First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Anthologies & Collections; Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

A collection of the trend-setting stories from "the Dean of Science Fiction" which opened and explored such topics as first contact with aliens, the Internet, transfers among parallel universes, and many more. "The best of [these stories] are remarkable inventions, providing a window on to science fiction's first Golden Age that demonstrates exactly what made it golden" - Kirkus Review

Release date: March 10, 2020

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 620

Sample

Introduction “Will” copyright © 1998 by Hal Clement.

“A Logic Named Joe” copyright © 1946 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1946 as by Will F. Jenkins.

“If You Was a Moklin” copyright © 1957 by Galaxy Publishing Co. First appeared in Galaxy, September 1957.

“The Ethical Equations” copyright © 1945 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1945.

“Keyhole” copyright © 1951 by Standard Magazines, Inc. First appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1951.

“Doomsday Deferred” copyright © 1949 by Curtis Pub. Co. First appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, September 24, 1949 as by Will F. Jenkins.

“First Contact” copyright © 1945 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945.

“Nobody Saw the Ship” copyright © 1950 by Columbia Publications, Inc. First appeared in Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories, May 1950.

“Pipeline to Pluto” copyright © 1945 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1945.

“The Lonely Planet” copyright © 1949 by Standard Magazines, Inc. First appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1949.

“De Profundis” copyright © 1945 by Standard Magazine, Inc. First appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1945.

“The Power” copyright © 1945 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1945.

“The Castaway” copyright © 1953 by Bell Publications, Inc. First appeared in Universe Science Fiction, June 1953.

“The Strange Case of John Kingman” copyright © 1948 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1948.

“Proxima Centauri” copyright © 1935 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1935.

“The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator” copyright © 1935 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, December 1935.

“Sam, This Is You” copyright © 1955 by Galaxy Publishing Co. First appeared in Galaxy, May 1955.

“Sidewise in Time” copyright © 1934 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1934.

“Scrimshaw” copyright © 1955 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1955.

“Symbiosis” copyright © 1947 by Crowell-Collier Publishing Co. First appeared in Collier’s Weekly, June 14, 1947, as by Will F. Jenkins.

“Cure For a Ylith” copyright © 1949 by Better Publications. First appeared in Startling Stories, November 1949 as by William Fitzgerald.

“Plague on Kryder II” copyright © 1964 by Condé Nast. First appeared Astounding Science Fiction, December 1964.

“Exploration Team” copyright © 1956 by Street and Smith Co. First appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1956.

“The Great Catastrophe” appears in this volume for the first time.

“To All Fat Policemen” appears in this volume for the first time.

I started reading science fiction magazines in the early 1930’s when I was ten or twelve. At that age and state of maturity my tastes were pure space opera and weird life forms, with the result that my heroes were people like Jack Williamson and John Campbell and Neil R. Jones. Don’t get me wrong—I never fell out of love with stories of this type, but I was a little slow catching on to what writing was all about.

There was no real excuse, not even at my age, for this. One of the earliest magazines I owned, as opposed to merely reading, was the February, 1932, issue of Amazing Stories, though I didn’t get hold of it until sometime in 1934 or 35. Its cover story was indeed one of Neil Jones’ Professor Jameson tales which first made a magazine reader out of me, but inside, there was among others a story called “The Racketeer Ray,” by Murray Leinster.

It was not space opera. It was, admittedly, a “What if…” yarn, but the key invention was not, this time, a space ship or atomic generator, or even a death ray.

Other authors would have called, and did call, it a tractor ray and simply used it to pull. Murray suggested a more or less plausible way for it to work, as an extension of a solenoid; it attracted only ferromagnetic materials. The inventor, who had the conventional lovely daughter with conventional brave boyfriend, got into trouble with the police for selling condemned firearms which he had retrieved from the river with the device, and the criminal element got the word. The logical fact that any steel object on which the device was used became strongly magnetized, with the result that cars and watches stopped running, and the resultant attempts to blackmail the municipality, were to me fascinating and instructive (one of the police responses was to load small iron containers with butyl mercaptan. This was when I learned the composition of skunk juice. I also learned how demagnetizers worked).

