Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
ORIGINS OF GALACTIC LAW
THE BIG CHEESE
ROOT OF EVIL
THE VOICES
THE WORLD IN THE JUKE BOX
THE SUPERSTITION SEEDERS
THE ENGRAMMAR AGE
UTTER SILENCE
ARMY WITHOUT BANNERS
SWEET DREAMS
DR. VICKERS’ CAR
NOTE FOR A TIME CAPSULE
OLD HAT
IOU
DEADLY GAME
COPYRIGHT INFO
The MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2015 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
****
The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
****
“Origins of Galactic Law” was originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1953.
“The Big Cheese” was originally published in Imagination, May 1953.
“Root of Evil” was originally published in Science Stories, December 1953.
“The Voices” was originally published in Universe, March 1954.
“The World in the Juke Box” was originally published in Infinity, August 1956.
“The Superstition Seeders” was originally published in Infinity, December 1956.
“The Engrammar Age” was originally published in Infinity, February 1957.
“Utter Silence” was originally published in Infinity, February 1957.
“Army Without Banners” was published in Galaxy, April 1957.
“Sweet Dreams” was originally published in Infinity, July 1957.
“Dr. Vickers’ Car” was originally published in Infinity, October 1957.
“Note for a Time Capsule” was originally published in Infinity, March 1958.
“Old Hat” was originally published in Amazing Stories, May 1958.
“IOU” was originally published in If, March 1961.
“Deadly Game” was originally published in If, May 1962.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Edward Paul Wellen (1919-2011) wrote primarily short stories throughout his long career, primarily
in both the mystery field, but also (especially early in his career) in science fiction magazines. This is
the second collection of his science fiction stories we have published, and it’s another good one.
Enjoy!
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor.
(Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep
getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at
Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn
Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s
authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is
perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our
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Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market
for new works.
TYPOS
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If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at
[email protected] or use the message boards above.
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
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THE GOLDEN AGE OF PULP FICTION
1. George Allan England
THE GOLDEN AGE OF MYSTER AND CRIME
1. Fletcher Flora
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THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION
1. Winston K. Marks
2. Mark Clifton
3. Poul Anderson
4. Clifford D. Simak
5. Lester del Rey (vol. 1)
6. Charles L. Fontenay
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8. Milton Lesser (Stephen Marlowe)
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28. Edward Wellen (Vol. 2)
THE GOLDEN AGE OF WEIRD FICTION
1. Henry S. Whitehead
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X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
ORIGINS OF GALACTIC LAW
Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1953.
Principle of self-punishment: provided the court concurs, any person pleading guilty to a crime
may choose the punishment he deems fitting. (People v. Kilgore, 3380, 84 Un. 793)
Paul Kilgore was a Terran pilot who was scheduled to make the first solo hop, in a faster-than-light
craft, from Pluto to Alpha Centauri. Celebrating the coming event at the Universal Joint, a spacemen’s
hangout on Mars, he met a former shipmate. He testified at his trial that, after a nebulous number of
Venus vapor cocktails, he agreed to drop his friend off at Pluto.
Kilgore said that while they were passing through the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter, he
discovered that the flap of the kit attached to his uniform was open. Anxiously, he felt in the pocket. It
was empty. His doppler pills, compounded especially for his projected flight, were missing. He
testified that he searched the entire ship and failed to find the pills. Then, with growing suspicion and
rage, he looked at his snoring passenger.
He shook the limp figure of his friend and angrily asked if the latter had swallowed the pills. The
friend made no answer except a foolish grin. Kilgore claimed that this was too much for him.
Vengefully, he jammed his friend into a spacesuit and dumped him on one of the 50,000 or more milethick asteroids. Each pill, Kilgore testified, would hold up metabolism across 130 light-years. Long
before the drug wore off, Kilgore said he believed, someone would come across his sleeping friend.
Still fuming, Kilgore returned to Mars for a new supply of the pills. His first stop was the Universal
Joint. He testified that the bartender seemed glad to see him and handed him a small pill box.
The bartender said that Kilgore had dropped it there.
