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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59323 ***
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+                               BLEEDBACK
+
+                           BY WINSTON MARKS
+
+               _It was just a harmless, though amazing,
+              kid's toy that sold for less than a dollar.
+                Yet it plunged the entire nation into a
+                  nightmare of mystery and chaos...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1955.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+The thing is over now, but I can't see a Teddy bear or a set of blocks
+in a department store window without shuddering. I'm thankful I'm a
+bachelor and have no children around to remind me of the utterly insane
+nightmare that a child's toy plunged our country into--the millions of
+people who died in agony--the total disruption and near dissolution of
+our nation.
+
+And yet, as the United States tottered on the verge of complete
+chaos, it was, ironically, another child's toy that saved us. A
+simple, ordinary, every-day toy for tots stopped the "fever", halted
+the carnage that was tearing our flesh and eyes and viscera into
+shreds. With most the scientists in the world working for an emergency
+solution, they could come up with no better answer than a toy that'd
+been around for generations before the "Mystery i-Gun" was even
+conceived.
+
+Being a plain-clothesman, I have seen greed and impatience ruin many
+individual lives. If I could have guessed at the chain of events that
+would stem from my first contact with the younger Baxter brother, I
+would have put a bullet through his head in cold blood and cheerfully
+faced the gas chamber.
+
+Instead I took off my hat and followed him through the substantial old
+house to a moderately large room in the rear where, I'd been told, we
+would find a body.
+
+Leo Baxter was a little guy about five-foot six, like me but with a
+better build. His size was important for a couple of reasons, one
+being that it was startling to say the least, when he pointed to the
+giant on the floor and said, "My brother."
+
+He caught my look and shrugged impatiently. "I know, I know, but this
+is no time for Mutt and Jeff gags. Calvin has been murdered. Now get
+with it, Lieutenant!" If Calvin _was_ his brother, Leo's agitation was
+understandable, but his voice had a flat note of practicality in it
+that I didn't like.
+
+As I looked down at the sprawled length of the big man on the tiled
+floor, the Mutt and Jeff angle didn't fit at all. David and Goliath
+was a better bet. This Goliath seemed also to have met his fate from a
+hole in the forehead. I say, "seemed," because it developed that Calvin
+Baxter was not yet quite dead.
+
+"There's no pulse or breath," his brother said when I mentioned this
+error in his assumption.
+
+"You're no doctor. Now call that ambulance like I told you. Jump!" I
+said.
+
+He jumped. I made a quick examination, meanwhile, and when Leo came
+back from the phone I pointed. "See, the blood. It's still coming out."
+
+"Corpses bleed, don't they?"
+
+"Not in spurts," I said. "The hole's tiny, but whatever's in there
+touched an artery. See that?"
+
+He looked and seemed convinced. "The ambulance will be here. Anything
+else I should do?"
+
+"Yes. Nothing. Don't touch a thing in this room ... or did you already?"
+
+"Just Calvin. I heard him fall, and when I came in he was on his face."
+
+"Why did you ask for homicide when you called the police? Or let's put
+it this way: What makes you think it wasn't an accident?"
+
+"Two reasons. First, because I couldn't see any cause of the accident.
+When I turned him over the floor was smooth and clean under his
+forehead except for the smear of blood. Reason number two: Because
+Calvin just doesn't have accidents. All his life he's moved in slow
+motion. I've never known him to stumble, or cut himself, or drop
+anything or even bump into anyone."
+
+I was checking around the room myself, and I had to admit that both
+reasons might be valid. A man the size of Calvin wasn't likely to be
+the skittish type. And by the time the ambulance arrived I was ready to
+admit that if the injury were an accident, Calvin Baxter had contrived
+to conceal its source.
+
+It took several of us to load the unconscious man onto the stretcher. I
+told his cocky little brother to stay on ice, while I rode downtown in
+the ambulance.
+
+Dr. Thorsen called me into the emergency ward. "How did this happen?"
+he wanted to know. Thorsen is a lean, learned old chap who normally
+gives more answers than he asks.
+
+I said, "Don't know, Doc. I found him in a sort of home workshop. No
+power tools, nothing dangerous in sight. The bench at one end had a
+couple of little gadgets on it--looked sort of electrical. Some wire,
+soldering iron, books, a few rough circuit drawings."
+
+"The gadgets. What did they look like?"
+
+I thought back and realized that what I had to describe would sound a
+little peculiar. "Sort of like flashlights with a pistol grip ... and
+no lens where the light should come out. Just blunt, flat ends."
+
+Thorsen shrugged. "Then I don't know. I expected you to report some
+kind of a blast or explosion."
+
+"No sign of one."
+
+"All right, then what else but a flying particle could drill a hole in
+a man's forehead the diameter of a piece of 16-gauge wire?"
+
+"What do the x-rays show?"
+
+"We'll know in a minute. What about the murder-attempt angle?"
+
+I said that I had nothing to go on yet. That was the whole truth and
+the final truth!
