Sprague de Camp's New Anthology

Juice

OF LUNAR Centre, little was to be seen on the surface, except the observatory, the space port, and a few nondescript domes. Below the surface was a series of chambers, like those of a Maginot Line fort, and from these branched a labyrinth of tunnels. Some led to the shafts of the Lunar Mining and Metals Corp. One reached out half a mile to the chambers containing the rocket-fuel plant. In the control-room of this plant a slight sandy-haired man in his early thirties worked a slide-rule. He was Victor Gaston, the engineer in charge.

As a large young man entered the room, the lights flickered. Gaston barked: "Damn." Then he said: "Oh, it's you. Come in."

"I am in," said the other truthfully. "But I don't mind sitting down. What's in your hair this time, Vic?" He was Darwin Priest, assistant to the Chief Surveyor of the Space Transport Authority.

"The lights," grumbled Gaston. "Been wrong ever since Sella landed. And when I call Hartwig up, he says: 'Oh don't bawthah '." He maliciously exaggerated Chief Engineer Werner Hartwig's accent.

Priest nodded sympathetically, and scratched the chin from which no amount of shaving would banish the bluish tinge. "The trouble with you is, you've never learned to handle your bosses. You know Uncle Poggy's terrible temper. He eats out of my hand. The Moon's a bad place for people with nerves."

Gaston fumed. "You can say that: Poggy's at least human. But if you opened Hartwig up you'd find nothing but stop-watches, efficiency tables, and a copy of Frederic Taylor's sermon on the duties of a good employee. Won't even let us do real research for fear of blowing up the fuel accumulators. What's Poggy's programme?"

"We start the survey for the emergency fuel-line pretty quick. That means froggin' around in a suit, okay if a meteor doesn't drill you. Say, where's the Dutchman?"

"Bill?" replied Gaston. "Asleep. He can—damn, there go the lights again. Routine check didn't find anything wrong. So Hartwig says: ' Waste the Authority's money tracing every wire in the place? Nonsense, young man!'" He listened. "Sounds like company. Yellow Peril's dainty steps, I think."

Priest craned his neck down the corridor. "You'd have to be deaf not to know 'em. Yep, Hank, and he's got a skirt."

"Female? Where's my comb! Damn, damn! No remarks from you about peristaltic movements." Gaston referred to Lunar Centre's chief topic of conversation, to wit, the unfortunate effect of the slight gravity on the human digestive system.

A thickset man with broad flat features entered with the female in tow. Gaston said: "Hello, Peril." Priest added: "Hi, Jenghis Khan."

Genrih Tseven, third assistant astronomer, would have been surprised if anyone had called him by his right name. He broadened his perpetual smile, waved a pudgy hand toward the two, and introduced them: "This is Miss McGlomb. You know, the Miss McGlomb? She came up with her father last week, and I've been showing her the observatory. Take over, huh?"

Gaston and Priest went into action like a pair of terriers after a rat. McGlomb was the Authority's sixth vice-president. Besides, the female was good-looking.

"Say, Hank," Gaston put in as Tseven started to leave, "how's juice up your way?"

"The lights blink," replied the Mongol blandly. "As they have ever since Sella landed. And a couple of our 'phone lines went out a couple of hours ago. When the monkeys went over them, they found some of the contacts melted down into little puddles of copper. Nobody knows why. Be seeing you."

Priest was saying: "... and so the hydrogen ions are stored here, and pumped up to the port when a ship's about to take off. The fuel plant is out here so if it explodes ..."

"But I still don't understand what ions are," interrupted the girl.

"Well, I'll try to explain again. You know what an atom is?"

Gaston pulled at Priest and hissed: "Say, whose control-room is this?"

"Keep your shirt on," whispered the surveyor. "I seen her first." But Gaston took charge of explanations. "Last ship out was Sella's; been up on Maleyev's Ob—"

"Oh, I know Captain Sella," broke in Miss McGlomb. "He's what I call a real hero ... so handsome ..."

"Maleyev's Object," continued Gaston firmly. "Another moon, as you may know, which we didn't know we had until a few months ago. Not surprising, considering it's only half a K through, and three times as far from Earth as the real moon. Sella was looking for scanlonite; that's what they mine here, you know. But nothing but nickel-iron, so he's gone back to Earth."

"What's scanlonite?" asked the girl.

"A complex magnesium-lithium silicate, found only on low-gravity bodies. In a magnetic field it conducts like silver. Cut off the field, and it conducts like porcelain, which is to say hardly at all. They can make it on Earth for $2.74 a gram, and mine and ship it from here for $1.96 a gram. Hence the ninety-nine year mining lease that Lunar Mining and Metals has on the Moon and on anything lying around on its surface. Won't say anything about how they got the lease; you'll hear things if you keep your ears open."

