The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales from Fantasy Adventures

SOMETHING IN THE AIR, by Gordon Landsborough

The publisher came in, his form bulking against the rare sunlight angling down through the open doorway. He was smiling, affable, in his usual good humor.

“Well…mornin’!” He put an inflexion in his voice, so that the last word rose half an octave, giving the intended effect of surprise and delight. Surprise at what? thought Butty, his head sore, his nose streaming with cold. Because the sun was shining? Because he’d made it from Hampstead before ten this morning? Delighted? To see them? Them? Butty said an obscene thing inside this head that only wanted to lie down.

Some people streamed past the doorway carrying lollypops. Wind-cheatered and jeaned, the uniform of protest. The daily picket. Laughing young voices submerged in sound as a diesel bus coughed through its gears. Butty thought, “A bloody editorial office that steps right off a High Street pavement.” Then he turned his full hatred on the publisher knowing what was coming.

“And what has my hi-fi, sci-fi editor got to tell me this morning — eh, Butteridge?” Jolly. Just short of being hearty.

Butty said, “We’ve got the usual load of crap.” He looked across at Dickie Armstrong, bright young face alert, watching the same old morning game and interested to know how far he, Butty, would go in showing the publisher he was a crude, tasteless, insensitive creature. Further than usual, with this blasted cold in his head.

“Crap?”

“I’ve dipped into them. Only one that’s good.” The publisher waiting to damn his opinion of good. Butty brooded out through the doorway into the High Street. Let him wait. The High Street. Marks & Sparks protected by St. Michael. Sainsburys protecting their good name. Burton’s next to Woolworth’s next to Tescos next to Barclays next to British Home Stores next to.… Like every other High Street in the land, except that this had problems and the lollypop youngsters were going to sort then out. Or were they against all that money?

“The good one?” The publisher, prompting, smile pleasant, waiting to annihilate him. Enormous fat wedding ring. Enormous fat, expensive fountain pen. Massive cigarette lighter. Why should a little man want to be big? Butty, trying to find a dry place in a sodden handkerchief.

“It’s about a long-chain molecule,” Butty began, deliberately obscure, inviting death. The publisher’s round face brightened. This would be an easy one. “Imagine a benzidrene molecule and you hammer it pretty flat and tack on some hydroxyl groupings at odd corners.…”

Young Armstrong settled back, listening with satisfaction to the cultural warfare. He didn’t know what his editor was talking about, and he was pretty sure Butty was making things up as he went on. His own inventive mind raced parallel with the words Butty was saying, pictures flung into it as they always were when people played with ideas.

“Okay,” said the publisher, unruffled good humor demonstrated by an indulgent smile. “I’m dead ignorant. You’ve got your long-chain thingumny but I want to know what this story is about. You say it’s good. Is it good enough for our list?”

Butty knew the answer but insisted that the publisher made it for him. “It could come under the term: hallucinatory drug. Administered, nobody wants for anything because nobody wants anything. It just brings peace.”

“Peace?” The publisher allowed a frown to mar his sun-tanned forehead. “No fighting? That doesn’t sound much good.”

“Not a ray gun in the whole story.” Butty lifted the manuscript. It wasn’t very bulky, and it was so neat, the tidiness of a thoughtful mind. “Under the drug people find pleasure in living.” Oh, how difficult it was to explain in simple terms to this sleek and prosperous man the pleasure of mind exploration. “The MS merely tells of a disentangling of minds that have had a few thousand years to snarl them up.” And what shocks and surprises the author had given, disentangling. Inevitable, thought Butty, those conclusions, though women would fight like hell against them.

The publisher said, “Oh, dear,” then paused to allow another lumbering bus and then a fourteen-wheeled truck to thunder by outside. “You know I have the greatest admiration for your hi-fi sci-fi—” Butty hated him for this old joke. High fidelity SF, indeed! “—but a poor publisher must think of sales. I mean, who wants to read about people’s minds?” He was honestly perplexed. “Action, that’s what people want.”

Young Armstrong obliged on cue. Butty looked at him suspiciously. Here was a chap with a tumbling, racing, fertile imagination, an intelligent human being, and yet he could be enthusiastic about the publisher’s needs. Butty was quite sure Armstrong wasn’t toadying up to the boss, quite sure there was no thought in that innocent young mind of sabotaging his superior’s editorship. He actually liked bug-eyed monsters. Butty shook his head, he couldn’t reconcile intelligence with that.

“There’s one good ’un came this morning.” Dickie flipped back some pages of the MS and found a place. He began to read: “‘Chet stood there, eyes cold glints of steel behind his visor. The savage, sub-moronic Castro came on, murder in those flaming amber eyes. Chet, clean and wholesome beside that vileness, allowed his eyes to flicker for a moment to the helpless Astra. So lovely. Naked save for the tiny kilt that barely covered those wonderful, sweeping thighs—’”

The publisher said, “That’s great!” Exulting. “That’s your cover pic for you, smart boy!” Something crashed outside and there was a shout distantly heard above the traffic’s rumble. “Go on. What happened?”

Butty rose and drooped towards the sunlight, blue with exhaust fumes. Butty said, as if reading: “Chet ground his teeth, then swung back his hating eyes on Castro. ‘You’ve come far enough, Castro.’ he said into his Inter-Galactic Mark 1 All Communities Interpreter. ‘One more step and by God I’ll drill you.’

“Castro makes one more step. He could hardly help it,” Butty said bitterly “Poor sod, he probably has eight legs and what’s one little step among eight legs? So our clean-cut American youth goes for his laser gun and turns old Castro into a pool of jelly. Hurrah for progress! If it’s different kill it.”

Dickie was indignant. “It doesn’t go like that at all.”

Butty: “But he goes for his laser gun?”

“Well, yes.”

The publisher said kindly, “That sounds much more like the stuff we need for our readers. Not thinking stuff.”

Someone came in at the doorway.

“That’s why I handed it over to Dickie,” said Butty. “I knew you’d like it. Crap.”

The fellow in the doorway was…queer. Vague age, vague man. Old Macintosh buttoned up to his neck. Worn shoes, very dirty sagging trousers that had probably been slept in many times, no hat and a fuzz of an immature beard.

The chap didn’t seem all there. Looked around as if disappointed.

“Books?” he said.