+
+When Doc's x-rays revealed _nothing but a blood clot_ deep in the brain
+at the end of the tiny tunnel piercing the skull, I was left without
+even a "modus operandi", let alone a substantial suspect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For two days I investigated brother Leo, and when I wasn't
+investigating him I was questioning him. The small town in Minnesota
+where he claimed he and his brother were born had been the county seat,
+and the whole shivaree had burned up in a prairie fire years ago,
+courthouse, birth records and all. With no other living relatives,
+I had to depend on people who had known both men. From those whom I
+questioned, I ascertained that they had been passing for brothers, at
+least, for some time.
+
+On the third day Leo's patience began to crack. "You keep asking me
+the same, stupid questions over and over. I tell you, I'm a mechanical
+engineer. My brother was a mathematician. We're both single. I make
+enough money in the construction game to support both of us. What's so
+suspicious about humoring my brother's research?"
+
+"Among other things," I said, "is your ignorance of what he was doing."
+
+"For the fiftieth time I tell you I _didn't_ know!" His exasperation
+was mounting to the pitch I had been awaiting.
+
+"You used the past tense. You do know now?"
+
+He wheeled and crossed the living room, poured himself a drink of
+straight bourbon and downed it. "Yes, I have a notion now, but it's
+none of your damned business. His ideas may be patentable."
+
+I said slowly and quietly, "Now I'll tell you what I've been waiting
+for. I've been waiting for you to offer me information about the two
+little gadgets that you removed from your brother's work-bench--against
+my explicit orders not to touch anything. Until you produce those items
+and explain your actions I'll be around here asking stupid questions.
+From now on, understand?"
+
+"Damn cops!" He threw the shot glass to the floor and glared at me for
+a long minute. "All right, come with me."
+
+We went into a little library. He took two volumes from a high shelf
+and from the recess snatched the two gadgets with the pistol grips.
+
+From a table drawer, which he unlocked with a key from his pocket, he
+took some drawings that looked like the ones that had disappeared from
+his brother's little workshop.
+
+"Calvin developed a new effect by applying one of his esoteric
+mathematical symbols to a simple electronic circuit," Leo began, in
+his surly tone. He pointed at the margin of the circuit drawing. There
+were jottings of algebraic formulae in which the quantity "i" appeared
+prominently. He pointed this out to me and continued, "Being a cop you
+wouldn't understand, but this symbol stands for an imaginary number,
+the square root of a minus one."
+
+This rang a bell from away back in my own college math. I said, "Yeah,
+I think I remember. It's some sort of operational factor in polar
+coordinates. No real meaning in itself, but--"
+
+"Well! An educated cop! That's right, except that Calvin managed to
+give this symbol an actual, functional application. I was telling
+the truth when I said I didn't know what he was doing. I still don't
+understand it, and I've been losing sleep over these formulae."
+
+"Then why not take it to the university and let the professors--"
+
+"Because," he interrupted, "whether I understand it or not, Calvin's
+gadget, happens to work. Watch this."
+
+He picked an ordinary paper clip from the debris of pencils, stamps and
+rubber bands from the top desk drawers, touched it to the "muzzle" end
+of the gadget where it stuck as if magnetized. "Now keep your eyes on
+the paper clip," he ordered.
+
+His forefinger pressed a button in the pistol grip, and without click,
+snap, buzz or murmur, _the paper clip disappeared_.
+
+Leo stared at me, as thoughts of "hyper-space", fourth-dimension and
+space-warps flitted through my mind. It wasn't a Buck Roger's atomic
+disintegrator, because there was no heat, flash or sound. The clip was
+suddenly elsewhere.
+
+"And I suppose the other gadget brings it back," I said.
+
+"That's what I thought, but I can't make it work. I suppose my brother
+could, if he were here."
+
+He tossed the thing to me, pointed at the little box of paper clips in
+the drawer and said, "Have fun."
+
+I did, for about five minutes. Eight paper clips later I was convinced
+that whatever else it might be, the gadget was no potential murder
+weapon. The clips disappeared, totally. You could pass your hand
+through the point of departure without a tingle of sensation.
+
+Leo briefed me further. The thing worked only on metallic conductors.
+It was harmless to human flesh and other organic matter. Then he
+removed the cover that ran the length of the rather crude, hand-carved,
+wooden barrel. From front to back, were: One pen-light cell, a
+lumpy-looking coil of wire hand-wound on a spindle-shaped iron core,
+and a short, cylindrical bar-magnet.
+
+"In mass production," he said, "About 40 cents worth of material and
+maybe 50 cents worth of labor! Do you see why I wanted to keep it a
+secret until I could patent it?"
+
+"No!" I said flatly. "Unless you consider a paper-clip disposal unit an
+item of commercial importance."
+
+"But it's a whole new scientific principle--the rotation of matter
+completely out of our space-time continuum!"
+
+"That much I grasp, but what good is it except as a demonstration of a
+piece of pure scientific research?"
+
+"Good Lord, man, have you no imagination?"
