, I'd
better say something about Karl. At this stage
in the business, Karl was only half-built. Like
all big computers, most of him consisted of
vast banks of memory units which could re-
ceive and store information until it was
needed. The creative part of Karl's brain the
analysers and integrators

THE PACIFIST 57

 took this information and operated on it, to
produce answers to the questions he was
asked. Given all the relevant facts, Karl would
produce the right answers. The problem, of
course, was to see that Karl did have all the
facts he couldn't be expected to get the right
results from inaccurate or insufficient
information.

  "It was Dr. Milquetoast's responsibility to
design Karl's brain. Yes, I know that's a crudely
anthropomorphic way of looking at it, but
no-one can deny that these big computers have
personalities. It's hard to put it more accurately
without getting technical, so I'll simply say that
little Milquetoast had to create the extremely
complex circuits that enabled Karl to think in
the way he was supposed to do.

  "So here are our three protagonists General
Smith, pining for the days of Custer; Dr.
Milsluetoast, lost in the fascinating scientific
intricacies of his job; and Karl, fifty tons of
electronic gear, not yet animated by the
currents that would soon be coursing through
him.

  "Soon but not soon enough for General
Smith. Let's not be too hard on the General:
someone had probably put the pressure on
him, when it became obvious that the Project
was falling behind schedule. He called Dr.
Milquetoast into his office.

  "The interview lasted more than thirty
minutes, and the doctor said less than thirty
words. Most of the time the General was
making pointed remarks about production
times, deadlines and bottlenecks. He seemed
to be under the impression that building Karl
differed in no imponant particular from the
assembly of the current model Ford: it was just
a question of putting the bits together. Dr.
Milquetoast was not the sort of man to explain
the error, even if the General had given him the
opportunity. He left, smarting under a
considerable sense of injustice.

  "A week later, it was obvious that the creation
of Karl was falling still further behind schedule.
Milquetoast was doing his best, and there was
no-one who could do better. Problems of a
complexity totally beyond the General's
comprehension had to be met and mastered.
They were mastered, but it took time, and time
was in short supply.

58 TAT ES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "At his first interview, the General had tried
to be as nice as he could, and had succeeded
in being merely rude. This time, he tried to be
rude, with results that I leave to your
imagination. He practically insinuated that
Milquetoast and his colleagues, by falling
behind their deadlines, were guilty of
un-American inactivity.

  "From this moment onwards, two things
started to haps pen. Relations between the
Army and the scientists grew steadily worse;
and Dr. Milquetoast, for the first time, began to
give serious thought to the wider implications
of his work. He had always been too busy, too
engaged upon the immediate problems of his
task, to consider his social responsibilities. He
was still too busy now, but that didn't stop bun
pausing for reflection. "Here am I," he told him-
self, "one of the best pure mathematicians in
the world  and what am I doing? What's
happened to my thesis on Diophantine
equations? When am I going to have another
smack at the prime number theorem? In short,
when am I going to do some real work again?"

  "He could have resigned, but that didn't
occur to him. In any case, far down beneath
that mild and diffident exterior was a stubborn
streak. Dr. Milquetoast continued to work, even
more energetically than before. The con-
struction of Karl proceeded slowly but steadily:
the final connexions in his myriad-celled brain
were soldered: the thousands of circuits were
checked and tested by the mechanics.

  "And one circuit, indistinguishably
interwoven among its multitude of companions
and leading to a set of memory cells
apparently identical with all the others, was
tested by Dr. Milquetoast alone, for no-one
else knew that it existed.

  "The great day came. To Kentucky, by
devious routes, came very important
personages. A whole constellation of
multi-starred generals arrived from the
Pentagon. Even the Navy had been invited.

  "Proudly, General Smith led the visitors from
cavern to cavern, from memory banks to
selector networks to matrix analysers to input
tables and finally to the rows of electric
typewriters on which Karl would print the re

THE PACIFIST 59

suits of his deliberations. The General knew his
way around quite well: at least, he got most of
the names right. He even managed to give the
impression, to those who knew no better, that
he was largely responsible for Karl.

  "'Now,' said the General cheerfully. 'Let's give
him some work to do. Anyone like to set him a
few sums?'

  "At the word 'sun-ls' the mathematicians
winced, but the General was unaware of his
faux pas. The assembled brass thought for a
while: then someone said daringly 'What's 9
multiplied by itself twenty times?'

  "One of the technicians, with an audible sniff,
punched a few keys. There was a rattle of
gunfire from an electric typewriter, and before
anyone could blink twice the answer had
appeared -all twenty digits of it."

  (I've looked it up since: for anyone who wants
to know its:

          12157665459056928801 But let's
get back to Harry and his tale.)

  "For the next fifteen minutes Karl was
bombarded with similar trivialities. The visitors
were impressed, though there was no reason to
suppose that they'd have spotted it if all the
answers had been completely wrong.

  "The General gave a modest cough. Simple
arithmetic was as far as he could go, and Karl
had barely begun to warm up. 'I'll now hand you
over,' he said, 'to Captain Winkler.'

  "Captain Winkler was an intense young
Harvard graduate whom the General distrusted,
rightly suspecting him to be more a scientist
than a military man. But he was the only officer
who really understood what Karl was supposed
to do, or could explain exactly how he set about
doing it. He looked, the General thought
grumpily, like a damned schoolmaster as he
started to lecture the visitors.

  "The tactical problem that had been set up
was a complicated one, but the answer was
already known to everybody except Karl. It was
a battle that had been fought and finished
almost a century before, and when Captain
Winkler concluded his introduction, a general
from Boston whispered to his side 'I'll bet some
damn Southerner has fixed it so that Lee wins
this time.' Everyone had to ad

60 TALES FROM THE WHITE

mit, however, that the problem was an
excellent way of testing Karl's capabilities.

  "The punched tapes disappeared into the
capacious memory units: patterns of lights
flickered and flashed across the registers;
mysterious things happened in all directions.

  "'This problem,' said Captain Winkler primly,
'will take about five minutes to evaluate.'

  "As if in deliberate contradiction, one of the
typewriters promptly started to chatter. A strip
of paper shot out of the feed, and Captain
Winkler, looking rather puzzled at Karl's
unexpected alacrity, read the message. His
lower jaw immediately dropped six inches, and
he stood staring at the paper as if unable to
believe his eyes.

"'What is it, man?' barked the General.

  "Captain Winkler swallowed hard, but
appeared to have lost the power of speech.
With a snort of impatience, the General
snatched the paper from him. Then it was his
turn to stand paralysed, but unlike his
subordinate he also turned a most beautiful
red. For a moment he looked like some
tropical fish strangling out of water: then, not
without a slight scuffle, the enigmatic
message was captured by the five-star general
who outranked everybody in the room.

  "His reaction was totally different. He
promptly doubled up with laughter.

  "The minor officers were left in a state of
infuriating suspense for quite ten minutes. But
finally the news filtered down through
Colonels to Captains to Lieutenants, until at
last there wasn't a G.I. in the establishment
who did not know the wonderful news.

  "Karl had told General Smith that he was a
pompous baboon. That was all.

  "Even though everybody agreed with Karl,
the matter could hardly be allowed to rest
there. Something, obviously, had gone wrong.
Something or someone had diverted Karl's
attention from the Battle of Gettysburg.

  'Where,' roared General Smith, finally
recovering his voice, 'is Dr. Milquetoast?'

"He was no longer present. He had slipped
quietly out

THE PACIFIST 61

of the room, having witnessed his great
moment. Retribution would come later, of
course, but it was worth it.

  "The frantic technicians cleared the circuits
and started running tests. They gave Karl an
elaborate series of multiplications and divisions
to perform the computer's equivalent of 'The
quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'
Everything seemed to be functioning perfectly.
So they put in a very simple tactical problem,
which a Lieutenant J. G. could solve in his
sleep.

"Said Karl: 'Go jump in a lake, General.'

  "It was then that General Smith realised that
he was confronted with something outside the
scope of Standard Operating Procedure. He
was faced with mechanical mutiny, no less.

  "It took several hours of tests to discover
exactly what had happened. Somewhere tucked
away in Karl's capacious memory units was a
superb collection of insults, lovingly assembled
by Dr Milquetoast. He had punched on tape, or
recorded in patterns of electrical impulses,
everything he would like to have said to the
General himself. But that was not all he had
done: that would have been too easy, not
worthy of his genius. He had also installed what
could only be called a censor circuit he had
given Karl the power of discrimination. Before
solving it, Karl examined every problem fed to
him. If it was concerned with pure mathematics,
he co-operated and dealt with it properly. But if
it was a military problem out came one of the
insults. After twenty times, he had not repeated
himself once, and the WAC's had already had
to be sent out of the room.

  "It must be confessed that after a while the
technicians were almost as interested in
discovering what indigruty Karl would next
heap upon General Smith as they were in
finding the fault in the circuits. He had begun
with mere insults and surprising genealogical
surmises, but had swiftly passed on to detailed
instructions the mildest of which would have
been highly prejudicial to the General's dignity,
while the more imaginative would have
seriously imperilled his physical integrity. The
fact that all these messages, as they emerged
from the typewriters, were im

62 TALES PROM THE WHITE HART

mediately classified TOP SECRET was small
consolation to the recipient. He knew with a
glum certainty that this would be the
worst-kept secret of the cold war, and that it
was time he looked round for a civilian
occupation.

  "And there, gentlemen," concluded Purvis,
"the situation remains. The engineers are still
trying to unravel the circuits that Dr.
Milquetoast installed, and no doubt it's only a
matter of time before they succeed. But mean-
while Karl remains an unyielding pacifist. He's
perfectly happy playing with the theory of
numbers, computing tables of powers, and
handling arithmetical problems generally. Do
you remember the famous toast 'Here's to
pure mathematics may it never be of any use
to anybody'? Karl would have seconded that....

  "As soon as anyone attempts to slip a fast
one across him, he goes on strike. And
because he's got such a wonderful memory,
he can't be fooled. He has half the great
battles of the world stored up in his circuits,
and can recognise at once any variations on
them. Though attempts were made to disguise
tactical exercises as problems in mathematics,
he could spot the subterfuge right away. And
out would come another billet dour for the
General.

  As for Dr. Milquetoast, no one could do
much about him because he promptly had a
nervous breakdown. It was suspiciously well
timed, but he could certainly claim to have
earned it. When last heard of he was teaching
matrix algebra at a theological college in
Denver. He swears he's forgotten everything
that had ever happened while he was working
on Karl. Maybe he was even telling the truth...."

There was a sudden shout from the back of
the room.

"I've won!" cried {Charles Willis. "Come and
see!"

  We all crowded under the dartboard. It
seemed true enough. Charlie had established
a zig-zag but continuous track from one side
of the checker-board to the other, despite the
obstacles the machine had tried to put in his
way.

"Show us how you did it," said Eric Rodgers.

Charlie looked embarrassed.

TEJE NEXT TENANTS 63

  "I've forgotten," he said. "I didn't make a note
of all the moves."

A sarcastic voice broke in from the background.

  'glut I did," said John Christopher. "You were
cheating you made two moves at once."

  After that, I am sorry to say, there was some
disorder, and Drew had to threaten violence
before peace was restored. I don't know who
really won the squabble, and I don't think it
matters. For I'm inclined to agree with what
Purvis remarked as he picked up the robot
checkerboard and examined its wiring.

  "You see," he said, "this little gadget is only a
simpleminded cousin of Karl's and look what
it's done already. All these machines are
beginning to make us look fools. Before long
they'll start to disobey us without any
Milquetoast interfering with their circuits. And
then they'll start ordering us about they're
logical, after all, and won't stand any
nonsense."

  He sighed. "When that happens, there won't
be a thing we can do about it. We'll just have to
say to the dinosaurs: 'Move over a bit here
comes home sap!' And the transistor shall
inherit the earth."

  There was no time for further pessimistic
philosophy, for the door opened and Police
Constable Wilkins stuck his head in. "Where's
the owner of CGC 571?" he asked testily.
"Oh it's you, Mr. Purvis. Your rear light's out."

  Harry looked at me sadly, then shrugged his
shoulders in resignation. "You see," he said, "it's
started already." And he went out into the night.

          T1ElE NEXT TENANTS

"THE NUMBER of mad scientists who wish to
conquer the world," said Harry Purvis, looking
thoughtfully at his beer, "has been grossly
exaggerated. In fact, I can remember
encountering only a single one."

"Then there couldn't have been many others,"
com

64 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

merited Bill Temple, a little acidly. "It's not the
sort of thing one would be likely to forget."

  "I suppose not," replied Harry, with that air of
irrefragible innocence which is so
disconcerting to his critics, "And, as a matter
of fact, this scientist wasn't really mad. There
was no doubt, though, that he was out to
conquer the world. Or if you want to be really
precise to let the world be conquered."

  "And by whom?" asked George Whitley. "The
Martians? Or the well-known little green men
from Venus?"

  "Neither of them. He was collaborating with
someone a lot nearer home. You'll realize who
I mean when I tell you he was a
myrmecologist."

"A which-what?" asked George.

  "Let him get on with the story," said Drew,
from the other side of the bar. "It's past ten,
and if I can't get you all out by closing time
this week, I'll lose my license."

  "Thank you," said Harry with dignity, handing
over his glass for a refill. "This all happened
about two years ago, when I was on a mission
in the Pacific. It was rather hush-hush, but in
view of what's happened since there's no harm
in talking about it. Three of us scientists were
landed on a certain Pacific atoll not a thousand
miles from Bikini, and given a week to set up
some detection equipment. It was intended, of
course, to keep an eye on our good friends
and allies when they started playing with
thermo-nuclear reactions to pick some
crumbs from the A.E.C.'s table, as it were. The
Russians, naturally, were doing the same
thing. and occasionally we ran into each other
and then both sides would pretend that there
was nobody here but us chickens.

  "This atoll was supposed to be uninhabited,
but this was a considerable error. It actually
had a population of several hundred
millions "

"What!" gasped everybody.

  " several hundred millions," continued
Purvis calmly, "of which number, one was
human. I came across him when I went inland
one day to have a look at the scenery."

THE NEXT TENANTS 65

  "Inland?" asked George Whitley. "I thought
you said it was an atoll How can a ring of
coral "

  "It was a very plump atoll," said Harry firmly.
"Anyway, who's telling this story?" He waited
defiantly for a moment until he had the right of
way again.

  "Here I was, then, walking up a charming little
rivercourse underneath the coconut palms,
when to my great surprise I came across a
waterwheel a very modernlooking one, driving
a dynamo. If I'd been sensible, I suppose I'd
have gone back and told my companions, but
I couldn't resist the challenge and decided to
do some reconnoitering on my own. I
remembered that there were still supposed to
be Japanese troops around who didn't know
that the war was over, but that explanation
seemed a bit unlikely.

  "I followed the power-line up a hill, and there
on the other side was a low, whitewashed
building set in a large clearing. All over this
clearing were tall, irregular mounds of earth,
linked together with a network of wires. It was
one of the most baffling sights I have ever
seen, and I stood and stared for a good ten
minutes, trying to decide what was going on.
The longer I looked, the less sense it seemed
to make.

  "I was debating what to do when a tall,
white-haired man came out of the building and
walked over to one of the mounds. He was
carrying some kind of apparatus and had a pair
of earphones slung around his neck, so I
guessed that he was using a Geiger counter. It
was just about then that I realized what those
tall mounds were. They were termitaries . . . the
skyscrapers, in comparison to their makers, far
taller than the Empire State Building, in which
the so-called white ants live.

  "I watched with great interest, but complete
bafflement, while the elderly scientist inserted
his apparatus into the base of the termitary,
listened intently for a moment, and then walked
back towards the building. By this time I was
so curious that I decided to make my presence
known. Whatever research was going on here
obviously had nothing to do with international
politics, so I was the

66 TAKES PROM THE WHITE HART

only one who'd have anything to hide. You'll
appreciate later just what a miscalculation that
was.

  "I yelled for attention and walked down the
hill, waving my arms. The stranger halted and
watched me approaching: he didn't look
particularly surprised. As I came closer I saw
that he had a straggling moustache that gave
him a faintly Oriental appearance. He was
about sixty years old, and carried himself very
erect. Though he was wearing nothing but a
pair of shorts, he looked so dignified that I felt
rather ashamed of my noisy approach.

  " 'Good morning,' I said apologetically. 'I
didn't know that there was anyone else on this
island. I'm with an er  scientific survey party
over on the other side.'

  "At this, the stranger's eyes lit up. 'Ah,' he
said, in almost perfect English, 'a fellow
scientist! I'm very pleased to meet you. Come
into the house.'

  "I followed gladly enough I was pretty hot
after my scramble and I found that the
building was simply one large lab. In a corner
was a bed and a couple of chairs, together
with a stove and one of those folding
wash-basins that campers use. That seemed to
sum up the livimg arrangements. But
everything was very neat and tidy: my
unknown friend seemed to be a recluse, but he
believed in keeping up appearances.

  "I introduced myself first, and as I'd hoped
he promptly responded. He was one Professor
Takato, a biologist from a leading Japanese
university. He didn't look particularly
Japanese, apart from the moustache I've men-
tioned. With his erect, dignified bearing he
reminded me more of an old Kentucky colonel
I once knew.

  "After he'd given me some unfamiliar but
refreshing wine, we sat and talked for a couple
of hours. Like most scientists he seemed
happy to meet someone who would appreciate
his work. It was true that my interests lay in
physics and chemistry rather than on the
biological side, but I found Professor Takato's
research quite fascinating.

  "I don't suppose you know much about
termites, so I'll remind you of the salient facts.
They're among the most highly evolved of the
social insects, and live in vast colonies
throughout the tropics. They can't stand cold

THE NEXT TENANTS 67

weather, nor, oddly enough, can they endure
direct sunlight. When they have to get from one
place to another, they construct little covered
roadways. They seem to have some unknown
and almost instantaneous means of com-
munication, and though the individual termites
are pretty helpless and dumb, a whole colony
behaves like an intelligent animal. Some writers
have drawn comparisons between a termitary
and a human body, which is also composed of
individual living cells making up an entity much
higher than the basic units. The termites are
often called 'white ants', but that's a completely
incorrect name as they aren't ants at all but
quite a different species of insect. Or should I
say 'genus'? I'm pretty vague about this sort of
thing....

  "Excuse this little lecture, but after I'd listened
to Takato for a while I began to get quite
enthusiastic about termites myself. Did you
know, for example, that they not only cultivate
gardens but also keep cows insect cows, of
course and milk them? Yes, they're
sophisticated little devils, even though they do
it all by instinct.

  "But I'd better tell you something about the
Professor. Although he was alone at the
moment, and had lived on the island for several
years, he had a number of assistants who
brought equipment from Japan and helped him
in his work. His first great achievement was to
do for the termites what van Frische had done
with bees he'd learned their language. It was
much more complex than the system of
communication that bees use, which as you
probably know, is based on dancing. I
understood that the network of wires linking the
termitaries to the lab not only enabled
Professor Takato to listen to the termites
talking among each other, but also permitted
him to speak to them. That's not really as
fantastic as it sounds, if you use the word
"speak" in its widest sense. We speak to a good
many anunals not always with our voices, by
any means. When you throw a stick for your
dog and expect him to run and fetch it, that's a
form of speech sign language. The Professor,
I gathered, had worked out some kind of code
which the termites understood, though how
efficient it was at communicating ideas I didn't
know.

68 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "I came back each day, when I could spare
the time, and by the end of the week we were
firm friends. It may surprise you that I was able
to conceal these visits from my colleagues, but
the island was quite large and we each did a
lot of exploring. I felt somehow that Professor
Takato was my private property, and did not
wish to expose him to the curiosity of my
companions. They were rather uncouth
characters graduates of some provincial
university like Oxford or Cambridge.

  "I'm glad to say that I was able to give the
Professor a certain amount of assistance,
fixing his radio and lining up some of his
electromc gear. He used radioactive tracers a
good deal, to follow individual termites around.
He'd been tracking one with a Geiger counter
when I first met him, in fact.

  "Four or five days after we'd met, his
counters started to go haywire, and the
equipment we'd set up began to reel in its
recordings. Takato guessed what had
happened: he'd never asked me exactly what
I was doing on the islands, but I think he
knew. When I greeted him he switched on his
counters and let me listen to the roar of
radiation. There had been some radioactive
fall-out  not enough to be dangerous, but
sufficient to bring the background 'way up.