"But," protested the girl, "isn't Mining and Metals the company you work for? I thought it was all one organisation."

Good lord, thought Gaston, and her old man an Authority exec! "No," he said, "we work for the Transport Authority, as your father does. That's a public corporation whose stock is owned by the principal governments on Earth. Mining and Metals just leases—"

"What's scanlonite used for?" asked the girl.

Gaston felt a slight wave of annoyance at these interruptions. But her eyes were still big and blue and beautiful. "Oh, electric switches and things."

"Oh! I thought it would be something exciting, like a gem."

Priest was smiling slightly at his friend's visible cooling. He asked: "Don't you think that's enough engineering for now? Let's try the radio." He twirled the dials of the set. The set burped, gave out a short phrase of music, and went dead with a pop.

Gaston swore under his breath as he hurried over. "All this damned juice works are going haywire!"

Priest told the girl: "Don't mind Vic; he gets riled up easy. Have you been up on top yet?"

"Oh, yes. Captain Sella took me for a two-hour hike. He's such a wonderful man—so brave—"She sighted Gaston's canary. Here was something she understood. "Oh, isn't he a darling! What's his name?"

"Alaric!"' said Priest. "Personally I like Great Danes better. But they don't let us keep big pets because of the oxygen they use."

Alaric gave a mournful twitter and relapsed into silence. A red-faced young man in pyjamas appeared through a door. He said: "Excuse me, blease," and vanished. Presently he was back in a bathrobe. Priest introduced him to the girl as Willem Kuyper, Gaston's partner.

"It must be thrilling ..." began the girl.

"Blease," said Kuyper firmly. "We have heard that before. Once a year something goes wrong, and we have a little excitement. Rest of the time we watch dials, and bush levers when a ship comes in, and blay bridge. The last ship was Sella's, and there won't be another for days."

"Do you know Captain Sella?" gushed the girl. "Isn't he a marvellous—"

"Ouch!" yelped Gaston. "The damn thing bit me! What's that?"

Something was oozing out of the receiving-set, like a soap-bubble out of a pipe. Like a soap-bubble it presently parted company with the set and floated up over the people's heads. It seemed to be a ball of light, varying in colour from magenta to deep purple, and a little bigger than an orange. It gave out a high buzz, like that of a small insect.

"Imbossible," murmured Kuyper. The ball moved toward Alaric's cage. There was a poof! and a burst of feathers. Then there was no ball, and a dead canary.

Priest started for the cage, but jumped back. The glowing ball was swelling out of a joint in the cage-wires. In a few seconds it was drifting around the room again.

The girl screamed piercingly. The ball hesitated, then started slowly toward her. Kuyper jerked open the tool-cabinet and took out a yard-long spanner. "Gill our Alaric, will you," he growled. He swung at the ball. As the head of the wrench hit the thing it vanished with a report. The Fleming leaped straight up, face distorted, and collapsed on the floor.

Gaston pulled Priest back from the fallen man. "Watch out! It may be in him still. There it comes!"

The ball was oozing out the end of the spanner. Priest snatched open the door. "Can't get out that way. More of 'em in the hall."

Gaston was trying to disentangle himself from Miss McGlomb, who had fastened around his neck like an amorous octopus and was shrieking at him to save her. He got loose long enough to snatch up the telephone. The line was dead.

The ball floated up near the ceiling. Priest, bending over Kuyper, said: "He's alive; just electric shock, looks like. If we can use artificial respiration—"

"Not with that thing floating around," replied Gaston. "It seems to travel along metal—look, why not use this to fend it off?" He picked up a little table with a circular glass top. He grabbed a bottle of rubber cement out of the tool-cabinet, and smeared some of the goo on the brass screw that went through the centre of the table-top. "That ought to insulate it. For God's sake, Miss McGlomb, will you please let go my arm?"

The ball drifted; then swooped at Gaston. He brought up the table, and the ball bounced back from the glass top as if it had been made of rubber. Gaston, mouth twitching into his nervous little smile, yelped: "Ha! Can't go through a dielectric!" The ball tried again; again its attack was parried.

"Looks like it's alive," said Priest. "If we had another table we could play ping-pong with it."

Gaston's face showed he wasn't amused. The ball flew to a light-switch on the wall, shrank, and disappeared. Priest went to work on Kuyper's breathing.

