"I Wonder How Improbable a Thing Can Get Before It Becomes Impossible."

"The Other Tiger."

By Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

First appearance: Fantastic Universe, June-July 1953.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Short short short story (3 pages).

Online at SFFaudio (HERE).

   "For as I said at the beginning, if the cosmos is infinite, then all possibilities must arise."

HAVE you ever considered how dangerous a pleasant stroll in the countryside can be? Just what are the odds that you might not survive it?

Principal characters:

~ Arnold and Webb.

References:

- "ponder parallel worlds" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the august British Interplanetary Society" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "infinity" (HERE, HERE, and HERE; Wikipedia).

- "where Hitler won the War" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "Columbus never discovered America" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the Roman Empire has lasted to this day" (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE; Wikipedia).

Resources:

- A recent encounter with the multiverse concept, one of many that we've had, would be Ron Friedman's "A Matter of Antimatter" (HERE).

- Older multiverse stories include Ray Wood's "Schrödinger’s Gun" (HERE), Sam Merwin's "Third Alternative" (HERE), J. W. Armstrong's "Reversal of Misfortune" (HERE), Dwight V. Swain's "So Many Worlds Away . . ." (HERE), and Murray Leinster's "The Other Now" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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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"You've Done It! You've Got the Answer!"

GETTING from Point A to Point B quickly and with the least effort and injury 

has always been a problem for humanity; regardless of how people manage to accomplish it, however, the process still takes time to cover the space 

in between—until now, that is, when an astounding discovery offers mankind . . .

"Passage to Anywhere."

(Click on image to enlarge.)

By Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-96; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the SFE HERE).

First appearance: Fantastic Universe, February 1956.

Novelette (17 pages on Project Gutenberg; 22 pages on SFFaudio).

Online at Project Gutenberg (HERE) and SFFaudio (HERE).

   "Has it occurred to you what it could mean if word gets out . . ."

SATISFYING everybody when there's a dispute calls for consummate skill and some serious smarts; fortunately for the SPR and the entire world system, there just happens to be a man who has that skill and those smarts . . .

Principal characters:

~ Park Hamilton, Miss Alderman, Shirley, Sven Ryan, Ian Harris, Charles Forsythe, and Jack Witherspoon.

References:

- "would have caused Atlas to throw down his burden" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the Gilbertian paradoxes" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "a sort of ASCAP arrangement" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "in Antarctica" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the UN assembly" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "walked under a ladder" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the refrain of There'll Always Be an England" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the toreador capework and the moment of truth" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the industrial-era pirate of the late nineteenth century" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "But what good is a transporter that cannot send organic life?" (HERE and HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the absent-minded professor" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the first airplane" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "where every millisecond counts" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "kept a weather eye cocked" (HERE; Wiktionary).

- "the Great Depression of fifty years ago" (HERE; Wikipedia). (That would put our story in the 1979-1989 timeframe.)

- "under security wraps"; "clamp down"; "suppressing knowledge" (HERE; Wikipedia).

- "the Heavyside [sic] Layer" (HERE; Wikipedia).

Resources:

- "world-wide financial and economic catastrophe"; "primarily dedicated to the development of disruptive discoveries without regard to their probable effect upon the structure of our society as a whole": An early-fifties British movie takes those ideas and runs with them (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE; Wikipedia).

- A story that involves teleportation and criminal behavior is Larry Niven's "The Alibi Machine" (HERE).

- Sam Merwin, Jr. happily cavorted through pulp fiction, both detective and SFF, for years. While today's story is science fiction, he also dealt handily with crime as well: "Disturb the Dead" (HERE); "The Triangular Blade" (HERE); "The Liquid Bullet" (HERE; first story); and "Death from a Family Tree" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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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"Disaster Was Indiscriminate. And It Had Taken Murder Out of My Hands."

(1) "The Shock."

By C. K. M. Scanlon.

First appearance: Popular Detective, October 1936.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at The Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

   "Perfect crime? Far from it!"

YOUR mama probably never said there'd be days like this:

  "Without warning the floor beneath me cracked open like a coconut rind. A savage, rending sound, magnified into distance, pressed about my eardrums. The walls cavorted and split, and shattering glass exploded like doom opening for the cohorts of hell. Screams rose up all around me. A weight dropped loose from the suddenly cobwebbed ceiling, and my head took the full impact. I lost consciousness at once...."

