2

Waldo F. Jones seemed to be floating in thin air at the center of a spherical room. The appearance was caused by the fact that he was indeed floating in air. His house lay in a free orbit, with a period of just over twenty-four hours. No spin had been impressed on his home; the pseudo gravity of centrifugal force was the thing he wanted least. He had left earth to get away from its gravitational field; he had not been down to the surface once in the seventeen years since his house was built and towed into her orbit; he never intended to do so for any purpose whatsoever.

Here, floating free in space in his own airconditioned shell, he was almost free of the unbearable lifelong slavery to his impotent muscles. What little strength he had he could spend economically, in movement, rather than in fighting against the tearing, tiring weight of the Earth’s thick field.

Waldo had been acutely interested in space flight since early boyhood, not from any desire to explore the depths, but because his boyish, overtrained mind had seen the enormous advantage—to him—in weightlessness. While still in his teens he had helped the early experimenters in space flight over a hump by supplying them with a control system which a pilot could handle delicately while under the strain of two or three gravities.

Such an invention was no trouble at all to him; he had simply adapted manipulating devices which he himself used in combating the overpowering weight of one gravity. The first successful and safe rocket ship contained relays which had once aided Waldo in moving himself from bed to wheelchair.

The deceleration tanks, which are now standard equipment for the lunar mail ships, traced their parentage to a flotation tank in which Waldo habitually had eaten and slept up to the time when he left the home of his parents for his present, somewhat unique, home. Most of his basic inventions had originally been conceived for his personal convenience, and only later adapted for commercial exploitation. Even the ubiquitous and grotesquely humanoid gadgets known universally as “waldoes”—Waldo F. Jones’s Synchronous Reduplicating Pantograph, Pat. #296,001,437, new series, et al—passed through several generations of development and private use in Waldo’s machine shop before he redesigned them for mass production. The first of them, a primitive gadget compared with the waldoes now to be found in every shop, factory, plant, and warehouse in the country, had been designed to enable Waldo to operate a metal lathe.

Waldo had resented the nickname the public had fastened on them—it struck him as overly familiar—but he had coldly recognized the business advantage to himself in having the public identify him verbally with a gadget so useful and important.

When the newscasters tagged his spacehouse “Wheelchair,” one might have expected him to regard it as more useful publicity. That he did not so regard it, that he resented it and tried to put a stop to it, arose from another and peculiarly Waldo-ish fact: Waldo did not think of himself as a cripple.

He saw himself not as a crippled human being, but as something higher than human, the next step up, a being so superior as not to need the coarse, brutal strength of the smooth apes. Hairy apes, smooth apes, then Waldo—so the progression ran in his mind. A chimpanzee, with muscles that hardly bulge at all, can tug as high as fifteen hundred pounds with one hand. This Waldo had proved by obtaining one and patiently enraging it into full effort. A well-developed man can grip one hundred and fifty pounds with one hand. Waldo’s own grip, straining until the sweat sprang out, had never reached fifteen pounds.

Whether the obvious inference were fallacious or true, Waldo believed in it, evaluated by it. Men were over-muscled canaille, smooth chimps. He felt himself at least ten times superior to them.

He had much to go on.

Though floating in air, he was busy, quite busy. Although he never went to the surface of the Earth his business was there. Aside from managing his many properties he was in regular practice as a consulting engineer, specializing in motion analysis. Hanging close to him in the room were the paraphernalia necessary to the practice of his profession. Facing him was a four-by-five color-stereo television receptor. Two sets of coordinates, rectilinear and polar, crosshatched it. Another smaller receptor hung above it and to the right. Both receptors were fully recording, by means of parallel circuits conveniently out of the way in another compartment.

The smaller receptor showed the faces of two men watching him. The larger showed a scene inside a large shop, hangarlike in its proportions. In the immediate foreground, almost full size, was a grinder in which was being machined a large casting of some sort. A workman stood beside it, a look of controlled exasperation on his face.

“He’s the best you’ve got,” Waldo stated to the two men in the smaller screen. “To be sure, he is clumsy and does not have the touch for fine work, but he is superior to the other morons you call machinists.”

The workman looked around, as if trying to locate the voice. It was evident that he could hear Waldo, but that no vision receptor had been provided for him. “Did you mean that crack for me?” he said harshly.

“You misunderstand me, my good man,” Waldo said sweetly. “I was complimenting you. I actually have hopes of being able to teach you the rudiments of precision work. Then we shall expect you to teach those butterbrained oafs around you. The gloves, please.”

Near the man, mounted on the usual stand, were a pair of primary waldoes, elbow length and human digited. They were floating on the line, in parallel with a similar pair physically in front of Waldo. The secondary waldoes, whose actions could be controlled by Waldo himself by means of his primaries, were mounted in front of the power tool in the position of the operator.

