The First Reginald Bretnor MEGAPACK ®. Reginald Bretnor

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СКАЧАТЬ as they left, he slipped the copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese into his pocket.

      “Well, now that we’ve sort of lost Cousin Aurelia,” said Betty, “I wish I could have one of these adorable animals on Sugar Plum for my very own. As a pet, you know. It might help as a substitute for Cousin Aurelia’s company.”

      “And what’s wrong with me for a substitute?” Charles wanted to know. “It seems to me that you can forget Cousin Aurelia for a change and give me a little consideration.”

      She looked at him appraisingly and then at her watch.

      “I never thought of that,” she said. “It’s time for bed.”

      Later, she sat up, studied him hard for a moment, and shook her head wistfully.

      “Oh, Charles, you’d be perfect,” she said, “if you only had lavender ears.”

      “That shouldn’t be much trouble,” he answered gravely. “I’ll signal a passing spaceship, get to New Texas and have my ears tattooed. Good enough?”

      She nuzzled against his neck.

      “Wonderful, darling. It would make you look so—so Bohemian!”

      It was the finest compliment Charles had ever received.

      GNURRS COME FROM THE VOODVORK OUT

      When Papa Schimmelhorn heard about the war with Bobovia, he bought a box-lunch, wrapped his secret weapon in brown paper, and took the first bus straight to Washington. He showed up at the main gate of the Secret Weapons Bureau shortly before midday, complete with box-lunch, beard, and bassoon. That’s right—bassoon. He had unwrapped his secret weapon. It looked like a bassoon. The difference didn’t show.

      Corporal Jerry Colliver, on duty at the gate, didn’t know there was a difference. All he knew was that the Secret Weapons Bureau was a mock-up, put there to keep the crackpots out of everybody’s hair, and that it was a lousy detail, and that there was the whole afternoon to go before his date with Katie.

      “Goot morning, soldier boy!” bellowed Papa Schimmelhorn, waving the bassoon.

      Corporal Colliver winked at the two Pfc’s who were sunning themselves with him on the guardhouse steps. “Come back Chris’­mus, Santa,” he said. “We’re closed for inventory.”

      “No!” Papa Schimmelhorn was annoyed. “I cannot stay so long from vork. Also, I haff here a zecret veapon. Ledt me in.”

      The Corporal shrugged. Orders were orders. Crazy or not, you had to let ’em in. He reached back and pressed the loony-button, to alert the psychos just in case. Then, keys jangling, he walked up to the gate. “A secret weapon, huh?” he said, unlocking it. “Guess you’ll have the war all won and over in a week.”

      “A veek?” Papa Schimmelhorn roared with laughter. “Soldier boy, you vait! It iss ofer in two days! I am a chenius!”

      As he stepped through, Corporal Colliver remembered regulations and asked him sternly if he had any explosives on or about his person.

      “Ho-ho-ho! It iss nodt necessary to haff exblosives to vin a var! Zo all right, you zearch me!”

      The corporal searched him. He searched the box-lunch, which contained one devilled egg, two pressed-ham sandwiches, and an apple. He examined the bassoon, shaking it and peering down it to make sure that it was empty.

      “Okay, Pop,” he said, when he had finished. “You can go on in. But you better leave your flute here.”

      “It iss nodt a fludt,” Papa Schimmelhorn corrected him. “It iss a gnurr-pfeife. And I must take it because it iss my zecret veapon.”

      The Corporal, who had been looking forward to an hour or so of trying to tootle Comin’ Through the Rye, shrugged philosophically. “Barney,” he said to one of the Pfc’s, “take this guy to Section Eight.”

      As the soldier went off with Papa Schimmelhorn in tow, he pressed the loony-button twice more just for luck. “Don’t it beat all,” he remarked to the other Pfc, “the way we gotta act like these nuts was top brass or something?”

      Corporal Colliver, of course, didn’t know that Papa Schim­melhorn had spoken only gospel truth. He didn’t know that Papa Schimmelhorn really was a genius, or that the gnurrs would end the war in two days, or that Papa Schimmelhorn would win it.

      Not then, he didn’t.

      At ten minutes past one, Colonel Powhattan Fairfax Pollard was still mercifully unaware of Papa Schimmelhorn’s existence.

      Colonel Pollard was long and lean and leathery. He wore Peal boots, spurs, and one of those plum-colored shirts which had been fashionable at Fort Huachuca in the ’twenties. He did not believe in secret weapons. He didn’t even believe in atomic bombs and tanks, recoilless rifles and attack aviation. He believed in horses.

      The Pentagon had called him back out of retirement to command the Secret Weapons Bureau, and he had been the right man for the job. In the four months of his tenure, only one inventor—a man with singularly sound ideas regarding packsaddles—had been sent on to higher echelons.

      Colonel Pollard was seated at his desk, dictating to his blond WAC secretary from an open copy of Lieutenant-General War­drop’s Modern Pigsticking. He was accumulating material for a work of his own, to be entitled Sword and Lance in Future Warfare. Now, in the middle of a quotation outlining the virtues of the Bengal spear, he broke off abruptly. “Miss Hooper!” he announced. “A thought has occurred to me!”

      Katie Hooper sniffed. If he had to be formal, why couldn’t he just say sergeant? Other senior officers had always addressed her as my dear or sweetheart, at least when they were alone. Miss Hooper, indeed! She sniffed again, and said, “Yes, sir.”

      Colonel Pollard snorted, apparently to clear his mind. “I can state it as a principle,” he began, “that the mania for these so-called scientific weapons is a grave menace to the security of the United States. Flying in the face of the immutable science of war, we are building one unproved weapon after another, counter-weapons against these weapons, counter-counter-weapons, and—and so on. Armed to the teeth with theories and delusions, we soon may stand defenseless, impotent—Did you hear me, Miss Hooper? Impotent—”

      Miss Hooper snickered and said, “Yessir.”

      “—against the onrush of some Attila,” shouted the Colonel, “some modern Genghis Khan, as yet unborn, who will sweep away our tinkering technicians like chaff, and carve his empire with cavalry—yes, cavalry, I say!—with horse and sword!”

      “Yessir,” said his secretary.

      “Today,” the Colonel thundered, “we have no cavalry! A million mounted moujiks could—”

      But the world was not destined to find out just what a million mounted moujiks could or could not do. The door burst open. From the outer office, there came a short, sharp squeal. A plump young officer catapulted across the room, braked to a halt before the Colonel’s desk, saluted wildly.

      “Oooh!” gasped Katie Hooper, staring with vast blue eyes.

      The Colonel’s face СКАЧАТЬ