Nightfall and Other Stories

  I cheated, though. (Would I lie to you?) The three of us were talking before the program started and somehow I got the idea they might ask me to write a story on the program. So, just in case they did, I spent a few minutes before its start blocking out something.

  Consequently, when they asked me, I had it roughly in mind. All I had to do was work out the details, write it down, and then read it. After all, I had twenty minutes.

  First appearance--The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1957. ©, 1957, by Fantasy House, Inc.

  Insert Knob A in Hole B

  Dave Woodbury and John Hansen, grotesque in their spacesuits, supervised anxiously as the large crate swung slowly out and away from the freight-ship and into the airlock. With nearly a year of their hitch on Space Station A5 behind them, they were understandably weary of filtration units that clanked, hydroponic tubs that leaked, air generators that hummed con­stantly and stopped occasionally.

  “Nothing works,” Woodbury would say mournfully, “because everything is hand-assembled by ourselves.”

  “Following directions,” Hansen would add, “composed by an idiot.”

  There were undoubtedly grounds for complaint there. The most expen­sive thing about a spaceship was the room allowed for freight so all equip­ment had to be sent across space disassembled and nested. All equipment had to be assembled at the Station itself with clumsy hands, inadequate tools and with blurred and ambiguous direction sheets for guidance.

  Painstakingly Woodbury had written complaints to which Hansen had added appropriate adjectives, and formal requests for relief of the situation had made their way back to Earth.

  And Earth had responded. A special robot had been designed, with a positronic brain crammed with the knowledge of how to assemble properly any disassembled machine in existence.

  That robot was in the crate being unloaded now and Woodbury was trembling as the airlock closed behind it.

  “First,” he said, “it overhauls the Food-Assembler and adjusts the steak-attachment knob so we can get it rare instead of burnt.”

  They entered the Station and attacked the crate with dainty touches of the demoleculizer rods in order to make sure that not a precious metal atom of their special assembly-robot was damaged.

  The crate fell open!

  And there within it were five hundred separate pieces--and one blurred and ambiguous direction sheet for assemblage.

  ---

  I have frequently (rather to my own uneasy surprise) been accused of writing humorously. Oh, I try, I try, but only very cautiously, and for a long time I thought nobody noticed.

  You see, there is no margin for error in humor. You can try to write suspense and not quite hit the mark, and have a story that is only moderately suspenseful. In analogous manner, you can have a story be only moderately romantic, moderately exciting, moderately eerie, even moderately science-fictiony.

  But what happens when you miss the mark in humor? Is the result moderately humorous? Of course not! The not-quite-humorous remark, the not-quite-witty rejoinder, the not-quite-farcical episode are, respectively, dreary, stupid, and ridiculous.

  Well, with a target that is all bull’s-eye and no larger than a bull’s-eye at that, am I going to blaze away carelessly? Certainly not! I’m fantastically courageous, but I’m not stupid.

  So I have tried being funny only occasionally, and usually only gently and unobtrusively (as in “Nobody Here But--”) .On the few occasions in which I tried to write a purely funny story, I wasn’t completely satisfied.

  Mostly, therefore, I kept my stories grave and sober (as you can tell). Yet, I never quite gave up, either. One day, at the prodding of Mr. Boucher, I tried my hand at a Gilbert and Sullivan parody and finally (in my own eyes, at any rate) I clicked without reservation. I read the story over and laughed heartily.

  That was it. I had found my métier in humor. All I had to do was to assume a very slightly exaggerated pseudo-Victorian style and I found I had no trouble at all in being funny.

  Did I enter a full-fledged career as science fiction humorist at once? Not at all. I kept the humor at the previous level and remained, for the most part, grave and sober. That’s still what I do best.

  However, in the middle 1960s, I took to writing a series of articles for TV Guide which are nothing but this kind of humor, and I love them. (1 am sometimes taken to task, by the way, for saying, in my artless way, that I like my own material, but why shouldn’t I? Is it conceivable that I would spend seventy hours a week on writing and related reading if I didn’t like what I wrote? Come on!)

