It is remarkable that, with all this data from which to draw, Mallory never wrote a line about the Solar System. And it was equally remarkable that he signed off the Golden Lion when he was eighteen and did not again appear in any record until he was thirty-one.
Then Mallory becomes, suddenly, Mallory the great, the darling of Earth. He wrote a book. It was about the mythical adventures of an outrageous man named Conroy and it was rapidly banned by all societies for the prevention of vice. The book was about a hundred thousand words in length and it purported to tour one Conroy on several voyages to various star systems wherein he dueled with dragons and got drunk with the daughters of humanoid kings and was deified or jailed as the popular whim might dictate. But whatever happened to Conroy, he was always the victor, always the hero, always loaded with the favors of damsel and king and Conroy always said so.
But whatever happened to Conroy, he was always the victor, always the hero, always loaded with the favors of damsel and king and Conroy always said so.
The book came after two government expeditions had gone out to Alpha Centauri and found humanoids. Their reports sounded so ridiculous and the work itself was so comparatively useless that Man was in a mood to laugh. And at that psychological moment, in stepped Fitz Mallory’s “Conroy” and Mankind roared with mirth.
According to the memoirs of a Captain Sauvage, the Explorers Club was officially stern but unofficially very amused.
Sven Durlinger came there, one quiet Sunday afternoon, on a search for Mallory and he found him.
Mallory was a big man, very good to look upon, tawny haired and strong. He had a group of thirty or forty members and guests hanging on his words, already laughed into exhaustion and ready to laugh more.
“But how,” pleaded a young man, “did Conroy ever get out of the dungeon?”
“There’s no law against kings having daughters, is there?” boomed Mallory. “And while it is true that she had three heads, Conroy knew instantly that three heads are better than one and . . . hello, Sven!”
“Hello, Fitz,” said Durlinger. He was a small man, the navigator and chief pilot of the Allied Survey Expeditions. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”
“Not at all! Come over here and have a drink. Boy, go find Mr. Durlinger a drink. I heard you’ve been looking for me.”
Sven nodded. “It’s kind of public here.”
“Fire away!” boomed Mallory. “I have nothing to conceal. I hope.”
“Well,” began Sven diffidently, “it’s kind of trying to come back after a year spent in a vacuum to find the whole world laughing about space travel.”
“Now, Sven. You’re not mad.”
“No. I guess not. But it’s upsetting. We worked like the devil around Alpha Centauri. And we didn’t get out of any dungeons with the help of the king’s daughter, either. I thought you were a friend of ours.”
“I am. I am!”
“Mallory, you’ve put back space travel fifty years. Every new thing that comes in, somebody will snort and say that Conroy should have found it. It’s very difficult to bring people to realize just what a spanking big Universe that is out there and how many various things there are in it. They were laughing already without the help from your Conroy. We have a flying dog—”
The whole crowd laughed. Sven shrugged. “You see. Even you salty characters are ready to classify straight out of that confounded diary. We really do have a flying dog. Space exploration is serious stuff, Fitz.”
“Drink up,” said Mallory. “It will make you feel better.”
“When you and I were with Blanding on the Golden Lion, you were dead serious about all this. You yourself said one night that Man’s only salvation lay in the stars. Why kill it?”
“Sven,” said Mallory, “just what did your expeditions prove that hadn’t been proved already? Nobody on the whole planet is going to sail off and stake out a homestead on Lincoln of Alpha Centauri. We have our fun, let them have theirs.”
“Speaking of fun,” said Sven, “where have you been in the last ten years? You don’t seem very out at elbows. Or is that the book paying royalties?”
“Well, as for that,” said Mallory, “I got me a small loan from Conroy.”
They all laughed and when Mallory had told them just how Conroy had got the capital which furnished the source of that loan, they laughed harder. It had to do with selling a necktie, which lighted up, to a certain medicine man on some weird planet of which no one had ever heard. Then Mallory took Sven out of there.
They rode uptown to Mallory’s apartment and there they found the butler waiting and the cook with dinner ready. Sven stood around and blinked. This apartment must be worth two or three thousand a month and the furniture was capable of paying a few ransoms. Did books make this much money?
Sven mellowed out a bit under the wine and what passed between them at the table is no matter of record. Sven went away the next day and was not seen again for an entire year.
But whatever happened to Sven Durlinger, it could not bother Fitz Mallory. Nothing ever bothered him. He went on his princely way, attending levees, autographing books, smiling on old ladies and young children and spending lavishly far beyond whatever his means could have been.
At the Museum of Natural History in New York, Earth, there is a copy of a speech made by Mallory on the occasion of opening a new wing. They did not intend to have Mallory speak, for the occasion was solemn. There was to be a new exhibit of fauna and flora from Lincoln, Alpha Centauri and there were many additions to the Mars-Venus displays.
