Asimov, Isaac - Buy Jupiter and Other Stories

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CONTENTS

BUY JUPITER AND OTHER STORIES 1

DAY OF THE HUNTERS 2

SHAH GUIDO G. 8

BUTTON, BUTTON 14

THE MONKEY'S FINGER 22

EVEREST 28

THE PAUSE 31

LET'S NOT 39

EACH AN EXPLORER 42

BLANK! 50

DOES A BEE CARE? 53

SILLY ASSES 56

BUY JUPITER 58

A STATUE FOR FATHER 61

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY 65

FOUNDING FATHER 70

EXILE TO HELL 73

KEY ITEM 76

To all the editors, whose careers

at one time or another,

have intersected my own-

good fellows, every one.

In THE EARLY ASIMOV I mentioned the fact that there were eleven

stories that I had never succeeded in selling. What's more, said I in that

book, all eleven stories no longer existed and must remain forever in limbo.

However, Boston University collects all my papers with an assiduity

and determination worthy of a far better cause, and when they first began to

do so back in 1966, I handed them piles and piles of manuscript material I

didn't look through.

Some eager young fan did, though. Boston University apparently allows

the inspection of its literary collections for research purposes, and this

young fan, representing himself as a literary historian, I suppose, got access

to my files. He came across the faded manuscript of Big Game, a thousand-

word short-short which I had listed in THE EARLY ASIMOV as the

eleventh and last of my lost rejections.

Columbia Publications, and reveling in the science fiction boom of the

period, asked me for a story. I must have remembered Big Game, written

eight years earlier, for I produced DAY OF THE HUNTERS, which was an

expanded version of the earlier story, and Had published it in the November

1950 issue of Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories.

DAY OF THE HUNTERS

It began the same night it ended. It wasn't much. It just bothered me; it

still bothers me.

You see, Joe Bloch, Ray Manning, and I were squatting around our

favorite table in the corner bar with an evening on our hands and a mess of

chatter to throw it away with. That's the beginning.

Joe Bloch started it by talking about the atomic bomb, and what he

thought ought to be done with it, and how who would have thought it five

years ago. And I said lots of guys thought it five years ago and wrote

stories about it and it was going to be tough on them trying to keep ahead

of the newspapers now. Which led to a general palaver on how lots of

screwy things might come true and a lot of for-instances were thrown

have lots of friends but I have the same lot and none of them know any big-

shot scientists. But he said never mind how he heard, take it or leave it.

And then there wasn't anything to do but talk about time machines, and

how supposing you went back and killed your own grandfather or why

didn't somebody from the future come back and tell us who was going to

win the next war, or if there was going to be a next war, or if there'd be

anywhere on Earth you could live after it, regardless of who wins.

Ray thought just knowing the winner in the seventh race while the sixth

was being run would he something.

But Joe decided different. He said, "The trouble with you guys is you

got wars and races on the mind. Me, I got curiosity. Know what I'd do if I

had a time machine?"

So right away we wanted to know, all ready to give him the old snicker

whatever it was.

He said, "If I had one, I'd go back in time about a couple or five or fifty

million years and find out what happened to the dinosaurs."

Which was too bad for Joe, because Ray and I both thought there was

just about no sense to that at all. Ray said who cared about a lot of

dinosaurs and I said the only thing they were good for was to make a mess

of skeletons for guys who were dopy enough to wear out the floors in

houses, too - all over the place. And then, all of a sudden, like that," and he

snaps his fingers, "there aren't any anymore."

How come, we wanted to know.

But he was just finishing a beer and waving at Charlie for another with a

coin to prove he wanted to pay for it and he just shrugged his shoulders. "I

don't know. That's what I'd find out, though."

That's all. That would have finished it. I would've said something and

Ray would've made a crack, and we all would've had another beer and

maybe swapped some talk about the weather and the Brooklyn Dodgers and

then said so long, and never think of dinosaurs again.

Only we didn't, and now I never have anything on my mind but

dinosaurs, and I feel sick.

Because the rummy at the next table looks up and hollers, "Hey!"

We hadn't seen him. As a general rule, we don't go around looking at

rummies we don't know in bars. I got plenty to do keeping track of the

rummies I do know. This fellow had a bottle before him that was half

empty, and a glass in his hand that was half full.

He said, "Hey," and we all looked at him, and Ray said, "Ask him what

he wants, Joe."

know?"

He sort of smiled at us. It was a funny smile; it started at the mouth and

ended just before it touched the eyes. He said, "Did you want to build a

time machine and go back to find out what happened to the dinosaurs?"

I could see Joe was figuring that some kind of confidence game was

coming up. I was figuring the same thing. Joe said, "Why? You aiming to

offer to build one for me?"

The rummy showed a mess of teeth and said. "No, sir. I could but I

won't. You know why? Because I built a time machine for myself a couple

of years ago and went back to the Mesozoic Era and found out what

happened to the dinosaurs."

Later on, I looked up how to spell "Mesozoic," which is why I got it

right. in case you're wondering, and I found nut that the Mesozoic Era is

when all the dinosaurs were doing whatever dinosaurs do. Rut of course at

the time this is just so much double-talk to me, and mostly I was thinking

we had a lunatic talking to us. Joe claimed afterward that he knew about

this Mesozoic thing, but he'll have to talk lots longer and louder before Ray

and I believe him.

