"The Copper Bullet."
First appearance: Vargo Statten Science Fiction Magazine, January 1954.
Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).
Collected in A Case for Brutus Lloyd (2013; for sale HERE).
Short story (9 pages).
Online at Faded Page (HERE).
"'Don’t talk to me about logic!' The eyelids drooped. 'We are dealing here with something extremely scientific . . .'"
SURELY you've heard the old expression, "There's more than one way to kill a research scientist." What, you mean you haven't? Today's sleuth, an egocentric genius of sorts, could justifiably have coined it himself, as he sets out to prove that the convicted murderer couldn't possibly be the murderer and the murder weapon couldn't possibly be the murder weapon, at the same time encountering one of the oldest and potentially deadliest of all motives—naked ambition . . .
Main characters:
~ Dr. Henry Bland ("This headache of mine is killing me"), Jeffrey Travers ("the younger of his two colleagues"), Grant Wilson ("'It looks,' Wilson said slowly, 'as though that bullet has been fired and then put there'"), Dr. Brutus Lloyd ("he preferred to study crime to worrying over research problems"), and Inspector Branson ("the bull-necked precinct chief").
References and resources:
- "these days of quantum theory":
Quantum theory has broken into separate fields since 1954. (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "perhaps an infinite number of other universes":
The term "multiverse" seems to have won out over time:
"The multiverse is the hypothetical set of all universes. Together, these universes are presumed to comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called 'parallel universes', 'flat universes', 'other universes', 'alternate universes', 'multiple universes', 'plane universes', 'parent and child universes', 'many universes', or 'many worlds'. One common assumption is that the multiverse is a 'patchwork quilt of separate universes all bound by the same laws of physics'." (Wikipedia HERE).
- "the atomic fusion going on in the heart of the sun":
"The core of the Sun is considered to extend from the center to about 0.2 of the solar radius (139,000 km; 86,000 mi). It is the hottest part of the Sun and of the Solar System. It has a density of 150,000 kg/m3 (150 g/cm3) at the center, and a temperature of 15 million kelvins (15 million degrees Celsius; 27 million degrees Fahrenheit)." (Wikipedia HERE.)
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- "two officials from the F.B.I., permanently connected on patrol work at the atomic centre":
The ultrasecret World War II atomic bomb program, the Manhattan Project, had plenty of F.B.I. agents attached to it:
"The Manhattan Project officials also had difficulty with journalists, Congressmen, federal officials who were not 'in the know,' residents near local sites, judges adjudicating land claims, and other sources of speculation, prying, and leaks, along with concerns about espionage and sabotage. Groves relied on the FBI and his own autonomous G-2 intelligence unit to investigate potential security violations. Ultimately over 1,500 'loose talk' cases were investigated during the war. Even Harry Truman was not informed about the project while he was vice president, and only learned about it after Roosevelt's death." (Wikipedia HERE.)
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- "As for the trial, it can be cited as a mistrial if new and incontestable evidence should be forthcoming":
A mistrial can be declared in the instance of "new evidence that might seriously affect the outcome of the trial being discovered." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- "the copper bullet which Branson put down on the stand itself":
"The next important change in the history of the rifle bullet occurred in 1882, when Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Rubin, director of the Swiss Army Laboratory at Thun, invented the copper-jacketed bullet — an elongated bullet with a lead core in a copper jacket. It was also small bore (7.5 and 8 mm) and it is the precursor of the 8 mm Lebel bullet adopted for the smokeless powder ammunition of the Lebel Model 1886 rifle. The surface of lead bullets fired at high velocity may melt from the hot gases behind and friction within the bore. Because copper has a higher melting point, and greater specific heat capacity, and higher hardness, copper-jacketed bullets allow greater muzzle velocities." (Wikipedia HERE.)
- A Case for Brutus Lloyd is also available at Archive.org (HERE; borrow only).
- Faded Page's growing John Russell Fearn collection is quite extensive; go (HERE).
- Previous ONTOS visits with John Russell Fearn: "Mystery of the White Raider" (HERE), "The Case of the Murdered Savants" and "The Case of the Mesozoic Monsters" (both Brutus Lloyd stories HERE), "The Mental Gangster" (HERE), and "Foolproof" (HERE).
Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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