Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.

John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Creating a Good Title for Your Short Story by Charles Raymond Barrett

Too often the novice considers the title of his story a matter of no import. He looks upon it as a mere handle, the result of some happy afterthought, affixed to the completed story for convenience or reference, just as numbers are placed on the books in a library. The title is really a fair test of what it introduces, and many a MS. has been justly condemned by its title alone; for the editor knows that a poor title usually means a poor story. Think, too, how often you yourself pass a story by with but a casual glance, because its title does not interest you: experience has shown you that you seldom enjoy reading a story which bears an unattractive title.

“A book’s name often has an astonishing influence on its first sale. A title that piques curiosity or suggests excitement or emotion will draw a crowd of readers the moment it appears, while a book soberly named must force its merits on the public. The former has all the advantage of a pretty girl over a plain one; it is given an instantaneous chance to prove itself worth while. A middle aged, unalluring title (‘In Search of Quiet,’ for instance) may frighten people away from what proves to be a mine of wit and human interest. A book headed by a man’s name unmodified and uncommented upon—such as ‘Horace Chase’—is apt to have a dreary, unprepossessing air, unless the name is an incisive one that suggests an interesting personality. Fragments of proverbs and poems are always attractive, as well as Biblical phrases and colloquial expressions, but the magic title is the one that excites and baffles curiosity. The publishers of a recent ‘Primer of Evolution’ received a sudden flood of orders for the book simply on account of a review which had spoken of it under the sobriquet, ‘From Gas to Genius.’ Many copies were indignantly returned when the true title was revealed.” “In 1850 Dr. O. M. Mitchell, Director of the Astronomical Observatory in Cincinnati, gave to the press a volume entitled ‘The Planetary and Stellar Worlds.’ The book fell dead from the press. The publisher complained bitterly of this to a friend, saying, ‘I have not sold a single copy.’ ‘Well,’ was the reply, ‘you have killed the book by its title. Why not call it “The Orbs of Heaven”?’ The hint was accepted and acted upon, and 6,000 copies were sold in a month.”

The title might almost be called the “text” of the story; it should be logically deduced from the plot; so a poor title usually indicates a poor plot and a poor story. This name line should grow out of the phase of the plot, rather than the basic theme, else it will be too abstract and general. It is so closely allied to the plot that they should be born synchronously—or if anything the title should precede the plot; for the story is built up around the central thought that the title expresses, much as Poe said he wrote “The Raven” about the word “nevermore.” At least, the title should be definitely fixed long before the story is completed, and often before it has taken definite form in the writer’s mind. That this is the practice of professional writers may be proved by a glance at the literary column of any periodical, where coming books are announced by title when scarcely a word of them has been written. So if you have difficulty in finding an appropriate title for your story, first examine your plot, and make sure that the cause does not lie there. In case you are unable to decide among a number of possible titles, any one of which might do, you may find that your plot lacks the definiteness of impression required by the short story; but a fertile intellect may suggest a number of good titles, from which your only difficulty is to select the best.

A good story may be given a bad title by its author, and so started toward failure. Novices are peculiarly liable to this fault, usually through allowing themselves to be too easily satisfied. They go to infinite pains to make the story itself fresh and individual, and then cap it with a commonplace phrase that is worse than no title at all. A good title is apt, specific, attractive, new, and short.

A title is apt if it is an outgrowth of the plot—a text, as I have said. It stands definitely for that particular story, and gives a suggestion of what is to come—but only a suggestion, lest it should anticipate the denouement and so satisfy the curiosity of the reader too soon. An apt title excites and piques the curiosity almost as much as does the story itself. Examples: Hawthorne’s “The Wedding Knell;” Poe’s “‘Thou Art the Man!'” Wilkins’ “The Revolt of Mother.” Each of these titles conveys an idea, though a vague one, of the theme of the story, and so its aptness is apparent; but frequently the relevancy of the title is evident only after the story has been read, as in the case of James’ “The Real Thing” and “The Lesson of the Master.” Such a title is almost ideal. This suspension of aptness, carried to the extreme, produces such vague and weak titles as:

“Happiness Won.”

“Almost Too Late.”

“After All.”

“Reorganized.”

The title must be specific or it is seldom apt. It is in this particular that the novice generally fails. He deduces his title rather from the original plot, or even from the theme, than from the particular phase which he presents; but its title should distinguish his story from the host of tales builded upon the same basic plot, just as the Christian name of a Smith distinguishes him from the rest of the great family of which he is a member. Thus we have such titles as the following, which are more appropriate for essays in psychology, moral philosophy, or some kindred subject, than for fiction:
“How Dreams Come True.”

“Moral Vision.”

“Sorrow and Joy.”

“The Straight Path.”

More often the unspecific title is simply a vague reference to the general style of the story:

“A Wedding in a Texas Jail.”

“A Frightful Night Ride.”

“A Unique Rescue.”

“A Lynching Incident.”

“Nature’s Freaks.”

“A Valuable Discovery.”

“The Widow.”

“A Valued Relic.”

“A Strange Case.”

“The Old Clock.”

“The Office Boy.”

None of these titles represents any definite idea, and in nearly every case it served to introduce a story which was equally vague, ordinary, and uninteresting. Several of them, too—notably the first four—were not stories at all, but were simply bits of description by narrative, as their titles would suggest.

In general a phrase, otherwise indefinite, becomes specific when united with the name of a character, as in Hawthorne’s “Howe’s Masquerade” and “Lady Eleanor’s Mantle;” but such titles are usually ordinary and unattractive. Some words frequently found in these compound titles are so vague in meaning or so worn from use that their total avoidance is the only safe course. Such are “Christmas,” “Adventure,” “Romance,” “Story,” “Vision,” and “Dream.” A “Dream” or a “Vision” is usually the relation of some commonplace incident with absurd adornments; and an “Adventure” is more often a piece of description than of narration. I know that these words may be found in combination in many happy titles, but it is best that the novice let them severely alone. That such titles are really a serious impediment to the success of their stories is shown by the action of the Chicago Record. For some years it was the custom of the Record to offer substantial cash prizes for the best Christmas stories written by school children; and prominent among the rules governing the competition was the announcement that stories bearing such titles as “Johnnie’s Christmas,” “Nellie’s Christmas,” “Mary’s Christmas,” would not even be read. The following titles show how fond is the novice of these objectionable words in their baldest combinations:
“Sarah’s Christmas Present.”

“Adventures with a Bear.”

“Nettie’s Romance.”

“Lee’s Romance.”

“A Woman’s Love Story.”

“The Captain’s Story.”

“A True Story.”

“The Story of a Vision.”

“The Dream at Sea.”

“Viola’s Dream.”

“Mabel’s Dream.”

“Eleanor’s Dream.”