+
+"Okay, okay! Get rich," I said and slammed the front door behind me as
+I stomped out. I had been so certain that the missing gadgets would
+give me a motive for the attack on Leo's brother, or at least the
+method of inflicting the fantastic wound, that I was about ready to
+turn in my badge in frustration. All I could pin on Leo was a desire to
+cash in on his brother's gimmick--which, presumably, he could have done
+whether Calvin lived or died.
+
+Suppose, I mused on my way back to the station, that Calvin had refused
+to let Leo commercialize on his discovery? Perhaps Calvin was preparing
+a paper for publication in scientific circles. Maybe cool-headed little
+Leo tried to knock off his brother to keep the secret in the family
+until it could be turned to a selfish dollar.
+
+All right, suppose a jury would accept such an impalpable theory as a
+motive, then what? No murder weapon. No witnesses. Not even a genuine
+murder yet, because Calvin was still alive.
+
+Yes, old Doc Thorsen had kept the mathematician alive somehow. The
+elder Baxter lay on his back across two, white iron beds pushed
+together in the City Hospital, and Thorsen came in to report to me.
+
+"The clot seems to be absorbing better than I expected, but it's
+doubtful that we could operate to remove the paralyzing pressure. The
+puncture is deep into the brain tissue, and he's too nearly gone to
+survive such an ordeal."
+
+"Any chance that he might recover consciousness?"
+
+"Pretty remote," Thorsen told me. "We'll keep a special nurse with him
+as you ordered, just in case he does."
+
+I left Calvin Baxter pale and motionless as some great statue supine
+amid the tangle of plasma, glucose and saline hoses, under his
+transparent oxygen tent. The wound that had laid him low was no more
+than a dot of dried blood on his massive forehead.
+
+Until his death, his file would remain under unsolved crimes. In my
+own mind I was no longer sure of anything, except that if there was a
+nickel in Calvin Baxter's discovery, his mercenary brother would wring
+it out.
+
+And he did. Even before Calvin died.
+
+Some seven weeks later Leo marketed the "MYSTERY i-GUN" as a combined,
+toy, trick and puzzle, and it set the whole damned world on its ear!
+
+I located Leo Baxter in his new suite of offices on the 34th floor
+of the State Building. He peeled back his lips in a sneery grin. "I
+thought you'd be showing up."
+
+He waved away his male secretary who was still clinging to my arm
+trying to tow me back to the reception room. I said, "I kept your
+secret, then you pull an irresponsible thing like this! A kid's toy!
+Good Lord, man, that device might be dangerous!"
+
+"I appreciate your professional ethics, Lieutenant. I've applied for a
+patent, so you can tell all your friends now. And stop worrying. The
+"Mystery i-Gun" is quite harmless. I experimented a week before going
+into production."
+
+"A week?" I could scarcely believe my ears. "What happens when some kid
+jams his gun against a light-pole or an automobile ... or the night
+lock on the First National Bank?"
+
+"Nothing. It punches no holes. A large metallic object simply
+dissipates the field. The largest object it will handle is about a
+half-inch steel screw--"
+
+"Baxter, your brother's accident is connected to that device--and you
+turn it loose as a novelty!"
+
+"Nonsense. It's safe as a knot-hole. It simply makes things disappear.
+Little things, like tacks, ball bearing, old rusty nuts and bolts--"
+
+"And dimes and mamma's earrings and the front door key," I snapped
+back. "Until you know how to bring those things back you had no right
+to market that rig."
+
+He laid his small hands before him on the desk. "Lieutenant, I'm sick
+of working for other people. This is my chance to get a bank-roll to
+back my own contracting firm. Yes, I financed Calvin's research because
+he's brilliant, and I knew he'd come up with something some day. Now
+he's done it, and I'm merely protecting his interests and my investment
+in him. See here." He shoved some documents at me. There was the patent
+application, a declaration of partnership for purposes of marketing
+the Mystery i-Gun, and the articles of incorporation of the Baxter
+Construction Company.
+
+"Okay," I said. "So you've cut your brother in on all this. Who's his
+beneficiary when he dies?"
+
+"Still looking for a motive for murder, aren't you, Lieutenant?"
+
+I didn't admit it to him, but he was right. Calvin's "accident" seemed
+too convenient to the purposes of his practical little brother,
+Leo. What's more, the lab and medical men on the force were just
+as mystified today as they were when we brought Calvin in with the
+needle-thin hole in his skull. Old Doc Thorsen had admitted to me that
+he could name no implement--not even a surgical instrument--that could
+have inflicted such a narrow gauge hole. It had to be caused by a
+fragment, _but there was no fragment in the brain_!
+
+"Leo," I said, "I know you consider this case closed, but I want you to
+do me a favor. I want to go over your brother's lab once more."
+
+"But you've--" He stopped, shrugged and nodded his head. "Okay. I'm
+interested in finding out what hurt Cal, as much as you are. I'll tell
+you, I'm busy the rest of this week, but I'll meet you at the old house
+next Monday evening at eight. You see, I closed up the place and moved
+downtown."
+
+I agreed, with the feeling that he was deliberately making me wait just
+to annoy me. Leo Baxter was an important man now, a man graciously
+willing to cooperate with the police--at his own convenience. I stood
+up. "Your brother has been calling your name. I suppose they told you
+that?"
