"It Was Just a Plain, Ordinary, Everyday Electric Push-button"

"The Doorbell."

By David H. Keller (1880-1966).

Original illustration by Lumen Winter (1908-82; HERE).

First appearance: Wonder Stories, June 1934.

Reprints page (HERE).

Short story (10 pages as a PDF).

Online at Faded Page (HERE).

     "Brother was dead and Mother was almost dead, but she managed to gasp out what had happened."

Even the most harmless technology can turn lethal when it becomes a means to exact revenge . . . .

Principal characters:

~ Jacob Hubler:

  "Why didn't you use the gun?"

~ Henry Cecil:

  "There would have been no originality in it."

~ Doctor Murdock:

  "He's a good physician and I have the greatest confidence in him. There's no occasion for him to worry."

References and resources:

- "a Rolls-Royce": For decades the world has regarded a Rolls as the very emblem of wealth:

  "Rolls-Royce was a British luxury car and later an aero-engine manufacturing business established in 1904 in Manchester, United Kingdom by the partnership of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. Building on Royce's reputation established with his cranes they quickly developed a reputation for superior engineering by manu-facturing the 'best car in the world.' The First World War brought them into manufacturing aero-engines. Joint development of jet engines began in 1940 and they entered production. Rolls-Royce has built an enduring reputation for development and manufacture of engines for defence and civil aircraft" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "auditory hallucinosis": Often called "hearing voices":

  "An auditory hallucination, or paracusia, is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus. A common form of auditory halluci-nation involves hearing one or more talking voices, and this is known as an auditory verbal hallucination. This may be associated with psychotic disorders, most notably schizophrenia, and holds special significance in diagnosing these conditions. How-ever, individuals without any psychiatric disease whatsoever may hear voices, including (but not limited to) those under the influence of mind-altering substances" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "should be good for cholera": Depending on where the patient lives, it could be fatal:

  "Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. Cholera affects an estimated 3–5 million people worldwide and causes 28,800–130,000 deaths a year. Although it is classified as a pandemic as of 2010, it is rare in high income countries" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "an electromagnet": You probably haven't realized it, but there are many electromagnets influencing your life at this very moment:

  "An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in the hole, denoting the center of the coil. The magnetic field disappears when the current is turned off. The wire turns are often wound around a magnetic core made from a ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic material such as iron; the magnetic core concentrates the magnetic flux and makes a more powerful magnet. The main advantage of an electromagnet over a permanent magnet is that the magnetic field can be quickly changed by controlling the amount of electric current in the winding. However, unlike a permanent magnet that needs no power, an electromagnet requires a continuous supply of current to maintain the magnetic field" (Wikipedia HERE).

- Writing in much the same vein as Poe but without his literary skills, David H. Keller had his fantasies often take a gruesome turn; see Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), The Encyclo-pedia of Fantasy (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

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"One Clutching Hand Seized the Revolver, the Other, with Clenched Fist, Pounded at His Face"

"Bank Night."

By Robert R. Mill (1895-1942).

Illustrations by Charles Chickering (1891-1970; HERE).

First appearance: Blue Book, February 1940.

Short story (11 pages; 6 illos).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     ". . . and they locked in a death struggle."

For a state trooper smitten with a speeder it's practically love at first sight, but for the object of his devotion it's something else entirely . . . .

Main characters:

The troopers:

~ Lt. Edward "Tiny" David:

  "Isn't it lucky, sir, that we came out the front way?"

~ Lt. James Crosby:

  ". . . taken completely by surprise, acted automatically."

~ Lt. Charles McMann:

  ". . . did not look forward to this with relish."

~ Captain Charles Field:

  "There's one thing in your favor: when you make a fool of yourself, you go whole hog."

~ Sgt. Max Payton:

  ". . . if the message is love and kisses, will the lieutenant care to have me deliver them to him?"

The civilians:

~ Vera Hamtrow:

  ". . . was smiling as she sat waiting for them. Her clothes and her make-up were vivid."

~ Mrs. Hamtrow:

  ". . . was carrying a large suitcase."

~ Pop:

  "Several nights here lately seems like I've been hearing funny noises down in the basement, but when I get there, there ain't nothin'."