Gaston yelled: "Look out!" The ball had appeared out of a lighting-fixture on the ceiling, and was dropping toward Priest's head.

"Whew," said Priest, "you saved my hash. Let's drag Bill into the lab."

"Oh, my God!" cried Gaston. Miss McGlomb had fainted.

"Keep your head, Vic. I'll carry 'em." Priest dragged the two limp forms out while Gaston held off the ball with the table-top. Gaston slipped into the laboratory and shut the glass door quickly. He began brushing rubber cement around the door-cracks and over the metal door handle.

The laboratory had the messiness of authenticity, with heaps of wire, rubber tubing and miscellaneous junk piled around. Priest said: "What'll we do about the pipes and wires running in there? It'd take gallons of goo to insulate 'em all."

"Have to trust to luck that it doesn't find them for a while. They're pretty complicated, and if it isn't alive, it gives a damn good imitation."

Gaston looked through the glass door. "It's them," he announced. "The ones in the hall are oozing through the door-knob. Four in the control-room now." The glowing balls hovered about the room. The only sounds were their hum and Priest's heavy breathing as he laboured over Kuyper.

Gaston continued: "Seems like animated lightning-balls, sort of. Nobody knows what lightning-balls are, or what holds 'em together against the mutual repulsion of their electrons. My guess is our visitors are balls of electrons, spinning rapidly."

Priest grunted: "Bill's pulse is getting stronger. How do these things move?"

"Don't know, but it might be by repelling ionized air-molecules out one side. The one that attacked us has shrunk; must be getting worn out."

The smallest of the balls fastened itself to an open light-fixture. The men could see a blue flicker inside the thing's body. The ball grew as they watched.

"Hey!" cried Priest, "it eats juice! It shorts the light-circuit, and feeds off the spark it makes through its own body!"

"Sure," said Gaston. "What'd you expect it to eat, hamburger and onions? Oh, hello!" This was to Miss McGlomb, who had come to.

"Where am I?" she asked. Gaston explained. The girl cried: "Get me out of here! Get me away from those awful things!"

Gaston explained that the emergency exit to the surface was through their bedroom, which could be reached only through the control-room. Miss McGlomb wept. Gaston looked jitterier and jitterier. Priest said: "Look here, young lady, you're missing something very interesting. If we watch these things maybe we can figure out how to handle them."

"I'm not interested in your fire-balls! I want to get out! Captain Sella would know a way out! He's a real man!"

The ball detached itself from the plug and flew vigorously around the room. It joined another ball. The two whirled around one another. Then there was only one, the size of a grapefruit. The big ball changed to a torus, and the torus broke up into four small balls. These raced for the open fixture. The first to arrive anchored itself and began to grow. The others buzzed off, apparently looking for more light-sockets.

Priest said: "They're alive all right. You've just seen a red-hot drama of stark passion. Like this!" He made a pretended grab for Miss McGlomb, who squeaked and snatched up a burette stand, with: "Don't you dare! I'll brain you!"

"Act your age, Darwin," said Gaston. "Guess you're right; they reproduce like paramecia. Wonder where they come from? Not the Moon, or somebody would have seen them. Can't travel through a vacuum, which is an insulator. Somebody brung 'em."

"Sella!" cried Priest.

"Exactly! From Maleyev's Object!"

"What?" It was Miss McGlomb. "Nonsense! I won't have you vilifying my friends this way!"

Gaston and Priest looked hard at the young woman, evidently not thinking beautiful thoughts. But a vice-president's daughter is a vice-president's daughter.

Priest turned back to the door. "We'd better do something. They're exploring the wiring system."

"Sure, but what? Let's see: what's their world like? Ours is made up of gravitational fields, and certain electromagnetic waves and sound waves, like the soundwaves between sixteen and 20,000 cycles. Our balls are probably blind to gravitational fields and sound-waves, but strongly conscious of magnetic and static fields. The wires and pipes are like hallways to them. Insulators are like walls or closed doors. Air they can move slowly through, like a man swimming."

"But that doesn't get us out," protested Miss McGlomb. "You scientists are supposed to be so smart—"

Gaston jumped nervously. "I'm not a scientist, my dear young lady. I'm just a poor dumb engineer—"

Gaston put in: "Don't rattle him, sweetheart. The great brain has to—"

"But," the girl persisted, "all you do is sit around and talk about walls and bicycles. Can't you do anything but lecture? Captain Sella—"

"Miss McGlomb," snarled Gaston tensely, "will you be so very kind as to shut up—before I stove your ports for you? Where was I? Oh, yes. They shouldn't be able to see, lacking organs for focusing light-rays. But they might be able to tell which direction electromagnetic waves are coming from, the way you can locate the heat from a fire. If they feed on current, and can locale a source ...I know, a trap!"