  " 'I think,' he said softly, 'that you physicists
are playing with your toys again. And very big
ones, this time.'

  " 'I'm afraid you're right,' I answered. We
wouldn't be sure until the readings had been
analyzed, but it looked as if Teller and his
team had started the hydrogen reaction.
'Before long, we'll be able to make the first A-
bombs look like damp squids.'

  " 'My family,' said Professor Takato, without
any emotion, 'was at Nagasaki.'

  "There wasn't a great deal I could say to that,
and I was glad when he went on to add: 'Have
you ever wondered who will take over when we
are finished?'

  "'Your termites?' [ said, half facetiously. He
seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he said
quietly, 'Come with me; I have not shown you
everything.'

"We walked over to a corner of the lab where
some

THE NEXT TENANTS 69

equipment lay concealed beneath dust-sheets,
and the Professor uncovered a rather curious
piece of apparatus. At first sight it looked lice
one of the manipulators used for the remote
handling of dangerously radioactive materials.
There were handgrips that conveyed
movements through rods and levers, but
everything seemed to focus on a small box a
few inches on a side. 'What is it?' I asked.

  " 'It's a micromanipulator. The French
developed them for biological work. There
aren't many around yet.'

  "Then I remembered. These were devices with
which, by the use of suitable reduction gearing,
one could carry out the most incredibly delicate
operations. You moved your finger an inch and
the tool you were controlling moved a
thousandth of an inch. The French scientists
who had developed this technique had built tiny
forges on which they could construct minute
scalpels and tweezers from fused glass.
Working entirely through microscopes, they had
been able to dissect individual cells. Removing
an appendix from a termite (in the highly
doubtful event of the insect possessing one)
would be child's play with such an instrument.

  " 'I am not very skilled at using the
manipulator,' confessed Takato. 'One of my
assistants does all the work with it. I have
shown no one else this, but you have been very
helpful. Come with me, please.'

  "We went out into the open, and walked past
the avenues of tall, cement-hard mounds. They
were not all of the same architectural design,
for there are many different kinds of
termites some, indeed, don't build mounds at
all. I felt rather like a giant walking through
Manhattan, for these were skyscrapers, each
with its own teeming population.

  "There was a small metal (not wooden the
termites would soon have fixed that! ) hut
beside one of the mounds, and as we entered it
the glare of sunlight was banished. The
Professor threw a switch, and a faint red glow
enabled me to see various types of optical
equipment.

"'They hate light,' he said, 'so it's a great
problem

70 TALES FROM THE WHrTP HART

observing them. We solved it by using
infra-red. This is an image-converter of the
type that was used in the war for operations at
night. You know about them?'

  "'Of course,' I said. 'Snipers had them fixed
on their rifles so that they could go
sharp-shooting in the dark. Very ingenious
things I'm glad you've found a civilized use
for them.'

  "It was a long time before Professor Takato
found what he wanted. He seemed to be
steering some kind of periscope arrangement,
probing through the corridors of the termite
city. Then he said: 'Quick before they've
gone!'

  "I moved over and took his position. It was
a second or so before my eye focused
properly, and longer still before I understood
the scale of the picture I was seeing. Then I
saw six termites, greatly enlarged, moving
rather rapidly across the field of vision. They
were travelling in a group, like the huskies
forming a dog-team. And that was a very good
analogy, because they were towing a sledge....

  "I was so astonished that I never even
noticed what kind of load they were moving.
When they had vanished from sight, I turned to
Professor Takato. My eyes had now grown
accustomed to the faint red glow, and I could
see him quite well.

  "'So that's the sort of tool you've been
building with your micromanipulator!' I said.
'It's amazing I'd never have believed it.'

  " 'But that is nothing,' replied the Professor.
'Performing fleas will pull a cart around. I
haven't told you what is so important. We only
made a few of those sledges. The one you saw
they constructed themselves.'

  "He let that sink in: it took some time. Then
he continued quietly, but with a kind of
controlled enthusiasm in his voice: 'Remember
that the termites, as individuals, have virtually
no intelligence. But the colony as a whole is a
very high type of organism and an immortal
one, barring accidents. It froze in its present
instinctive pattern millions of years before Man
was born, and by itself it can never escape
from its present sterile perfection. It has
reached a dead-end because it has no tools,
no ef

THE NEXT TENANTS 71

fectiveway of controlling nature. I have given it
the lever, to increase its power, and now the
sledge, to improve its efficiency.. I have thought
of the wheel, but it is best to let that wait for a
later stage it would not be very useful now.
The results have exceeded my expectations. I
started with this termitary alone but now they
all have the same tools. They have taught each
other, and that proves they can cooperate. True,
they have wars but not when there is enough
food for all, as there is here.

  " 'But you cannot judge the termitary by
human standards. What I hope to do is to jolt its
rigid, frozen culture  to knock it out of the
groove in which it has stuck for so many
millions of years. I will give it more tools, more
new techniques and before I die, I hope to see
it beginning to invent things for itself.'

  "'Why are you doing this?' I asked, for I knew
there was more than mere scientific curiosity
here.

  "'Because I do not believe that Man will
survive, yet I hope to preserve some of the
things he has discovered. If he is to be a
dead-end, I think that another race should be
given a helping hand. Do you know why I chose
this island? It was so that my experiment should
remain isolated. My supertermite, if it ever
evolves, will have to remain here until it has
reached a very high level of attainment. Until it
can cross the Pacific, in fact....

  " 'There is another possibility. Man has no
rival on this planet. I think it may do him good
to have one. It may be his salvation.'

  "I could think of nothing to say: this glimpse
of the Professor's dreams was so
overwhelming and yet, in view of what I had
just seen, so convincing. For I knew that
Professor Takato was not mad. He was a
visionary, and there was a sublime detachment
about his outlook, but it was based on a secure
foundation of scientific achievement.

  "And it was not that he was hostile to
mankind: he was sorry for it. He simply believed
that humanity had shot its bolt, and wished to
save something from the wreckage. I could not
feel it in my heart to blame him.

"We must have been in that little hut for a long
tune,

72 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

exploring possible futures. I remember
suggesting that perhaps there might be some
kind of mutual understanding, since two
cultures so utterly dissimilar as Man and
Termite need have no cause for convict. But I
couldn't really believe this, and if a contest
comes, I'm not certain who will win. For what
use would man's weapons be against an
intelligent enemy who could lay waste all the
wheat fields and all the rice crops in the
world?

  "When we came out into the open once
more, it was almost dusk. It was then that the
Professor made his final revelation.

  "'In a few weeks,' he said, 'I am going to take
the biggest step of all.'

" 'And what is that?' I asked.

" 'Cannot you guess? I am going to give them
fire.'

  "Those words did something to my spine. I
felt a chill that had nothing to do with the
oncoming night. The glorious sunset that was
taking place beyond the palms seemed
symbolic and suddenly I realized that the
symbolism was even deeper than I had
thought

  "That sunset was one of the most beautiful I
had ever seen, and it was partly of man's
making. Up there in the stratosphere, the dust
of an island that had died this day was
encircling the earth. My race had taken a great
step forward; but did it matter now?

  "'I am going to give them fire.' Somehow, I
never doubted that the Professor would
succeed. And when he had done so, the forces
that my own race had just unleashed would
not save it....

  "The hying boat came to collect us the next
day, and I did not see Takato again. He is still
there, and I think he is the most important man
in the world. While our politicians wrangle, he
is making us obsolete.

  "Do you think that someone ought to stop
him? There may still be time. I've often thought
about it, but I've never been able to think of a
really convincing reason why I should
interfere. Once or twice I nearly made up my
mind, but then I'd pick up the newspaper and
see the headlines.

MOVING SPIRIT 73

  "I think we should let them have the chance. I
don't see how they could make a worse job of it
than we've done."

             kIO\lING SPIRIT

WE WERE discussing a sensational trial at the Old
Bailey when Harry Purvis, whose talent for twisting
the conversation to his own ends is really
unbelievable, remarked casually: "I was once an
expert witness in a rather interesting case."

  "Only a witness?" said Drew, as he deftly filled
two glasses of Bass at once.

  "Yes but it was a rather close thing. It was in the
early part of the war, about the time we were
expecting the invasion. That's why you never heard
about it at the time."

  "What makes you assume," said Charles Willis
suspiciously, "that we never did hear of it?"

  It was one of the few times I'd ever seen Harry
caught trying to cover up his tracks. "Qui s'excuse
s'accuse," I thought to myself, and waited to see
what evading action he'd take.

  "It was such a peculiar case," he replied with
dignity, "that I'm sure you'd have reminded me of it
if you ever saw the reports. My name was featured
quite prominently. It all happened in an
out-of-the-way part of Cornwall, and it concerned!
the best example of that rare species, the genuine
mad scientist, that I've ever met."

  Perhaps that wasn't really a fair description,
Purvis amended hastily. Homer Ferguson was
eccentric and had little foibles like keeping a pet
boa constrictor to catch the mice, and never
wearing shoes around the house. But he was so
rich that no one noticed things like this.

  Homer was also a competent scientist. Many
years ago he had graduated from Edinburgh
University, but having plenty of money he had
never done a stroke of real work

.,

74 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

in his life. Instead, he pattered round the old
vicarage he'd bought not far from Newquay
and amused himself building gadgets. In the
last forty years he'd invented television,
ball-point pens, jet propulsion, and a few other
tribes. However, as he had never bothered to
take out any patents, other people had got the
credit. This didn't worry him in the least as he
was of a singularly generous disposition,
except with money.

  It seemed that, in some complicated way,
Purvis was one of his few living relatives.
Consequently when Harry received a telegram
one day requesting his assistance at once, he
knew better than to refuse. No one knew
exactly how much money Homer had, or what
he intended to do with it. Harry thought he had
as good a chance as anyone, and he didn't
intend to jeopardise it. At some inconvenience
he made the journey down to Cornwall and
turned up at the rectory.

  He saw what was wrong as soon as he
entered the grounds. Uncle Homer (he wasn't
really an uncle, but he'd been called that as
long as Harry could remember) had a shed
beside the main building which he used for his
experiments. That shed was now minus roof
and windows, and a sickly odor hovered
around it. There had obviously been an
explosion, and Harry wondered, in a
disinterested sort of way, if Uncle had been
badly injured and wanted advice on drawing up
a new will.

  He ceased day-dreaming when the old man,
looking the picture of health (apart from some
sticking plaster on his face) opened the door
for him.

  "Good of you to come so quickly," he
boomed. He seemed genuinely pleased to see
Harry. Then his face clouded over. "Fact is, my
boy, I'm in a bit of a jam and I want you to
help. My case comes up before the local
Bench tomorrow."

  This was a considerable shock. Homer had
been as law-abiding a citizen as any motorist
in petrol-rationed Britain could be expected to
be. And if it was the usual black-market
business, Harry didn't see how he could be
expected to help.

"Sorry to hear about this, Uncle. What's the
trouble?"

MOVING SPIRIT 75

  "It's a long story Come into the library and
we'll talk it over."

  Homer Ferguson's library occupied the entire
west wing of the somewhat decrepit building.
Harry believed that bats nested in the rafters,
but had never been able to prove it. When
Homer had cleared a table by the simple
expedient of tilting all the books off on to the
floor, he whistled three times, a voic~operated
relay tripped somewhere, and a gloomy
Cornish voice drifted out of a concealed
loudspeaker.

"Yes, Mr. Ferguson?"

"Maida, send across a bottle of the new
whiskey."

  There was no reply except an audible sniff.
But a moment later there came a creaking and
clanking, and a couple of square feet of library
shelving slid aside to reveal a conveyor belt.

  "I can't get Maida to come into the library,"
complained Homer, lifting out a loaded tray.
"She's afraid of Boanerges, though he's
perfectly harmless."

  Harry found it hard not to feel some
sympathy for the invisible Maida. All six feet of
Boanerges was draped over the case holding
the "Encyclopaedia Britannica", and a bulge
amidships indicated that he had dined recently.

  "What do you think of the whiskey?" asked
Homer when Harry had sampled some and
started to gasp for breath.

  "It's well, I don't know what to say.
It's phew  rather strong. I never thought "

  "Oh, don't take any notice of the label on the
bottle. This brand never saw Scotland. And
that's what all the trouble's about. I made it
right here on the premises."

"Uncle!7'

  "Yes,~I know it's against the law, and all that
sort of nonsense. But you can't get any good
whiskey these days  it all goes for export. It
seemed to me that I was being patriotic making
my own, so that there was more left over for
the dollar drive. But the Excise people don't
see it that way."

"I think you'd better let me have the whole
story,"

76 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

said Harry. He was gloomily sure that there
was nothing he could do to get his uncle out of
this scrape.

  Homer had always been fond of the bottle,
and wartime shortages had hit hun badly. He
was also, as has been hinted, disinclined to
give away money, and for a long time he had
resented the fact that he had to pay a tax of
several hundred percent on a bottle of
whiskey. When he couldn't get his own supply
any more, he had decided it was time to act.

  The district he was living in probably had a
good deal to do with his decision. For some
centuries, the Customs and Excise had waged
a never-ending battle with the Cornish
fisherfolk. It was rumored that the last
incumbent of the old vicarage had possessed
the finest cellar in the district next to that of
the Bishop himself and had never paid a
penny in duty on it. So Uncle Homer merely felt
he was carrying on an old and noble tradition.

  There was little doubt, moreover, that the
spirit of pure scientific enquiry also inspired
him. He felt sure that this business about being
aged in the wood for seven years was all
rubbish, and was confident that he could do a
better job with ultrasonics and ultra-violet rays.

  The experiment went well for a few weeks.
But late one evening there was one of those
unfortunate accidents that will happen even in
the best-conducted laboratories, and before
Uncle knew what had happened, he was
draped over a beam, while the grounds of the
vicarage were littered with pieces of copper
tubing.

  Even then it would not have mattered much
had not the local Home Guard been practicing
in the neighborhood. As soon as they heard
the explosion, they immediately went into
action, Sten guns at the ready. Had the
invasion started? If so, they'd soon fix it.

  They were a little disappointed to discover
that it was only Uncle, but as they were used
to his experiments they weren't in the least
surprised at what had happened. Unfortunately
for Uncle, the Lieutenant in charge of the
squad happened to be the local exciseman,
and the combined evidence of his nose and his
eyes told him the story in a flash.

MOVING SPIRIT 77

  "So tomorrow," said Uncle Homer, looking
rather like a small boy who had been caught
stealing candy, "I have to go up before the
Bench, charged with possessing an illegal still."

  "I should have thought," replied Harry, "that
was a matter for the Assizes, not the local
magistrates."

  "We do things our own way here," answered
Homer, with more than a touch of pride. Harry
was soon to discover how true this was.

  They got little sleep that night, as Homer
outlined his defence, overcame Harry's
objections, and hastily assembled the
apparatus he intended to produce in court.

  "A Bench like this," he explained, "is always
impressed by experts. If we dared, I'd like to
say you were someone from the War Office, but
they could check up on that. So we'll just tell
them the truth about your qualifications, that
is."

  "Thank you," said Harry. "And suppose my
college finds out what I'm doing?"

  "Well, you won't claim to be acting for anyone
except yourself. The whole thing is a private
venture."

"I'll say it is," said Harry.

  The next morning they loaded their gear into
Homer's ancient Austin, and drove into the
village. The Bench was sitting in one of the
classrooms of the local school, and Harry felt
that time had rolled back a few years and he
was about to have an unpleasant interview with
his old headmaster.

  "We're in luck," whispered Homer, as they
were ushered into their cramped seats. "Major
Fotheringham is in the Chair. He's a good
friend of mine."

  That would help a lot, Harry agreed. But there
were two other justices on the Bench as well,
and one friend in court would hardly be
sufficient. Eloquence, not influence, was the
only thing that could save the day.

  The courtroom we, crowded, and Harry found
it surprising that so many people had managed
to get away from work long enough to watch
the case. Then he realized the local interest that
it would have aroused, in view of the fact
that in normal times, at least smuggling

78 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

was a major industry in these parts. He was
not sure whether that would mean a
sympathetic audience. The natives might well
regard Homer's form of private enterprise as
unfair competition. On the other hand, they
probably approved on general principles with
anything that put the excisemen's noses out of
joint.

  The charge was read by the clerk of the
court, and the somewhat damning evidence
produced. Pieces of copper tubing were
solemnly inspected by the justices, each of
whom in turn looked severely at Uncle Homer.
Harry began to see his hypothetical
inheritance becoming even more doubtful.

  When the case for the prosecution was
completed, Major Fotheringham turned to
Homer.

  "This appears to he a serious matter, Mr.
Ferguson. I hope you have a satisfactory
explanation."

  "I have, your Honor," replied the defendant
in a tone that practically reeked of injured
innocence. It was amusing to see His Honor's
look of relief, and the momentary frown,
quickly replaced by calm confidence, that
passed across the face of H. M. Customs and
Excise.

  "Do you wish to have a legal representative?
I notice that you have not brought one with
you."

  "It won't be necessary. The whole case is
founded on such a trivial misunderstanding
that it can be cleared up without complications
like that. I don't wish to incur the prosecution
in unnecessary costs."

  This frontal onslaught brought a murmur
from the body of the court, and a flush to the
cheeks of the Customs man. For the first time
he began to look a little unsure of himself. If
Ferguson thought the Crown would be paying
costs, he must have a pretty good case. Of
course, he might only be bluffing....

  Homer waited until the mild stir had died
away before creating a considerably greater
one.

  "I have called a scientific expert to explain
what happened at the Vicarage," he said. "And
owing to the nature of the evidence, I must
ask, for security reasons, that the rest of the
proceedings be in camera."

MOVING SPTRIT 79

  "You want me to clear the court?" said the
Chairman incredulously.

  "I am afraid so, sir. My colleague, Doctor
Purvis, feels that the fewer people concerned in
this case, the better. When you have heard the
evidence, I think you will agree with him. If I
might say so, it is a great pity that it has
already attracted so much publicity. I am afraid
it may bring certain ah confidential matters to
the wrong ears."

  Homer glared at the customs officer, who
fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat.

  "Oh, very well," said Major Fotheringham.
"This is all very irregular, but we live in
irregular times. Mr. Clerk, clear the court."

  After some grumbling and confusion, and an
overruled protest from the prosecution, the
order was carried out. Then, under the
interested gaze of the dozen people left in the
room, Harry Purvis uncovered the apparatus he
had unloaded from the Baby Austin. After his
qualifications had been presented to the court,
he took the witness stand.

  "I wish to explain, your Honor," he began,
"that I have been engaged on explosives
research, and that is why I happen to be
acquainted with the defendant's work." The
opening part of this statement was perfectly
true. It was about the last thing said that day
that was.

"You mean bombs and so forth?"

  "Precisely, but on a fundamental level. We are
always looking for new and better types of
explosives, as you can imagine. Moreover, we
in government research and the academic
world are continually on the lookout for good
ideas from outside sources. And quite recently,
Unc er, Mr. Ferguson, wrote to us with a most
interesting suggestion for a completely new
type of explosive. The interesting thing about it
was that it employed non-explosive materials
such as sugar, starch and so on."

  "Eh?" said the Chairman. "A non-explosive
explosive? That's impossible."

Harry smiled sweetly.

"I know, sir that is one's immediate reaction.
But like

most great ideas, this has the simplicity of
genius. I am afraid, however, that I shall have
to do a little explaining to make my point."

  The Bench looked very attentive, and also a
little alarmed. Harry surmised that it had
probably encountered expert witnesses before.
He walked over to a table that had been set up
in the middle of the courtroom, and which was
now covered with flasks, piping, and bottles of
liquids.

  "I hope, Mr. Purvis," said the Chairman
nervously, "that you're not going to do
anything dangerous."

  "Of course not, sir. I merely wish to
demonstrate some basic scientific principles.
Once again, I wish to stress the importance of
keeping this between these four walls." He
paused solemnly and everyone looked duly
impressed.

  "Mr. Ferguson," he began, "is proposing to
tap one of the fundamental forces of nature. It
is a force on which every living thing
depends a force, gentlemen, which keeps
you alive, even though you may never have
heard of it."