References and resources:

- "Bank Night": It had relatively little to do directly with banks per se:

  "Bank Night was a lottery game franchise in the United States during the Great Depression. It was invented and marketed by Charles U. Yaeger, a former booking agent for 20th Century Fox. In 1936, Bank Night was played at 5,000 of America's 15,000 active theaters, and copies of it were played at countless more. The popularity of Bank Night and similar schemes contributed to the resiliency of the film industry during the Great Depression more than any other single business tactic" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "we haven't a jitterbug on the block": Not an insect but a style of dance:

  "White dancers picked up the energetic jitterbug from dancers at black venues. Venues in the Hill District of Pittsburgh were popular places for whites to learn the jitterbug. The Savoy Ballroom, a dance hall in Harlem, was a famous cross-cultural venue, frequented by both black locals and white tourists" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the European dictators": They were very much in the news at the time:

  "Mussolini and Hitler used similar, modest titles referring to them as 'the Leader.' Mussolini used 'Il Duce' and Hitler was generally referred to as 'der Führer.' Franco used a similar title 'El Caudillo' ('the Head') and for Stalin his adopted name ['man of steel'] became synonyms with his role as the absolute leader. For Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco, the use of modest, non-traditional titles displayed their absolute power even stronger as they did not need any, not even a historic legitimacy either. Over time, dictators have been known to use tactics that violate human rights. For example, under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, government policy was enforced by secret police and the Gulag system of prison labour camps. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of political prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time. Data collected from Soviet archives gives the death toll from Gulags at 1,053,829. Other human rights abuses by the Soviet state included human experimentation, the use of psychiatry as a political weapon and the denial of freedom of religion, assembly, speech and association" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the P.W.A.": With FDR's New Deal in full effect, every reader would know what it was right away:

  "Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves in 1933–35, and again in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1935 and shut down in 1944" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the gay nineties vintage": Seen through the haze of nostalgia almost any historical period would seem to be better than the present:

  "The Gay Nineties is an American nostalgic term and a periodization of the history of the United States referring to the decade of the 1890s. It is known in the United Kingdom as the Naughty Nineties, and refers there to the decade of supposedly decadent art of Aubrey Beardsley, the witty plays and trial of Oscar Wilde, society scandals and the beginning of the suffragette movement. Despite the term, the decade was marked by an economic crisis, which greatly worsened when the Panic of 1893 set off a widespread economic depression in the United States that lasted until 1896" (Wikipedia HERE).

- We had a recent encounter with Robert R. Mill's atypical tale, "Mrs. Murder" (HERE).

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"I Don't Like Being Shot At"

 "Twelve Hours to Blow!"

By Robert Silverberg (born 1935).

Illustrator unknown.

First appearance: Imaginative Tales, May 1957.

Short story (15 pages).

Online at Comic Book Plus (HERE; using dropdown menu go to page 66) and Archive.org (HERE).

(Parental note: Mild profanity.)

     "My name isn't Caldwell."

What looks at first like a case of mistaken identity propels a cryonics expert into a criminal conspiracy that for one disagreeable moment has him seeing "pretty stars": "He got me up against one of the walls and began banging my head against it . . . "

Principal characters:

~ Martin:

  "I glanced at my watch. And realized, with a shock, that I had less time left than I imagined."

~ Caldwell:

  "Hey! You! Caldwell! Halt!"

~ Channing:

  "He could move fast; I'll give him credit for that."

~ Ledland:

  "A Z9M9Z tube, Mr. Martin? Well, we're rather short of them, but I suppose I could let you have one."

~ Parkhurst:

  "You're listed in the official files as a criminal wanted on three planets. Do you expect us to believe some cock-and-bull story like that in face of the identification evidence?"

Typos: "cooper bus bar" [copper]; "computor".

References and resources:

- "Phobos, the inner moon of Mars": "Measurements of the day and night sides of Phobos show such extreme temperature variations that the sunlit side of the moon rivals a pleasant winter day in Chicago, while only a few kilometers away, on the dark side of the moon, the climate is more harsh than a night in Antarctica" (NASA Solar System Exploration HERE). "A person who weighs 68 kilogram-force (150 pounds) on Earth would weigh about 40 gram-force (2 ounces) standing on the surface of Phobos" (Wikipedia HERE and HERE). "headed for Deimos, the outer moon of Mars": "Escape velocity from Deimos is 5.6 m/s. This velocity could theoretically be achieved by a human performing a vertical jump" (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).

- "Syrtis City, Mars": "Syrtis Major is centered near at 8.4°N 69.5°E, extends some 1,500 km (930 mi) north from the planet's equator, and spans 1,000 km (620 mi) from west to east" (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).

