Robots Have No Tails

The World is Mine

“Let me in!” shrilled the rabbity little creature outside the window. “Let me in! The world is mine!” Gallegher automatically rolled off his couch, reeling under the not unexpected gravity-pull of a colossal hangover, and gazed about in a bleary fashion. His laboratory, gloomy in gray morning light, swam into visibility around him. Two dynamos, decorated with tinsel, seemed to stare at him as though resentful of their festive garments. Why tinsel? Probably the result of those Tom-and-Jerries, Gallegher thought wanly. He must have decided that last night was Christmas Eve.

Brooding on the thought, he was recalled to himself by a repetition of the squeaky cry that had awakened him. Gallagher turned carefully, holding his head between steadying palms. A face, small, furry and fantastic, was regarding him steadfastly through the plexoglas of the nearest window.

It was not the sort of face to see after a drinking bout. The ears were huge, round and furry, the eyes enormous, and a pink button of a nose shivered and twitched. Again the creature cried:

“Let me in! I gotta conquer the world!”

“What now?” Gallagher said under his breath, as he went to the door and opened it. The back yard was empty save for three remarkable animals that now stood in a row facing him, their furry white bodies fat and pushy as pillows. Three pink noses twitched. Three pairs of golden eyes watched Gallegher steadily. Three pairs of dumpy legs moved in unison as the creatures scuttled over the threshold, nearly upsetting Gallegher as they rushed past.

That was that. Gallegher went hurriedly to his liquor organ, mixed a quick one, and siphoned it down. He felt a little better — not much. The three guests were sitting or standing in a row, as usual, watching him unblinkingly.

Gallagher sat down on the couch. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“We’re Lybblas,” said the foremost.

“Ah.” Gallegher thought for a moment. “What are Lybblas?”

“Us,” the Lybblas said.

It seemed to be a deadlock, broken when a shapeless bundle of blankets in one corner stirred and exposed a nutbrown, withered face, seamed with far too many wrinkles. A man emerged, thin, ancient and bright-eyed. “Well, stupid,” he said, “so you let ’em in, eh?”

Gallegher thought back. The old fellow, of course, was his grandfather, in Manhattan for a visit from his Maine farm. Last night — Hm-m-m. What happened last night? Dimly he recalled Grandpa boasting about his capacity for liquor, and the inevitable result: a contest. Grandpa had won. But what else had happened?

He inquired.

“Don’t you know?” Grandpa said.

“I never know,” Gallagher told him wearily. “That’s how I invent things. I get tight and work ’em out. Never know how, exactly. I invent by ear.”

“I know,” Grandpa nodded. “That’s just what you did. See that?” He pointed to a corner, where stood a tall, enigmatic machine Gallegher did not recognize. It buzzed quietly to itself.

“Oh? What is it?”

“You made it. Yourself. Last night.”

“I did, huh? Why?”

“How should I know?” Grandpa scowled. “ You started fiddling with gadgets and set the thing up. Then you said it was a time machine. Then you turned it on. Focused it into the back yard, for safety’s sake. We went out to watch, and those three little guys popped out of empty air. We came back — in a hurry, I recall. Where’s a drink?”

The Lybblas began to dance up and down impatiently. “It was cold out there last night,” one of them said reproachfully. “You should have let us in. The world is ours.”

Gallegher’s long, horselike face grew longer. “So. Well, if I built a time machine — though I don’t remember a thing about it — you must have come out of some different time, right?”

“Sure,” one of the Lybblas agreed. “Five hundred years or so.”

“You’re not — human? I mean — we’re not going to evolve into you?”

“No,” said the fattest Lybbla complacently, “it would take thousands of years for you to evolve into the dominant species. We’re from Mars.”

“Mars — the future. Oh. You — talk English.”

“There are Earth people on Mars in our day. Why not? We read English, talk the lingo, know everything.”

Gallegher muttered under his breath. “And you’re the dominant species on Mars?”

“Well, not exactly,” a Lybbla hesitated. “Not all Mars.”

“Not even half of Mars,” said another. “Just Koordy Valley,” the third announced. “But Koordy Valley is the center of the universe. Very highly civilized. We have books. About Earth and so on. We’re going to conquer Earth, by the way.”

“Are you?” Gallagher said blankly.

“Yes. We couldn’t in our own time, you know, because Earth people wouldn’t let us, but now it’ll be easy. You’ll all be our slaves,” the Lybbla said happily. He was about eleven inches tall.

“You got any weapons?” Grandpa asked. “We don’t need ’em. We’re clever. We know everything. Our memories are capacious as anything. We can build disintegrator guns, heat rays, spaceships—”

“No, we can’t,” another Lybbla countered. “We haven’t any fingers.” That was true. They had furry mittens, fairly useless, Gallegher thought.

“Well,” said the first Lybbla, “we’ll get Earth people to build us some weapons.”

Grandpa downed a shot of whiskey and shuddered. “Do these things happen all the time around here?” he wanted to know. “I’d heard you were a big shot scientist, but I figured scientists made atom-smashers and stuff like that. What good’s a time machine?”

“It brought us,” a Lybbla said. “Oh, happy day for Earth.”

“That,” Gallegher told him, “is a matter of opinion. Before you get around to sending an ultimatum to Washington, would you care for a spot of refreshment? A saucer of milk or something?”

“We’re not animals!” the fattest Lybbla said. “We drink out of cups, we do.” Gallegher brought three cups, heated some milk, and poured. After a brief hesitation, he put the cups on the floor. The tables were all far too high for the small creatures. The Lybblas, piping “Thank you,” politely, seized the cups between their hind feet and began to lap up the milk with long pink tongues.

“Good,” one said.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” cautioned the fattest Lybbla, who seemed to be the leader.

Gallegher relaxed on the couch and looked at Grandpa. “This time machine business—” he said. “I can’t remember a thing about it. We’ll have to send the Lybblas back home. It’ll take me a while to work out the method. Sometimes I think I drink too much.”

“Perish the thought,” Grandpa said. “When I was your age, I didn’t need a time machine to materialize little fellers a foot high. Corn likker did it,” he added, smacking withered lips. “ You work too hard, that’s what it is.”

“Well—” Gallegher said helplessly. “I can’t help it. What was my idea in building the thing, anyhow?”

“Dunno. You kept talking about killing your own grandfather or something. Or foretelling the future. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it myself.”

“Wait a minute. I remember — vaguely. The old time-traveling paradox. Killing your own grandfather—”

“I picked up an ax handle when you started in on that,” Grandpa said. “Not quite ready to cash in my chips yet, young fellow.” He cackled. “I can remember the gasoline age — but I’m still pretty spry.”

“What happened then?”

“The little guys came through the machine or whatever it was. You said you hadn’t adjusted it right, so you fixed it.”

“I wonder what I had in mind,” Gallegher pondered.

The Lybblas had finished their milk. “We’re through,” said the fat one. “Now we’ll conquer the world. Where’ll we begin?”

Gallegher shrugged, “I fear I can’t advise you, gentlemen. I’ve never had the inclination myself. Wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to go about it.”

“First we destroy the big cities,” said the smallest Lybbla excitedly, “then we capture pretty girls and hold them for ransom or something. Then everybody’s scared and we win.”

“How do you figure that out?” Gallegher asked.

“It’s in the books. That’s how it’s always done. We know. We’ll be tyrants and beat everybody. I want some more milk, please.”

“So do I,” said two other piping little voices.

Grinning, Gallegher served. “You don’t seem much surprised by finding yourselves here.”

“That’s in the books, too.” Lap-lap.

“You mean — this?” Gallegher’s eyebrows went up.

“Oh, no. But all about time-traveling. All the novels in our era are about science and things. We read lots. There isn’t much else to do in the Valley,” the Lybbla ended, a bit sadly.

“Is that all you read?”