Waldo’s remark had referred to the primaries near the workman. The machinist glanced at them, but made no move to insert his arms in them. “I don’t take no orders from nobody I can’t see,” he said flatly. He looked sidewise out of the scene as he spoke.

“Now, Jenkins,” commenced one of the two men in the smaller screen.

Waldo sighed. “I really haven’t the time or the inclination to solve your problems of shop discipline. Gentlemen, please turn your pickup, so that our petulant friend may see me.”

The change was accomplished; the workman’s face appeared in the background of the smaller of Waldo’s screens, as well as in the larger. “There—is that better?” Waldo said gently. The workman grunted.

“Now… your name, please?”

“Alexander Jenkins.”

“Very well, friend Alec—the gloves.”

Jenkins thrust his arms into the waldoes and waited. Waldo put his arms into the primary pair before him; all three pairs, including the secondary pair mounted before the machine, came to life. Jenkins bit his lip, as if he found unpleasant the sensation of having his fingers manipulated by the gauntlets he wore.

Waldo flexed and extended his fingers gently; the two pairs of waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism. “Feel it, my dear Alec,” Waldo advised. “Gently, gently—the sensitive touch. Make your muscles work for you.” He then started hand movements of definite pattern; the waldoes at the power tool reached up, switched on the power, and began gently, gracefully, to continue the machining of the casting. A mechanical hand reached down, adjusted a vernier, while the other increased the flow of oil cooling the cutting edge. “Rhythm, Alec, rhythm. No jerkiness, no unnecessary movement. Try to get in time with me.”

The casting took shape with deceptive rapidity, disclosed what it was—the bonnet piece for an ordinary three-way nurse. The chucks drew back from it; it dropped to the belt beneath, and another rough casting took its place. Waldo continued with unhurried skill, his finger motions within his waldoes exerting pressure which would need to be measured in fractions of ounces, but the two sets of waldoes, paralleled to him thousands of miles below, followed his motions accurately and with force appropriate to heavy work at hand.

Another casting landed on the belt—several more. Jenkins, although not called upon to do any work in his proper person, tired under the strain of attempting to anticipate and match Waldo’s motions. Sweat dripped down his forehead, ran off his nose, accumulated on his chin. Between castings he suddenly withdrew his arms from the paralleled primaries. “That’s enough,” he announced.

“One more, Alec. You are improving.”

“No!” He turned as if to walk off. Waldo made a sudden movement—so sudden as to strain him, even in his weight-free environment. One steel hand of the secondary waldoes lashed out, grasped Jenkins by the wrist.

“Not so fast, Alec.”

“Let go of me!”

“Softly, Alec, softly. You’ll do as you are told, won’t you?” The steel hand clamped down hard, twisted. Waldo had exerted all of two ounces of pressure.

Jenkins grunted. The one remaining spectator—one had left soon after the lesson started—said, “Oh, I say, Mr. Jones!”

“Let him obey, or fire him. You know the terms of my contract.”

There was a sudden cessation of stereo and sound, cut from the Earth end. It came back on a few seconds later. Jenkins was surly, but no longer recalcitrant. Waldo continued as if nothing had happened. “Once more, my dear Alec.”

When the repetition had been completed, Waldo directed, “Twenty times, wearing the wrist and elbow lights with the chronanalyzer in the picture. I shall expect the superposed strips to match, Alec.” He cut off the larger screen without further words and turned to the watcher in the smaller screen. “Same time tomorrow, McNye. Progress is satisfactory. In time we’ll turn this madhouse of yours into a modern plant.” He cleared that screen without saying good-by.

Waldo terminated the business interview somewhat hastily, because he had been following with one eye certain announcements on his own local information board. A craft was approaching his house. Nothing strange about that; tourists were forever approaching and being pushed away by his autoguardian circuit. But this craft had the approach signal, was now clamping to his threshold flat. It was a broomstick, but he could not place the license number. Florida license. Whom did he know with a Florida license?

He immediately realized that he knew no one who possessed his approach signal—that list was very short—and who could also reasonably be expected to sport a Florida license. The suspicious defensiveness with which he regarded the entire world asserted itself; he cut in the circuit whereby he could control by means of his primary waldoes the strictly illegal but highly lethal inner defenses of his home. The craft was opaqued; he did not like that.

A youngish man wormed his way out. Waldo looked him over. A stranger—face vaguely familiar perhaps. An ounce of pressure in the primaries and the face would cease to be a face, but Waldo’s actions were under cold cortical control; he held his fire. The man turned, as if to assist another passenger. Yes, there was another. Uncle Gus!—but the doddering old fool had brought a stranger with him. He knew better than that. He knew how Waldo felt about strangers!

Nevertheless, he released the outer lock of the reception room and let them in.

