Tiger by the Tail Read online

  OUT OF TIME —

  OUT OF SPACE —

  INTO THE

  UNKNOWN

  Nine startling adventures in the regions that lie somewhere beyond tomorrow—in that incalculable time slot known as the Future ...

  A journey through the vastness of time to an age of null-gravity, Rocketjet commuter specials, visiphones—even a cure for the common cold.

  TIGER BY THE TAIL is an unparalleled collection of science-fiction thrillers. Each story is unique in appeal and is guaranteed to excite even the most jaded reader.

  THIS BOOK IS THE COMPLETE TEXT

  OF THE HARDCOVER EDITION

  A MACFADDEN BOOK

  First Printing.................April, 1964

  Second Printing........January, 1968

  MACFADDEN BOOKS are published by

  Macfadden-Bartell Corporation

  a subsidiary of Bartell Media Corpororation 205 East 42nd Street, New York, New York 10012

  Copyright ©, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1957, 1961 by Allan

  E. Nourse. All rights reserved. Published by special arrangement

  with David McKay Company Inc.

  Printed in The United States of America

  Contents:

  Tiger by the Tail by Alan E. Nourse

  Nightmare Brother by Alan E. Nourse

  PRoblem by Alan E. Nourse

  The Coffin Cure by Alan E. Nourse

  Brightside Crossing by Alan E. Nourse

  The Native Soil by Alan E, Nourse

  Love Thy Vimp by Alan E. Nourse

  The Letter of The Law by Alan E. Nourse

  Family Resemblance by Alan E. Nourse

  Tiger by the Tail

  by

  Alan E. Nourse

  The department store was so crowded with the postseason rush, it was surprising that they spotted her at all. The salesgirl at the counter was busy at the far end, and the woman was equally busy at her own end, slipping goods from the counter into the large black purse. Kearney watched her in alarm for several minutes before calling over the other section manager.

  "Look at that woman!" he said. "She's sorting that hardware like she owns the store."

  "A klepto? What are we waiting for?" asked the other. "Let's have a talk with her."

  Kearney scratched his head. "Watch her for a minute. There's something fishy—"

  They watched. She was standing at the kitchenware counter, her hands running over the merchandise on the shelf. She took three cookie cutters and popped them into the pocket-book. Two large cake tins and a potato masher followed, then a small cake safe, two small pots and a large aluminum skillet.

  The second man stared in disbelief. *'She's taken enough junk there to stock a store. And she's putting it all into that pocketbook. Kearney, she couldn't get all that junk into a pocketbook!''

  "I know," said Kearney. "Let's go."

  They moved in on her from opposite sides, and Kearney took her gently by the arm. "We'd like to speak to you, madam. Please come with us quietly."

  She looked up blankly. "What do you mean?"

  "We've been watching you load that pocketbook for fifteen minutes."

  "Pocketbook?" the woman said, bewildered.

  Kearney took the pocketbook from her arm, unsnapped it, glanced inside, and shook it in alarm.

  He looked up, eyes wide and puzzled. "Jerry, look at this."

  Jerry looked. When he tried to speak, there just weren't any words.

  The pocketbook was empty.

  Frank Collins parked his car in front of the Institute of Physics and was passed by fingerprint into the lab wing. Evanson met him in the corridor.

  "Glad you got here," Evanson said grimly.

  "Listen, John, what is this about a pocketbook? I hope it's not your idea of a joke."

  "Not this gadget," Evanson promised. "Wait till you see it."

  He led the way into one of the large lab sections. Collins eyed the shiny control panels uneasily, the giant generators and boosters, the duocalc relay board with its gleaming tubes and confusion of wiring. "1 can't see what you want with me here. I'm a mechanical engineer."

  Evanson walked into a small office off the lab. "You're also a trouble shooter from way back. Meet the research team, Frank."

  The research team wore smocks, glasses, and a slouch. Collins nodded, and looked at the pocketbook lying on the table.

  "Looks just like any other pocketbook to me," he said. He picked it up. It felt like a pocketbook. "What's in it?"

  "You tell us," Evanson said.

  Collins opened it up. It was curiously dark inside, with a dull metallic ring around the opening, near the top. He turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out.

  "Don't reach around inside," Evanson cautioned. "It's not safe. One fellow tried, and lost a wrist watch."

  Collins looked up, his bland face curious. "Where did you get this?"

  "A couple of section managers spotted a shoplifter down in the Taylor-Hyden store a few days ago. She was helping herself to kitchen hardware, and was stuffing her pocketbook full. They nabbed her, but when they tried to get the hardware back out of the pocketbook they couldn't find any. One of them lost a wrist watch groping around in it."

  "Yes, but how did you wind up with the purse?"

  Evanson shrugged. "They turned the woman over to Psych, naturally. She denied ever seeing the purse. And when the Psych boys looked at the pocketbook they called us in a hurry. Here, I'll show you why."

  Evanson picked up a meter stick and began to push it into the pocketbook. It went in about ten centimeters, to the bottom of the purse.... And kept on going!

  It didn't poke out the bottom. It didn't even bulge the purse.

  Collins goggled at it. "Holy smoke, how'd you do that?"

