The Frederik Pohl Omnibus

The Haunted Corpse

Well, we moved in pretty promptly. This Van Pelt turned up at the Pentagon on a Thursday, and by the following Monday I had a task force of a hundred and thirty-five men with full supply bivouacked around the old man’s establishment.

He didn’t like it. I rather expected he wouldn’t. He came storming out of the big house as the trucks came in. ‘Get out of here! Go on, get out! This is a private property and you’re trespassing. I won’t have it, do you hear me? Get out!’

I stepped out of the jeep and gave him a soft salute. ‘Colonel Windermere, sir. My orders are to establish a security cordon around your laboratories. Here you are, sir, your copy of the orders.’

He scowled and fussed and finally snatched the orders out of my hand. Well, they were signed by General Follansbee himself, so there wasn’t much argument. I stood by politely, prepared to make matters as painless for him as I could. I don’t hold with antagonizing civilians unnecessarily. But he evidently didn’t want it to be painless. ‘Van Pelt!’ he bellowed. ‘Why, that rotten, decrepit, back-stabbing monster of a -’

I listened attentively. He was very good. What he was saying, in essence, was that he felt his former associate, Van Pelt, had had no right to report to the Pentagon that there was potential military applicability in the Horn Effect. Of course, it was the trimmings with which he stated his case that made it so effective.

I finally interrupted him. ‘Dr. Horn,’ I said, ‘the general asked me to give you his personal assurance that we will not in any way interfere with your work here. It is only a matter of security. I’m sure you’ll understand the importance of security, sir.’

‘ Security! Now listen here, Lieutenant, I -’

‘Colonel, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Windermere.’

‘Colonel, General, Lieutenant, what the hell do I care? Listen to me! The Horn Effect is my personal property, not yours, not Van Pelt’s, and not the government’s. I was working in personality dissociation before you were born, and -’

‘Security, sir!’ I made it crackle. He looked at me pop-eyed and I nodded to my driver. ‘He isn’t cleared. Dr. Horn,’ I explained. ‘All right, O’Hare. You’re dismissed.’ Sergeant O’Hare saluted from behind the wheel and took off.

I said soothingly, ‘Now, Dr. Horn, I want you to know that I’m here to help you. If there’s anything you want, just ask; I’ll get it. Even if you want to go into town, that can be arranged - of course, you’d better give us twenty-four hours notice so we can arrange a route and -’

He said briefly, ‘Young man, go to the devil.’ And he turned and stalked into the big house. I watched him, and I remember thinking that for a lean old goat of eighty or eighty-five he had a lot of spirit.

I went about my business, and Dr. Horn picked up the phone in his house and demanded the Pentagon, to complain about our being there. When he finally realized he was talking to our intercept monitor, and that no calls would go out on his line without authorization from me, he yelled up another storm.

But that wasn’t going to get him anywhere, of course. Not when General Follansbee himself had signed the orders.

About oh-eight-hundred the next morning I ran a surprise fullscale inspection and simulated infiltration to keep the detachment on its toes. It all checked out perfectly. I had detailed Sergeant O’Hare to try to sneak in from the marshland south of the old man’s place, and he was spotted fifty yards from the perimeter. When he reported to me he was covered with mud and shaking. ‘Those trigger-happy ba - Those guards, sir, nearly blew my head off. If the officer of the day hadn’t happened by I think they would have done it, only he recognized me.’

‘All right, Sergeant.’ I dismissed him and went in to breakfast. The wire-stringing detail had worked all night, and we were now surrounded with triple-strand electrified barbwire, with an outer line of barbwire chevaux-de-frise. There were guard-towers every fifty yards and at the corners, and a construction detail was clearing the brush for an additional twenty yards outside the wire. I thought briefly of bulldozing a jeep path in the cleared area for permanent rotating patrols, but it didn’t really seem necessary.

I was rather hungry, and a little sleepy - that wire-stringing detail had made quite a lot of noise. But on the whole I was pleased, if a little irritable.

The O.D. phoned in for instructions while I was breakfasting; Van Pelt had arrived from town and the O.D. wouldn’t let him in without my approval. I authorized it, and in a moment Van Pelt turned up in my private mess, looking simultaneously worried and jubilant. ‘How’d he take it, Colonel?’ he asked. ‘Is he - I mean, is he sore?’

‘Very.’