  He moved over to the table and took up his
position beside the flasks and bottles.

  "Have you ever stopped to consider," he
said, "how the sap manages to reach the
highest leaf of a tall tree? It takes a lot of force
to pump water a hundred sometimes over
three hundred feet from the ground. Where
does that force come from? I'll show you, with
this practical example.

  "Here I have a strong container, divided into
two parts by a porous membrane. On one side
of the membrane is pure water on the other,
a concentrated solution of sugar and other
chemicals which I do not propose to specify.
Under these conditions, a pressure is set up,
known as osmotic pressure. The pure water
tries to pass through the membrane, as if to
dilute the solution on the other side. I've now
sealed the container, and you'll notice the
pressure gauge here on the right see how
the pointer's going up. That's osmotic
pressure for you. This same force acts
through the cell walls in our bodies, causing
fluid movement. It drives the sap up the trunk
of

MOVING SPiRiT 81

trees, from the roots to the topmost branches.
It's a universal force, and a powerful one. To
Mr. Ferguson must go the credit of first
attempting to harness it."

Harry paused impressively and looked round
the court.

  "Mr. Ferguson," he said, "was attempting to
develop the Osmotic Bomb."

  It took some time for this to sink in. Then
Major Fotheringham leaned forward and said in
a hushed voice: "Are we to presume that he had
succeeded in manufacturing this bomb, and
that it exploded in his workshop?"

  "Precisely, your Honor. It is a pleasure an
unusual pleasure, I might say to present a
case to so perspicacious a court. Mr. Ferguson
had succeeded, and he was preparing to report
his method to us when, owing to an unfortunate
oversight, a safety device attached to the bomb
failed to operate. The results, you all know. I
think you will need no further evidence of the
power of this weapon and you will realize its
importance when I point out that the solutions
it contains are all extremely common
chemicals."

  Major Fotheringham, looking a little puzzled,
turned to the prosecution lawyer.

  "Mr. Whiting," he said, "have you any
questions to ask the witness?"

  "I certainly have, your Honor. I've never heard
such a ridiculous "

"You will please confine yourself to questions of
fact."

  "Very good, your Honor. May I ask the witness
how he accounts for the large quantity of
alcohol vapor immediately after the explosion?"

  "I rather doubt if the inspector's nose was
capable of accurate quantitative analysis. But
admittedly there was some alcohol vapor
released. The solution used in the bomb
contained about 25 percent. By employing
dilute alcohol, the mobility of the inorganic ions
is restricted and the osmotic pressure raised a
desirable effect, of course."

  That should hold them for a while, thought
Harry. He was right. It was a good couple of
minutes before the second question. Then the
prosecution's spokesman waved one of the
pieces of copper tubing in the air.

82 TALES PROM THE WHITE HART

  "What function did these carry out?" he said,
in as nasty a tone of voice as he could
manage. Harry affected not to notice the sneer.

  "Manometer tubing for the pressure gauges,"
he replied promptly.

  The Bench, it was clear, was already far out
of its depth. This was just where Harry wanted
it to be. But the prosecution still had one card
up its sleeve. There was a furtive whispering
between the excisemen and his legal eagle.
Harry looked nervously at Uncle Homer, who
shrugged his shoulders with a "Don't ask nzeJ"
gesture.

  "I have some additional evidence I wish to
present to the Court," said the Customs lawyer
briskly, as a bulky brown paper parcel was
hoisted on to the table.

  "Is this in order, your Honor?" protested
Harry. "All evidence against my ah colleague
should already have been presented."

  "I withdraw my statement," the lawyer
interjected swiftly. "Let us say that this is not
evidence for this case, but material for later
proceedings." He paused ominously to let that
sink in. "Nevertheless, if Mr. Ferguson can give
a satisfactory answer to our questions now,
this whole business can be cleared up right
away." It was obvious that the last thing the
speaker expected or hoped for  was such a
satisfactory explanation.

  He unwrapped the brown paper, and there
were three bottles of a famous brand of
whiskey.

"Uh-huh," said Uncle Homer. "I was
wondering "

  "Mr. Ferguson," said the Chairman of the
Bench. "There is no need for you to make any
statement unless you wish."

  Harry Purvis shot Major Fotheringham a
grateful glance. He guessed what had
happened. The prosecution had, when prowling
through the ruins of Uncle's laboratory,
acquired some bottles of his home-brew. Their
action was probably illegal, since they would
not have had a search-warrant hence the
reluctance in producing the evidence. The case
had seemed sufficiently clear-cut without it.

It certainly appeared pretty clear-cut now....

MOVING SPIRIT 83

  "These bottles," said the representative of the
Crown, "do not contain the breed advertised on
the label. They have obviously been used as
convenient receptacles for the
defendant's shall we say~hemical solutions."
He gave Harry Purvis an unsympathetic glance.
"We have had these solutions analyzed, with
most interesting results. Apart from an
abnormally high alcohol concentration, the
contents of these bottles are virtually indistin-
guishable from "

  He never had time to finish his unsolicited
and certainly unwanted testimonial to Uncle
Homer's skill. For at that moment, Harry Purvis
became aware of an ominous whistling sound.
At first he thought it was a falling bomb  but
that seemed unlikely, as there had been no air
raid warning. Then he realized that the whistling
came from close at hand; from the courtroom
table, in fact....

"Take cover!" he yelled.

  The Court went into recess with a speed
never matched in the annals of British law. The
three justices disappeared behind the dais;
those in the body of the room burrowed into the
floor or sheltered under desks. For a protracted,
anguished moment nothing happened, and
Harry wondered if he had given a false alarm.
Then there was a dull, peculiarly muffled
explosion, a great tinkling of glass  and a
smell like a blitzed brewery. Slowly, the Court
emerged from shelter.

  The Osmotic Bomb had proved its power.
More important still, it had destroyed the
evidence for the prosecution.

  The Bench was none too happy about
dismissing the case; it felt, with good reason,
that its dignity had been assailed. Moreover,
each one of the justices would have to do some
fast talking when he got home: the mist of alco-
hol had penetrated everything. Though the
Clerk of the Court rushed round opening
windows (none of which, oddly enough, had
been broken) the fumes seemed reluctant to
disperse. Harry Purvis, as he removed pieces of
bottle-glass from his hair, wondered if there
would be some intoxicated pupils in class
tomorrow.

Major Fotheringham, however, was undoubtedly
a real

84 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

sport, and as they filed out of the devastated
courtroom, Harry heard him say to his Uncle:
"Look here, Ferguson it'll be ages before we
can get those Molotov Cocktails we've been
promised by the War Office. What about
making some of these bombs of yours for the
Home Guard? If they don't knock out a tank, at
least they'll make the crew drunk; and
incapable."

  "I'll certainly think about it, Major," replied
Uncle Homer, who still seemed a little dazed
by the turn of events.

  He recovered sorrewhat as they drove back
to the Vicarage along the narrow, winding
lanes with their high walls of unmortared
stone.

  "I hope, Uncle," remarked Harry, when they
had reached a relatively straight stretch and it
seemed safe to talk to the driver, "that you
don't intend to rebuild that still. They'll be
watching you like hawks and you won't get
away with it again."

  "Very well," said Uncle, a little sulkily.
"Confound these brakes! I had them fixed only
just before the War!"

"Hey!" cried Harry, "Watch out!"

  It was too late. They had come to a
cross-roads at which a brand-new HALT sign
had been erected. Uncle braked hard, but for
a moment nothing happened. Then the wheels
on the left seized up, while those on the right
continued gaily spinning. The car did a hairpin
bend, luckily without turning over, and ended
in the ditch pointing in the direction from
which it had come.

  Harry looked reproachfully at his Uncle. He
was about to frame a suitable reprimand when
a motorcycle came out of the side-turning and
drew up to them.

  It was not going to be their lucky day, after
all. The village police-sergeant had been
lurking in ambush, waiting to catch motorists
at the new sign. He parked his machine by the
roadside and leaned in through the window of
the Austin.

  "You all right, Mr. Ferguson?" he said. Then
his nose wrinkled up, and he looked like Jove
about to deliver a thunderbolt. "This won't do,"
he said. "I'll have to put

MOVING SPIRIT 85

you on a charge. Driving under the influence is
a very serious business."

  "But I've not touched a drop all day!"
protested Uncle, waving an alcohol-sodden
sleeve under the sergeant's twitching nose.

  "Do you expect me to believe that?" snorted
the irate policeman, pulling out his note-book.
"I'm afraid you'll have to come to the station
with me. Is your friend sober enough to drive?"

  Harry Purvis didn't answer for a moment. He
was too busy beating his head against the
dash-board.

  "Well," we asked Harry. 'What did they do to
your Uncle?"

  "Oh, he got fined five pounds and had his
license endorsed for drunken driving. Major
Fotheringham wasn't in the Chair, unfortunately,
when the case came up, but the other two
justices were still on the Bench. I guess they
felt that even if he was innocent this time, there
was a limit to everything."

"And did you ever get any of his money?"

  "No fear! He was very grateful, of course, and
he's told me that I'm mentioned in his will. But
when I saw him last, what do you think he was
doing? He was searching for the Elixir of Life."

Harry sighed at the overwhelming injustice of
things.

  "Sometimes," he said gloomily, "I'm afraid
he's found it. The doctors say he's the
healthiest seventy-year-old they've ever seen.
So all I got out of the whole affair was some
interesting memories and a hangover."

"A hangover?" asked Charlie Willis.

  "Yes," replied Harry, a faraway look in his eye.
"You see, the excise men hadn't seized all the
evidence. We had to ah destroy the rest. It
took us the best part of a week. We invented all
sorts of things during that time  but we never
discovered what they were."

    TIIE ~ WHO PLOUGI{ED TH1E SEA

THE ADVENTURES of Harry Purvis have a kind
of mad logic that makes them convincing by
their very improbability. As his complicated
but neatly dove-tailed stories emerge, one
becomes lost in a sort of baffled wonder.
Surely, you say to yourself, no-one would have
the nerve to make that Such absurdities only
occur in real life, not in fiction. And so
criticism is disarmed, or at any rate
discomfitted, until Drew shouts "Time,
gentlemen, pleeze!" and throws us all out into
the cold hard world.

  Consider, for example, the unlikely chain of
events which involved Harry in the following
adventure. If he'd wanted to invent the whole
thing, surely he could have managed it a lot
more simply. There was not the slightest need,
from the artistic point of view, to have started
at Boston to make an appointment off the
coast of Florida....

  Harry seems to have spent a good deal of
time in the United States, and to have quite as
many friends there as he has in England.
Sometimes he brings them to the "White Hart,"
and sometimes they leave again under their
own power. Often, however, they succumb to
the illusion that beer which is tepid is also
innocuous. (I am being unjust to Drew: his
beer is not tepid. And if you insist, he will give
you, for no extra charge, a piece of ice every
bit as large as a postage-stamp.)

  This particular saga of Harry's began, as I
have indicated, at Boston, Mass. He was
staying as a house-guest of a successful New
Fngland lawyer when one morning his host
said, in the casual way Americans have: "Let's
go down to my place in Florida. I want to get
some sun."

  "Fine," said Harry, who'd never been to
Florida. Thirty minutes later, to his
considerable surprise, he found himself
moving south in a red Jaguar saloon at a
formidable speed.

The drive in itself was an epic worthy of a
complete 86

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 87

story. From Boston to Miami is a little matter of
1,568 miles a figure which, according to Harry,
is now engraved on his heart. They covered the
distance in 30 hours, frequently to the sound of
ever-receding police sirens as frustrated
squad-cars dwindled astern. From time to time
considerations of tactics involved them in
evasive manoeuvres and they had to shoot off
into secondary roads. The Jaguar's radio tuned
in to all the police frequencies, so they always
had plenty of warning if an interception was
being arranged. Once or twice they just
managed to reach a state line in time, and Harry
couldn't help wondering what his host's clients
would have thought had they known the
strength of the psychological urge which was
obviously getting him away from them. He also
wondered if he was going to see anything of
Florida at all, or whether they would continue at
this velocity down US I until they shot into the
ocean at Key West.

  They finally came to a halt sixty miles south of
Miami, down on the Keys that long, thin line of
island hooked on to the lower end of Florida.
The Jaguar angled suddenly off the road and
weaved a way through a rough track cut in the
mangroves. The road ended in a wide clearing
at the edge of the sea, complete with dock, 35
foot cabin cruiser, swimming pool, and modern
ranchtype house. It was quite a nice little
hide-away, and Harry estimated that it must
have cost the best part of a hundred thousand
dollars.

  He didn't see much of the place until the next
day, as he collapsed straight into bed. After
what seemed far too short a time, he was
awakened by a sound like a boiler factory in
action. He showered and dressed in slow mo-
tion, and was reasonably back to normal by the
time he had left his room. There seemed to be
no one in the house, so he went outside to
explore.

  By this time he had learned not to be
surprised at anything, so he barely raised his
eyebrows when he found his host working down
at the dock, straightening out the rudder on a
tiny and obviously home-made submarine. The
little craft was about twenty feet long, had a
con

88 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

Ding tower with large observation windows,
and bore the name "Pompano" stencilled on
her prow.

  After some reflection, Harry decided that
there was nothing really very unusual about all
this. About five million visitors come to Florida
every year, most of them determined to get on
or into the sea. His host happened to be one
of those fortunate enough to indulge in his
hobby in a big way.

  Harry looked at the "Pompano" for some
time, and then a disturbing thought struck him.
"George," he said, "do you expect me to go
down in that thing?"

  "Why, sure," answered George, giving a final
bash at the rudder. "What are you worried
about? I've taken her out lots of times she's
safe as houses. We won't be going deeper
than twenty feet."

  "There are circumstances," retorted Harry,
"when I should find a mere six feet of water
more than adequate. And didn't I mention my
claustrophobia? It always comes on badly at
this time of year."

  "Nonsense!" said George. "You'll forget all
about that when we're out on the reef." He
stool back and surveyed his handiwork, then
said with a sigh of satisfaction. "Looks O.K.
now. Let's have some breakfast."

  During the next thirty minutes, Harry learned
a good deal about the "Pompano." George had
designed and built her himself, and her
powerful little Diesel could drive her at five
knots when she was fully submerged. Both
crew and engine breathed through a snorkle
tube, so there was no need to bother about
electric motors and an independent air supply.
The length of the snorkle limited dives to
twenty-five feet, but in these shallow waters
this was no great handicap.

  "I've put a lot of novel ideas into her," said
George enthusiastically. "Those windows, for
instance look at their size. They'll give you a
perfect view, yet they're quite safe. I use the
old Aqualung principle to keep the
air-pressure in the 'Pompano' exactly the same
as the water-pressure outside, so there's no
strain on the hull or the ports."

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 89

  "And what happens," asked Harry, "if you get
stuck on the bottom?"

  "I open the door and get out, of course. There
are a couple of spare Aqualungs in the cabin,
as welt as a liferaft with a waterproof radio, so
that we can always yell for help if we get in
trouble. Don't worry I've thought of
everything."

  "Famous last words," muttered Harry. But he
decided that after the ride down from Boston he
undoubtedly had a charmed life: the sea was
probably a safer place than US 1 with George
at the wheel.

  He made himself thoroughly familiar with the
escape arrangements before they set out, and
was fairly happy when he saw how well
designed and constructed the little craft
appeared to be. The fact that a lawyer had pro-
duced such a neat piece of marine engineering
in his spare time was not in the least unusual.
Harry had long ago disc covered that a
considerable number of Americans put quite as
much effort into their hobbies as into their pro-
fessions.

  They chugged out of the little harbour,
keeping to the marked channel until they were
well clear of the coast. The sea was calm and
as the shore receded the water became steadily
more and more transparent. They were leaving
behind the fog of pulverised coral which
clouded the coastal waters, where the waves
were incessantly tearing at the land. After thirty
minutes they had come to the reef, visible
below them as a kind of patchwork quilt above
which multicolored fish pirouetted to and fro.
George closed the hatches, opened the valve of
the buoyancy tanks, and said gaily, "Here we
go!"

  The wrinkled silk veil lifted, crept past the
window, distorting all vision for a moment and
then they were through, no longer aliens
looking into the world of waters, but denizens
of that world themselves. They were floating
above a valley carpeted with white sand, and
surrounded by low hilts of coral. The valley
itself was barren but the hilts around it were
alive with things that grew, things that crawled
and things that swam. Fish as dazzling as neon
signs wandered lazily among the animals that
looked like

90 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

trees. It seemed not only a breathtakingly
lovely but also a peaceful world. There was no
haste, no SigQ of the struggle for existence.
Harry knew very well that this was an illusion,
but dunug all the time they were submerged he
never saw one fish attack another. He
mentioned this to George, who commented:
"Yes, that's a funny thing about fish. They
seem to have definite feeding times. You can
see barracuda swimming around and if the
dinner gong hasn't gone the other fish won't
take any notice of them."

  A ray, looking like some fantastic black
butterfly, flapped its way across the sand,
balancing itself with its long, whiplike tail. The
sensitive feelers of a crayfish waved cautiously
from a crack in the coral; the exploring
gestures reminded Harry of a soldier testing
for snipers with his hat on a stick. There was
so much life, of so many kinds, crammed in
this single spot that it would take years of
study to recognise it all.

  The "Pompano" cruised very slowly along the
valley, while George gave a running
commentary.

  "I used to do this sort of thing with the
Aqualung," he said, "but then I decided how
nice it would be to sit in comfort and have an
engine to push me around. Then I could stay
out all day, take a meal along, use my cameras
and not give a damn if a shark was sneaking
up on me. There goes a tang did you ever
see such a brilliant blue in your life? Besides,
I could show my friends around down here
while still being able to talk to them. That's
one big handicap with ordinary diving
gear you're deaf and dumb and have to talk
in signs. Look at those angelfish one day I'm
going to fix up a net to catch some of them.
See the way they vanish when they're edge-on!
Another reason why I built the 'Pompano' was
so that I could look for wrecks. There are
hundreds in this area  it's an absolute
graveyard. The 'Santa Margarita' is only about
fifty miles from here, in Biscayne Bay. She
went down in 1595 with seven million dollars
of bullion aboard. And there's a little matter of
sixty-five million off Long Cay, where fourteen
galleons sank in 1715. The trouble is, of
course, that most of these wrecks have been
smashed

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 91

up and overgrown with coral, so it wouldn't do
you a lot of good even if you did locate them.
But it's fun to try."

  By this time Harry had begun to appreciate
his friend's psychology. He could think of few
better ways of escaping from a New England
law practice. George was a repressed
romantic and not such a repressed one,
either, now that he came to think of it.

  They cruised along happily for a couple of
hours, keeping in water that was never more
than forty feet deep. Once they grounded on a
dazzling stretch of broken coral, and took time
off for liverwurst sandwiches and glasses of
beer. "I drank some ginger beer down here
once," said George. "When I came up the gas
inside me expanded and it was a very odd sort
of feeling. MUSt try it with champagne some
day."

  Harry was just wondering what to do with the
empties when the "Pompano" seemed to go into
eclipse as a dark shadow drifted overhead.
Looking up through the observation window, he
saw that a ship was moving slowly past twenty
feet above their heads. There was no danger of
a collision, as they had pulled down their snort
for just this reason and were subsisting for the
moment on their capital as far as air was
concerned. Harry had never seen a ship from
underneath and began to add another novel
experience to the many he had acquired today.

  He was quite proud of the fact that, despite
his ignorance of matters nautical, he was just
as quick as George at spotting what was wrong
with the vessel sailing overhead. Instead of the
normal shaft and screw, this ship had a long
tunnel running the length of its keel. As it
passed above them, the "Pompano" was rocked
by the sudden rush of water.

  "I'll be damned!" said George, grabbing the
controls. "That looks like some kind of jet
propulsion system. It's about time somebody
tried one out. Let's have a look."

  He pushed up the periscope, and discovered
that the ship slowly cruising past them was the
"Valency," of New Orleans. "That's a funny
name," he said. "What does it mean?"

"I would say," answered Harry, "that it means
the

92 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

owner is a chemist except for the fact that no
chemist would ever make enough money to
buy a ship like that."

  "I'm going to follow her," decided George.
"She's only making five knots, and I'd like to
see how that dingus works."

