Clifford D. Simak - Ring around the Sun

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Title: Ring Around the Sun

Author: Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1952

Genre: science fiction

Comments: To my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this story. I searched for this

book without success in all the libraries and bookstores I have access to, until a friend found a

copy in a second-hand bookstore during a visit to the UK. The book was new, never opened, well-

kept and printed in 1967, and yet the acid-containing paper had browned considerably, smelled like

a three-hundred-year-old musty parchment and was quite brittle. In spite of handling care, the

binding literally fell to pieces when I scanned the book. This is just an example that shows how

unlikely these works are to survive in the long term, unlike they are converted to e-text,

Source: scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in

MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text: October 6, 1999

Prepared by: Anada Sucka

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Ring Around the Sun

Clifford D. Simak

For Carson

CHAPTER ONE

VICKERS got up at an hour outrageous for its earliness, because Ann had phoned the night

before to tell him about a man in New York she wanted him to meet.

He had tried to argue about it.

"I know it breaks into your schedule, Jay," she said "but I don't think this is something you

can pass up."

"I can't do it, Ann," he'd told her. "I've got the writing now and I can't get loose."

"But this is big," Ann had said, "the biggest thing that has ever broken. They picked you to

talk to first, ahead of all the other writers. They think you're the man to do it."

"Publicity."

"This is not publicity. This is something else."

"Forget it - I won't meet the guy, whoever he is," he had said, and hung up. But here he was,

making himself an early breakfast and getting ready to go into New York.

He was frying eggs and bacon and making toast and trying to keep one eye on the coffee maker,

which was temperamental, when the doorbell rang.

He wrapped his robe around him and headed for the door.

It might be the newsboy. He had been out on the regular collection day and the boy probably

had seen the light in the kitchen.

Or it might be his neighbor, the strange old man named Horton Flanders, who had moved in a

year or so ago and who dropped over to spend an idle hour at the most unexpected and inconvenient

times. He was an affable old man and distinguished looking, although slightly motheaten and shabby

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at the edges, pleasant to talk with and a good companion, even though Vickers might have wished

that he were more orthodox in his visiting.

It might be the newsboy or it might be scarcely be anyone else at this early hour.

He opened the door and a little girl stood there, wrapped in a cherry-colored bathrobe and

with bunny rabbit slippers on her feet. Her hair was tousled from a night of sleep, but her blue

eyes sparkled at him and she smiled a pretty smile.

"Good morning, Mr. Vickers," she said. "I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep and I saw the

light burning in your kitchen and I thought maybe you was sick."

"I'm all right, Jane," Vickers told her. "I'm just getting breakfast. Maybe you would like to

eat with me."

"Oh, yes," said Jane. "I was hoping maybe if you was eating breakfast you'd ask me to eat with

you."

"Your mother doesn't know you're here, does she?"

"Mommy and Daddy are asleep," said Jane. "This is the day that Daddy doesn't work and they was

out awful late last night. I heard them when they came in and Mommy was telling Daddy that he

drank too much and she said she wouldn't go out with him, never again, if he drank that much, and

Daddy ..."

"Jane," said Vickers, firmly, "I don't think your mommy and daddy would like you to be telling

this."

"Oh, they don't care. Mommy talks about it all the time. I heard her telling Mrs. Traynor she

had half a mind to divorce my Daddy. Mr. Vickers, what is divorce?"

"Now, I don't know," said Vickers. "I can't recollect I ever heard the word before. Maybe we

oughtn't to talk about what your mommy says. And look, you got your slippers all wet crossing the

grass."

"It's kind of wet outside. The dew is awful heavy."

"You come in," said Vickers, "and I'll get a towel and dry your feet and then we'll have some

breakfast and call your mommy so she knows where you are."

She came in and he closed the door.

"You sit on that chair," he said, "and I'll get a towel. I'm afraid you might catch cold."

"Mr. Vickers, you aren't married, are you?"

"Why, no. It happens that I'm not."

