Part 1

GRAVY TRAIN

By DANIEL F. GALOUYE

_Ever hear of evil fairies who grant three wishes? McWorther's was more efficient. One wish was plenty to bring catastrophe!_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

At one hundred and thirty, life was indeed gratifying for Titus McWorther. But for one missing detail, it would have been perfect.

With his wife, Edna, he had planned well for retirement. His idyllic estate consisted of a second-hand planetoid, thirty miles in circumference, which was the only habitable piece of matter in its system. Complete with supplementary gravity generator, a compact atmosphere, a mantle of lush topsoil and a carefully selected biota, McWorther's World was both his delight and his pride.

Its principal asset was, of course, its isolation.

Well away from the mainstream of galactic civilization, McWorther's Star was smugly hidden behind a dark nebula, through which he and Edna plunged twice a year to the fringe of the cluster--just to observe and mock convention, if for nothing else.

It was an ideal setup.

But, after two sedentary years, Titus realized he still needed one item to make his retirement complete. So he dispatched this tight-beamed message to the packet order department of Rear-Sobucks and Company in the West Cluster Federation's Hub City:

Dear Sir:

Please send one automatic bather with back-scrubbing attachment and toy boat docks, as listed in your videolog under order No. 4678-25C. Charge same to credit account No. W414754-B24D.

Sincerely yours, Titus McWorther, Potentate McWorther's World

He listed the coordinates of the star and the orbital factor of his planetoid.

* * * * *

Unfortunately, the hyper-spatial line between McWorther's World and the nearest relay center was partly coincident with the link to the politically noncommitted world of Gauyuth-VI.

This condition, together with the fact that components of a communication are sent by separate pulse, sometimes leads to the embarrassing phenomenon known as "message interfusion," which is retransmission of the right text with the wrong signature.

And it so happened that as Titus McWorther's order was en route, the system was also being burdened with this intelligence to the Ganymede Extension of the Western Cluster's State Department:

Dear Sir:

This will verify our agreement and authorize implementation of interstellar aid arrangements as set forth in conferences with your ambassador. If such arrangements produce mutual satisfaction, we will quite readily declare concurrence, in principle at least, with the political aims of the Western Cluster.

Respectfully yours, Ogarm Netath, Prime Minister Gauyuth-VI

Appended to the signature were the coordinates of Gauyuth and the orbital factor of its Number Six planet.

* * * * *

Wharton Hoverly, undersecretary of cosmic aid for the Western Cluster, plucked at his thick, gray mustache as he reread the space-o-gram.

He punched the videobox stud. "Mallston!"

The younger and more composed face of his assistant stared from the screen. "Yes, sir?"

"Anything yet?"

"Not a thing. We have no record of a--McWorther's World."

"What do you suppose?"

"Well, it seems authentic enough. We do know Ambassador Summerson has been working in that general area."

"And you think Summerson signed an aid agreement with this potentate?"

"I'd say the message speaks for itself."

Again, Hoverly worried his mustache. "Did you check with Summerson?"

"He's on extended leave."

"What do you think we ought to do?"

"McWorther's World must be a critical area. And evidently we're going to get what we want out of the deal, since the Potentate speaks of concurrence with Western Cluster aims."

Impatiently, the undersecretary glanced out the window. Ganymede was well out of the Jovian umbra now. If he didn't leave soon, he'd be late for his conference with the commerce department on Farside Luna.

"All right, Mallston," he said. "Put McWorther's World on a Class A aid schedule. That ought to hold the Potentate until Summerson gets back."

* * * * *

In the commercial section of Hub City, Rear-Sobucks and Company occupied a monstrous building whose emblematic tip pierced the clouds.

On the two hundredth floor, the twenty-seventh vice-president strode through the rail gate, tossed the secretary a "don't-bother-to-announce-me" glance and went on into the inner office of the twenty-sixth vice-president.

"Got something I thought you'd be interested in, V.R.," he told the limp-faced man behind the desk. "There may be a promotion angle."

"What is it?" V.R. asked, not exactly gripping his chair with anticipation.