  By the way, a final word about “The Up-to-Date Sorcerer”--It is not essential to read Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer first, but it would make my story funnier if you did (I think) , and I would like to give it every break.

  First appearance--The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1958. @, 1958, by Mercury Press, Inc.

  The Up-to-Date Sorcerer

  It always puzzled me that Nicholas Nitely, although a Justice of the Peace, was a bachelor. The atmosphere of his profession, so to speak, seemed so conducive to matrimony that surely he could scarcely avoid the gentle bond of wedlock.

  When I said as much over a gin and tonic at the Club recently, he said, “Ah, but I had a narrow escape some time ago,” and he sighed.

  “Oh, really?”

  “A fair young girl, sweet, intelligent, pure yet desperately ardent, and withal most alluring to the physical senses for even such an old fogy as myself.”

  I said, “How did you come to let her go?”

  “I had no choice. “He smiled gently at me and his smooth, ruddy complex­ion, his smooth gray hair, his smooth blue eyes, all combined to give him an expression of near-saintliness. He said, “You see, it was really the fault of her fiancé--”

  “Ah, she was engaged to someone else.”

  “--and of Professor Wellington Johns, who was, although an endocrinologist, by way of being an up-to-date sorcerer. In fact, it was just that--” He sighed, sipped at his drink, and turned on me the bland and cheerful face of one who is about to change the subject

  I said firmly, “Now, then, Nitely, old man, you cannot leave it so. I want to know about your beautiful girl--the flesh that got away.”

  He winced at the pun (one, I must admit, of my more abominable efforts) and settled down by ordering his glass refilled. “You understand,” he said, “I learned some of the details later on.”

  Professor Wellington Johns had a large and prominent nose, two sincere eyes and a distinct talent for making clothes appear too large for him. He said, “My dear children, love is a matter of chemistry.”

  His dear children, who were really students of his, and not his children at all, were named Alexander Dexter and Alice Sanger. They looked perfectly full of chemicals as they sat there holding hands. Together, their age amounted to perhaps 45, evenly split between them, and Alexander said, fairly inevitably, “Vive la chémie!”

  Professor Johns smiled reprovingly. “Or rather endocrinology. Hormones, after all, affect our emotions and it is not surprising that one should, specifi­cally, stimulate that feeling we call love.”

  “But that’s so unromantic,” murmured Alice. “I’m sure I don’t need any.” She looked up at Alexander with a yearning glance.

  “My dear,” said the professor, “your blood stream was crawling with it at that moment you, as the saying is, fell in love. Its secretion had been stimu­lated by”--for a moment he considered his words carefully, being a highly moral man--”by some environmental factor involving your young man, and once the hormonal action had taken place, inertia carried you on. I could duplicate the effect easily.”

  “Why, Professor,” said Alice, with gentle affection. “It would be delight­ful to have you try,” and she squeezed Alexander’s hand shyly.

  “I do not mean,” said the professor, coughing to hide his embarrassment, “that I would personally attempt to re
produce--or, rather, to duplicate-- the conditions that created the natural secretion of the hormone. I mean, instead, that I could inject the hormone itself by hypodermic or even by oral ingestion, since it is a steroid hormone. I have, you see,” and here he re­moved his glasses and polished them proudly, “isolated and purified the hormone.”

  Alexander sat erect. “Professor! And you have said nothing?”

  “I must know more about it first.”

  “Do you mean to say,” said Alice, her lovely brown eyes shimmering with delight, “that you can make people fed the wonderful delight and heaven-surpassing tenderness of true love by means of a ... a pill?”