+
+"They phoned. Doctor said it was just mutterings."
+
+"You haven't even been to see him?"
+
+"What's the use? He wouldn't recognize me."
+
+Well, it wasn't any of my business, really, but it's funny how you get
+to hate a man for his attitude. I don't know what I expected to find
+by going over that lab-workshop again, but whatever it was, I hoped it
+would incriminate Leo. On the face of it he was guilty of nothing more
+than a premature marketing of a new device, but the way he was cashing
+in on Calvin's genius certainly did the dying man no honor.
+
+_Cash in was right!_ The toys sold like bubble-gum. The papers, radio,
+and TV picked up the sensational gimmick and gave it a billion bucks
+worth of free advertising. And the profitable part of it was that the
+i-Gun was so simple to mass-produce that Leo's fifteen contracting
+manufacturers were almost able to keep up with the astronomical demand.
+
+Before that week was up, the Wall Street Journal estimated there
+were already more i-Guns in the hands of the juvenile public than all
+the yo-yos ever produced. They retailed at eighty-five cents, made of
+plastic with a hole in the back where you could change the pen-light
+battery. They sold, all right. They sold in drugstores and toy stores
+and dime stores and department stores. Toddler's, tykes and teen-agers
+went for them. And adults. Maybe 30 million of them were in the hands
+of the public before I saw Leo Baxter next.
+
+Which was almost two weeks instead of the one week he had promised.
+
+I finally got an appointment. "Sorry," he said. "I've been tied up with
+government people all week. The A. E. C. tried to get me in trouble."
+
+I said, "Skip it. You promised for tonight. Now let's go."
+
+"I can't possibly make it tonight." He pointed at his desk. It was
+littered with correspondence, orders and contracts. "Give me one more
+week, Lieutenant."
+
+It was an order, not a request.
+
+There was nothing to do but wait the third week. It was not, however,
+uneventful. It was the week the accidents began to happen.
+
+At 4:14 of a Tuesday afternoon, a man was admitted to a local hospital
+with a perforated belly. Straight through, hide, guts and liver. A
+newsman got hold of it and wrote a scare story about an attack with a
+pellet gun that must shoot needles.
+
+Before the edition was sold out the hospitals were loaded with
+emergency cases. People with holes in them. Tiny little holes,
+mostly, but holes that went right through them. Then dogs. Then
+automobiles, trucks and busses. Holes in their radiators. Holes in
+windshields that always went straight back, through seats and sometimes
+passengers--right out through the rear end.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The city panicked. Then the county, state and nation. In two days, yes,
+the whole nation!
+
+At first everyone thought we were being attacked by some secret weapon.
+By some miracle of statesmanship, the President of the United States
+prevented a "massive retaliation" attack by the army upon our most
+likely enemy--long enough for Intelligence to affirm that no enemy on
+Earth was that mad at us.
+
+Then all thoughts turned to extra-terrestrial space. A bombardment from
+the sky? It was ridiculous to even consider, because none of the holes
+that appeared in people and things came from above. The holes were
+almost entirely in the horizontal plane.
+
+Strangely enough during those first two days, nobody thought of the
+Mystery i-Gun. No one but me.
+
+Leo Baxter had disappeared into thin air, as completely as if he'd
+turned to metal and crawled into the muzzle of one of his own "toys".
+
+I had every known place he frequented staked out with a pair of
+plain-clothesmen, but it was the morning of the second day of
+accidents before I got a radio call from the squad car stationed near
+the old Baxter home.
+
+Leo had come home at last. He was a sad looking midget when I got
+there. Obviously no sleep, unshaven, deep hollows under his eyes.
+
+"I figured you'd be waiting for me, Lieutenant, but you know what?" he
+demanded. "I don't give a damn! I kept waiting for them to figure out
+the answer to these accidents and string me up. How come you didn't
+tell anybody?"
+
+I said, "Shut up and let's go inside."
+
+Sure, I figured the i-Gun was the cause, but the last thing I wanted
+was for Leo to get strung up before I laid my hands on that other
+device--the one that wouldn't work. I wanted that rig and all the plans
+and formulae, and Leo undoubtedly had them hidden deeper than Fort Knox.
+
+He unlocked the door, and I told the others to wait outside. We went
+into the hall and closed the door behind us. "So your little toy was
+harmless?" I said, grabbing him by his wrinkled lapels. "So it just
+shoots stuff off into another dimension?"
+
+He stared at me, his eyes half glazed. "I don't--know. That's what the
+notes said." He sank into a chair. "I guess it doesn't, though. It must
+ball up the metal object and shoot it out--infinite velocity--reduced
+in size--infinite mass--infinite inertia--keeps circling the globe
+like--like a satellite. Goes right through anything it hits. Goes on
+and on. Forever. Little bullets. Right through steel. Right through
+flesh and bones--"
+
+"Simmer down," I said. "You've been reading the papers. I've been
+checking the facts."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"That you were right the first time. It does shoot metal objects
+into another dimension. But _they don't stay there_. They ooze back.