Gus Grimes snaked his way through the lock, pulling himself from one handrail to the next, and panting a little as he always did when forced to move weight free. Matter of diaphragm control, he told himself as he always did; can’t be the exertion. Stevens streaked in after him, displaying a groundhog’s harmless pride in handling himself well in space conditions. Grimes arrested himself just inside the reception room, grunted, and spoke to a man-sized dummy waiting there. “Hello, Waldo.”

The dummy turned his eyes and head slightly. “Greetings, Uncle Gus. I do wish you would remember to phone before dropping in. I would have had your special dinner ready.”

“Never mind. We may not be here that long. Waldo, this is my friend, Jimmie Stevens.”

The dummy faced Stevens. “How do you do, Mr. Stevens,” the voice said formally. “Welcome to Freehold.”

“How do you do, Mr. Jones,” Stevens replied, and eyed the dummy curiously. It was surprisingly lifelike; he had been taken in by it at first, A “reasonable facsimile.” Come to think of it, he had heard of this dummy. Except in vision screen few had seen Waldo in his own person. Those who had business at Wheelchair—no, “Freehold,” he must remember that—those who had business at Freehold heard a voice and saw this simulacrum.

“But you must stay for dinner, Uncle Gus,” Waldo continued. “You can’t run out on me like that; you don’t come often enough for that. I can stir something up.”

“Maybe we will,” Grimes admitted. “Don’t worry about the menu. You know me. I can eat a turtle with the shell.”

It had really been a bright idea, Stevens congratulated himself, to get Doc Grimes to bring him. Not here five minutes and Waldo was insisting on them staying for dinner. Good omen!

He had not noticed that Waldo had addressed the invitation to Grimes alone, and that it had been Grimes who had assumed the invitation to be for both of them.

“Where are you, Waldo?” Grimes continued. “In the lab?” He made a tentative movement, as if to leave the reception room.

“Oh, don’t bother,” Waldo said hastily. “I’m sure you will be more comfortable where you are. Just a moment and I will put some spin on the room so that you may sit down.”

“What’s eating you, Waldo?” Grimes said testily. “You know I don’t insist on weight. And I don’t care for the company of your talking doll. I want to see you.” Stevens was a little surprised by the older man’s insistence; he had thought it considerate of Waldo to offer to supply acceleration. Weightlessness put him a little on edge.

Waldo was silent for an uncomfortable period. At last he said frigidly, “Really, Uncle Gus, what you ask is out of the question. You must be aware of that.”

Grimes did not answer him. Instead, he took Stevens’s arm. “Come on, Jimmie. We’re leaving.”

“Why, Doc! What’s the matter?”

“Waldo wants to play games. I don’t play games.”

“But—”

“Ne’ mind! Come along. Waldo, open the lock.”

Uncle Gus!”

“Yes, Waldo?”

“Your guest—you vouch for him?”

“Naturally, you dumb fool, else I wouldn’t have brought him.”

“You will find me in my workshop. The way is open.”

Grimes turned to Stevens. “Come along, son.”

Stevens trailed after Grimes as one fish might follow another, while taking in with his eyes as much of Waldo’s fabulous house as he could see. The place was certainly unique, he conceded to himself—unlike anything he had ever seen. It completely lacked up-and-down orientation. Space craft, even space stations, although always in free fall with respect to any but internally impressed accelerations, invariably are designed with up-and-down; the up-and-down axis of a ship is determined by the direction of its accelerating drive; the up-and-down of a space station is determined by its centrifugal spin.

Some few police and military craft use more than one axis of acceleration; their up-and-down shifts, therefore, and their personnel, must be harnessed when the ship maneuvers. Some space stations apply spin only to living quarters. Nevertheless, the rule is general; human beings are used to weight; all their artifacts have that assumption implicit in their construction—except Waldo’s house.

It is hard for a groundhog to dismiss the notion of weight. We seem to be born with an instinct which demands it. If one thinks of a vessel in a free orbit around the Earth, one is inclined to think of the direction toward the Earth as “down,” to think of oneself as standing or sitting on that wall of the ship, using it as a floor. Such a concept is completely mistaken. To a person inside a freely falling body there is no sensation of weight whatsoever and no direction of up-and-down, except that which derives from the gravitational field of the vessel itself. As for the latter, neither Waldo’s house nor any space craft as yet built is massive enough to produce a field dense enough for the human body to notice it. Believe it or not, that is true. It takes a mass as gross as a good-sized planetoid to give the human body a feeling of weight.

It may be objected that a body in a free orbit around the Earth is not a freely falling body. The concept involved is human, Earth surface in type, and completely erroneous. Free flight, free fall, and free orbit are equivalent terms. The Moon falls constantly toward the Earth; the Earth falls constantly toward the Sun, but the sidewise vector of their several motions prevents them from approaching their primaries. It is free fall nonetheless. Consult any ballistician or any astrophysicist.