"Most everyone is married," said Jane. "Most everyone I know. Why aren't you married, Mr.

Vickers?"

"Why, I don't rightly know. Never found a girl, I guess."

"There are lots of girls."

"There was a girl," said Vickers. "A long time ago, there was a girl."

It had been years since he had remembered sharply. He had forced the years to obscure the

memory, to soften it and hide it away so that he did not think of it, and if he did think of it,

to make it so far away and hazy that he could quit thinking of it.

But here it was again.

There had been a girl and an enchanted valley they had walked in, a springtime valley, he

remembered, with the pink of wild crab apple blossoms flaming on the hills and the song of

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bluebird and of lark soaring in the sky, and there had been wild spring breeze that ruffled the

water and blew along the grass so that the meadow seemed to flow and become a lake with whitecaps

rolling on it.

They had walked in the valley and there was no doubt that it was enchanted, for when he had

gone back again the valley wasn't there - or at least not the same valley. It had been, he

remembered, a very different valley.

He had walked there twenty years ago and through all of twenty years he had hidden it away,

back in the attic of his mind, yet here it was again, as fresh and shining as if it had been only

yesterday.

"Mr. Vickers," said Jane, "I think your toast is burning."

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER Jane had gone and he had washed the dishes, he remembered that he had intended for a

week or more to phone Joe about the mice.

"I got mice," Vickers told him.

"You got what?"

"Mice," said Vickers. "Little animals. They run around the place."

"Now that's funny," said Joe. "A well-built place like yours. It shouldn't have no mice. You

want me to come over and get rid of them?"

"I guess you'll have to. I tried traps but these mice don't go for traps. Got a cat a while

back and the cat left. Only stayed a day or two."

"Now, that's a funny thing. Cats like places where they can catch a mouse."

"This cat was crazy," said Vickers. "Acted like it was spooked. Walked around on tiptoe."

"Cats is funny animals," Joe confided.

"I'm going down to the city today. Figure you could do it while I'm gone?"

"Sure thing," said Joe. "The exterminating business is kind of slack right now. I'll come over

ten o'clock or so."

"I'll leave the front door unlocked," said Vickers.

He hung up the phone and got the paper off the stoop. At his desk, he laid down the paper and

picked up the sheaf of manuscript, holding it in his hand, feeling the thickness of it and the

weight of it, as if by its thickness and its weight he might reassure himself that what it held

was good, that it was not labor wasted, that it said the many things he wished to say and said

them well enough that other men and women might read the words and know the naked thought that lay

behind the coldness of the print.

He should not waste the day, he told himself. He should stay here and work. He should not go

traipsing off to meet this man his agent wanted him to meet. But Ann had been insistent and had

said that it was important and even when he had told her about the car being in the garage for

repairs she still had insisted that he come. That story about the car had been untrue, of course,

for he knew even as he told her that Eb would have it ready for him to make the trip.

He looked at his watch and saw he had no more than half an hour until Eb's garage would open

and half an hour was not worth his while to spend in writing.

He picked up the paper and went out on the porch to read the morning's news.

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He thought about little Jane and what a sweet child she was and how she'd praised his cooking

and had chattered on and on.

You aren't married, Jane had said. Why aren't you married, Mr. Vickers?

And he had said: once there was a girl. I remember now. Once there was a girl.

Her name had been Kathleen Preston and she had lived in a big brick house that sat up on a

hill, a many-columned house with a wide porch and fanlights above the doors - an old house that

had been built in the first flush of pioneer optimism when the country had been new, and the house

had stood when the land had failed and ran away in ditches and left the hillsides scarred with

gullied yellow clay.

He had been young then, so young that it hurt him now to think of it; so young he could not

understand that a girl who lived in an old ancestral home with fanlights above the doors and a

pillared portico could not seriously consider a boy whose father farmed a worn-out farm where the

corn grew slight and sickly. Or rather, perhaps, it had been her family that could not consider

it, for she, too, must have been too young to fully understand. Perhaps she had quarreled with her

family; perhaps there had been angry words and tears. That was something he had never known. For

between that walk down the enchanted valley and the next time he had called they had bundled her

off to a school somewhere in the east and that was the last he had seen or heard of her.