+Slowly. Real slow, so the first edge or corner that sticks back into
+our dimension is only a few millionths of an inch thick. Then a few
+ten-thousandths, then a few thousandths--and that's about the time they
+start making holes in people and objects _that run into them_."
+
+"Run into them?"
+
+"Certainly. There are no holes in buildings or other stationary
+objects. The holes are all horizontal. Now look, Baxter, our only
+chance is to work on that other device and your brother's notes, and
+maybe we can develop an extractor of some kind."
+
+"No. No, you don't understand," he said shaking his head like a
+sleep-walker. "It balls up the metal. Shoots it out. Infinite mass.
+Infinite veloc--"
+
+"Knock off that nonsense, and tell me where those plans are."
+
+"Trying to steal my brother's other invention, are you? It's not
+patented yet. You know that, don't you? Couldn't patent it because I
+can't make it work yet. You're smart, but you won't get it from me--"
+
+I had a fair hold on him, but the pure insanity that flared in his
+eyes shocked me for just the instant it took him to wrench out of
+my hands. He stumbled to the door of the study and burst through it
+heading for the window. I didn't hurry after him too fast, because I
+knew the boys outside would take him.
+
+Leo Baxter was only three paces into the stale air of the unused
+library when he screamed, clasping his hands to his chest and dropped.
+A peculiar grating, plucking sound came faintly before he thudded to
+the carpet.
+
+I stopped hard in my tracks and wiped the sweat from my face while Leo
+Baxter twitched almost at my feet, his heart shredded and bubbling its
+last in his perforated chest.
+
+_The paper clips. The ones I had propelled into nothingness weeks ago._
+
+Hat in hand I advanced slowly, waving it before me chest high. Then
+it caught suddenly, grated for a split second and passed on in its
+arc. Now there were several tiny holes in it. I backed away a foot and
+brought my hat down slowly on the same lethal spot of air. Chest-high
+it caught and hung suspended.
+
+Leaving it there as a marker I took off my suitcoat, held it before me
+and inched forward toward the desk. Something plucked at the dangling
+garment, and a chill froze my spine. Had I been walking forward
+normally, the tiny speck of metal that barely caught the glint of light
+from the window, would have pierced my skin at just about the site of
+my appendix. I circled the spot continuing to feel forward with my
+coat. That was the paper clip Baxter had fired to demonstrate to me
+that first day.
+
+At the phone I called headquarters and told the chief what to do.
+
+"You're so right," he told me, his voice slurring strangely. "Only
+you're a little late. The order went out to confiscate the i-Guns. They
+think the damned toys might have something to do with the accidents.
+And I bought one of the first ones for my little Jerry!" His voice
+sounded hollow.
+
+So they were figuring it out! The next question was, how to extract the
+deadly particles from the other dimension, or how to keep them from
+bleeding back slowly into ours.
+
+I moved cautiously through the old house fanning every inch of air
+ahead of me with a phone book. When I got to Calvin Baxter's workshop
+I was especially careful, but I needn't have been. The only metal
+particles stuck into the thin air seemed to be over his work-bench
+where he had been experimenting with his device. All but one.
+
+It was right where I expected to find it--better than six feet in the
+air, just forehead high for a man tall as Calvin Baxter. He had fired
+his proto-type of the i-Gun just once into the middle of the room.
+
+How long ago? Eight--ten weeks ago?
+
+It seemed impossible that all this horror had occurred in such a short
+time.
+
+But there it was, stuck in space, protruding about a hundredth of an
+inch from nowhere into clear visibility. So little was showing that I
+couldn't be sure, but it looked like the tip of an ordinary little nail
+or wood-screw.
+
+This was my "murder-weapon", the cause of Calvin Baxter's accident.
+He'd run into it, jerked his head back, and the speck had come out the
+same hole it went in.
+
+In twenty minutes by the clock I had the lab crew out from
+headquarters, and had explained the whole business to them. First they
+measured the length of the protrusion, and my guess was about right. It
+measured .0095 inches on the micrometer caliper.
+
+If it were a screw an inch long, at that rate of "bleedback" it would
+take another 98 weeks to come the rest of the way out. Almost two years!
+
+Paul Riley, the lab chief, was sharp. He caught it about the same time
+I did and turned to look at me. "We've got to figure a way of getting
+those things out of the way."
+
+I nodded. "But quick."
+
+Collins, our print man, said, "Why not just shoot them back into
+wherever it is they go, with another i-Gun?"
+
+"And have them come bleeding back after a few weeks?" Paul frowned him
+silent.
+
+He picked up a hammer from the bench and tapped the tiny, glinting
+speck. The point flattened out a bit, but the thud of the hammer
+indicated how solidly it was stuck. Then he walked around behind the
+point and struck it a hard blow from the cross-section side. The
+hammer shivered in his hand and he dropped it, rubbing his numbed
+fingers with his other hand.
+
+"Lieutenant," he said slowly, "we are up against something."