The title should be attractive because it will be the test of the story, and it must be sufficiently interesting to arouse at a glance the curiosity of the reader, and induce in him a desire to peruse the narrative that it offers. Commonplaceness is the chief cause of the unattractive title, and that fault is usually traceable to the plot itself. It may, however, be due to a conventional expression of the dominant idea of the story, as in the list just given; and also in the following:

“How Amy Won the Prize.”

“Fred Norton, the Artist.”

Or it may be unattractive through comprising only the name of the chief character:

“Lucy Bonneville.”

“Lester Rice.”

The use of a name for a title is a matter which it is difficult to settle. If the story is dominated by one character, and particularly if it is a genuine Character Study, the writer naturally feels that he cannot do better than to name it after the character it depicts; and he has good authority for so doing in the example of Poe (“Berenice,” “Elenora,” “Morella”), Hawthorne (“Sylph Etherege,” “Ethan Brand,” “Wakefield”), Irving (“Wolfert Webber,” “Rip Van Winkle”), James (“Sir Dominic Ferrand,” “Nona Vincent,” “Greville Fane”), Stevenson (“Olalla,” “Thrawn Janet,” “Markheim”), Wilkins (“Louisa”), Davis (“Gallegher,” “Cinderella”), Kipling (“Lispeth,” “Namgay Doola”), etc., etc. A good rule to observe would be this: If the name of the chief personage gives a hint of character, or if it is sufficiently unusual to attract attention, it may be used as a title; but in general it will be stronger if used in combination.

In the endeavor to make his title distinctive and attractive the novice is liable to fall into the error of making it cheap and sensational. A title which offends against good taste must not be used, no matter how desirable it may appear in the matter of attractiveness. The newspaper caption writer who headed an account of a hanging “Jerked to Jesus!” attained the acme of attractiveness, but he also committed an unpardonable sin against good taste. The short story writer seldom descends to such depths of sensationalism: his chief offense consists in the use of double titles, connected by the word “or.” Often either title alone would be passable, if not really good; but their united form must be placed in the category of bad titles. Such titles are rated as bad chiefly through the effects of association. It used to be common for a story to bear a double title; but to-day the custom has been relegated to the cheap, sensational tale of the “penny dreadful” order, and the conjunctive title is a recognized mark of “yellow” literature. This fault in a title can usually be corrected by the use of either of the titles alone, as may be seen from a study of the following:

(1) “The Story of Dora; or, Innocence Triumphant.”

(2) “Jessie Redmond; or, The Spider and the Fly.”

(3) “Outwitted; or, The Holdup of No. 4.”

(4) “The Battle of the Black Cats; or, A Tragedy Played with Twenty Thousand Actors and Only One Spectator.”
(5) “Fate; or, Legend of ‘Say Au Revoir, but not Goodbye.'”

(6) “The Romance of a Lost Mine; or, The Curse of the Navajos.”

(7) “A Little Bunch of Rosebuds; or, Two Normal Graduates.”

(8) “Her Silk Quilt; or, On the Crest of the Wave.”

(1) Neither part is particularly happy. “The Story of Dora” is too general, and conveys an idea of largeness and time that is better suited to the novel than to the short story; “Innocence Triumphant” is cheap, sensational and trite. (2) “Jessie Redmond” is too commonplace a name to be a good head line; “The Spider and the Fly” was worn out years ago. (3) Either title alone is good; “The Holdup of No. 4” is preferable because of its definiteness. (4) “The Battle of the Black Cats” alone would pass, in spite of its hint of sensationalism; but the second part is of course ludicrously impossible. (5) “Fate” is too indefinite; the second title is cheap and old. (6) Either would do, though the first is somewhat vague, and “Curse” savors of sensationalism. (7) Either would do, though the first sounds rather silly. (8) The first is good; the second is vague and rather old.

That a title should be new is so obvious that offenses against this rule are usually unconscious; yet in some cases stories have been capped with stolen headings, where the theft was so apparently intentional that it seemed as if the writer wished to fail. Lapses in this regard are usually due to the writer’s ignorance of the value of a title; or to the too ready use of the abstract theme, as mentioned before. Of such titles are “All’s Well that Ends Well,” “Love’s Labor Lost,” and “The Irony of Fate,” all of which are great favorites with the beginner. Like charity, they will cover a multitude of sins, but they constitute so great a literary sin in themselves that they should be rigorously eschewed. To this class belongs also such a title as “Cuba Libre!” which is so very old, and which during the last few years has been so twisted and mishandled in every conceivable way that its mere use is an irritation. Such a title will frequently be apt, specific, attractive, and, in application, new; but it will so exasperate the reader that its use will be perilous.

For self-evident reasons the title should be short. Aptness and specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like “Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me,” or “What the Rabbit Drive Did for Me” is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make the title of a writing a regular synopsis of the matter contained therein; but modern readers object to being told in advance exactly what is to happen. No ruling concerning the proper length of a short story title is possible; but generally speaking, the shorter the title the better it is. Compound titles connected by “or,” like those previously mentioned, are as offensive in their length as in their sensationalism.

To illustrate further these several points I introduce here a few good titles used by successful short story writers. They are roughly divided into three classes according to their derivation. The title may be the text of the story:

Edgeworth: “Murad the Unlucky.”

Hawthorne: “The Wedding Knell;” “The Prophetic Pictures.”

James: “The Real Thing;” “The Lesson of the Master.”

Poe: “The Masque of the Red Death;” “‘Thou Art the Man!'”

Stockton: “The Transferred Ghost.”

Wilkins: “The Revolt of Mother;” “Two Old Lovers.”

The title may represent the principal character by name or by some apt appellation:
Davis: “Gallegher.”

Hawthorne: “The Ambitious Guest;” “Feathertop.”

Irving: “The Spectre Bridegroom;” “Rip Van Winkle.”

Poe: “Morella;” “Ligeia.”

Stevenson: “Markheim.”

Wilkins: “A Modern Dragon;” “A Kitchen Colonel.”

The title may mention the principal object:

Adee: “The Life Magnet.”

Burnett: “The Spider’s Eye.”

Hawthorne: “The Great Stone Face;” “The Great Carbuncle.”

James: “The Aspern Papers.”

Kipling: “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw.”

Poe: “The Black Cat;” “The Gold Bug.”

Stevenson: “The Bottle Imp.”

Excerpted From Short Story Writing, by Charles Raymond Barrett

Name Your Symptom by Jim Harmon

Name Your Symptom

By JIM HARMON

Illustrated by WEISS

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!

Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.

Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you were serious about this, why not just the shoes?"

Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."

Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down. "Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do you then?"

Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."

Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."

The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us, a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we hide on our side of the wall?"

Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno, Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and that's quite an accomplishment these days."

Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not only the indications."

Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned therapy to all the sick people."

Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers, semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man with claustrophobia."

His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for life.

The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."

Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right, everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"

"But is everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."

Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23 per cent."

"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why, he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it. The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell or one of those inhuman lobotomies."

Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."

"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.

The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the air. People didn't bathe very often these days.

He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not readily apparent.

A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.

"Quite all right."