For remembrance sake he had walked the valley again, alert to catch something that would spell

out for him the enchantment of that day he had walked with her. But the crab apples had dropped

their blossoms and the lark did not sing so well and the enchantment had fled into some never-

never land. She had taken the magic with her.

The paper fell out of his lap and he bent to pick it up. Opening it, he saw that the news was

following the same drab pattern of all other days.

The latest peace rumor still was going strong and the cold war still was in full cry.

The cold war had been going on for years, of course, and gave promise of going on for many

more. The last thirty years had seen crisis after crisis, rumor after rumor, near-war always

threatening and big war never breaking out, until a cold-war-weary world yawned in the face of the

new peace rumors and the crises that were a dime a dozen.

Someone at an obscure college down in Georgia had set a new record at raw egg-gulping and a

glamorous movie star was on the verge of changing husbands once again and the steel workers were

threatening to strike.

There was a lengthy feature article about missing persons and he read about half of it, all

that he wanted to. It seemed that more and more people were dropping out of sight all the time,

whole families at a time, and the police throughout the land were getting rather frantic. There

always had been people who had disappeared, the article said, but they had been individuals. Now

two or three families would disappear from the same community and two or three from another

community and there was no trace of them at all. Usually they were from the poorer brackets. In

the past, when individuals had dropped from sight there had usually been some reason for it, but

in these cases of mass disappearances there seemed to be no reason beyond poverty and why one

would or could disappear because of poverty was something the article writer and the people he had

interviewed could not figure out.

There was a headline that read: More Worlds Than One, Says Savant.

He read part of the story:

BOSTON, MASS. (AP) - There may be another earth just a second ahead of us and another world a

second behind us and another world a second behind that one and another world a second behind...

well, you get the idea.

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A sort of continuous chain of words, one behind the other.

That is the theory of Dr. Vincent Aldridge.

Vickers let the paper drop to the floor and sat looking out across the garden, rich with

flowers and ripe with sunshine. There was peace here, in this garden corner of the world, if there

were nowhere else, he thought. A peace compounded of many things, of golden sunshine and the talk

of summer leaves quivering in the wind, of bird and flower and sundial, of picket fence that

needed painting and an old pine tree dying quietly and tranquilly, taking its time to die, being

friends with the grass and flowers and other trees all the while it died.

Here there was no rumor and no threat; here was calm acceptance of the fact that time ran on,

that winter came and summer, that sun would follow moon and that the life one held was a gift to

be cherished rather than a right that one must wrest from other living things.

Vickers glanced at his watch and saw that it was time to go.

CHAPTER THREE

EB, the garage man, hitched up his greasy britches and squinted his eyes against the smoke

from the cigarette that hung from one corner of a grease-smeared mouth.

"You see, it's this way, Jay," he explained. "I didn't fix your car."

"I was going to the city," said Vickers, "but if my car's not fixed..."

"You won't be needing that car anymore. Guess that's really why I didn't fix it. Told myself

it would be just a waste of money."

"It's not that bad," protested Vickers. "It may look shackle, but it still has lots of miles."

"Sure, it's got some miles in it. But you're going to be this new Forever car."

"Forever car?" Vickers repeated. "That's a queer name for a car."

"No, it isn't," Eb told him, stubbornly. "It'll really last forever. That's why they call it

the Forever car, because it lasts forever. Fellow was in here yesterday and told me about it and

asked if I wanted to take it on and I said sure I would and this fellow, he said I was smart to

take it on, because, he said, there isn't going to be any other car selling except this Forever

car."

"Now, wait a minute," said Vickers. "They may call it a Forever car, but it won't last

forever. No car would last forever. Twenty years, maybe, or a lifetime, maybe, but not forever."

