Galactic Dreams

Since there have been many rumors about the professor’s death, I wish to go on record now and state the entire truth. I was the one who discovered the professor’s body, so I know whereof I speak. It is a lie and a canard that the good man committed suicide; indeed he was in love with life and was cut off in his prime, and I’m sure he looked forward to many more productive years. Nor was he electrocuted, though his TAP machine was close by and fused and melted as though a singularly large electrical current had flowed through it. The offical records read heart failure and for want of a better word this description will have to stand, though in all truth the cause of death was never determined. The professor appeared to be in fine health and in the pink of condition, though of course he was dead. Since his heart was no longer beating, heart failure seemed to be a satisfactory cause of death to enter in the records.

In closing let me state that when I discovered the professor he was seated at his desk, his head cocked toward the loudspeaker and his pen clutched in his fingers. Under his hand was a writing pad with an incomplete entry that he appeared to be writing when death struck. I make no conclusion about this, but merely record it as a statement of fact.

The writing is in Old Norse, which, for the benefit of those not acquainted with this interesting language, I have translated into modern English:

“… this meeting will come to order and if you don’t put those mead horns away there’ll be a few cracked skulls around here, I tell you. Now, order of business. There have been reports of tent caterpillars in Yggdrasill and some dead branches, but we’ll get onto that later. Of more pressing interest is the sandy concrete that has been found cracking in foundations of Bilfrost Bridge. I want to — just one moment this is supposed to be a closed meeting and there is someone listening in. Thor, will you please take care of that eavesdropper ….”

THE PAD — A STORY OF THE DAY AFTER THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

In the expansive, expensive atmosphere of Sardi’s Topside, two hundred stories above the city, a pretty girl was no novelty, nor a beautiful one either for that matter. So the redhead in the green suit, who would certainly have drawn stares, turned heads, on the lower levels, received no attention here at all until she stopped at Ron Lowell-Stein’s table and slapped him. A good, roundhouse smack right across the kisser.

His bodyguards, who now made up for their earlier inattention with an exaggerated display of muscle, grabbed her and squeezed her, and one even went so far as to push a gun against the base of her spine.

“Go ahead and have them kill me,” she said, shaking her lovely, shoulder-length hair while an angry flush suffused the whiteness of her skin. “Add murder to your list of other crimes.”

Ron, who rose at once because he was always polite to women, dismissed the bodyguards with a tilt of his head and said, “Would you care to sit down and tell me to which crimes you are referring?”

“Don’t play the hypocrite with me, you juvenile Don Juan. I’m talking about my friend, Dolores, the girl whom you ruined.”

“Is she ruined? I frankly thought she would be good for many years to come.”

This time he caught her wrist before she could connect, proof that the years of polo, copter-hockey, and skeet shooting had toned his muscles and reflexes well. “It seems rather foolish to stand here like this. Can we not sit and fight in undertones like civilized people? I’ll order us Black Velvet, that is champagne and stout if you have never tried it, which is a great soother and nerve settler.”

“I’ll not sit with a man like you,” she said as she sat down, firmly pressed into place by the strength of that polo-playing wrist.

“I am Ron Lowell-Stein, the man you hate, but you have not introduced yourself …?”

“It’s none of your damn business.”

“Women should leave swearing to men, who do it so much better.”

He looked up as one of his bodyguards pulled a printed sheet from his pocketfax and handed it over. “Beatrice Carfax,” he read. “I’ll call you Bea since I have no liking for these classic names. Father … Mother … born … why you sweet thing, you are only twenty-two. Blood type O; occupation, dancer.”

His eyes jumped across to her, moved slowly down her torso. “I like that,” he said, barely audibly. “Dancers have such beautifully muscled bodies.”

She blushed again at the obviousness and pushed away the crystal beaker of dark and bubbling liquid that had been set before her, but he firmly slid it back.

“I do not feel that I have ruined your friend Dolores,” he said. “In fact, I thought I was doing her a favor. However, because you are so attractive and forthright I shall give her fifty thousand dollars, a dowry that I know will unruin her in the eyes of any prospective husband.”

Beatrice gasped at the sum. “You can’t mean this.”