When there is free fall there is no sensation of weight. A gravitational field must be opposed to be detected by the human body.

Some of these considerations passed through Stevens’s mind as he handwalked his way to Waldo’s workshop. Waldo’s home had been constructed without any consideration being given to up-and-down. Furniture and apparatus were affixed to any wall; there was no “floor.” Decks and platforms were arranged at any convenient angle and of any size or shape, since they had nothing to do with standing or walking. Properly speaking, they were bulkheads and working surfaces rather than decks. Furthermore, equipment was not necessarily placed close to such surfaces; frequently it was more convenient to locate it with space all around it, held in place by light guys or slender stanchions.

The furniture and equipment was all odd in design and frequently odd in purpose. Most furniture on Earth is extremely rugged, and at least 90 per cent of it has a single purpose—to oppose, in one way or another, the acceleration of gravity. Most of the furniture in an Earth-surface—or subsurface—house is stator machines intended to oppose gravity. All tables, chairs, beds, couches, clothing racks, shelves, drawers, et cetera, have that as their one purpose. All other furniture and equipment have it as a secondary purpose which strongly conditions design and strength.

The lack of need for the rugged strength necessary to all terrestrial equipment resulted in a fairylike grace in much of the equipment in Waldo’s house. Stored supplies, massive in themselves, could be retained in convenient order by compartmentation of eggshell-thin transparent plastic. Ponderous machinery, which on Earth would necessarily be heavily cased and supported, was here either open to the air or covered by gossamerlike envelopes and held stationary by light elastic lines.

Everywhere were pairs of waldoes, large, small and lifesize, with vision pickups to match. It was evident that Waldo could make use of the compartments through which they were passing without stirring out of his easy chair—if he used an easy chair. The ubiquitous waldoes, the insubstantial quality of the furniture, and the casual use of all walls as work or storage surfaces, gave the place a madly fantastic air. Stevens felt as if he were caught in a Disney.

So far the rooms were not living quarters. Stevens wondered what Waldo’s private apartments could be like and tried to visualize what equipment would be appropriate. No chairs, no rugs, no bed. Pictures, perhaps. Something pretty clever in the way of indirect lighting, since the eyes might be turned in any direction. Communication instruments might be much the same. But what could a washstand be like? Or a water tumbler? A trap bottle for the last—or would any container be necessary at all? He could not decide and realized that even a competent engineer may be confused in the face of mechanical conditions strange to him.

What constitutes a good ash tray when there is no gravity to hold the debris in place? Did Waldo smoke? Suppose he played solitaire; how did he handle the cards? Magnetized cards, perhaps, and a magnetized playing surface.

“In through here, Jim.” Grimes steadied himself with one hand, gesturing with the other. Stevens slid through the manhole indicated. Before he had had time to look around he was startled by a menacing bass growl. He looked up; charging through the air straight at him was an enormous mastiff, lips drawn back, jaws slavering. Its front legs were spread out stiffly as if to balance in flight; its hind legs were drawn up under its lean belly. By voice and manner it announced clearly its intention of tearing the intruder into pieces, then swallowing the pieces.

“Baldur!” A voice cut through the air from some point beyond. The dog’s ferocity wilted, but it could not check its lunge. A waldo snaked out a good thirty feet and grasped it by the collar. “I am sorry, sir,” the voice added. “My friend was not expecting you.”

Grimes said, “Howdy, Baldur. How’s your conduct?” The dog looked at him, whined, and wagged his tail. Stevens looked for the source of the commanding voice, found it.

The room was huge and spherical; floating in its center was a fat man—Waldo.

He was dressed conventionally enough in shorts and singlet, except that his feet were bare. His hands and forearms were covered by metallic gauntlets—primary waldoes. He was softly fat, with double chin, dimples, smooth skin; he looked like a great, pink cherub, floating attendance on a saint. But the eyes were not cherubic, and the forehead and skull were those of a man. He looked at Stevens. “Permit me to introduce you to my pet,” he said in a high, tired voice. “Give the paw, Baldur.”

The dog offered a foreleg, Stevens shook it gravely. “Let him smell you, please.”

The dog did so, as the waldo at his collar permitted him to come closer. Satisfied, the animal bestowed a wet kiss on Stevens’s wrist. Stevens noted that the dog’s eyes were surrounded by large circular patches of brown in contrast to his prevailing white, and mentally tagged it the Dog with Eyes as Large as Saucers, thinking of the tale of the soldier and the flint box. He made noises to it of “Good boy!” and “That’s a nice old fellow!” while Waldo looked on with faint distaste.