"Jay," declared Eb, "that's what this fellow told me. 'Buy one of them,' he says, 'and use it

all your life. When you die, will it to your son and when he dies he can will it to his son and so

on down the line.' It's guaranteed to last forever. Anything goes wrong with it and they'll fix it

up or give you a new one. All except the tires. You got to buy the tires. They wear out, just like

on any other car. And paint, too. But the paint is guaranteed ten years. If it goes bad sooner

than ten years you get a new job free."

"It _might_ be possible," said Vickers, "but I hardly think so. I don't doubt a car could be

made to last a lot longer than the ones do now. But if they were built too well, there'd be no

replacement. It stands to reason a manufacturer in his right mind wouldn't build a car that would

last forever. He'd put himself out of business. In the first place, it would cost too much..."

"That's where you're wrong," Eb told him. "Fifteen hundred smackers, that's all you pay. No

accessories to buy. No buildups. You get it complete for fifteen hundred."

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"Not much to look at, I suppose."

"It's the classiest job you ever laid your eyes on. Fellow that here was driving one of them

and I looked it over good. Any color that you want. Lots of chrome and stainless steel. All latest

gadgets. And drive... man, that thing drives like a million dollars. But it might take some

getting used to it. I went to open the hood to take a look at the motor and, you know, that hood

doesn't open. 'What you doing there?' this fellow asked me and I told him I wanted to look at the

motor. 'There isn't any need to,' this fellow says. 'Nothing ever goes wrong with it. You never

need to get at it.' 'But,' I asked him, 'wnere do you put in the oil?' And you know what he said?

Well, sir, he said you don't put in no oil. 'All you put in is gasoline,' he tells me.

"I'll have a dozen or so of them in within a day or so," said Eb, "You better let me save you

one."

Vickers shook his head. "I'm short on money."

"That's another thing about it. This company gives you good trade-in value. I figure I could

give you a thousand for that wreck of yours."

"It's not worth a thousand, Eb."

"I know it's not. Fellow says, 'Give them more than they're worth. Don't worry about what you

give them. We'll make it right with you.' It doesn't exactly seem the smart way to do business,

come to think about it, but if that's the way they want to operate I won't say a word against it."

"I'd have to think about it."

"That would leave five hundred for you to pay. And I can make it easy on you. Fellow said I

should make it easy. Says they aren't so much interested in the money right now as getting a few

of them Forever cars out, running on the road."

"I don't like the sound of it," protested Vickers. "Here this company springs up over night

with no announcement at all with a brand new car. You'd think there would have been something in

the papers about it. If I were putting out a new car, I'd plaster the country with advertising...

big ads in the newspapers, announcements on television, billboards every mile or so."

"Well, you know," said Eb, "I thought of that one, too. I said, look, you fellows want me to

sell this car and how am I going to sell it when you aren't advertising it? How am I going to sell

it when no one knows about it? And he said that they figured the car was so good everyone would up

and tell everybody else. Said there isn't any advertising that can beat word of mouth. Said they'd

rather save the money they put in advertising and cut down the cost of the car. Said there was no

reason to make the consumer pay for the cost of an advertising campaign."

"I can't understand it."

"It does sort of hit you that way," Eb admitted. "This gang that's putting out the Forever car

isn't losing any money on it, you can bet your boots on that. Be crazy if they did. And if they

aren't losing any money at it, can you imagine what the rest of them companies have been making

all these years, two or three thousand for a pile of junk that falls apart second time you take it

out? Makes you shiver to think of the money they been making, don't it?"

"When you get the cars in," said Vickers, "I'll be down to take a look at them. We might make

a deal, at that."

"Sure," said Eb. "Be sure to do that. You say you was going to the city?"

Vickers nodded.

"Be a bus along any minute now," said Eb. "Catch it down at the drugstore corner. Get you

there in a couple of hours. Those fellows really wheel it."

"I guess I could take a bus. I never thought of it."