It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these people, now that he had taken down the wall.

Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly. Some primitive fear of snake symbols? his mind wondered while panic crushed him.

"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.

A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.

Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!

"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"

Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm holding it. Release it, you hear?"

Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd disassembled.

"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies," he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't care about other people's feelings. This is official."

Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies' chin. The big man fell silently.

The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he explained. "He never knew he fell."

"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.

The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"

"Not—not long," Infield evaded.

The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal organization of the Cured?"

Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out. How about it?"

The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of his face away from the psychiatrist.

Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor, but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."

"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they have liquor at the Club. We can have a drink there, I guess."

Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."

Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even after seeing this, some people still ask me to have a drink." This was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his left ear.

Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.

"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."

"What happens if you take one too many?"

Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my temple and kills me."

The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed to save lives, not endanger them.

"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he demanded angrily.

"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible. Impervium-shielded, you see."

Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.

"We're here."

Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed two streets from his building and were standing in front of what appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the screeching screen door.

They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth. Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.

A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at some point in time rather than space.

Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."

The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.

Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."

"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.

The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."

Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I don't remember exactly."

Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had to prove that.

Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be imaginary.

"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it. You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in it." He did laugh.

Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray, examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is buying me the drink and that makes it different."

Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the Cured," he said as a reminder.

Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What do you really think of the Incompletes?"

The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"

"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"

"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to say but tiring of constant pretense.

"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation. Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—must be dealt with."

Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"

"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."

Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic, likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man. Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the fanaticism.

"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.

Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground. "We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own good."

Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick. Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal, imposed upon many ill minds.

He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view. Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop secondary symptoms.

People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to operate.

A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and the race.

But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't want or need it?

"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll explain."

Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.

"George, drink it."

The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete." But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a rag doll. She sat down at the table.

"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight or smell of liquor."

The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly. He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head. It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.

"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important. But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why don't you tell him it's silly?"

"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he downed that drink and the shock might do you good."

Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic, like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I don't have the nerve to do it."

Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look at the drink. Makes me laugh."

Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs. Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.

"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."

"I said we were going to do it. Actually you will play a greater part than I, Doctor Infield."

The psychiatrist sat rigidly.

"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your Cure and eager to Cure others. Very eager."

"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.

Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the other Cured psychiatrists give everybody who comes to you a Cure?"

Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures unless they were absolutely necessary."

"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself. Other psychiatrists have."

Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to Infield in the street.

Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept cooing to the doll.

"You made me fall," Davies accused.

Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."

Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"

Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward, dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind making others fall. They were always trying to make him fall just so they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make them fall first?

Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.

Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.

Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying to soothe it, and stared in horror.

Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he looked up at Infield.

Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.

Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously. "I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."

Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted him about six inches off the floor.

"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.

"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"

"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his aching forearms.

Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.

"You broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says 'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."

"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.

"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him, same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.

"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."

Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one ever gets rid of a Cure."

They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took, the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm for less Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the word—monstrous thing on your head?"

Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.

"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He threw the Cure on the floor.

"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and so can you."

"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him for good. We've got to go after him."

"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."

Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she mustn't get wet."

"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."

Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he was very frightened of the lightning.

There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro just as well.

He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear rushed.

Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."

Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I can't see the words!"

It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.

Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure. He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.

He was wrong.

The lightning hit him first.

Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.

"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"

"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you saying?"

"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go out without his Cure."

Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your place and you can tell me about it later."

Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.

Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears, thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips. The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have to deal with them.

Volpla by Wyman Guin

Volpla

By WYMAN GUIN

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The only kind of gag worth pulling, I always
maintained, was a cosmic one—till I learned the
Cosmos has a really nasty sense of humor!

There were three of them. Dozens of limp little mutants that would have sent an academic zoologist into hysterics lay there in the metabolic accelerator. But there were three of them. My heart took a great bound.

I heard my daughter's running feet in the animal rooms and her rollerskates banging at her side. I closed the accelerator and walked across to the laboratory door. She twisted the knob violently, trying to hit a combination that would work.

I unlocked the door, held it against her pushing and slipped out so that, for all her peering, she could see nothing. I looked down on her tolerantly.

"Can't adjust your skates?" I asked again.

"Daddy, I've tried and tried and I just can't turn this old key tight enough."

I continued to look down on her.

"Well, Dad-dee, I can't!"

"Tightly enough."

"What?"

"You can't turn this old key tightly enough."

"That's what I say-yud."

"All right, wench. Sit on this chair."

I got down and shoved one saddle shoe into a skate. It fitted perfectly. I strapped her ankle and pretended to use the key to tighten the clamp.

Volplas at last. Three of them. Yet I had always been so sure I could create them that I had been calling them volplas for ten years. No, twelve. I glanced across the animal room to where old Nijinsky thrust his graying head from a cage. I had called them volplas since the day old Nijinsky's elongated arms and his cousin's lateral skin folds had given me the idea of a flying mutant.

When Nijinsky saw me looking at him, he started a little tarantella about his cage. I smiled with nostalgia when the fifth fingers of his hands, four times as long as the others, uncurled as he spun about the cage.

I turned to the fitting of my daughter's other skate.

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"Mother says you are eccentric. Is that true?"

"I'll speak to her about it."

"Don't you know?"

"Do you understand the word?"

"No."

I lifted her out of the chair and stood her on her skates. "Tell your mother that I retaliate. I say she is beautiful."

She skated awkwardly between the rows of cages from which mutants with brown fur and blue fur, too much and too little fur, enormously long and ridiculously short arms, stared at her with simian, canine or rodent faces. At the door to the outside, she turned perilously and waved.

Again in the laboratory, I entered the metabolic accelerator and withdrew the intravenous needles from my first volplas. I carried their limp little forms out to a mattress in the lab, two girls and a boy. The accelerator had forced them almost to adulthood in less than a month. It would be several hours before they would begin to move, to learn to feed and play, perhaps to learn to fly.

Meanwhile, it was clear that here was no war of dominant mutations. Modulating alleles had smoothed the freakish into a beautiful pattern. These were no monsters blasted by the dosage of radiation into crippled structures. They were lovely, perfect little creatures.

My wife tried the door, too, but more subtly, as if casually touching the knob while calling.

"Lunch, dear."

"Be right there."

She peeked too, as she had for fifteen years, but I blocked her view when I slipped out.

"Come on, you old hermit. I have a buffet on the terrace."

"Our daughter says I'm eccentric. Wonder how the devil she found out."

"From me, of course."

"But you love me just the same."

"I adore you." She stretched on tiptoe and put her arms over my shoulders and kissed me.

My wife did indeed have a delicious-looking buffet ready on the terrace. The maid was just setting down a warmer filled with hot hamburgers. I gave the maid a pinch and said, "Hello, baby."

My wife looked at me with a puzzled smile. "What on Earth's got into you?"

The maid beat it into the house.

I flipped a hamburger and a slice of onion onto a plate and picked up the ketchup and said, "I've reached the dangerous age."