The other placed the space-o-gram on the desk. "It's from an Ogarm Netath, _prime minister_ of a place called Gauyuth-Six. He wants an automatic bather."

V.R. extended a "so what?" glare.

"Don't you see? Big shots like that don't place personal orders. But here's one who thinks so much of a Rear-Sobucks item that he forgets all about convention."

"And so, Wheeler, you want to capitalize on his good name in some sort of promotion gimmick," V.R. said through taut lips.

Wheeler shrank. "But I thought--"

"Never mind what you thought. Fill his order. Send it compliments of--let's see, Gauyuth-Six is uncommitted--compliments of the Western Cluster."

* * * * *

It was a fine morning on McWorther's World. Cotton-candy clouds floated over the fields. Dreaming herons, balanced on slender legs, gave the shallows of the lake a tufted appearance. A delightful breeze, artificially generated at the equator, wafted flowering stalks and rocked the air car and spaceabout at their moorings.

Titus snorted on the veranda and reached for his julep. He was a chunky little man, with the ruddiness of good health tinting his face and overflowing onto his partly bald pate.

"Where are you, Titus?" an anxious voice disturbed the quiet of the house.

"Out here, Love."

Edna appeared in the doorway. Despite her age, there was still the fascination in her timeless eyes that had snared Titus more than ninety years ago.

"The chef burned the beans again," she said, frowning.

"Guess I'll have to fix it."

"You know it's not the cooker. It's that darned gravity."

He realized now it was a weight fluctuation that had nudged him from his nap.

"I've got it _set_ that way, Love," he explained. "We did not get clouds in the contract. But by varying the gravity control we can have them for nothing. It all has to do with atmospheric pressure."

Edna cast a resigned glance skyward. "If that's the way you want it--fleecy clouds and burnt beans--"

The guttural scream of braking jets rattled the windows and sent the herons winging for the safety of the other hemisphere. Hesitating on the fringe of the atmosphere, the freighter altered its approach and landed beside the house.

Titus went out to meet the skipper and his three assistants whose arms were filled with printed forms.

"You Potentate McWorther?" the skipper asked.

Titus smiled in embarrassment. "It's a gag. I just call myself that."

"We got your order," the other snapped. "Where do you want it?"

Titus' small eyes widened with an inner vision of the automatic bather--a vision which went on in speculation to dispose of the crude shower-masseur, for which he and Edna were getting a bit too old.

"If you'll put it on the veranda--" He paused and shouted back toward the house. "Edna, get out the grapplers. We're in business."

"Fun-ny," the skipper observed with dry derision. Then he signaled to his waiting assistants.

They came forward and, one by one, thrust their stacks of printed forms against Titus' chest. His arms came up in a reflex to accept the offerings. But, as the third assistant's contribution sent the stack soaring in front of his face, he went down under the weight.

When he had extricated himself from the mound of paper, the men had returned to their ship. And now its sides were folding down and scores of huge crates were drifting out on repulsor beams and fluttering to the ground.

Soon the freighter was gone and Edna was at his side.

"What _have_ you gotten us into now, Titus?"

"Honest, Love--I don't know."

Suddenly his ears were splitting with the thunderous roar of a thousand ships plunging down to the surface as far as he could see around the perimeter of his small world. Each pulled to a halt a few feet from the ground, opened its sides and disgorged vast mounds of crates and sacks, boxes and barrels, naked hills of coarse material that hissed like gravel as it spewed from chutes, gleaming masses of machinery.

Confounded, Titus seized one of the slips of paper. It was an invoice listing two hundred earth movers, seventy-five instant pavers, five hundred concrete mixers.

Matching his frown, Edna read a second sheet and demanded, "What on earth do you expect to do with a hundred thousand barrels of wheat germ oil? Four thousand kegs of eight-penny nails? Forty-five hundred tons of soybeans?"

* * * * *

At his secluded villa, Prime Minister Netath was entertaining his foreign minister, Ugaza Bataul.

Netath leaned against the terrace bar and proposed a toast. "To an era of plenty."

Bataul smiled. "At the expense of the Western Cluster."