In a few minutes the men had rigged up a box of miscellaneous glass plates, precariously held together by machine-tape. The plate at one end was fastened at the upper edge only, so that it was free to swing.

"Now," said Gaston, "the bait." He rummaged around until he found a spark-coil. He explained: "We'll put the secondary inside, and the primary outside next to the glass."

"Yeah," said Priest, "but how to get the ball through the door?"

"We'll open the door."

"What?" shrilled Miss McGlomb.. "Let those things in here?"

"We'll pin Bill's and my rubber aprons together," said Gaston. "Curtain. Stuff up the spaces on the sides of the box with glass wool."

"I won't let you—" began Miss McGlomb, but a growl from Priest stopped her. Gaston said: "Don't make it any harder for us, young lady. If a ball gets into the ionizers, the whole fuel supply'll go off with a loud bang. Only we shan't hear it."

Priest took a mouthful of thumb tacks and climbed a chair. Gaston opened the door, and Priest tacked up the improvised curtain. Then they pushed the trap across the threshold, so that the end with the door was in the control-room. They connected up the primary of the spark-coil, which was crudely taped to the rear end of the glass box. The hinged plate at the far end was held up by a string running back into the laboratory.

"Damn," said Priest. "Have to get down on the floor to see what they're doing in there. Okay, Vic, 'the juice'."

A little blue streak crackled across the terminals of the secondary coil inside the box. Presently Priest yelled: "Here it comes!" A rosy ball hovered uncertainly at the open end of the box. "Come on, mousey!" pleaded the surveyor. "Look at the nice cheese!" The ball finally drifted into the box and pounced upon the spark like a hungry dog on a chop.

Gaston released the string, and the hinged plate dropped with a clank. They hauled the box into the room, closed the door, and sealed the hinged plate into place with tape.

The ball seemed to realise that something was wrong. It left its meal and circuited the box. It changed to bright pink and darted about, its shrill buzz coming clearly through the glass. Priest turned off the current. "No use letting it build up voltage to where it can bust out. Especially on the Authority's current. Now we've got it, what'll we do with it? It's probably sending out an SOS to its pals."

Gaston was silent for a while. Then he said: "If it's made of juice, it should be affected by a magnetic field. Motion of an electron in a field creates a voltage at right angles to its direction of motion. Let's see. For a core—no, the burette stand's too thin." He prowled around, and pounced on a yard-long mailing-tube. This he filled with buck-shot from the lunar static field gauge, and closed the ends with a pair of round tin box-tops. "Now," he said, "ought to be plenty of lead-wire. Ah!" He began winding the insulated wire around the tube.

"Here, Vic," said Priest. "Punch a couple of holes in your tube and stick this lever through for a crank. That's it. I'll hold the lower end with my feet, and crank. You feed the wire."

They worked furiously, but the wire coiled with disheartening slowness. The lights went out. The one emergency bulb blinked wanly on over the doorway.

"Hell!" shouted Gaston. "Can't see what I'm doing. That means the 110-volt system's gone."

"Keep your shirt on. I've got it." He reached over and shook the box; the entity inside glowed brightly. "We'll use Alphonso's own light to fix him by."

"Step on it, Darwin. Here, I'll pour the rest of the rubber cement on the tube. Don't want it coming unravelled."

To the accompaniment of the baleful buzz of the imprisoned entity, three layers of wire were put on the tube, and the whole thing was covered with black machine-tape.

"Okay," said Priest. "Where's the 220 plug?"

The wires from the improvised electromagnet were plugged in, and Gaston pointed the thing at the glass box. Instantly the ball was snatched this way and that by magnetic forces, and finally buzzed into a corner, where it buzzed helplessly. Gaston looked his disappointment. "Not good enough. I can push Alphonso around with my magic wand, but I can't wreck him. Let's see—"

The girl shrieked. A ball was growing out of the cold-water tap. It detached itself, floated up to shoulder height, and began shuttling purposefully across the room. "Damn it!" cried Priest. "It's after us! Oh hell, here's another!" A second sphere was growing out of the faucet. "Must have found the way, and they're lined up in the pipe!" The big surveyor dropped to his hands and knees as the first ball swept over him. The second ball was shuttling, too, and a third one had appeared on the tap. Their humming was like that of a swarm of mosquitoes.