"Oh, good heavens!"

I dowsed ketchup over the hamburger, threw the onion on and closed it. I opened a bottle of beer and guzzled from it, blew out my breath and looked across the rolling hills and oak woods of our ranch to where the Pacific shimmered. I thought, "All this and three volplas, too."

I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth and said aloud, "Yes, sir, the dangerous age. And, lady, I'm going to have fun."

My wife sighed patiently.

I walked over and put the arm that held the beer bottle around her shoulder and chucked her chin up with my other hand. The golden sun danced in her blue eyes. I watched that light in her beautiful eyes and said, "But you're the only one I'm dangerous about."

I kissed her until I heard rollerskates coming across the terrace from one direction and a horse galloping toward the terrace from the other direction.

"You have lovely lips," I whispered.

"Thanks. Yours deserve the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, too."

Our son reared the new palomino I had just bought him for his fourteenth birthday and yelled down, "Unhand that maiden, Burrhead, or I'll give you lead poisoning."

I laughed and picked up my plate and sat down in a chair. My wife brought me a bowl of salad and I munched the hamburger and watched the boy unsaddle the horse and slap it away to the pasture.

I thought, "By God, wouldn't he have a fit if he knew what I have back there in that lab! Wouldn't they all!"

The boy carried the saddle up onto the terrace and dropped it. "Mom, I'd like a swim before I eat." He started undressing.

"You look as though a little water might help," she agreed, sitting down next to me with her plate.

The girl was yanking off her skates. "And I want one."

"All right. But go in the house and put on your swim suit."

"Oh, Mother. Why?"

"Because, dear, I said so."

The boy had already raced across the terrace and jack-knifed into the pool. The cool sound of the dive sent the girl scurrying for her suit.

I looked at my wife. "What's the idea?"

"She's going to be a young woman soon."

"Is that any reason for wearing clothes? Look at him. He's a young man sooner than already."

"Well, if you feel that way about it, they'll both have to start wearing clothes."

I gulped the last of my hamburger and washed it down with the beer. "This place is going to hell," I complained. "The old man isn't allowed to pinch the maid and the kids can't go naked." I leaned toward her and smacked her cheek. "But the food and the old woman are still the best."

"Say, what goes with you? You've been grinning like a happy ape ever since you came out of the lab."

"I told you—"

"Oh, not that again! You were dangerous at any age."

I stood up and put my plate aside and bent over her. "Just the same, I'm going to have a new kind of fun."

She reached up and grabbed my ear. She narrowed her eyes and put a mock grimness on her lips.

"It's a joke," I assured her. "I'm going to play a tremendous joke on the whole world. I've only had the feeling once before in a small way, but I've always...."

She twisted my ear and narrowed her eyes even more. "Like?"

"Well, when my old man was pumping his first fortune out of some oil wells in Oklahoma, we lived down there. Outside this little town, I found a litter of flat stones that had young black-snakes under each slab. I filled a pail with them and took them into town and dumped them on the walk in front of the movie just as Theda Bara's matinee let out. The best part was that no one had seen me do it. They just couldn't understand how so many snakes got there. I learned how great it can be to stand around quietly and watch people encounter the surprise that you have prepared for them."

She let go of my ear. "Is that the kind of fun you're going to have?"

"Yep."

She shook her head. "Did I say you are eccentric?"

I grinned. "Forgive me if I eat and run, dear. Something in the lab can't wait."

The fact was that I had something more in the lab than I had bargained for. I had aimed only at a gliding mammal a little more efficient than the Dusky Glider of Australia, a marsupial. Even in the basically mutating colony, there had been a decidedly simian appearance in recent years, a long shift from the garbage-dump rats I had started with. But my first volplas were shockingly humanoid.

They were also much faster than had been their predecessors in organizing their nervous activity after the slumbrous explosion of growth in the metabolic accelerator. When I returned to the lab, they were already moving about on the mattress and the male was trying to stand.

He was a little the larger and stood twenty-eight inches high. Except for the face, chest and belly, they were covered with a soft, almost golden down. Where it was bare of this golden fur, the skin was pink. On their heads and across the shoulders of the male stood a shock of fur as soft as chinchilla. The faces were appealingly humanoid, except that the eyes were large and nocturnal. The cranium was in the same proportion to the body as it is in the human.

When the male spread his arms, the span was forty-eight inches. I held his arms out and tried to tease the spars open. They were not new. The spars had been common to the basic colony for years and were the result of serial mutations effecting those greatly elongated fifth fingers that had first appeared in Nijinsky. No longer jointed like a finger, the spar turned backward sharply and ran alongside the wrist almost to the elbow. Powerful wrist muscles could snap it outward and forward. Suddenly, as I teased the male volpla, this happened.

The spars added nine inches on each side to his span. As they swept out and forward, the lateral skin that had, till now, hung in resting folds was tightened in a golden plane that stretched from the tip of the spar to his waist and continued four inches wide down his legs to where it anchored at the little toe.

This was by far the most impressive plane that had appeared till now. It was a true gliding plane, perhaps even a soaring one. I felt a thrill run along my back.

By four o'clock that afternoon, I was feeding them solid food and, with the spars closed, they were holding little cups and drinking water from them in a most humanlike way. They were active, curious, playful and decidedly amorous.

Their humanoid qualities were increasingly apparent. There was a lumbar curvature and buttocks. The shoulder girdle and pectoral muscles were heavy and out of proportion, of course, yet the females had only one pair of breasts. The chin and jaw were humanlike instead of simian and the dental equipment was appropriate to this structure. What this portended was brought home to me with a shock.

I was kneeling on the mattress, cuffing and roughing the male as one might a puppy dog, when one of the females playfully climbed up my back. I reached around and brought her over my shoulder and sat her down. I stroked the soft fur on her head and said, "Hello, pretty one. Hello."

The male watched me, grinning.

He said, "'Ello, 'ello."

As I walked into the kitchen, giddy with this enormous joke, my wife said, "Guy and Em are flying up for dinner. That rocket of Guy's they launched in the desert yesterday was a success. It pulled Guy up to Cloud Nine and he wants to celebrate."

I danced a little jig the way old Nijinsky might do it. "Oh, great! Oh, wonderful! Good old Guy! Everybody's a success. It's great. It's wonderful. Success on success!"

I danced into the kitchen table and tipped over a basket of green corn. The maid promptly left the kitchen for some other place.

My wife just stared at me. "Have you been drinking the lab alcohol?"

"I've been drinking the nectar of the gods. My Hera, you're properly married to Zeus. I've my own little Greeks descended from Icarus."

She pretended a hopeless sag of her pretty shoulders. "Wouldn't you just settle for a worldly martini?"

"I will, yes. But first a divine kiss."

I sipped at my martini and lounged in a terrace chair watching the golden evening slant across the beautiful hills of our ranch. I dreamed. I would invent a euphonious set of words to match the Basic English vocabulary and teach it to them as their language. They would have their own crafts and live in small tree houses.