When it came time for the judge to pronounce sentence, Kilgore asked to be allowed to impose his
own punishment. The judge was surprised, but he heard Kilgore out. And he sanctioned the penalty, a
harsher penalty than he had intended to impose. Kilgore spent the remainder of his life hunting the
sleeping body of the man he had marooned on one of the myriad asteroids.
Psychic guilt: fitting the punishment to the criminal supersedes fitting the punishment to the
crime. (People v. Nica, 3286, 70 Un. 1245)
In the lobby of the Jovian hostel at which he was staying, Bor Nica, a Sagittarian, brushed against
another guest, an Antarean. The Antarean, being unused to the gravity of Jupiter, fell and bruised
himself considerably. When he had struggled up again, however, instead of rebuking Nica for jostling
him and not offering to assist him to his feet, he passed the incident off lightly. He was about to hop
on his way again when Nica, in an insane rage, felled him with a blow. This time the fall was fatal.
Nica, instead of trying to escape, waited expectantly beside the body until a nickel led him off to
detention. (Note: by 2012 U.E., inflation had caused nickel to replace copper as the designation for an
officer of the law.) There he remained, happily awaiting trial, until word reached him that the widow
of the Antarean he had murdered harbored no hatred for him, and had indeed forgiven him.
Infuriated, Nica broke out of his cell, located the widow and killed her, too. Again he waited beside
the body of his victim. And again he not only did not resist arrest, but seemed to welcome it.
Smiling, he pleaded guilty to both murders and listened eagerly for the verdict. But the judge
deferred passing sentence until sociologists could go into Nica’s background for a clue to his
seemingly illogical actions.
They found that Nica’s society had stabilized itself on a mass psychosis. Because of atrocities his
people had committed in their history, they had piled up a vast unpaid debt of guilt. This weighed so
heavily on them that every normal individual in Nica’s society had a compulsion to seek punishment.
The judge studied this report. He reasoned that the greatest punishment Nica could receive would be
no punishment. Any penalty he could impose would only gratify Nica instead of punishing him.
Therefore he set Nica free. Frantic, Nica appealed the court’s judgment, but in vain. The Galactic
Tribunal held that he could not place himself in double jeopardy. The Jovians deported Nica to his
home planet. There he remained an outcast because of his humiliating failure to obtain the punishment
they all sought. His honor was not restored until he bribed a passing Cygnian to shoot him in a
carefully contrived hunting accident.
Pro rata sentencing: terms of penal servitude are to be based upon comparative life expectancy .
People v. Gund, 3286, 70 Un. 1245)
In the park on the vacation satellite orbiting around Altair VII was the body of a Vegan, beaten to
death. Beside him lay the carcass of his pet ululu, also beaten to death. Erdo Gund, a Procyoni,
voluntarily gave himself up. At his trial, Gund’s deposition, which he had signed by impressing his
noseprint, was offered in evidence by the prosecutor.
In this deposition, Gund admitted killing the pet’s master—but not the pet. In fact, he stated, his
motive for killing the master was the anger he felt when he saw the Vegan brutally beating the pet. He
struck the Vegan down, when the cumulative effect of witnessing nearly two hours of the master’s
cruelty and the pet’s pain had proved unbearable.
At this point the judge interrupted the reading of the deposition. He said he had understood other
witnesses to state that the Vegan’s fatal beating of the ululu had lasted only ten minutes at most.
The prosecutor said that His Honor was correct in his understanding. But, he said, the deposition was
accurate, too. He explained to the judge that, to the Terran-type observer, the Procyoni’s span of life
averaged two Earth years. In that length of time, the Procyoni lived—subjectively—as long as a
centenarian Earthman.
The prosecutor further said that in view of all the circumstances, he was of the opinion that Gund
could not plead “not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.” However, added the prosecutor, he
would ask His Honor to be lenient and take into account the temporal differential.
The judge followed the prosecutor’s recommendation and sentenced Gund to 30 Earth hours of
psychic guilt.