I don’t propose to summarize all of Murray Leinster/Will Jenkins’ work here; I have already made my main point. Murray was an idea writer at a time when an idea alone was likely to sell a story, but he liked to, and could, carry the idea to a reasonable and, if the reader were sufficiently on his or her toes, predictable conclusion. He was, in effect, writing science fiction mystery stories long before John Campbell said this was impossible.

I can’t guess how much of this can be attributed to his age. He was born in 1896, a decade before Jack Williamson and Sprague de Camp, and even longer before John Campbell, and started writing (not only science fiction, eventually) about 1919. He was not the first to come up with all the standard s-f themes, but he was frequently the first to make real stories out of them.

“Sidewise in Time” (1934) was an early alternate-universe, or alternate time track, tale. Later he did it again with “The Incredible Invasion,” a six-part serial (just universes this time) in Astounding Stories. I remember the latter more for the writing than the basis; I still giggle at the thought of one character’s line—“Blast it, have I been dead again?” (The expletive I may not have remembered correctly; but this was the 1940s, and it couldn’t have been more than mild.)

He kept up with the new idea sources. Murder of the U.S.A. was not just one of the nuclear holocaust tales which filled editorial slush piles in the years immediately following the Hitlerian War. The book, or at least the copy I saw, first appeared under the by-line of Will Jenkins (or Will F. Jenkins), his real name. Again, it was a reasonable what-if, detailing background in a world where nuclear weapons existed. His proposed solution to the threat would be generally unacceptable today, though even now it might conceivably happen. There existed an international treaty, the Brienne Agreement, whose signatories obligated themselves to saturate with their own nuclear weapons any country which started a nuclear war. Most of the book was a detective story again; the aggressors had launched their missiles from Antarctica, and the problem was to find who they were. The story ended with missiles shrieking up the launching tubes of the Atomic Service base where most of the action took place, and of all the others in the world, but this was only after various technical devices had been developed (at the base) to detect, back-track, and sabotage warheads in orbit (no, not Star Wars). The development times were a bit unrealistic, even allowing for the fact that there was no political fussing or scientific breakthroughs involved, and Will seemed to give no consideration to the pollution results of his ending, but it was still an entrancing yarn.

Murray’s writing was not confined to a single background. “The Power” consisted mostly of a medieval manuscript describing the writer’s interviews with a marooned alien who was trying to teach him the elements of electricity, while “Critical Difference,” though it did involve space travel, solved its mystery with quite straightforward electrical and radiation laws.

I am not the only one to regard as his best work “First Contact,” which appeared in Astounding Stories in 1945. There are at least two reasons for this.

First, Murray recognized as a real problem the implications of our meeting in deep space other species at a similar technical level. Idealism aside (the story was criticized in Russia because “obviously” any such species would be Communist and therefore completely trustworthy), the aims, intention, and moral background of the other species—and I mean this from the points of view of both meeting crews—would be completely unknown, and letting the other guys learn where your own planetary system was involved potentially an unacceptable risk. (Another story, not by Murray, in the same general period dealt with a psychologically similar problem: was an unrecognizable object under the waters of San Francisco Bay a planted nuclear mine?) This was the problem if one regards the yarn as a detective story.

There may conceivably, somewhere, be someone who hasn’t read “First Contact,” so I won’t give the solution right out. A hint, however, can be found in the Mid-eastern story of a man with two sons whose will left all his possessions to the son whose horse entered Mecca last. (I can’t help wondering what the original story teller, or Murray, might have done by giving the old fellow three sons. The multiple-plot detective story might have become standard literation a millennium or two earlier.)

