Dusty Zebra

If the Trader had any qualms about what was happening, he gave no sign of it. He seemed perfectly happy to send us dust collectors so long as we sent him zebras.

The neighbours were curious and somewhat upset at first, but finally they got used to it. If I could have moved to some other location, I would have, for the house was more an office than a home and we had practically no family life at all. But if we wanted to stay in business, we had to stay right where we were because it was the only place we had contact with the Trader.

The money kept rolling in and I turned the management of it over to Helen and Marge. The income tax boys gave us a rough time when we didn’t show any manufacturing expenses, but since we weren’t inclined to argue over what we had to pay, couldn’t do anything about it.

Lewis was wearing himself down to a nubbin at the lab, but he wasn’t finding anything that we could use.

But he still did some worrying now and then about where all that dust was going. And he was right, probably for the first time in his life.

One afternoon, a couple of years after we’d started selling the dust-collectors, I had been uptown to attend to some banking difficulties that Helen and Marge had gotten all bollixed up.

I’d no more than pulled into the driveway when Helen came bursting out of the house. She was covered with dust, her face streaked with it, and she was the maddest-looking woman I have ever seen.

“You’ve got to do something about it, Joe!” she shrieked.

“About what?”

“The dust! It’s pouring into the house!”

“Where is it pouring from?”

“From everywhere!”

I could see she’d opened all the windows and there was dust pouring out of them, almost like a smoke cloud. I got out of the car and took a quick look up and down the street. Every house in the block had its windows open and there was dust coming out of all of them and the neighbourhood was boiling with angry, screaming women.

“Where’s Bill?” I asked.

“Out back.”

I ran around the house and called him and he came ru

Marge had come across the street and, if anything, she was about six degrees sorer about all the dust than Helen was.

“Get in the car,” I said.

“Where are we going?” Marge demanded.

“Out to pick up Lewis.”

I must have sounded like nothing to trifle with, for they piled in and I got out of there as fast as the car would take us.

The homes and factories and stores that had bought the gadget were gushing so much dust, visibility wouldn’t be worth a damn before long.

I had to wade through about two feet of dust on the laboratory floor to get to Lewis’s office and hold a handkerchief over my nose to keep from suffocating.

Inside the car we got our faces wiped off and most of the dust hacked out of our throats. I could see then that Lewis was about three shades paler than usual, although, to tell the truth, he always was a pasty-looking creature.

“It’s the creatures from that third dimension,” he said anxiously. “The place where we were sending all the dust. They got sick and tired of having it pour in on them and they got it figured out and now they’re firing the dust right back at us.”

“Now calm down. We’re just jumping to the conclusion that this was caused by our gadget.”

“I checked, Joe. It was. The dust is coming out in jets from every single place where we sent it through. No place else.”

“Then all we have to do is fire it back at them.”

He shook his head. “Not a chance. The gadget works one way now from them to us.” He coughed and looked wildly at me.

“Think of it! A couple of million of those gadgets, picking up dust from a couple of million homes, stores and factories—some of them operating for two whole years! Joe, what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to hole up somewhere till this well, blows over.”

Being of a nasty legal turn of mind, he probably foresaw even then the countless lawsuits that would avalanche on us.

Personally, I was more scared of being mobbed by angry women.

But that’s all past history. We hid out till people had quieted down and then began trying to settle the suits out of court. We had a lot of money and were able to pay off most of them. The judgements against us still outstanding don’t amount to more than a few hundred thousand. We could wipe that out pretty quickly if we’d just hit on something else as profitable as the cleaning gadget.

Lewis is working hard at it, but he isn’t having any luck. And the Trader is gone now. As soon as we dared come home, I went into the house and had a look at the desk. The inlaid dot was gone. I tried putting something where it had been, but nothing happened.

What scared the Trader off? I’d give a lot to know. Meanwhile, there are some commercial prospects.

The rose-tinted glasses, for instance, that we call the Happiness Lenses. Put them on and you’re happy as a clam. Almost every person on the face of the Earth would like a pair of them, so they could forget their troubles for a while. They would probably play hob with the liquor business.

The trouble is that we don’t know how to make them and, now that the Trader’s gone, we can’t swop for them.

But there’s one thing that keeps worrying me. I know I shouldn’t let it bother me, but I can’t keep it out of mind.

Just what did the Trader do with those couple of million zebras we sent him?