‘Oh.’ Van Pelt shook slightly, then shrugged. ‘Well, you’re here. I guess he won’t try anything.’ He looked hungrily at my buckwheat cakes and sausages. ‘I, uh, I didn’t get a chance to have breakfast on the way down -’

‘Be my guest, Dr. Van Pelt.’ I ordered another place set, and extra portions of everything. He ate it all, God knows how. Looking at him, you’d think he could march two hundred miles on the stored fat he already had. He wasn’t much over five-six, perhaps five-seven, and I’d guess two hundred and eighty pounds at the least. He was about as unlike Dr. Horn as you could imagine. I wondered how they had got along, working together - but of course I knew the answer. They got along badly. Else Van Pelt never would have gone running to the Pentagon. I tried to keep an open mind about that, of course. I mean, General Follansbee thought it was important to national defence, and so on - But I couldn’t help thinking how I would feel if some junior went over my head in that way. Of course, military discipline is one thing, and civilian affairs, as I understand it, ere something else. But all the same...

Anyway, he had done it; and here we were. Not much like a fighting command for me. But orders are orders.

At fourteen hundred I paid a call on Dr. Horn.

He looked up as the clerk-typist corporal and I came in. He didn’t say anything, just stood up and pointed to the door.

I said, ‘Good afternoon, Dr. Horn. If this is an inconvenient time for you to make your daily progress report, just say the word. I’m here to help you, you know. Would from twelve to thirteen hundred hours every day be more satisfactory? Or in the morning? Or -’

‘Every day?’

‘That’s right, sir. Perhaps you didn’t notice Paragraph Eight of my orders. General Follansbee’s orders were to -’

He interrupted me with an irrelevant comment on General Follansbee, but I pretended not to hear. Besides, he might have been right. I said, ‘As a starter, sir, perhaps you’ll be good enough to show us around the laboratories. I think that you’ll find that Corporal McCabe will be able to take your words down at normal speed.’

‘Take what words down?’

‘Your progress report, sir. What you’ve accomplished in the past twenty-four hours. Only this time, of course, we’d better have a fill-in on everything to date.’

He roared: ‘No. I won’t -’

I was prepared for that. I let him roar. When he was through roaring I put it to him very simply. I said, ‘That’s the way it’s going to be.’

He stuttered and gagged. ‘Why, you stinking little two-bit Army - Listen, what’s the idea -’

He stopped and looked at me, frowning. I was glad that he stopped, since in the confidential section of my orders - the paragraphs I didn’t show Dr. Horn, as he was not cleared for access to that material - there had been a paragraph which was relevant here. Van Pelt had told the General that Horn’s health was not good. Apoplexy, I believe - perhaps cancer, I am not very familiar with medical terms. At any rate, Van Pelt, while being debriefed by the General’s intelligence section, had reported that the old man might drop dead at any minute. Well, he looked it, when he was mad at least. I certainly didn’t want him to drop dead before I had made a proper Situation Analysis, for which I needed his report.

Horn sat down. He said, with rusty craft: ‘You’re going to stick to what you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then,’ he said, with a pathetic, senile cunning, ‘I suppose I must reconcile myself to the situation. Exactly what is it you want, Lieutenant?’

‘The report, sir.’

He nodded briefly. ‘Just so.’

Ah-ha, I thought - to myself, of course - this will prove interesting. Do you suppose he will try to win my confidence so that he can phone his congressman? Or merely get me to turn my back so he can clobber me over the head?

‘Yes, yes, the report. Just so,’ he said, staring thoughtfully at a machine of some kind - it rather resembled an SCR-784, the Mark XII model; the one that has something to do with radar, or radio, or something or other. I leave that sort of thing to the Signal Corpsmen, naturally. Anyway, it was something electrical. ‘Just so,’ he repeated. ‘Well, Captain, I shall have to do as you wish. Observe,’ he said, rising, ‘My polycloid quasitron. As you see -’

There was a strangling noise from Corporal McCabe. I looked at him; he was in difficulties.

‘Sir,’ I interrupted the doctor, ‘Will you spell that, please?’

He chuckled, rather grimly. ‘Just so. P-O-L-Y-C-L-O-I-D Q-U-A-S-I-T-R-O-N. Well, Lieutenant, you’re familiar with the various potentiometric studies of the brain which - Perhaps I should begin farther back. The brain, you must realize, is essentially an electrical device. Potentiometer studies have shown -’

He went on. Every thirty to fifty seconds he glanced at me, and turned his head half to one side, and waited. And I said, ‘I see,’ and he said, ‘Just so,’ and he went on. Corporal McCabe was in acute distress, of course, but I rather enjoyed the exposition; it was restful. One learns to make these things restful, you see. One doesn’t spend much time in staff meetings without learning a few lessons in survival tactics.