"I'm sorry about the car," said Eb. "If I'd known you was going to use it, I'd have fixed her

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up. Not much wrong with it. But I wanted to see what you thought about this other deal before I

run you up a bill."

The drugstore corner looked somehow unfamiliar and Vickers puzzled about it as he walked down

the Street toward it. Then, when he got closer, he saw what it was that was unfamiliar.

Several weeks ago old Hans, the shoe repairman, had taken to his bed and died and the shoe

repair shop, which had stood next to the drugstore for almost uncounted years, finally had been

closed.

Now it was open again - or, at least, the display window had been washed, something which old

Hans had never bothered to do in all his years, and there was a display of some sort. And there

was a sign. Vickers had been so intent on figuring out what was wrong with the window that he did

not see the sign until he was almost even with the store. The sign was new and neatly lettered and

it said GADGET SHOP.

Vickers stopped before the window and looked at what was inside. A layer of black velvet had

been laid along the display strip and arranged upon it were three items - a cigarette lighter, a

razor blade and a single light bulb. Nothing else.

Just those three items. There were no signs, no advertising, no prices. There was no need of

any. Anyone who saw that window, Vickers knew, would recognize the items, although the store would

not sell only those. There would be a couple of dozen others, each of them in its own way as

distinguished and efficient as the three lying on the strip of velvet.

There was a tapping sound along the walk and Vickers turned when it came close to him. It was

his neighbor, Horton Flanders, out for his morning walk, with his slightly shabby, carefully

brushed clothes and his smart malacca cane. No one else, Vickers told himself, would have the

temerity to carry a cane along the streets of Cliffwood.

Mr. Flanders saluted him with the cane and moved in to stand beside him and stare at the

window.

"So they're branching out," he said.

"Apparently," Vickers agreed.

"Most peculiar outfit," said Mr. Flanders. "You may know, although I presume you don't, that I

have been most interested in this company. Just a matter of curiosity, you understand. I am

curious, I might add, about many different things."

"I hadn't noticed." Vickers said.

"Oh, my, yes," said Mr. Flanders. "About so many things. About the carbohydrates, for

instance. Most intriguing setup, don't you think so, Mr. Vickers?"

"I hadn't given it much thought. I have been so busy that I'm afraid..."

"There's something going on," said Mr. Flanders. "I tell you that there is."

The bus came down the street, passed them and braked to a stop at the drugstore corner.

"I'm afraid I shall have to leave you, Mr. Flanders," Vickers said. "I'm going to the city. If

I'm back tonight, why don't you drop over."

"Oh, I will," Mr. Flanders told him. "I nearly always do."

CHAPTER FOUR

IT had been the blade at first, the razor blade that would not wear out. And after that the

lighter that never failed to light, that required no flints and never needed filling. Then the

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light bulb that would burn forever if it met no accident. Now it was the Forever car.

Somewhere in there, too, would be the synthetic carbohydrates.

There is something going on, Mr. Flanders had said to him, standing there in front of old

Hans' shop.

Vickers sat in his seat next to the window, well back in bus, and tried to sort it out in his

mind.

There was a tie-up somewhere - razor blades, lighters, light bulbs, synthetic carbohydrates

and now the Forever car. Somewhere there must be a common denominator to explain why it should be

these five items and not five other things, say roller curtains and pogo sticks and yo-yos and

airplanes and toothpaste. Razor blades shaved a man and light bulbs lit his way and a cigarette

lighter would light a cigarette and the synthetic carbohydrates had ironed out at least one

international crisis and had saved some millions of people from starvation or war.

There is something going on, Flanders had said, standing there in neat, but shabby clothes and

with that ridiculous stick clutched in his fist, although, come to think of it, it was not

ridiculous when Mr. Flanders held it.

The Forever car would run forever and it used no oil and when you died you willed it to your

son and when he died he willed it to his son and if your great-great-grandfather bought one of the

cars and you were the eldest son of the eldest son of the eldest son you would have it, too. One

car would outlast many generations.