Principal characters:

~ Inspector Shelting, Randolph, Tess, the head physician, and the unnamed narrator.

References:

- "Long Beach, California" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Catalina Island" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the strength of a Samson among the Philistines" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "March 11th, 1933" (Wikipedia HERE).

(2) "Filed in Person."

By C. K. M. Scanlon.

First appearance: Popular Detective, February 1939.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at The Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

(Parental note: Mild profanity.)

   "There was the scrape of a match and a soft gasp from the girl. It was now or never."

THE D.A. gets conked, a material witness gets menaced, and a desperado gets buzzed. Case closed . . .

Principal characters:

~ John Barstow, Diana Wayne, and Gunner Overholt.

Resource:

- "C. K. M. Scanlon" didn't just write fiction but was "himself" a fiction. A story with the Scanlon byline could have been by any of the following, as FictionMags informs us:

  Scanlon, C. K. M. (fl. 1930s-1950s); house pseudonym used by Joe Archibald (1898-1986), W. T. Ballard (1903-1980), Robert Sidney Bowen (1900-1977), D. L. Champion (1902-1968), Edward Churchill (1902-1960), Ray Cummings (1887-1957), Tom Curry (1900-1976), Norman A. Daniels (1905-1995), Lester Dent (1904-1959), Laurence Donovan (1885-1948), George Fielding Eliot (1894-1971), Whitney Ellsworth (1908-1980), G. T. Fleming-Roberts (1910-1968), Charles Greenberg (fl. 1920s-1960s), Frank Gruber (1904-1969), Donald Bayne Hobart (1898-1970), Henry Kuttner (1915-1958), Johnston McCulley (1883-1958), George A. McDonald (fl. 1920s-1940s), Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-1996), Frank Philipp (fl. 1990s), Jean Francis Webb (1910-1991) & Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986).

- Previous Scanlon stories that caught ONTOS's attention: "Footprints" and "Blood for Breakfast" (both HERE) and "Page the Murderer" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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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UPDATE: Sam Merwin, Jr.'s "Disturb the Dead"

Added a Pulpgen Archive link and a story headnote (HERE).

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"Two Different Worlds, We Live in Two Different Worlds"

"The Other Now."

By Murray Leinster (Will F. Jenkins, 1896-1975; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; and the IMDb HERE).

First appearance: Galaxy, March 1951.

Illustration by Bard (?-?).

Reprints (many) page (ISFDb HERE).

Among the reprints:

  Galaxy Reader of Science Fiction, 1952.

  Twists in Time, 1960.

  One Hundred Years of Science Fiction, 1968.

  One Hundred Years of Science Fiction, 1972.

  As Time Goes By, 2015.

  Black Infinity Magazine #4, Spring 2019.

Short story (12 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE).

   "They were separated only by the difference between what was and what might have been."

STRONG FEELINGS often move writers, especially poets and tunesmiths, to summon up extravagant notions; for examples: "I love you more than words can wield the matter/Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty" (Goneril) and "Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low/Ain't no river wide enough/If you need me call me, no matter where you are/No matter how far" (Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell). Nevertheless, it isn't every day you come across a story that literally—and we mean literally—knows no bounds, employing another extravagant notion, the perdurably popular concept of neverending love . . .

Principal characters:

~ Jimmy Patterson ("If Jimmy Patterson had told anybody but Haynes, calm men in white jackets would have taken him away for psychiatric treatment"), Haynes ("was his friend and reluctantly a lawyer"), and Jane ("It could have been me instead, or neither of us").

References:

- The title of today's post comes from a song by Al Frisch and Sid Wayne, published in 1956 (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a belief in a fourth dimension" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Nobody except fatalists" (Wikipedia HERE).

- The technical term for communication with the dead is known as necromancy (Wikipedia HERE), and the place where that communication might occur could be considered a haunted house (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a saying about two people becoming one flesh":

  From the Bible: "And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?" (KJV HERE).

Resources:

- Evidently a lot of people have been thinking about parallel universes for a long time (Wikipedia HERE).

- Murray Leinster seems to have been a pioneer in SFnal multiverse fiction, so for him "The Other Now" wouldn't be breaking new ground:

  "One of the first science-fiction examples of a parallel universe is Murray Leinster's short story 'Sidewise in Time,' published in 1934. Although Leinster's story was not the first example of parallel universes, it is credited with popularizing the concept." (Wikipedia HERE).