  The professor said, “I can indeed duplicate the emotion to which you refer in those rather cloying terms.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Alexander raised a protesting hand. “Now, darling, your ardor leads you astray. Our own happiness and forthcoming nuptials make you forget cer­tain facts of life. If a married person were, by mistake, to accept this hor­mone--”

  Professor Johns said, with a trace of hauteur, “Let me explain right now that my hormone, or my amatogenic principle, as I call it--” (for he, in common with many practical scientists, enjoyed a proper scorn for the rar­efied niceties of classical philology).

  “Call it a love-philtre, Professor,” said Alice, with a melting sigh.

  “My amatogenic cortical principle,” said Professor Johns, sternly, “has no effect on married individuals. The hormone cannot work if inhibited by other factors, and being married is certainly a factor that inhibits love.”

  “Why, so I have heard,” said Alexander, gravely, “but I intend to dis­prove that callous belief in the case of my own Alice.”

  “Alexander,” said Alice. “My love.”

  The professor said, “I mean that marriage inhibits extramarital love.”

  Alexander said, “Why, it has come to my ears that sometimes it does not.”

  Alice said, shocked, “Alexander!”

  “Only in rare instances, my dear, among those who have not gone to college.”

  The professor said, “Marriage may not inhibit a certain paltry sexual attraction, or tendencies toward minor trifling, but true love, as Miss Sanger expressed the emotion, is something which cannot blossom when the mem­ory of a stern wife and various unattractive children hobbles the subcon­scious.”

  “Do you mean to say,” said Alexander, “that if you were to feed your love-philtre--beg pardon, your amatogenic principle--to a number of peo­ple indiscriminately, only the unmarried individuals would be affected?”

  “That is right, I have experimented on certain animals which, though not going through the conscious marriage rite, do form monogamous attach­ments. Those with the attachments already formed are not affected.”

  “Then, Professor, I have a perfectly splendid idea. Tomorrow night is the night of the Senior Dance here at college. There will be at least fifty couples present, mostly unmarried. Put your philtre in the punch.”

  “What? Are you mad?”

  But Alice had caught fire. “Why, it’s a heavenly idea, Professor. To think that all my friends will feel as I feel! Professor, you would be an angel from heaven. --But oh, Alexander, do you suppose the feelings might be a trifle uncontrolled? Some of our college chums are a little wild and if, in the heat of discovery of love, they should, well, kiss--”

  Professor Johns said, indignantly, “My dear Miss Sanger. You must not allow your imagination to become overheated. My hormone induces only those feelings which lead to marriage and not to the expression of anything that might be considered indecorous.”

  “I’m sorry,” murmured Alice, in confusion. “I should remember, Profes­sor, that you are the most highly moral man I know--excepting always dear Alexander--and that no scientific discovery of yours could possibly lead to immorality.”

  She looked so woebegone that the professor forgave her at once.

  “Then you’ll do it, Professor?” urged Alexander. “After all, assuming there will be a sudden urge for mass marriage afterward, I can take care of that by having Nicholas Nitely, an old and valued friend of the family, present on some pretext. He is a Justice of the Peace and can easily arrange for such things as licenses and so on.”

  “I could scarcely agree,” said the professor, obviously weakening, “to perform an experiment without the consent of those experimented upon. It would be unethical.”

  “But you would be bringing only joy to them. You would be contributing to the moral atmosphere of the college. For surely, in the absence of over­whelming pressure toward marriage, it sometimes happens even in college that the pressure of continuous propinquity breeds a certain danger of-- of--”

  “Yes, there is that,” said the professor. “Well, I shall try a dilute solution. After all, the results may advance scientific knowledge tremendously and, as you say, it will also advance morality.”

  Alexander said, “And, of course, Alice and I will drink the punch, too.”

  Alice said, “Oh, Alexander, surely such love as ours needs no artificial aid.”

  “But it would not be artificial, my soul’s own. According to the professor, your love began as a result of just such a hormonal effect, induced, I admit, by more customary methods.”

  Alice blushed rosily. “But then, my only love, why the need for the repetition?”

  “To place us beyond all vicissitudes of Fate, my cherished one.”

