Big Book of Science Fiction (6 page)

“What are you talking about,
Daddy?”

“Never mind . . . why am I
supposed to get that thing, anyway?”

“Uh—so’s you can jump off the
roof.”

“That is just silly. However, I
do want a look at that thing. Since his ship is gone, that object up there
seems to be the only artifact he brought with him except his clothes.”

“What’s an artifact?”

“Second cousin to an artichoke.
Here goes nothin’.” And he swung up into the tree. He had not climbed a tree
for years, and as he carefully chose his way, it occurred to him that there
were probably more efficient ways of gaining altitude. An escalator, for
example. Why didn’t escalators grow on trees?

The tree began to shiver and sway
with his weight. He looked down once and decided instantly not to do it again.
He looked up and was gratified to see how close he was to the object he was
after. He pulled himself up another three feet and was horrified at how far
away it was, for the branches were very small up here. He squirmed upward,
reached, and his fingers just brushed against the shank of the thing. It had
two rings fastened to it, he noticed, one each side of the center, large enough
to get an arm through. It was one of these which was hung up on a branch. He
chinned himself, then, with his unpracticed muscles cracking, took one hand off
and reached.

The one-hand chinning didn’t come
off so well. His arms began to sag. The ring broke off its branch as his weight
came on it. He was immediately surrounded by the enthusiastic crackling of
breaking shrubbery. He folded his tongue over and got his teeth on it. Since he
had a grip on Mewhu’s artifact, he held on . . . even when it came free. He
began to fall, tensed himself for the bone-breaking jolt he would get at the
bottom.

He didn’t get it

He fell quite fast at first, and
then the stick he was holding began to bear him up. He thought that it must
have caught on a branch, by some miracle—but it hadn’t! He was drifting down
like a thistle seed, hanging from the rod, which in some impossible fashion was
supporting itself in midair. There was a shrill, faint
whooshing
sound
from the two streamlined fixtures at the ends of the rod. He looked down,
blinked sweat out of his eyes, looked again. Mewhu was grinning a broad and
happy grin, and Molly was slack-jawed with astonishment.

The closer he came to the ground
the slower he went. When, after what seemed an eternity, he felt the blessed
pressure of earth under his feet, he had to stand and
pull
the rod down.
It yielded slowly, like an eddy current brake. Dry leaves danced and whirled
under the end pieces.

“Gee, Daddy, that was wonderful!”

He swallowed twice to wet down
his dry esophagus, and pulled his eyes back in. “Yeah. Fun,” he said weakly.

Mewhu came and took the rod out
of his hand, and dropped it. It stayed perfectly horizontal, and sank slowly
down to the ground, where it lay. Mewhu pointed at it, at the tree, and
grinned.

“Just like a parachute. Oh,
gee,
Daddy!”

“You keep away from it,” said
Jack, familiar with youthful intonation. “Heaven knows what it is. It might go
off, or something.”

He looked fearfully at the
object. It lay quietly, the hissing of the end pieces stilled. Mewhu bent
suddenly and picked it up, held it over his head with one hand. Then he calmly
lifted his feet and hung from it. It lowered him gently, butt first, until he
sat on the ground, in a welter of dead leaves; for as soon as he picked it up,
the streamlined end pieces had begun to blast again.

“That’s the silliest thing I ever
saw. Here—let me see it.” It was hovering about waist-high. He leaned over one
of the ends. It had a fine round grille over it. He put out a hand. Mewhu
reached out and caught his wrist, shaking his head. Apparently it was dangerous
to go too near those ends. Garry suddenly saw why. They were tiny, powerful jet
motors of some kind. If the jet was powerful enough to support a man’s weight,
the intake must be drawing like mad—probably enough to snap a hole through a
man’s hand like a giant ticket-puncher.

But what controlled it? How was
the jet strength adjusted to the weight borne by the device, and to the
altitude? He remembered without pleasure that when he had fallen with it from
the treetop, he had dropped quite fast, and that he went slower and slower as
he approached the ground. And yet when Mewhu had held it over his head, it had
borne his weight instantly and lowered him very slowly. And besides—how was it
so stable? Why didn’t it turn upside down and blast itself and passenger down
to earth?

He looked at Mewhu with some
increase of awe. Obviously he came from a place where the science was really
advanced. He wondered if he would ever be able to get any technical information
from his visitor—and if he would be able to understand it. Of course, Molly
seemed to be able to—

“He wants you to take it back and
try it on the roof,” said Molly.

“How can that refugee from a
Kuttner opus help me?”

Immediately Mewhu took the rod,
lifted it, ducked under it, and slipped his arms through the two rings, so that
it crossed his back like a water-bucket yoke. Peering around, he turned to face
a clearing in the trees, and before their startled eyes, he leaped thirty feet
in the air, drifted away in a great arc, and came gently to rest twenty yards
away.

Molly jumped up and down and
clapped her hands, speechless with delight. The only words Garry could find
were a reiterated, “Ah, no!” ‘

Mewhu stood where he was, smiling
his engaging smile, waiting for them. They walked toward him, and when they
were close, he leaped again and soared out toward the road.

“What do you do with a thing like
this?” breathed Jack. “Who do you go to, and what do you say to him?”

“Le’s just keep him for a pet,
Daddy.”