Semantic jurisprudence: that branch of the law which systematizes forensic debate on questions
of meaning. (U. of Venus v. Vac. Inc. et al., 2937, 63 Un. 8451)
Vac., Inc., was a Terran corporation, supplying the vacuum of space for use in laboratory research.
At its plant on Luna, it manufactured its product by welding two duralloy hemispheres lip to lip and
thus sealing a vacuum inside the globe they formed.
One container in a shipment to the University of Venus proved to be defective. The University sued
for damages resulting from sudden failure of the built-in valve. These damages included the tearing of
the elbow-beard of a visiting Ganymedean professor, which had been sucked into the globe.
Attorney for the defendants asked for dismissal of the suit on the grounds that a vacuum was
nothing, and that when both parties to the action had stipulated the loss of a vacuum, the plaintiff in
effect admitted losing nothing. In support of this contention, attorney for the defandants exhibited the
advertising slogan of Vac., Inc., “Nothing—but the best!”
Attorney for the plaintiff countered the dismissal motion by stating that if this were true, then the
defendants were confessing to the inequity of giving nothing in exchange for good hard cash.
However, attorney for the plaintiff argued, no absolute vacuum exists in all space, there being a
minimum of twelve molecules per cubic foot in the emptiest reaches. Therefore, she claimed, there is
nothing in the Universe which one might name “nothing.”
That last statement, attorney for the defendants replied scornfully, was self-contradictory. “Nothing”
exists, he said; the space between the molecules is “nothing.”
Quickly, attorney for the plaintiff exclaimed that now her learned opponent was arguing on the side
of her client by agreeing that “nothing” is something.
At this point the judge wearily recessed court, declaring that he intended to damp his brain waves
with tonic chord therapy.
As soon as court reconvened, the judge asked if either party objected to the swearing in of a panel of
semanticists. There was no objection. And so, before deciding on the dismissal motion, the judge
submitted the problem to the panel.
With a squad of burly bailiffs keeping order among the venerable semanticists, the question finally
came to a vote.
The majority decided that a vacuum is “something.”
The judge denied the defendants’ motion for dismissal, heard the case, and found for the plaintiff.
He awarded to the University 40 million credits. But legal expenses and the adverse publicity
bankrupted Vac., Inc.
It paid nothing.
Law of identity: any judgment of the court is a true judgment in all succeeding cases where the
circumstances are the same. (Smith v. General Teletote, 3016, 24 Un. 612)
Jak Smith, a clerk in the Titan branch of the First Solar Bank & Trust Co., filed a civil suit against
General Teletote. He sought to recover damages for, injuries he had sustained while utilizing the
facilities of the passenger division of that firm.
Under a governmental Class F priority (his heart could not stand the strain of spaceship travel), he
had returned to his native Terra via teletote. He charged General Teletote with garbling him in
transmission.
General Teletote admitted that its tri-dimensional scanner had reassembled Smith improperly.
The firm also conceded that its Terran operator had been out on a panjo drunk, leaving the receptor
controls untended and incorrectly adjusted—permitting electronic snow to piebald Smith.
But though it acknowledged its carelessness, General Teletote firmly disclaimed any liability. It
produced the customary waiver that Smith had signed prior to transmission, absolving General
Teletote of all responsibility for mishap in transit and/or upon reception.
Smith replied that as he was now obviously not the same individual who had signed the waiver, its
terms were not binding on him.
General Teletote answered that if Smith was not the same individual, he could not claim damages in
the other’s name.
Having studied the briefs, the Galactic Tribunal ruled that even by the signing of a waiver, an
individual cannot divest himself of his inalienable right to his own identity.
Smith had just won his case when the “ghost image” of Smith came forward, pressing claims for a
like award. To prove these claims, the ghost image produced witnesses who testified that Smith2 had
emerged from the receptor shortly after Smith1, although records failed to show any other
transmission scheduled for that time and place.
Smith1 struggled for sole possession of his identity. He sided with General Teletote in its attempts
to disprove Smith2’s physical appearance by saying that the latter was merely a partial albino who
saw a good chance to cash in on the accidental resemblance.