  He elevated the snort, got the diesel running,
and started in pursuit. After a brief chase, the
"Pompano" drew within fifty feet of the
"Valency," and Harry felt rather like a
submarine commander about to launch a tor-
pedo. They couldn't miss from this distance.

  In fact, they nearly made a direct hit. For the
"Valency" suddenly slowed to a halt, and before
George realized what had happened, he was
alongside her. "No signals!" he complained,
without much logic. A minute later, it was clear
that the manoeuvre was no accident. A lasso
dropped neatly over the "Pompano's" snorkle
and they were efficiently gaffed. There was
nothing to do but emerge, rather sheepishly,
and make the best of it.

  Fortunately, their captors were reasonable
men and could recognise the truth when they
heard it. Fifteen minutes after coming aboard
the "Valency," George and Harry were sitting on
the bridge while a uniformed steward brought
them highballs and they listened attentively to
the theories of Dr. Gilbert Romano.

  They were still both a little overawed at being
in Dr. Romano's presence: it was rather like
meeting a live Rockefeller or a reigning du
Pont. The Doctor was a phenomenon virtually
unknown in Europe and unusual even in the
United States the big scientist who had be-
come a bigger business man. He was now in
his late seventies and had just been
retired after a considerable tussle- from the
chairmanship of the vast chemical engineering
firm he had founded.

  It is rather amusing, Harry told us, to notice
the subtle social distinctions which differences
in wealth can produce even in the most
democratic country. By Harry's standards,
George was a very rich man: his income was
around a hundred thousand dollars a year. But
Dr. Romano was in another price range
altogether, and had to be treated accordingly
with a kind of friendly respect which had

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 93

nothing to do with obsequiousness. On his side,
the Doctor was perfectly free and easy; there
was nothing about him that gave any impression
of wealth, if one ignored such trivia as
hundred-and-fifty-foot ocean-going yachts.

  The fact that George was on first-name terms
with most of the Doctor's business
acquaintances helped to break the ice and to
establish the purity of their motives. Harry spent
a boring half hour while business deals ranging
over half the United States were discussed in
terms of what Bill So-and-so did in Pittsburgh,
who Joe Somebody Else ran into at the Bankers'
Club in Houston, how Clyde Thingummy
happened to be playing golf at Augusta while
Ike was there. It was a glimpse of a mysterious
world where immense power was wielded by
men who all seemed to have gone to the same
colleges, or who at any rate belonged to the
same clubs. Harry soon became aware of the
fact that George was not merely paying court to
Dr. Romano because that was the polite thing to
do. George was too shrewd a lawyer to miss
this chance of building up some good-will, and
appeared to have forgotten all about the original
purpose of their expedition.

  Harry had to wait for a suitable gap in the
conversation before he could raise the subject
which really interested him. When it dawned on
Dr. Romano that he was talking to another
scientist, he promptly abandoned finance and
George was the one who was left out in the colt

  The thing that puzzled Harry was why a
distinguished chemist should be interested in
marine propulsion. Being a man of direct action,
he challenged the Doctor on this point. For a
moment the scientist appeared a little em-
barrassed and Harry was about to apologize for
his inquisitiveness a feat that would have
required real effort on his part. But before he
could do this, Dr. Romano had excused himself
and disappeared into the bridge.

  He came back five minutes later with a rather
satisfied expression, and continued as if nothing
had happened.

  "A very natural question, Mr. Purvis," he
chuckled. "I'd have asked it myself. But do you
really expect me to tell you?"

"Er it was just a vague sort of hope,"
confessed Harry. "Then I'm going to surprise
you surprise you twice, in fact. I'm going to
answer you, and I'm going to show you that
I'm not passionately interested in marine pro-
pulsion. Those bulges on the bottom of my
ship which you were inspecting with such
great interest do contain the screws, but they
also contain a good deal else as well.

  "Let me give you," continued Dr. Romano,
now obviously warming up to his subject, "a
few elementary statistics about the ocean. We
can see a lot of it from here  quite a few
square miles. Did you know that every cubic
mile of sea-water contains a hundred and fifty
nullion tons of minerals."

  "Franldy, no," said George. "It's an
impressive thought."

  "It's impressed me for a long time," said the
Doctor. "Here we go grubbing about in the
earth for our metals and chemicals, while every
element that exists can be found in sea water.
The ocean, in fact, is a kind of universal mine
which can never be exhausted. We may
plunder the land, but we'll never empty the
sea.

  "Men have already started to mine the sea,
you know. Dow Chemicals have been taking
out bromine for years: every cubic mile
contains about three hundred thousand tons.
More recently, we've started to do something
about the five million tons of magnesium per
cubic mile. But that sort of thing is merely a
beginning.

  "The great practical problem is that most of
the elements present in sea-water are in such
low concentrations. The first seven elements
make up about 99 percent of the total, and it's
the remaining one percent that contains all the
useful metals except magnesium.

  "All my life I've wondered how we could do
something about this, and the answer came
during the war. I don't know if you're familiar
with the techniques used in the atomic energy
field to remove minute quantities of isotopes
from solutions: some of those methods are still
pretty much under wraps."

  "Are you talking about ion-exchange resins?"
hazarded Harry.

the MAN WHO PLOUGHED the SBA 95

  "Well something similar. My firm developed
several of these techniques on A.E.C. contracts,
and I realised at once that they would have
wider applications. I put some of my bright
young men to work and they have made what
we call a "molecular sieve". That's a mighty
descriptive expression: in its way, the thing is a
sieve, and we can set it to select anything we
like. It depends on very advanced
wave-mechanical theories for its operation, but
what it actually does is absurdly simple. We can
choose any component of sea-water we like,
and get the sieve to take it out. With several
units, working in series, we can take out one
element after another. The efficiency's quite
high, and the power consumption negligible."

  "I knowl" yelped George. "You're extracting
gold from sea-water!',

  "Huhl" snorted Dr. Romano in tolerant disgust.
"I've got better things to do with my time. Too
much damn gold around, anyhow. I'm after the
commercially useful metals the ones our
civilisation is going to be desperately short of in
another couple of generations. And as a matter
of fact, even with my sieve it wouldn't be worth
going after gold. There are only about fifty
pounds of the stuff in every cubic mile."

  "What about uranium?" asked Harry. "Or is
that scarcer still?"

  "I rather wish you hadn't asked that question,"
replied Dr. Romano with a cheerfulness that
belied the remark. "But since you can look it up
in any library, there's no harm in telling you that
UraDium'S two hundred times more common
than gold. About seven tons in every cubic mile
 a figure which is, shall we say, distinctly
interesting. So why bother about gold?"

"Why indeed?" echoed George.

  `'To continue," said Dr. Romano, duly
continuing, "even with the molecular sieve,
we've still got the problem of processing
enormous volumes of sea-water. There are a
number of ways one could tackle this: you
could build giant pumping stations, for example.
But I've always been keen on killing two birds
with one stone, and the other day I did a little
calculation that gave the most surprising

result. I found that every time the 'Queen Mary'
crosses the Atlantic, her screws chew up about
a tenth of a cubic mile of water. Fifteen million
tons of minerals, in other words. Or to take the
case you indiscreetly mentioned  almost a ton
of uranium on every Atlantic crossing. Quite a
thought, isn't it?

  "So it seemed to me that all we need do to
create a very useful mobile extraction plant
was to put the screws of any vessel inside a
tube which would compel the slip-stream to
pass through one of my sieves. Of course,
there's a certain loss of propulsive power, but
our experimental unit works very well. We can't
go quite as fast as we did, but the further we
cruise the more money we make from our
mining operations. Don't you think the shipping
companies will find that very attractive? But of
course that's merely incidental. I look forward
to the building of floating extraction plants that
will cruise round and round in the ocean until
they've filled their hoppers with anything you
care to name. When that day comes, we'll be
able to stop tearing up the land and all our
material shortages Will be over. Everytfung
goes back to the sea in the long run anyway,
and once we've unlocked that treasure-chest,
we'll be all set for eternity."

  For a moment there was silence on deck,
save for the faint clink of ice in the tumblers,
while Dr. Romano's guests contemplated this
dazzling prospect. Then Harry was struck by a
sudden thought.

  "This is quite one of the most important
inventions I've ever heard of," he said. "That's
why I find it rather odd that you should have
confided in us so fully. After all, we're perfect
strangers, and for all you know might be
spying on you."

The old scientist chortled gaily.

  "Don't worry about that, my boy," he
reassured Harry. "I've already been on to
Washington and had my friends check up on
you."

  Harry blinked for a minute, then realised how
it had been done. He remembered Dr.
Romano's brief disappearance, and could
picture what had happened. There would have
been a radio call to Washington, some senator

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 97

would have got on to the Embassy, the Ministry
of Supply representative would have done his
bit and in five minutes the Doctor would have
got the answer he wanted. Yes, Americans were
very efficient those who could afford to be.

  It was about this time that Harry became
aware of the fact that they were no longer alone.
A much larger and more impressive yacht than
the "Valency" was heading towards them, and in
a few minutes he was able to read the name
"Sea Spray". Such a name, he thought, was
more appropriate to billowing sails than
throbbing diesels, but there was no doubt that
the "Spray" was a very pretty creature indeed.
He could understand the looks of undisguised
covetousness that both George and Dr. Romano
now plainly bore.

  The sea was so calm that the two yachts were
able to come alongside each other, and as soon
as they had made contact a sunburned,
energetic man in the late forties vaulted over on
to the deck of the "Valency". He strode up to Dr.
Romano, shook his hand vigorously, said, "Well,
you old rascal, what are you up to?" and then
looked Inquiringly at the rest of the company.
The Doctor carried out the introductions: it
seemed that they had been boarded by
Professor Scott McKenzie, who'd been sailing
his yacht down from Key Largo.

  "Oh no!" cried Harry to himself. "This is too
muchl One millionaire scientist per day is all I
can stand."

  But there was no getting away from it. True,
McKenzie was very seldom seen in the
academic cloisters, but he was a genuine
Professor none the less, holding the chair of
geophysics at some Texas college. Ninety
percent of his time, however, he spent working
for the big oil companies and running a
consulting firm of his own. It rather looked as if
he had made his torsion balances and
seismographs pay quite well for themselves. In
fact, though he was a much younger man than
Dr. Romano, he had even more money owing to
being in a more rapidly expanding industry.
Harry gathered that the peculiar tax laws of the
Sovereign State of Texas also had something to
do with it....

98 TALES FROM TEIE WEITTE HART

  It seemed an unlikely coincidence that these
two scientific tycoons should have met by
chance, and Harry waited to see what
skullduggery was afoot. For a while the con-
versation was confined to generalities, but it
was obvious that Professor McKenzie was
extremely inquisitive about the Doctor's other
two guests. Not long after they had been
introduced, he made some excuse to hop back
to his own ship and Harry moaned inwardly. If
the Embassy got two separate enquiries about
him in the space of half an hour, they'd wonder
what he'd been up to. It might even make the
F.B.I. suspicious, and then how would he get
those promised twenty-four pairs of nylons out
of the country?

  Harry found it quite fascinating to study the
relation between the two scientists. They were
like a couple of fighting cocks circling for
position. Romano treated the younger man with
a downright rudeness which, Harry suspected,
concealed a grudging admiration. It was clear
that Dr. Romano was an almost fanatical
conservationist, and regarded the activities of
McKenzie and his employers with the greatest
disapproval. "You're a gang of robbers," he
said once. "You're seeing how quickly you can
loot this planet of its resources, and you don't
give a damn about the next generation."

  "And what,', answered McKenzie, not very
originally, "has the next generation ever done
for us?"

  The sparmug continued for the best part of
an hour, and much of what went on was
completely over Harry's head. He wondered
why he and George were being allowed to sit
in on all this, and after a while he began to
appreciate Dr. Romano's technique. He was an
opportunist of gowns: he was glad to keep
them round, now that they had turned up, jwt
to worry Professor McKenzie and to make him
wonder what other deals were afoot.

  He let the molecular sieve leak out bit by bit,
as if it wasn't really important and he was only
mentioning it in passing. Professor McKenzie,
however, latched on to it at once, and the more
evasive Romano became, the more insistent
was his adversary. It was obvious that he was
being deliberately coy, and that though
Professor Mc

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 99

Kenzie knew this perfectly well, he couldn't help
playing the older scientist's game.

  Dr. Romano had been discussing the device
in a peculiarly oblique fashion, as if it were a
future project rather than an existing fact. He
outlined its staggering possibilities, and
explained how it would make all existing forms
of mining obsolete, besides removing forever
the danger of world metal shortages.

  "If it's so good," exclaimed McKenzie
presently, "Why haven't you made the thing?"

  "What do you think I'm doing out here in the
Gulf Stream?" retorted the Doctor. "Take a look
at this."

  He opened a locker beneath the sonar set,
and pulled out a small metal bar which he
tossed to McKenzie. It looked like lead, and was
obviously extremely heavy. The Professor
hefted it in his hand and said at once: "Uranium.
Do you mean to say...."

  "Yes every gram. And there's plenty more
where that came from." He turned to Harry's
friend and said: "George what about taking the
Professor down in your submarine to have a
look at the works? He won't see much, but it'll
show him we're in business."

  McKenzie was still so thoughtful that he took
a little thing like a pAvate submarine in his
stride. He returned to the surface fifteen
minutes later, having seen just enough to whet
his appetite.

  "The first thing I want to know," he said to
Romano, "is why you're showing this to me! It's
about the biggest thing that ever
happened why isn't your own firm handling it?"

Romano gave a little snort of disgust.

  "You know I've had a row with the Board," he
said. "Anyway, that lot of old dead-beats
couldn't handle anything as big as this. I hate to
admit it, but you Texas pirates are the boys for
the job."

"This is a pAvate venture of yours?"

  "Yes: the company knows nothing about it,
and I've sunk half a million of my own money
into it. It's been a kind of hobby of mine. I felt
someone had to undo the damage that was
going on, the rape of the continents by people
like "

  "All right we've heard that before. Yet you
propose giving it to us?"

"Who said anything about giving?"

  There was a pregnant silence. Then
McKenzie said cautiously; "Of course, there's
no need to tell you that we'll be
interested very interested. If you'll let us have
the figures on efficiency, extraction rates, and
all the other relevant statistics no need to tell
us the actual technical details if you don't want
to then we'll be able to talk business. I can't
really speak for my associates but I'm sure that
they can raise enough cover to make any
deal "

  "Scott," said Romano and his voice now
held a note of tiredness that for the first time
reflected his age "I'm not interested in doing
a deal with your partners. I haven't time to
haggle with the boys in the front room and
their lawyers and their lawyers' lawyers. Fifty
years I've been doing that sort of thing, and
believe me, I'm tired. This is my development.
It was done with my money, and all the
equipment is in my ship. I want to do a
personal deal, direct with you. You can handle
it from then on."

McKenzie blinked

  "I couldn't swing anything as big as this," he
protested. "Sure, I appreciate the offer, but if
this does what you say, it's worth billions. And
I'm just a poor but honest millionaire."

  "Money I'm no longer interested in. What
would I do with it at my time of life? No, Scott,
there's just one thing I want now and I want
it right away, this minute. Give me the 'Sea
Spray', and you can have my process."

  "You're crazyl Why, even with inflation, you
could build the 'Spray' for inside a million. And
your process must be worth ''

  "I'm not arguing, Scott. What you say is true,
but I'm an old man in a hurry, and it would take
me a year to get a ship like yours built. I've
wanted her ever since you showed her to me
back at Miami. My proposal is that you take
over the 'Valency', with all her lab equipment
and records. It will only take an hour to swap
our personal effects we've a lawyer here who
can make it all legal. And then I'm heading out
into the Caribbean, down through the islands,
and across the Pacific."

THE MAN WHO PLOUGHED THE SEA 101

  "You've got it all worked out?" said McKenzie
in awed wonder.

"Yes. You can take it or leave it."

  "I never heard such a crazy deal in my life,"
said McKenzie, somewhat petulantly. "Of course
I'll take it. I know a stubborn old mule when I
see one."

  The next hour was one of frantic activity.
Sweating crew-members rushed back and forth
with suitcases and bundles, while Dr. Romano
sat happily in the midst of the turmoil he had
created, a blissful smile upon his wrinkled old
face. George and Professor McKenzie went into
a legal huddle, and emerged with a document
which Dr. Romano signed with hardly a glance.

  Unexpected things began to emerge from the
"Sea Spray", such as a beautiful mutation mink
and a beautiful non-mutation blonde.

  "Hello, Sylvia," said Dr. Romano politely. "I'm
afraid you'll find the quarters here a little more
cramped. The Professor never mentioned you
were aboard. Never mind  we won't mention it
either. Not actually in the contract, but a
gentleman's agreement, shall we say? It would
be such a pity to upset Mrs. McKenzie."

  "I don't know what you mean!" pouted Sylvia,
"Someone has to do all the Professor's typing."

  "And you do it damn badly, my dear," said
McKenzie, assisting her over the rail with true
Southern gallantry. Harry couldn't help admiring
his composure in such an embarrassing
situation he was by no means sure that he
would have managed as well. But he wished he
had the opportunity to find out.

  At last the chaos subsided, the stream of
boxes and bundles subsided to a trickle. Dr.
Romano shook hands with everybody, thanked
George and Harry for their assistance, strode to
the bridge of the "Sea Spray", and ten minutes
later, was half-way to the horizon.

  Harry was wondering if it wasn't about time
for them to take their departure as well they
had never got round to explaining to Professor
McKenzie what they were doing here in the first
place when the radio-telephone started calling.
Dr. Romano was on the line.

"Forgotten his tooth-brush, I suppose," said
George.

102 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

It was not quite as trivial as that. Fortunately,
the loudspeaker was switched on.
Eavesdropping was practically forced upon
them and required none of the effort that
makes it so embarrassing to a gentleman.

  "Look here, Scott," said Dr. Romano, "I think
I owe you some sort of explanation."

"If you've gypped me, I'll have you for every
cent "

  "Oh, it's not like that. But I did rather
pressu~ize you, though everything was
perfectly true. Don't get too annoyed with
me you've got a bargain. It'll be a long time,
tnoug'n, before it makes you any money, and
you'll have to sink a few millions of your own
into it first. You see, the efficiency has to be
increased by about three orders of magmtude
before it will be a commercial proposition: that
bar of uranium cost me a couple of thousand
dollars. Now don't blow your top it can be
done  I'm certain of that. Dr. Kendall is the
man to get: he did all the basic work hire bim
away from my people however much it costs
you. You're a stubborn cuss and I know you'll
finish the job now it's on your hands. That's
why I wanted you to have it. Poetic justice,
too you'll be able to repay some of the
damage you've done to the land. Too bad it'll
make you a billionaire, but that can't be
helped.

  "Wait a minute~on't cut in on me. I'd have
finished the job myself if I had the time, but it'll
take at least three more years. And the doctors
say I've only got six months: I wasn't kidding
when I said I was in a hurry. I'm glad I
clinched the deal without having to tell you
that, but believe me I'd have used it as a
weapon if I had to. Just one thing more when
you do get the process working, name it after
me, will you? That's all it's no use calling me
back. I won't answer and I know you can't
catch me."

Professor McKenzie didn't turn a hair.

  "I thought it was something like that," he said
to no one in particular. Theri he sat down,
produced an elaborate pocket slide-rule, and
became oblivious to the world. He scarcely
looked up when George and HalTy, feeling
very much outclassed, made their polite
departure and silently snorkled away.

THE RELUCTANT ORCHID 103

  "Like so many things that happen these days,"
conduded Harry Purvis, "I still don't know the
final outcome of this meeting. I rather imagine
that Professor McKenzie has run into some
snags, or we'd have heard rumors about the
process by now. But I've not the slightest doubt
that sooner or later it'll be perfected, so get
ready to sell your mining shares....

  "As for Dr. Romano, he wasn't kidding,
though his doctors were a little out in their
estimates. He lasted a full year, and I guess the
'Sea Spray' helped a lot. They buried him in
mid-Pacific, and it's just occurred to me that the
old boy would have appreciated that. I told you
what a fanatical conservationist he was, and it's
a piquant thought that even now some of his
atoms may be going through his own molecular
sieve....