Jack took her hand, and they
followed the bounding, soaring silver man. A pet! A member of some alien race,
from some unthinkable civilization—and obviously a highly trained individual,
too, for no “man in the street” would have made such a trip. What was his
story? Was he an advance guard? Or-—was he the sole survivor of his people? How
far had he come? Mars? Venus?

They caught up with him at the
house. He was standing by the ladder. His strange rod was lying quiet on the
ground. He was fascinatedly operating Molly’s yo-yo. When he saw them, he threw
down the yo-yo, picked up his device, and slipping it across his shoulders,
sprang high in the air and drifted down to the roof. “Eee-yu!” he said, with
emphasis, and jumped off backward. So stable was the rod that, as he sank
through the air, his long body swung to and fro.

“Very nice,” said Jack. “Also
spectacular. And I have to go back to work.” He went to the ladder.

Mewhu bounded over to him, caught
his arm, whimpering and whistling in his peculiar speech. He took the rod and
extended it toward Jack.

“He wants you to use it,” said
Molly.

“No, thanks,” said Jack, a trace
of his tree-climbing vertigo returning to him. “I’d just as soon use the
ladder.” And he put his hand out to it.

Mewhu, hopping with frustration;
reached past him and toppled the ladder. It levered over a box as it fell and
struck Jack painfully on the shin.

“I guess you better use the flyin’
belt, Daddy.”

Jack looked at Mewhu. The silver
man was looking as pleasant as he could with that kind of a face; on the other
hand, it might just possibly be wise to humor him a little. Being safely on the
ground to begin with, Jack felt that it might not matter if the fantastic thing
wouldn’t work for him. And if it failed him over the roof—well the house wasn’t,
very
tall.

He shrugged his arms through the
two rings. Mewhu pointed to the roof, to Jack, made a jumping motion. Jack took
a deep breath, aimed carefully, and, hoping the gadget wouldn’t work—jumped.

He shot up close to the house—too
close. The eave caught him a resounding thwack on precisely the spot where the
ladder had just hit him. The impact barely checked him. He went sailing up over
the roof, hovered for a breathless second, and then began to come down. For a
moment he thought his flailing legs would find purchase on the far edge of the
roof. He just missed it. All he managed to do was to crack the same shin, in
the same place, mightily on the other eave. Trailing clouds of profanity, he
landed standing—in Iris’ wash basket. Iris, just turning from the clothes line,
confronted him.

“Jack! What on earth are you ...
get out of that! You’re standing right on my wash with your dirty . . .
oh!”

“Oh oh!” said Jack, and stepped
backward out of the wash basket. His foot went into Molly’s express wagon,
which Iris used to carry the heavy basket. To get his balance, he leaped —and
immediately rose high in the air. This time his luck was better. He soared
completely over the kitchen wing of the house and came to earth near Molly and
Mewhu.

“Daddy, you were just like a
bird!”

“I’m going to be just like a
corpse if your mother’s expression means what I think it does.” He shucked off
the “flyin’ belt” and dove into the house just as Iris rounded the corner. He
heard Molly’s delighted “He went
that
way” as he plowed through the
shambles of the living room and out the front door. As the kitchen door slammed
he was rounding the house. He charged up to Mewhu, snatched the gadget from
him, slipped it on and jumped. This time his judgment was faultless. He cleared
the house easily although he came very near landing astride the clothesline.
When Iris, panting and furious, stormed out of the house, he was busily hanging
sheets.

“Just what,” said Iris, her voice
crackling at the seams, “do you think you’re doing?”

“Just giving you a hand with the
laundry, m’love,” said Jack.

“What is that . . . that object
on your back?”

“Another evidence of the ubiquity
of the devices of science-fiction,” said Jack blandly. “This is a multilateral,
three-dimensional mass adjuster, or pogo-chute. With it I can fly like a gull,
evading the cares of the world and the advances of beautiful redheads, at such
times as their passions are distasteful to me.”

“Sometime in the very near
future, you gangling hatrack, I am going to pull the tongue out of your juke
box of a head and tie a bowknot in it.” Then she laughed.

He heaved a sigh of relief, went
and kissed her. “Darling, I am sorry. I was scared silly, dangling from this
thing. I didn’t see your clothes basket, and if I had I don’t know how I’d have
steered clear.”

“What is it, Jack? How does it
work?”

“I dunno. Jets on the ends. They
blast hard when there’s a lot of weight pushing them toward the earth. They
blast harder near the earth than up high. When the weight on them slacks off a
bit, they throttle down. What makes them do it, what they are using for power—I
just wouldn’t know. As far as I can see, they suck in air at the top and blow
it out through the jets. And, oh yes—they point directly downward no matter
which way the rod is turned.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Off a tree. It’s Mewhu’s.
Apparently he used it for a parachute. On the way down, a tree branch speared
through one of these rings and he slipped out of it and fell and broke his arm.”

“What are we going to do with
him, Jack?”

“I’ve been worrying about that
myself. We can’t sell him to a sideshow.” He paused, thoughtfully. “There’s no
doubt that he has a lot that would be of value to humanity. Why—this thing
alone would change the face of the earth! Listen—I weigh a hundred and seventy.
I
fell
on this thing, suddenly, when I lost my grip on a tree and it
bore my weight immediately. Mewhu weighs more than I do, judging from his
build. It took his weight when he lifted his feet off the ground while holding
it over his head. If it can do that, it or a larger version should be able, not
only to drive, but to support ah aircraft. If for some reason that isn’t
possible, the power of those little jets certainly could turn a turbine.”