  The significance of "Sidewise in Time" gets a thorough discussion (Wikipedia: WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE); the story itself is (HERE).

- For a sampling of the fictional permutations of the multiverse, go to TV Tropes (HERE and HERE and a lot of other places there).

- Other multiverse yarns that we've perused include Ray Wood's "Schrödinger’s Gun" (HERE), Sam Merwin's "Third Alternative" (HERE), J. W. Armstrong's "Reversal of Misfortune" (HERE), Dwight V. Swain's "So Many Worlds Away . . ." (HERE), and John Russell Fearn's "The Copper Bullet" (HERE).

- Our latest contact with Murray Leinster was his crime fictional "Transfusion" (HERE).

The bottom line:

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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"A Terrific Haymaker Sent the Detective Crashing into the Office Furniture" (Repost)

"Disturb the Dead."

By Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-96).
First appearance: Thrilling Mystery, March 1942.
Short short story (5 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE) and The Luminist Archives (HERE; go down to text page 59).

"A Murder and a Jewel Theft Take Bill Post on a Strange Graveyard Trail"

While insurance investigator Bill Post officially works for Twin-A, the Twin-American Insurance Company, as a practical matter he has to answer to his boss, an impatient man who doesn't like it when Post comes up empty-handed. In this instance, much to Post's chagrin, the police have already nabbed Pete Mydans, a "dapper thief" who likes to sport pink and white carnations in his lapels, on a minor charge; Post, however, knows for sure that Mydans made off with the Mallory jewels worth a cool two hundred grand and has been chasing him everywhere, but now can only do a slow burn when Mydans taunts him from behind bars.

Things take a turn for the better, though, when our insurance investigator discovers solid connections between Mydans's carnations, a murdered undertaker, "a hulking hairless Hibernian whose rough hands and weather-beaten face gave the lie to his neatly-pressed dark suit," and a "long-jawed man with a red face, loud clothes and a glittering diamond horseshoe tie pin"—the last being especially out of place in a chilly graveyard at midnight.

Resources:
- Since we've already encountered Sam Merwin in science fiction mode in a previous posting, you can find offsite links to his other work (THERE).

The bottom line:

   "That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the knave jowls it to the ground as if ’twere Cain’s jawbone, that did the first murder!"
   — Shakespeare

"That Door Is Always Kept Locked"

THERE'S AN OLD SAYING: You can choose your friends but not your relatives. Our protagonist is about to discover that, relatively speaking, it's possible to have . . .

"Death from a Family Tree."
By Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-96).
Illustration by Ed DeLavy (1916-89).

First appearance: Popular Detective, May 1948.

Short short story (9 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "No man could be alive with the hole he had in his head."

"The love of money," said the preacher, "is the root of all evil." In the process of probating the Lucius Weaver estate, there's plenty of money love at stake—"upwards of half a million dollars"—leading, as you might guess, to evil in the form of a well-deadened bullet and an "infernal nightmare chariot". . .

Principal characters:
~ Leonie Carroll:
  ". . . terrifyingly beautiful . . ."
~ Wilfrid I. Hull:
  ". . . he didn't know what to do about it, so soon after a murder. So he compromised by merely sitting."
~ Orrin S. Gorman:
  "If he hadn't kept everything locked in his own head, we might know who did it."
~ Lieutenant Venner:
  "I get it. In English, this meeting here was a showdown of sorts—right?"
~ Leffords:
  "In the vernacular—yes."
~ Tom Hollingsworth:
  "Weaver left just before the shot."
~ Morgan Weaver:
  "He's not his nephew until he proves it in court."