I would teach them legends: that they had come from the stars, that they had subsequently watched the first red men and then the first white men enter these hills.

When they were able to take care of themselves, I would turn them loose. There would be volpla colonies all up and down the Coast before anyone suspected. One day, somebody would see a volpla. The newspapers would laugh.

Then someone authoritative would find a colony and observe them. He would conclude, "I am convinced that they have a language and speak it intelligently."

The government would issue denials. Reporters would "expose the truth" and ask, "Where have these aliens come from?" The government would reluctantly admit the facts. Linguists would observe at close quarters and learn the simple volpla language. Then would come the legends.

Volpla wisdom would become a cult—and of all forms of comedy, cults, I think, are the funniest.

"Darling, are you listening to me?" my wife asked with impatient patience.

"What? Sure. Certainly."

"You didn't hear a word. You just sit there and grin into space." She got up and poured me another martini. "Here, maybe this will sober you up."

I pointed. "That's probably Guy and Em."

A 'copter sidled over the ridge, then came just above the oak woods toward us. Guy set it gently on the landing square and we walked down to meet them.

I helped Em out and hugged her. Guy jumped out, asking, "Do you have your TV set on?"

"No," I answered. "Should I?"

"It's almost time for the broadcast. I was afraid we would miss it."

"What broadcast?"

"From the rocket."

"Rocket?"

"For heaven's sake, darling," my wife complained, "I told you about Guy's rocket being a success. The papers are full of it. So are the broadcasts."

As we stepped up on the terrace, she turned to Guy and Em. "He's out of contact today. Thinks he's Zeus."

I asked our son to wheel a TV set out onto the terrace while I made martinis for our friends. Then we sat down and drank the cocktails and the kids had fruit juice and we watched the broadcast Guy had tuned in.

Some joker from Cal Tech was explaining diagrams of a multi-stage rocket.

After a bit, I got up and said, "I have something out in the lab I want to check on."

"Hey, wait a minute," Guy objected. "They're about to show the shots of the launching."

My wife gave me a look; you know the kind. I sat down. Then I got up and poured myself another martini and freshened Em's up, too. I sat down again.

The scene had changed to a desert launching site. There was old Guy himself explaining that when he pressed the button before him, the hatch on the third stage of the great rocket in the background would close and, five minutes later, the ship would fire itself.

Guy, on the screen, pushed the button, and I heard Guy, beside me, give a sort of little sigh. We watched the hatch slowly close.

"You look real good," I said. "A regular Space Ranger. What are you shooting at?"

"Darling, will you please—be—quiet?"

"Yeah, Dad. Can it, will you? You're always gagging around."

On the screen, Guy's big dead-earnest face was explaining more about the project and suddenly I realized that this was an instrument-bearing rocket they hoped to land on the Moon. It would broadcast from there. Well, now—say, that would be something! I began to feel a little ashamed of the way I had been acting and I reached out and slapped old Guy on the shoulder. For just a moment, I thought of telling him about my volplas. But only for a moment.

A ball of flame appeared at the base of the rocket. Miraculously, the massive tower lifted, seemed for a moment merely to stand there on a flaming pillar, then was gone.

The screen returned to a studio, where an announcer explained that the film just shown had been taken day before yesterday. Since then, the rocket's third stage was known to have landed successfully at the south shore of Mare Serenitatis. He indicated the location on a large lunar map behind him.

"From this position, the telemeter known as Rocket Charlie will be broadcasting scientific data for several months. But now, ladies and gentlemen, we will clear the air for Rocket Charlie's only general broadcast. Stand by for Rocket Charlie."

A chronometer appeared on the screen and, for several seconds, there was silence.

I heard my boy whisper, "Uncle Guy, this is the biggest!"

My wife said, "Em, I think I'll just faint."

Suddenly there was a lunar landscape on the screen, looking just as it's always been pictured. A mechanical voice cut in.

"This is Rocket Charlie saying, 'Hello, Earth,' from my position in Mare Serenitatis. First I will pan the Menelaus Mountains for fifteen seconds. Then I will focus my camera on Earth for five seconds."

The camera began to move and the mountains marched by, stark and awesomely wild. Toward the end of the movement, the shadow of the upright third stage appeared in the foreground.

Abruptly the camera made a giddy swing, focused a moment, and we were looking at Earth. At that time, there was no Moon over California. It was Africa and Europe we were looking at.

"This is Rocket Charlie saying, 'Good-by, Earth.'"

Well, when that screen went dead, there was pandemonium around our terrace. Big old Guy was so happy, he was wiping tears from his eyes. The women were kissing him and hugging him. Everybody was yelling at once.

I used the metabolic accelerator to cut the volplas' gestation down to one week. Then I used it to bring the infants to maturity in one month. I had luck right off. Quite by accident, the majority of the early infants were females, which sped things up considerably.

By the next spring, I had a colony of over a hundred volplas and I shut down the accelerator. From now on, they could have babies in their own way.

I had devised the language for them, using Basic English as my model, and during the months while every female was busy in the metabolic accelerator, I taught the language to the males. They spoke it softly in high voices and the eight hundred words didn't seem to tax their little skulls a bit.

My wife and the kids went down to Santa Barbara for a week and I took the opportunity to slip the oldest of the males and his two females out of the lab.

I put them in the jeep beside me and drove to a secluded little valley about a mile back in the ranch.

They were all three wide-eyed at the world and jabbered continuously. They kept me busy relating their words for "tree," "rock," "sky" to the objects. They had a little trouble with "sky."

Until I had them out in the open country, it had been impossible to appreciate fully what lovely little creatures they were. They blended perfectly with the California landscape. Occasionally, when they raised their arms, the spars would open and spread those glorious planes.

Almost two hours went by before the male made it into the air. His playful curiosity about the world had been abandoned momentarily and he was chasing one of the girls. As usual, she was anxious to be caught and stopped abruptly at the bottom of a little knoll.

He probably meant to dive for her. But when he spread his arms, the spars snapped out and those golden planes sheared into the air. He sailed over her in a stunning sweep. Then he rose up and up until he hung in the breeze for a long moment, thirty feet above the ground.

He turned a plaintive face back to me, dipped worriedly and skimmed straight for a thorn bush. He banked instinctively, whirled toward us in a golden flash and crashed with a bounce to the grass.

The two girls reached him before I did and stroked and fussed over him so that I could not get near. Suddenly he laughed with a shrill little whoop. After that, it was a carnival.

They learned quickly and brilliantly. They were not fliers; they were gliders and soarers. Before long, they took agilely to the trees and launched themselves in beautiful glides for hundreds of feet, banking, turning and spiraling to a gentle halt.

I laughed out loud with anticipation. Wait till the first pair of these was brought before a sheriff! Wait till reporters from the Chronicle motored out into the hills to witness this!