The publisher’s genial smile wiped off. No money in this bum. Don’t waste time. His verbal laser reached out and scalded. “We publish books, we don’t sell to the public. That’s next door.” Harmless sentences, taken by themselves, but somehow offensive, insulting coming from the mouth of the publisher.

The fellow seemed unable to take it all in immediately. He hovered. The publisher’s eyes became frosty hard. “On your way. Beat it.” He turned, not bothering if the fellow was within earshot. “Tramps — make the place look untidy.”

Butty hated him because tramps are human and more wanting humanity than most other people. He thought, “Why don’t I get the treatment?” Then bleakly changed it to, “When will I get the same treatment?” He knew when.

When the publisher grew tired of him. Why wasn’t he tired of him now?

Because of two things. One was that he was cheap labor, efficient at turning bad crap into not quite so bad crap. The other was, he was public school and university. Oh, sure, not Eton, Harrow or Winchester. Lancing. Not Oxford or Cambridge. Redbrick — Southampton. And the publisher wasn’t either, and it kept him in good humor to think that he could employ at mean rates a man of education; every time he humbled Butty by overriding him it filled him with a sense of superiority and put him in good humor.

A whipping boy There to do the humble work, there to be shown mercilessly every day that his boss was superior and all that taxpayers’ money invested in him was just down the educational drain. “If only I had spine,” he thought tiredly but he hated trying to find jobs and here he could sit in a corner and read.

The queer fellow turned and went out, quickly, looking back as if expecting a blow to follow. Funny small eyes surprised in a vague way, bewildered.

Geniality returned. Even a slight triumph at disposing of a fellow creature. “Sounds on the right lines, that story,” said the publisher. “It’s got the right cover material, and covers sell.” Which reminded him. “Butteridge. Make sure if you use it you have an all-action cover. Show the laser gun blasting. Show the what-d’you-call-it hit and in pain. And the girl.”

Butteridge glowered over his glasses.

“Her milk rounds. The last cover didn’t show ’em up to advantage. A bit on the spare side. Make ’em big, stand out.”

“Too big, they’re conical.” Butty truculent, cold getting worse. Wish he could go home. Wish he’d drop dead. The publisher.

“You don’t know readers.” Just for once impatient. The publisher explaining. “They’ve got to attract attention on the bookstall, our sci-fi. So they’ve got to be big, stand out. See? Simple, isn’t it?”

“But they’ve got to be decent,” said Butty, and young Dickie almost gasped, for the editor was mimicking the boss. “Musn’t show their nipples, eh? Got to sling ’em in a bra — brass roundels with no visible means of support.”

“Gold.” The publisher was serious, upgrading then. But he frowned. He didn’t like sex made fun of. He was a family man, and sex was for books he published but wasn’t really real and didn’t harm anyone but it wasn’t a Fit Subject for Humor. Butty could have taken the mickey to the last syllable.

The door darkening again. Old Dalrymple dragging in his catarrh. That was sixty seconds exactly before it began. Saying, “I saw him come out. That chap.” Dalrymple who bought odd lots of books at knockdown prices from the publisher, to sell in his book-shambles next door. But the publisher didn’t mind — ready cash and he didn’t have to declare it.

The publisher, able to be kind to Lancing and Soton. “I don’t say I don’t admire you for being an intellectual, Butteridge. God knows life’s in need of an uplift. But.…” A gesture. The shoulders hunching helplessly. The brown eyes saddened. Two hands untouched by toil turned appealingly. “Someone’s got to be commercial. Someone’s got to know what the market really wants. If we had to publish what appeals to you, we’d all be in Carey Street, now wouldn’t we?” He made it sound jocular, but that was part of the game. He was wounding Butty, delicately touching him up with barbed words.

Dalrymple was teetering in the doorway, no one taking any notice of him. Only thirty seconds to go. “What was he wanting? In my place every day. Never buys. And trouble.…”

The catarrh was thick. The Liverpool sound. Butty was thinking, “Yes, you bastard, but you’d drive from Carey Street in your Jag. You’re the kind to come out on top.” But not him, Butty. Not the commercial touch, he supposed. Couldn’t bargain. Just wanted to be left alone to live with the thoughts of other men. To read. But not this crap.

Young Dickie’s desk was nearer the door. Three desks only in this room, once a budgerigar shop. His, Dickie’s and the boss’s, rarely used. Next door another shop constructed into an office where the sales manager, crease-waist-coated, chain smoking, and two typists lived.

Dalrymple fixed on Dickie. Dalrymple was mad fit to bust a gasket. “Every day, I tell you. There he is, head stuck in a book. Never buys. And always something happens when he’s in my shop.”

“Something?” Dickie’s bright, intelligent face prompting. Everything in life was superbly interesting to Dickie Armstrong.

“He’s a walking jinx. One day a bookcase collapsed. Another day a shelf fell down.”

Ten seconds.

Butty was looking yearningly into the patch of sunshine wanting them all to shove off, wanting five-thirty so that he could take his head and running nose home. Looked across at Dunn & Co next door to Pricerite, then above the High Street shops to the tall chimneys of the industrial estate beyond. Smokeless zone. No smoke. A bit of steam from one of the chimneys. Steam? He supposed steam was all right in a smokeless zone. The wind whipping it downwards in eddies. Lasting a long time for steam. Picketing didn’t seem to stop industrial activities. WAR CRIMINALS. BAN GERM WARFARE. Funny, his tired mind said, you can see banners go on picket every day and the ads on commercial telly, you never remember what they’re proclaiming. It wasn’t germ warfare. That was down in Dorset.

“He just comes in and books fall off top shelves and lay old ladies out. Right now a whole table collapsed. He wasn’t within yards of it.” Dalrymple scrubbed his gray stubble with a coarse fingernail. “But it’s him, he’s the cause. Some people are like that. Wherever they go they bring disaster around them.”

Three seconds. He shot off, in case someone was helping himself to his precious, secondhand books. His voice floated back: “Don’t have him near you.”

The publisher smiled indulgently, he knew how to handle bums. And then there were no seconds left; and it was happening and they were all on their feet and minds were racing with shock and emotions close to fear and Butty for the moment forgot his throat and head, Dickie forgot he wanted to go to the toilet, and the publisher thought, “It’s a smash and grab,” and slammed the office safe door shut.

What happened outside was reconstructed from the evidence of many, many people, curiously including Dickie Armstrong, who bolted out into the street immediately things began. No one person was able to give the whole complete story. But when the police car arrived — which it did within a minute or so of the occurrence; it was cruising the length of the High Street — the hysteria was at its height and they had to use extreme patience to cut through the gabble.