  "I notice some incredulous looks, but it's a
fact. If you took a tumbler of water, poured it
into the ocean, milled well, then filled the glass
from the sea, there'd still be some scores of
molecules of water from the original sample in
the tumbler. So " he gave a gruesome little
chuckle "it's only a matter of time before not
only Dr. Romano, but all of us, make some
contribution to the sieve. And with that thought,
gentlemen, I bid you all a very pleasant
good-night."

        TEIE RELUCTANT ORCHID

THOUGH FEW people in the "White Hart" will
concede that any of Harry Purvis' stories are
actually true, everyone agrees that some are
much more probable than others. And on any
scale of probability, the affair of the Select tent
Orchid must rate very low indeed.

  I don't remember what ingenious gambit
Harry used to launch this narrative: maybe
some orchid fancier brought his latest
monstrosity into the bar, and that set him off.
No matter. I do remember the story, and after
an that's what counts.

104 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

  The adventure did not, this time, coerced
any of Harry's numerous relatives, and he
avoided explaining just how he managed to
know so many of the sordid details. The
hero if you can call him that of this hot-
house epic was an inoffensive little clerk
named Hercules Heating. And if you think that
is the most unlikely part of the story, just stick
round a while.

  Hercules is not the sort of name you can
carry off lightly at the best of times, and when
you are four foot nine and look as if you'd
have to take a physical culture course before
you can even become a 97-pound weakling, it
is a positive embarrassment. Perhaps it helped
to explain why Hercules had very little social
life, and all his real friends grew in pots in a
humid conservatory at the bottom of his
garden. His needs were simple and he spent
very little money on himself; consequently his
collection of orchids and cacti was really
rather remarkable. Indeed, he had a wide
reputation among the fraternity of cactophiles,
and often received from remote corners of the
globe, parcels smelling of mould and tropical
jungles.

  Hercules had only one living relative, and it
would have been hard to find a greater
contrast than Aunt Henrietta. She was a
massive six footer, usually wore a rather loud
line in Harris tweeds, drove a Jaguar with
reckless skill, and chain-smoked cigars. Her
parents had set their hearts on a boy, and had
never been able to decide whether or not their
wish had been granted. Henrietta earned a
living, and quite a good one, breeding dogs of
various shapes and sizes. She was seldom
without a couple of her latest models, and they
were not the type of portable canine which
ladies like to carry in their handbags. The
Keating Kennels specialised in Great Danes,
Alsatians, and Saint Bernards....

  Henrietta, rightly despising men as the
weaker sex, had never married. However, for
some reason she took an avuncular (yes, that
is definitely the right word) interest in
Hercules, and called to see him almost every
weekend. It was a curious kind of relationship:
probably Henrietta found that Hercules
bolstered up her feelings of superiority. If he
was a good example of the male sex, then they

THE RELUCTANT ORCHID 105

were certainly a pretty sorry lot. Yet, if this was
Henrietta's motivation, she was unconscious of
it and seemed genuinely fond of her nephew.
She was patronising, but never unkind.

  As -might be expected, her attentions did not
exactly help Hercules' own well-developed
inferiority complex. At first he had tolerated his
aunt; then he came to dread her regular visits,
her booming voice and her bone-crushing
handshake; and at last he grew to hate her.
Eventually, indeed, his hate was the dominant
emotion in his life, exceeding even his love for
his orchids. But he was careful not to show it,
realizing that If Aunt Henrietta discovered how
he felt about her, she would probably break
him in two and throw the pieces to her wolf
pack.

  There was no way, then, in which Hercules
could express his pent-up feelings. He had to
be polite to Aunt Henrietta even when he felt
like murder. And he often did feel dike murder,
though he knew that there was nothmg he
would ever do about it. Until one day . . .

  According to the dealer, the orchid came
from "somewhere in the Amazon region" a
rather vague postal address. When Hercules
first saw it, it was not a very prepossessing
sight, even to anyone who loved orchids as
much as he did. A shapeless root, about the
size of a man's fist that was all. It was
redolent of decay, and there was the faintest
hint of a rank, carrion smell. Hercules was not
even sure that it was viable, and told the dealer
as much. Perhaps that enabled him to purchase
it for a trifling sum, and he carried it home
without much enthusiasm.

  It showed no signs of life for the first month,
but that did not worry Hercules. Then, one day,
a tiny green shoot appeared and started to
creep up to the light. After that, progress was
rapid. Soon there was a thick, fleshy stem as
big as a man's forearm, and colored a
positively virulent green. Near the top of the
stem a series of curious bulges circled the
plant: otherwise it was completely featureless.
Hercules was now quite excited: he was sure
that some entirely new species had swum into
his ken.

The rate of growth was now really fantastic:
soon the

106 TALES FROM the WHITE HART

plant was taller than Hercules, not that that
was saying a great deal. Moreover, the bulges
seemed to be developing, and it looked as if at
any moment the orchid would burst into
bloom. Hercules waited anxiously, knowing
how short-lived some flowers can be, and
spent as much time as he possibly could in the
hot-house. Despite all his watchfulness, the
transformation occurred one night while he
was asleep.

  In the morning, the orchid was fringed by a
series of eight dangling tendrils, almost
reaching to the ground. They must have
developed inside the plant and emerged
with for the vegetable world explosive
speed. Hercules stared at the phenomenon in
amazement, and went very thoughtfully to
work.

  That evening, as he watered the plant and
checked its soil, he noticed a still more
peculiar fact. The tendrils were thickening, and
they were not completely motionless. They had
a slight but unmistakable tendency to vibrate,
as if possessing a life of their own. Even
Hercules, for all his interest and enthusiasm,
found this more than a little disturbing.

  A few days later, there was no doubt about
it at all. When he approached the orchid, the
tendrils swayed towards him in an
unpleasantly suggestive fashion. The im-
pression of hunger was so strong that
Hercules began to feel very uncomfortable
indeed, and something started to nag at the
back of his mind. It was quite a while before
he could recall what it was: then he said to
himself, "Of course! How stupid of me!" and
went along to the local library. Here he spent
a most interesting half-hour rereading a little
piece by one H. G. Wells entitled, "The
Flowering of the Strange Orchid."

  "My goodness!" thought Hercules, when he
had finished the We. As yet there had been no
stupifying odor which might overpower the
plant's intended victim, but otherwise the
characteristics were an too similar. Hercules
went home in a very unsettled mood indeed.

  He opened the conservatory door and stood
looking along the avenue of greenery towards
his prize specimen. He judged the length of
the tendrils already he found

THE RELUCTANT ORCHID 107

himself calling them tentacles with great care
and walked to within what appeared a safe
distance. The plant certainly had an impression
of alertness and menace far more appropriate
to the animal than the vegetable kingdom.
Hercules remembered the unfortunate history of
Doctor Frankenstein, and was not amused.

  But, ready, this was ridiculous! Such things
didn't happen in real life. WeU, there was one
way to put matters to the test . . .

  Hercules went into the house and came back
a few minutes later with a broomstick, to the
end of which he had attached a piece of raw
meat. Feeling a considerable fool, he advanced
towards the orchid as a lion-tamer might
approach one of his charges at meal-time.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then two of
the tendrils developed an agitated twitch. They
began to sway back and forth, as if the plant
was making up its mind. Abruptly, they whipped
out with such speed that they practically
vanished from view. They wrapped themselves
round the meat, and Hercules felt a powerful
tug at the end of his broomstick. Then the meat
was gone: the orchid was clutching it, if one
may mix metaphors slightly, to its bosom.

  "Jumping Jehosophat!" yelled Hercules. It was
very seldom indeed that he used such strong
language.

  The orchid showed no further signs of life for
twentyfour hours. It was waiting for the meat to
become high, and it was also developing its
digestive system. By the next day, a network of
what looked like short roots had covered the
still visible chunk of meat. By nightfall, the meat
was gone.

The plant had tasted blood.

  Hercules' emotions as he watched over his
prize were curiously mixed. There were times
when it almost gave him nightmares, and he
foresaw a whole range of horrid possibilities.
The orchid was now extremely strong, and if he
got within its clutches he would be done for.
But, of course, there was not the slightest
danger of that. He had arranged a system of
pipes so that it could be watered

108 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

from a safe distance, and its less orthodox
food he simply tossed within range of its
tentacles. It was now eating a pound of raw
meat a day, and he had an uncomfortable
feeling that it could cope with much larger
quantities if given the opportunity.

  Hercules' natural qualms were, on the whole,
outweighed by his feeling of triumph that such
a botanical marvel had faDen into his hands.
Whenever he chose, he could become the
most famous orchid-grower in the world. It was
typical of his somewhat restricted view-point
that it never occurred to him that other people
besides orchid-fanciers might be interested in
his pet.

  The creature was now about six feet tall, and
apparently still growing though much more
slowly than it had been. All the other plants
had been moved from its end of the
conservatory, not so much because Hercules
feared that it might be cannibalistic as to
enable him to tend them without danger. He
had stretched a rope across the central aisle
so that there was no risk of his accidentally
walking within range of those eight dangling
arms.

  It was obvious that the orchid had a highly
developed nenous system, and something very
nearly approaching intelligence. It knew when
it was going to be fed, and exhibited
unmistakable signs of pleasure. Most fantastic
of all though Hercules was still not sure
about this it seemed capable of producing
sounds. There were times, just before a meal,
when he fancied he could hear an incredibly
high-pitched whistle, skirting the edge of audi-
bility. A new-born bat might have had such a
voice: he wondered what purpose it served.
Did the orchid somehow lure its prey into its
clutches by sound? If so, he did not think the
technique would work on him.

  While Hercules was making these interesting
discoveries, he continued to be fussed over by
Aunt Henrietta and assaulted by her hounds,
which were never as housetrained as she
claimed them to be. She would usually roar up
the street on a Sunday afternoon with one dog
in the seat beside her and another occupying
most of the baggage compartment. Then she
would bound up the steps two at a time, nearly
deafen Hercules with her greetings

IkERELUCTANT ORCEITD 109

half paralyze him with her handshake, and blow
cigar smoke in his face. There had been a time
when he was terrified that she would kiss him,
but he had long since realized that such
effeminate behaviour was foreign to her nature.

  Aunt Henrietta looked upon Hercules' orchids
with some scorn. Spending one's spare time in
a hothouse was, she considered, a very effete
recreation. When she wanted to let off steam,
she went big-game hunting in Kenya. This did
nothing to endear her to Hercules, who hated
blood sports. But despite his mounting dislike
for his overpowering aunt, every Sunday
afternoon he dutifully prepared tea for her and
they had a tete-a-tete together which, on the
surface at least, seemed perfectly friendly.
Henrietta never guessed that as he poured the
tea Hercules often wished it was poisoned: she
was, far down beneath her extensive
fortifications, a fundamentally good-hearted
person and the knowledge would have upset
her deeply.

  Hercules did not mention his vegetable
octopus to Aunt Henrietta. He had occasionally
shown her his most interesting specimens, but
this was something he was keeping to himself.
Perhaps, even before he had folly formulated
his diabolical plan, his subconscious was
already preparing the ground . . .

  It was late one Sunday evening, when the
roar of the Jaguar had died away into the night
and Hercules was restoring his shattered
nerves in the conservatory, that the idea first
came fully-fledged into his mind. He was staring
at the orchid, noting how the tendrils were now
as thick around as a man's thumb, when a most
pleasing fantasy suddenly flashed before his
eyes. He pictured Aunt Henrietta struggling
helplessly in the grip of the monster, unable to
escape from its carnivorous clutches. Why, it
would be the perfect crime. The distraught
nephew would arrive on the scene too late to
be of assistance, and when the police answered
his frantic call they would see at a glance that
the whole affair was a deplorable accident.
True, there would be an inquest, but the
coroner's censure would be toned down in view
of Hercules' obvious grief . . .

The more he thought of the idea, the more he
liked it.

I 10 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

He could see no flaws, as long as the orchid
co-operated. That, clearly, would be the
greatest problem. He would have to plan a
course of trying for the creature. It already
looked sufficiently diabolical; he must give it a
disposition to suit its appearance.

  Considering that he had no prior experience
in such matters, and that there were no
authorities he could consult, Hercules
proceeded along very sound and businesslike
lines. He would use a fishing rod to dangle
pieces of meat just outside the orchid's range,
until the creature lashed its tentacles in a
frenzy. At such times its highpitched squeak
was clearly audible, and Hercules wondered
how it managed to produce the sound. He also
wondered what its organs of perception were,
but this was yet another mystery that could not
be solved without close examination. Perhaps
Aunt Henrietta, if all went welt would have a
brief opportunity of discovering these in-
teresting facts though she would probably be
too busy to report them for the benefit of
posterity.

  There was no doubt that the beast was quite
powerful enough to deal with its intended
victim. It had once wrenched a broomstick out
of Hercules' grip, and although that in itself
proved very little, the sickening "crack" of the
wood a moment later brought a smile of
satisfaction to its trainer's thin lips. He began
to be much more pleasant and attentive to his
aunt. In every respect, indeed, he was the
model nephew.

  When Hercules considered that his picador
tactics had brought the orchid into the right
frame of mind, he wondered if he should test
it with live bait. This was a problem that
worried him for some weeks, during which
time he would look speculatively at every dog
or cat he passed in the street, but he finally
abandoned the idea, for a rather peculiar
reason. He was simply too kind-hearted to put
it into practice. Aunt Henrietta would have to
be the first victim.

  He starved the orchid for two weeks before
he put his plan into action. This was as long as
he dared risk he did not wish to weaken the
beast merely to whet its appetite that the
outcome of the encounter might be more
certain.

THE RELUCTANT ORCHID 1 1 1

And so, when he had carried the tea-cups back
into the kitchen and was sitting upwind of Aunt
Henrietta's cigar, he said casually: "I've got
something I'd like to show you, auntie. I've
been keeping it as a surprise. It'll tickle you to
death."

  That, he thought, was not a completely
accurate description, but it gave the general
idea.

  Auntie took the cigar out of her mouth and
looked at Hercules with frank surprise.

  "Well!" she boomed. "Wonders will never
ceasel What have you been up to, you rascal?"
She slapped him playfully on the back and shot
all the air out of his lungs.

  "You'll never believe it," gritted Hercules,
when he had recovered his breath. "It's in the
observatory."

"Eh?" said Auntie, obviously puzzled.

  "Yes come along and have a look. It's going
to create a real sensation."

  Auntie gave a snort that might have indicated
disbelief, but followed Hercules without further
question. The two Alsatians now busily chewing
up the carpet looked at her anxiously and half
rose to their feet, but she waved them away.

  "All right, boys," she ordered gruffly. "I'll be
back in a minute." Hercules thought this
unlikely.

  It was a dark evening, and the lights in the
conservatory were off. As they entered, Auntie
snorted, "Gad, Hercules the place smells like
a slaughter-house. Haven't met such a stink
since I shot that elephant in Bulawayo and we
couldn't find it for a week."

  "Sorry, auntie," apologised Hercules,
propelling her forward through the gloom. "It's
a new fertiliser I'm using. It produces the most
stunning results. Go on another couple of
yards. I want this to be a real surprise."

  "I hope this isn't a joke," said Auntie
suspiciously, as she stomped forward.

  "I can promise you it's no joke," replied
Hercutes, standing with his hand on the light
switch. He could just see the looming bulk of
the orchid: Auntie was now within ten feet of it.
He waited until she was well inside the danger
zone, and threw the switch

1 1 2 TALES FROM THrl WHITE HART

  There was a frozen moment while the scene
was transfixed with light. Then Aunt Henrietta
ground to a halt and stood, arms akimbo, in
front of the giant orchid. For a moment
Hercules was afraid she would retreat before
the plant could get into action: then he saw
that she was calmly scrutinising it, unable to
make up her mind what the devil it was.

  It was a full five seconds before the orchid
moved. Then the dangling tentacles Dashed
into action but not in the way that Hercules
had expected. The plant clutched them tightly,
protectively, around itself and at the same
time it gave a high-pitched scream of pure
terror. In a moment of sickening
disillusionment, Hercules realized the awful
truths

  His orchid was an utter coward. It might be
able to cope with the wild life of the Amazon
jungle, but coming suddenly upon Aunt
Henrietta had completely broken its nerve.

  As for its proposed victim, she stood
watching the creature with an astonishment
which swiftly changed to another emotion. She
spun around on her heels and pointed an
accusing finger at her nephew.

  "Hercules!" she roared. "The poor thing's
scared to death. Have you been bullying it?"

  Hercules could only stand with his head
hanging low in shame and frustration.

  "N-no, auntie," he quavered. "I guess it's
naturally nervous."

  "Well, I'm used to animals. You should have
called me before. You must treat them
firmly but gently. Kindness always works, as
long as you show them you're the master.
There, there, did-dums don't be frightened of
auntie she won't hurt you . . ."

  It was, thought Hercules in his blank
despair, a revolting sight. With surprising
gentleness, Aunt Henrietta fussed over the
beast, patting and stroking it until the tentacles
relaxed and the shrill, whistling scream died
away. After a few minutes of this pandering, it
appeared to get over its fright. Hercules finally
fled with a muffled sob when one of the
tentacles crept forward and began to stroke
Henrietta's gnarled fingers . . .

COED WAR 1 1 3

  Prom that day, he was a broken man. What
was worse, he could never escape from the
consequences of his intended crime. Henrietta
had acquired a new pet, and was liable to cad
not only at weekends but two or three times in
between as well. It was obvious that she did not
trust Hercules to treat the orchid properly, and
still suspected him of bullying it. She would
bring tasty tidbits that even her dogs had
rejected, but which the orchid accepted with
delight. The smell, which had so far been
confined to the conservatory, began to creep
into the house . . .

  And there, concluded Harry Purvis, as he
brought this improbable narrative to a close, the
matter rests to the satisfaction of two, at any
rate, of the parties concerned. The orchid is
happy, and Aunt Henrietta has something
(query, someone?) else to dominate. From time
to time the creature has a nervous breakdown
when a mouse gets loose in the conservatory,
and she rushes to console it.

  As for Hercules, there is no chance that he
will ever give any more trouble to either of
them. He seems to have sunk into a kind of
vegetable sloth: indeed, said Harry thoughtfully,
every day he becomes more and more like an
orchid himself.

The harmless variety, of course. . ..

               COLD WAR

ONB of ME things that makes Harry Purvis'
tales so infernally convincing is their detailed
verisimilitude. Consider, for instance, this
example. I've checked the places and
information as thoroughly as I can I had to, in
order to write up this account and everything
fits into place. How do you explain that
unless but judge for yourself . . .

  "I've often noticed," Harry began, "how
tantalising little snippets of information appear
in the Press and then, sometimes years later,
one comes across their sequels. I've just had a
beautiful example. In the spring of 1954 I've

114 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

looked up the date it was April 19 an
iceberg was reported off the coast of Florida.
I remember spotting this news item and
thinking it highly peculiar. The Gulf Stream,
you know, is born in the Straits of Florida, and
1 didn't see how an iceberg could get that far
south before It melted. But I forgot about the
whole business almost immediately, thinking it
was just another of those tall stories which the
papers like to print when there isn't any real
news.

  "And then, about a week ago, I met a friend
who'd been a Commander in the U.S. Navy,
and he told me the whole astonishing tale. It's
such a remarkable story that I think it ought to
be better known, though I'm sure that a lot of
people simply won't believe it.

  "Any of you who are familiar with domestic
American affairs may know that Florida's claim
to be the Sunshine State is strongly disputed
by some of the other forty-seven members of
the Union. I don't suppose New York or Maine
or Connecticut are very serious contenders,
but the State of California regards the Florida
claim as an almost personal affront, and is
always doing its best to refute it. The
Floridians hit back by pointing to the famous
Los Angeles smogs, then the Californians say,
with careful anxiety, "Isn't it about time you had
another hurricane?' and the Floridians reply
'You can count on us when you want any
earthquake relief.' So it goes on, and this is
where my friend Commander Dawson came
into the picture.

  "The Commander had been in submarines,
but was now retired. He'd been working as
technical advisor on a film about the exploits
of the submarine service when he was
approached one day with a very peculiar
proposition. I won't say that the California
Chamber of Commerce was behind it, as that
might be libel. You can make your own
guesses . . .