“No, we read everything. Technical books on science as well as novels. How disintegrators are made and so on. We’ll tell you how to make weapons for us.”

“Thanks. That sort of literature is open to the public?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I should think it would be dangerous.”

“So should I,” the fat Lybbla said thoughtfully, “but it isn’t somehow.”

Gallegher pondered. “Could you tell me how to make a heat ray, for example?”

“Yes,” was the excited reply, “and then we’d destroy the big cities and capture—”

“I know. Pretty girls and hold them for ransom. Why?”

“We know what’s what,” a Lybbla said shrewdly. “We read books, we do.” He spilled his cup, looked at the puddle of milk, and let his ears droop disconsolately.

The other two Lybblas hastily patted him on the back. “Don’t cry,” the biggest one urged.

“I gotta,” the Lybbla said. “It’s in the books.”

“You have it backward. You don’t cry over spilt milk.”

“Do. Will,” said the recalcitrant Lybbla, and began to weep.

Gallegher brought him more milk. “About this heat ray,” he said. “Just how—”

“Simple,” the fat Lybbla said, and explained.

It was simple. Grandpa didn’t get it, of course, but he watched interestedly as Gallegher went to work. Within half an hour the job was completed. It was a heat ray, too. It burned a hole through a closet door.

“Whew!” Gallegher breathed, watching smoke rise from the charred wood. “That’s something!” He examined the small metal cylinder in his hand.

“It kills people, too,” the fat Lybbla murmured. “Like the man in the back yard.”

“Yes, it — What? The man in—”

“The back yard. We sat on him for a while, but he got cold after a bit. There’s a hole burned through his chest.”

“You did it,” Gallegher accused, gulping.

“No. He came out of time, too, I expect. There was a heat-ray hole in him.”

“Who…who was he?”

“Never saw him before in my life,” the fat Lybbla said, losing interest. “I want more milk.” He leaped to the bench top and peered through the window at the towers of Manhattan’s skyline. “Wheeee! The world is ours!”

The doorbell sang. Gallegher, a little pale, said, “Grandpa, see what it is. Send him away in any case. Probably a bill collector. They’re used to being turned away. Oh, Lord! I’ve never committed a murder before—”

“I have,” Grandpa murmured, departing. He did not clarify the statement.

Gallegher went into the back yard, accompanied by the scuttling small figures of the Lybblas. The worst had happened. In the middle of the rose garden lay a dead body. It was the corpse of a man, bearded and ancient, quite bald, and wearing garments made, apparently, of flexible, tinted cellophane. Through his tunic and chest was the distinctive hole burned by a heatray projector.

“He looks familiar, somehow,” Gallegher decided. “Dunno why. Was he dead when he came out of time?”

“Dead but warm,” one of the Lybblas said. “That was nice.”

Gallegher repressed a shudder. Horrid little creatures. However, they must be harmless, or they wouldn’t have been allowed access to dangerous information in their own time-era. Gallegher was far less troubled by the Lybblas than by the presence of the corpse. Grandpa’s protesting voice came to his ears.

The Lybblas scurried under convenient bushes and disappeared as three men entered the back yard, escorting Grandpa. Gallegher, at sight of blue uniforms and brass buttons, dropped the heat-ray projector into a garden bed and surreptitiously kicked dirt over it. He assumed what he hoped was an ingratiating smile.

“Hello, boys. I was just going to notify Headquarters. Somebody dropped a dead man in my yard.”

Two of the newcomers were officers, Gallegher saw, burly, distrustful and keeneyed. The third was a small, dapper man with gray blond hair plastered close to his narrow skull, and a pencil-thin mustache. He looked rather like a fox.

He was wearing an Honorary Badge — which meant little or much, depending on the individual.

“Couldn’t keep ’em out,” Grandpa said. “You’re in for it now, young fellow.”

“He’s joking,” Gallegher told the officers. “Honest, I was just going to—”

“Save it. What’s your name?”

Gallegher said it was Gallegher. “Uh-huh.” The officer knelt to examine the body. He blew out his breath sharply. “Wh-ew! What did you do to him?”

“Nothing. When I came out this morning, here he was. Maybe he fell out of a window up there somewhere,” Gallegher pointed up vaguely to overshadowing skyscrapers.

“He didn’t. Not a bone broken. Looks like you stabbed him with a red-hot poker,” the officer remarked. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Never saw him before. Who told you—”

“Never leave bodies in plain sight, Mr. Gallegher. Somebody in a penthouse — like up there — might see it and vise Headquarters.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.”

“We’ll find out who killed the guy,” the officer said sardonically. “Don’t worry about that. And we’ll find out who he is. Unless you want to talk now and save yourself trouble.”

“Circumstantial evidence—”

“Save it.” The air was patted with a large palm. “I’ll vise the boys to come down with the coroner. Where’s the visor?”

“Show him, Grandpa,” Gallegher said wearily. The dapper blond man took a step forward. His voice was crisp with authority.

“Groarty, take a look around the house while Banister’s televising. I’ll stay here with Mr. Gallegher.”

“O.K., Mr. Cantrell.” The officers departed with Grandpa.

Cantrell said, “Excuse me,” and came forward swiftly. He dug slim fingers into the dirt at Gallegher’s feet and brought up the heat-ray tube. Smiling slightly, Cantrell examined the projector.

Gallegher’s heart nosedived. “Wonder where that came from?” he gulped, in a frantic attempt at deception.

“You put it there,” Cantrell told him. “I saw you do it. Luckily the officers didn’t. I think I’ll keep it.” He slipped the small tube into his pocket. “Exhibit A. That’s a damn peculiar wound in your corpse—”

“It’s not my corpse!”

“It’s in your yard. I’m interested in weapons, Mr. Gallegher. What sort of gadget is this?”

“Uh — just a flashlight.”

Cantrell took it out and aimed it at Gallegher. “I see. If I press this button—”

“It’s a heat ray,” Gallegher said quickly, ducking. “For goodness sake, be careful!”

“Hm-m-m. You made it?”

“I…yes.”

“And you killed this man with it?”

“No!”

“I suggest,” Cantrell said, repocketing the tube, “that you keep your mouth shut about this. Once the police get their hands on the weapon, your goose will be cooked. As it is, no known gun can make a wound like that. Proof will be difficult. For some reason, I believe you didn’t kill the man, Mr. Gallegher. I don’t know why. Perhaps because of your reputation. You’re known to be eccentric, but you’re also known to be a pretty good inventor.”

“Thanks,” Gallegher said. “But…the heat ray’s mine.”

“Want me to mark it Exhibit A?”

“It’s yours.”

“Fine,” Cantrell said, grinning. “I’ll see what I can do for you.”

He couldn’t do much, as it proved. Almost anyone could wangle an Honorary Badge, but political pull didn’t necessarily mean a police in. The machinery of the law, once started, couldn’t easily be stopped. Luckily the rights of the individual were sacrosanct in this day and age, but that was chiefly because of the development of communication. A criminal simply couldn’t make a getaway. They told Gallegher not to leave Manhattan, secure in the knowledge that if he tried, the televisor system would quickly lay him by the heels. It wasn’t even necessary to set guards. Gallegher’s three-dimensional photo was already on file at the transportation centers of Manhattan, so that if he tried to book passage on a streetliner or a sea-sled, he could be recognized instantly and sent home with a scolding.

The baffled coroner had superintended the removal of the body to the morgue. The police and Cantrell had departed. Grandpa, the three Lybblas, and Gallegher sat in the laboratory and looked dazedly at one another.

“Time machine,” Gallegher said, pressing buttons on his liquor organ. “Bah! Why do I do these things?”

“They can’t prove you’re guilty,” Grandpa suggested.

“Trials cost money. If I don’t get a good lawyer, I’m sunk.”

“Won’t the court give you a lawyer?”