The battle ended suddenly one day in court when the judge intervened, pointing out that both had
equally good evidence, that there was no doubt that they were the same man, and asked them to effect
a compromise. Otherwise, the judge explained, the case would result in a deadlock. Smith1 and
Smith2, quickly came to a settlement.
The two set up a partnership with the credits they collected and established a firm which became the
foremost competitor of General Teletote.
Doctrine of excusable fraud: deception, when welcomed by the victimized party, comes within the
realm of caveat emptor. (Based on a quashed indictment, 3426 U.E.)
Until he worked his great coup, Conway Limbeck was a minor criminal preying on the gullibleminded and larcenous-hearted. He sold interests in a formula for synthesizing ambidextrose sugar. For
years he thrived on this formula, which was more than his victims could claim. At the time he
dreamed up his brilliant stroke, he was chief steward aboard a Sirius-bound liner. Thanks to forged
credentials, he was making a getaway in the most comfortable style.
While the liner was approaching Sirius XIII, a passenger gave Limbeck a fifty credit tip. Limbeck
examined the note. It gave him ideas. He stole into the chart room and trimmed the blank edges from
the astronautical maps. These plastic strips had the official heat mark imbedded in them. Then
Limbeck burgled enough photo supplies to counterfeit the strips into notes amounting to Cr. 3 trillion.
When the liner landed on Sirius XIII, Limbeck hastened to the Presidential Shack. Convincing
credentials vouching for Limbeck as representative plenipotentiary of the Io Trading Trust gained him
immediate admittance. After the ceremonial somersaults were exchanged, Limbeck announced that
the Trust had authorized him to negotiate for that season’s output of tumul.
The President was hard-of-smelling until the interpreter wafted that Limbeck had finally raised his
offer to Cr. 21/2 trillion. When he gave vent to his great satisfaction, the President nearly bowled
Limbeck over.
Limbeck chartered a vessel with his remaining Cr. 1/2 trillion and took off with his precious
payload. His vessel had hardly come out of synergy when the Siriutes realized that Limbeck had jetted
a fast one on them. A Sirius XIII patrol intercepted and boarded Limbeck’s vessel. Limbeck’s heart
sank as he faced the boarding party. Then to his amazement he scented that the Siriutes were emitting
friendly laughs. Their leader passed over a new agreement for Limbick to sign. It was a contract for
tumul futures.
In bewilderment, Limbeck read the terms. They were extremely favorable to him—especially the
explicit condition that he was to make payment in counterfeit credits only.
The Siriutes told him they valued the counterfeit more than the genuine. This fetish of theirs, they
explained, stemmed from the darkest age of their history, when a tyrant had set himself up through
fraud. The revolutionary fervor with which they at last overthrew him fired in them a passion for
skepticism. For this reason they treasured symbols of disbelief.
Limbeck was more than happy to sign the contract.
But news of the Sirius situation outsped his vessel and the GBI nailed him. However, the Galactic
Government had no evidence with which to pin the counterfeiting charge on Limbeck, as the proud
possessors of the fakes had hidden them and would not yield them up. The most that the government
could do was to put a brake on his future activities: It enjoined him from counterfeiting.
Sirius XIII demanded that Limbeck fulfill the contract. The Galactic Tribunal ruled that the contract
was illegal and invalid.
But the Secretary for Galactic defense privately informed Limbeck that he was anxious to see the
deal come off, as tumul was vital to defense. Limbeck, of course, was equal to the problem.
He arranged a secret rendezvous in deep space. The Siriutes and Limbeck exchanged tumul and
currency. After Limbeck’s departure, the Siriutes noticed an inscription beginning to appear in each of
the notes. The inscription read: GENUINE—PASSED AS COUNTERFEIT.
This double fraud doubly delighted the Siriutes and they gratefully bestowed upon Limbeck their
highest award.
The medal, of course, was made of synthetic platinum.
THE BIG CHEESE
Originally published in Imagination, May 1953.