As they reconstructed it, this was what happened. A bus came along the High Street. Nothing remarkable in that. Buses came like bananas along that High Street, in bunches. Dickie told the cops he was sure it was a 99A; he’d seen it for a glimpse. Which puzzled the cops, because a 99A did not run along that route.

Butty and the publisher watched from the doorway. Then the publisher went running towards the group, and he seemed excited and that wasn’t usual. But Butty didn’t move. Behind his glasses his eyes took in the picture. All traffic at a standstill in the High Street. One car mounted on the pavement, bonnet thrust through the window of Jolly’s Sandwich Bar—‘Take Away Or Consume On Premises’. People lying on the ground in a state of shock. Like a battlefield. Some people running around in hysterics, but most just standing, looking dazed, or walking irresolutely, as if in some trance-like state. And that group now surrounding the police car, all talking, arguing among themselves, shouting. And young Dickie’s bright face there, somehow the center of events.

All witnesses at a certain stage agreed that there was Something Funny About That Bus. Funny? queried the senior policeman. He was Welsh, from the Valleys, and you had to be smart to put one past his acute mind. What did they mean by funny? And at that they all seemed to hesitate, at a loss, and look at each other, and only young Dickie had the answer.

“The passengers. They didn’t seem — well, real, human. You know what I mean. Well, like tailors’ dummies. I caught a glimpse.”

Everyone began to talk, to agree. Yes, that was it, that’s what it was like, why the bus was funny. The passengers, swaying there, smiling or not smiling, staring fixedly ahead. Tailors’ dummies. That’s what they thought at the time.

“All right, so the bus was full of tailors’ dummies,” said the Welsh bobby, not allowing even a hint of sarcasm, surprise or disbelief to mar his tones. “So what happened?”

They told him, prompting each other, and it was surprising how much sharp young Dickie knew of events.

The bus came along. It pulled into a stop outside Boots. The conductress, shortish, fattish, blue uniform very shiny from use (curious how observant some of those people were, each supplementing the other’s details), called, “Plenty of room on top!” Very brisk and hearty, everyone said. And then?

Now, that was puzzling. The story varied only slightly. A tiny queue of people shuffled forward to get on the bus. An oldish woman — some said a very old woman — was first in the queue. She was reaching for the handrail to haul herself on to the platform and then—

“And then what?” asked the Welsh cop as all seemed to pause. His oppo, a big young bobby from Bradford, was trying to keep pace with the talk, looking somewhat unfamiliar with pencil and notebook.

Then the conductress lifted a stout leg, her foot planted itself on the chest of the oldish woman, straightened and the poor old duck went flying back into the queue, knocking them for six.

And then the conductress rang the bell three times, which means, keep going, mate, we don’t stop for anyone now, and the bus seemed to jump into top speed immediately and went careering along the High Street, while the conductress held on to the brass rail and laughed uproariously at the tumbled queue and shouted, “Plenty of room on top!”

The Welsh cop looked startled for a moment, tried to see how his Bradford chum was reacting, then recovered. He stared at a High Street that looked as if war had come to it — crowds of people seemed to be racing in from side streets. Someone had phoned the ambulance service and now they were coming in relays on to the street. A motorcycle cop parked his machine, then like a thing from outer space came pushing through to join his comrades.

It was what happened when the bus leapt away from the stop that was so startling. So many people clamored to tell the story, and again Dickie was one of them, more articulate than the rest, so that in time the Welsh cop was addressing most of his questions to the young editorial dogsbody.

People had been crossing the High Street at the zebra crossing between the Co-op and the George. A woman pushing a pram was there — one of those pushcart things designed to take twins, and twins were in it. An oldish man with a limp was on the crossing. Two or three housewives with their shopping. Another old woman, though everyone agreed she’d been pretty sprightly and leapt for it, clear of danger.

And the bus didn’t stop. On the contrary it was accelerating all the way from Boots. The horror of that moment was too strong for many of them and someone fainted and others had to go and sit down and not be reminded of it.

The bus deliberately drove into the people on the crossing. The woman with the pushchair thing saw it bearing down on her, towering above her, and started to scream and everyone down that street heard the terrible sound.

The big red London bus knocked her flat. The front offside wheel smashed the pushchair and went over the two children. The old man went down, the shoppers, their bags and baskets flying. All down under the wheels of the bus.

“Carnage,” someone in the crowd said. Sobbing broke out at the memory.

Hysteria was in the air again.

“Crushed. Bits of stuff scattered across the road. And — blood.” A man with a hoarse voice, face white. He kept on about “Crushed” and “Bits of stuff” until the Welsh bobby asked him to shut up, people were going down like ninepins. Ambulance men were getting the driver out of the car that had made unusual entry into Jolly’s Sandwich Bar.

“Heart,” thought Butty, from the doorway, watching. “Shock.” It was only later that he got the story. Just now what surprised him was to keep seeing young Dickie right there amid the crowd, talking at times very animatedly to the policeman, and the publisher there, too, beside Dickie, and shoving a verbal oar in occasionally himself. Butty was puzzled. He could have gone over and joined the crowd, but he didn’t like crowds and anyway his cold made him feel anti-social. Roll on five-thirty.

But it was the crew of the bus that created the hysteria that was subtly changing into anger among the crowd.

“It was deliberate,” protested a decent-looking chap who was probably an accountant or a local government official. “Quite deliberate. The driver not only drove callously and deliberately into those people on the crossing, but he seemed to feel it was an enormous joke.”

“Joke?” The Bradford cop made his solitary verbal contribution to the occasion.

“He was laughing. Roaring his head off. Could hardly keep the bus straight. Sitting up in his cab howling away as if it was the funniest thing in the world.” One voice after another taking up the patchwork tale, creating a picture that shocked.

Even the Welsh bobby was set aback. “It was no accident?” They shouted him down. “And he drove away laughing?”

“Blood on his wheels,” someone said hysterically and screamed to draw attention to herself.

“Bits of stuff scattered all over,” said the man with the hoarse voice, getting it in again.

“Laughing his bloody head off,” Confirmation from all points of the crowd. Even Dickie could confirm it. And the publisher. Butty asked questíons later, when he knew of the publisher’s confirmation. In fact it probably started him off in his thoughts.