The Curator of Other Worlds was astonished to read in the morning press that this afternoon Fitz Mallory was to speak there. Ordinarily he would have instantly protested but it happened that he knew Mallory and one does not usually offend men who are six feet four. He held his peace. At two o’clock he was doubly astonished. The hall, which held four thousand, was packed and people were piling up in the streets. This dazed him. A five hundred person attendance would have been remarkable.
He was wringing futile hands and wondering about the courtesy of turning so many away when a rigging truck drew up and eight communications men plunged through the crowd which was piling up in the street to install a dozen speakers and a huge visio screen so that the overflow could see and hear if it filled the entire park.
It did fill the park. Mallory came, leading a strange looking animal with six legs, a huge head and horns about twelve feet long. Mallory solemnly led the brilliant pink beast into the hall amid thundering cheers.
The curator made his pathetic little address about his new hall and then helplessly introduced Mallory.
There ensued a rapid-fire, booming lecture, a solemn-voiced atrocity of hashed up Latin and mangled zoology in which Mallory exhibited the curator by mistake as a specimen taken on the planet Jungo-Boola of the System Gastric, caught after three hundred humanoid beaters had lost their lives. Mallory recognized his error and humbly apologized and then absent-mindedly began a flora speech on a potted palm which had been on the platform there since time had begun. Its deadly poison was the result of a malevolent eye which grew in the center of the tree, he said, and the already laughter-weakened audience shrieked when the president of the museum rose with haughtiness from his seat behind that palm.
The pièce de résista
nce, however, was the six-legged alihipidile from far-off Bingo-Bocbum of the Roulette System. This ferocious beast used its horns to spear doughnuts and lived on a diet of mink coats which made it expensive to keep. However, for the benefit of the assembled, Conroy himself had brought this beast all the way from far-off Bocbum at great and terrible expense and only that morning had had to take donations on Fifth Avenue to make up a proper ration. If any showgirls were in the crowd . . . But at this point the six-legged alihipidile revolted and began to buck and suddenly came apart into three men and a hide which caused such obvious embarrassment to Fitz Mallory, who reviled the absent Conroy, that it broke up the show.
About a month later the Geophysical Society found that it had scheduled a meeting it did not know about when the curious members attended Carnegie Hall which had been rented for the night, admission free. They were stunned at the vastness of the apparatus strung about the stage. They did not understand anything about this until Fitz Mallory, tawny and laughing, came upon the stage and greeted a packed hall with the news that tonight he was going to show them the newest inventions for space travel.
There proceeded a display of scientific mumbo jumbo which made the audience scream and the Geophysical Society squirm. Folding spittoons, self-disposing rations which did not have to be eaten, a flamboyantly introduced new ship heating unit which turned out to be a slinky brunette and other items rapidly reduced the sanity of the crowd. And then Fitz Mallory demonstrated the newest and greatest invention of all. It was a gravity shield, he said. And he slid a piece of the material under him. Promptly he began to drift off the floor, noticing the fact so late that he had a terrible time shifting over to get down again. As he lectured he absent-mindedly kept stepping on the shield and rising and finally, as his lecture reached its climax, stumbled across it and promptly soared straight up and out of sight. A few seconds later he was coming down again but he was angrily arguing with the man in the wings who was working a reel and fighting to get loose from the wires which were harnessed to his coat.
It ended the breath of the audience and the show.
But although the publishers of the book were delighted with these things, the scientific world was not. Fitz Mallory had stepped too far when he had billed Carnegie Hall as he did. He was thrown bodily out of the Geophysical Society. The Explorers Club was far too tolerant to take action but it became cool.
The Society for the Exploitation of Space, very old now and staid, struck Mallory from its list and recommended that the government take some action. The government did take action, but not of the expected kind.
For a year Fitz Mallory had been spending money. And he had made no income tax return. Conroy, romping through further adventures in a second book, had obviously brought in more money than the publishers reported having paid Mallory.
Two investigators, working quietly, found that Mallory had spent, one way or another, something more than a million dollars during the year. They had the facts and, shortly, they had Fitz Mallory.
They interviewed him politely in the Collector’s Office—politely as befitted a man who must owe them a million and probably more.
It was the third of May of that memorable year. There had been murders and robberies and a senator slain in a love nest but the headlines all talked about Fitz Mallory and the government.
“WORLD’S GREATEST LIAR BAFFLING GOVERNMENT” is a sample of these scareheads. If war had been declared, no greater stir would have been made. Everybody waited to hear about this one. The papers repeated past exploits, including the latest, a fiasco wherein Fitz had been exhibiting the largest dwarf ever caught on Flub-Mub of the Sambo System, a person some eight feet tall, known to anyone who had ever seen a jungle motion picture as Sam Casper of Sioux Falls.