  “Surely, my adored, you don’t doubt my love.”

  “No, my heart’s charmer, but--”

  “But? Is it that you do not trust me, Alexander?”

  “Of course I trust you, Alice, but--”

  “But? Again but!” Alice rose, furious. “If you cannot trust me, sir, per­haps I had better leave--” And she did leave indeed, while the two men stared after her, stunned.

  Professor Johns said, “I am afraid my hormone has, quite indirectly, been the occasion of spoiling a marriage rather than of causing one.”

  Alexander swallowed miserably, but his pride upheld him. “She will come back,” he said, hollowly. “A love such as ours is not so easily broken.”

  The Senior Dance was, of course, the event of the year. The young men shone and the young ladies glittered. The music lilted and the dancing feet touched the ground only at intervals. Joy was unrestrained.

  Or, rather, it was unrestrained in most cases. Alexander Dexter stood in one corner, eyes hard, expression icily bleak. Straight and handsome he might be, but no young woman approached him. He was known to belong to Alice Sanger, and under such circumstances, no college girl would dream Of, poaching. Yet where was Alice?

  She had not come with Alexander and Alexander’s pride prevented him from searching for her. From under grim eyelids, he could only watch the circulating couples cautiously.

  Professor Johns, in formal clothes that did not fit although made to mea­sure, approached him. He said, “I will add my hormone to the punch shortly before the midnight toast. Is Mr. Nitely still here?”

  “I saw him a moment ago. In his capacity as chaperon he was busily engaged in making certain that the proper distance between dancing cou­ples was maintained. Four fingers, I believe, at the point of closest approach. Mr. Nitely was most diligently making the necessary measurements.”

  “Very good. Oh, I had neglected to ask: Is the punch alcoholic? Alcohol would affect the workings of the amatogenic principle adversely.”

  Alexander, despite his sore heart, found spirit to deny the unintended slur upon his class. “Alcoholic, Professor? This punch is made along those princi­ples firmly adhered to by all young college students. It contains only the purest of fruit juices, refined sugar, and a certain quantity of lemon peel-- enough to stimulate but not inebriate.”

  “Good,” said the professor. “Now I have added to the hormone a sedative designed to put our experimental subjects to sleep for a short time while the hormone works. Once the
y awaken, the first individual each sees--that is, of course, of the opposite sex--will inspire that individual with a pure and noble ardor that can end only in marriage.”

  Then, since it was nearly midnight, he made his way through the happy couples, all dancing at four-fingers’ distance, to the punch bowl.

  Alexander, depressed nearly to tears, stepped out to the balcony. In doing so, he just missed Alice, who entered the ballroom from the balcony by another door.

  “Midnight,” called out a happy voice. “Toast! Toast! Toast to the life ahead of us.”

  They crowded about the punch bowl; the little glasses were passed round.

  “To the life ahead of us,” they cried out and, with all the enthusiasm of young college students, downed the fiery mixture of pure fruit juices, sugar, and lemon peel, with--of course--the professor’s sedated amatogenic prin­ciple.

  As the fumes rose to their brains, they slowly crumpled to the floor.

  Alice stood there alone, still holding her drink, eyes wet with unshed tears. “Oh, Alexander, Alexander, though you doubt, yet are you my only love. You wish me to drink and I shall drink.” Then she, too, sank gracefully downward.

  Nicholas Nitely had gone in search of Alexander, for whom his warm heart was concerned. He had seen him arrive without Alice and he could only assume that a lovers’ quarrel had taken place. Nor did he feel any dismay at leaving the party to its own devices. These were not wild young­sters, but college boys and girls of good family and gentle upbringing. They could be trusted to the full to observe the four-finger limit, as he well knew.

  He found Alexander on the balcony, staring moodily out at a star-riddled sky.

  “Alexander, my boy.” He put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “This is not like you. To give way so to depression. Chut, my young friend, chut.”