References and resources:
- "said the jehu": "Originally a commander of chariots for Ahab, king of Israel, Jehu later led a revolt against the throne and became king himself. In the Bible, it is noted of Jehu that 'he drives furiously' (II Kings 9:20). In the 17th century, English speakers began using jehu as a generic term meaning 'coachman' or, specifically, 'a fast or reckless coachman.' Today, we are more likely to use the word in reference to reckless cabdrivers. The phrase drives like Jehu is encountered occasionally, too." (Merriam-Webster HERE).
- "a descendant of Captain Isaac Hull of the Constitution": Hull (1773-1843) was an accomplished sailor, to say the least. "For the infant U.S. Navy, the battle of USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere on August 19, 1812, at the beginning of the war, was the most important single ship action of the War of 1812 and one that made Isaac Hull a national hero." (Wikipedia HERE). His most famous command (launched in 1797) is still around. "USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat." (Wikipedia HERE). As for "Major General Hull": "Hull was also uncle to Isaac Hull, son of his brother Joseph. Joseph died while Isaac was young, so Hull adopted the boy. Isaac commanded the USS Constitution during the War of 1812." (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a police positive in his right hand": A venerable sidearm. "The Colt Police Positive is a small-frame, double-action revolver featuring a six-round cylinder, chambered for either .32 or .38 caliber. It was also offered in .22 caliber cartridges. Designed primarily for sale to federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies, the Police Positive was introduced into the firearms market by Colt's Manufacturing Company in 1905." (Wikipedia HERE).

- We've been sampling Samuel Kimball Merwin, Jr.'s fiction for quite a while now, mainly his SFF, such as "Arbiter" (HERE) and "Third Alternative" (HERE).

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"If Anybody's Going To Get That Ice Back, and Incidentally Get the Murderer, I Guess It's Up to Us"

STORIES FEATURING investigators who work for insurance agencies have been a popular staple of crime fiction writers for a long time; the format allows authors to combine the (often hard-boiled) private eye trope with the real world of business activity—and, once in a while, actual mystery plots. An example from television would be Banacek (HERE and HERE), although he was a freelance investigator not exclusively employed by any particular agency. In today's story, our sleuth, who does work for one, while investigating a case of theft and murder discovers that there is much significance in . . .

"The Murderer's Left Hand."
By Donald Barr Chidsey (1902-81).

First appearance: Short Stories, November 25, 1935.
Reprinted in Short Stories (U.K.), April 1936 and Short 
Stories, May 1952.

Short short story (8 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go down to text page 59).

     "He thlapped me with hith open hand."

Superstitious people believe our fate is in the stars; but in this instance, for a cowardly criminal it lies in (or should we say on) a crystal ball—a phony crystal ball—that and two bullets . . .

Principal characters:
~ Harris:
  "He was lying on the walk there right next to a brand new flower bed, and his lower jaw had been socked so hard that it had splintered off and part of it had been driven up through his brain."
~ "The boss":
  "He had a $70,000 policy with us for his wife's jewelry, which is more to the point, and that was the stuff the murderer got away with."
~ Charles Francis Xavier Morrissey:
  "I studied it until I could close my eyes and see every single delta and island and end in its relation to every other end and island and delta."
~ Monkhouse:
  "He was a big guy, and nasty-tempered. He stood there with his fists on his hips, glaring at me."
~ "a little rat of a guy in a brown suit":
  ". . . I knew that, for all his hard-boiled mannerisms, he was superstitious as hell."
~ "this female mountain":
  "I ought to have you arrested!"

What would a tough guy shamus adventure be without a moment like this:

  ". . . I went spinning around while funny lights, most of them red, did funny dances for me. The lights broke up into streamers, which whirled in tight little circles very fast, and then exploded all at once. I hit a wall and went flat."

References and resources:
- Our sleuth mentions persons who were involved with palmistry: Whipple and Wilder (HERE), Kidd, Desbarolles (HERE), and Heron-Allen (HERE).
- "palmistry was a new one on me": Sometimes called chiromancy (Wikipedia HERE); for scientific forensic palm identification see Wikipedia (HERE).
- "the whole crystal ball": An important element in our story (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Or rummy.": At one time a very popular card game. (Wikipedia HERE).