The Welsh cop was looking a bit dazed. This was something beyond his normal ken. Helplessly he stared round. Ambulance men were picking people up on stretchers. A police car came sirening through the shocked but excited crowd.

Dickie made a contribution: “The conductress. I saw her as I ran out. She was simply rolling around on the platform. Hanging on to the pole. Laughing so much I thought she’d fall off any minute. She was still shouting, ‘Plenty of room on top’!”

The crowd remembered then. A roar of utter fury went up from them, pressing round the police. The utter heartlessness of the bus crew incensed them, so that if they had fallen into the crowd’s hands at that moment undoubtedly they would have been lynched.

“Over them pore kids,” a woman said, then sobbed and broke down.

“Wheel right over them,” a man said quietly, face ashen remembering. The publisher nodded, feeling sick.

Police from the other car were pushing through the crowd. Some of the pickets from the industrial estate were there, banners waving above the crowd. BAN YOG 45, Butty read from a distance. “It’s a capitalist trick,” shouted one of the demonstrators. The Welshman, who had secretly voted Labour ever since he could say ‘Nye Bevan’ looked his scorn at this political solution to the problem perplexing him.

“Frank,” he said when the other crew came up. “Better get a call out for a bus, driver and conductress behaving curiously. Probably drunk. Mowed down some people on a pedestrian crossing then drove off at speed.” He turned to the crowd. “What happened to the bus? I mean, which way did it go?”

A pause. The crowd looking at each other, pondering. Then someone said, hesitantly, “Well, it sort of — well, disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?” The Welshman.

They looked at each other again, all those faces pressing close around him.

The man said, helplessly, “Well…just that. One moment it was there. The next it wasn’t. It disappeared.”

Too much for the Welshman at last. A snap of temper in his voice, his language un-policelike. “What the bloody hell are you talking about? A bus — disappeared? You mean, dissolved like smoke?”

Nobody would answer him. No one would confirm what he said. No one wanted to be told he was off his head by that caustic Welsh voice, yet they all looked at each other and all knew. They had seen it with their own eyes, they were able to tell themselves, just as they had witnessed the dreadful tragedy on the crossing, and then the car taking avoiding action as the bus swerved and Jolly’s Take Away Sandwich Bar suffering in consequence.

Somehow the hysteria was abating now. The street was almost solidly packed with people, and perhaps comfort came with crowdedness and fear went, though still some cried their anguish at what they had seen.

“Those poor bairns,” a girl-mother cried over and over again. “And their poor mother. I’ll never forget it. Never. Seeing her just before.…” They couldn’t stop her talking.

An ambulance pushed slowly along the road. The Welsh cop called out to the driver. “What’s the damage, Nobby? Killed, I mean. How many?” And the crowd waited in horror for the score.

Nobby looked vague. “Killed? I’ve got some shock patients aboard. Killed?” He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He drove on.

The police were moving the crowd now. A superintendent from the Ambulance Division could be seen along the road by the Co-op. The Welsh bobby took some names — Dickie’s first; even the publisher’s, curiously — then headed towards the zebra crossing.

The superintendent said, “It’s a to-do, Taffy, it’s a to-do.” A migrant from Yorkshire, affable behind gleaming false teeth, eyes happy at the turmoil behind their glasses. He said, cheerfully, “Everybody gone mad, or someat?” But it was good for trade.

Taffy stared at him. “Hasn’t nobody told you? I mean.…” He looked at the zebra crossing. A lot of people were gawking at it. “I mean, those people killed.”

The Yorkshire superintendent’s gleaming smile vanished. “Killed?” He looked round, quickly, as if afraid he had missed something obvious. “Who’s been killed?” Taffy recited — a mother and twins, some women shoppers, an old limping man.

The superintendent studied the cop for quite a long while. Then he said slowly. “Are you out of your mind? None of my men reported any killed. Now, they would have done, wouldn’t they, if there’d been any?” Vigor in his voice. “You can’t come the old mullarkey with Yorkshire folk, tha knows. Down to earth. Don’t get kidded. Go on, Tatty, show me where they are. Who’s been pullin’ thy leg lad?”

But a Welsh policeman was looking at the crossing for traces of blood. There weren’t any. He was looking for pieces of crushed pushchair the debris from flying shopping baskets. There weren’t any. And no corpses.

The publisher and Dickie came back some time later wth the full and incredible story. Both were curiously subdued, more remarkable in the publisher than in Dickie. They came in and sat down with that air of slumping which tells of mental exhaustion. As if, Butty thought, stunned. Not that he cared. He was feeling like death warmed up. Damned if he was going to hang on till the end of the afternoon. He’d take a MS home and read it in bed. Or not read it unless his head stopped aching.

He waited to tell the publisher of his decision, but the other two had started talking. Talking quietly, factually, deliberately Telling of events on the High Street, reconstructing it, and Butty had to listen and yet he wasn’t interested.

From the doorway he’d thought someone was knocked down. Crowds gathered like harpies when there was a real accident. Though part of his mind was puzzled because of the unusual amount of hysteria that had resulted, which he had felt even from a distance.

But he got a shock from their story when they came to the end. He hadn’t been really listening, so he had to drag their last words out of his mind, repeat them to get them confirmed, before he could begin to think of them and their implications.

“You say a bus deliberately ran clown a lot of people including some babies, yet when the ambulances turned up there were no bodies?” Put like that it made them squirm.

“But we saw then, saw it happen.” Dickie speaking passionately, young eves holding horror, yet incredulous, bewildered. The publisher nodded heavily “It was slaughter,” Dickie shuddered. “On the crossing.”

Butty fought through his cold. There were a lot of loose ends hanging about but for the moment his thick head wouldn’t let him put hem together. All he could say was, “You don’t kill people and then not have bodies.”

Dickie said, his voice quite steady, low and positive, “I saw with my own eyes a bus wheel go right over that pram. I saw the children.…”

He went into the toilet and they heard him being sick. The publisher just sat there. Butty put his hands to his aching head. He didn’t want to think. After a while Dickie came out, drained and exhausted.

The publisher said, with real kindness, “I think you ought to go home, Armstrong.” It was the kindness that comes from comradeship in terrible circumstances. Butty thought, “That means I can’t go early.” Sod Dickie and his queasy stomach. One of them would have to stay. The publisher wouldn’t allow them both away from the office at once.