But it would do more than that. It would close every automotive plant in a year or so; it

would shut down most of the garages and repair shops; it would be a blow to the steel industry and

the glass industry and the fabric makers and perhaps a dozen other industries as well.

The razor blade hadn't seemed important, nor the light bulb, nor the lighter, but now they

suddenly all were. Thousands of men would lose their jobs and they would come home and face the

family and say: "Well, this is it. After all these years I haven't got a job."

The family would go about their everyday affairs in tight and terrible silence, with a queer

air of dread hanging over them, and the man would buy all the newspapers and study the want ad

columns, then go out and walk the streets and men in little cages or at desks in the outer offices

would shake their heads at him.

Finally the man would go to one of those little places that had the sign "Carbohydrates, Inc."

over its door and he would shuffle in with the embarrassment of a good workman who cannot find a

job, and he would say, "I'm a little down on my luck and the cash is running low. I wonder..."

The man behind the desk would say, "Why, sure, how many in your family?" The man would tell

him and the one who was at the desk would write on a slip of paper and hand it to him. "That

window over there," he'd say. "I figure there's enough there to last you for a week, but if there

isn't be sure to come back anytime you want to."

The man would take the slip of paper and try to say his thanks, but the carbohydrates man

would brush them easily aside and say, "Look, now, that's what we're here for. This is our

business, helping guys like you."

The man would go to the window and the man behind the window would look at the slip of paper

and hand him packages and one package would be synthetic stuff that tasted like potatoes and

another one would taste like bread and there would be others that would make you think you were

eating corn or peas.

That was what had happened before, that was what was happening all the time.

It wasn't like relief - anyhow, you could say it wasn't like relief. These carbohydrates

people didn't ever insult you when you came to ask for help. They treated you like a paying

customer and they always said that you should come back and sometimes when you didn't they came

around to see what had happened - if maybe you had got a job or were bashful about coming in

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again. If it turned out that you were bashful, they'd sit down and talk to you and before they

left they had you thinking you were doing them a favor by taking the carbohydrates off their

hands.

Because of the carbohydrates millions who would have died were still alive in India and in

China. Now the thousands who would lose their jobs when the automotive plants shut down and the

steel mills curtailed their operations and the repair shops shut their doors, would travel the

same trail to the doors with the carbohydrates sign.

The automotive industry would have to shut down. No one would buy any other car when you could

walk down the street and buy one that would last forever. Just as the razor blade industry was

already closing its doors, now that it was possible to get an everlasting blade at the gadget

shops, The same thing was happening with light bulbs and with cigarette lighters and the chances

were, Vickers told himself, that the Forever car wasn't the last that would be heard from these

manufacturers, whoever they might be.

For it must be, he told himself, that those who made the razor blades also made the lighters

and the light bulbs, and that those who made the gadget items must have designed the Forever car.

Not the same companies, perhaps, although he couldn't know, for it had never occurred to him to

try to find out who had made any of them

The bus was filling up, but Vickers still sat staring out the window and sorting out his

thoughts.

Just behind him a couple of women were talking and, without consciously trying to eavesdrop,

he picked up their words.

One of them giggled and said, "We have the _most_ interesting group. So _many_ interesting

people in it."

And the other woman said, "I been thinking about joining one of those groups, but Charlie, he

says it's all baloney. Says we're living in America in the year 1977 and there's no reason in the

world why we should pretend we aren't. Says this is the best country and the best time the world

has ever known. Says we got all the modern conveniences and everything. Says we're happier than

people ever been before. Says this pretending business is just a lot of communist propaganda and

he'd like to get hold of the ones that got it started. Says...

"Oh, I don't know," interrupted the first woman. "It _is_ kind of fun. It takes a _lot_ of

work, of course, reading about them old times and all of that, but you get something out of it, I

guess. One fellow was saying at a meeting the other night you get out of it what you put into it

and I guess he's right. But I don't seem to be able to put much into it. I guess I must be the

flighty type, I'm not too good a reader and I don't understand too well and I got to have a lot

explained to me, but there are them as get a lot of it, seems like. There's a man in our group

living bad in London, back in the times of a man named Samuel Peeps. I don't know who this Peeps

was, but I guess he was an important man or something. You don't know who Peeps was, do you

Gladys?'