Of course, the volplas didn't want to return to the lab. There was a tiny stream through there and at one point it formed a sizable pool. They got into this and splashed their long arms about and they scrubbed each other. Then they got out and lay on their backs with the planes stretched to dry.

I watched them affectionately and wondered about the advisability of leaving them out here. Well, it had to be done sometime. Nothing I could tell them about surviving would help them as much as a little actual surviving. I called the male over to me.

He came and squatted, conference fashion, the elbows resting on the ground, the wrists crossed at his chest. He spoke first.

"Before the red men came, did we live here?"

"You lived in places like this all along these mountains. Now there are very few of you left. Since you have been staying at my place, you naturally have forgotten the ways of living outdoors."

"We can learn again. We want to stay here." His little face was so solemn and thoughtful that I reached out and stroked the fur on his head reassuringly.

We both heard the whir of wings overhead. Two mourning doves flew across the stream and landed in an oak on the opposite hillside.

I pointed. "There's your food, if you can kill it."

He looked at me. "How?"

"I don't think you can get at them in the tree. You'll have to soar up above and catch one of them on the wing when they fly away. Think you can get up that high?"

He looked around slowly at the breeze playing in the branches and dancing along the hillside grass. It was as if he had been flying a thousand years and was bringing antique wisdom to bear. "I can get up there. I can stay for a while. How long will they be in the tree?"

"Chances are they won't stay long. Keep your eye on the tree in case they leave while you are climbing."

He ran to a nearby oak and clambered aloft. Presently he launched himself, streaked down-valley a way and caught a warm updraft on a hillside. In no time, he was up about two hundred feet. He began criss-crossing the ridge, working his way back to us.

The two girls were watching him intently. They came over to me wonderingly, stopping now and then to watch him. When they were standing beside me, they said nothing. They shaded their eyes with tiny hands and watched him as he passed directly above us at about two hundred and fifty feet. One of the girls, with her eyes fast on his soaring planes, reached out and grasped my sleeve tightly.

He flashed high above the stream and hung behind the crest of the hill where the doves rested. I heard their mourning from the oak tree. It occurred to me they would not leave that safety while the hawklike silhouette of the volpla marred the sky so near.

I took the girl's hand from my sleeve and spoke to her, pointing as I did so. "He is going to catch a bird. The bird is in that tree. You can make the bird fly so that he can catch it. Look here." I got up and found a stick. "Can you do this?"

I threw the stick up into a tree near us. Then I found her a stick. She threw it better than I had expected.

"Good, pretty one. Now run across the stream and up to that tree and throw a stick into it."

She climbed skillfully into the tree beside us and launched herself across the stream. She swooped up the opposite hillside and landed neatly in the tree where the doves rested.

The birds came out of the tree, climbing hard with their graceful strokes.

I looked back, as did the girl remaining beside me. The soaring volpla half closed his planes and started dropping. He became a golden flash across the sky.

The doves abruptly gave up their hard climbing and fell away with swiftly beating wings. I saw one of the male volpla's planes open a little. He veered giddily in the new direction and again dropped like a molten arrow.

The doves separated and began to zigzag down the valley. The volpla did something I would not have anticipated—he opened his planes and shot lower than the bird he was after, then swept up and intercepted the bird's crossward flight.

I saw the planes close momentarily. Then they opened again and the bird plummeted to a hillside. The volpla landed gently atop the hill and stood looking back at us.

The volpla beside me danced up and down shrieking in a language all her own. The girl who had raised the birds from the tree volplaned back to us, yammering like a bluejay.

It was a hero's welcome. He had to walk back, of course—he had no way to carry such a load in flight. The girls glided out to meet him. Their lavish affection held him up for a time, but eventually he strutted in like every human hunter.

They were raptly curious about the bird. They poked at it, marveled at its feathers and danced about it in an embryonic rite of the hunt. But presently the male turned to me.

"We eat this?"

I laughed and took his tiny, four-fingered hand. In a sandy spot beneath a great tree that overhung the creek, I built a small fire for them. This was another marvel, but first I wanted to teach them how to clean the bird. I showed them how to spit it and turn it over their fire.

Later, I shared a small piece of the meat in their feast. They were gleeful and greasily amorous during the meal.

When I had to leave, it was dark. I warned them to stand watches, keep the fire burning low and take to the tree above if anything approached. The male walked a little away with me when I left the fire.

I said again, "Promise me you won't leave here until we've made you ready for it."

"We like it here. We will stay. Tomorrow you bring more of us?"

"Yes. I will bring many more of you, if you promise to keep them all here in this woods until they're ready to leave."

"I promise." He looked up at the night sky and, in the firelight, I saw his wonder. "You say we came from there?"

"The old ones of your kind told me so. Didn't they tell you?"

"I can't remember any old ones. You tell me."

"The old ones told me you came long before the red men in a ship from the stars." Standing there in the dark, I had to grin, visioning the Sunday supplements that would be written in about a year, maybe even less.

He looked into the sky for a long time. "Those little lights are the stars?"

"That's right."

"Which star?"

I glanced about and presently pointed over a tree. "From Venus." Then I realized I had blundered by passing him an English name. "In your language, Pohtah."

He looked at the planet a long time and murmured, "Venus. Pohtah."

That next week, I transported all of the volplas out to the oak woods. There were a hundred and seven men, women and children. With no design on my part, they tended to segregate into groups consisting of four to eight couples together with the current children of the women. Within these groups, the adults were promiscuous, but apparently not outside the group. The group thus had the appearance of a super-family and the males indulged and cared for all the children without reference to actual parenthood.

By the end of the week, these super-families were scattered over about four square miles of the ranch. They had found a new delicacy, sparrows, and hunted them easily as they roosted at night. I had taught the volplas to use the fire drill and they were already utilizing the local grasses, vines and brush to build marvelously contrived tree houses in which the young, and sometimes the adults, slept through midday and midnight.

The afternoon my family returned home, I had a crew of workmen out tearing down the animal rooms and lab building. The caretakers had anesthetized all the experimental mutants, and the metabolic accelerator and other lab equipment was being dismantled. I wanted nothing around that might connect the sudden appearance of the volplas with my property. It was already apparent that it would take the volplas only a few more weeks to learn their means of survival and develop an embryonic culture of their own. Then they could leave my ranch and the fun would be on.

My wife got out of the car and looked around at the workmen hurrying about the disemboweled buildings and she said, "What on Earth is going on here?"

"I've finished my work and we no longer need the buildings. I'm going to write a paper about my results."

My wife looked at me appraisingly and shook her head. "I thought you meant it. But you really ought to. It would be your first."

My son asked, "What happened to the animals?"

"Turned them over to the university for further study," I lied.

"Well," he said to her, "you can't say our pop isn't a man of decision."

Twenty-four hours later, there wasn't a sign of animal experimentation on the ranch.

Except, of course, that the woods were full of volplas. At night, I could hear them faintly when I sat out on the terrace. As they passed through the dark overhead, they chattered and laughed and sometimes moaned in winged love. One night a flight of them soared slowly across the face of the full Moon, but I was the only one who noticed.