“Sure, but that isn’t the way it works out. Jurisprudence has developed into something like a chess game these days. It takes a gang of experts to know all the angles. I could be convicted if I overlooked even one loop-hole. Attorneys have the balance of political power, Grandpa. So they’ve got their lobbies. Guilt and innocence doesn’t mean as much as getting the best lawyers. And that takes money.”

“You won’t need money,” the fattest Lybbla said. “When we conquer the world, we’ll set up our monetary system.”

Gallegher ignored the creature. “You got any dough, Grandpa?”

“Nope, never needed much up in Maine.”

Gallegher cast desperate eyes around the laboratory. “Maybe I can sell something. That heat-ray projector — but no. I’d be sunk if anybody knew I’d had the thing. I only hope Cantrell keeps it under cover. The time machine—” He wandered over and stared at the cryptic object. “Wish I could remember how it works. Or why.”

“You made it, didn’t you?”

“My subconscious made it. My subconscious does the damnedest things. Wonder what the lever’s for.” Gallegher investigated. Nothing happened. “It’s fearfully intricate. Since I don’t know how it works, I can’t very well raise money on it.”

“Last night,” Grandpa said thoughtfully, “you were yelling about somebody named Hellwig who’d given you a commission.”

A light came into Gallegher’s eyes, but died swiftly. “I remember. A pompous big shot who’s a complete nonentity. Terrific vanity complex. He wants to be famous. Said he’d pay me plenty if I could fix him up.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“How?” Gallegher demanded. “I could invent something and let him pretend he’d made it, but nobody’d ever believe a pothead like Rufus Hellwig could do more than add two and two. If that. Still—”

Gallegher tried the televisors. Presently a large, fat white face grew on the screen. Rufus Hellwig was an immensely fat, baldheaded man with a pug nose and the general air of a Mongolian idiot. By virtue of money, he had achieved power, but public recognition eluded him. To his intense distress. Nobody admired him. He was laughed at — simply because he had nothing but money. Some tycoons can carry this off well. Hellwig couldn’t. He scowled at Gallegher now.

“Morning. Anything yet?”

“I’m working on something. But it’s expensive. I need an advance.”

“Oh,” Hellwig said unpleasantly, “you do, eh? I gave you an advance last week.”

“ You could have,” Gallegher said. “I don’t remember it.”

“You were drunk.”

“Oh. Was I?”

“You were quoting Omar.”

“ What part?”

“Something about spring vanishing with the rose.”

“Then I was drunk,” Gallegher said sadly. “How much did I hook you for?”

Hellwig told him. The scientist shook his head.

“It just runs through my fingers like water. Oh, well. Give me more money.”

“You’re crazy,” Hellwig growled. “Show results first. Then you can write your own ticket.”

“Not in the gas chamber I can’t,” Gallegher said, but the tycoon had broken the beam. Grandpa took a drink and sighed.

“What about this guy Cantrell? Maybe he can help.”

“I doubt it. He had me on the spot. Still has, in fact. I don’t know anything about him.”

“Well, I’m going back to Maine,” Grandpa said.

Gallegher sighed. “Running out on me?”

“Well, if you’ve got more liquor—”

“You can’t leave, anyway. Accessory before the fact or something of the sort. Sure you can’t raise any money?”

Grandpa was sure. Gallegher looked at the time machine again and sighed unhappily. Damn his subconscious, anyway! That was the trouble with knowing science by ear, instead of the usual way. The fact that Gallegher was a genius didn’t prevent him from getting into fantastic scrapes. Once before he remembered he’d invented a time machine of sorts but it hadn’t worked like this one. The thing sat silently in its corner, an incredibly complicated gadget of glistening metal, its focus of materialization aimed somewhere in the backyard.

“I wonder what Cantrell wanted with that heat ray,” Gallegher mused.

The Lybblas had been investigating the laboratory with interested golden eyes and twitching pink noses. Now they came back to sit in a row before Gallegher.

“When we conquer the world, you won’t have to worry,” they told the man.

“Thanks,” Gallegher said. “That helps a lot. The immediate need, however, is dough, and lots of it. I must get me a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“So I won’t be convicted for murder. It’s hard to explain. You’re not familiar with this time sector—” Gallegher’s jaw dropped. “Oh-oh. I got an idea.”

“What is it?”

“You told me how to make that heat ray. Well, if you can give me an angle on something else — something that’ll bring in quick money—”

“Of course. We’ll be glad to do that. But a mental hookup would help.”

“Never mind that. Start talking. Or let me ask questions. Yeah, that’ll be better. What sort of gadgets do you have in your world?”

The doorbell sang. The visitor was a police detective, Mahoney, a tall, sardoniclooking chap with slick blue black hair. The Lybblas, undesirous of attracting attention before they’d worked out a plan for world conquest, scuttled out of sight. Mahoney greeted the two men with a casual nod.

“Morning. We ran into a little snag at Headquarters. A mix-up — nothing important.”

“That’s too bad,” Gallegher said. “Have a drink?”

“No, thanks. I want to take your fingerprints. And your eyeprints, if you don’t mind.”

“O.K. Go ahead.”

Mahoney called in a lab man who had accompanied him. Gallegher’s fingertips were pressed against sensitized film, and a specially lensed camera snapped the pattern of rods, cones and blood vessels inside his eyes. Mahoney watched, scowling. Presently the lab man showed the result of his labors to the detective.

“That tears it,” Mahoney said.

“What?” Gallegher wanted to know.

“ Nothing much. That corpse in your back yard—”

“Yeah?”

“His prints are the same as yours. And his eye-pattern too. Even plastic surgery couldn’t account for that. Who was that stiff, Gallegher?”

The scientist blinked. “Jumping tomcats! My prints? It’s crazy.”

“Crazy as the devil,” Mahoney agreed. “Sure you don’t know the answer?”

The lab man, at the window, let out a long whistle. “Hey, Mahoney,” he called. “Come over here a minute. Want to show you something.”

“It’ll keep.”

“Not long, in this weather,” the lab man said. “It’s another corpse, out there in the garden.”

Gallegher exchanged horrified glances with Grandpa. He sat motionless even after the detective and his companion had tumultuously rushed out of the laboratory. Cries came from the back yard.

“Another one?” Grandpa said.

Gallegher nodded. “Looks like it. Come on. We’d better—”

“We’d better make a run for it!”

“No soap. Let’s see what it is this time.” It was, as Gallegher already knew, a body. It too had been killed by a narrow hole burned through the fabricloth vest and the torso beneath. A heat-ray blast, undoubtedly. The man himself gave Gallegher a poignant shock — with good reason. He was looking at his own corpse.

Not quite. The dead man looked about ten years older than Gallegher, the face was thinner, the dark hair sprinkled with gray. And the costume was of an extreme cut, unfamiliar and eccentric. But the likeness was unmistakable.

“Uh-huh,” Mahoney said, looking at Gallegher. “Your twin brother, I suppose?” Mahoney clicked his teeth together. He took out a cigar and lit it with trembling fingers.

“Now look,” he said, “I don’t know what kind of funny business is going on here, but I don’t like it. I got goose bumps. If this stiff’s eyeprints and fingerprints tally with yours, I…won’t…like…it. I’ll hate it like hell. I don’t want to feel that I’m going nuts. See?”

“It’s impossible,” the lab man said. Mahoney shepherded them into the house and televised Headquarters. “Inspector? About that body that was brought in an hour ago — Gallegher, you know—”

“Found it?” the inspector asked. Mahoney blinked. “Huh? I mean the one with the funny fingerprints—”

“I know what you mean. Have you found it or haven’t you?”

“But its in the morgue!”

“It was,” the inspector said, “up to about ten minutes ago. Then it was snatched. Right out of the morgue.”

Mahoney let that soak in briefly, while he licked his lips. “Inspector,” he said presently, “I’ve got another body for you. A different one this time. I just found it in Gallegher’s back yard. Same circumstances.

“what?”