Again and again the pinball machine went score-happy. And when Brownie ran up top score for the
214th time in a row I began to smell a rat. A large oily-brown rat. I watched him closely on the 215th
try.
He went through the complicated procedure of earning a slug, putting it in the slot, maneuvering the
plunger. And again he made a perfect score and his reward of a piece of cheese chuted out. He began
to nibble, pausing once to wink at me. And that resolved my last doubt: Brownie was using body
english.
Brownie was quite a cuss. Rattus norvegicus, to be exact. He was the product of selective breeding,
scion of myriads of rodent martyrs to science. But breeding, though it accounted for his extraordinary
size, was hardly the answer to his miraculous I.Q. Brownie was a mutant. Or was he? Sometimes I
think something out of space inhabited Brownie. Whatever the cause, the effect was becoming more
and more apparent as the tests progressed.
“Brownie,” I said reproachfully, “you tilted the machine.”
Brownie looked shocked at the accusation.
“Who, me?” he chalked on his slate.
“I don’t mean the rat in Lillian Russell’s hair.”
The doorbell rang.
Brownie went into a boxer’s crouch. He knew it always got a laugh.
But this time I said, “Save it, sport.” Under my breath, as I went to open the door, I said, “And I do
mean sport. Biological sport.”
“What’s that you’re muttering in your beard?” Isabel asked, after she’d kissed my clean-shaven face.
“It’s Brownie,” I said.
“What’s Brother Rat been up to now?”
“He’s cheating at pinball.”
“Well, what do you expect when you corrupt animal morals with your gambling devices? What do
you think the A.S.P.C.A. would have to say about that if they knew? By the way, dear, how much
longer are you going to keep Brownie under wraps?”
“I guess I can’t keep him on ice much longer, honey,” I said. “As it is, I’ve taken a big chance
keeping him here at home instead of in the school lab.”
Isabel looked at Brownie. He raised his eyes from his comic book and gazed at her unblinkingly.
Isabel shivered and moved closer to me.
“He scares me,” she whispered. “It isn’t right for a rat to read and write.”
I looked at Brownie absorbed in his comic book again. And I had to admit that Isabel had something
there.
“It is a blow to human pride,” I said. “But think of what it will mean to the theory of evolution. And
think of what it will mean to get a rat’s-eye view of man. And—”
“And think what it’ll mean to us if we miss the ski train,” Isabel said.
I looked at my watch.
“Gosh!” I said. “I’ll be right with you.” I walked over to Brownie’s cage. “Listen, Brownie,” I told
him, “I’m going away on a long weekend. There’s plenty of cheese in the machine and all the water
you want. Okay?”
Brownie nodded and we beat it.
****
In the dining-car, Isabel asked, “Doesn’t your Rodent Scholar rate a menu like this instead of just
cheese and water?”
I watched the poles flicker past.
“To tell the truth, Isabel,” I said, “I feel Brownie can get out of his cage whenever he wants to. I
think he’s been nipping at the Scotch I keep locked in the cabinet.”
We were mostly silent until the train mounted the hills. Then the sight of snow whitewashed our
minds.
****
But our minds darkened geometrically as the poles stepped off the miles back to town. In unspoken
agreement we headed straight for my house.
Brownie wasn’t in his cage. The cage wasn’t. Brownie had dismantled the equipment and
cannibalized it into something else.
A miniature tank, strangely resembling a pinball machine, rumbled toward us as we entered. And the
small cannon set in the turret motioned us over against the wall.
The tank backed off. The lid lifted and Brownie popped up. He had on a battle helmet, nee stainless
steel pot.
“Brownie,” I said, “what’s the big idea?”
He pointed to my left. And I noticed a message lettered on the wall.
“Your girlfriend will come with me,” it said. “She’ll be all right if you do as I say. Don’t move. I’ll
be back soon.”
“Now, wait a minute, Brownie,” I said.
But his head disappeared and the lid clanged shut. And the tank began to roll. The way the gun drew
a bead on Isabel’s heart drew beads from my forehead.
“Better humor him, honey,” I said.