Dickie, looking shocked, said, “I might be sick again. In the street. I think I’ll stay for a while.”

Dalrymple came in from next door, smelling of the old books he sold. His catarrhal voice honked, “You’d have thought it was Hitler and his V2s again.”

It was some time before they realized that he knew nothing of the events along the road, just the big crowd that had mysteriously gathered. He’d gone back to his shop and busied himself setting up the table that had collapsed “—because of that jinx,” Dalrymple said. All this time he’d been sorting his precious books into alphabetical order again. “Damned fellow!” he ended wrathfully.

In defense of a man who liked books, even if he didn’t buy them, Butty said, “You said he was nowhere near the table when it collapsed. Why blame him?”

Dalrymple was impatient with details. “It was him. I don’t know how he does it. Wherever he goes things happen. Well, in my shop. Every time he comes in, things fall, collapse. Though he’s nowhere near. Call it coincidence if you like, but—” He brooded. A reasonable man reluctant for once to reject the unreasonable.

That scratchy fingernail on his bristly chin. A sagacious look out through the doorway. “Wouldn’t put it past him to have caused that there, whatever it was.”

Butty looked at young Dickie at that moment, and saw shock there, as if thoughts almost too great for his mind to assimilate were never the less having to be ingested. Slowly Dickie turned to look at them in turn. Dalrymple went out. He had no time in his life for anything except books. The world’s tragedies would go on, but Dalrymple wouldn’t be concerned. Only when a shelf collapsed or a table fell down, throwing his books into disorder, was he roused to normal human emotion.

The publisher seemed to sense a change in the young editorial assistant, for he said again, “I think you’d better go home. You look knocked up.”

But Dickie didn’t seem to hear him. His eyes were far distant. He said, “I didn’t think of it at the time, but he was there.”

“What?” Butty. But not really interested.

“That chap. The fellow that brings disaster.” Dickie’s eyes met Butty’s, very straight and unflinching. “I saw him. Hanging about. Laughing. Yes, I think he was laughing. Yes, I’m sure of it now.”

Butty picked up his dirty Mac off the floor where it had fallen from the hat stand. Pulled it on, unheeding collar turned in. He was tired, tired, tired. The hell with everything.

“I’m going home,” he said, and went. The publisher roused himself to a minor show of indignation, then slumped back into his dreadful thoughts.

Butty came in next day. That was all he needed, one blissful day dozing in bed. Of course another day, and even the weekend, would have been better, but in spite of his morose temper with the boss, Butty was in fear of his job. Too long away, and one never knew. So he came in, not better but, well, better.

Dickie obviously wanted to talk about the previous day’s events. He carried with him an air of suppressed excitement. But Butty didn’t want to talk. He wanted to get straight with yesterday’s mail, and see what was in today’s.

Fortunately light, this day. Only one MS. First para: “The big ship steadied, the side thrusters blasting momentarily, bringing the bow round on course. Matt’s voice was quiet, narrowed gray eyes on the scanner and the picture it provided of the alien craft a thousand miles away. “We can’t take any risks,” he told them, hanging on to the words of their intrepid commander. “Bring the ray guns to bear.” A pause. His solid jaws set, displaying nothing of the emotion that raced inside him. ‘Fire’!”

Butty said, “Crap for you, Dickie. Just your barrow.” And threw the manuscript across.

The publisher came in shortly after ten. He was in a brisk, no-nonsense mood. “We got behind yesterday,” he said, and his voice accused Butty for going. Dickie, apparently, had manfully stayed on and worked, gallantly holding on to his stomach. So he started in at Butty, wanting to know what had happened to the page proofs of Planet of Doom and The Lost Constellation. Had lettering been done for the covers for July? And that agreement with the Sutton Coldfield author, had it turned up? On and on, a peevish man this morning, without pretence of good humor, grinding down on poor Butty.

About quarter to eleven Frances came in with the morning coffee. She used a biscuit-tin lid for a tray, and as usual it was considerably awash. Frances was the typist next door. She was pregnant, complacent about it, and because she was leaving she had no fear any longer for the publisher and his ill-humors.

She said, “They’re all down the street.”

The publisher gingerly wiped the bottom of his cup on a piece of blotting paper, then set it down on another piece of paper. They didn’t run to saucers in this publishing house.

“I wish you wouldn’t slop coffee everywhere,” he said, grieved. Then followed up her statement. “Who’s down the street?”

“The fuzz.” Frances wriggled a bit, to settle more comfortably into tights that daily grew tighter. “They’re calling on all the shops, asking questions about yesterday.”

“Yes, yes,” said the boss. It was almost as if he had a hangover, the after-effects of yesterday’s excitement. Not so Dickie, who plainly would have talked if he had been encouraged. Once during the morning, in fact he had asked, “Seen the papers?” but Butty hadn’t and the boss frowned, wanting to keep hard on to Butty for missing some work the previous day.

The police came just when the morning picket went trooping by, their lollypops damning war and particularly YOG 45. They were honored with a chief superintendent of police and a detective-sergeant. Old Dalrymple next door had a mess sergeant and ordinary bobby, and they didn’t waste much time with him.

The super was supremely courteous, beautifully tailored and impressive — senior police officers are the smartest dressed men in the country, thought Butty, who was not the smartest-dressed science fiction editor in the country.

The super said, “There was an incident in the High Street yesterday. Can any of you tell me anything about it?”

Dickie began with enthusiasm. Then the publisher joined in after a hesitant start but became almost as voluble as Dickie. As if deciding that the morning would be wasted, anyway, so he might just as well get his share of pleasure from it as anyone else.

And Butty listened and after a while marveled at Dickie and the boss, but said nothing. Once, noticing his silence, the super turned to him and asked, “Weren’t you here, yesterday?”

“Oh, I was here, all right,” said Butty, giving a sniff. Cold almost better but still there, running down his nose. “But I didn’t witness anything.”

Large smile from the super. “Well, you’re the only person on the High Street who didn’t. Never had so many witnesses.” He frowned, as if that was puzzling. And then his brow corrugated tiredly, as if he had been up all night.

“Witnesses?” He ruminated. “They saw a bus drive over a pram containing two kids. Saw them crushed beneath the wheels. Saw others killed. The bus driver laughing his head off as if it was a great joke.”