When he had entirely finished (McCabe was sobbing softly to himself), I summed it all up for him.

‘In other words, sir, you’ve perfected a method of electronically killing a man without touching him.’

For some reason that rocked him.

He stared at me. ‘Electronically,’ he said after a moment. ‘Killing. A man. Without. Touching. Him.’

‘That’s what I said, sir,’ I agreed.

‘Just so, just so.’ He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘will you tell me one thing? What in the sweet name of heaven did I say that gave you that particular stupid notion?’

I could hardly believe my ears. ‘Why - why - That’s what the General said, Dr. Horn! And he talked to Van Pelt, you realize.’

I wondered: Was that his little trick? Was he trying to pretend the weapon wouldn’t work?

He raved for twenty-five seconds about Van Pelt. Then he checked himself and looked thoughtful again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it can’t be Van Pelt. That idiot general of yours must be off his rocker.’

I said formally: ‘Dr. Horn, do you state that your, ah -’ I glanced at McCabe. He whispered the name. ‘Your polycloid quasitron does not, through electronic means, remove a person’s life at a distance?’

He scowled like a maniac. It was almost as if something were physically hurting him. With an effort he conceded: ‘Oh - yes, yes, perhaps. Would you say a locomotive oxidizes coal into impure silicaceous aggregates? It does, you know - they call them ashes. Well, then you could say that’s what the quasitron does.’

‘Well, then!’

He said, still painfully: ‘All right. Just so. Yes, I see what you mean. No doubt that explains why you’re here - I had wondered, I confess. You feel this is a weapon.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Ah.’

He sat down and took out a fat, stickily black pipe and began to fill it. He said cheerfully: ‘We understand each other then. My machine renders humans into corpses. A chipped flint will also do that - pithecanthropus discovered that quite independently some time ago - but no matter, that is the aspect which interests you. Very good.’ He lit the pipe. ‘I mention,’ he added, puffing, ‘that my quasitron does something no chipped flint can do. It removes that thing which possesses only a negative definition from the human body, that quantity, which we will term “x”, which added to the body produces a man, subtracted from it leaves a corpse. You don’t care about this.’

He had me going for a moment, I admit. I said briskly: ‘Sir, I’m afraid I don’t understand you.’

‘You’re bloody well told you don’t understand me!’ he howled. ‘We’re all corpses, don’t you understand? Corpses inhabited by ghosts! And there’s only one man in the world who can separate the two without destroying them, and that’s me; and there’s only one way in the world to do it, and that’s with my quasitron! Lieutenant, you’re a stupid, pig-headed man! I-’

Well, enough was enough.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ I said politely, though I knew he couldn’t hear what I said with his own voice drowning me out. I nodded to Corporal McCabe. He closed his notebook with a snap, jumped to open the door for me; and the two of us left.

There was no reason to stay, do you see? I already had all the material for my Situation Analysis.

All the same I got Van Pelt into my private quarters that evening; I wanted to see if I could make an assessment of the old man’s sanity.

‘He’s perfectly sane, Colonel Windermere. Perfectly!’ Van Pelt’s jowls were shaking. ‘He’s dangerous - oh, yes. Very dangerous. Particularly dangerous to me - I mean, of course, if I hadn’t had your promise of complete protection. Of course. But dangerous. I -’

He paused, glancing at the sideboard where the bowl of fruit (I always take fruit after the evening meal) still reposed. ‘I -’ He coughed. ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘I wonder if -’

‘Help yourself,’ I told him.

‘Thank you, thank you! My, but that looks good! Honestly, Colonel Windermere, I feel that an apple is almost Nature’s rarest treat. Well, pears, yes. I must say that pears -’

I said, ‘Mr. Van Pelt, excuse me. I want the straight dope on Horn. What’s this ghost business?’

He looked at me blankly, crunching. ‘Ghost business?’ He took another bite. Crunch, crunch. ‘My goodness, Colonel -’ crunch, crunch - ‘Colonel Windermere, I don’t know - Oh, the ghost business!’ Crunch. ‘Oh, that. Why, that’s just Dr. Horn’s way of putting it. You know his manner, of course. You see, there is a difference between a living man and a dead man, and that difference is what Dr. Horn whimsically terms a “ghost”.’ He chuckled, tossed the apple core into my wastebasket and took another. ‘Call it life, plus intelligence, plus soul, if there is such a word in your lexicon, Colonel - Dr. Horn merely sums them up. And terms the total “ghost”.’