+
+We found we could file away the metal easily enough. Sure it filed away
+until the file cut into empty space. But cold comfort that was. In a
+few hours, we knew, molecule by molecule, the screw buried in the other
+dimension would come oozing back, a minute but lethal speck ready to
+ambush the first very tall man who walked toward it.
+
+Tall man!
+
+That's why Leo Baxter and I had failed to find it in the first place.
+I had criss-crossed that room half a thousand times in my previous
+examinations. If I had been taller, or the speck of metal lower--
+
+"We've got to bring Calvin Baxter back to consciousness somehow," I
+said. "We've got to find out how that extractor of his works."
+
+"Right!" Jerry said, dropping his hands in resignation. We'd run out of
+ideas at the same time, and the senior Baxter appeared to be our only
+hope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We fanned our way out of there, into the squad car, and proceeded at a
+gingerly five miles per hour back to headquarters. On my insistence,
+Calvin Baxter had been set up in a private room at the jail with Doc
+Thorsen in attendance. The city hospitals were so jammed with accident
+victims and frantic relatives that it was no place to work with a man
+who was our only salvation.
+
+When I explained everything to Dr. Thorsen and told him how important
+it was that we bring Calvin back to consciousness he shook his head.
+"It might be done, but it would probably kill him--"
+
+"But you said he'd never recover anyway," I argued.
+
+Thorsen seemed to be considering that. "Yes," he said at last. "That's
+more apparent now than ever. He's beginning to suffer the usual
+complications of immobility. Probably won't last more than a few weeks
+anyway. But can't you get the dope you want from his brother?" he
+stalled while he weighed his ethics against the necessity of the moment.
+
+"His brother," I told him, "is dead. Paper clips. Right through the
+heart."
+
+"I see. Well, we could operate, but as I said, Calvin wouldn't survive
+for long. Maybe only hours or minutes. And maybe not even long enough
+to regain consciousness after we remove the clot."
+
+I said, "I've left a crew at the Baxter house to tear it apart, board
+by board, until we find this so-called _extractor_ that Leo hid. But
+even after we find it, we need Calvin to tell us how to make it work.
+There must be a part missing."
+
+We had wandered into Calvin's room and were talking over his great,
+supine body, covered to the chin with a white sheet. The speck of scalp
+on his forehead had dried up and dropped off leaving only a faint white
+spot.
+
+As I mentioned the missing part, his lips began moving and a grunt
+issued from his throat. "Listen," I said. "He hears me! He's trying to
+talk!"
+
+"No, Lieutenant." Thorsen said, putting a hand to his eyes. "He's been
+grunting like that for days. The only word that ever comes out is his
+brother's name, Leo."
+
+The name struck anger and frustration in me. "Leo," I half-shouted.
+"That stinking little--never even visited his brother!"
+
+"Relax, Gene. That won't do any good. The man's dead," he reminded me.
+
+"Relax? When all over the country people are tearing their bodies to
+pieces? Innocent people. Little kids--"
+
+"I know, I know. I just spent nine hours in the emergency ward.
+Peritonitis. Cardiac injury. Lungs. Torn eye-balls. And it's probably
+just the beginning."
+
+"Then what are you waiting for?" I demanded. "Our only chance is to
+bring Calvin Baxter to consciousness long enough to explain how his
+extractor works."
+
+Doc ran trembling hands through his fuzz of white hair. For the first
+time I noticed that the pupils of his eyes were moving back and forth
+in little quick, darting motions like a wild animal looking for
+escape. "I--don't know, Gene. I suppose you are right. Only--we need
+permission--we must--you see, he might die, and--"
+
+I took a good look at him and suddenly realized that despite his calm
+voice, the old man was going to pieces. I grabbed him by the arm
+and hauled him out of there, across the hall to the chief's office.
+Durstine had his head down on his arms, slouched over the desk fast
+asleep between two clanging telephones.
+
+"Wake up, chief!" I said, shaking him by the shoulder. "We have to get
+Baxter to City Hospital and--"
+
+Durstine raised his head and stared at me. His usually sharp, gray eyes
+were dull, and his face looked dirty with a stubble of black whiskers.
+With a deliberate motion of both hands he knocked the receivers off
+both phones and fell back in his swivel chair. "Now what?" he asked
+thickly.
+
+"You're drunk!" I exclaimed. _Durstine, who would fire a 20-year man
+without a qualm if he caught a single trace of beer on his breath on
+duty._
+
+"What else is new?" He could barely focus his eyes on me.
+
+I swallowed a couple of times and began explaining what must be done.
+Get the mayor and Civil Defense on the phone. Commandeer all radio
+stations to explain the true nature of the metallic particles to the
+public. Tell them to stay put, and when they did move, to walk slowly,
+fanning the air ahead of them with something solid--an umbrella, a
+coat, newspaper, garbage can lid--anything to warn them of the tiny,
+suspended daggers.
+
+"Yeah. Great idea. Some people doing it already." He said it without
+enthusiasm. "Only trouble is, the phones are swamped. Communications
+are breaking down already, and when people learn about the fever, they
+will blow sky-high."
+
+"The fever?"