The other groundbreaking effect, on me at least, of “First Contact” was to solve a major science-fiction problem. Just where do all these roughly human-tech aliens come from? In the early magazines, other planets in our own system were often simply stages for story-telling; the hero could rescue the heroine on Saturn or Ceres wearing shirtsleeves. Multi-planet governments were common. When we moved to the stars for scenarios, there was a tendency to find our aliens on at least one planet in every system the hero visited. By all reasonable estimates, however, only a very tiny percentage of planets, even granting that most stars have planets, will have races willing and able to capture heroines even if they want them only for food. With technical civilizations a hundred, or several thousand, parsecs apart, even with faster-than-light travel it’s going to be hard to run either an interstellar union or a Hanseatic (or Polesotechnic; sorry, Poul) League.

But Murray’s two explorers had a very good reason to meet. They were both scientific expeditions studying the Crab Nebula.

This, I submit, is the ideal way to bring technically advanced cultures together, given faster-than-light travel. I have used it myself, always giving Murray credit. I call celestial objects which are both peculiar in makeup and visible from a great distance “Leinster Sites” or “Leinster Objects.” The farthest I’ve carried the matter so far is to use Eta Carinae, which is certainly luminous enough for the purpose, as the site. I housed a seven-hundred-species interstellar university on the planets of a nearby binary sun.

But I give full credit for, and feel all gratitude to, Murray Leinster for the basic idea.

He was not (pardon the phrase, colleagues) “only” a writer. As a man with a large fund of knowledge which in turn disciplined a powerful imagination, he was also an inventor. Most people who know of him at all have heard that he made some important contributions in the motion picture industry, notably the development of a rear-projection system which avoided the nuisance of having a special-effects background projection show up on the bodies of the actors.

Another bit of work—quite a bit, I understand—was for the Navy, though I am less familiar with the details. At least some of it apparently had to do with submarines. Several decades ago, when Murray was Guest of Honor at a World Science Fiction Convention (please don’t ask me which one; I’ve attended about thirty-five of them in the last four decades, and have not kept all their program books. If the editors of this publication want to look it up, they have my blessing [it was Discon I in 1963.—Ed.]), his GoH speech mentioned some of the Navy work. He described one of his meetings with a group of officers in which he reported doing some of his development work while in the bathtub.

Now Murray could also have been a teacher if he had wanted; maybe he was, though I haven’t heard about it. He had a very good grasp of what makes a presentation memorable. He told the science-fiction audience that when he reported to the group of Naval officers about the bathtub, the first question he got back was, “What did you use for a periscope?”

Some of the other Murray Leinster stories I have particularly enjoyed include:

“A Logic Named Joe”: a blend of the Frankenstein-complex era and the just beginning computer age. This was one of the first stories ever written about the Internet.

“Trog”: a paralysis-ray tale far beyond Buck Rogers.

“Keyhole”: where Murray got far more out of the chimp than the psychologist (yes, he could do viewpoint stories, too).

“The Lonely Planet”: It really was, and felt it.

“The Strange Case of John Kingman”: Alien? Immortal? Actually, both. And nuts. How do you get information out of him? He must have some … And there’s no way of proving he’s immortal; how long do you wait?

That’s Murray Leinster, whenever it isn’t William Fitzgerald Jenkins. But it’s nowhere near all of them. Perhaps unlike John Kingman, he wasn’t immortal; we lost him in 1976, but he left his trail, not just his mark. Very few of us who write science fiction would deny having been influenced by him; or if they did, they probably have the grace to be ashamed.

Hal Clement

Milton, MA, Feb 98

Murray Leinster was born William Fitzgerald Jenkins near Norfolk, Virginia, on June 16, 1896. He made his living almost exclusively from freelance writing. Characteristically he referred to his two stints of service to his country (in World War One as a soldier, in World War Two as a researcher for the War Department) as the only times he ever collected a paycheck. Beginning in his teens, he wrote romances, mystery stories, and cautionary tales of the perils that could await a young woman who, in all innocence, failed to insure that she was properly chaperoned at all times.

One day in 1919, he looked up from his writing and saw the clock on the building across the street turning backwards (it was of course being reset). It was all the inspiration Leinster’s keen mind needed. And the resulting story about a time-traveling building, “The Runaway Skyscraper” (Argosy, Feb. 1919), began a career in science fiction that lasted over fifty years. Leinster may be the only S.F. author who wrote prior to 1920 who would later win a Hugo (for “Exploration Team,” March 1956).