Brownie marched Isabel out. I started to follow. But the gun turret spun around and a slug whizzed
past my head. I advanced in the other direction.
All I could do was wait until he returned. No! There were things I could do in the meantime. What?
Well, if Brownie intended to use my home as his base of operations, he might sooner or later sample
my Scotch again. I spiked the Scotch with rat poison. What else? Of course, the police!
The voice of a desk veteran answered the phone.
“Fourteenth precinct. Sergeant Martin.”
“Sergeant, a rat kidnapped my girl!”
“Calm down, mister. Now give me the facts. Who, where, when. What’s this guy look like?”
I told him.
“A real rat, huh? And he’s in a little armored car? And he’s dangerous? I see. Well, you just sit tight,
mister. I’m giving the case to Detective Cann right away.”
I got sore. I have cop friends and so I know “Detective Cann” is cop talk for the wastebasket. I
blistered the wires.
“Calm down, mister… The voice was going on but I wasn’t listening.
Nosing ground the door was the snout of the gun mounted on Brownie’s tank. I hung up. The tank
swung into the room and rolled to a stop.
When Brownie showed himself again, I asked, “What have you done with Isabel?”
Brownie pointed to a stack of leaves torn from a calendar. They were face down. On the back of the
top one was the answer to my question:
“The girl is a hostage. She is in a safe place.”
“What ransom do you want? Cheese? I’ll give you all the cheese you want, Brownie.”
The answer to that was on the second leaf: “I want you to help me raise and train an army of Rats.”
The third leaf said: “The girl dies if you refuse.”
The fourth leaf said: “I mean to rule the world.”
Those damned comic books! Plainly, I had to scotch his plans now.
“Okay, Brownie,” I said. “Let’s drink on it.” I unlocked the cabinet and took out the Scotch.
I filled a shot glass for Brownie and set it on the floor. I moved away and poured a glass for myself.
Brownie waited for me to drink first.
I took a deep breath and drank. Brownie stepped out of the tank. He sipped his drink, keeping his
beady eyes on me. I let him empty the glass before I spoke, “Brownie, that drink was poisoned.” And
as I said the words I felt the poison work on me, twisting my insides. Brownie got it then, too. His
twitching body and whipping tail showed it. I was in agony. “Brownie, if you tell me where Isabel is
I’ll give you an antidote.”
Giddily, Brownie found chalk and scrawled on the floor, “How do I know it’s not more poison?”
“I’ll take a dose of it myself,” I said.
“All right,” he wrote.
Quickly I got an emetic and swallowed a dose. For a bad moment I was sick all over the place. Then
I felt better.
“Now,” I said weakly, “tell me where she is.”
“Tied to tree in woods behind house quick the antidote!”
I gave Brownie the emetic. I’d promised it to him.
He drank it, then scurried back to the tank. Holding me off with the gun, he chalked on the turret:
“You fool! Now you die. Nothing will stop me—”
Brownie doubled up in pain.
“Rats can’t vomit,” I said. “This is it, you rat.”
Brownie looked at me. “You man,” he wrote, and died.
ROOT OF EVIL
Originally appeared in Science Stories, December 1953.
No one, it seems, can explain away the vanishing of Wilmer Kootz without dragging in the
supernatural by its bedraggled tail. No one, that is, if you leave out me. And because I know you want
to weigh the evidence for yourself, I’ll give you the events leading up to the vanishing point—and let
you take it from there. Here goes:
I was leaning out of the window to look down at the figure struggling across the campus under a
heavy load. Dusk blurred everything in the scene into almost uniform grayness, but I got the feeling
that poor Wilmer was cracking up. I pulled my head back into the room as he doggedly moved with
his burden through the dormitory arch below. I returned to my seat and doodled sundry luscious
curves on my chemistry notes while waiting for him to stagger upstairs and into the room we shared.
He elbowed the door open and gave me a perfunctory nod. Before he could set the bushel basket
down it slipped from his weary grasp, tumbling out its contents as it crashed.
I clicked my pencil against my teeth. I examined my fingernails. I gazed at the ceiling. I cleared my
throat. I said, “Turnips.”