- "temperatures around absolute zero": "Scientists and technologists routinely achieve temperatures close to absolute zero, where matter exhibits quantum effects such as Bose–Einstein condensate, superconductivity and superfluidity" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a superconductor": "Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in certain materials where electrical resistance vanishes and magnetic flux fields are expelled from the material. Any material exhibiting these properties is a super-conductor. Unlike an ordinary metallic conductor, whose resistance decreases gradually as its temperature is lowered even down to near absolute zero, a super-conductor has a characteristic critical temperature below which the resistance drops abruptly to zero. An electric current through a loop of superconducting wire can persist indefinitely with no power source" (Wikipedia HERE).

 - "a super ultra-high-frequency radio transmitter": "UHF radio waves propagate mainly by line of sight; they are blocked by hills and large buildings although the trans-mission through building walls is strong enough for indoor reception. They are used for television broadcasting, cell phones, satellite communication including GPS, personal radio services including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, walkie-talkies, cordless phones, and numerous other applications" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "your retinal patterns": "The relative obscurity and 'high tech' nature of retinal scans means that they are a frequent device in fiction to suggest that an area has been particularly strongly secured against intrusion" (Wikipedia HERE, HERE, and HERE).

- "fifteen gravities of acceleration": "Human tolerances depend on the magnitude of the gravitational force, the length of time it is applied, the direction it acts, the location of application, and the posture of the body" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a geodesic bee-line": "In geometry, a geodesic is commonly a curve representing in some sense the shortest path (arc) between two points in a surface" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the fishbowl helmet": "Many space story writers merely mention a 'spacesuit' without considering or describing design details, in the same way as they mention a ray gun or a spaceship without considering how its mechanism would work" (Wikipedia HERE); also see Atomic Rockets (HERE).

- Beginning writing in the early '50s, the incredibly prolific Robert Silverberg has shown himself to be as adept at the novel as he is with the short form; see Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

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"Much Too Nice To Get Mixed Up with a Murder"

TODAY'S STORY showcases that venerable crime fiction trope of the protagonist, usually a man, who is wanted by both the cops and the baddies, desperately trying to exculpate himself before he comes to a bad end in what could be termed "the man on the run" motif (but see "References and resources" below). True to the trope, our hero finds himself framed for . . .

"The Fun Farm Murder."

By Thomas Duncan (1905-?).

Illustrations by Orson Lowell (1871-1956; HERE).

First appearance: Blue Book, January 1941.

Novelette (24 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

(Parental caution: Some violence.)

     "The rug pillowing his head gleamed wet and scarlet."

Crime is bad enough without politics fouling up everything: "Assault and battery, resisting arrest, murder . . . Oh, yes—larceny, too . . ."

Main characters:

~ Cliff Boyd:

  ". . . I've had enough headaches tonight without getting hydrophobia."

~ Sally Kerrigan:

  ". . . would be waiting at the park gate, instead of in the caretaker's bungalow where she lived with her uncle, Mike Kerrigan."

~ Mike Kerrigan:

  "She wouldn't be living with her Uncle Mike any more—for that doughty little Irishman lay sprawled on the living-room rug, dead."

~ Tubby Gunderson:

  ". . . was merely typical. Just a blockhead who owed his job to the votes he swung in a rural precinct."

~ Mrs. Rasmussen:

  "My heart was ticking about three times as fast as usual . . ."

~ Fritz Scanlon:

  "He's the slickest shyster in town. Or—was."

~ The desk clerk:

  ". . . kept backing painfully away, and suddenly he turned and scurried into some inner office."

~ Kenneth Richards:

  "You're not so dumb, Boyd. You might make a good sheriff."

~ August E. Schuckelutz:

  "That name sent a tingle to the ends of his hair."

~ Hubbard, Worrall, and Ott:

  ". . . were frozen motionless, like wax figures in a carnival chamber of murderers."

References and resources:

- "flivver in the garage": "a small cheap usually old automobile" (Merriam-Webster HERE; see etymology as well).