Time travel was a recurring theme for Leinster. He visited the subject in “Sam, This Is You,” “The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator,” and in “Sidewise in Time,” a work in which his love for his native Virginia clearly shows. But I found that solitude was Leinster’s most common theme. His heroes are isolated, marooned, scorned, and hunted. But they never compromise or surrender. They take the universe on its own terms and win or lose, remain true to themselves.

Murray Leinster utilized dialects and slang current to his time, and he wasn’t above creating a neologism or two. He had definite ideas about when and when not to use hyphens and em-dashes. We have by and large kept his stories as they were originally written.

For those of you who are about to reacquaint yourself with an old friend, enjoy. And for those of you who are about to have your first contact with this master of science fiction, I envy you your discovery.

I was privileged to have a number of people without whose aid and support I would not have been able to produce this book. First of all, I would like to thank my wife, Beth Maclellan, who besides giving me the encouragement I needed to tackle this project also helped proof and edit the volume. I also thank Tony Lewis, who suggested I edit this book in the first place. And Rick Katze, who gave me a nudge at the right moment and negotiated the contract.

Jim Mann, Richard Henry Goudge, Michael Colpitts, and Ken Johnson provided invaluable suggestions regarding the contents of this volume. Librarian Carolyn Davis and her excellent staff at the Special Collections section of the Bird Library at Syracuse University of New York were indispensable in tracking down the manuscript for “The Great Catastrophe.” I must give a special thank-you to Joe Ross, who typed in that story, working from a photocopy of an old manuscript. Claire Anderson proved invaluable in finding old magazines for me. Mary Bliss, my high school Latin teacher, was kind enough to correct the French in the manuscript of “To All Fat Policemen.”

Many people toiled to raise me to the point of computer literacy needed for this project; they almost succeeded. These included Ted Atwood, Sharon Sbarsky, Deb Geisler, Mark Hertel, and Paul Giguere. Lisa Hertel tutor me patiently from OmniPage through Word and finally to PageMaker. Mark Olson and Tim Szczesuil were especially helpful in giving guidance on what I was doing wrong at various stages of the work.

I’d like to thank the following people who did preliminary proofing for this book, many of whom did this work for the first time. These include Bonnie Atwood, Kelly Persons, Beth Maclellan, Leslie Turek, Susan Khan, Michael Devney, Bob Devney, and of course George Flynn, who did the final proofing and also provided sound advice throughout the project.

I’m certain the above is only a partial list. I am indebted to you all.

Joe Rico

Dorchester, Mass., 1998

It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly-line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, an’ that afternoon I save civilization. That’s what I figure, anyhow. Laurine is a blonde that I was crazy about once—and crazy is the word—and Joe is a Logic that I have stored away down in the cellar right now. I had to pay for him because I said I busted him, and sometimes I think about turning him on and sometimes I think about taking an axe to him. Sooner or later I’m gonna do one or the other. I kinda hope it’s the axe. I could use a couple million dollars—sure!—an’ Joe’d tell me how to get or make ‘em. He can do plenty! But so far I been scared to take a chance. After all, I figure I really saved civilization by turnin’ him off.

The way Laurine fits in is that she makes cold shivers run up an’ down my spine when I think about her. You see, I’ve got a wife which I acquired after I had parted from Laurine with much romantic despair. She is a reasonable good wife, and I have some kids which are hellcats but I value ‘em. If I have sense enough to leave well enough alone, sooner or later I will retire on a pension an’ Social Security an’ spend the rest of my life fishin’ contented an’ lyin’ about what a great guy I used to be. But there’s Joe. I’m worried about Joe.

I’m a maintenance man for the Logics Company. My job is servicing Logics, and I admit modestly that I am pretty good. I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will select any of ’steenteen million other circuits—in theory there ain’t no limit—and before the Logics Company hooked it into the Tank-and-Integrator set-up they were usin’ ’em as business-machine service. They added a vision-screen for speed—an’ they found out they’d made Logics. They were surprised an’ pleased. They’re still findin’ out what Logics will do, but everybody’s got ‘em.