“Yeah. A hole burned through the chest. And it looks like Gallegher.”

“Looks like him — What about those prints I told you to check?”

“I did. The answer is yes.”

“It couldn’t be.”

“Wait’ll you seethe newcorpse,” Mahoney growled. “Send the boys over, will you?”

“Right away. What sort of crazy business—”

The connection broke. Gallegher passed drinks and collapsed on the couch, manipulating the liquor organ. He felt giddy.

“One thing,” Grandpa said, “you can’t be tried for murdering that first body. If it’s been stolen, there’s no corpus delicti.”

“I’ll be — That’s right!” Gallegher sat up. “Isn’t that so, Mahoney?”

The detective hooded his eyes. “Sure. Technically. Only don’t forget what I just found outside. You can be gassed for his murder, once you’re convicted.”

“Oh.” Gallegher lay back. “That’s right. But I didn’t kill him.”

“That’s your story.”

“O.K. I’m sticking to it. Wake me up when the fuss is over. I’ve got some thinking to do.” Gallegher slipped the siphon into his mouth, adjusted it to slow trickle, and relaxed, absorbing cognac. He shut his eyes and pondered. The answer eluded him.

Abstractedly Gallegher realized that the room was filling, that the routine was gone over again. He answered questions with half his mind. In the end, the police left, bearing the second body. Gallegher’s brain, saturated by alcohol, was sharper now. His subconscious was taking over.

“I got it,” he told Grandpa. “I hope. Let’s see.” He went to the time machine and fiddled with levers. “Oh-oh. I can’t shut it off. It must have been set to a definite cycle pattern. I’m beginning to remember what happened last night.”

“About foretelling the future?” Grandpa asked.

“Uh-huh. Didn’t we get in an argument about whether a man could foretell his own death?”

“Right.”

“Then that’s the answer. I set the machine to foretell my own death. It follows the temporal line, catches up with my own future in articulo mortis, and yanks my body back to this time sector. My future body, I mean.”

“You’re crazy,” Grandpa suggested.

“No, that’s the angle, all right,” Gallegher insisted. “That first body was myself, at the age of seventy or eighty. I’m going to die then. I’ll be killed, apparently, by a heat ray. In forty years from now or thereabouts,” he finished thoughtfully. “Hm-m-m. Cantrell’s got that ray projector—”

Grandpa made a face of distaste. “What about the second corpse, then? You can’t fit that in, I bet.”

“Sure I can. Parallel time developments. Variable futures. Probability lines. You’ve heard that theory.”

“Nope.”

“Well — it’s the idea that there are an infinity of possible futures. If you change the present, you automatically switch into a different future. Like throwing a switch in a railroad yard. If you hadn’t married Grandma, I wouldn’t be here now. See?”

“Nope,” Grandpa said, taking another drink.

Gallegher went ahead, anyway. “According to pattern a, I’m going to be killed by a heat ray when I’m seventy or so. That’s one variable. Well, I brought back my dead body along the transport line, and it appeared in the present. And, naturally, it altered the present. Originally, in pattern a, there was no place for the eighty-year-old dead body of Gallegher. It was introduced and changed the future. We automatically switched into another time track.”

“Pretty silly, eh?” Grandpa mumbled.

“Shut up, Grandpa. I’m working this out. The second track — pattern b—is in operation now. And in that track I’m going to be killed by a heat ray when I’m about forty-five. Since the time machine’s set to bring back my body the minute it’s killed, it did just that — materialized my forty-five-year-old corpse. At which the eighty-year-old corpse vanished.”

“Hah!”

“It had to. It was nonexistent in pattern b. When pattern b jelled, pattern a simply wasn’t there any more. Likewise the first corpse.”

Grandpa’s eyes lit up suddenly. “I get it,” he said, smacking his lips. “Clever of you. You’re going to plead insanity, eh?”

“Bah,” Gallegher snarled, and went to the time machine. He tried vainly to turn it off. It wouldn’t turn off. It seemed to be fixed irrevocably in the business of materializing Gallegher’s future probable corpses.

What would happen next? Temporal pattern b had taken over. But the b corpse wasn’t intended to exist in this particular present. It was an x factor.

And b plus x would equal c. A new variable, and a new cadaver. Gallegher cast a harried glance into the back yard. As yet, it was empty. Thank God for small mercies.

At any rate, he thought, they couldn’t convict him of murdering himself. Or could they? Would the law about suicide hold? Ridiculous. He hadn’t committed suicide, he was still alive, but if he was still alive, he couldn’t be dead. Utterly confused, Gallegher fled for the couch, gulped strong drink and longed for death. He foresaw a court battle of impossible contradictions and paradoxes — a battle of the century. Without the best lawyer on Earth, he’d be doomed.

A new thought came, and he laughed sardonically. Suppose he were to be convicted of murder and gassed? If he died in the present, his future corpse would instantly vanish — naturally. No corpus delicti. Inevitably — oh, very inevitably — he would be vindicated after he died.

The prospect failed to cheer him.

Reminded of the need for action, Gallegher yelled for the Lybblas. They had got into the cookie jar, but responded guiltily to his summons, brushing crumbs from their whiskers with furry paws. “We want milk,” the fattest one said. “The world is ours.”

“Yes,” said another, “we’ll destroy all the cities and then hold pretty girls for—”

“Leave it,” Gallegher told them tiredly. “The world will wait. I can’t, I’ve got to invent something in a hurry so I can get some money and hire a lawyer. I can’t spend the rest of my life being indicted for my future corpses’ murders.”

“You talk like a madman,” Grandpa said helpfully.

“Go away. Far away. I’m busy.”

Grandpa shrugged, donned a topcoat, and went out. Gallegher returned to his cross-questioning of the three Lybblas.

They were, he found, singularly unhelpful. It wasn’t that they were recalcitrant; on the contrary, they were only too glad to oblige. But they had little idea of what Gallegher wanted. Moreover, their small minds were filled, to the exclusion of all else, with their own fond delusion. The world was theirs. It was difficult for them to realize that other problems existed.

Nevertheless, Gallegher persevered. Finally he got a clue to what he wanted, after the Lybblas had again referred to a mental hookup. Such devices, he learned, were fairly common in the world of the future. They had been invented by a man named Gallegher, long ago, the fat Lybbla said stupidly, not grasping the obvious implication.

Gallegher gulped. He had to make a mental hookup machine now, apparently, since that was in the cards. On the other hand, what if he didn’t? The future would be changed again. How was it, he wondered, that the Lybblas hadn’t vanished with the first corpse — when pattern a had switched to variable b?

Well, the question wasn’t unanswerable. Whether or not Gallegher lived his life, the Lybblas, in their Martian valley, would be unaffected. When a musician strikes a false note, he may have to transpose for a few bars, but will drift back into the original key as soon as possible. Time, it seemed, trended toward the norm. Heigh-ho.

“What is this mental hookup business?” he demanded.

They told him. He pieced it out from their scatterbrained remarks, and discovered that the device was strange but practical. Gallegher said something about wild talents under his breath. It amounted to that.

With the mental hookup, a dolt could learn mathematics in a few moments. The application, of course, would require practice — mental dexterity must be developed. A stiff-fingered bricklayer could learn to be an expert pianist, but it would take time before his hands could be limbered up and made sufficiently responsive. However, the important point was that talents could be transferred from one brain to another.

It was a matter of induction, through charts of the electrical impulses emitted by the brain. The pattern varies. When a man is asleep, the curve levels out. When he is dancing, for example, his subconscious automatically guides his feet — if he’s a sufficiently good dancer. That pattern is distinctive. Once recorded and recognized, it can be traced later — and the factors that go to make up a good dancer traced, as by a pantograph, on another brain.

Whew!