I pressed him closely. ‘This machine is a - a ghost conjurer?’

‘No, no!’ he cried, quite losing his temper. ‘Colonel, don’t permit yourself to be fooled, Dr. Horn is an arrogant, unprincipled man, but he is not an idiot! Forget the term ghost, since it distresses you. Think of - think of -’

He stared about wildly, shrugged. ‘Think merely of the difference between being alive and being dead. It is that difference that Dr. Horn’s machine works on! Life, intelligence - electrical phenomena, you understand? And Dr. Horn drains them from the body, stores them - can, if he wishes, replace them, or even put them in another body.’ He nodded, beamed at me, bit into the second apple. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Well, sir!

When I had got rid of him, I sat, trying to control my temper, for some time.

This strange old man had a machine that could take a mind right out of a body - yes, and put it in another body!

Confound them, why hadn’t they said so instead of beating around the bush?

Naturally, I didn’t believe it until I saw it - and then I saw it. The next morning, at my request, Dr. Horn put a hen and a cocker spaniel into what he called his polycloid quasitron, and exchanged them.

Then I believed. I saw the hen trying to wag its tail and the spaniel, whimpering, bruised, endeavouring to peck corn.

Corporal McCabe’s eyes were popping out of his head. He started to write something, glanced at me, shook his head slowly and sat staring into space.

Well, time for him later. I said: ‘You can do it. You can take a hen and put it into a cocker spaniel.’

He nodded, too stiff-necked to show his gratification. ‘Just so, Lieutenant.’

‘And - and you can do it with people, too?’

‘Oh, indeed I can, Major. Indeed I can!’ He scowled. ‘These ridiculous laws,’ he complained, ‘governing the conduct of institutions! I’ve tried, I swear I’ve tried, to be permitted to conduct a simple exchange. A man dying of terminal cancer, you see, and a feeble-minded youth. Why not? Put the sound mind in the sound body, let the decayed parts rot together! But will they let me?’

I said, ‘I see. Then you’ve never done it.’

‘Never.’ He looked at me, his old eyes gleaming. ‘But now you’re here, Lieutenant. A military man. Very brave, eh? All I’ve needed is a volunteer - that coward Van Pelt refused, my gardener refused, everyone has refused! But you -’

‘Negative, sir!’ I was shaking - confound the man’s arrogance! ‘I am not a lieutenant, I am a field grade officer! I don’t imagine you appreciate the investment our service has in me!’

‘But, Lieutenant, the importance -’

‘No, no! Never!’ The man’s stupidity amazed me. Me, a lieutenant colonel! What would it do to my 201 file? What about my time in grade? The Pentagon would rock, literally rock! I said, trying to be calm: ‘You don’t understand military matters, Dr. Horn. I assure you, if there is a need for volunteers we will find them for you. Believe me, sir, we are here to help! Why, one of our enlisted men will be pleased - proud, sir! - to offer his services in this - Corporal McCabe! Come back here!’ But it was too late. Moaning, he had fled the room.

I turned to Dr. Horn, a little embarrassed. ‘Well, sir, we understand these things - a shock to the boy, of course. But I’ll find you a volunteer. Trust me.’

The man was as pleased as a fourth-year cadet in June Week, but he still wouldn’t show it. Stiffly he said: ‘Just so, Lieutenant - Major, I mean. Or Captain. Tomorrow will do splendidly.’

Tomorrow! Oh, that wonderful day! For I saw Dr. Horn do just as he had promised ... and I, I alone among them all, I saw what it meant. A weapon? Nonsense, it was much, much more than that!

There was the matter of finding volunteers. Trust me for that, as I had told Dr. Horn. There was the latrine orderly in Able Company - AWOL, he was; and when I explained to him what a court-martial would do, he volunteered with blinding speed. Didn’t even ask what he was volunteering for. We needed two; my executive officer, I am proud to say, volunteered to be the second. A courageous man, typical of the very best leadership type.

We arrived in Dr. Horn’s laboratory; the men were strapped in place and anesthetized - at my request; I wanted to maintain security, so naturally I couldn’t let them know what was happening. Just before he went under the exec whispered, ‘Sir - no Korea?’

‘I promise, Captain,’ I said solemnly, and before his eyes I ripped up the transfer recommendation I had written the night before. He went to sleep a happy man.