I got Joe, after Laurine nearly got me. You know the Logics set-up. You got a Logic in your house. It looks like a vision-receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It’s hooked in to the Tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch “Station SNAFU” on your Logic. Relays in the Tank take over an’ whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin’ comes on your Logic’s screen. Or you punch “Sally Hancock’s Phone” an’ the screen blinks an’ sputters an’ you’re hooked up with the Logic in her house an’ if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfield’s administration or what is PDQ and R sellin’ for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the Tank do it. The Tank is a big buildin’ full of all the facts in creation an’ all the recorded telecasts that ever was made—an’ it’s hooked in with all the other Tanks all over the country—an’ everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an’ you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an’ keeps books, an’ acts as consultin’ chemist, physicist, astronomer an’ tea-leaf reader, with a “Advice to the Lovelorn” thrown in. The only thing it won’t do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, “Oh, you think so, do you?” in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don’t work good on women. Only on things that make sense.

Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us. All on accounta the Carson Circuit. And Joe shoulda been a perfectly normal Logic, keeping some family or other from wearin’ out its brains doin’ the kids’ homework for ‘em. But something went wrong in the assembly-line. It was somethin’ so small that precision-gauges didn’t measure it, but it made Joe a individual. Maybe he didn’t know it at first. Or maybe, bein’ logical, he figured out that if he was to show he was different from other Logics they’d scrap him. Which woulda been a brilliant idea. But anyhow, he come off the assembly-line, an’ he went through the regular tests without anybody screamin’ shrilly on findin’ out what he was. And he went right on out an’ was duly installed in the home of Mr. Thaddeus Korlanovitch at 119 East Seventh Street, second floor front. So far, everything was serene.

The installation happened late Saturday night. Sunday mornin’ the Korlanovitch kids turned him on an’ seen the Kiddie Shows. Around noon their parents peeled ‘em away from him an’ piled ‘em in the car. Then they come back into the house for the lunch they’d forgot an’ one of the kids sneaked back an’ they found him punchin’ keys for the Kiddie Shows of the week before. They dragged him out an’ went off. But they left Joe turned on.

That was noon. Nothin’ happened until two in the afternoon. It was the calm before the storm. Laurine wasn’t in town yet, but she was comin’. I picture Joe sittin’ there all by himself, buzzing meditative. Maybe he run Kiddie Shows in the empty apartment for a while. But I think he went kinda remote-control exploring in the Tank. There ain’t any fact that can be said to be a fact that ain’t on a data-plate in some Tank somewhere—unless it’s one the technicians are diggin’ out an’ puttin’ on a data-plate now. Joe had plenty of material to work on. An’ he musta started workin’ right off the bat.

Joe ain’t vicious, you understand. He ain’t like one of these ambitious robots you read about that make up their minds the human race is inefficient and has got to be wiped out an’ replaced by thinkin’ machines. Joe’s just got ambition. If you were a machine, you’d wanna work right, wouldn’t you? That’s Joe. He wants to work right. An’ he’s a Logic. An’ Logics can do a lotta things that ain’t been found out yet. So Joe, discoverin’ the fact, begun to feel restless. He selects some things us dumb humans ain’t thought of yet, an’ begins to arrange so Logics will be called on to do ’em.

That’s all. That’s everything. But, brother, it’s enough!

Things are kinda quiet in the Maintenance Department about two in the afternoon. We are playing pinochle. Then one of the guys remembers he has to call up his wife. He goes to one of the bank of Logics in Maintenance and punches the keys for his house. The screen sputters. Then a flash comes on the screen.

“Announcing new and improved Logics service! Your Logic is now equipped to give you not only consultive but directive service. If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—Ask your Logic!”

There’s a pause. A kinda expectant pause. Then, as if reluctantly, his connection comes through. His wife answers an’ gives him hell for somethin’ or other. He takes it an’ snaps off.