“Heel, sir!” Waldo commanded when the ceremony was complete. The dog turned in midair, braced a foot against Stevens’s thigh, and shoved, projecting himself in the direction of his master. Stevens was forced to steady himself by clutching at the handgrip. Grimes shoved himself away from the manhole and arrested his flight on a stanchion near their host. Stevens followed him.

Waldo looked him over slowly. His manner was not overtly rude, but was somehow, to Stevens, faintly annoying. He felt a slow flush spreading out from his neck; to inhibit it he gave his attention to the room around him. The space was commodious, yet gave the impression of being cluttered because of the assemblage of, well, junk which surrounded Waldo. There were half a dozen vision receptors of various sizes around him at different angles, all normal to his line of sight. Three of them had pickups to match. There were control panels of several sorts, some of which seemed obvious enough in their purpose—one for lighting, which was quite complicated, with little ruby telltales for each circuit, one which was the keyboard of a voder, a multiplex television control panel, a board which seemed to be power relays, although its design was unusual. But there were at least half a dozen which stumped Stevens completely.

There were several pairs of waldoes growing out of a steel ring which surrounded the working space. Two pairs, mere monkey fists in size, were equipped with extensors. It had been one of these which had shot out to grab Baldur by his collar. There were waldoes rigged near the spherical wall, too, including one pair so huge that Stevens could not conceive of a use for it. Extended, each hand spread quite six feet from little finger tip to thumb tip.

There were books in plenty on the wall, but no bookshelves. They seemed to grow from the wall like so many cabbages. It puzzled Stevens momentarily, but he inferred—correctly it turned out later—that a small magnet fastened to the binding did the trick.

The arrangement of lighting was novel, complex, automatic, and convenient for Waldo. But it was not so convenient for anyone else in the room. The lighting was of course, indirect; but, furthermore, it was subtly controlled, so that none of the lighting came from the direction in which Waldo’s head was turned. There was no glare—for Waldo. Since the lights behind his head burned brightly in order to provide more illumination for whatever he happened to be looking at, there was glare aplenty for anyone else. An electric eye circuit, obviously. Stevens found himself wondering just how simple such a circuit could be made.

Grimes complained about it. “Damn it, Waldo; get those lights under control. You’ll give us headaches.”

“Sorry, Uncle Gus.” He withdrew his right hand from its gauntlet and placed his fingers over one of the control panels. The glare stopped. Light now came from whatever direction none of them happened to be looking, and much more brightly, since the area source of illumination was much reduced. Lights rippled across the walls in pleasant patterns. Stevens tried to follow the ripples, a difficult matter, since the setup was made not to be seen. He found that he could do so by rolling his eyes without moving his head. It was movement of the head which controlled the lights; movement of an eyeball was a little too much for it.

“Well, Mr. Stevens, do you find my house interesting?” Waldo was smiling at him with faint superciliousness.

“Oh—quite! Quite! I believe that it is the most remarkable place I have ever been in.”

“And what do you find remarkable about it?”

“Well—the lack of definite orientation, I believe. That and the remarkable mechanical novelties. I suppose I am a bit of a groundlubber, but I keep expecting a floor underfoot and a ceiling overhead.”

“Mere matters of functional design, Mr. Stevens; the conditions under which I live are unique; therefore, my house is unique. The novelty you speak of consists mainly in the elimination of unnecessary parts and the addition of new conveniences.

“To tell the truth, the most interesting thing I have seen yet is not a part of the house at all.”

“Really? What is it, pray?”

“Your dog, Baldur.” The dog looked around at the mention of his name. “I’ve never before met a dog who could handle himself in free flight.”

Waldo smiled; for the first time his smile seemed gentle and warm. “Yes, Baldur is quite an acrobat. He’s been at it since he was a puppy.” He reached out and roughed the dog’s ears, showing momentarily his extreme weakness, for the gesture had none of the strength appropriate to the size of the brute. The finger motions were flaccid, barely sufficient to disturb the coarse fur and to displace the great ears. But he seemed unaware, or unconcerned, by the disclosure. Turning back to Stevens, he added, “But if Baldur amuses you, you must see Ariel.”

“Ariel?”

Instead of replying, Waldo touched the keyboard of the voder, producing a musical whistling pattern of three notes. There was a rustling near the wall of the room “above” them; a tiny yellow shape shot toward them—a canary. It sailed through the air with wings folded, bullet fashion. A foot or so away from Waldo it spread its wings, cupping the air, beat them a few times with tail down and spread, and came to a dead stop, hovering in the air with folded wings. Not quite a dead stop, perhaps, for it drifted slowly, came within an inch of Waldo’s shoulder, let down its landing gear, and dug its claws into his singlet.

Waldo reached up and stroked it with a fingertip. It preened. “No earth-hatched bird can learn to fly in that fashion,” he stated. “I know. I lost half a dozen before I was sure that they were incapable of making the readjustment. Too much thalamus.”