- "between the right ear and the medulla oblongata": "The medulla contains the cardiac, respiratory, vomiting and vasomotor centers, and therefore deals with the auto-nomic functions of breathing, heart rate and blood pressure as well as the sleep wake cycle" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "called itself a roadhouse": "A roadhouse (Australia and the United States) or stopping house (Canada) is a small mixed-use premises typically built on or near a major road in a sparsely populated area or an isolated desert region that services the passing travellers, providing food, drinks, accommodation, fuel and parking spaces to the guests and their vehicles. The premises generally consist of just a single dwelling, permanently occupied by a nuclear family, usually between two and five family members" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "our pin-ball machine": The story takes place on the eve of the Second World War, before certain design changes were made: "During World War II, all of the major manufac-turers of coin-operated games turned to the manufacture of equipment for the war effort. Some companies, like Williams, bought old games from operators and refurbished them, adding new artwork with a patriotic theme. At the end of the war, a generation of Americans looked for amusement in bars and malt shops, and pinball saw another golden age. Improvements such as the tilt mechanism and free games (known as replays) appeared" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "those five C's covered the drinks": There's a logical reason for that nickname: "$100 bill is occasionally 'C-note' (C being the Roman numeral for 100, from the Latin word centum) or 'century note'; it can also be referred to as a 'Benjamin' or 'Benny' (after Benjamin Franklin, who is pictured on the note), or a 'yard' (so $300 is '3 yards' and a $50 bill is a 'half a yard'). 'A rack' is $1,000 in the form of ten $100 bills, banded by a bank or otherwise" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a six percent first mortgage bond": "A mortgage bond is a bond backed by a pool of mortgages on a real estate asset such as a house. More generally, bonds which are secured by the pledge of specific assets are called mortgage bonds. Mortgage bonds can pay interest in either monthly, quarterly or semiannual periods" (Wikipedia HERE). "hovering around par": "A bond selling at par is priced at 100% of face value. Par can also refer to a bond's original issue value or its value upon redemption at maturity" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "telegraph company": "Telegraph lines continued to be an important means of distributing news feeds from news agencies by teleprinter machine until the rise of the internet in the 1990s. For Western Union, one service remained highly profitable—the wire transfer of money. This service kept Western Union in business long after the telegraph had ceased to be important" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the State cops": "Twenty-three U.S. states use the term 'State Police.' Forty-nine states have a State Police agency or its equivalent, with Hawaii being the only state with a Sheriff Division of the Hawaii Department of Public Safety with statewide jurisdiction" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "under the marquee": "A marquee is most commonly a structure placed over the entrance to a hotel, theatre, casino, train station, or similar building" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "tramped the starter": "Before Chrysler's 1949 innovation of the key-operated combination ignition-starter switch, the starter was often operated by the driver pressing a button mounted on the floor or dashboard. Some vehicles had a pedal in the floor that manually engaged the starter drive pinion with the flywheel ring gear, then completed the electrical circuit to the starter motor once the pedal reached the end of its travel" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "a gambling device": "Pinball was banned beginning in the early 1940s until 1976 in New York City. Like New York, Los Angeles banned pinball machines in 1939. The ban was overturned by the Supreme Court of California in 1974 . . . Although it was rarely enforced, Chicago's ban on pinball lasted three decades and ended in 1976. Philadelphia and Salt Lake City also had similar bans. Regardless of these events, some towns in America still have such bans on their books; the town of Kokomo, Indiana lifted its ordinance banning pinball in December 2016" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Several rods ahead": "In modern U.S. customary units it is defined as 16 1⁄2 US survey feet, equal to exactly 1⁄320 of a surveyor's mile, or a quarter of a surveyor's chain, and is approximately 5.0292 meters. The rod is useful as a unit of length because whole number multiples of it can form one acre of square measure" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "go to the chair": "Execution by electrocution, performed using an electric chair, is a method of execution originating (and almost exclusively employed) in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York, dentist named Alfred P. South-wick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a supposed humane alternative to hanging, and first used in 1890" (Wikipedia HERE).

- TV Tropes (HERE) has its own term for the man on the run motif.

- FictionMags's (HERE) thumbnail about Thomas William Duncan: "Poet and writer. Born in Casey, Iowa; lived in California." He started out in the pulps in 1930 and found a home in the slicks as well, more or less alternating between the two; his last listed credit is in Collier's in 1947.

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"They Are a Conquered People"

THE AGE-OLD problem conquerors always face is how to win the hearts and minds of those they've conquered. In today's story, a would-be conqueror doesn't realize that this hearts and minds thing can go both ways . . .

"Planetary Defences."

By S. R. Algernon (Sean Green).

First appearance: Nature/Futures, 5 December 2013.

Illustration by JACEY (Jason Cook).

Reprints page (HERE).

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at Nature/Futures (HERE; PDF).

     "How did they get access to galactic currency?"

Have you ever had one of those moments of introspection while you were in the middle of doing something where you couldn't be sure that what you were doing was your own idea or the result of somebody cleverly tricking you into it? Overseer Kleeg is about to have such a moment, but by the time he does, he really couldn't care less one way or the other . . . .