Gaston swung the electromagnet at the first sphere that came near him; the field flung it six feet away, but it came back for more. Priest caught up the glass-topped table. Miss McGlomb was screaming continuously, so that the men had to shout to each other. They tried to project the two other persons. But the third sphere joined the deadly hunt, and a fourth began to take its place. One was persistently trying to get past Priest's table-top; as he blocked each lunge, it backed up and came on from, a new angle.

"Vic!" he yelled suddenly, "is that magnet on direct current?"

"Yes. You mean—"

"Try A.C.!"

The engineer backed up to the wall-socket and snatched the plug out. The slight spark caused thereby attracted two of the balls. They swooped as he fumbled for the alternating-current socket. Gaston in his excitement failed to turn around to see what he was doing. In a fraction of a second the onrushing spheres would plunge into him—they were only inches from the end of the electromagnet, which he gripped like a lance in his left hand—and his fingers found the A.C. socket and thrust the plug home.

The two balls exploded with one shattering detonation. Gaston leaped across the room to the third ball, and the third ball went off likewise. Gaston swung his apparatus at the faucet, and another explosion rewarded him.

"Got 'em!" he whooped. "D.C. just pushes 'em around, but they can orient themselves to a constant field. But the A.C. field changes direction so fast it shorts 'em or breaks down their organisation or something. Come on! We'll hitch a reel to the magnet, and set up a bunch of spark-coils for bait, and clean 'em out of the Centre. Why, what's wrong, Darwin?"

Priest wasn't listening. He was holding a large bare foot in his hands and hopping around on the other, meanwhile filling the ozone-smelling air with the greatest exhibit of plain and fancy cursing anybody in the room had heard. When the fourth ball had exploded, its discharge had melted the faucet, and Priest had gotten a drop of molten pipe-metal inside his shoe.

Genrih Tseven came to see them. Willem Kuyper was in a wheel-chair. His moves were jerky, as he could not yet completely control his muscles. As usual they greeted the Mongol with "Hi, Yellow Peril!" "'Lo, Fu-Manchu!" "How's the Scourge of God today?" He smiled good-naturedly.

"They've arrested Captain Sella," he announced.

"Did he do it?" asked Gaston.

"Looks that way. He found that Maleyev's Object was mostly scanlonite, with enough magnetite and metallic iron to give it fair conductivity. He landed with a magnetic grapple, and the field caught one of these lighting-balls near the surface. They live in the Object, you know."

Gaston said: "'It must be like a big hollow cavern to them."

"When Sella got out," Tseven continued, "he found this one ball caught at the end of a pinnacle by his field. So he collected it in a non-conducting box, and studied it on his way here.

"The Mining Corp.'s lease gives them not only all the scanlonite in and on the Moon, but all that's in any meteors on its surface. So Sella wanted to have the Corp. haul the Object into the Moon's orbit, and lower it down on the surface, so it would come under the terms of the lease, and their monopoly would be safe.

"But he wanted to present the governments that own the Authority's stock with an accomplished fact before they made a stink about moving the Object. So he turned the ball loose here, knowing it would wreck all the low-amp circuits, including that of our signal-beam modulator. But now the beam's been fixed up, and we sent word to Earth. So they pinched our gallant captain when he landed, and it all came out.

"I'm afraid it'll go hard with him. Eleven men knocked out, two of 'em dead. Anyway, you boys ought to get something out of it. I've heard rumours of promotions."

Gaston said: "I'll take mine on Earth. I'm applying for transfer."

The other three protested with one voice: "No, Vic!"

"You can't do that to us!"

"What'll we do for a fourth bridge-player?"

He smiled his nervous, twitchy little smile. "Thanks, but my mind's made up. Darwin was right; the Moon's no place for a man with nerves. Anyway, I don't get on with my superior."

Tseven asked: "Where's your beautiful young lady?"

Priest answered: "She's been barricaded in our bedroom for twelve hours and won't come out. The balls have all been killed, but she's staying for a while to make sure."

A beautiful smile spread over Victor Gaston's undistinguished features. "That gives me an idea for the most horrible revenge the mind can conceive." He dialled the telephone. "Mr. Hartwig? Gaston ... Sure, Bill's coming along fine. Say, we have a surprise for you. Know Miss Eleanor McGlomb, the McGlomb's daughter? She was in the control room with us when the trouble started ... Yes, she's here now. If you'll be in your office half an hour from now, I'll bring her up to meet you. Don't mention it; glad to. 'Bye." He turned, grinning to his friends. To Tseven he said: "If she nearly drove us nuts, Hank, what do you suppose she'll do to old Super-Efficiency Hartwig?"