“Whadda you know?” he says when he comes back. He tells us about the flash. “We shoulda been warned about that. There’s gonna be a lotta complaints. Suppose a fella asks how to get ridda his wife an’ the censor circuits block the question?”

Somebody melds a hundred aces an’ says:

“Whyn’t punch for it an’ see what happens?”

It’s a gag, o’course. But the guy goes over. He punches keys. In theory, a censor block is gonna come on an’ the screen will say severely, “Public Policy Forbids This Service.” You hafta have censor blocks or the kiddies will be askin’ detailed questions about things they’re too young to know. And there are other reasons. As you will see.

This fella punches, “How can I get rid of my wife?” Just for the hell of it. The screen is blank for a half a second. Then comes a flash. “Service question; is she blonde or brunette?” He hollers to us an’ we come look. He punches, “Blonde.” There’s another brief pause. Then the screen says, “Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a constituent of green shoe-polish. Take home a frozen meal including dried-pea soup. Color the soup with green shoe-polish. It will appear to be green-pea soup. Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a selective poison which is fatal to blonde females but not to brunettes or males of any coloring. This fact has not been brought out by human experiment but is a product of Logics service. You cannot be convicted of murder. It is improbable that you will be suspected.”

The screen goes blank, and we stare at each other. It’s bound to be right. A Logic workin’ the Carson Circuit can no more make a mistake than any other kinda computin’ machine. I call the Tank in a hurry.

“Hey, you guys!” I yell. “Somethin’s happened! Logics are givin’ detailed instructions for wife-murder! Check your censor-circuits—but quick!”

That was close, I think. But little do I know. At that precise instant, over on Monroe Avenue, a drunk starts mournful to punch for somethin’ on a Logic. The screen says, “Announcing new and improved Logics service!… If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—Ask your Logic!” And the drunk says owlish, “I’ll do it!” So he cancels his first punching and fumbles around and says, “How can I keep my wife from finding out I’ve been drinking?” And the screen says, prompt, “Buy a bottle of Franine hair shampoo. It is harmless but contains a detergent which will neutralize ethyl alcohol immediately. Take one teaspoonful for each jigger of hundred-proof you have consumed.”

This guy was plenty plastered—just plastered enough to stagger next-door and obey instructions. An’ five minutes later he was cold sober and writing down the information so he couldn’t forget it. It was new, and it was big! He got rich offa that memo. He patented “SOBUH, The Drink that Makes Happy Homes!” You can top off any souse with a slug or two of it an’ go home sober as a judge. The guy’s cussin’ income-taxes right now!

You can’t kick on stuff like that. But an ambitious young fourteen-year-old wanted to buy some kid stuff and his pop wouldn’t fork over. He called up a friend to tell his troubles. And his Logic says, “If you want to do something and don’t know how to do it—Ask your Logic!” So this kid punches, “How can I make a lotta money, fast?”

His Logic comes through with the simplest, neatest, and most efficient counterfeitin’ device yet known to science. You see, all the data was in the Tank. The Logic—since Joe had closed some relays here an’ there in the Tank—simply integrated the facts. That’s all. The kid got caught up with three days later, havin’ already spent two thousand credits an’ havin’ plenty more on hand. They hadda heluva time tellin’ his counterfeits from the real stuff, an’ the only way they done it was that he changed his printer, kid fashion, not bein’ able to let somethin’ that was workin’ right alone.

Those are what you might call samples. Nobody knows all that Joe done. But there was the bank-president who got humorous when his Logic flashed that “Ask your Logic” spiel on him, and jestingly asked how to rob his own bank. An’ the Logic told him, brief and explicit but good! The bank-president hit the ceiling, hollering for cops. There musta been plenty of that sorta thing. There was fifty-four more robberies than usual in the next twenty-four hours, all of them planned astute an’ perfect. Some of ’em they never did figure out how they’d been done. Joe, he’d gone exploring in the Tank and closed some relays like a Logic is supposed to do—but only when required—and blocked all censor-circuits an’ fixed up this Logics Service which planned perfect crimes, nourishing an’ attractive meals, counterfeitin’ machines, an’ new