They gulped the drinks and Netath stared down into his empty glass. "We're quite fortunate that the Western Cluster's aspirations are extending to this sector."

"As long as we can be sure that there won't be any _military_ advances." Bataul added the qualification with misgiving.

"Oh, there's no danger of that. Actually, we're lucky we didn't try to get on the Eastern Cluster's gravy train. We'd have had to make a lot of concessions."

Heralding its own approach with a sputtering rumble, the station 'copter came in low over the trees and dropped down on the lawn. Netath walked over as his chauffeur climbed out of the cab and used antigrav grapples to float a large crate out of the freight compartment.

"Just picked it up at the space terminal," the man explained. "Must be that aid shipment."

Bataul laughed. "You mean the first batch of credit certificates, maybe."

The chauffeur pressed the "unpack" stud. The sides of the crate fell outward.

"What _is_ it?" Netath drew back, surveying the ivory, tanklike thing with its sparkling fixtures and flexible appendages.

Bataul bent and read the words on the inscription plate: "Deluxe Automatic Bather--4678-25C."

By then, Netath had found the torn, soiled delivery tag. He read the part of the writing that was still legible:

"... _sincerely hope this expression of Western amity meets with your satisfaction. If we can serve you again, please don't hesitate._..."

Infuriated, he imparted a vindictive kick to the crate and crumpled the paper.

"_That's_ the cosmic aid we were expecting?" Bataul sputtered.

"Capitalist Western dogs!" Netath exclaimed. "They were just trifling with our planetary honor!"

"It's an insult against our racial character!" the foreign minister said severely. "They _know_ we have no use for a bather, shedding our skin as we do once a day."

Netath forced restraint into his features. "We will not lose our diplomatic poise. There is always the chance a mistake has been made."

He drew the contacter out of his pocket and shouted into its grid, "Miss Yalera?"

"Yes, sir?" came the instant answer.

"Take a space-o-gram to Solaria."

II

When the initial error was made at the hyper-spatial relay station, a pattern had been set. Committed categorically to the memory banks were the false associations between the State Department's Ganymede Extension and Potentate McWorther, between Premier Netath and Rear-Sobucks.

Thus, it was somewhat to be expected that Undersecretary Hoverly should find himself chewing on the under-bristles of his mustache as he read the latest space-o-gram.

Dear Sir:

Needless to say, we are somewhat disappointed over the Western Cluster's meager response to our desperate need.

Perhaps Ambassador Summerson misrepresented our agreement. In that event, we feel sure that consultation with his Excellency will set the record straight.

We would appreciate prompt attention to this detail. Otherwise, in the interest of our people, we shall feel compelled to seek satisfaction elsewhere.

Respectfully yours, Titus McWorther, Potentate

Hoverly tossed the message on his desk, punched the audio-com button and called for his assistant. When Mallston arrived, the undersecretary was still pacing.

"Did you take care of the McWorther World aid consignment?" he asked.

Mallston nodded. "Delivery should have been made day before yesterday. Full Class A schedule."

"Well, it wasn't enough!" Hoverly extended a stiff finger toward the space-o-gram. "Read that."

Looking up finally, Mallston said, "Evidently we dropped the ball."

"Indeed we did. Ambassador Summerson must have promised the Potentate the whole works."

Hoverly resumed pacing. "I should have guessed as much. President Roswell only last week hinted that the Western Cluster should level its galactic commerce sights on that entire sector."

Mallston pondered the gravity of the space-o-gram. "Maybe we should lay the McWorther development before the President."

Bristling, the undersecretary said, "And call attention to our own incompetence? We'll straighten this matter out by doing what we should have done in the first place--by putting the Potentate on the double-A priority list. Full and immediate delivery under Class B through K schedules."

Mallston started out, but paused at the door. "How about cultural exchange?"

"We'll play it safe by assuming Summerson shot the works in that category too. Round up every uncommitted cultural group in the cluster."

* * * * *

Shaking his head deprecatingly, the twenty-seventh vice-president stood before the desk of the next highest official in the Rear-Sobucks hierarchy.