There was a lot more, involving memory centers and so forth, but Gallegher got the gist of it. He was impatient to begin work. It fitted a certain plan he had—

“Eventually you learn to recognize the chart lines at a glance,” one of the Lybblas told him. “It — the device — is used a great deal in our time. People who don’t want to study get the knowledge pumped into their minds from the brains of noted savants. There was an Earthman in the Valley once who wanted to be a famous singer, but he was tone-deaf. Couldn’t carry a note. He used the mental hookup, and after six months he could sing anything.”

“Why six months?”

“His voice wasn’t trained. That took time. But after he’d got in the groove he—”

“Make us a mental hookup,” the fat Lybblas suggested. “Maybe we can use it to conquer the Earth.”

“That,” Gallegher said, “is exactly what I’m going to do. With a few reservations—” Gallegher televised Rufus Hellwig, on the chance that he might induce the tycoon to part with some of his fortune, but without success. Hellwig was recalcitrant. “Show me,” he said. “Then I’ll give you a blank check.”

“But I need the money now,” Gallegher insisted. “I can’t give you what you want if I’m gassed for murder.”

“Murder? Who’d you kill?” Hellwig wanted to know.

“I didn’t kill anybody, I’m being framed—”

“So am I. But I’m not falling, this time. Show me results. I make you no more advances, Gallegher.”

“Look. Wouldn’t you like to be able to sing like a Caruso? Dance like Nijinsky? Swim like Weissmuller? Make speeches like Secretary Parkinson? Make like Houdini?”

“Have you got a snootful!” Hellwig said ruminatively and broke the beam. Gallegher glared at the screen. It looked as though he’d have to go to work, after all.

So he did. His trained, expert fingers flew, keeping pace with his keen brain. Liquor helped, liberating his demon subconscious. When in doubt, he questioned the Lybblas. Nevertheless the job took time.

He didn’t have all the equipment he needed, and vised a supply company, managing to wangle sufficient credit to swing the deal on the cuff. He kept working. Once he was interrupted by a mild little man in a derby who brought a subpoena, and once Grandpa wandered in to borrow five credits. The circus was in town, and Grandpa, as an old big top enthusiast, couldn’t miss it.

“Want to come along?” he inquired. “I might get in a crap game with some of the boys. Always got on well with circus people, somehow. Won five hundred once from a bearded lady. Nope? Well, good luck.”

He went away, and Gallegher returned to his mental hookup device. The Lybblas contentedly stole cookies and squabbled amicably about the division of the world after they’d conquered it. The machine grew slowly but inevitably.

As for the time machine itself, occasional attempts to turn it off proved only one thing: it had frozen into stasis. It seemed to be fixed in a certain definite pattern, from which it was impossible to budge it. It had been set to bring back Gallegher’s variable corpses. Until it had fulfilled that task, it stubbornly refused to obey additional orders. “There was an old maid from Vancouver,” Gallegher murmured absently.

“Let’s see. I need a tight beam here — Yeah. She jumped on his knee with a chortle of glee—If I vary the receptor sensibly on the electro-magnetic current — Hm-m-m—And nothing on earth could remove ’er. Yeah, that does it.”

It was night. Gallegher hadn’t been conscious of the passing of hours. The Lybblas, bulging with filched cookies, had made no complaint, except occasional demands for more milk. Gallegher had drunk steadily as he worked, keeping his subconscious to the fore. He hadn’t realized till now that he was hungry. Sighing, he looked at the completed mental hookup device, shook his head, and opened the door. The back yard lay empty before him.

Or—

No, it was empty. No more corpses just yet. Time-variable pattern b was still in operation. He stepped out and let the cool night air blow on his hot cheeks. The blazing towers of Manhattan made ramparts against the night around him. Above, the lights of air traffic flickered like devil fireflies.

There was a sodden thump near by. Gallegher whirled, startled. A body had fallen out of empty air and lay staring blankly up in the middle of his rose garden. His stomach cold, Gallegher investigated.

The corpse was that of a middle-aged man, between fifty and sixty, with a silky dark mustache and eye-glasses. Unmistakably, though, it was Gallegher. A Gallegher aged and altered by time variable c—c, now, not b any more — and with a hole burned through the breast by a heat-ray projector.

At that precise moment, Gallegher realized, corpse b must have vanished from the police morgue, like its predecessor.

Uh-huh. In time-pattern c, then, he wasn’t to die till he was over fifty — but even then a heat-ray would kill him. Depressing. Gallegher thought of Cantrell, who’d taken the ray projector, and shivered, slightly. Matters were growing more and more confusing.

Well, presently the police would arrive. In the meantime, he was hungry. With a last shrinking glance at his own dead, aged face, Gallagher returned to the laboratory, picked up the Lybblas on the way, and herded them into the kitchen, where he fixed a makeshift supper. There were steaks, luckily, and Lybblas gobbled their portions like pigs, talking excitedly about their fantastic plans. They’d decided to make Gallegher their Grand Vizier.

“Is he wicked?” the fat one demanded.

“I don’t know. Is he?”

“He’s gotta be wicked. In the novels the Grand Vizier’s always wicked. Wheel” The fat Lybbla choked on a bit of steak. “Ug…uggle…ulp! The world is ours!” Deluded little creatures, Gallegher mused. Incurable romanticists. Their optimism was, to say the least, remarkable.

His own troubles engrossed him as he slid the plates into the Burner—“It Burns Them Clean”—and fortified himself with a beer. The mental hookup device should work. He knew of no reason why it shouldn’t. His genius subconscious had really built the thing—

Hell, it had to work. Otherwise the Lybblas wouldn’t have mentioned that the gadget had been invented by Gallegher, long in their past. But he couldn’t very well use Hellwig as a guinea pig.

A rattle at the door made Gallegher snap his fingers in triumph. Grandpa, of course! That was the answer.

Grandpa appeared, beaming. “Had fun. Circuses are always fun. Here’s a couple of hundred for you, stupid. Got to playing stud poker with the tattooed man and the guy who dives off a ladder into a tank. Nice fellows. I’m seeing ’em tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Gallegher said. The two hundred was penny-ante stuff, but he didn’t want to antagonize the old guy now. He managed to lure Grandpa into the laboratory and explain that he wanted to make an experiment.

“Experiment away,” said Grandpa, who found the liquor organ.

“I’ve made some charts of my own mental patterns and located my bump of mathematics. It amounts to that. The atomic structure of pure learning, maybe — It’s a bit vague. But I can transfer the contents of my mind to yours, and I can do it selectively. I can give you my talent for mathematics.”

“Thanks,” Grandpa said. “Sure you won’t be needing it?”

“I’ll still have it. It’s the matrix, that’s all.”

“Matrix?”

“Matrix Pattern. I’ll just duplicate that pattern in your brain. See?”

“Sure,” Grandpa said, and allowed himself to be led to a chair where a wired helmet was fitted over his head. Gallegher donned another helmet and began to fiddle with the device. It made noises and flashed lights. Presently a low buzzing rose to a erescendo scream, and then stopped. That was all.

Gallegher removed both helmets. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Fit as a fiddle.”

“No different?”

“I want a drink.”

“I didn’t give you my drinking ability, because you already had your own. Unless I doubled it—” Gallegher paled. “If I gave you my thirst, too, you couldn’t stand it. You’d die.”

Muttering something about blasted foolishness, Grandpa replenished his dry palate. Gallegher followed him and stared perplexedly at the old fellow.

“I couldn’t have made a mistake. The charts — What is the value of pi?” He snapped suddenly.

“A dime is plenty,” Grandpa said. “For a big slice.”

Gallegher cursed. The machine must have worked. It had to work, for a number of reasons, chief of which was the question of logic. Perhaps—

“Let’s try it again. I’ll be the subject this time.”

“O.K.,” Grandpa said contentedly.

“Only — hm-m-m. You haven’t got any talents. Nothing unusual. I couldn’t be sure whether it worked or not. If you’d only been a concert pianist or a singer,” Gallegher moaned.

“Hah!”