- "right in the breadbasket": Slang for the region around the stomach. "No one is quite sure of the exact origins of the use, but it’s likely that there’s some connection between the basket used to hold bread and the basket where the bread ends up after a person eats it." (Merriam-Webster Dictionary HERE).
- "pivot teeth": A pivot tooth is "an artificial crown attached to the root of a tooth by a usually metallic pin." (Merriam-Webster Dictionary HERE).
- "handing out a haymaker": See Wikipedia's article about types of punches (HERE).
- While our author Donald Barr Chidsey was quite prolific in the pulps (1930-58), he also generated quite a lot of historical fiction; see the Wikipedia entry for him (HERE). Chidsey's series characters included McGarvey, always paired with Wainwright T. Morton, and, on one occasion, Nick Fisher in Detective Fiction Weekly (1934-41); Fisher appeared in one issue of DFW (1932) and then migrated to Argosy for thirteen more adventures (1933-34, 1936-39). A fourth series character was short-lived Sergeant Fletcher Steel with three tales in Double Detective (1938-39). (All data from the FictionMags Index)
- Stories involving insurance investigations that we've previously featured: Ronald A. Knox's Miles Bredon novel THE THREE TAPS (HERE), Henry Kuttner's "Murder's Handyman" (HERE), Sam Merwin's "Disturb the Dead" (HERE), Donald E. Westlake's "The Risk Profession" (HERE), Ray Cummings's "Poor Economy" (HERE), A.E.W. Mason's "The Ginger King" (HERE), E. Hoffman Price's "A Burning Clue" (HERE), Lawrence G. Blochman's "Calendar Girl" (HERE), Henry Slesar's "Policeman's Lot" (HERE), and Robert Sheckley's "Double Indemnity" (HERE).

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Two Shorties from MYSTERY BOOK

"The Liquid Bullet."
By Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-96).
First appearance: Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1949.

Short short short story (2 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "Then she lets out a yell to me and fires at the lamp and hits it."

The lesson is clear: Never laugh at a blonde with a pistol—any kind of pistol . . .

Comment: A rare instance of a story being told as a one-side-only telephone conversation.

~ ~ ~

"Lady Killer."
By John W. Clifford (?-?).
First appearance: Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1949.

Short short short story (3 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "The victim going out of her way to make it easier for him. The target fitting herself to the muzzle of the gun."

He's always had it his way—until tonight . . .

Comment: A twisty variation on a Hemingway story.

Resources:
- We've featured Samuel Kimball Merwin, Jr.'s detective fiction (HERE) and (HERE) and 
his crime-tinged science fiction (HERE) and (HERE); see (HERE) for biographical data. 
As for our other author, John W. Clifford, who knows?

The bottom line:

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"The Best of All Possible Worlds"

"Reversal of Misfortune."
By J. W. Armstrong (?-?).
First appearance: Nature/Futures, 4 December 2014.
Illustration by JACEY.
Short short short story (1 page).
Online at Nature.com (HERE; PDF; purchase necessary).

     "As I waited, an hour before my execution, my unfocused mind ranged freely . . ."

Maybe, sometimes, it is better not to know . . .

Resources:
- The ISFDb informs us that so far our author, J. W. Armstrong, has three SFFnal stories to his credit.
- Previous encounters with the multiverse (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) are Ray Woods's story "Schrödinger’s Gun" (HERE) and Sam Merwin's "Third Alternative" (HERE); you'll find plenty of links in those places if you want to explore it further.

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"By the Time the Police Get Through Questioning You You'll Be Meat for the Nut-hatch, Friend"

"Third Alternative."
By Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-96).
First appearance: Fantastic Story, Spring 1952.
Reprinted in Science Fiction Yearbook, No. 2 (1968).
Short short story (8 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"There was a third alternative open to him."

Personally, we don't believe in the multiverse (for one thing, its existence is unprovable as a practical matter); imagine, though, the complications—political, legal, and personal—that would result from such a thing. To save us the trouble, Sam Merwin has already imagined it, and the prospect isn't all that good for one man, a murderer who keeps seeing his victim everywhere, alive and well . . .

Typo: "wainscoats".

Resources:
- Read all about Sam Merwin's accomplishments in the SFF genre (HERE; Wikipedia), (HERE; the SFE), and (HERE; the ISFDb). Our previous encounters with him can be found on this page (HERE).
- What used to be called the concept of parallel worlds but is now referred to as the multiverse is discussed fairly thoroughly on Wikipedia (HERE):
     "The multiverse (or metaverse) is a hypothetical group of multiple separate universes including the universe in which humans live. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, the physical laws and the constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called the 'parallel universes', 'other universes' or 'alternative universes.'"
See also the SFE theme entry on parallel worlds (HERE).

- It might be an illusory notion, but the multiverse has been a boon to SFF authors like Merwin (and daydreaming theoretical physicists fishing for research grants), all of them exploiting it shamelessly ever since the idea first bobbed up; see the short "Multiple Timelines" section of Atomic Rockets (HERE) for still more.

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