  "Anyway, the idea was a typical Hollywood
conception. So I thought at first, until I
remembered that dear old Lord Dunsany had
used a similar theme in one of his short
stories. Maybe the Californian sponsor was a
Jorkens fan, just as I am.

COLD WE 115

  "The scheme was delightful in its boldness
and simplicity. Commander Dawson was
offered a substantial sum of money to pilot an
artificial iceberg to Florida, with a bonus if he
could contrive to strand it on Miami Beach at
the height of the season.

  "I need hardly say that the Commander
accepted with alacrity: he came from Kansas
himself, so could view the whole thing
dispassionately as a purely commercial prop-
osition. He got together some of his old crew,
swore them to secrecy, and after much waiting
in Washington corridors managed to obtain
temporary loan of an obsolete submarine. Then
he went to a big air-conditioning company,
convinced them of his credit and his sanity, and
got the icemaking plant installed in a big blister
on the sub's deck.

  "It would take an impossible amount of power
to make a solid iceberg, even a small one, so a
compromise was necessary. There would be an
outer coating of ice a couple of feet thick, but
Frigid Freda, as she was christened, was to be
hollow. She would look quite impressive from
outside, but would be a typical Hollywood stage
set when one got behind the scenes. However,
nobody would see her inner secrets except the
Commander and his men. She would be set
adrift when the prevailing winds and currents
were in the right direction, and would last long
enough to cause the calculated alarm and
despondency.

  "Of course, there were endless practical
problems to be solved. It would take several
days of steady freezing to create Freda, and
she must be launched as near her objective as
possible. That meant that the submarine which
we'll call the Marlin would have to use a base
not too far from Miami.

  "The Florida Keys were considered but at
once rejected. There was no privacy down there
any more; the fishermen now outnumbered the
mosquitoes and a submarine would be spotted
almost instantly. Even if the Marlin pretended
she was merely smuggling, she wouldn't be
able to get away with it. So that plan was out.

  "There was another problem that the
Commander had to consider. The coastal
waters round Florida are ex

tremely shallow, and though Freda's draught
would only be a couple of feet, everybody
knew that an honest-togoodness iceberg was
nearly all below the waterline. It wouldn't be
very realistic to have an impressive-looking
berg sailing through two feet of water. That
would give the show away at once.

  "I don't know exactly how the Commander
overcame these technical problems, but I
gather that he carried out several tests in the
Atlantic, far from any shipping routes. The
iceberg reported in the news was one of his
early productions. Incidentally, neither Freda
nor her brethren would have been a danger to
shipping being hollow, they would have
broken up on impact.

  Finally, all the preparations were complete.
The Marlin lay out in the Atlantic, some
distance north of Miami, with her
ice-manufacturing equipment going full blast.
It was a beautiful clear night, with a crescent
moon sinking in the west. The A~Iarlin had no
navigation lights, but Commander Dawson was
keeping a very strict watch for other ships. On
a night like this, he'd be able to avoid them
without being spotted himself.

  "Freda was still in an embryonic stage. I
gather that the technique used was to inflate a
large plastic bag with super-cooled air, and
spray water over it until a crust of ice formed.
The bag could be removed when the ice was
thick enough to stand up under its own weight.
Ice is not a very good structural material, but
there was no need for Freda to be very big.
Even a small iceberg would be as
disconcerting to the Florida Chamber of
Commerce as a small baby to an unmarried
lady.

  "Commander Dawson was in the conning
tower, watching his crew working with their
sprays of ice-cold water and jets of freezing
air. They were now quite skilled at this unusual
occupation, and delighted in little artistic
touches. However, the Commander had had to
put a stop to attempts to reproduce Marilyri
Monroe in ic~though he filed the idea for
future reference.

  "Just after midnight he was startled by a
flash of light in the northern sky, and turned in
time to see a red glow die away on the
horizon.

COLD WAR 1 1 7

  " 'There's a plane down skipper!' shouted one
of the lookouts. 'I just saw it crash!' Without
hesitation, the Commander shouted down to the
engine room and set course to the north. He'd
got an accurate fix on the glow, and judged that
it couldn't be more than a few miles away. The
presence of Freda, covering most of the stern
of his vessel, would not affect his speed
appreciably, and in any case there was no way
of geKing rid of her quickly. He stopped the
freezers to give more power to the main
diesels, and shot ahead at full speed.

  "About thirty minutes later the lookout, using
powerful night-glasses, spotted something Iying
in the water. 'It's still afloat,' he said. 'Some
kind of airplane all right but I can't see any
sign of life. And I think the wings have come
off.'

  "He had scarcely finished speaking when
there was an urgent report from another
watcher.

  " 'Look, skipper thirty degrees to starboard!
What's that?'

  "Commander Dawson swung around and
whipped up his glasses. He saw, just visible
above the water, a small oval object spinning
rapidly on its axis.

  " 'Uh-huh,' he said, 'I'm afraid we've got
company. That's a radar scanner there's
another sub here.' Then he brightened
considerably. 'Maybe we can keep out of this
after all,' he remarked to his second in
command. We'll watch to see that they start
rescue operations, then sneak away.'

  " 'We may have to submerge and abandon
Freda. Remember they'll have spotted us by
now on their radar. Better slacken speed and
behave more like a real iceberg.'

  "Dawson nodded and gave the order. This
was getting complicated, and anything might
happen in the next few minutes. The other sub
would have observed the Marlin merely as a
blip on its radar screen, but as soon as it upped
periscope its commander would start
investigating. Then the fat would be in the fire
. . .

  "Dawson analyzed the tactical situation. The
best move, he decided, was to employ his
unusual camouflage to the full. He gave the
order to swing the Marlin around

118 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

so that her stern pointed towards the still
submerged stranger. When the other sub
surfaced, her commander would be most
surprised to see an iceberg, but Dawson
hoped he would be too busy with rescue
operations to bother about Freda.

  "He pointed his glasses towards the crashed
plane  and then had his second shock. It was
a very peculiar type of aircraft indeed -and
there was something wrong

  " 'Of course!' said Dawson to his Number
One. 'We should have thought of this that
thing isn't an airplane at all. It's a missile from
the range over at Cocoa look, you can see
the floatation bags. They must have inflated on
impact, and that sub was waiting out here to
take it back.'

  "He'd remembered that there was a big
missile launching range over on the east coast
of Florida, at a place with the unlikely name of
Cocoa on the still more improbable Banana
River. Well, at least there was nobody in
danger, and if the Marlin sat tight there was a
sporting chance that they'd be none the worse
for this diversion.

  "Their engines were just turning over, so that
they had enough control to keep hiding behind
their camouflage. Freda was quite large
enough to conceal their conning tower, and
from a distance, even in better light than this,
the Marlin would be totally invisible. There was
one horrid possibility, though. The other sub
might start shelling them on general
principles, as a menace to navigation. No: it
would just report them by radio to the
coast-guards, which would be a nuisance but
would not interfere with their plans.

  " 'Here she comesl' said Number One. 'What
class is she?'

  "They both stared through their glasses as
the submarine, water pouring from its sides,
emerged from the faintly phosphorescent
ocean. The moon had now almost set, and it
was difficult to make out any details. The radar
scanner, Dawson was glad to see, had
stopped its rotation and was pointing at the
crashed missile. There was something odd
about the design of that conning tower, though
. . .

COLD We 1 l9

  "Then Dawson swallowed hard, lifted the mike to
his mouth, and whispered to his crew in the
bowels of the Marlin: 'Does anyone down there
speak Russian....?'

  "There was a long silence, but presently the
engineer officer climbed up into the conning
tower.

  " 'I know a bit, skipper,' he said. 'My
grandparents came from the Ukraine. What's the
trouble?'

  " 'Take a look at this,' said Dawson grimly.
'There's an interesting piece of poaching going on
here. I Thirsk we ought to stop it . . .' "

  Harry Purvis has a most annoying habit of
breaking off just when a story reaches its climax,
and ordering another beer or, more usually,
getting someone else to buy him one. I've watched
him do this so often that now I can tell just when
the climax is coming by the level in his glass. We
had to wait, with what patience we could, while he
refueled.

  "When you think about it," he said thoughtfully,
"it was jolly hard luck on the commander of that
Russian submarine. I imagine they shot him when
he got back to Vladivostock, or wherever he came
from. For what court of inquiry would have
believed his story? If he was fool enough to tell
the truth, he'd have said 'We were just off the
Florida coast when an iceberg shouted at us in
Russian, "Excuse me I think that's our property!"
' Since there would be a couple of MVD men
aboard the ship, the poor guy would have had to
make up some kind of story, but whatever he said
wouldn't be very con

. .
nacmg . . .

  "As Dawson had calculated, the Russian sub
simply ran for it as soon as it knew it had been
spotted. And remembering that he was an officer
on the reserve, and that his duty to his country
was more important than his contractual
obligations to any single state, the commander of
the Marlin really had no choice in his subsequent
actions. He picked up the missile, defrosted Freda,
and set course for Cocoa first sending a radio
message that caused a great flurry in the Navy
Department and started destroyers racing out into
the Atlantic. Perhaps Inquisitive Ivan never got
back to Vladivostock after all ....

 \,                                 1

12Q TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "The subsequent explanations were a little
embarrassing, but I gather that the rescued
missile was so important that no one asked too
many questions about the Marlin's private war.
The attack on Miami Beach had to be called
off, however, at least until the next season. It's
satisfactory to relate that even the sponsors of
the project, though they had sunk a lot of
money into it, weren't too disappointed. They
each have a certificate signed by the Chief of
Naval Operations, thanking them for valuable
but unspecified services to their country.
These cause such envy and mystification to all
their Los Angeles friends that they wouldn't
part with them for anything . . .

  "Yet I don't want you to think that nothing
more will ever come of the whole project; you
ought to know American publicity men better
than that. Preda may be in suspended
animation, but one day she'll be revived. All
the plans are ready, down to such little details
as the accidental presence of a Hollywood film
unit on Miami Beach when Freda comes sailing
in from the Atlantic.

  "So this is one of those stories I can't round
off to a nice, neat ending. The preliminary
skirmishes have taken place, but the main
engagement is still to come. And this is the
thing I often wonder about what will Florida
do to the Californians when it discovers what's
going on? Any suggestions' anybody?"

            WHAT GOES UP

ONE OF THE reasons why I am never too
specific about the exact location of the "White
Hart" is frankly, because we want to keep it to
ourselves. This is not merely a dog-
in-the-manger attitude: we have to do it in pure
self-protection. As soon as it gets around that
scientists, editors and science-fiction writers
are forgatherir~g at some locality, the
weirdest collection of visitors is likely to turn
up. Peculiar people with new theories of the
universe, characters who have been "cleared"
by Dianetics (God knows

WHAT GOES UP 121

what they were like before), intense ladies who
are liable to go all clairvoyant after the fourth
gin these are the less exotic specimens.
Worst of all, however, are the Flying Sorcerers:
no cure short of mayhem has yet been
discovered for them.

  It was a black day when one of the leading
exponents of the Flying Saucer religion
discovered our hideout and fell upon us with
shrill cries of delight. Here, he obviously told
himself, was fertile ground for his missionary
activities. People who were already interested
in spaceflight, and even wrote books and
stories about its imminent achievement, would
be a pushover. He opened his little black bag
and produced the latest pile of sauceriana.

  It was quite a collection. There were some
interesting photographs of flying saucers made
by an amateur astronomer who lives right
beside Greenwich Observatory, and whose
busy camera has recorded such a remarkable
variety of spaceships, in all shapes and sizes,
that one wonders what the professionals next
door are doing for their salaries. Then there
was a long statement from a gentleman in
Texas who had just had a casual chat with the
occupants of a saucer making a wayside halt
on route to Venus. Language, it seemed, had
presented no difficulties: it had taken about ten
minutes of arm-waving to get from "Me Man.
This Earth" to highly esoteric information
about the use, of the fourth dimension in
space" travel.

  The masterpiece, however, was an excited
letter from a character in South Dakota who
had actually been offered a lift in a flying
saucer, and had been taken for a spin round
the Moon. He explained at some length how the
saucer travelled by hauling itself along
magnetic lines of force, rather like a spider
going up its thread.

  It was at this point that Harry Purvis rebelled.
He had been listening with a professional pride
to tales which even he would never have dared
to spin, for he was an expert at detecting the
yield-point of his audience's credulity. At the
mention of lines of magnetic force, however,
his scientific training overcame his frank
admiration of these latter-day Munchausens,
and he gave a snort of disgust.

122 TALES FROM THE WH;TE HART

  "That's a lot of nonsense," he said. "I can
prove it to you magnetism's my speciality."

  "Last week," said Drew sweetly, as he filled
two glasses of ale at once, "you said that
crystal structure was your speciality."

Harry gave him a superior smile.

  "I'm a general specialist," he said loftily. "To
get back to where I was before that
interruption, the point I want to make is that
there's no such thing as a line of magnetic
force. It's a mathematical fiction exactly on a
par with lines of longitude or latitude. Now if
anyone said they'd invented a machine that
worked by pulling itself along parallels of
latitude, everybody would know that they were
talking drivel. But because few people know
much about magnetism, and it sounds rather
mysterious, crackpots like this guy in South
Dakota can get away with the tripe we've just
been hearing."

  There's one charming characteristic about
the "White Hart" we may fight among each
other, but we show an impressive solidarity in
times of crisis. Everyone felt that something
had to be done about our unwelcome visitor:
for one thing, he was interfering with the
serious business of drinking. Fanaticism of any
kind casts a gloom over the most festive
assembly, and several of the regulars had
shown signs of leaving despite the fact that it
was still two hours to closing time.

  So when Harry Purvis followed up his attack
by concocting the most outrageous story that
even he had ever presented in the "White
Hart", no one interrupted him or tried to
expose the weak points in his narrative. We
knew that Harry was acting for us all he was
fighting fire with fire, as it were. And we knew
that he wasn't expecting us to believe him (if
indeed he ever did) so we just sat back and
enjoyed ourselves.

  "If you want to know how to propel
spaceships," began Harry, "and mark you, I'm
not saying anything one way or the other about
the existence of flying saucers then you must
forget magnetism. You must go straight to
gravity that's the basic force of the universe,
after ale But it's going to be a tricky force to
handle, and if you

WHAT GOES UP 123

don't believe me just listen to what happened
only last year to a scientist down in Australia. I
shouldn't really tell you this, I suppose,
because I'm not sure of its security
classification, but if there's any trouble I'll
swear that I never said a word.

  "The Aussies, as you may know, have always
been pretty hot on scientific research, and they
had one team working on fast reactors those
house-broken atomic bombs which are so much
more compact than the old uranium piles. The
head of the group was a bright but rather
impetuous young nuclear physicist I'll call Dr.
Cavor. That, of course, wasn't his real name,
but it's a very appropriate one. You'll all
recollect, I'm sure, the scientist Cavor in Wells'
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, and the wonderful
gravity-screening material Cavorite he
discovered?

  "I'm afraid dear old Wells didn't go into the
question of Cavorite very thoroughly. As he put
it, it was opaque to gravity just as a sheet of
metal is opaque to light. Anything placed above
a horizontal sheet of cavorite, therefore,
became weightless and Boated up into space.

  "Well, it isn't as simple as that. Weight
represents energy an enormous amount of
it which can't just be destroyed without any
fuss. You'd have to put a terrific amount of
work into even a small object in order to make
it weightless. Antigravity screens of the cavorite
type, therefore, are quite impossible they're in
the same class as perpetual motion."

  "Three of my friends have made perpetual
motion machines," began our unwanted visitor
rather stuffily. Harry didn't let him get any
further: he just steamed on and ignored the
interruption.

  "Now our Australian Dr. Cavor wasn't
searching for antigravity, or anything like it. In
pure science, you can be pretty sure that
nothing fundamental is ever discovered by
anyone who's actually looking for it that's half
the fun of the game. Dr. C'avor was interested
in producing atomic power: what he found was
antigravity. And it was quite some time before
he realised that was what he'd discovered.

WHAT GOES UP 125

sort of accident, that might have been caused
by the jeep going into a rut. But Cavor hadn't
been driving all that fast, luckily for him, and
anyway there was no rut at the scene of the
crash. What the jeep had run into was some-
thing quite impossible. lit was an invisible wall,
apparently the lower rim of a hemispherical
dome, which entirely surrounded the reactor.
Stones thrown up in the air slid back to the
ground along the surface of this dome, and it
also extended underground as far as digging
could be carried out. It seemed as if the reactor
was at the exact center of an impenetrable,
spherical shell.

  "Of course, this was marvellous news and
Cavor was out of bed in no time, scattering
nurses in all directions. He had no idea what
had happened, but it was a lot more exciting
than the humdrum piece of nuclear engineering
that had started the whole business.

  "By now you're probably all wondering what
the devil a sphere of force as you
science-fiction writers would call it has to do
with antigravity. So I'll jump several days and
give you the answers that Cavor and his team
discovered only after much hard work and the
consump tion of many gallons of that potent
Australian beer.

  "The reactor, when it had been energised, had
somehow produced an antigravity field. All the
matter inside a twenty-foot-radius sphere had
been made weightless, and the enormous
amount of energy needed to do this had been
extracted, in some utterly mysterious manner,
from the uranium in the pile. Calculations
showed that the amount of energy in the reactor
was just sufficient to do the job. Presumably the
sphere of force would have been larger still if
there had been more ergs available in the
power-source.

  "I can hear someone just waiting to ask a
question, so Pll anticipate them. Why didn't this
weightless sphere of earth and air float up into
space? Well, the earth was held together by its
cohesion, anyway, so there was no reason why
it should go wandienug off. As for the air, that
was forced to stay inside the zone of
zero-gravity for a most surprising and subtle
reason which leads me to the crux of this whole
peculiar business.

126 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "Better fasten your seat-belts for the next bit:
we've got a bumpy passage ahead. Those of
you who know something about potential
theory won't have any trouble, and I'll do my
best to make it as easy as I can for the rest.

  "People who talk glibly about antigravity
seldom stop to consider its implications, so
let's look at a few fundamentals. As I've
already said, weight implies energy  lots of it.
That energy is entirely due to Eanh's gravity
field. If you remove an object's weight, that's
precisely equivalent to taking it clear outside
Earth's gravity. And any rocket engineer will
tell you how much energy that requires."

  Harry turned to me and said: "There's an
analogy I'd like to borrow from one of your
books, Arthur, that puts across the point I'm
trying to make. You know comparing the fight
against Earth's gravity to climbing out of a
deep pit."

  "You're welcome," I said. "I pinched it from
Doc Richardson, anyway.,'

  Etch," replied Harry. "I thought it was too
good to be original. Well, here we go. If you
hang on to this really very simple idea, you'll
be O.K. To take an object clear away from the
Earth requires as much work as lifting it four
thousand miles against the steady drag of
normal gravity. Now the matter inside Cavor's
zone of force was still on the Earth's surface,
but it was weightless. From the energy point of
view, therefore, it was outside the Earth's
gravity field. It was inaccessible as if it was on
top of a four thousand mile high mountain.

  "Cavor could stand outside the anti-gravity
zone and look into it from a point a few inches
away. To cross those few inches, he would
have to do as much work as if he climbed
Everest seven hundred times. It wasn't sur-
prising that the jeep stopped in a hurry. No
material object had stopped it, but from the
point of view of dynamics it had run smack
into a cliff four thousand miles high

  "I can see some blank looks that are not
entirely due to the lateness of the hour. Never
mind: if you don't get all this, just take my
word for it. It won't spoil your appreciation of
what follow~at least, I hope not.

WHAT GOES UP 127

  "Cavor had realised at once that he had made
one of the most important discoveries of the
age, though it was some time before he worked
out just what was going on. The final clue to the
anti-gravitational nature of the field came when
they shot a rifle bullet into it and observed the
trajectory with a high-speed camera Ingenious,
don't you think?

  "The next problem was to experiment with the
field's generator and to find just what had
happened inside the reactor when it had been
switched on. This was a problem indeed. The
reactor was there in plain sight, twenty feet
away. But to reach it would require slightly
more energy than going to the Moon ....

  "Cavor was not disheartened by this, nor by
the inexplicable failure of the reactor to respond
to any of its remote controls. He theorised that
it had been completely drained of energy, if one
can use a rather misleading term, and that lithe
if any power was needed to maintain the anti-
gravity field once it had been set up. This was
one of the many things that could only be
determined by examination on the spot. So by
hook or by crook, Dr Cavor would have to go
there.