“Wait a minute. I’ve an idea. I’ve got connection at a teleview studio — maybe I can wangle something.” Gallegher used the visor. It took some time, but presently he managed to induce Senor Ramon Firez, the Argentine tenor, to hop an air-taxi and come down to the laboratory in a hurry.

“Firez!” Gallegher gloated. “That’ll prove it, one way or the other. One of the greatest voices in the hemisphere! If I suddenly find myself signing like a lark, I’ll know I can use the gadget on Hellwig.”

Firez, it seemed, was nightclubbing, but at the studio’s request he shelved his nocturnal activities for the nonce and appeared within ten minutes, a burly, handsome man with a wide, mobile mouth. He grinned at Gallegher.

“You say there is trouble, that I can help with my great voice, and so I am at your service. A recording, is it?”

“Something of the sort.”

“To win a bet, perhaps?”

“You can call it that,” Gallegher said, easing Firez into a chair. “I want to record the mental patterns of your voice.”

“Ah-h, that is something new! Explain, please!”

The scientist obediently launched into a completely meaningless jargon that served the purpose of keeping Señor Firez pacified while he made the necessary charts. That didn’t take long. The significant curves and patterns showed unmistakably. The graph that represented Firez’s singing ability — his great talent.

Grandpa watched skeptically while Gallegher made adjustments, fitted the helmets into place, and turned on the device. Again lights flashed and wires hummed. And stopped.

“It is a success? May I see—”

“It takes awhile to develop the prints,” Gallegher lied unscrupulously. He didn’t want to burst into song while Firez was still present. “I’ll bring the results out to your apartment as soon as they’re done.”

“Ah-h, good. Muy bien.” White teeth flashed. “I am always happy to be of service, amigo!”

Firez went away, Gallegher sat down and looked at the wall, waiting. Nothing happened. He had a slight headache, that was all.

“Through fiddling?” Grandpa demanded.

“Yeah. Do-re-mi-fa-so—”

“What?”

“Shut up. I Pagliacci—”

“You’re crazy as a bedbug.”

“I love a parade!” howled the frantic Gallegher, his tuneless voice cracking. “Oh, hell! Seated one day at the organ—”

“She’ll be coming ’round the mountain,” Grandpa chimed in chummily. “She’ll be coming ’round the mountain—”

“I was weary and ill at ease—”

“She’ll be coming ’round the mountain—”

“And my fingers wandered idly—”

“WHEN SHE COMES!” Grandpa blatted, always the life of the party. “Used to carry a tune pretty well in my young days. Let’s get together now. Know ‘Frankie and Johnnie’?”

Gallegher repressed an impulse to burst into tears. With a cold glance at Grandpa, he went into the kitchen and opened a bulb of beer. The cool catnip taste refreshed him, but failed to raise his spirits. He couldn’t sing. Not in the manner of Firez, anyhow. Nor would six months of training his larynx work any appreciable change, he knew. The device simply had failed to work. Mental hookup, nuts.

Grandpa’s voice called shrilly.

“Hey! I found something in the back yard!”

“I don’t need three guesses,” Gallegher said moodily, and went to work on the beer.

Three hours later — at 10 P.M. — the police arrived. The reason for the delay was simply explained; the body in the morgue had vanished, but its disappearance hadn’t been detected for some time. Then there had been a thorough search, yielding, of course, not the slightest result. Mahoney appeared, with his cohorts, and Gallegher waved them into the back yard. “You’ll find it out there,” he sighed.

Mahoney glared at him. “More funny business, eh?” he snapped.

“None of my doing.”

The troupe poured out of the lab, leaving a slim, blond man eyeing Gallegher thoughtfully.

“How goes it?” Cantrell inquired.

“Uh — O.K.”

“You got any more of those — gadgets — hidden around here?”

“The heat-ray projectors? No.”

“Then how do you keep killing people that way?” Cantrell asked plaintively. “I don’t get it.”

“He explained it to me,” Grandpa said, “but I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Not then. I do now, of course. It’s simply a matter of variable temporal lines. Planck’s uncertainty principle enters into it, and, Heisenberg, obviously. Laws of thermodynamics show clearly that a universe tends to return to the norm, which is our known rate of entropy, and variations from that norm must necessarily be compensated for by corresponding warps in the temporal-spatial structure of the universal cosmos equation.”

There was silence.

Gallegher went to the wall and drew a glass of water, which he poured slowly over his head. “You understand that, do you?” he asked.

“Sure,” Grandpa said. “Why not? The mental hookup gave me your mathematical talent — which included vocabulary, I suppose.”

“You been holding out on me?”

“Hell, no. It takes awhile for the brain to readjust to the new values. That’s a safety valve, I guess. The sudden influx of a completely novel set of thought-patterns would disrupt the mind completely. It sinks in — three hours or so it takes. It’s been that long or more, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Gallegher said. “Yeah.” He caught sight of the watching Cantrell and managed a smile. “A little joke Grandpa and I have between ourselves. Nothing to it.”

“Hm-m-m,” Cantrell said, his eyes hooded. “That so?”

“Yeah. Sure. That’s all.”

A body was carried in from the back yard and through the laboratory. Cantrell winked, patted his pocket significantly, and drew Gallegher into a corner.

“If I showed anybody that heat-ray of yours, you’d be sunk, Gallegher. Don’t forget that.”

“I’m not. What the devil do you want, anyhow?”

“Oh — I dunno. A weapon like this might come in plenty handy. One never knows. Lots of holdups these days. I feel safer with this thing in my pocket.”

He drew back as Mahoney came in, chewing his lips. The detective was profoundly disturbed.

“That guy in the back yard—”

“Yeah?”

“He looks like you, a bit. Only older.”

“How about the fingerprints, Mahoney?” Cantrell asked.

The detective growled something under his breath. “ You know the answer. Impossible, as usual. Eyeprints check, too. Now listen, Gallegher, I’m going to ask you some questions and I want straight answers. Don’t forget you’re under suspicion of murder.”

“Whom did I murder?” Gallegher asked. “The two guys who vanished from the morgue? There’s no corpus delicti. Under the new Codex, eyewitnesses and photographs aren’t enough to prove murder.”

“You know why that was put into effect,” Mahoney said. “Three-dimensional broadcast images that people thought were real corpses — there was a stink about that five years ago. But those stiffs in your back yard aren’t three-d’s. They’re real.”

“Are?”

“Two were. One is. You’re still on the spot. Well?”

Gallegher said, “I don’t—” He stopped, his throat working. Abruptly, he stood up, eyes closed.

“Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine,” Gallegher sang, in a blasting tenor that, though untrained, rang true and resonant. “Or leave a kiss within the cup—”

“Hey!” Mahoney snapped, springing up. “Lay off. Hear me?”

“—and I’ll not ask for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise—”

“Stop it!” the detective shouted. “We’re not here to listen to you sing!”

Nevertheless, he listened. So did the others. Gallegher, caught in the grip of Senor Firez’s wild talent, sang on and on, his unaccustomed throat gradually relaxing and pouring out the notes like the beak of a nightingale. Gallegher — sang!

They couldn’t stop him. They fled, with threats. They would return later — with a strait jacket.

Grandpa also seemed caught in the throes of some strange affliction. Words poured out of him, strange semantic terms, mathematics translated into word-symbols, ranging from Euclid to Einstein and beyond. Grandpa, it seemed, had certainly acquired Gallegher’s wild talent for math.

It came to an end, as all things, good or bad, inevitably do. Gallegher croaked hoarsely from a dry throat and, after a few feeble gasps, relapsed into silence. He collapsed on the couch, eyeing Grandpa, who was crumpled in a chair, wide-eyed. The three Lybblas had come out of hiding and stood in a row, each with a cookie clasped in furry paws.

“The world is mine,” the fattest one said.