+
+"The fever." He bobbed his head loosely. "My Jerry died of it this
+afternoon. Came down with it day before yesterday. By the time we got
+him to the hospital this morning he was running a hundred and five.
+Docs were too busy with bleeders. Wouldn't listen to me until it was
+too late. Jerry's dead. My little Jerry." His voice was flat, his eyes
+staring straight ahead.
+
+Jerry was his only son, and one of the first kids in town to own an
+i-Gun. Durstine had said he bought it for himself. The chief went on,
+"What's more, the fever's epidemic. Before we left the hospital they
+were dragging victims in by the hundreds. Not just kids, either. On top
+of this other thing, we got the worst epidemic in history. No one knows
+what it is."
+
+I looked at Thorsen. "You said you'd been at the hospital. What is it?"
+
+"I--saw a few cases." He said it almost under his breath.
+
+I grabbed him by his coat lapels. "Snap out of it, Doc. If you know
+what it is, for God's sake tell us!"
+
+"They don't know what it is," he said looking down at the floor.
+
+"But you do. I can tell by your face."
+
+"All right, maybe I do." His face was drawn and defiant with an almost
+fanatical determination. "There aren't enough sulphas and antibiotics
+in the world to control it. We can't do anything about it, so why drive
+people crazy with fear?"
+
+Durstine was coming out of his fog. He opened the big bottom drawer of
+his desk and handed an open fifth of whiskey to Thorsen. He said, "Doc,
+you're in no condition to make a decision like that."
+
+Thorsen tipped up the bottle and let several swallows pour down his
+leathery neck. The stuff brought tears to his eyes. He blinked them
+away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "All right, public
+guardian, I'll tell you. It's pretty obvious, and other medical men
+will think of it pretty quick, I suppose--when they find out the cause
+of the punctures they are treating. This fever is just more of the
+same. Peritonitis. Only it's caused by particles so small that you
+can't even feel when they penetrate the skin. They're large enough to
+poke holes in your intestines, though. Large enough to make microscopic
+passages for bacteria. So, you see, for every bleeding patient, there
+will be hundreds, thousands, coming down with peritonitis--infection of
+the body cavity from within. Without drugs the inflammation spreads in
+hours, and the temperature goes up and up. It's fatal."
+
+I could almost feel the pain in my belly and the fire in my veins as he
+spoke. Doc Thorsen took another drink and handed me the bottle. "You
+look a little pale, Gene. Have a jolt and see if _your_ guts leak."
+
+Durstine and I both had a drink, and the chief said, "I see what you
+meant. I wish you'd kept your mouth shut."
+
+I said, "Dammit, we've got to do something."
+
+"Like what?" Durstine asked bitterly. "Like quarantining the schools
+and the playgrounds?"
+
+Thorsen nodded grimly. "And the parks? And all back yards and front
+yards?"
+
+Durstine picked it up again. "And empty lots and all sidewalks and
+streets and public buildings and the whole damned outdoors plus the
+indoors?"
+
+The enormity of the problem began to sink into my tired brain. In the
+space of weeks, more than 30 million i-Guns were sold in the United
+States alone. Multiply that figure by the number of times each was
+fired. Ten? Fifty? A hundred times? Only God knew how many billion
+nails, tacks, screws and rivets were launched into limbo, and were now
+just beginning to return--invisible at first--to skewer the American
+people.
+
+Wherever kids had played--and that was virtually everywhere--death was
+hidden. And the semi-visible particles would keep emerging for weeks,
+in the order that they were shot into the other dimension. Worse yet,
+at the slow rate of emergence, it would be months or years before the
+metallic flotsam returned completely and dropped to earth!
+
+A man could protect himself only by remaining motionless. But society
+was geared to motion, fast, space-covering motion. The nation would
+starve to death, if everyone didn't go insane first and tear themselves
+to pieces running around.
+
+"We've got to get the secret of that extractor out of Calvin Baxter,"
+I said. "If we can discover the principle, we can build large models,
+like a vacuum cleaner--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Getting Baxter into City Hospital and finding a competent surgeon in
+good enough condition to perform the delicate operation, took almost
+twenty-four hours. The hospital resembled an abattoir, the corridor
+floors slick from the drippings of fresh blood, as people seeking help
+wandered frantically from floor to floor.
+
+Somehow we managed to impress upon the staff the fact that Baxter had
+priority, and we were allowed on the operating floor, which was guarded
+at all entries.
+
+Sick with exhaustion, I waited with Durstine. Thorsen was impressed
+into duty immediately, and that was the last we saw of him. It was a
+good many hours before they called us into the operating room. I won't
+try to describe the sight in detail. Surgeons and nurses hovered over
+tables, weaving like drunken butchers in blood-soaked aprons. In one
+corner, on a cot, Baxter lay with his head and shoulders propped up
+high. His feet hung over the end at least fourteen inches. A single
+sheet covered him.
+
+The top of his skull was bandaged, and he looked even paler than
+before. A doctor and one nurse stood on either side of him. As we came
+in the doctor said, "I've been told of the problem. We've done all we
+can, but this man is dying. I think we can bring him to consciousness
+for a few minutes. It's a terribly cruel thing to do, and I'm not sure
+he will be coherent. Are you sure you want me to try?"