  "His first idea was to use an
electrically-driven trolley, supplied with power
through cables which it dragged behind it as it
advanced into the field. A hundred horsepower
generator, running continuously for seventeen
hours, would supply enough energy to take a
man of average weight on the perilous
twenty-foot journey. A velocity of slightly over a
foot an hour did not seem much to boast about,
until you remembered that advancing one foot
into the antigravity field was equivalent to a two
hundred mile vertical climb.

  "The theory was sound, but in practice the
electric trolley wouldn't work. It started to push
its way into the field, but began to skid after it
had traversed half an inch. The reason was
obvious when one started to think about it.
Though the power was there, the traction
wasn't. No wheeled vehicle could climb a
gradient of two hundred miles per foot.

"This minor setback did not discourage Dr
Cavor. The

128 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

answer, he realised at once, was to produce
the traction at a point outside the field. When
you wanted to lift a load vertically, you didn't
use a cart: you used a jack or an hydraulic
ram.

  "The result of this argument was one of the
oddest vehicles ever built. A small but
comfortable cage, containing sufficient
provisions to last a man for several days, was
mounted at the end of a twenty-foot-long
horizontal girder. The whole device was
supported off the ground by balloon tires, and
the theory was that the cage could be pushed
right into the center of the field by a machine
which would remain outside its influence. After
some thought, it was decided that the best
prime-mover would be the common or garden
bulldozer.

  "A test was made with some rabbits in the
passenger compartment and I can't help
thinking that there was an interesting
psychological point here. The experimenters
were trying to get it both ways: as scientists
they'd be pleased if their subjects got back
alive, and as Australians they'd be just as
happy if they got back dead. But perhaps I'm
being a little too fanciful . . .(You know, of
course, how Australians feel about rabbits.)

  "The bulldozer chugged away hour after
hour, forcing the weight of the girder and its
insignificant payload up the enormous
gradient. It was an uncanny sight all this
energy being expended to move a couple of
rabbits twenty feet across a perfectly
horizontal plain. The subjects of the
experiment could be observed throughout the
operation: they seemed to be perfectly happy
and quite unaware of their historic role.

  "The passenger compartment reached the
centre of the field, was held there for an hour,
and then the girder was slowly backed out
again. The rabbits were alive, in good health,
and to nobody's particular surprise there were
now six of them.

  "Dr Cavor, naturally, insisted on being the
first human being to venture into a zero-gravity
field. He loaded up the compartment with
torsion balances, radiation detectors, and
periscopes so that he could look into the
reactor when he finally got to it. Then he gave
the signal, the

WHAT GOES UP 129

bulldozer started chugging, and the strange
journey began.

  "There was, naturally, telephone
communications from the passenger
compartment to the outside world. Ordinary
sound waves couldn't cross the barrier, for
reasons which were still a little obscure, but
radio and telephone both worked without
difficulty. Cavor kept up a running commentary
as he was edged forward into the field,
describing his own reactions and relaying
instrument readings to his colleagues.

  "The first thing that happened to him, though
he had expected it, was nevertheless rather
unsettling. During the first few inches of his
advance, as he moved through the fringe of the
field, the direction of the vertical seemed to
swing around. 'Up' was no longer toward the
sky: it was now in the direction of the reactor
hut. To Cavor, it felt as if he was being pushed
up the face of a vertical cliff, with the reactor
twenty feet above him. For the first time, his
eyes and his ordinary human senses told him
the same story as his scientific training. He
could see that the centre of the field was,
gravity-wise, higher than the place from which
he had come. However, imagination still
boggled at the thought of all the energy it would
need to climb that innocent-looking twenty feet,
and the hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel that
must be burned to get him there.

  "There was nothing else of interest to report
on the journey itself, and at last, twenty hours
after he had started, Cavor arrived at his
destination. The wall of the reactor hut was right
beside him, though to him it seemed not a wall
but an unsupported floor sticking out at right
angles from the cliff up which he had risen. The
entrance was just above his head, like a
trapdoor through which he would have to climb.
This would present no great difficulty, for Dr
Cavor was an energetic young man, extremely
eager to find just how he had created this
miracle.

  "Slightly too eager, in fact. For as he tried to
work his way into the door, he slipped and fell
off the platform that had carried him there.

"That was the last anyone ever saw of him but
it

130 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

wasn't the last they heard of him. Oh dear no!
He made a very big noise indeed . . .

  "You'll why when you consider the situation
in which this unfortunate scientist now found
himself. Hundreds of lrilowatt-hours of energy
had been pushed into him enough to lift him to
the Moon and beyond. All that work had been
needed to take him to a point of zero
gravitational potential. As soon as he lost his
means of support, that energy began to
reappear. To get back to our earlier and very
picturesque analogy the poor doctor had
slipped off the edge of the
four-thousand-mile-high mountain he had
ascended.

  "He fell back the twenty feet that had taken
almost a day to climb. 'Ah, what a fall was
there, my countrymen!' It was precisely
equivalent, in terms of energy, to a free drop
from the remotest stars down to the surface of
the Earth. And you all know how much velocity
an object acquires in that fall. It's the same
velocity that's needed to get it there in the first
place the famous velocity of escape. Seven
miles a second, or twenty-five thousand miles
an hour.

  "That's what Dr Cavor was doing by the time
he got back to his starting point. Or to be more
accurate, that's the speed he involuntarily tried
to reach. As soon as he passed Mach 1 or 2,
however, air-resistance began to have its little
say. Dr Cavor's funeral pyre was the finest,
and indeed, the only, meteor display ever to
take place entirely at sea level....

  "I'm sorry that this story hasn't got a happy
ending. In fact, it hasn't got an ending at all,
because that sphere of zero gravitational
potential is still sitting there in the Australian
desert, apparently doing nothing at all but in
fact producing ever-increasing amounts of
frustration in scientific and official circles. I
don't see how the authorities can hope to keep
it secret much longer. Sometimes I think how
odd it is that the world's tallest mountain is in
Australia and that though it's four thousand
miles high the airliners often fly Aght over it
without knowing it's there."

You will hardly be surprised to hear that H.
Purvis

SLEEPING BEAUTY 131

finished his narration at this point: even he
could hardly take it much further, and no-one
wanted him to. We were all, including his most
tenacious critics, lost in admiring awe. I have
since detected six fallacies of a fundamental
nature in his description of Dr Cavor's
Frankensteinian fate, but at the time they never
even occurred to me. (And I don't propose to
reveal them new. They will be left, as the
mathematics text-books put it, as an exercise
for the reader. ) What had earned our undying
gratitude, however, was the fact that at some
slight sacrifice of truth he had managed to keep
Flying Saucers from invading the White Hart. It
was almost closing time, and too late for our
visitor to make a counter attack.

  That is why the sequel seems a little unfair. A
month later, someone brought a very odd
publication to one of our meetings. It was nicely
printed and laid out with professional skill, the
misuse of which was sad to behold. The thing
was called FLYING SAUCER REVELA-
TIONS and there on the front page was a full
and detailed account of the story Purvis had
told us. It was printed absolutely straight and
what was much worse than that, from poor
Harry's point of view, was that it was attributed
to him by name.

  Since then he has had 4,375 letters on the
subject, most of them from California. 24 called
him a liar; 4,205 believed him absolutely. (The
remaining ones he couldn't decipher and their
contents still remain a matter of speculation. )

  I'm afraid he's never quite got over it, and I
sometimes think he's going to spend the rest of
his life trying to stop people believing the one
story he never expected to be taken seriously.

  There may be a moral here. For the life of me
I can't find it.

            SLEEPING BEAUS

IT WAS one of those half-hearted discussions
that is liable to get going in the "White Hart"
when no-one can think

132 TALES FROM THE WEnTE HART

of anything better to argue about. We were
tryirg to recall the most extraordinary names
we'd ever encountered, and I had just
contributed "Obediah Polkinghorn" when
 inevitably Harry Purvis got into the act.

  "It's easy enough to dig up odd names," he
said, reprimanding us for our levity, "but have
you ever stopped to consider a much more
fundamental point the erects of those names
on their owners? Sometimes, you know, such
a thing can warp a man's entire life. That is
what happened to young Sigmund Snoring."

  "Oh, no!" groaned Charles Willis, one of
Harry's most implacable critics. "I don't believe
it!"

  "Do you imagine," said Harry indignantly,
"that I'd invent a name like that? As a matter of
fact, Sigmund's family name was something
Jewish from Central Europe; it began with SCH
and went on for quite a while in that vein.
'Snonng' was just an anglicised precis of it.
However, all this is by the way; I wish people
wouldn't make me waste time on such details."

  Charlie, who is the most promising author I
know (he has been promising for more than
twenty-five years) started to make vaguely
protesting noises, but someone
public-spiritedly diverted him with a glass of
beer.

  "Sigmund," continued Harry, "bore his burden
bravely enough until he reached manhood.
There is little doubt, however, that his name
preyed upon his mind, and finally produced
what you might call a psycho-somatic result. If
Sigmund had been born of any other parents,
I am sure that he would not have become a
stertorous and incessant snorer in fact as well
as almost in name.

  "Well, there are worse tragedies in life.
Sigmund's family had a fair amount of money,
and a sound-proofed bedroom protected the
remainder of the household from sleepless
nights. As is usually the case, Sigmund was
quite unaware of his own nocturnal
symphonies, and could never really
understand what all the fuss was about.

  "It was not until he got married that he was
compelled to take his affliction if you can call
it that, for it only inflicted itself on other
people as seriously as it deserved. There is
nothing unusual in a young bride return

SLEEPING BEAUTY 133 9

ingfrom her honeymoon in a somewhat distracted
condition, but poor Rachel Snoring had been
through a uniquely shattering experience. She was
red-eyed with lack of sleep, and any attempt to get
sympathy from her friends only made them dissolve
into peals of laughter. So it was not surprising that
she gave Sigmund an ultimatum; unless he did
something about his snoring, the marriage was off.

  "Now this was a very serious matter both for
Sigmund and his family. They were fairly well-to-do,
but by no means rich unlike Grand-uncle Reuben,
who had died last year leaving a rather complicated
will. He had taken quite a fancy to Sigmund, and
had left a considerable sum of money in trust for
him, which he would receive when he was thirty.
Unfortunately, Grand-uncle Reuben was very
old-fashioned and strait-laced, and did not al-
together trust the modern generation. One of the
conditions of the bequest was that Sigmund should
not be divorced or separated before the designated
date. If he was, the money would go to found an
orphanage in Tel Aviv.

  "It was a difficult situation, and there is no way of
guessing how it would have resolved itself had not
someone suggested that Sigmund ought to go alla
see Uncle Hymie. Sigmund was not at all keen on
this, but desperate predicaments demanded
desperate remedies; so he went.

  "Uncle Hymie, I should explain, was a very distin-
guished professor of physiology, and a Fellow of
the Royal Society with a whole string of papers to
his credit. He was also, at the moment, somewhat
short of money, owing to a quarrel with the trustees
of his college, and had been compelled to stop
work on some of his pet research projects. To add
to his annoyance, the Physics Department had just
been given half a million pounds for a new
synchrotron, so he was in no pleasant mood when
his unhappy nephew called upon him.

  "Trying to ignore the all-pervading smell of
disinfectant and livestock, Sigmund followed the lab
steward along rows of incomprehensible equipment,
and past cages of mice and gunnea-pigs, frequently
averting his eyes from

134 TALES FROM TEIB WHITE HART

the revolting coloured diagrams which
occupied so much wall-space. He found his
uncle sitting at a bench, drinking tea from a
beaker and absent-n~dedly nibbling sand-
wiches.

"'Help yourself,' he said ungraciously. 'Roast
hamster elicious. One of the litter we used for
some cancer tests. What's the trouble?'

  "Pleading lack of appetite, Sigmund told his
distinguished uncle his tale of woe. The
professor listened without much sympathy.

  " 'Don't know what you got married for,' he
said at last. 'Complete waste of time.' Uncle
Hymn was known to possess strong views on
this subject, having had five children but no
wives. 'Still, we might be able to do some thing
How much money have you gotl'

  " 'Why?' asked Sigmund, somewhat taken
aback. The professor waved his arms around
the lab.

" 'Costs a lot to run all this,' he said.

" 'But I thought the university '

  "'Oh yes but any special work will have to
be under the counter, as it were. I can't use
college funds for it.'

" 'Well, how much will you need to get started?'

  "Uncle Hymie mentioned a sum which was
rather smaller than Sigmund had feared, but
his satisfaction did not last for long. The
scientist, it soon transpired, was fully
acquainted with Grand-uncle Reuben's will;
Sigmund would have to draw up a contract
promising him a share of the loot when, in five
years' time, the money became his. The
present payment was merely an advance.

  "'Even so, I don't promise anything, but I'll
see what can be done,' said Uncle Hymie,
examirung the cheque carefully. 'Come and
see me in a month.'

  "That was all that Sigmund could get out of
him, for the professor was then distracted by
a highly decorative research student in a
sweater which appeared to have been sprayed
on her. Riley started discussing the domestic
affairs of the lab's rats in such terms that
Sigmund, who was easily embarrassed, had to
beat a hasty retreat.

  "Now, I don't really think that Uncle Hymie
would have taken Sigmund's money unless he
was fairly sure he

SLEEPING BEAUTY 1 35

could deliver the goods. He must, therefore,
have been quite near the completion of his
work when the university had slashed his
funds; certainly he could never have produced,
in a mere four weeks, whatever complex
mixture of chemicals it was that he injected into
his hopeful nephew's arm a month after
receiving the cash. The experiment was carried
out at the professor's own home, late one
evening; Sigmund was not too surprised to find
the lady research student in attendance.

"'What will this stuff do?' he asked.

  " 'It will stop you snoring I hope,' answered
Uncle Hype. 'Now, here's a nice comfortable
seat, and a pile of magazines to read. Irma and
I will take turns keeping an eye on you in case
there are any side-reactions.'

  " 'Side-reactions?' said Sigmund anxiously,
rubbing his arm.

  " 'Don't worry just take it easy. In a couple
of hours we'll know if it works.'

  "So Sigmund waited for sleep to come, while
the two scientists fussed around him (not to
mention around each other) taking readings of
blood-pressure, pulse, temperature and
generally making Sigmund feel like a chronic
invalid. When midnight arrived, he was not at
all sleepy, but the professor and his assistant
were almost dead on their feet. Sigmund
realised that they had been working long hours
on his behalf, and felt a gratitude which was
quite touching during the short period while it
lasted.

  "Midnight came and passed. Irma folded up
and the professor laid her, none too gently, on
the couch. "'You're quite sure you don't feel
tired yet?' he yawned at Sigmund.

  " 'Not a bit. It's very odd; I'm usually fast
asleep by this time.'

" 'You feel perfectly all right?'

"'Never felt better.'

  "There was another vast yawn from the
professor. He muttered something like, 'Should
have taken some of it myself,' then subsided
into an armchair.

  " 'Give us a shout," he said sleepily, 'if you
feel anything unusual. No point in us staying up
any longer.' A

136 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

moment later Sigmund, still somewhat
mystified, was the only conscious person in
the room.

  "He read a dozen copies of Punch, stamped
'Not to be Removed from the Common Room'
until it was 2 a.m. He polished off an the
Saturday Evening Posts by 4. A small bundle of
New Yorkers kept him busy until 5, when he
had a stroke of luck. An exclusive diet of
caviar soon grows monotonous, and Sigmund
was delighted to discover a limp and
much-thumbed volume entitled 'The Blonde
Was Willing'. This engaged his fun attention
until dawn, when Uncle Hynue gave a
convulsive start, shot out of his chair, woke
Irma with a wet/-directed slap, and then turned
his full attention towards Sigmund.

  " 'WeU, my boy,' he said, with a hearty
cheerfulness that at once alerted Sigmund's
suspicions, 'I've done what you wanted. You
passed the night without snoring, didn't you?'

  "Sigmund put down the WiUing Blonde, who
was now in a situation where her co-operation
or lack of it would make no difference at an.

  " 'I didn't snore,' he admitted. 'But I didn't
sleep either.'

" 'You still feel perfectly wide awake?'

" 'Yes I don't understand it at an.'

  "Uncle Hymie and Irma exchanged
triumphant glances. 'You've made history,
Sigmund,' said the professor. 'You're the first
man to be able to do without sleep.' And so
the news was broken to the astonished and
not yet indignant guinea-pig.

  "I know," continued Harry Purvis, not
altogether accurately, "that many of you would
like the scientific details of Uncle Hymie's
discovery. But I don't know them, and if I did
they would be too technical to give here. I'll
merely point out, since I see some expressions
which a less trusting man might describe as
sceptical, that there is nothing really startling
about such a development. Sleep, after an, is
a highly variable factor. Look at Edison, who
managed on two or three hours a day right up
to the end of his life. it's true that men can't go
without

SLEEPING BEAUTY 137

sleep indefinitely but some animals can, so it
clearly isn't a fundamental part of metabolism."

  "What animals can go without sleep?" asked
somebody, not so much in disbelief as out of
pure curiosity.

  "Well er of course! the fish that live out in
deep water beyond the continental shelf. If they
ever fell asleep, they'd be snapped up by other
fish, or they'd lose their trim and sink to the
bottom. So they've got to keep awake all of
their lives."

  (I am still, by the way, trying to find if this
statement of Harry's is true. I've never caught
him out yet on a scientific fact, though once or
twice I've had to give him the benefit of the
doubt. But back to Uncle Hymie.)

  "It took some time," continued Harry, "for
Sigmund to realise what an astonishing thing
had been done to him. An enthusiastic
commentary from his uncle, enlarging upon all
the glorious possibilities that had been opened
up for him now that he had been freed from the
tyranny of sleep, made it difficult to concentrate
on the problem. But presently he was able to
raise the question that had been worrying him.
'How long will this last?' he enquired.

  "The professor and Irma looked at each other.
Then Uncle Hymie coughed a little nervously
and replied: 'We're not quite sure yet. That's
one thing we've got to find out. It's perfectly
possible that the effect will be permanent.'

" 'You mean that I'll never be able to sleep
again?'

  " 'Not "Never be able to." "Never want to."
However, I could probably work out some way
of reversing the process if you're really
anxious. Cost a lot of money, though.'

  "Sigmund left hastily, promising to keep in
touch and to report his progress every day. His
brain was still in a turmoil, but first he had to
find his wife and to convince her that he would
never snore again.

  "She was quite willing to believe hun, and
they had a touching reunion. But in the small
hours of next morning it got very dull Iying
there with no-one to talk to, and presently
Sigmund tiptoed away from his sleeping wife.
For the first tune, the full reality of his position
was be

138 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

ginning to dawn upon him; what on earth was
he going to do with the extra eight hours a day
that had descended upon him as an unwanted
gift?

  "You might think that Sigmund had a
wonderful indeed an
unprecedented~pportunity for leading a fuller
life by acquiring that culture and knowledge
which we all feel we'd like if only we had the
time to do something about it. He could read
every one of the great classics that are just
names to most people; he could study art,
music or philosophy, and fill his mind with all
the finest treasures of the human intellect. In
fact, a good many of you are probably envying
him right now.

  "Well, it didn't work out that way. The fact of
the matter is that even the highest grade mind
needs some relaxation, and cannot devote
itself to serious pursuits indefinitely. It was
true that Sigmund had no further need of
sleep, but he needed entertainment to occupy
him during the long, empty hours of darkness.

  "Civilisation, he soon discovered, was not
designed to fit the requirements of a man who
couldn't sleep. He might have been better off
in Paris or New York, but in London practically
everything closed down at 11 p.m., only a few
coffee-bars were still open at midnight, and by
1 a.m. Novell, the less said about any
establishments still operating, the better,

  "At first, when the weather was good, he
occupied his time going for long walks, but
after several encounters with inquisitive and
sceptical policemen he gave this up. So he
took to the car and drove all over London
during the small hours, discovering all sorts of
odd places he never knew existed. He soon
had a nodding acquaintance with many
night-watchmen, Covent Garden porters, and
milkmen, as well as Fleet Street journalists and
printers who had to work while the rest of the
world slept. But as Sigmund was not the sort
of person who took a great interest in his
fellow human beings, this amusement soon
palled and he was thrown back upon his own
limited resources.