Events marched. Mahoney vised to say he was getting out a special injunction, and that Gallegher would be clapped into jail as soon as the machinery could be swung into action. Tomorrow, that meant.

Gallegher vised an attorney — the best one on the Eastern seaboard. Yes, Persson could quash the injunction, and certainly win the case, or — well, anyhow, Gallegher would have nothing to worry about if he retained the lawyer. The fee was payable partially in advance.

“How much?…Uh!”

“Call me,” Persson said, “when you wish me to take charge. You may mail your check tonight?”

“All right,” Gallegher said, and hurriedly vised Rufus Hellwig. The tycoon, luckily, was in.

Gallegher explained. Hellwig was incredulous. He agreed, however, to be at the laboratory early the next morning for a test. He couldn’t make it before then. Nor could he advance any money till matters had been proved beyond a doubt.

“Make me an excellent concert pianist,” he said, “and I’ll be convinced.”

After that, Gallegher vised the teleview studio, again, and managed to get in touch with Joey Mackenzie, the blond, beautiful pianist who had taken New York by storm recently and had instantly been signed by the tele-company. She said she’d be over in the morning. Gallegher had to talk her into it, but he dropped enough hints to rouse the girl’s interest to fever pitch. She seemed to class science with black magic, and was fascinated by both.

She’d be there.

And another body appeared in the back yard, which meant probability line d was taking over. No doubt the third corpse, at the same time, had vanished from the morgue. Gallegher almost felt sorry for Mahoney.

The wild talents settled down. Apparently the irresistible outburst came only at the beginning, some three hours or more after the initial treatment. After that, the ability could be turned on or off at will. Gallegher was no longer impelled to burst into song, but he found he could sing, and sing well, when he wished. Likewise, Grandpa had a fine sense of mathematics when he chose to use it.

Finally, at five o’clock in the morning, Mahoney arrived with two officers, arrested Gallegher, and carried him off to jail.

He was incommunicado for three days.

Persson, the attorney, came on the evening of the third day armed with writs of habeas corpus and foul language. He sprang Gallegher, somehow — perhaps on his reputation. Later, in the air-taxi, he threw up his hands and howled complaints.

“What kind of a case is this? Political pressure, legal tangles — it’s crazy! Corpses appearing in your back yard — seven of them already — and vanishing from the morgue. What’s behind it, Gallegher?”

“I’m not sure. You…uh…you’re acting as my attorney?”

“Obviously.” The taxi skimmed precariously past a skyscraper.

“The check—” Gallegher hazarded. “Your grandfather gave it to me. Oh, he gave me a message, too. He said he’d treated Rufus Hellwig along the lines you’d suggested, and collected the fee. I can’t feel that I’ve earned any part of my retainer, yet, though. Letting you stay in jail for three days! But I was up against powerful political pull. Had to pull plenty of wires myself.”

So that was it. Grandpa, of course, had acquired Gallegher’s mathematical talent, and knew all about the mental hookup and how it worked. He’d treated Hellwig — successfully, it seemed. At least, they were in the chips now. But would that be enough?

Gallegher explained as much as he dared. Persson shook his head.

“The time machine’s behind it, you say? Well, you’ve got to turn it off somehow. Stop those corpses from coming through.”

“I can’t even smash it,” Gallegher confessed. “I tried, but it’s in a state of stasis. Completely out of this poral-spatial sector. I don’t know how long that’ll last. It’s set to bring back my own corpse — and it’ll keep doing that.”

“So. All right. I’ll do my best. Anyway, you’re a free man now. But I can’t guarantee anything unless you eliminate those incessant corpses of yours, Mr. Gallegher. I get out here. See you tomorrow. At my office, at noon? Good.”

Gallegher shook hands and directed the cabman to his own place. An unpleasant surprise awaited him. It was Cantrell who opened the door.

The man’s narrow, pale face twitched into a smile. “Evening,” he said pleasantly, stepping back. “Come in, Gallegher.”

“I am in. What are you doing here?”

“Visiting. Visiting your grandfather.” Gallegher glanced around the laboratory. “Where is he?”

“I dunno. See for yourself.”

Sensing danger of some kind, the scientist began to search. He found Grandpa eating pretzels in the kitchen, and feeding the Lybblas. The old man evaded his gaze. “O.K.,” Gallegher said, “let’s have it.”

“’Twasn’t my fault. Cantrell said he’d turn over the heat ray to the police if I didn’t do what he wanted. I knew that’d be your finish—”

“What’s been happening?”

“Now take it easy. I got it all worked out. It can’t do any harm—”

“What? What?”

“Cantrell’s been making me use the machine on him,” Grandpa confessed. “He peeked through the window when I treated Hellwig and figured out the answer. He threatened to get you convicted unless I gave him some extra talents.”

“Whose?”

“Oh — Gulliver, Morleyson, Kottman. Denys, St. Malory—”

“That’s enough,” Gallegher said weakly. “The greatest technicians of the age, that’s all! And their knowledge in Cantrell’s brain! How did he wangle ’em into it?”

“Fast talking. He didn’t let on what he wanted. Made up some cock-and-bull story — He got your mathematical talent, too. Through me.”

“That’s just fine,” Gallegher said, looking grim. “What the devil is he up to?”

“ He wants to conquer the world,” the fattest Lybbla said sadly. “Oh, don’t let him do it. We want to conquer the world.”

“Not quite that,” Grandpa said, “But bad enough. He’s got the same knowledge we have now — enough to build another mental hookup. And he’s taking the stratoliner to Europe in an hour.”

“This means trouble,” Gallegher said. “Yeah, I know. I’m commencing to feel Cantrell’s just a mite unscrupulous. He’s the one responsible for your being kept in jail the last few days.”

Cantrell opened the door and looked in. “There’s a new corpse in the garden. It just appeared. We won’t bother about it new, though. I’ll be leaving shortly. Any word from Van Decker?”

“Van Decker!” Gallegher gulped. “You haven’t got him—”

The man with the world’s highest I.Q.! “Not yet,” Cantrell smiled. “I tried to get in touch with him for days, and he vised me only this morning. I was afraid I’d miss him. But he said he’d be over tonight.” Cantrell glanced at his watch. “Hope he’s on time. Stratoliners won’t wait.”

“Just a minute,” Gallegher said, moving forward. “I’d like to know your plans, Cantrell.”

“He’s going to conquer the world!” one of the Lybbla’s piped.

Cantrell sent an amused look downward. “It’s not too fantastic, at that,” he admitted. “I’m completely amoral, luckily, so I can take full advantage of this opportunity. The talents of the world’s greatest minds — they’ll come in handy. I’ll be a success in almost anything. I mean anything,” he added, winking.

“Dictator complex,” Grandpa scowled. “Not yet,” Cantrell told him. “Some day, maybe. Give me time. I’m pretty much of a superman already, you know.”

Gallegher said, “You can’t—”

“No? Don’t forget I’ve got that heat ray of yours.”

“Yeah,” the scientist said, “and those corpses in the back yard — my own corpses — were all killed with a heat ray. You’re the only guy who has one, so far. Apparently you’re ticketed to kill me, eventually.”

“Eventually is better than now, isn’t it?” Cantrell asked softly.

Gallegher didn’t answer. The other man went on.

“I’ve skimmed the cream from the best minds on the East Coast, and now I’ll do the same thing to Europe. Anything can happen.”

One of the Lybblas began to cry bitterly, seeing his plan of world conquest shattered.

The doorbell sang. Grandpa, at Cantrell’s nod, went out, to return with a squat, beaknosed man wearing a busy red beard. “Ha!” he bellowed. “I am here! Not late, I trust? Good.”

“Dr. Van Decker?”

“Who else?” the redbeard shouted. “Now hurry, hurry, hurry. I am a busy man. This experiment of yours; as you explained it on the visor, it will not work, but I am willing to try. Projecting one’s astral is foolishness.” Grandpa nudged Gallegher. “Cantrell told him that was the idea,” he muttered.