Wilmer busied himself wiping a film of sweat from his glasses. His naked eyes blinked rapidly. He
said softly, “I hope you don’t mind my bringing them here. I promise I’ll keep them out of your way.”
I was severely silent. Wilmer hurriedly replaced his glasses and peered at me. He evidently found
reassurance because a smile kneaded his doughy face. He stowed his jacket in his locker. On the way
back he looked over my shoulder at my notes. A puzzled frown crossed his countenance. “Hum,” he
said. “I must’ve dozed through part of today’s lecture.”
I watched him round up the turnips. Finally I said, “Wilmer, I can’t hold out any longer. Why
turnips? Or perhaps I’d better put it this way: why turnips?”
Wilmer’s instinctive look of sheepishness gave way to one of holy fanaticism. He lifted up a
maverick turnip and said, “You may not know that some vegetable tissue that grows at top speed
radiates a kind of energy, energy that stimulates living tissue. For instance, if you place a turnip root
at right angles to another root, with the tips one-fourth of an inch apart, the turnip will excite the
growth of the other vegetable. Result, the number of cells on the vegetable’s near side will increase by
as much as seventy percent. And I’m going to—” For no reason that I could figure, he let his voice
trail off.
I’d never thought of a turnip as being particularly exciting—even to another turnip. But Wilmer
Kootz seemed to be going overboard.
“Wilmer,” I said kiddingly, “some day I’ll tell my grandchildren, as the little tykes accumulate
around lovable old gramps, that I was the college chum of the great Kootz when he began his worldshaking turnip experiment.” So help me, his eyes gleamed moistly behind the thick lenses. And, as
always, I was surprised. Wilmer so bordered on caricature of the bespectacled, befuddled, bookish
type that I often had trouble thinking of him as a human being with human feelings. His pathetic
gratitude shamed me.
To break a mood that was embarrassing both of us, I said heartily, “What say we cook up a mess of
turnip greens, Wilmer?” He sprang protectingly in front of his turnips. Hastily I said, “After you’re
through with your experiment, of course. Wouldn’t harm them for the world, Wilmer.” He relaxed.
“What is your experiment? You didn’t finish telling me.”
But he was evasively vague, and I wasn’t sufficiently rapt about turnips to press him. And because
both of us were tired we soon hit the sack.
****
Wilmer was going through the motions of shaving his fledgling beard when I woke. I sat up in bed
and stretched my arms. I froze in the middle of a yawn.
On Wilmer’s pillow, a fraction of an inch from the impression of his head, a turnip reposed.
I cut into Wilmer’s cheery greeting. “Wilmer,” I said, “are you part of the experiment?”
His eyes flashed to the turnip then back to me defiantly. “Yes!”
I suppose I gaped; for the first time since I’d known him, Wilmer had shown something like temper.
“Sorry I flared,” he said more calmly. “I guess you had to find out sooner or later. And now you may
as well know it all.” He paused, but not for dramatic effect; Wilmer was histrionically anemic. He
visibly marshaled his thoughts, then said, “Just because I look the student, people think I’m brainy.
But my IQ is nowhere near the genius mark. You’ve no idea how I’ve sweated to get good grades, all
because my folks were always telling me what heights I’d reach some day. It’s a bitter thing to know
your own limitations—and have others expect more of you than those limitations will allow.”
I felt my face burn as I realized that what I’d taken for Wilmer’s pathetic gratitude the night before
could as easily have been an agony of humiliation if he had been aware that I was twitting him.
Wilmer was saying, “While I was in the library the other day I came across an old Science—the June
15, 1928 issue, I think. In it was an article called ‘Emission of Rays by Plant Cells;’ I’ve already told
you the gist of it. Well, this thought hit me: here’s this strange, untapped form of energy and here are
the inadequate twelve billion nerve cells in my brain…
“Now you know. I’m trying to increase my mental capacity so I can do things that are far beyond me
now, maybe even surpass Einstein.”
My first impulse was to laugh. Instead I said, and I meant every word, “Wilmer, I hope it works.”