  "Maybe it's going somewhere else. Fourth dimension. I don't know."

  "Nuts!"

  "Where else, then?" Evanson laid the meter stick down. "Another thing about that pocketbook," he added, "no matter what you do, you can't turn it inside out."

  Collins looked at the dark inside of the pocketbook. Gingerly he stuck his finger in, rubbed the metallic ring, and scratched it with his nail. A shiny line appeared. "That's aluminum in there," he said. "An aluminum circle."

  Evanson nodded, "All the stuff she was stealing was aluminum," he said. "That's one reason we called you. You're an engineer, and you know your metals. We've been trying for three days to figure out what's happening inside that purse. We still don't know. Maybe you can tell us."

  "What have you been doing?"

  "Pushing stuff into it. Checking it with all the instruments. X-ray, everything. Didn't tell us a thing. We'd like to know where that stuff that we push in goes."

  Collins dropped an aluminum button into the purse. It went through the aluminum circle and vanished. "Say," he asked suddenly, scowling. "What do you mean, you can't turn this thing inside out?"

  "It's a second-order geometric form." Evanson lit a cigarette carefully. "You can turn a first-order form, like a sphere or a rubber ball, inside out through a small hole in the surface. But you can't turn an inner tube inside out, no matter what you do."

  "Hm. Why not?"

  "Because it's got a hole in it. And you can't pull a hole through a hole. Not even an infinitesimal hole."

  "So?" Collins said, frowning.

  "So it's the same with that purse. We think it's wrapped around a chunk of another universe. A four-dimensional universe. And you can't pull a chunk of another universe through this one without causing a lot of trouble."

  "But you can turn an inner tube inside out," Collins protested. "It may stretch all out of shape, but you can pull it through the hole."

  Evanson eyed the pocketbook on the table. "Maybe so. A second-order geometric under conditions of stress. But there's one hitch to that. It won't be an inner tube any more."

  He took another bit of aluminum and fed it into the purse. He shook his head tiredly. "I don't know. The stuff is going somewhere. He pushed a wooden ruler in, watched it pop right out again. "And it takes only aluminum. Nothing else. That detective had an aluminum military watch, which disappeared from his wrist, but he had two gold rings on the same hand, and neither one was touched."

  "Let's play some thinking games," Collins said.

  Evanson looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

  Collins grinned. "Whatever is on the other side of that pocketbook seems to want aluminum. Why? There's an aluminum ring around the mouth of the purse—all around it. Like a portal. But it isn't very big, and it doesn't use much aluminum. They seem to want lots more."

  "They?"

  "Whatever takes the metal but pushes back the wood."

  "Why?"

  "We could venture a guess. Maybe they're building another opening. A large one."

  Evanson stared at him. "Don't be silly," he said. "Why—"

  "I was just thinking out loud," said Collins mildly. He picked up the steel meter stick. Taking a firm grip on one end, he pushed the other end into the purse.

  Evanson watched, puzzled. "They don't want it. They're trying to push it back."

  Collins continued to push the stick in, perspiring a little. Suddenly the end appeared, curving back out. Like a flash Collins grabbed it and began tugging both ends at once.

  “Watch it, watch it!" Evanson snapped. "You'll twist their universe to conform to our geometry!" The purse seemed to be sagging inward.

  One end of the stick suddenly slipped out of Collins' hand.

  He fell back, pulli
ng it out of the pocketbook. It was straight again.

  Collins stared at it, and his eyes narrowed. "Can you get a winch up here?"

  "I think so," Evanson said.

  "Good," said Collins. "I think I know how we can hook onto their universe."

  The big three-inch steel oar rolled easily into the lab on a dolly. The end of the bar was covered with shiny aluminum tubing and bent into a sharp hook.

  "Is the winch ready?" Collins asked.

  "All set," Evanson said.

  "Then slide the purse onto the end of the bar."

  The end of the bar disappeared into the pocketbook.

  "What are you trying to do?" Evanson asked uneasily.

  "They seem to want aluminum, so we're going to give them some. If they're building another opening through with it, 1 want to hook onto the opening and pull it out into this lab. They'll be putting the aluminum on this bar with the rest. If we can hook onto what they already have, they'll either have to cut it free and let us retrieve it, or open it into this lab."

  Evanson scowled. "But what if they don't do either?''

  "They have to. If we pull a non-free section of their universe through the purse, it will put a terrific strain on their whole geometric pattern. Their whole universe will be twisted. Just like an inner tube."

  The winch squeaked as Collins worked the bar to and fro inside the purse.

  "Up a little," he said to the operator.

  Evanson shook his head sourly. "I don't see—" he began. The bar twanged under sudden pressure.

  "Hold it! You've got it hooked!" Collins shouted.

  The winch squealed noisily, the motor whining under the strain. The steel bar began sliding slowly out of the purse, millimeter by millimeter. Every ten minutes one of the technicians made a chalk mark on the bar by the mouth of the purse.

  Frank Collins filled a pipe and puffed nervously. 'The way 1 see it," he said, 4'these beings pried a small fourth-dimension hole into our universe, and somehow got that woman under control. Then they made her start collecting aluminum so they could build a bigger opening."