Biz, buzz, crackle - I don’t understand these scientific things. But when the electric sparks had stopped flashing and the whiney, droney sounds had died away, Dr. Horn gave them each a shot of something, one at a time.

The latrine orderly opened his eyes. I stepped before him. ‘Name, rank and serial number!’

‘Sir,’ he said crisply, ‘Lefferts, Robert T., Captain, A.U.S., Serial Number 0-3339615!’

Good heavens! But I made sure, with a test question: ‘Where is it you don’t want to be transferred?’

“Why - why, Korea, sir. Please, sir! Not there! I’ll volunteer for your test, I’ll-‘

I nodded to Dr. Horn, and another needle put him back to sleep.

Then - the body that was my exec. The body opened its eyes. ‘Cunnel, suh! I changin’ my mind. I’ll take the guard-house, suh, only -’

‘At ease!’ I commanded, and nodded to Dr. Horn.

There was no doubt about it. ‘You really did it’

He nodded. ‘Just so, Lieutenant. I really did.’

As he switched them back again, I began to realize what it all meant.

In my office I got on the phone. ‘Crash priority!’ I ordered. ‘The Pentagon! General Follansbee, priority and classified; ask him to stand by for scrambler!’

I slapped the field phone into its case. A weapon? Oh, we had the world by the tail, a weapon was nothing by comparison. I confess I was floating on a cloud of pure joy. I saw my eagles within my grasp, perhaps in a year or less my first star - there was nothing the Army would deny the officer who could give them what I had to give!

A rattle and a crash, and Van Pelt thumped into my room, his face smeared, one hand clutching a melting chocolate bar. ‘Colonel Windermere!’ he gasped. ‘You let Horn make his test! But that’s all he’s been waiting for! He -’

It was unbearable. ‘O’Hare!’ I roared. Sergeant O’Hare appeared, looking uncomfortable. ‘How dare you let this man in here without my permission? Don’t you realize I’m making a classified scrambler call to the Pentagon?’

O’Hare said weakly, ‘Sir, he -’

‘Get him out of here!‘

‘Yessir!’ The fat little man kicked up a fuss, but O’Hare was much bigger than he. All the same, Van Pelt gave him a tussle. He was yelling something, all upset; but my call to the Pentagon came through, and I frankly didn’t listen.

‘General Follansbee? Windermere here, sir. Please scramble!’ I slapped the button that scrambled the call from my end. In a moment I heard the General’s voice come through in clear; but anyone tapping in on the scrambled circuit would hear nothing but electronic garbage.

I gave him a quick, concise account of what I had seen. He was irritated at first - disappointed. As I thought he would be.

‘Change them around, Windermere?’ he complained in a high-pitched voice. ‘Why, what’s the use of changing them around? Do you see any strategic value in that? Might confuse them a little, I suppose - if we could get a couple of the enemy commanders. Good God, is that all there is to it? I was looking for something bigger, Windermere, something of more immediate tactical advantage. That Van Pelt must learn not to waste the time of high Army officers!’

‘Sir,’ I said. ‘General Follansbee, may I point out something? Suppose - suppose, sir, that Khrushchev or someone should visit the States. Suppose, for instance, that we surrounded him, him and his whole entourage. Switched them all. Put our own men in their bodies, you see?’

‘What!’ He was thinking I was insane, you could tell it. ‘Colonel Windermere, what are you talking about?’

‘It would work, sir,’ I said persuasively. ‘Believe me, I’ve seen it. But suppose we couldn’t do that. What about a Polish U.N. envoy, eh? Get him, put one of G-2’s operatives inside his body. Do you follow me, sir? No question about whose Intelligence would get the facts in a case like that, is there, sir? Or - maybe we wouldn’t want to do anything like that in peacetime; but what about in war? Take a couple of their prisoners, sir, put our own men in their bodies. Exchange the prisoners!’

Well, I went on; and I won’t say I convinced him of anything. But by the time he hung up, he was thinking pretty hard.

And I had an appointment to see him in the Pentagon the following day. Once I was on the spot, I knew I was in; for he wouldn’t take the responsibility of passing up a thing like this alone, he’d call a staff meeting; and somewhere on the staff somebody would understand.

I could feel the stars on my shoulders already....

‘What is it, O’Hare?’ I demanded.

I was becoming very irritated with the man; he was sticking his head in the door, looking very worried. Well, that was reasonable; I was quite close to giving him something to worry about.