"Not me," said Glady.

"Well, anyhow," continued the other, "this fellow, he talks the time about this Peeps. 'He

wrote a book, this Peeps, it must be an awful long book because he tells about so many things.

This man I was telling you about writes the most wonderful diary. We always like to have him read

it to us. You know, it sounds almost as if he was _really_ living there".

The bus stopped for a railroad crossing and Vickers glanced at his watch. They'd be in the

city in another half an hour.

It was a waste of time, he told himself. No matter what sort of scheme Ann had up her sleeve,

it would be a waste of time, for he was not going to allow anything to interrupt his writing. He

shouldn't have allowed himself to be talked into wasting even this one day.

Back of him, Gladys was saying, "Did you hear about these new houses they're putting out. I

was talking to Charlie about them the other night and I was saying maybe we ought to look into

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them. Our place is getting kind of shabby, you know, and we'll have to paint it and sort of fix it

up, but Charlie he said that it was a sucker game of some sort. He said no one would put out them

kind of houses on the sort of deal they offer without there was a catch somewhere. Charlie, he

said he was too old a hand to be taken in by something like them houses. Mabel, have you seen any

of them houses or read anything about them..."

"I was telling you," Mabel persisted, "about this group I belong to. One of the fellows is

pretending that he's living in the future. Now, I ask you, ain't that a laugh. Imagine anyone

pretending he's living in the future..."

CHAPTER FIVE

OUTSIDE the door, Ann Carter stopped and said, "Now, please remember, Jay, his name is

Crawford. You're not to call him Cranford or Crawham or any other name but Crawford."

Vickers said humbly, "I'll do my very best."

She came close to him and tightened his tie and straightened it and flicked some imaginary

dust off his lapel.

"We're going out as soon as this is over and buy you a suit," she said.

"I have a suit," said Vickers.

The letters on the door read: North American Research.

"What I can't understand," protested Vickers, "is why North American Research and I should

have anything in common."

"Money," said Ann. "They have it and you need it." She opened the door and he followed her in

obediently, thinking what a pretty woman she was and how efficient. Too efficient. She knew too

much. She knew books and publishers and what the public wanted and she was onto all the angles.

She drove herself and everyone around her. She was never so happy as when three telephones were

ringing and there were five dozen letters to be answered and a dozen calls to make. She had

bullied him into coming here this day and it was not beyond reason, he told himself, that she had

bullied Crawford and North American Research into wanting him to come.

"Miss Carter," said the girl at the desk, "you can go right in. Mr. Crawford is waiting for

you."

She's even got the Indian sign on the receptionist, Vickers thought.

CHAPTER SIX

GEORGE Crawford was a big man who overflowed the chair in which he sat. He held his hands

folded over his paunch and talked with no change of tone, with no inflection whatsoever, and was

the stillest man Vickers had ever seen. There was no movement in him nor any sense of movement. He

sat huge and stolid and his lips scarcely moved and his voice was not much louder than a whisper.

"I have read some of your work, Mr, Vickers," he said. "I am impressed by it."

"I am glad to hear you say so," Vickers said.

"Three years ago, I never would have thought that I would ever read a piece of fiction or be

talking to its author. Now, however, I find that we need a man like you. I have talked it over

with my directors and we are all agreed that you are the man who could do the job for us."

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file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/SIMAK,%20Clifford%20D.%20-%20Ring%20Around%20the%20Sun.txtTitle:RingAroundtheSunAuthor:CliffordD.SimakOriginalcopyrightyear:1952Genre:sciencefictionComments:Tomyknowledge,thisistheonlyavailablee-textofthissto y.Isearchedforthisbookwithoutsuccessinallthelibrariesan...

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