“Yeah? Listen, we can’t—”

“Take it easy,” Grandpa said, and one eye closed in a significant wink. “I got your talents now, son. I thought of the answer. See if you can. I used your math. Sh-h-h!” There was no time for more. Cantrell shepherded them all into the laboratory. Gallegher, scowling and biting his lip, pondered the problem. He couldn’t let Cantrell get away with this. But, on the other hand, Grandpa had said it was all right — that everything was under control.

The Lybblas, of course, had disappeared, probably in search of cookies. Cantrell, eyeing his watch, urged Van Decker into a chair. He kept one hand significantly on his pocket, and from time to time looked toward Gallegher. The ray gun was still around; its outline was visible beneath the flexocloth of Cantrell’s coat.

“Showyou how easy I can do it,” Grandpa cackled, tottering on spindly legs toward the mental hookup device and throwing switches.

“Careful, Grandpa,” Cantrell warned, his voice tight.

Van Decker stared. “Something is wrong?”

“No, no,” Grandpa said. “Mr. Cantrell is afraid I will make a mistake. But no. This helmet—”

He fitted it on Van Decker’s head. A stylus scratched wavering lines on graphs. Deftly Grandpa sheafed them together, fell over his own feet and collapsed, the cards flying far and wide. Before Cantrell could move the old man was up again, muttering oaths as he collected the charts.

He laid them on a table. Gallegher moved forward, peering over Cantrell’s shoulder. Whew! This was the real thing, all right. Van Decker’s I.Q. was tremendous. His wild talents were — well, wildly remarkable.

Cantrell — who also knew the details of the mental hookup now, since he had absorbed Gallegher’s mathematical ability via Grandpa — nodded with satisfaction. He fitted a helmet on his own head and moved toward the device. With a cursory glance at Van Decker to see that all was well, he threw the switches. Lights blazed, the humming rose to a scream. And died.

Cantrell removed the helmet. As he reached into his pocket, Grandpa lifted a casual hand and showed a small, gleaming pistol.

“Don’t do it,” Grandpa said.

Cantrell’s eyes narrowed. “Drop that gun.”

“Nope. I figured you’d want to kill us and smash the machine, so you’d stay unique. It won’t work. This gun’s got a hair trigger. You can burn a hole in me, Cantrell, but you’ll be dead while you’re doing it.”

Cantrell considered. “Well?”

“Get out. I don’t want to be burned down, any more than you want a bullet in your stomach. Live and let live. Beat it.”

Cantrell laughed softly. “Fair enough, Grandpa. You’ve earned it. Don’t forget, I still know how to build the machine. And — I’ve skimmed the cream. You can do the same thing, but not any better than I can.

“So it’s even,” Grandpa said.

“Yes, it’s even. We’ll meet again. Don’t forget what killed those corpses in your yard, Gallegher,” Cantrell said, and backed out of the door, smiling tightly.

Gallegher came to life with a jump. “We’ve got to vise the police!” he snapped. “Cantrell’s too dangerous now to let loose.”

“ Take it easy,” Grandpa cautioned, waving the gun. “I told you it was all fixed up. You don’t want to be convicted for murder, do you? If Cantrell’s arrested — and we couldn’t make a charge stick, anyway — the police would find the heat ray projector. This way’s better.”

“What way?” Gallegher demanded.

“O.K., Mickey,” Grandpa said, grinning at Dr. Simon Van Decker, who took off his red beard and wig and started to laugh triumphantly.

Gallegher’s jaw dropped. “A ringer!” he gulped.

“Sure. I vised Mickey privately a few days ago. Told him what I wanted. He dressed up, vised Cantrell, and pretended to be Van Decker. Made an appointment for tonight.”

“But the charts. They showed a genius I.Q.-”

“I switched charts when I dropped ’em on the floor,” Grandpa confessed. “I’d made up some fakes in advance.”

Gallegher scowled. “That doesn’t alter the situation, though. Cantrell’s still loose, and with too damn much knowledge.”

“Hold your horses, young fellow,” Grandpa said. “Wait’ll I explain.”

He explained.

About three hours later the telecast news came through: a man named Roland Cantrell had fallen to his death from the Atlantic Stratoliner.

Gallegher, however, knew the exact moment of Cantrell’s death. For the corpse in the back yard had vanished at that time.

Because, with the heat ray projector destroyed, Gallegher’s future no longer could involve his death through a heat beam. Unless he made another, which he would take care not to do.

The time machine came out of its stasis and returned to normal. Gallegher guessed why. It had been set to fulfill a definite pattern — involving the death of Gallegher according to a certain set of variables. Within the limits of those variables, it was frozen. It could not stop operating till it had exhausted all the possibilities. As long as any of Gallegher’s probable futures held heat ray death — corpses would appear.

Now the future was altered drastically. No longer did Gallagher’s probable futures now involve a-1, b-1, c-1, et cetera.

And the machine wasn’t set for such radical variations. It had fulfilled the task for which it had been set. Now it awaited new orders.

But Gallegher studied it thoroughly before using it again.

He had plenty of time. Without a single corpus delecti, Persson had no difficulty in getting the case quashed, though the unfortunate Mahoney nearly went mad trying to figure out what had happened. As for the Lybblas—

Gallegher absently passed around the cookies, wondering how he could get rid of the small, stupid creatures without hurting their feelings. “You don’t want to stay here all your lives, do you?” he inquired.

“Well, no,” one of them replied, brushing crumbs from his whiskers with a furry paw. “But we gotta conquer the Earth,” he pointed out plaintively.

“Mm-m-m,” Gallegher said. And went out to make a purchase, returning later with some apparatus he surreptitiously attached to the televisor.

Shortly thereafter, the regular telecast was broken off for what purported to be a news flash. By a curious coincidence, the three Lybblas were watching the visor at the time. The scene on the screen faded into a close-up of the newscaster, whose face was almost entirely concealed by the sheaf of papers he held. From the eyebrows up — the only part visible — he looked much like Gallegher, but the Lybblas were too intrigued to notice.

“Flash!” said the visor excitedly. “Important bulletin! For some time the world has known of the presence of three distinguished visitors from Mars. They have—”

The Lybblas exchanged startled glances. One of them started to pipe a question and was hastily shushed. They listened again.

“They had been planning to conquer the Earth, it has been learned, and we are pleased to report that the world’s entire population has gone over to the side of the Lybblas. A bloodless revolution has taken place. The Lybblas are unanimously acclaimed as our sole rulers—”

“Whee!” cried a small voice.

“—and the new form of government is already being set up. There will be a different fiscal system, and coins bearing the heads of the Lybblas are being minted. It is expected that the three rulers will shortly return to Mars to explain the situation to their friends there.”

The newscaster’s partially exposed face vanished from the screen, and the regular telecast resumed. After a while

Gallegher appeared, smiling secretively. He was greeted with shrill shouts from the Lybblas.

“We gotta go home now. It was a bloodless—”

“Revolution! The world is ours!”

Their optimism was surpassed only by their credulity. Gallegher allowed himself to be convinced that the Lybblas must go back to Mars.

“O.K.,” Gallegher agreed. “The machine’s all ready. One last cookie all around, and then off you go.”

He shook each fuzzy paw, bowed politely, and the three Lybblas, ears bobbing, piping excitedly among themselves, were shot back to Mars, five hundred years in the future. They were anxious to return to their friends and relate their adventures. They did — but nobody ever believed them.

There were no repercussions from Cantrell’s death, though Gallegher, Grandpa and Mickey waited rather worriedly for several days before they felt able to relax. After that, Grandpa and Gallegher went on a terrific binge and felt far better.

Mickey couldn’t join them. Regretfully, he returned to the circus lot, where, twice a day, he capitalized on his peculiar talents by diving from the top of a thirty-foot ladder into a tub filled with water…