“What happened to them?”

“In a man you would call it acute anxiety psychosis. They try to fly; their own prime skill leads them to disaster. Naturally, everything they do is wrong and they don’t understand it. Presently they quit trying; a little later they die. Of a broken heart, one might say, poetically.” He smiled thinly. “But Ariel is a genius among birds. He came here as an egg; he invented, unassisted, a whole new school of flying.” He reached up a finger, offering the bird a new perch, which it accepted.

“That’s enough, Ariel. Fly away home.”

The bird started the “Bell Song” from Lakmé.

He shook it gently. “No, Ariel. Go to bed.”

The canary lifted its feet clear of the finger, floated for an instant, then beat its wings savagely for a second or two to set course and pick up speed, and bulleted away whence he had come, wings folded, feet streamlined under.

“Jimmie’s got something he wants to talk with you about,” Grimes commenced.

“Delighted,” Waldo answered lazily, “but shan’t we dine first? Have you an appetite, sir?”

Waldo full, Stevens decided, might be easier to cope with than Waldo empty. Besides, his own midsection informed him that wrestling with a calorie or two might be pleasant. “Yes, I have.”

“Excellent.” They were served.

Stevens was never able to decide whether Waldo had prepared the meal by means of his many namesakes, or whether servants somewhere out of sight had done the actual work. Modern food-preparation methods being what they were, Waldo could have done it alone; he, Stevens, batched it with no difficulty, and so did Gus. But he made a mental note to ask Doc Grimes at the first opportunity what resident staff, if any, Waldo employed. He never remembered to do so.

The dinner arrived in a small food chest, propelled to their midst at the end of a long, telescoping, pneumatic tube. It stopped with a soft sigh and held its position. Stevens paid little attention to the food itself—it was adequate and tasty, he knew—for his attention was held by the dishes and serving methods. Waldo let his own steak float in front of him, cut bites from it with curved surgical shears, and conveyed them to his mouth by means of dainty tongs. He made hard work of chewing.

“You can’t get good steaks any more,” he remarked. “This one is tough. God knows I pay enough—and complain enough.”

Stevens did not answer. He thought his own steak had been tenderized too much; it almost fell apart. He was managing it with knife and fork, but the knife was superfluous. It appeared that Waldo did not expect his guests to make use of his own admittedly superior methods and utensils. Stevens ate from a platter clamped to his thighs, making a lap for it after Grimes’s example by squatting in mid air. The platter itself had been thoughtfully provided with sharp little prongs on its service side.

Liquids were served in small flexible skins, equipped with nipples. Think of a baby’s plastic nursing bottle.

The food chest took the utensils away with a dolorous insufflation. “Will you smoke, sir?”

“Thank you.” He saw what a weight-free ash tray necessarily should be: a long tube with a bell-shaped receptacle on its end. A slight suction in the tube, and ashes knocked into the bell were swept away, out of sight and mind.

“About the matter—” Grimes commenced again. “Jimmie here is Chief Engineer for North American Power-Air.”

“What?” Waldo straightened himself, became rigid; his chest rose and fell. He ignored Stevens entirely. “Uncle Gus, do you mean to say that you have introduced an officer of that company into my—home?”

“Don’t get your dander up. Relax. Damn it, I’ve warned you not to do anything to raise your blood pressure.” Grimes propelled himself closer to his host and took him by the wrist in the age-old fashion of a physician counting pulse. “Breathe slower. Whatcha trying to do? Go on an oxygen jag?”

Waldo tried to shake himself loose. It was a rather pitiful gesture; the old man had ten times his strength. “Uncle Gus, you—”

“Shut up!”

The three maintained a silence for several minutes, uncomfortable for at least two of them. Grimes did not seem to mind it.

“There,” he said at last. “That’s better. Now keep your shirt on and listen to me. Jimmie is a nice kid, and he has never done anything to you. And he has behaved himself while he’s been here. You’ve got no right to be rude to him, no matter who he works for. Matter of fact, you owe him an apology.”

“Oh, really now, Doc,” Stevens protested. “I’m afraid I have been here somewhat under false colors. I’m sorry, Mr. Jones. I didn’t intend it to be that way. I tried to explain when we arrived.”

Waldo’s face was hard to read. He was evidently trying hard to control himself. “Not at all, Mr. Stevens. I am sorry that I showed temper. It is perfectly true that I should not transfer to you any animus I feel for your employers… though God knows I bear no love for them.”

“I know it. Nevertheless, I am sorry to hear you say it.”

“I was cheated, do you understand? Cheated—by as rotten a piece of quasilegal chicanery as has ever—”

“Easy, Waldo!”

“Sorry, Uncle Gus.” He continued, his voice less shrill. “You know of the so-called Hathaway patents?”

“Yes, of course.”