  "His wife, as might be expected, was not at
all happy about his nocturnal wanderings. He
had told her the

SEF.EPTNG BEAUTY 139

whole story, and though she had found it hard
to believe she was forced to accept the
evidence of her own eyes. But having done so,
it seemed that she would prefer a husband who
snored and stayed at home to one who tiptoed
away around midnight and was not always back
by breakfast.

  "This upset Sigmund greatly. He had spent or
promised a good deal of money (as he kept
remanding Rachel) and taken a considerable
personal risk to cure himself of his malaise.
And was she grateful? No; she just wanted an
itemised account of the time he spent when he
should have been sleeping but wasn't. It was
most unfair and showed a lack of trust which he
found very disheartening.

  "Slowly the secret spread through a wider
circle, though the Snorings (who were a very
close-knit clan) managed to keep it inside the
family. Uncle Lorenz, who was in the diamond
business, suggested that Sigmund take up a
second job a; it seemed a pity to waste all that
additional working time. He produced a list of
one-man occupations, which could be carried
on equally easily by day or night, but Sigmund
thanked him kindly and said he saw no reason
why he should pay two lots of income tax.

  "By the end of six weeks of twenty-four-hour
days, Sigmund had had enough. He felt he
couldn't read another book, go to another
nightclub or listen to another gramophone
record. His great gift, which many foolish men
would have paid a fortune to possess, had
become an intolerable burden. There was
nothing to do but to go and see Uncle Hymie
again.

  "The professor had been expecting him, and
there was no need to threaten legal
proceedings, to appeal to the solidarity of the
Snorings, or to make pointed remarks about
breach of contract.

  " 'All right all right,' grumbled the scientist. 'I
don't believe in casting pearls before swine. I
knew you'd want the antidote sooner or later,
and because I'm a generous man it'll only cost
you fifty guineas. But don't blame me if you
snore worse than ever.'

" 'I'll take that risk,' said Sigmund. As far as he
and

140 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

Rachel were concerned, it had come to
separate rooms anyway by this time.

  "He averted his gaze as the professor's
assistant (not Irma this time, but an angular
brunette) filled a terrifyingly large hypodermic
with Uncle Hymie's latest brew. Before he had
absorbed half of it, he had fallen asleep.

  "For once, Uncle Hymie looked quite
disconcerted. 'I didn't expect it to act that fast,'
he said. 'Well, let's get him to bed we can't
have him Iying around the lab.'

  "By next morning, Sigmund was still fast
asleep and showed no reactions to any stimuli.
His breathing was imperceptible; he seemed to
be in a trance rather than a slumber, and the
professor was getting a little alarmed.

  "His worry did not last for long, however. A
few hours later an angry guinea-pig bit him on
the finger, bloodpoisoning set in, and the
editor of Nature was just able to get the
obituary notice into the current issue before it
went to press.

  "Sigmund slept through all this excitement
and was still blissfully unconscious when the
family got back from the Golders Green
Crematorium and assembled for a council of
war. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, but it was ob-
vious that the late Professor Hymie had made
another unfortunate mistake, and no-one knew
how to set about unravelling it.

  "Cousin Meyer, who ran a furniture store in
the Mile End Road, offered to take charge of
Sigmund if he could use him on display in his
shop window to demonstrate the luxury of the
beds he stocked. However, it was felt that this
would be too undignified, and the family
vetoed the scheme.

  "But it gave them ideas. By now they were
getting a little fed up with Sigmund; this Dying
from one extreme to another was really too
much. So why not take the easy way out and,
as one wit expressed it, let sleeping Sigmunds
lie?

  "There was no point in calling in another
expensive expert who might only make matters
worse (though how, no-one could quite
imagine). It cost nothing to feed Sigmund, he
required only a modicum of medical attention,

SLEEPING BEAUTY 141

and while he was sleeping there was certainly
no danger of him breaking the terms of
Grand-uncle Reuben's will. When this argument
was rather tactfully put to Rachel, she quite saw
the strength of it. The policy demanded re-
quired a certain amount of patience, but the
ultimate reward would be considerable.

  "The more Rachel examined it, the more she
liked the idea. The thought of lacing a wealthy
near-widow appealed to her; it had such
interesting and novel possibilities. And, to tell
the truth, she had had quite enough of Sigmund
to last her for the five years until he came into
his inheritance.

  "In due course that time arrived and Sigmund
became a semi-demi-millionaire. However, he
still slept soundly  and in all those five years
he had never snored once. He looked so
peaceful lying there that it seemed a pity to
wake him up, even if anyone knew exactly how
to set about it. Rachel felt strongly that
ill-advised tampering might have unfortunate
consequences, and the family, after assuring
itself that she could only get at the interest on
Sigmund's fortune and not at the capital, was
inclined to agree with her.

  "And that was several years ago. When I last
heard of him, Sigmund was still peacefully
sleeping, while Rachel was baring a perfectly
wonderful time on the Riviera. She is quite a
shrewd woman, as you may have guessed, and
I think she realises how convenient it might be
to have a youthful husband in cold storage for
her old age.

  "There are times, I must admit, when I think
it's rather a pity that Uncle Hymie never had a
chance of revealing his remarkable discoveries
to the world. But Sigmund proved that our
civilisation isn't yet ripe for such changes, and
I hope I'm not around when some other
physiologist starts the whole thing all over
again."

  Harry looked at the clock. "Good lord!" he
exclaimed, "I'd no idea it was so late I feel half
asleep." He picked up his brief-case, stifled a
yawn, and smiled benignly at us.

"Happy dreams, everybody," he said.

       THE DEliENESTRATION OF
          ERMINI~RUDE INGH

AND NOW I have a short, sad duty to perform.
One of the many mysteries about Harry
Purvis who was so informative in every other
direction was the existence or otherwise of a
Mrs. Purvis. It was true that he wore no
wedding ring, but that means little nowadays.
Almost as little, as any hotel proprietor will tell
you, as does the reverse.

  In a number of his tales, Harry had shown
distinct evidence of some hostility towards
what a Polish friend of mine, whose command
of English did not match his gallantry, always
referred to as ladies of the female sex. And it
was by a curious coincidence that the very last
story he ever told us first indicated, and then
proved conclusively, Harry's marital status.

  I do not know who brought up the word
"defenestration", which is not, after all, one of
the most commonly used abstract nouns in the
language. It was probably one of the
alarmingly erudite younger members of the
"White Hart" clientele; some of them are just
out of college, and so make us old-timers feel
very callow and ignorant. But from the word,
the discussion naturally passed to the deed.
Had any of us ever been defenestrated? Did
we know anyone who had?

  "Yes," said Harry. "It happened to a verbose
lady I once knew. She was called Ernuntrude,
and was married to Osbert Inch, a sound
engineer at the B.B.C.

  "Osbert spent all his working hours listening
to other people talking, and most of his free
time listening to Ermintrude. Unfortunately, he
couldn't switch her off at the turn of a knob,
and so he very seldom had a chance of getting
a word in edgeways.

  "There are some women who appear
sincerely unaware of the fact that they cannot
stop talking, and are most surprised when
anyone accuses them of monopolising the

                 142
                  
the DEPENESTRATION of ERM~NTRuDs
INCH 143

conversation. Ermintrude would start as soon as
she woke op. change gear so that she could
hear herself speak above the eight o'clock
news, and continue unabated until Osbert
thankfully left for work. A couple of years of this
had almost reduced him to a nervous wreck, but
one morning when his wife was handicapped by
a long overdue attack of laryngitis he made a
spirited protest against her vocal monopoly.

  '*To his incredulous disbelief, she flatly
refused to accept the charge. It appeared that
to Ermintrude, time ceased to exist when she
was talking but she became extremely restive
when anyone else held the stage. As soon as
she had recovered her voice, she told Osbert
how unfair it was of him to make such an
unfounded accusation, and the argument would
have been very acrimonious if it had been
possible to have an argument with Ermintrude
at all.

  "This made Osbert an angry and also a
desperate man. But he was an ingenious one,
too, and it occurred to him that he could
produce irrefutable evidence that Ermintrude
talked a hundred words for every syllable he
was able to utter. I mentioned that he was a
sound engineer, and his room was fitted up with
Hi-Fi set, tape recorder, and the usual electronic
tools of his trade, some of which the B.B.C. had
unwittingly supplied.

- "It did not take him very long to construct a
piece of equipment which one might call a
Selective Word Counter. If you know anything
about audio engineering you'll appreciate how
it could be done with suitable filters and
dividing circuits and if you don't, you'll have to
take it for granted. What the apparatus did was
simply this; a microphone picked up every word
spoken in the Inch apartment, Osbert's deeper
tones went one way and registered on a counter
marked "His", and Ermintrude's higher
frequencies went the other direction and ended
up on the counter marked "Hers".

  "Within an hour of switching on, the score
was as follows:

His 23

 Hers  2,530

144 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "As the numbers flickered across the counter
dials, Ermintrude became more and more
thoughtful and at the same time more and more
silent. Osbert, on the other hand, drinking the
heady wine of victory (though to anyone else it
would have looked like his morning cup of tea)
began to make the most of his advantage and
became quite talkative By the time he had left
for work, the counters had reflected the
changing status in the household:

              His 1,043

Hers 3,397

  "Just to show who was now the boss, Osbert
left the apparatus switched on; he had always
wondered if Ermintrude talked to herself as a
purely automatic reflex even when there was
no-one around to hear what she was saying. He
had, by the way, thoughtfully taken the precau-
tion of putting a lock on the Counter so that his
wife couldn't turn it off while he was out.

  "He was a little disappointed to find that the
figures were quite unaltered when he came
home that evening, but thereafter the score
soon started to mount again. It became a kind
of game though a deadly serious one  with
each of the protagonists keeping one eye on
the machine whenever either of them said a
word. Ermintrude was clearly discomfited; ever
and again she would suffer a verbal relapse
and increase her score by a couple of hundred
before she brought herself to a halt by a su-
preme effort of self-control. Osbert, who still
had such a lead that he could afford to be
garrulous, amused himself by making
occasional sardonic comments which were wed
worth the expenditure of a few-score points.

  "Although a measure of equality had been
restored in the Inch household, the Word
Counter had, if anything, increased the state of
dissension. Presently Ermintrude, who had a
certain natural intelligence which some people
might have caned craftiness, made an appeal
to her husband's better nature. She pointed out
that neither of them

THE DEFENESTRATION OF ERMINTRUDE
INCH 145

was really behaving naturally while every word
was being monitored and counted; Osbert had
unfairly let her get ahead and was now being
taciturn in a way that he would never have been
had he not got that warning score continuously
before his eyes. Though Osbert gagged at the
sheer effrontery of this charge, he had to admit
that the objection did contain an element of
truth. The test would be fairer and more
conclusive if neither of them could see the
accumulating score if, indeed, they forgot all
about the presence of the machine and so
behaved perfectly naturally, or at least as
naturally as they could in the circumstances.

  "After much argument they came to a
compromise. Very sportingly, in his opinion,
Osbert reset the dials to zero and sealed up the
counter windows so that no-one could take a
peek at the scores. They agreed to break the
wax seals on which they had both impressed
their fingerprints at the end of the week, and
to abide by the decision. Concealing the
microphone under a table, Osbert moved the
counter equipment itself into his little workshop,
so that the liv~g-room now bore no sign of the
implacable electronic watchdog that was
controlling the destiny of the [aches.

  "Thereafter, things slowly returned to normal.
F.nnin_ truce became as talkative as ever, but
now Osbert didn't mind in the least because he
knew that every word she uttered was being
patiently noted to be used as evidence against
her. At the end of the week, his triumph would
be complete. He could afford to allow himself
the luxury of a couple of hundred words a day,
knowing that Ermintrude used up this allowance
in five minutes.

  "The breaking of the seals was performed
ceremonially at the end of an unusually talkative
day, when Ermintrude had repeated verbatim
three telephone conversations of excruciating
banality which, it seemed, had occupied most of
her afternoon. Osbert had merely smiled and
said "Yes, dear" at ten minute intervals,
meanwhile trying to imagine what excuse his
wife would put forward when confronted by the
damning evidence.

146 TAKES FROM THE WHITE HART

  "Imagine, therefore, his feelings when the
seals were removed to &close the week's total:

             His 143,567

Hers 32,590

  "Osbert stared at the incredible figures with
stunned disbelief. Something had gone
wrong but where? There must, he decided,
have been a fault in the apparatus. It was
annoying, very annoying, for he knew perfectly
well that Intrude would never let hen live it
down, even if he proved conclusively that the
Counter had gone hay" wire.

  "Ennintrude was still crowing victoriously
when Osbert pushed her out of the room and
started to dismantle his errant equipment. He
was half-way through the job when he noticed
something in his waste-paper basket which he
was sure he hadn't put there. It was a closed
loop of tape, a couple of feet long, and he was
quite unable to account for its presence as he
had not used the tape-recorder for several
days. He picked it up, and as he did so
suspicion exploded into certainty.

  "He glanced at the recorder; the switches, he
was quite sure, were not as he had left them.
E`nnintrude was crafty, but she was also
careless. Osbert had often complained that she
never did a job properly, and here was the final
proof.

  "His den was littered with old tapes carrying
unerased test passages he had recorded; it
had been no trouble at all for 13nnintrude to
locate one, snip off a few words, stick the ends
together, switch to "Playback" and leave the
machine running hour after hour in front of the
microphone. Osbert was furious with himself
for not having thought of so simple a ruse; if
the tape had been strong enough, he would
probably have strangled Ermintrude with it.

  "Whether he tried to do anything of the sort
is still uncertain. All we know is that she went
out of the apartment window, and of course it
could have been an acci

THE DEFENESTRATION OF ERMINTRUDE
INCH 147

dent but there was no way of asking her, as
the Inches lived four storeys up.

  "I know that defenestration is usually
deliberate, and the Coroner had some pointed
words to say on the subject. But nobody could
prove that Osbert pushed her, and the whole
thing soon blew over. About a year later he
married a charming little deaf-and-dumb girt
and they're one of the happiest couples I know."

  There was a long pause when Harry had
finished, whether out of disbelief or out of
respect for the late Mrs. Inch it would be hard
to say. But before anyone could make a suitable
comment, the door was thrown open and a
formidable blonde advanced into the private bar
of the "White Hart".

  It is seldom indeed that life arranges its
climaxes as neatly as this. Harry Purvis turned
very pale and tried, in vain, to hide himself in
the crowd. He was instantly spotted and pinned
down beneath a barrage of invective.

  "So this," we heard with interest, "is where
you've been giving your Wednesday evening
lectures on quantum mechanical I should have
checked up with the University years agol Harry
Purvis, you're a liar, and I don't mind if
everybody knows it. And as for your
friends" she gave us all a scathing look "it's
a long time since I've seen such a scruffy lot of
tipplers."

  "Hey, just a minute!" protested Drew from the
other side of the counter. She quelled him with
a glance, then turned upon poor Harry again.

  "Come along," she said, "you're going home.
No, you needn't finish that drinkl I'm sure
you've already had more than enough."

  Obediently, Harry Purvis picked up his
brief-case and coat.

"Very well, Pnnintrude," he said meekly.

  I will not bore you with the long and still
unsettled argument as to whether Mrs Purvis
really was called Ermintrude, or whether Harry
was so dazed that he auto

148 TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

matically applied the name to her. We all have
our theories about that, as indeed we have
about everything concerning Harry. All that
matters now is the sad and indisputable fact
that throne has ever seen him since that
evening.

  It is just possible that he doesn't know
where we meet nowadays, for a few months
later the "White Hart" was taken over by a new
management and we all followed Drew lock,
stock and barrel particularly barrel to his
new establishment. Our weekly sessions now
take place at the "Sphere", and for a long time
many of us used to look up hopefully when the
door opened to see if Harry had managed to
escape and find his way back to us. It is,
indeed, partly in the hope that he will see this
book and hence discover our new location that
I have gathered these tales together.

  Even those who never believed a word you
spoke miss you, Harry. If you have to
defenestrate Ermmtrude to regain your
freedom, do it on a Wednesday evening
between six and eleven, and there'll be forty
people in the "Sphere" who'll provide you with
an alibi. But get back somehow; things have
never been quite the same since you went.

       About Arthur C. Clarke

IN A recent issue, [holiday magazine acclaimed
Arthur C Clarke as "the colossus of science
fiction" and with good reason. He has already
completed a body of works, both in fiction and
non-fiction, which has clearly established his
reputation as a careful scientist and a superbly
gifted writer of imaginative literature. THE
]?XPLORATiON OF SPACB, his nonfiction book
on the coming age of interplanetary flight, was
a Book-of-the-Month Club choice. The Atlantic
Monthly praised it as "an exceptionally lucid
job of scientific exposition for the layman." His
novel CHILDHOOD'S END, a breathtaking
speculation on the future evolution of man, was
hailed by The New York Times as "a first rate
tour de force that is wed worth the attention of
every thoughtful citizen in this age of anxiety."

  A fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
and former Chairman of the British
Interplanetary Society, Arthur C. Clarke brings
the discipline and the intellectual horizons of
science to the service of a truly original and
powerful imagination. The result is fiction of
the future with an unusual relevance for our
times. (His story "Superiority," for example, is
required reading at the Massachusetts Institute
of TechnologY.)

  Mr. Clarke's interest in science began early.
"When I was less than ten years old," he writes,
"I built a small telescope from a cardboard tube
and a couple of lenses, and spent many of my
nights mapping the moon, until I knew my way
around it a good deal better than around my
native Somerset.

  "The science-fiction virus attacked me when
I was fourteen and saw my first copies of
Amazing Stories and Astounding. Por years I
collected every issue I could lay my hands
upon; I can still recall the thrill of receiving an
entire crateful of Wonder Stories which I'd
purchased for five cents apiece.

  "When I was around fifteen I started writing
short pieces for the school magazine and
eventually became its assistant editor. On
turning up these articles recently, I was
depressed to see how little improvement there
had been in the interim.

  "Moving to London I encountered the British
science-fiction world as well the embryo British
Interplanetary Society. Was treasurer of the B.I.S.,
edited, wrote for, and duplicated countless
science-fiction Yan Nags,' and sold my first
articles on space flight.

  "The War and the R.A.P. introduced me to radar.
The experience I gained running the first
Ground-Controlled Approach equipment has been
reflected in a number of my stories and has given
me an insight into the scientific mind.

  'with the help of a friendly Member of Parliament
I obtained our equivalent of a G.I. scholarship to
Kings College, London, and passed out two years
later with a First Class Honors B.Sc. in physics
and pure and applied math.

  "Meanwhile I had started selling stories to the
science-fiction magazines in the United States. I
continued writing fiction and nonfiction after I'd
left college and became Assistant Editor of
Physics Abstracts a very interesting job that kept
me in touch with scientific progress. Threw this up
after two years when my spare-time income began
to exceed my salary.

  "In 1950 my first book was published a
technical work called Interplanetary Flight, which
was so successful despite its speoiaN~ed nature
that I was asked to do a second book for the
general public. This was The Exploration of Space.

  In the mid-50's, however, my career took a new
direction when I was badly bitten by the
skin-diving virus. (I have since infected other
astronauts, notably Dr. Wernher van Braun.) In
1955 I joined my partner Mike Wilson on the Great
Barrier Reef of Australia, with results reported in
The Coast of Coral. Later expeditions took us to
Ceylon, where we have now made our home.
Mike's discovery of the first treasure ship ever
found in the Indian Ocean (a heavily-armed trader
that went down in 1702 carrying at least a ton of
silver coins) resulted in the book and TV movie
'Yhe Treasure of the Great Reef," and plunged our
lives into a confusion from which we have not yet
extricated ourselves.

  At the moment I am approaching my fortieth
book, and would probably have reached it by now
if not for a three year detour with Stanley Kubrick,
writing the novel and screenplay of "2001: A
Space Odyssey." Having long ago abandoned
hope of catching up with Isaac Asimov's output, I
have now restricted myself to a couple of minor
ambitions:

  I intend to go to the Moon when the tourist
service starts; and I hope (but hardly expect) to
go to Mars....

                       Arthur C. Clarke
-
           BALLANTINE BOOKS
         TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY
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