Principal characters:

~ Overseer Kleeg:

  "We've lost another mining platform."

~ Security Chief Vig’lah:

  "Alas, the natives have used their proceeds to buy access to the interstellar net from the Communications Guild."

~ The Esteemed Denzel Gatez Starbuck:

  "If you could provide us with 20,000 galactic credits for the equipment to recover the vault, we would gladly remit to you 50% of the riches within."

References and resources:

- "in exchange for one magnetic bottle of antimatter": Magnetic bottle: "A magnetic mirror, known as a magnetic trap (магнитный захват) in Russia and briefly as a pyrotron in the U.S., is a type of magnetic confinement device used in fusion power to trap high temperature plasma using magnetic fields. The mirror was one of the earliest major approaches to fusion power, along with the stellarator and z-pinch machines" (Wikipedia HERE). Antimatter: "In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter that is composed of the antiparticles (or 'partners') of the corresponding particles of 'ordinary' matter. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the RF signature": "Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of an alternating electric current or voltage or of a magnetic, electric or electromagnetic field or mechanical system in the frequency range from around 20 kHz to around 300 GHz. This is roughly between the upper limit of audio frequencies and the lower limit of infrared frequencies; these are the frequencies at which energy from an oscillating current can radiate off a conductor into space as radio waves" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "power for their tractor beams": "A tractor beam is a device with the ability to attract one object to another from a distance. The concept originates in fiction: the term was coined by E. E. Smith (an update of his earlier 'attractor beam') in his novel Spacehounds of IPC (1931). Since the 1990s, technology and research has laboured to make it a reality, and have had some success on a microscopic level. Less commonly, a similar beam that repels is called a pressor beam or repulsor beam. Gravity impulse and gravity propulsion beams are traditionally areas of research from fringe physics that coincide with the concepts of tractor and repulsor beams" (Wikipedia HERE).

- About Nature/Futures: "In 1999 Nature began publishing science fiction short stories. The brief 'vignettes' are printed in a series called 'Futures.' The stories appeared in 1999 and 2000, again in 2005 and 2006, and have appeared weekly since July 2007. Sister publication Nature Physics also printed stories in 2007 and 2008. In 2005, Nature was awarded the European Science Fiction Society's Best Publisher award for the 'Futures' series. One hundred of the Nature stories between 1999 and 2006 were published as the collection Futures from Nature in 2008. Another collection, Futures from Nature 2, was published in 2014" (Wikipedia HERE). "Non-fiction magazine which publishes one short story each issue as part of the 'Futures' series, which was originally projected as temporary: The first series ran from November 1999 to December 2000. The second series ran from January/February 2005 to December 2006 (A ten-part serialization ran from January to March 2005, the parts of which were only occasionally labelled as 'Futures'). The third series ran from July 2007 to October 17, 2019 after which it switched to on-line only" (ISFDb HERE).

- Previous stories by S. R. Algernon that we've highlighted on ONTOS:

  . . . "VTE" (HERE)

  . . . "Trading in Futures" (HERE)

  . . . and "Murder at the Tesseract House" (HERE).

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"What He Might Have To Do Needed Careful Planning"

THE PERFECT CRIME is by definition one where the malefactor escapes, his or her identity never being revealed; in today's story a killer succeeds in getting away with a perfect murder—until, that is . . .

"The Clue Got Lost."

By Ray Cummings (1887-1957).

Illustrator unknown.

First appearance: Popular Detective, July 1948.

Short short story (6 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

     "Then he saw the level revolver."

In almost any endeavor careful planning usually results in success—but then plans can go south on—dare we say it?—the "spur" of the moment . . . .

Main characters:

~ Robert Tarn:

  ". . . was tense and grim as he drove his rattling car down the last declivity of the little mountain road."

~ Mrs. Greer:

  ". . . was downstairs screaming."

~ Parks:

  "Seems it jus' got lost, didn't it?"

~ Jake Conlin:

  ". . . had discovered that he had been tricked, of course."

Typo: "a snor of contempt" [snort is likely].

Reference and resources:

- "The ore of cinnabar": "It is the most common source ore for refining elemental mercury, and is the historic source for the brilliant red or scarlet pigment termed vermilion and associated red mercury pigments" (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).

- Our latest encounter with uberpulpster Ray Cummings was his "Crimes of the Year 2000" mini-series (HERE). You might also enjoy Cummings's nonSFFnal "The Scarlet Letter" (HERE).