“‘So-called’ is putting it mildly. The man was a mere machinist. Those patents are mine.”

Waldo’s version, as he proceeded to give it, was reasonably factual, Stevens felt, but quite biased and unreasonable. Perhaps Hathaway had been working, as Waldo alleged, simply as a servant—a hired artisan, but there was nothing to prove it, no contract, no papers of any sort. The man had filed certain patents, the only ones he had ever filed and admittedly Waldo-ish in their cleverness. Hathaway had then promptly died, and his heirs, through their attorneys, had sold the patents to a firm which had been dickering with Hathaway.

Waldo alleged that this firm had put Hathaway up to stealing from him, had caused him to hire himself out to Waldo for that purpose. But the firm was defunct; its assets had been sold to North American Power-Air. NAPA had offered a settlement; Waldo had chosen to sue. The suit went against him.

Even if Waldo were right, Stevens could not see any means by which the directors of NAPA could, legally, grant him any relief. The officers of a corporation are trustees for other people’s money; if the directors of NAPA should attempt to give away property which had been adjudicated as belonging to the corporation, any stockholder could enjoin them before the act or recover from them personally after the act.

At least so Stevens thought. But he was no lawyer, he admitted to himself. The important point was that he needed Waldo’s services, whereas Waldo held a bitter grudge against the firm he worked for.

He was forced to admit that it did not look as if Doc Grimes’s presence was enough to turn the trick. “All that happened before my time,” he began, “and naturally I know very little about it. I’m awfully sorry it happened. It’s pretty uncomfortable for me, for right now I find myself in a position where I need your services very badly indeed.”

Waldo did not seem displeased with the idea. “So? How does this come about?”

Stevens explained to him in some detail the trouble they had been having with the deKalb receptors. Waldo listened attentively. When Stevens had concluded he said, “Yes, that is much the same story your Mr. Gleason had to tell. Of course, as a technical man you have given a much more coherent picture than that money manipulator was capable of giving. But why do you come to me? I do not specialize in radiation engineering, nor do I have any degrees from fancy institutions.”

“I come to you,” Stevens said seriously, “for the same reason everybody else comes to you when they are really stuck with an engineering problem. So far as I know, you have an unbroken record of solving any problem you cared to tackle. Your record reminds me of another man—”

“Who?” Waldo’s tone was suddenly sharp.

“Edison. He did not bother with degrees either, but solved all the hard problems of his day.”

“Oh, Edison—I thought you were speaking of a contemporary. No doubt he was all right in his day,” he added with overt generosity.

“I was not comparing him to you. I was simply recalling that Edison was reputed to prefer hard problems to easy ones. I’ve heard the same about you; I had hopes that this problem might be hard enough to interest you.”

“It is mildly interesting,” Waldo conceded. “A little out of my line, but interesting. I must say, however, that I am surprised to hear you, an executive of North American Power-Air, express such a high opinion of my talents. One would think that, if the opinion were sincere, it would not have been difficult to convince your firm of my indisputable handiwork in the matter of the so-called Hathaway patents.”

Really, thought Stevens, the man is impossible. A mind like a weasel. Aloud, he said, “I suppose the matter was handled by the business management and the law staff. They would hardly be equipped to distinguish between routine engineering and inspired design.”

The answer seemed to mollify Waldo. He asked, “What does your own research staff say about the problem?”

Stevens looked wry. “Nothing helpful. Dr. Rambeau does not really seem to believe the data I bring him. He says it’s impossible, but it makes him unhappy. I really believe that he has been living on aspirin and Nembutal for a good many weeks.”

“Rambeau,” Waldo said slowly. “I recall the man. A mediocre mind. All memory and no intuition. I don’t think I would feel discouraged simply because Rambeau is puzzled.”

“You really feel that there is some hope?”

“It should not be too difficult. I had already given the matter some thought, after Mr. Gleason’s phone call. You have given me additional data, and I think I see at least two new lines of approach which may prove fruitful. In any case, there is always some approach—the correct one.”

“Does that mean you will accept?” Stevens demanded, nervous with relief.

“Accept?” Waldo’s eyebrows climbed up. “My dear sir, what in the world are you talking about? We were simply indulging in social conversation. I would not help your company under any circumstances whatsoever. I hope to see your firm destroyed utterly, bankrupt and ruined. This may well be the occasion.”

Stevens fought to keep control of himself. Tricked! The fat slob had simply been playing with him, leading him on. There was no decency in him. In careful tones he continued, “I do not ask that you have any mercy on North American, Mr. Jones, but I appeal to your sense of duty. There is public interest involved. Millions of people are vitally dependent on the service we provide. Don’t you see that the service must continue, regardless of you or me?”