“Mr. Mallory,” said the collector, “you must have some accounts of your transactions and some explanation of your income.”
Fitz sat back and counted thoughtfully on his fingers. He made some secret figures on a piece of paper and destroyed it. He pulled out a slide rule and slaved over it. Then he drew out a pocket adding machine and worked with it for ten breathless minutes.
Finally he said, “Nope.”
The collector was stern. “Mr. Mallory, I must warn you that unless you divulge your sources and explain yourself satisfactorily, we are prepared to send you to prison.”
“On what evidence?”
“We have received secret information from an anonymous but identifiable source to the effect that your income during the past year was more than a million dollars. All but twenty-nine thousand of that is, of course, tax.”
“A secret informer?”
“Yes, that is the case. I have the affidavit here.”
Mallory seemed to deflate. He looked very sad. “I shall have to get my books. It will take me almost a week. You won’t send me to prison, will you?”
“Unless you pay, frankly I have no choice.”
Fitz went out and found the street jammed. Cameras flashed, people cheered. Reporters tried to learn something. Mallory pulled out a tin cup and a pair of dark glasses and sat down on the steps, putting up a sign, “I got to pay a tax. Please help the needy. Conroy is out of town.”
During the week Fitz made several volunteer lectures on the fauna and flora of the Treasury Department. He offered land for sale on the Planet Slumgo of the Blue Sky System—a billion acres of it at ten dollars an acre. He had an atmosphere ship paint a huge sign over New York, “S O S Conroy. All is forgiven. Come home. Mallory. P.S. I need a million dollars.” This was in reverse as it would be addressed to some star.
Meantime the press kept asking, “WILL MALLORY GO TO JAIL?”
And the Collector of Internal Revenue kept replying, “Yes. Unless . . .”
The week was finally at end. Fitz Mallory delivered himself up.
Solemnly he placed a dozen ledgers on the desk of the collector and sank wearily down. Reporters had been admitted at Mallory’s request.
“This is no sideshow,” warned the collector. “I am sick of this buffoonery. I do not care a straw about popular opinion. I am doing my job as I have been ordered to do it and I have no other choice.” This, delivered to the reporters, was properly noted.
The collector approached the ledgers. He opened the first one. The top entry was, “Full price for the Planet Slumgo, $100,000.” The next read, “Loan repaid to Moolamaun, King of the Tarkabs, $10, in beads.” The following was, “Ransom of Miss Geeber, cut price, to her friends on Kaledon—price cut for certain considerations, $1,000,000. In diamonds.”
The collector slammed the ledger to the floor. “I have been used long enough for publicity to sell books! These are no accounts. You have no sense of decency! Mr. Mallory, I cannot permit this to continue. Produce your sources of revenue—”
There was a slight commotion at the door and a man walked in. He was clad in a tattered spaceman’s coat and belted about with a scratched stomach protector. He was unshaven and he was tired.
The collector glared at him for the intrusion. “And who the devil might you be?”
“I am Sven Durlinger, lately chief of the Recheck Expedition. This is my friend, Fitz Mallory. I understand that there is some trouble here about income.”
“Trouble enough!” said the collector. “And enough that you needn’t add
more.”
“Sir,” said Sven quietly, “I can testify that Fitz Mallory’s income from his books was bequeathed to various charities. I have seen the records and I know the charities.”
“Who are you to testify that?” demanded the collector.
A small man in the rear of the room, an attorney for the publisher, came forth with an imposing book. On inspection it disclosed that not one penny of the sales of the “Conroy Diary,” volumes one and two, had been given to Fitz Mallory.
This was curious enough. What followed was worse.
“Fitz Mallory,” said Sven Durlinger, “is a firm believer in the future of man in space. He should be. He made enough money there.” Sven turned to the reporters, “Gentlemen, Fitz Mallory is a fraud.”
This was not news.
“He is a fraud,” said Sven Durlinger, “because he has written the truth.” He unrolled a long series of photographs and beckoned up a young space officer who had a pile of documents. They were strange photographs. They were stranger documents.
As the collector made his inspection, Sven continued. “Gentlemen, for the past year I have been retracking. I have visited twenty-three planets in various systems, all of them habitable, seventeen of them inhabited by humans or humanoids of which you already know something.
“You will not lightly disregard my word, gentlemen, nor my evidence. I have a twelve-man crew to back me in everything I say.
“Fitz Mallory is a fraud. He has visited every one of those planets. He gave some of them outrageous names and he treated them all to outrageous adventures. He is considered a god on a round dozen of those worlds and a mention of his name was enough to bring kings kneeling at my feet. He is a fraud, gentlemen, because he is masquerading. There before you, and look at him well, is Conroy!”
The stillness of the room attested that nobody was breathing. Not one eye-blink fanned the air. They gaped at Sven Durlinger.