I made daily trips out to the original camp to meet the oldest of the males, who had apparently established himself as a chief of all the volpla families. He assured me that the volplas were staying close to the ranch, but complained that the game was getting scarce. Otherwise things were progressing nicely.

The males now carried little stone-tipped spears with feathered shafts that they could throw in flight. They used them at night to bring down roosting sparrows and in the day to kill their biggest game, the local rabbits.

The women wore bluejay feathers on their heads. The men wore plumes of dove feathers and sometimes little skirts fashioned of rabbit down. I did some reading on the subject and taught them crude tanning of their rabbit and squirrel hides for use in their tree homes.

The tree homes were more and more intricately wrought with expert basketry for walls and floor and tight thatching above. They were well camouflaged from below, as I suggested.

These little creatures delighted me more and more. For hours, I could watch the adults, both the males and females, playing with the children or teaching them to glide. I could sit all afternoon and watch them at work on a tree house.

So one day my wife asked, "How does the mighty hunter who now returns from the forest?"

"Oh, fine. I've been enjoying the local animal life."

"So has our daughter."

"What do you mean?"

"She has two of them up in her room."

"Two what?"

"I don't know. What do you call them?"

I went up the stairs three at a time and burst into my daughter's room.

There she sat on her bed reading a book to two volplas.

One of the volplas grinned and said in English, "Hello there, King Arthur."

"What's going on here?" I demanded of all three.

"Nothing, Daddy. We're just reading like we always do."

"Like always? How long has this been going on?"

"Oh, weeks and weeks. How long has it been since you came here that first time to visit me, Fuzzy?"

The impolite volpla who had addressed me as King Arthur grinned at her and calculated. "Oh, weeks and weeks."

"But you're teaching them to read English."

"Of course. They're such good pupils and so grateful. Daddy, you won't make them go away, will you? We love each other, don't we?"

Both volplas nodded vigorously.

She turned back to me. "Daddy, did you know they can fly? They can fly right out of the window and way up in the sky."

"Is that a fact?" I said testily. I looked coldly at the two volplas. "I'm going to speak to your chief."

Back downstairs again, I raved at my wife. "Why didn't you tell me a thing like this was going on? How could you let such an unusual thing go on and not discuss it with me?"

My wife got a look on her face that I don't see very often. "Now you listen to me, mister. Your whole life is a secret from us. Just what makes you think your daughter can't have a little secret of her own?"

She got right up close to me and her blue eyes snapped little sparks all over me. "The fact is that I was wrong to tell you at all. I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone. Look what happened when I did. You go leaping around the house like a raving maniac just because a little girl has a secret."

"A fine secret!" I yelled. "Didn't it occur to you this might be dangerous? Those creatures are over-sexed and...." I stumbled into an awful silence while she gave me the dirtiest smile since the days of the Malatestas.

"How did you ... suddenly get to be ... the palace eunuch? Those are sweet lovable little creatures without a harm in their furry little bodies. But don't think I don't realize what's been going on. You created them yourself. So, if they have any dirty ideas, I know where they got them."

I stormed out of the house. I spun the jeep out of the yard and ripped off through the woods.

The chief was sitting at home as comfortable as you please. He was leaning back against the great oak that hid his tree house. He had a little fire going and one of the women was roasting a sparrow for him. He greeted me in volpla language.

"Do you realize," I blurted angrily, "that there are two volplas in my daughter's bedroom?"

"Why, yes," he answered calmly. "They go there every day. Is there anything wrong with that?"

"She's teaching them the words of men."

"You told us some men may be our enemies. We are anxious to know their words, the better to protect ourselves."

He reached around behind the tree and, right there in broad daylight, that volpla pulled a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle out of hiding. He held it up apologetically. "We have been taking it for some time from the box in front of your house."

He spread the paper on the ground between us. I saw by the date that it was yesterday's. He said proudly, "From the two who go to your house, I have learned the words of men. As men say, I can 'read' most of this."

I just stood there gaping at him. How could I possibly recoup this situation so that the stunning joke of the volplas wouldn't be lost? Would it seem reasonable that the volplas, by observing and listening to men, had learned their language? Or had they been taught it by a human friend?

That was it—I would just have to sacrifice anonymity. My family and I had found a colony of them on our ranch and taught them English. I was stuck with it because it was the truth.

The volpla waved his long thin arm over the front page. "Men are dangerous. They will shoot us with their guns if we leave here."

I hastened to reassure him. "It will not be like that. When men have learned about you, they will leave you alone." I stated this emphatically, but for the first time I was beginning to see this might not be a joke to the volplas. Nevertheless, I went on. "You must disperse the families at once. You stay here with your family so we remain in contact, but send the other families to other places."

He shook his head. "We cannot leave these woods. Men would shoot us."

Then he stood and looked squarely at me with his nocturnal eyes. "Perhaps you are not a good friend. Perhaps you have lied to us. Why are you saying we should leave this safety?"

"You will be happier. There will be more game."

He continued to stare directly at me. "There will be men. One has already shot one of us. We have forgiven him and are friends. But one of us is dead."

"You are friends with another man?" I asked, stunned.

He nodded and pointed up the valley. "He is up there today with another family."

"Let's go!"

He had the advantage of short glides, but the volpla chief couldn't keep up with me. Sometimes trotting, sometimes walking fast, I got way ahead of him. My hard breathing arose as much out of my anxiety about the manner of handling this stranger as it did out of the exertion.

I rounded a bend in the creek and there was my son sitting on the grass near a cooking fire playing with a baby volpla and talking in English to an adult volpla who stood beside him. As I approached, my son tossed the baby into the air. The tiny planes opened and the baby drifted down to his waiting hands.

He said to the volpla beside him, "No, I'm sure you didn't come from the stars. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure my father—"

I yelled from behind them, "What business do you have telling them that?"

The male volpla jumped about two feet. My son turned his head slowly and looked at me. Then he handed the baby to the male and stood up.

"You haven't any business out here!" I was seething. He had destroyed the whole store of volpla legends with one small doubt.

He brushed the grass from his trousers and straightened. The way he was looking at me, I felt my anger turning to a kind of jelly.

"Dad, I killed one of these little people yesterday. I thought he was a hawk and I shot him when I was out hunting. I wouldn't have done that if you had told me about them."

I couldn't look at him. I stared at the grass and my face got hot.

"The chief tells me that you want them to leave the ranch soon. You think you're going to play a big joke, don't you?"

I heard the chief come up behind me and stand quietly at my back.

My son said softly, "I don't think it's much of a joke, Dad. I had to listen to that one crying after I hit him."

There were big black trail ants moving in the grass. It seemed to me there was a ringing sound in the sky. I raised my head and looked at him. "Son, let's go back to the jeep and we can talk about it on the way home."