Bottom line:

  ". . . and be sure your sin will find you out."

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"I Don't Like His Kind of Slime, and I'll Do My Best To Get Rid of Them"

THE SHAN OF THIZAR is about to get himself coronated, with the highly valuable Crown Jewels an integral part of the ceremony. Jewels of any description tend to attract people of, shall we say, less than sterling character; stealing them and getting away with it always presents a challenge to thieves, but a smooth operator and a beautiful young woman think they've figured out how to pull off a . . .

"Heist Job on Thizar."

By Randall Garrett (1927-87).

Illustrated by Virgil Finlay (1914-71; HERE).

First appearance: Amazing Stories, October 1956.

Reprints page (HERE).

Short story (10 pages).

Online at Project Gutenberg (HERE) and The Luminist Archives (HERE; scroll down to text page 22).

     "In the future, we may discover new planets; our ships may rocket to new worlds; robots may be smarter than people. But we'll still have slick characters willing and able to turn a fast buck—even though they have to be smarter than Einstein to do it."

It would seem that even smooth operators have scruples . . . .

Principal characters:

~ Anson Drake:

  "I was drawn back by the memory of the natural beauties of your planet. The very thought of the fat, flabby face of old Belgezad, decorated with a bulbous nose that is renowned throughout the Galaxy, was irresistible. So here I am."

~ Jomis Dobigel:

  "You're very funny, Earthman. But we don't like Earthmen here."

~ Norma Knight:

  ". . . was known throughout this whole sector of the Galaxy as the cleverest jewel thief the human race had ever spawned."

~ Viron Belgezad:

  "This time you won't get away, Drake! Stealing anything from the palace of the Shan carries a minimum penalty of twenty years in Thizar Prison."

~ The Lord Prosecutor:

  ". . . looked as though he suspected Drake of having taken leave of his senses."

References and resources:

- Astronomical references: Thizar, Seladon II: Inventions of the author. Algol: A real three-star system about 90 light-years away in the Pegasus constellation as seen from Earth; some-times called the Demon Star (Wikipedia HERE). Andromeda: "The number of stars contain-ed in the Andromeda Galaxy is estimated at one trillion (1 times 10 to the 12th power), or roughly twice the number estimated for the Milky Way" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "smarter than Einstein": Some say he was the smartest man who ever lived (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).

- "able to turn a fast buck": "A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as 'a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct . . . intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial,' as they 'benefit con operators ("con men") at the expense of their victims (the "marks")'" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Little Bo-Peep": Not meant to be a compliment (Wikipedia HERE).

- "worth traveling parsecs to see": A measure of distance in space not as well known as the "light-year": "The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to 3.26 light-years or 206,000 astronomical units (au), i.e. 30.9 trillion kilometres (19.2 trillion miles)" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the Crown Jewels": On Earth, as on Thizar, they represent more than just wealth: "Crown jewels are the objects of metalwork and jewellery in the regalia of a current or former monarchy. They are often used for the coronation of a monarch and a few other ceremonial occasions. A monarch may often be shown wearing them in portraits, as they symbolize the power and continuity of the monarchy. Additions to them may be made, but since medieval times the existing items are typically passed down unchanged as they symbolize the continuity of the monarchy" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "this whole sector of the Galaxy": "In stellar cartography, a sector, which was referred to as a star sector or space sector, was a gridded region within the Milky Way Galaxy. Sectors were composed of an area and volume encompassing several light years and typically contained several star systems. A group of sectors was called a sector block, which was located in a quadrant" (Memory Alpha HERE).

- "Coronation Day": "A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the presentation of other items of regalia, marking the formal investiture of a monarch with regal power. Aside from the crowning, a coronation ceremony may comprise many other rituals such as the taking of special vows by the monarch, the investing and presentation of regalia to the monarch, and acts of homage by the new ruler's subjects and the performance of other ritual deeds of special significance to the particular nation" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "they're simply well-cut crystals of titanium dioxide": On today's Earth it supports a $13 billion industry: "Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula TiO2. When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6 (PW6), or CI 77891. Generally, it is sourced from ilmenite, rutile, and anatase. It has a wide range of applications, including paint, sunscreen, and food coloring" (Wikipedia HERE).

- Randall Garrett was tirelessly publishing SFF beginning in 1950 and never letting up; see the ISFDb (HERE).

- Another SFFnal adventure by Randall Garrett that you might enjoy is "Witness for the Persecution" (HERE).

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