He looked at them. “You’ve seen the morning’s papers? All those people saw it happen, but no one found any bodies. What happened to them? He looked bewildered. “Too many people tell the same, identical story. They saw it all happen, on the zebra crossing by the Co-op. All right, but we can’t trace any woman with two kids…or anyone missing. And no bodies. Just a lot of people dropping down in faints because of shock. What happened?”

He was a helpless man.

The publisher sat with his eyes downcast. Dickie fídgeted. Then said, “Well, I saw it happen. Or thought I did.”

“So did I.” The publisher. “Saw it with my own eyes.”

Butty said, “You couldn’t have,” and they all swung round on him, though Dickie was nodding and smiling brightly.

The publisher was indignant. “What d’you mean, I couldn’t have? I saw it, I tell you.” His face was a truculent threat.

Butty rubbed his glasses ferociously. He said, “You were in this office here with me when it happened. Dickie shot out and might have seen something—” Even so, his manner conveyed doubt about the possibility. “But you took time to follow. You shut the safe. We went to the door an stood together. I saw nothing, so you couldn’t have seen more than I did. Then you shot off to join the mob. But whatever had happened had happened by then. You couldn’t have — couldn’t have seen what you say you saw.”

The publisher rose slowly. His controlled movement was to convey the utmost in threat to his employee. His voice was soft, which is yet another w of projecting malignancy.

“Are you telling me I’m making up a story? Can you sit there and tell me I’m lying, that I didn’t see what I saw? Are you mad, Butteridge?”

Butty took courage. “Not mad, but you didn’t see what you thought yoi saw.”

And at that Dickie leapt in with his wonderful theory, the superintendent and the detective-sergeant swinging their heads from one speaker to another.

Dickie said, “It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened, even though hundreds of people swore they saw it happen. If you run over people there must be bodies. There weren’t any. So it didn’t happen. It only happened in our minds.”

The superintendent said, tiredly, “That’s what the M.O. said. Mass hallucination followed by mass hysteria.”

The publisher protested. “Oh, come now, that’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? I mean, here’s a street full of people, and all at once everyone sees something and now we’re told it happened only in their minds. I mean—” Butty wished he would stop saying, ‘I mean’, “I mean, well, people don’t all go bonkers at once, not without cause.”

The superintendent agreed with him. “That’s what we’re here to try to find out. What happened to cause all those people to imagine they saw one certain picture at precisely the same moment, a picture — an event — which by the evidence demonstrably did not happen.” He leaned forward, eyes weary. “What did it? What triggered off this hallucination, if it was that? Something did it, because in this world nothing happens without a cause.” A policeman speaking. Find the motive.

Dickie spoke, young voice very confident, very clear. “There are two recorded cases in history of mass hallucination like this.” They all turned on Dickie. Butty thought the remarkable thing was that Dickie should quite willingly, openly, admit that what he said he saw yesterday was a figment of his imagination. Not everyone could do that. The publisher, for instance.

Dickie said, “Some time in the 1890s there was an incident in a canton in Eastern Switzerland. A tiny village, with a big wooden hotel. It set on fire. One moment there was no fire, the next it was an inferno. The whole village saw it and were shocked by the suddenness of events.”

Butty nodded, but no one noticed. Dickie was reminding him.

“An entire village bore witness to that fire, and to the people who leapt to their death from the blazing upper rooms. I remember, they even saw a mother throw her child down to be caught, but it was missed and died. The whole village saw that tragedy. Yet next day the hotel was there. When they woke up, the hotel was there and so were all the guests. Nobody hurt.”

“And the other similar event?” Was the superintendent really interested in young Dickie and his stories? Dickie was enthralled to recite them. Butty took off his glasses and screwed up his eyes. Beginning of a headache again. Yes, he should have stayed away another day and blow the boss.

“That was later,” Dickie, reveling in their attentions. “Just before World War I. It was on the Rhine. September, I think it was, the time of the wine festival. A lot of the villagers had gone on a steamer up the Rhine as part of the celebrations. They came back in the evening, and the rest of the village was down at the landing stage to serenade their return with a band. All told the same story.

“The steamer was only a few hundred yards from the bank, when there was an explosion—”

“And also a fire.” Butty spoke.

Dickie looked a mite disappointed. “Oh, you know the story?”

Butty nodded. “It’s been told often enough. It seems to get more precise and detailed the longer in time it is from the event. But do go on, this is your story.”

Slightly subdued, Dickie continued. “Horrified villagers saw people running about the decks on fire. They saw people jumping into the water, drowning before their eyes, before they could run for rowing boats to save then. There was another violent explosion and almost at once the ship sank, taking down with it over a hundred men, women and children. They saw it, close on two hundred villagers, including the German band. It was a night of horror for them.

“Yet next morning when they stirred, there was the steamer tied to the landing stage, not in the least harmed. And no one was missing from the village.”

The superintendent looked at the detective-sergeant, then he rose and absent-mindedly brushed the editorial dust from his well-pressed trousers.

“Yes, yes,” he said. Then again, “Yes.” He drew on a great breath and said, “Well, thank you, gentlemen. Very interesting, I must say.”

Why did you say it? thought Butty. You know your time is being wasted, why don’t you come out with it?

“We must go and interview others,” said the super, but his tone said he didn’t think it would do much good. He said, using that now slightly old-fashioned term, “Good day, gentlemen,” and they went.

Dickie was a bit hurt, his rampaging enthusiasm snubbed. When they were through the door his indignation burst out. “That’s the trouble, they’ve no imagination, so they can’t see. They can’t explain yesterday’s mass hallucination, but they haven’t time to listen.”

Butty said, gently, “The einflubgeist?” making it up because he couldn’t remember exactly.

Dickie said, “The ein— Oh, you mean that fellow.” He shot a grateful glance at Butty. This was an encouragement for him to go on with his story.

Dickie said, “I’d forgotten what he was called—”

“Einflubgeist.” Fortunately Butty was able to remember his invented title. And wickedly. “It means, freely translated, ‘influencing ghost or spirit’.” Though to himself he was amused, realizing it meant nothing of the sort, but Dickie wouldn’t know.

The publisher had to come in then. “What’s this ein thing?”

“You’ve heard of a poltergeist? Malignant spirit? Well, something like that.” Dickie, imprecise but near enough to satisfy a publisher.

“German,” added Butty, delicately holding on to his humor because he was beginning to see the truth. “They go in a lot for those sort of wicked spirits, those Teutons. Thick with them in Bavaria.”

