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"But the final report was always plain enough, sir," said Jablonsky.
"To those who did not have to make the decision, perhaps. Not to me. The horror of the responsibility of such decisions was unbearable and not even Multivac was sufficient to remove the weight. But the point is I was justified in doubting and there is tremendous relief in that."
Caught up in the conspiracy of mutual confession, Jablonsky put titles aside, "What was it you did then, Lamar? After all, you did make decisions. How?"
"Well, it's time to be getting back perhaps but-I'll tell you first. Why not? I did make use of a computer, Max, but an older one than Multivac, much older."
He groped in his own pocket for cigarettes, and brought out a package along with a scattering of small change; old-fashioned coins dating to the first years before the metal shortage had brought into being a credit system tied to a computer-complex.
Swift smiled rather sheepishly. "I still need these to make money seem substantial to me. An old man finds it hard to abandon the habits of youth." He put a cigarette between his lips and dropped the coins one by one back into his pocket.
He held the last coin between his fingers, staring absently at it. "Multivac is not the first computer, friends, nor the best-known, nor the one that can most efficiently lift the load of decision from the shoulders of the executive. A machine did win the war, John; at least a very simple computing device did; one that I used every time I had a particularly hard decision to make."
With a faint smile of reminiscence, he flipped the coin he held. It glinted in the air as it spun and came down in Swift's outstretched palm. His hand closed over it and brought it down on the back of his left hand. His right hand remained in place, hiding the coin.
"Heads or tails, gentlemen?" said Swift.
One of the side effects of the growing respectability of science fiction was that it began to appear in markets where, a few short years earlier, the Sanitation Department would have been called in to remove any such manuscripts that had inadvertently found their way into the editorial office.
I'll never forget the shock that rumbled through the entire world of science fiction fandom when, after World War II, our own Robert A. Heinlein broke the "slicks" barrier by having an undiluted science fiction story of his published in The Saturday Evening Post.
Nowadays, it is routine to find science fiction writers and their science fiction in such wide-circulation markets as Playboy. Indeed, the competition of the mass markets is such that the small specialty science fiction magazines find it hard to hold on to the more experienced writers and they do not benefit, as they ought, from the field's new-won respectability. It is unjust!
But the strangest market for science fiction, in my opinion, was the advertising columns of that excellent (and, for me, indispensable) periodical, Scientific American. It seems that a company called Hoffman Electronics Corporation got the idea of ru
The challenge was interesting and artistic integrity was preserved, so when I was asked to do a story for the program, I accepted and wrote "My Son, the Physicist." As you see, it deals with communications but is in no way a "commercial" for such things. Hoffman accepted the story without changing a word or a comma and it ran not only in the ad columns of Scientific American but in Fortune as well.
It was an experience, you may be sure, because it is not likely that my by-line would ever have appeared in either magazine otherwise. Not under a piece of science fiction, anyway.
I am a little uneasy, though, as to how well the idea worked out. There were only six such advertisements altogether, as far as I know, and then they stopped. Well, maybe they just had difficulty getting appropriate stories. I don't know.
First appearance-Scientific American, February 1962. @, 1962, Hoffman Electronics Corporation.
My Son, the Physicist
Her hair was light apple-green in color, very subdued, very old-fashioned. You could see she had a delicate hand with the dye, the way they did thirty years ago, before the streaks and stipples came into fashion.
She had a sweet smile on her face, too, and a calm look that made something serene out of elderliness.
And, by comparison, it made something shrieking out of the confusion that enfolded her in the huge government building.
A girl passed her at a half-run, stopped and turned toward her with a blank stare of astonishment. "How did you get in?"
The woman smiled. "I'm looking for my son, the physicist."
"Your son, the-"
"He's a communications engineer, really. Senior Physicist Gerard Cremona."
"Dr. Cremona. Well, he's- Where's your pass?"
"Here it is. I'm his mother."
"Well, Mrs. Cremona, I don't know. I've got to- His office is down there. You just ask someone." She passed on, ru
Mrs. Cremona shook her head slowly. Something had happened, she supposed. She hoped Gerard was all right.
She heard voices much farther down the corridor and smiled happily. She could tell Gerard's.
She walked into the room and said, "Hello, Gerard."
Gerard was a big man, with a lot of hair still and the gray just begi
Right now, he was talking volubly to a man in army uniform. She couldn't tell the rank, but she knew Gerard could handle him.
Gerard looked up and said, "What do you- Mother! What are you doing here?"
"I was coming to visit you today."
"Is today Thursday? Oh Lord, I forgot. Sit down, Mother, I can't talk now. Any seat. Any seat. Look, General."
General Reiner looked over his shoulder and one hand slapped against the other in the region of the small of his back. "Your mother?"
"Yes."
"Should she be here?"
"Right now, no, but I'll vouch for her. She can't even read a thermometer so nothing of this will mean anything to her. Now look, General. They're on Pluto. You see? They are. The radio signals can't be of natural origin so they must originate from human beings, from our men. You'll have to accept that. Of all the expeditions we've sent out beyond the planetoid belt, one turns out to have made it. And they've reached Pluto."
"Yes, I understand what you're saying, but isn't it impossible just the same? The men who are on Pluto now were launched four years ago with equipment that could not have kept them alive more than a year. That is my understanding. They were aimed at Ganymede and seem to have gone eight times the proper distance."
"Exactly. And we've got to know how and why. They may-just-have- had-help."
"What kind? How?"
Cremona clenched his jaws for a moment as though praying inwardly. "General," he said, "I'm putting myself out on a limb but it is just barely possible non-humans are involved. Extra-terrestrials. We've got to find out. We don't know how long contact can be maintained."
"You mean" (the General's grave face twitched into an almost-smile) "they may have escaped from custody and they may be recaptured again at any time."