  "But why?" Evanson poured coffee out of a thermos. It was late, and the whole building was silent and deserted except for this one lab section. The only noise in the room was the whine of the winch, tugging away at the other universe.

  "Who knows? To get more and more aluminum? Whatever the reason, they want to get through to our universe. Maybe theirs is in some kind of danger. The reason may be so alien that we couldn't possibly understand it."

  "But what's the idea of hooking onto them?" Evanson's eyes were worried.

  "Control. We pull a non-free chunk of their universe into ours, and they can't use the opening. It'll be plugged up. The more we pull through, the more strain on the structure of their universe. They'll have to listen to our terms then. They'll have to give us their information so that we can build openings and examine them properly. If they don't, we'll wreck their universe."

  "But you don't even know what they're doing in there!"

  Collins shrugged, made another chalk mark on the bar. The bar was humming under the strain.

  "I don't think we should take the risk," Evanson complained. "I didn't have permission to try this. I just let you go ahead on my own authority, on data—" he shuddered suddenly "—that's so vague it makes no sense at all."

  Collins knocked out his pipe sharply. "It's all the data we have."

  "I say it's wrong. I think we should release the bar right now, and wait till Chalmers gets here in the morning."

  Collins eyed the winch with growing uneasiness. His fingers trembled as he lit his pipe again. "Don't be foolish," he said. "We can't release the bar now. The tapered sheaves are under too much tension. We couldn't even burn through that rod with an oxy torch in less than twenty minutes—and it would jolt the whole building apart when it broke."

  "But the danger—" Evanson stood up, his forehead beaded with perspiration. He nodded toward the creaking winch. "You might be gambling our whole universe."

  "Oh, calm down!" Collins said angrily. "We don't have any choice now. We're doing it, and that's all there is to it. When you grab a , you've got to hang on."

  Evanson crossed the room excitedly. "It seems to me," he said tensely, "that the tiger might have the advantage. If it went the wrong way, think what they could do to our universe!"

  Collins rubbed his chin nervously. "Well, at any rate, I'm glad we thought of it first—" He trailed off, his face slowly turning white.

  Evanson followed his stare, and his breath came in a sharp gasp. The thermos clattered noisily to the floor. He pointed at the second chalk mark, sliding slowly into the pocketbook.

  "You mean you hope we did," he said.

  Nightmare Brother

  by

  Alan E. Nourse

  This is not a comforting story to read. The vast gulfs of space in which the Earth swims are alien to Man. They may well hold dangers too great for any human being to overcome, and even if they do not, the very difference between what is there and what is here will be terrifying to the first travelers who land on worlds beyond any present imagining. One thing seems fairly certain—no matter how many other worlds there may be, and no matter how many of them human beings manage to reach, they will all be different from the Earth and from each other. The men who go to them will be aware of these differences, or at least of some of them, and that awareness will be, at the start, a panicky one.

  Every living person has experienced terror in his own life. The most familiar example is in nightmares, which are made up of bits and pieces of the real world and real life, all jumbled and twisted and warped by the sleeping mind into shapes of fear. What is so frightening about nightmares is exactly what the explorers of worlds in outer space may also experience—the sense of the differences and the sense of the dangers.

  The first spacemen will have to have a special kind of strength. Athletes’ muscles and co-ordination, swiftness of body and mind will not be enough, even when supplemented by power of endurance and the willingness to accept pain, loneliness, monotony and the knowledge that they may never come home again. The first spacemen will need, also, the inner strength that comes from the mind. They will need every scrap of will power, every pattern of discipline over their own minds and thoughts which the human race can produce. A single member of an expedition whose mind is not as trained and ready as his body may bring disaster to himself and his companions.

  How are the people who select the members of the first space explorations going to locate men with the mental strength to stand up under the experience? It will not be easy—much more is known about the human body than about the human mind. In this story, Mr. Nourse proposes an answer to this problem of selection in terms of a test stranger than any ever given in a college or laboratory. It is a story written with great skill. The fears through which its central character passes are fears that everybody has known sometime in one form or another. What happens when a man is subjected to these fears—his own fears and those of everybody else as well—horrifyingly intensified?

  Only the men and women who can react as Robert Cox does in this story have much hope of surviving the first phase of space exploration.

  He was walking down a tunnel.

  At first it didn’t even occur to him to wonder why he was walking down the tunnel, nor how he had got there, nor just what tunnel it was. He was walking quickly, with short, even steps, and it seemed, suddenly, as if he had been walking for hours.

  It wasn’t the darkness that bothered him at first. The tunnel wasn’t bright, but it was quite light enough, for the walls glowed faintly with a bluish luminescence. Ahead of him the glowing walls stretched as far as he could see. The tunnel was about ten feet wide, and ten feet high, with smooth Walls arching into a perfectly smooth curve over his head. Under his feet the floor seemed cushiony, yielding slightly to the pressure as he walked, and giving off a soft, muffled sound in perfect measure to his tread. It was a pleasant, soothing sound, and he hardly thought to wonder at all just what he was doing. It was quite obvious, after all. As simple as simple could be. He was walking down a tunnel.