"Well, Wheeler," V.R. clipped without looking up. "What is it this time?"

"I'm afraid Netath didn't take too kindly to our gesture."

"Netath? Netath?" V.R. milked the name for its significance.

"Ogarm Netath. The prime minister of that Gauyuth place. The automatic bather."

"Oh, _that_ one."

Wheeler handed over the space-o-gram and V.R. muttered through the message:

Dear Sir:

I'm sure you made a mistake filling my order. You've got to come pick up your shipment right away. We're up to our ears and it's shaking us to pieces.

Yours in disappointment, Ogarm Netath, Prime Minister

Growling, V.R. dropped an effervescent pill into a glass of water. "You can't get anywhere with these back-planet bumpkins. I doubt that this Netath ever _had_ a bath. Send him a Supplementary Manual of Operating Instructions."

Wheeler started for the door.

But V.R. called after him. "And bill the prime minister for that article. It'll teach him to show a little bit of appreciation."

* * * * *

Titus winced before the persistent tremors that came through the floor of his cellar. He made another adjustment on the gravity control deflecting the planetoid's center of pseudomass another few feet. The ground beneath him finally quieted.

"Three days," he mumbled, dragging himself up the stairs.

Edna received him with hands on hips. "Three days--what?"

"Getting things balanced again."

"What are you going to do about all that stuff cluttering up our beautiful planetoid?" She was near tears.

With Edna dogging his steps, he returned to the veranda, where his julep was now quite thin and warm in the rays of the setting sun.

"We'll have to find out where it came from first," he said, staring dismally over the mountains of machinery and grain, the tumbled stacks of crates and barrels and kegs, the lesser rows of wheeled and winged vehicles.

"Seems to me," Edna persisted, "that the invoices will show that." She gestured at what remained of the stacks of printed forms.

The rest of the slips were strewn over the ground as far as he could see. "Only the _first_ sheet will show the origin--_if_ we could ever find it," Titus explained.

He went out to the air car, warmed it up and sent it churning skyward. Near the attenuated top of the atmosphere, he was able to see exactly how much extraneous stuff had been dumped on his world. The main area of disposal seemed to have been within a two-mile radius of the house.

An ever-widening helical course, wending its way alternately from night to day, eventually brought him on a great circle that sliced over both poles. Then, with his searchlights still burning, he spiraled inward, covering the other hemisphere. The rest of his world was in primal order.

He started for home around the daylight side.

But even above the noise of his own rotorjets, the stridence of descending freighters erupted in a pandemonium of sound all around him. Great clouds of rockets, clustered in fleets, were darkening the sky and raining down onto the surface.

He barely managed to pull out from under one of the formations before it could pinch him against the ground. Swearing in oaths that he had not used in years, he headed for the nearest group of ships. Before he could close in, they had discharged their cargoes and thundered off into space again.

He altered course for another detachment of freighters, only to meet with the same frustrating results. By the time he had aimed his craft at a third group, all the ships had blasted away, leaving everywhere great, gleaming mounds and stacks and irregular rows of crates and containers that completely obscured the surface.

Enraged, Titus gunned the craft for home. He picked his way between several monstrous peaks of grain, some of them soaring nearly all the way up through the six-hundred-foot-thick atmosphere, and threw on his brakes to avoid collision with a tremendous pyramid of what looked like corn kernels.

With stark apprehension, he envisioned his world shaking apart under the eccentric forces. But he quelled his fears with logic: This new addition of mass, apparently distributed evenly over all but the four square miles that had already served as a dumping ground, would be unbalanced only to a negligible degree.

* * * * *

Titus flicked on his landing lights as he headed into the night. But from over the horizon came a glare considerably stronger than the candlepower of his own electrical system. As he pulled up to the mooring pylon, the explanation was evident.

Scores of Pullman crafts were packed so tightly around his house that the blunt noses of several were sticking out over the veranda.

He cut off the idling jets. The militant strains of a Venurian march, blaring from the instruments of a hundred-piece symphony, swelled up mightily all around him. The orchestra itself was wedged between two residential crafts while the roof of McWorther's generating house served as the conductor's podium.