‘Sir - it’s that Van Pelt.’ He swallowed, and looked a little foolish. ‘I - I don’t know if he’s nuts or what, sir, but he says…He says that Dr. Horn wants to live forever! He says all Horn was waiting for was to make a test on a human being. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he says that now that you’ve given Horn his test, sir, Horn’s going to grab the first man he sees and, uh, steal his body. Does that make sense, sir?’

Did it make sense?

I shoved him out of the way, stopping only to grab my side-arm.

It made all the sense in the world. It was just what you’d expect of a man like Horn, he’d take an invention like this and use it to steal other people’s bodies, to prolong his own worthless, nearly senile existence in a younger body!

And if that happened, what would become of my general’s star?

Oh, I knew just the way Horn’s mind would work. Steal a body; smash the machine; get away. Could we trace him? Impossible; there was no test in the world, no fingerprints, no eye-retina charts, no blood-type classifications that could distinguish John Smith from Horn inhabiting John Smith. It was the obvious thing to do; it had occurred to me at once.

Van Pelt had gone blundering in, conquering his cowardice. His objective was to try to stop Horn, I supposed, but what was the effect of his mad rush into the laboratory? Why, to furnish Horn with a body! And if one was not enough, there would be others; for there were the men of my own detachment, standing guard, going about their duties; it would not be impossible for Horn to lure one inside. He would not wait. No, for the chance that his own body would wear out on him in a moment, any moment, was very great - old, worn, and now subject to the pounding of a new hope and excitement, it might collapse like the bombed-out hulk of a barracks, at the lightest touch.

So I hurried - Into the building, through the long dark halls, into the room where the big polycloid quasitron stood -

And I was too late.

I tripped over a human body, stumbled, fell, the gun spinning out of my hand. I scrambled to my hands and knees, touching the body - still warm, but not very warm. Dr. Horn! His castoff cocoon, abandoned!

And before me capered and screeched the figure that once had been Van Pelt, holding a weapon. ‘Too late!’ he cried. ‘Too late, Colonel Windermere!’ Van Pelt! But it was not Van Pelt that lived in that fat soft corpse today, I knew; for the Horn-in-Van Pelt held a gun of his own in one hand, and in the other a bar of metal. And with it he was bashing, bashing the polycloid quasitron! Bam, and showers of sparks flew from it; crash, and it began to glow, sag, melt.

And he had the gun. It was a very difficult situation.

But not hopeless! For we were not alone.

Next to my fallen gun lay another body. Not dead, this one; unconscious. It was Corporal McCabe, struck down with a blow to the head.

But he was quivering slightly. Consciousness was not far away.

‘Stop!’ I cried strongly, getting to my knees. The Horn Van Pelt turned to stare at me. ‘Stop, don’t wreck the machine! More depends on it than you can possibly realize, Dr. Horn. It isn’t only a matter of your life - trust me for that, Dr. Horn, I shall see that you have bodies, fine bodies, to hold your mind as long as you want it. But think of national defence! Think of the safety of our country! And think of your sacred duty to science!’ I cried, thinking of my general’s stars.

And Corporal McCabe twitched and stirred.

I stood up. Horn’s carrier, Van Pelt, dropped his iron bar in alarm, switched the gun to his right hand, stared at me. Good! Better at me than at McCabe. I said: ‘You must not destroy the machine, Dr. Horn! We need it.’

‘But it is destroyed already,’ the little fat figure said stupidly, gesturing. ‘And I am not -’

Splat.

McCabe’s bullet caught him at the base of the skull. The brain that had evicted Van Pelt to house a Horn now housed no one; the blubbery little figure was dead.

And I was raging!

‘You fool, you idiot, you unutterable ass!’ I screamed at McCabe. ‘You killed him! Why did you kill him? Wing him, yes j injure him, break his leg, shoot the gun out of his hand. Any of those things, and still we could make him rebuild the machine ! But now he’s dead, and the machine is gone!’

And so, sadly, were my general’s stars.

The Corporal was looking at me with a most peculiar expression.

I got hold of myself. A life’s dream was gone, but there was no help for it now. Maybe the engineers could tinker and discover and rebuild - but, glancing at the wreck of the polycloid quasitron, I knew that was a dream.

I took a deep breath.

‘All right, McCabe,’ I said crisply. ‘Report to your quarters. I’ll talk to you later on. Right now I must phone the Pentagon and try to account for your blundering in this matter!’

McCabe patted the gun fondly, put it on the floor and turned to go.

‘Just so, Lieutenant,’ said Corporal McCabe.