And when a warm smile shined his face I found myself blinking hard.
****
In the following weeks the only noticeable change in Wilmer was the appearance of bags under his
eyes, the effect of nights spent uncomfortably rigid. It had become a ritual: Wilmer would ease his
head into a kind of clamp he’d rigged, then I’d strap his body to the bed, leaving his hands free, and
he’d hold a mirror to watch anxiously while I placed a turnip root exactly one quarter of an inch from
his right temple. Days and evenings Wilmer spent all his spare time testing fertilizers on the turnips
growing in the pots that had whittled down our lebensraum. Whew! I still remember the reek.
I could see no visible reason for Wilmer’s increasing cheerfulness, but one day he assured me that
he had narrowed the field to a particular breed of turnip. He said he felt “in tune” with it.
It was about two months after the beginning of the experiment. I was positioning a turnip when I
noticed a slight swelling of Wilmer’s temple. I asked the immobilized subject, “Bump yourself
today?”
He sounded surprised. “Why, no.”
I touched a finger gingerly to the spot. “Feel any soreness, Wilmer? Any pain?”
“No.” He reached up and prodded the swelling. And suddenly his skinny frame trembled with
emotion too big for it, and he said in a choked voice, “It’s begun! It’s begun!”
****
To forestall a lopsided development Wilmer decided to alternate the point of stimulus: one night the
right temple got the benefit of turnip emanations, the next night the left. And Wilmer continued to
respond. The swelling grew uniformly now, steadily but imperceptibly. You became aware of it only
when normal objects proved inadequate, as when Wilmer could no longer hook his glasses over his
ears. He held them in place with loops of string tied to the side-pieces, but he gave up wearing them
altogether when the flesh of his bulging brow began to overhang his eyes. The most outsize of hats
was soon unequal to the project of covering that shining dome. Shining, because Wilmer had lost hair
rapidly as his scalp expanded. That acreage was an inverted dust bowl, at the end of the third month.
Wilmer had to give up going to classes. His gait was too unsteady and the great bulbous head
bobbled dangerously on its pipe-stem support. I feared that his neck would snap, and I urged him to
recline in bed. He agreed willingly enough, because that meant he could undergo continuous turnipexcited cell development.
More than once I started to beg Wilmer to abandon the experiment, but always I fell silent when I
looked into the depths of his eyes. Beady little things as they now appeared to be, the thought of the
tremendous intelligence behind and almost enveloping them struck me dumb with awe and fear.
But it couldn’t last.
The campus was a bee-hive of rumor, and one day the dean dropped in. He ignored the clutter of the
room and directed his attention at the blank wall above Wilmer’s recumbent form.
“Kootz,” he said briskly, “I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t want to know. You’ll have to pack
up this—this equipment and leave. Whispers have begun to reach Senatorial ears that something queer
is going on here. We want no investigations, Kootz.” He whisked out.
He was a good old boy at heart, however, and he arranged for Wilmer to take sole charge of an
agricultural experimental sub-station out in the middle of nowhere.
Although I was sorry to see Wilmer go, now I was able to attack my studies fully. For the rest of the
semester I was busy making up for lost time, but as soon as exams were through I sped toward
Wilmer’s station. I felt both humble and exalted as I drove nearer to that mighty brain, for Wilmer
might prove to be the hope of the world.
****
The custodian stopped his lawn-mower and scratched an armpit thoughtfully. “Nope,” he said,
“come to think of it I ain’t seed that feller for couple-three weeks now. Always keeps to his-self. You
can look around, if you want.” He started his machine again.
In Wilmer’s living quarters I found only strewn clothes and a few rotting turnips. I started a tour of
the greenhouses, hoping to find him at work. I strolled through one given over to hydroponics
experiments. Neatly aligned tanks, containing a variety of growing plants, stretched to the far end of
the structure. As I passed, I glanced approvingly at the luxuriating vegetables. I paused before the
huge tank at the end.
There, with a vestigial expression of contentment, was the biggest turnip in the world.