But that did it just the same. We said to the rummy to come over to our

table. I guess I figured we could listen to him for a while and maybe get

He didn't blink; he never jumped at us no matter how wise we cracked.

Just kept talking to himself out loud, as if the whiskey had limbered up his

tongue and he didn't care if we stayed or not.

He said, "I broke it up. Didn't want it. Had enough of it."

We didn't believe him. We didn't believe him worth a darn. You better

get that straight. It stands to reason, because if a guy invented a time

machine, he could clean up millions - he could clean up all the money in

the world, just knowing what would happen to the stock market and the

races and elections. He wouldn't throw a11 that away, I don't care what

reasons he had. - Besides, none of us were going to believe in time travel

anyway, because what if you did kill your own grandfather.

Well, never mind.

Joe said, "Yeah, you broke it up. Sure you did. What's your name?"

But he didn't answer that one, ever. We asked him a few more times,

and then we ended up calling him "Professor."

He finished off his glass and filled it again very slow. He didn't offer us

any, and we all sucked at our beers.

So I said, "Well, go ahead. What happened to the dinosaurs?"

But he didn't tell us right away. He stared right at the middle of the table

and talked to it.

"It was sunny," he said, "sunny and bright; dry and hard. There were no

swamps, no ferns. None of the accoutrements of the Cretaceous we

associate with dinosaurs," - anyway, I think that's what he said. I didn't

always catch the big words, so later on I'll just stick in what I can

remember. I checked all the spellings, and I must say that for all the liquor

he put away, he pronounced them without stutters.

That's maybe what bothered us. He sounded so familiar with everything,

and it all just rolled off his tongue like nothing.

He went on, "It was a late age, certainly the Cretaceous. The dinosaurs

were already on the way out - all except those little ones, with their metal

belts and their guns."

I guess Joe practically dropped his nose into the beer altogether. He

skidded halfway around the glass, when the professor let loose that

statement sort of sadlike.

Joe sounded mad. "What little ones, with whose metal belts and which

guns?"

The professor looked at him for just a second and then let his eyes slide

back to nowhere. "THC were little reptiles, standing four feet high. They

stood on their hind legs with a thick tail behind, and they had little forearms

five of them. They were on me as soon as I got out of the machine. There

must have been millions of them all over Earth - millions. Scattered all

over. They must have been the Lords of Creation then."

I guess it was then that Ray thought he had him, because he developed

that wise look in his eyes that makes you feel like conking him with an

empty beer mug, because a full one would waste beer. He said, "Look,

P'fessor, millions of them, huh? Aren't there guys who don't do anything

but find old bones and mess around with them till they figure out what

some dinosaur looked like. The museums are full of these here skeletons,

aren't they? Well, where's there one with a metal belt on him. If there were

millions, what's become of them? Where are the hones?"

The professor sighed. It was a real, sad sigh. Maybe he realized for the

first time he was just speaking to three guys in overalls in a barroom. Or

maybe he didn't care.

He said, "You don't find many fossils. Think how many animals lived

on Earth altogether. Think how many billions and trillions. And then think

how few fossils we find. - And these lizards were intelligent. Remember

that. They're not going to get caught in snow drifts or mud, or fall into lava,

except by big accident. Think how few fossil men there are - even of these

subintelligent apemen of a million years ago."

"Hey," said Joe, plenty objecting, "any simple bum can tell a gorilla

skeleton from a man's. A man's got a larger brain. Any fool can tell which

one was intelligent."

"Really?" The professor laughed to himself, as if all this was so simple

and obvious, it was just a crying shame to waste time on it. "You judge

everything from the type of brain human beings have managed to develop.

Evolution has different ways of doing things. Birds fly one way; bats fly

another way. Life has plenty of tricks for everything. - How much of your

brain do you think you use. About a fifth. That's what the psychologists

say. As far as they know, as far as anybody knows, eighty per cent of your

brain has no use at all. Everybody just works on way-low gear, except

maybe a few in history. Leonardo da Vinci, for instance. Archimedes,

Aristotle, Gauss, Galois, Einstein -"

I never heard of any of them except Einstein, but I didn't let on. He

mentioned a few more, but I've put in all I can remember. Then he said,

"Those little reptiles had tiny brains, maybe quarter-size, maybe even less,

but they used it all - every bit of it. Their hones might not show it, but they

were intelligent; intelligent as humans. And they were boss of all Earth."

And then Joe came up with something that was really good. For a while

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摘要：

CONTENTSBUYJUPITERANDOTHERSTORIES1DAYOFTHEHUNTERS2SHAHGUIDOG.8BUTTON,BUTTON14THEMONKEY'SFINGER22EVEREST28THEPAUSE31LET'SNOT39EACHANEXPLORER42BLANK!50DOESABEECARE?53SILLYASSES56BUYJUPITER58ASTATUEFORFATHER61RAIN,RAIN,GOAWAY65FOUNDINGFATHER70EXILETOHELL73KEYITEM76Toalltheeditors,whosecareersatonetimeo...

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