Waldo pursed his lips. “No,” he said, “I’m afraid that does not affect me. The welfare of those nameless swarms of Earth crawlers is, I fear, not my concern. I have done more for them already than there was any need to do. They hardly deserve help. Left to their own devices, most of them would sink back to caves and stone axes. Did you ever see a performing ape, Mr. Stevens, dressed in a man’s clothes and cutting capers on roller skates? Let me leave you with this thought: I am not a roller-skate mechanic for apes.”

If I stick around here much longer, Stevens advised himself, there will be hell to pay. Aloud, he said, “I take it that is your last word?”

“You may so take it. Good day, sir. I enjoyed your visit. Thank you.”

“Good-by. Thanks for the dinner.”

“Not at all.”

As Stevens turned away and prepared to shove himself toward the exit, Grimes called after him, “Jimmie, wait for me in the reception room.”

As soon as Stevens was out of earshot, Grimes turned to Waldo and looked him up and down. “Waldo,” he said slowly, “I always did know that you were one of the meanest, orneriest men alive, but—”

“Your compliments don’t faze me, Uncle Gus.”

“Shut up and listen to me. As I was saying, I knew you were too rotten selfish to live with, but this is the first time I ever knew you to be a four-flusher to boot.”

“What do you mean by that? Explain yourself.”

“Shucks! You haven’t any more idea of how to crack the problem that boy is up against than I have. You traded on your reputation as a miracle man just to make him unhappy. Why, you cheap tinhorn bluffer, if you—”

“Stop it!”

“Go ahead,” Grimes said quietly. “Run up your blood pressure. I won’t interfere with you. The sooner you blow a gasket the better.”

Waldo calmed down. “Uncle Gus—what makes you think I was bluffing?”

“Because I know you. If you had felt able to deliver the goods, you would have looked the situation over and worked out a plan to get NAPA by the short hair, through having something they had to have. That way you would have proved your revenge.”

Waldo shook his head. “You underestimate the intensity of my feeling in the matter.”

“I do like hell! I hadn’t finished. About that sweet little talk you gave him concerning your responsibility to the race. You’ve got a head on you. You know damned well, and so do I, that of all people you can least afford to have anything serious happen to the setup down on Earth. That means you don’t see any way to prevent it.”

“Why, what do you mean? I have no interest in such troubles; I’m independent of such things. You know me better than that.”

“Independent, eh? Who mined the steel in these walls? Who raised that steer you dined on tonight? You’re as independent as a queen bee, and about as helpless.”

Waldo looked startled. He recovered himself and answered, “Oh no, Uncle Gus. I really am independent. Why, I have supplies here for years.”

“How many years?”

“Why… uh, five, about.”

“And then what? You may live another fifty—if you have regular supply service. How do you prefer to die—starvation or thirst?”

“Water is no problem,” Waldo said thoughtfully; “as for supplies, I suppose I could use hydroponics a little more and stock up with some meat animals—”

Grimes cut him short with a nasty laugh. “Proved my point. You don’t know how to avert it, so you are figuring some way to save your own skin. I know you. You wouldn’t talk about starting a truck garden if you knew the answers.”

Waldo looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s not entirely true. I don’t know the solution, but I do have some ideas about it. I’ll bet you a half interest in hell that I can crack it. Now that you have called my attention to it, I must admit I am rather tied in with the economic system down below, and”—he smiled faintly—”I was never one to neglect my own interests. Just a moment—I’ll call your friend.”

“Not so fast. I came along for another reason, besides introducing Jimmie to you. It can’t be just any solution; it’s got to be a particular solution.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s got to be a solution that will do away with the need for filling up the air with radiant energy.”

“Oh, that. See here, Uncle Gus, I know how interested you are in theory, and I’ve never disputed the possibility that you may be right, but you can’t expect me to mix that into another and very difficult problem.”

“Take another look. You’re in this for self-interest. Suppose everybody was in the shape you are in.”

“You mean my physical condition?”

“I mean just that. I know you don’t like to talk about it, but we blamed well need to. If everybody was as weak as you are—presto! No coffee and cakes for Waldo. And that’s just what I see coming. You’re the only man I know of who can appreciate what it means.”

“It seems fantastic.”

“It is. But the signs are there for anybody to read who wants to. Epidemic myasthenia, not necessarily acute, but enough to raise hell with our mechanical civilization. Enough to play hob with your supply lines. I’ve been collating my data since I saw you last and drawing some curves. You should see ’em.”

“Did you bring them?”

“No, but I’ll send ’em up. In the meantime, you can take my word for it.” He waited. “Well, how about it?”

“I’ll accept it as a tentative working hypothesis,” Waldo said slowly, “until I see your figures. I shall probably want you to conduct some further research for me, on the ground—if your data is what you say it is.”

“Fair enough. G’by.” Grimes kicked the air a couple of times as he absentmindedly tried to walk.