“What about this ghost thing?” The publisher frowned and looked at his watch.

“That was the only explanation that was ever given for the two events,” said Dickie. “Something triggered off their imaginations all at once. Something projected the same pictures into all their minds, and they believed, just as we believed yesterday, that they saw what they didn’t see.”

“But what?” An impatient publisher now.

“This einflubergeist. In Germany they believe that influences move around the world in the guise of men but not real men. They are emotions, not substantial. They merely have physical form—”

“Why?” Butty. “Why do they need to have physical form at all?” Butty amused. Dickie ignored him.

“When they appear there is always tragedy — or the appearance of tragedy. In that Rhine village and in Switzerland people spoke of a stranger — and strangers weren’t common in small places in those days.” Dickie looked at Butty. Deliberately— “In both cases they painted the same picture. A man, difficult to describe because he seemed of no age, no features to remember him by — just a vague creature, poorly dressed, shabby.”

“In fact,” helped Butty, “just like the fellow who upset the table outside Dalrymple’s yesterday.” He turned to the publisher. “You know, the weirdie you sent packing because he looked a bum.”

The publisher was a little proud of the memory and nodded.

Young Dickie took the plunge. “Just like him. Mr. Butteridge, something happened yesterday that was above natural laws of explanation. You tell me, how can the same identical story leap into a hundred people’s minds when it didn’t happen? Something happened to plant those pictures in those minds. I still think I saw them. They’re vivid to me. Yet I am prepared to accept that I didn’t see them. Even so, I want to know — what put the pictures into our minds, the same pictures at the same moments?”

The Swiss and the Germans blamed it on the passing stranger.” Butty was on sure ground. “Passing strangers have been lynched for unaccountable happenings to communities right through the ages. You should read The Witches of Salem. Not quite the same, but it does demonstrate the power of hysteria.”

Dickie said levelly, not liking to be laughed at, “Both the Swiss and the Germans put down the hallucination to the presence and influence of the einflubgeist. For them there was no other explanation. In some mysterious way that stranger in their midst was able to influence their minds. They saw — or thought they saw — tragedy. And in both cases, next day the stranger had gone and was never seen again.” His young voice ended on triumph.

Butty squashed him easily. He felt rather a cad for doing so, for Dickie was a nice lad, just quaint because he liked bug-eyed monsters.

“Now, Dickie, are you saying that yesterday’s hallucination was caused by that weirdie who showed up here only a minute or so before the event?”

Put like that, Dickie wasn’t on such firm ground. He wavered. “Well, not exactly.” He pondered and saw for the first time where a vivid imagination could take one — into quicksand that could bring shame and retraction. Defiantly, “All right, but what’s your explanation? What caused it all?”

Butty looked out on to the High Street, seeing Dunn’s the gents’ hatters opposite. His eyes lifted to the tall chimneys on the industrial estate behind. No smoke today. Good. Smokeless zones are to be observed.

Butty said, “I approve of your explanation. It was the work of an einflubgeist.”

The publisher said, “Oh, come off it, Butteridge. Even I can’t swallow that. And let’s stop talking. God knows, we’re so far behind we’ll have nothing to publish next month.”

Neither took any notice of him. Dickie said, “But I thought you were deriding my theory?”

“I am. So far as the weirdie is concerned. He wasn’t the einflubgeist,” He looked at Dickie, smiled slightly, and said, “You were it.”

Dickie just sat there with his mouth open. Butty said, “Let us accept that something put people into a mental condition where they could be receptive to thought suggestions. I have a theory about that.” His eyes looked through the doorway again. “At that very moment — and it must have been exactly at that moment — something happened to cause a stir, a bit of a panic, a commotion.”

That car that ended up in Jolly’s window, thought Butty. Yes, that would be the thing that triggered things off, first aroused emotions. The driver — a heart attack — a swerve. Into the window and everybody shouting and running like mad. Young Dickie drawn out by the noise, and then the publisher. And then — But first something had tampered with all those minds down the High Street.

Butty looked at Dickie. “You did it. You have a wonderfully fertile imagination. You handle imaginative writing, science fiction, good, bad and plain lousy. Your job is to deal with ideas, wild ideas at times, richly imaginative ideas occasionally. So your mind is a stockpot of many men’s inventiveness, so that when the time came you were able to draw upon your imagination.”

Dickie was incredulous. He just stared at Butty, then said, “Are you telling me I went into that crowd and made up the whole story about the conductress and the bus and those people being run down?”

Butty was laughing. “Well, someone did, didn’t they?”

Dickie snapped, “You must think I’m mad.”

Butty shook his head, “Oh, you didn’t do it consciously. Perhaps someone else even started it off. An odd phrase— ‘These damn’ buses. Shouldn’t be on the High Street. That caused the accident.’ I don’t know, I’m only ad libbing. But you have an inventive mind and you probably started off the crowd and they responded and you accepted their statements and built upon them and between you in no time you had worked out a story which in their condition they saw as pictures in their minds.”

“I saw them.” The publisher was looking hard at Butty. He was entertaining some theory of his own now, and by the look of things it would not be in Butty’s favor.

Butty said, “That was it. All in seconds a story built up, and those who had been influenced accepted it and believed they saw the events invented.”

Dickie was a little dazed. “I can’t really accept that.” He began to protest, as anyone would in his situation. “I mean, being responsible for all that hysteria.” He was shuddering, Sick inside, thinking, “Great God, if it’s true and it comes out in the papers.” Then he said, suspicious, “But people aren’t normally responsive to suggestions like that. If I went into the street right now and shouted to people that a bus was mowing down pedestrians on the zebra crossing, they’d take one look then—”

“Then tell you to get stuffed.”

“It happened yesterday, though, according to your theory. What’s different?”

Butty sighed. He had to use his handkerchief again. “That chimney isn’t smoking. The wind isn’t swinging a down draught on to the High Street.”

The publisher had lost all interest. He snapped, “Stop playing detectives. This is something far above your head. Leave police work to the police.”

Deliberately Butty said, “This is science fantasy on a vastly higher plane than anything you publish.” He would probably get fired for that. Butty knew he had been asking for the boot for some days past. But, the hell with this job.

He said, “Every day we see protestors go by to picket USUK Chenucal Company’s premises. Why? Why do they do it? Because USUK are known to be researching in chemicals for use in warfare. They’ve a number already on the market, some used by police in uncivilized countries. I mean by that, in the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Northern Ireland.