"I'd rather walk." He sort of waved to the volpla he had been talking to and then to the chief. He jumped the creek and walked away into the oak woods.

The volpla holding the baby stared at me. From somewhere far up the valley, a crow was cawing. I didn't look at the chief. I turned and brushed past him and walked back to the jeep alone.

At home, I opened a bottle of beer and sat out on the terrace to wait for my son. My wife came toward the house with some cut flowers from the garden, but she didn't speak to me. She snapped the blades of the scissors as she walked.

A volpla soared across the terrace and landed at my daughter's bedroom window. He was there only briefly and relaunched himself. He was followed from the window in moments by the two volplas I had left with my daughter earlier in the afternoon. I watched them with a vague unease as the three veered off to the east, climbing effortlessly.

When I finally took a sip of my beer, it was already warm. I set it aside. Presently my daughter ran out onto the terrace.

"Daddy, my volplas left. They said good-by and we hadn't even finished the TV show. They said they won't see me again. Did you make them leave?"

"No. I didn't."

She was staring at me with hot eyes. Her lower lip protruded and trembled like a pink tear drop.

"Daddy, you did so." She stomped into the house, sobbing.

My God! In one afternoon, I had managed to become a palace eunuch, a murderer and a liar!

Most of the afternoon went by before I heard my son enter the house. I called to him and he came out and stood before me. I got up.

"Son, I can't tell you how sorry I am for what happened to you. It was my fault, not yours at all. I only hope you can forget the shock of finding out what sort of creature you had hit. I don't know why I didn't anticipate that such things would happen. It was just that I was so intent on mystifying the whole world that I...."

I stopped. There wasn't anything more to say.

"Are you going to make them leave the ranch?" he asked.

I was aghast. "After what has happened?"

"Gee, what are you going to do about them, Dad?"

"I've been trying to decide. I don't know what I should do that will be best for them." I looked at my watch. "Let's go back out and talk to the chief."

His eyes lighted and he clapped me on the shoulder, man to man. We ran out and got into the jeep and drove back up to the valley. The late afternoon Sun glared across the landscape.

We didn't say much as we wound up the valley between the darkening trees. I was filled more and more with the unease that had seized me as I watched the three volplas leave my terrace and climb smoothly and purposefully into the east.

We got out at the chief's camp and there were no volplas around. The fire had burned down to a smolder. I called in the volpla language, but there was no answer.

We went from camp to camp and found dead fires. We climbed to their tree houses and found them empty. I was sick and scared. I called endlessly till I was hoarse.

At last, in the darkness, my son put a hand on my arm. "What are you going to do, Dad?"

Standing there in those terribly silent woods, I trembled. "I'll have to call the police and the newspapers and warn everybody."

"Where do you suppose they've gone?"

I looked to the east where the stars, rising out of the great pass in the mountains, glimmered like a deep bowl of fireflies.

"The last three I saw were headed that way."

We had been gone from the house for hours. When we stepped out onto the lighted terrace, I saw the shadow of a helicopter down on the strip. Then I saw Guy sitting near me in a chair. He was holding his head in his hands.

Em was saying to my wife, "He was beside himself. There wasn't a thing he could do. I had to get him away from there and I thought you wouldn't mind if we flew over here and stayed with you till they've decided what to do."

I walked over and said, "Hello, Guy. What's the matter?"

He raised his head and then stood and shook hands. "It's a mess. The whole project will be ruined and we don't dare go near it."

"What happened?"

"Just as we set it off—"

"Set what off?"

"The rocket."

"Rocket?"

Guy groaned.

"The Venus rocket! Rocket Harold!"

My wife interjected. "I was telling Guy we didn't know a thing about it because they haven't delivered our paper in weeks. I've complained—"

I waved her to silence. "Go on," I demanded of Guy.

"Just as I pushed the button and the hatch was closing, a flock of owls circled the ship. They started flying through the hatch and somehow they jammed it open."

Em said to my wife, "There must have been a hundred of them. They kept coming and coming and flying into that hatch. Then they began dumping out all the recording instruments. The men tried to run a motor-driven ladder up to the ship and those owls hit the driver on the head and knocked him out with some kind of instrument."

Guy turned his grief-stricken face to me. "Then the hatch closed and we don't dare go near the ship. It was supposed to fire in five minutes, but it hasn't. Those damned owls could have...."

There was a glare in the east. We all turned and saw a brief streak of gilt pencil its way up the black velvet beyond the mountains.

"That's it!" Guy shouted. "That's the ship!" Then he moaned. "A total loss."

I grabbed him by the shoulders. "You mean it won't make it to Venus?"

He jerked away in misery. "Sure, it will make it. The automatic controls can't be tampered with. But the rocket is on its way without any recording instruments or TV aboard. Just a load of owls."

My son laughed. "Owls! My dad can tell you a thing or two."

I silenced him with a scowl. He shut up, then danced off across the terrace. "Man, man! This is the biggest! The most—the greatest—the end!"

The phone was ringing. As I went to the box on the terrace, I grabbed my boy's arm. "Don't you breathe a word."

He giggled. "The joke is on you, Pop. Why should I say anything? I'll just grin once in a while."

"Now you cut that out."

He held onto my arm and walked toward the phone box with me, half convulsed. "Wait till men land on Venus and find Venusians with a legend about their Great White Father in California. That's when I'll tell."

The phone call was from a screaming psychotic who wanted Guy. I stood near Guy while he listened to the excited voice over the wire.

Presently Guy said, "No, no. The automatic controls will correct for the delay in firing. It isn't that. It's just that there aren't any instruments.... What? What just happened? Calm down. I can't understand you."

I heard Em say to my wife, "You know, the strangest thing occurred out there. I thought it looked like those owls were carrying things on their backs. One of them dropped something and I saw the men open a package wrapped in a leaf. You'd never believe what was in it—three little birds roasted to a nice brown!"

My son nudged me. "Smart owls. Long trip."

I put my hand over his mouth. Then I saw that Guy was holding the receiver limply away from his ear.

He spluttered. "They just taped a radio message from the rocket. It's true that the radio wasn't thrown out. But we didn't have a record like this on that rocket."

He yelled into the phone. "Play it back." He thrust the receiver at me.

For a moment, there was only a gritty buzz from the receiver. Then the tape started playing a soft, high voice. "This is Rocket Harold saying everything is well. This is Rocket Harold saying good-by to men." There was a pause and then, in clear volpla language, another voice spoke. "Man who made us, we forgive you. We know we did not come from the stars, but we go there. I, chief, give you welcome to visit. Good-by."

We all stood around too exhausted by the excitement to say anything. I was filled with a big, sudden sadness.

I stood for a long time and looked out to the east, where the sprawling mountain range held a bowl of dancing fireflies between her black breasts.

Presently I said to old Guy, "How long do you think it will be before you have a manned rocket ready for Venus?"

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Saturday, February 13, 2016

Creating a Good Title for Your Short Story by Charles Raymond Barrett

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