On the veranda, a full troupe of Simalean Ballet dancers swirled and caracoled, not seeming to mind that they were occasionally overflowing the tiles and flouncing not so lightly through Edna's caladiums.

His wife stood helplessly by, still gripping the autobroom which she had evidently wielded without success in an attempt to rout the intruders.

Dismayed, Titus elbowed his way through a dedicated choral group that was patriotically rendering the "Fayothian Anthem," sidestepped a tumbling foursome obviously from one of the Lesser Javapa planets and pushed aside a debating team which was having little luck making itself heard above the general cacophony.

Edna swept out to meet him. "Titus, they just won't leave!"

"Who are they? What do they want?"

"I don't know." She was having a difficult time restraining herself. "They asked for the ministry of something or other. Then they said they were cooped up so long that they had to get some practice."

Titus bellowed for attention. But nobody turned an ear, except a pirouetting ballerina who whirled to a stop nearby, glissaded over in front of him and made a theatrical display of bending over and planting a set of lip-prints on his forehead--a gesture that fed considerable fuel to Edna's vexation.

"You're cute," the dancer tittered. "You got the word on this place, Pudgy? What is it--a stopover station?"

Before he could answer, one of the tumblers shouted, "It's snowing!"

The choral group broke reverently into the ancient carol "Noel" while the orchestra paused on an upbeat and swung into a jazzed-up "Jingle Bells."

Perplexed, Titus stared at the dancing snowflakes. But that was impossible! It _never_ snowed here on McWorther's World!

Then he remembered the grain peak he had skirted on the way home. It had extended high above the infrared and ultraviolet shields--into the naked, hot zone where restless winds had wafted the kernels eastward.

He picked up one of the "flakes."

_Popcorn!_

III

Many light years away, the Emperor of the Eastern Cluster whirled around, kicked his bejeweled train out of the way and faced his chief adviser. "So they've opened up a new aid offensive?"

"And a most vital one." The adviser blew on his spectacles and burnished the lenses against his sleeve. "A place called McWorther. Our intelligence got its coordinates from their consignment documents."

"Never heard of it."

"That's what's so insidious about this whole capitalist plot. They've kept it under their hats."

"And why is it so vital?"

The adviser directed the Emperor's attention to a space globe suspended from the ceiling. He pressed two buttons on the wall and twin beams of light intersected within the sphere. "That's McWorther's location."

"Why--why--" the Emperor stammered. "That outflanks us completely!"

"What concerns me is how many other undisclosed but settled worlds lie in that same general area."

"A whole raft of them, no doubt," the Emperor said pessimistically.

"What are we going to do?"

"In this critical sector we've got to make friends--and fast! We'll begin with the McWorther place."

"How far do you want to go?"

"All the way. Empty the surplus bins. Clear out the warehouses. Let McWorther have every available pound of material and equipment."

"Terms?"

"Terms be damned! We let the Western Cluster steal a march on us. We've got to recoup. Everything goes as an outright gift--with all the cultural trimmings thrown in."

* * * * *

Titus splashed into the cellar and struck out for the hypertransmitter.

It was a peculiar flood. Suffusing the water was a thick scum that flashed iridescently as it caught the glint of light from the ceiling. He stuck his finger into the dross and applied it to the tip of his tongue.

Syrup!

He thought of the thousands of barrels that had been dumped into the lake and surmised that the contaminated water was backing up through the drainage system.

He altered course for the pumps.

And, like ships in convoy, a score of virtuosos invaded the cellar, paddling in his wake.

The soprano's piercing voice assailed his ears. "In all my theatrical experience, I have never been subjected to such indignity! I insist--"

But a violinist pushed forward, wielding his bow like a stiff finger. "You, sir, are holding back on us. No doubt you know what our future instructions are."

"I've never seen such fascist highhandedness," complained a diminutive choreographer in the uniform of a Palosov Rocket Dancer. "In the name of the ministry of culture of the Eastern Federation, I demand to see a representative of His Imperial Highness!"

Ignoring them, Titus trudged on to the pumps and set them for maximum drain-off.