+
+"It's his invention that brought on all of this," I said. "If there's
+any solution to it, he has it in his head."
+
+"Very well."
+
+He did things with a hypodermic needle while the nurse rigged an oxygen
+tent. The smell of ether and blood made me sicker. My throat was dry,
+and I remember wishing I hadn't drunk Durstine's whiskey. As we stood
+waiting the humid air felt almost unbearably hot, and I had difficulty
+focussing my eyes.
+
+Durstine looked terrible, hollow-eyed, unshaven, but he seemed in
+better shape than I. It was he who caught the first flicker of Baxter's
+eyes and dropped to his knees. The color came back to the scientist's
+face in a rush of pink, and his chest heaved with deep breathing.
+
+"Can you hear me?" Durstine began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later Baxter was dead as predicted. And so was all hope of
+removing the lethal debris with his other invention. The "extractor"
+didn't work, he had told us. Yes, he'd been trying to reverse the field
+to retrieve the metallic objects from the other dimension, _but the
+experiment was a failure_!
+
+Durstine took my arm. "Come on, Gene. We've done all we can. I know one
+safe place--a place where no kids ever played."
+
+"Yeah, I know," I said with a tongue two sizes too big. "The nearest
+bar. The damned kids! They've murdered us! Leo Baxter and the damned
+kids!"
+
+Things were turning gray, but I remember the chief catching me by the
+shoulder and jerking me around. Too late I remembered about his little
+Jerry and the agony my words must have carved in his heart. I wished
+he'd slug me, but he didn't. He looked at me for a long minute and
+said something I don't remember, because the fog closed in--a hot, dry
+fog that swept into my brain and blacked out the light. I don't even
+remember falling.
+
+The last thought I had was, _the fever! I've got it. And Thorsen said
+there were no more antibiotics or drugs left in the city._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some weeks later it was a surprise but no pleasure, to discover I was
+still alive. Through the smoke of my unfocussed eyes I could tell that
+my "private" room was occupied by at least a dozen other patients. Some
+were on cots and some, like me, simply lay on the floor with a blanket
+over them.
+
+I had one 30-second visit from the doctor before Durstine came to take
+me away. The doc said simply, "You're a lucky man, Lieutenant. We
+didn't save many 'fever' patients after the drugs ran out."
+
+The chief brought a couple of boys in blue with a stretcher to haul me
+out. I was amazed to discover that automobiles were still moving about
+the streets--not many, but a few. I was too sick and exhausted to talk
+during the ride.
+
+Durstine rode in back with me, a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry,
+Gene," he said. "You're going to be all right. And we've got this thing
+pretty well licked."
+
+He looked into my eyes and read the question I was too weak to speak
+aloud.
+
+"No," he said, "we didn't figure out Baxter's extractor. But we do have
+a successful detector, and all we have to do now is use it--then hang a
+tin can or an old ketchup bottle on each speck of metal for a marker.
+Yeah, the country's going to be cluttered up like a hanging garbage
+dump for a long time, but if you can see 'em you can dodge 'em."
+
+A detector? Why, they'd have to equip every person in the country
+with one! And surely nothing less than an electronic, radar-type
+gadget could detect the microscopic particles as they first began to
+emerge--the kind that had riddled my intestines and given me the fever
+without even leaving a mark on my skin.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," Durstine said. His face was gray and
+drawn, but he wore a faint smile. "It was simple when somebody thought
+of it. What would be cheap enough to distribute universally, yet
+effective enough to give you positive warning? You see, these tiny
+particles are so fine at first that you can fan the air with a plank
+and never know when one passes through."
+
+He raised me up from the stretcher and let me look out the window of
+the police ambulance. Through squinted eyes I made out a strange
+sight. A thin scattering of pedestrians was moving slowly on the
+sidewalks, winding their ways among a random collection of floating tin
+cans and inverted bottles.
+
+When we stopped for a red light I watched a young woman in a business
+suit step between a whiskey bottle head-high, and a bean can about
+knee-high, and then proceed gingerly waving a colored sphere ahead
+of her. This sphere, about eighteen inches in diameter, suddenly
+disappeared. She stopped abruptly and began shouting. Before the
+traffic light turned green, a man came up with an empty motor oil can
+and placed it on the sidewalk, under the point she indicated in the air
+before her.
+
+Durstine explained, "When that speck gets large enough to support it,
+that can will be hung on it. Meanwhile, other people are forewarned
+that the air over the can is out-of-bounds, so they won't waste
+detectors on it."
+
+As he spoke, the young woman was fishing another "detector" from her
+purse. It was a limp bit of something which she placed to her lips and
+inflated until it was a foot-and-a-half in diameter, then she tied off
+the neck and proceeded down the walk waving it before her in great
+vertical sweeps.
+
+It was as simple as that.
+
+Our undoing had been an 85-cent kid's toy. And our salvation was a
+penny-balloon!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bleedback, by Winston Marks
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59323 ***