“What these young people are picketing against, however, is YOG 45, the Eunuch Drug, as the popular press have called it. Used against an enemy and it makes them as docile, as unaggressive as eunuchs are supposed to be.” Butty was thoughtful. “Not that castration does make all eunuchs unaggressive — history gives the lie to that.”

The publisher was getting tizzier because time was going on. Now, rather like a spoilt child, he had to say, “I thought you approved of drugs that made people content, unwarlike, un-aggressive?”

“Not if they are employed by war-like people seeking to hurt and to dominate.” Butty could dispose of the publisher any time he liked.

Dickie was startled at the idea. “You think some YOG 45 escaped into the High Street.” His mind jumped on to it eagerly. This was rich, real SF. He frowned. There were snags to the theory.

“Not necessarily YOG 45, probably not that at all. But something, something else they manufacture. Something that went up in smoke yesterday morning — probably by accident. Right at the time I saw white vapor—” He pointed to one of the chimneys on the industrial estate. “I remember wondering about it — smokeless zone, you know. Seemed to last too long for steam. And it blew down, down towards us. Down on to the High Street.”

Dickie was on edge. He got up and walked two or three irresolute steps across the office. Plainly he wanted to run out and discuss excitedly this theory.

“Just a whiff,” said Butty. “Probably affected only this part of the High Street and nowhere else. A whiff, but it created conditions fertile for hallucinations. A hundred or so people affected. And between you, building up this mass hallucinatory effect.”

Dickie said, “That’s it, that’s it. A hallucinatory drug, then…imagination.”

“Yours,” grinned Butty. “Master of space Bug science Fiction professional sensational man, harborer of way-out ideas.”

The publisher finally exploded. He stood up, almost raving. “You go on and on, yacking. You think because you handle SF you’ve got a superior insight into things. But you haven’t. You’re too clever by half, that’s your trouble.”

They blinked at him. He was really in a paddy, but much more so, his sarcasm rasped like a power-tool saw. The publisher was well and truly worked up. Butty experienced a spasm of unease.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, YOG 45. You’re just carried away with absurd theories when you know they don’t stand the test at all. Think, man, think.” He was unpleasant to Butty, leering at him.

Butty went stiff-faced, thinking, “Think what?” His mind racing to see what he might have overlooked. Dickie just stood there, motionless.

The publisher. He troweled on his sarcasm. “You say a gust of wind came down, blowing some hallucinatory drug on to the High Street and into this office?”

Butty caught on. Too late. The publisher pounced for the kill.

“All right, Superior Intellect, if it affected Armstrong and me, why didn’t it affect you?”

And Butty hadn’t a word to say to that. So curious, the weakness in his theory just hadn’t occurred to him. He could only look at the publisher, staring, helpless. And Dickie was looking at him, pleading for support, wanting now to believe in this YOG 45, or whatever it was theory.

Butty went to his desk and sat down. He didn’t say anything, because he had nothing to say. Right back to the beginning? was his thought. He’d had no hallucinations.…

The boss wasn’t a man to leave things alone. This was his moment of triumph. “I tell you, you can’t see wood for trees. You’re so damned sure of yourself. you won’t believe what others tell you. Nothing on earth will you convince me that what I saw yesterday was a hallucination. Nothing.” A resolute, no=-nonsense-about-me businessman. He jerked his chin up, that little gesture to show independence, toughness, down-to-earth qualities,

“Nothing.” Dozy old Dalrymple was in the doorway. The publisher ignored him. “I know my own mind, and the sooner you stop talking your fanciful theories, the sooner we’ll be in business again. Look at all the work.” He gestured towards a swollen in-tray.

Butty sat and thought. Old Dalrymple cleared his throat and said. “About those remainders.” His voice globby with catarrh.

The publisher was irritable, though it meant a pound or two of spending money. “Look, Dal, have I had time to do anything with all that happening out there, and Butteridge off with cold — and a bit off his head this morning, too,” he added maliciously.

Dalrymple honked, “Damn’ fools.”

The publisher sad, “Who? Damn’ fools?”

Dal husked, “Hysterical people, seeing corpses when there were none!”

The publisher looked huffed. Dickie turned his eyes on Butty. And Butty was getting to his feet, beginning to smile.

He said, “Mr. Dalrymple, so you weren’t affected yesterday. You didn’t see any…accident?”

Dalrymple gave a quick, birdlike look over the tops of his glasses. Very short, his answer. “Too busy putting that table up. Damned man. Hope he never comes near my shop again.”

Butty was beaming. “Blame the damp Merseyside air,” he said. Dalrymple grunted and looked surprised. “Catarrh,” said Butty. “That’s it.”

The publisher and Dickie were looking at him as if he was daft. Butty snapped his fingers. “Two of us weren’t affected. Now, why? I’m just going to make a guess. I had a cold in my head — nasal passage blocked — Mr. Dalrymple has permanent catarrh, same effect. Something to do with the nose, don’t you see? The gas affected healthy people, not people with bunged-up hooters. Dickie, don’t you see, the theory’s right, after all.”

He went out into the street. It didn’t matter what the publisher thought. This was better than reading science fiction — crap stuff, that is — and anyway he was firmly in sympathy with young people who gave their time to protesting against new weapons of war.

Butty went down the street until he found the superintendent. Then he spoke to him for quite a time, and they watched him from the door of the shop that was an unsuitable editorial premise. The superintendent spotted the local Medical Officer of Health and signaled him to stop, and then Butty talked again.

The M.O. said. “I’m grateful to you. Mr. Butteridge. I think your theory is worth testing. It hangs together. Yes, I’m really grateful.” He’d been getting nowhere. Now, this.… The M.O. began to feel excited. “Look, I’ll go round to the factory and do some checking. If I need you again, Mr. Butteridge?”

Butty gave the address of the publisher. After all, he’d still be there for another month, even if he was fired. The publisher would make him work out his time. He went back, happy. One up on his mortal enemy.

The only thing that worried the M.O. was the car that had veered into Jolly’s window. Uneasily he remembered that the driver had spoken only a few words when he regained consciousness, just before dying. And no one could have got at him with suggestion.

“The bus…damned thing.… All across the road.… Driver laughing. Mad, mad.…”

The M.O. decided to forget about the motorist. It made Butty’s theory inconsistent and he needed it.