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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Happy ending, by Henry Kuttner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Happy ending
+
+Author: Henry Kuttner
+
+Release Date: June 5, 2022 [eBook #68250]
+[Most recently updated: June 10, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Alex White & the online
+             Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
+             https://www.pgdpcanada.net.
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY ENDING ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                             HAPPY ENDING
+
+                           By HENRY KUTTNER
+
+                Out of the Future emerge the Robot and
+                 Tharn—while James Kelvin fights them
+                 blindly, knowing not friend from foe!
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+[Illustration: The android uttered a protesting cry as Kelvin sent a
+wave of mental energy at him]
+
+This is the way the story ended:
+
+James Kelvin concentrated very hard on the thought of the chemist with
+the red mustache who had promised him a million dollars. It was simply a
+matter of tuning in on the man’s brain, establishing a rapport. He had
+done it before. Now it was more important than ever that he do it this
+one last time. He pressed the button on the gadget the robot had given
+him, and thought hard.
+
+Far off, across limitless distances, he found the rapport.
+
+He clamped on the mental tight beam.
+
+He rode it....
+
+The red-mustached man looked up, gaped, and grinned delightedly.
+
+“So there you are!” he said. “I didn’t hear you come in. Good grief,
+I’ve been trying to find you for two weeks.”
+
+“Tell me one thing quick,” Kelvin said. “What’s your name?”
+
+“George Bailey. Incidentally, what’s yours?”
+
+But Kelvin didn’t answer. He had suddenly remembered the other thing the
+robot had told him about that gadget which established rapport when he
+pressed the button. He pressed it now—and nothing happened. The gadget
+had gone dead. Its task was finished, which obviously meant he had at
+last achieved health, fame and fortune. The robot had warned him, of
+course. The thing was set to do one specialized job. Once he got what he
+wanted, it would work no more.
+
+So Kelvin got the million dollars.
+
+And he lived happily ever after....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the middle of the story:
+
+As he pushed aside the canvas curtain something—a carelessly hung
+rope—swung down at his face, knocking the horn-rimmed glasses askew.
+Simultaneously a vivid bluish light blazed into his unprotected eyes. He
+felt a curious, sharp sense of disorientation, a shifting motion that
+was almost instantly gone.
+
+Things steadied before him. He let the curtain fall back into place,
+making legible again the painted inscription: horoscopes—learn
+your future—and he stood staring at the remarkable horomancer.
+
+It was a—oh, impossible!
+
+The robot said in a flat, precise voice, “You are James Kelvin. You are
+a reporter. You are thirty years old, unmarried, and you came to Los
+Angeles from Chicago today on the advice of your physician. Is that
+correct?”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his astonishment Kelvin called on the Deity. Then he settled his
+glasses more firmly and tried to remember an exposé of charlatans he had
+once written. There was some obvious way they worked things like this,
+miraculous as it sounded.
+
+The robot looked at him impassively out of its faceted eye.
+
+“On reading your mind,” it continued in the pedantic voice, “I find this
+is the year Nineteen Forty-nine. My plans will have to be revised. I had
+meant to arrive in the year Nineteen Seventy. I will ask you to assist
+me.”
+
+Kelvin put his hands in his pockets and grinned.
+
+“With money, naturally,” he said. “You had me going for a minute. How do
+you do it, anyhow? Mirrors? Or like Maelzel’s chess player?”
+
+“I am not a machine operated by a dwarf, nor am I an optical illusion,”
+the robot assured him. “I am an artificially created living organism,
+originating at a period far in your future.”
+
+“And I’m not the sucker you take me for,” Kelvin remarked pleasantly. “I
+came in here to—”
+
+“You lost your baggage checks,” the robot said. “While wondering what to
+do about it, you had a few drinks and took the Wilshire bus at
+exactly—exactly eight-thirty-five post meridian.”
+
+“Lay off the mind-reading,” Kelvin said. “And don’t tell me you’ve been
+running this joint very long with a line like that. The cops would be
+after you. _If_ you’re a real robot, ha, ha.”
+
+“I have been running this joint,” the robot said, “for approximately
+five minutes. My predecessor is unconscious behind that chest in the
+corner. Your arrival here was sheer coincidence.” It paused very
+briefly, and Kelvin had the curious impression that it was watching to
+see if the story so far had gone over well.
+
+The impression was curious because Kelvin had no feeling at all that
+there was a man in the large, jointed figure before him. If such a thing
+as a robot were possible, he would have believed implicitly that he
+confronted a genuine specimen. Such things being impossible, he waited
+to see what the gimmick would be.
+
+“My arrival here was also accidental,” the robot informed him. “This
+being the case, my equipment will have to be altered slightly. I will
+require certain substitute mechanisms. For that, I gather as I read your
+mind, I will have to engage in your peculiar barter system of economics.
+In a word, coinage or gold or silver certificates will be necessary.
+Thus I am—temporarily—a horomancer.”
+
+“Sure, sure,” Kelvin said. “Why not a simple mugging? If you’re a robot,
+you could do a super-mugging job with a quick twist of the gears.”
+
+“It would attract attention. Above all, I require secrecy. As a matter
+of fact, I am—” The robot paused, searched Kelvin’s brain for the right
+phrase, and said, “—on the lam. In my era, time-traveling is strictly
+forbidden, even by accident, unless government-sponsored.”
+
+There was a fallacy there somewhere, Kelvin thought, but he couldn’t
+quite spot it. He blinked at the robot intently. It looked pretty
+unconvincing.
+
+“What proof do you need?” the creature asked. “I read your brain the
+minute you came in, didn’t I? You must have felt the temporary amnesia
+as I drew out the knowledge and then replaced it.”
+
+“So that’s what happened,” Kelvin said. He took a cautious step
+backward. “Well, I think I’ll be getting along.”
+
+“Wait,” the robot commanded. “I see you have begun to distrust me.
+Apparently you now regret having suggested a mugging job. You fear I may
+act on the suggestion. Allow me to reassure you. It is true that I could
+take your money and assure secrecy by killing you, but I am not
+permitted to kill humans. The alternative is to engage in the barter
+system. I can offer you something valuable in return for a small amount
+of gold. Let me see.” The faceted gaze swept around the tent, dwelt
+piercingly for a moment on Kelvin. “A horoscope,” the robot said. “It is
+supposed to help you achieve health, fame and fortune. Astrology,
+however, is out of my line. I can merely offer a logical scientific
+method of attaining the same results.”
+
+“Uh-huh,” Kelvin said skeptically. “How much? And why haven’t _you_ used
+that method?”
+
+“I have other ambitions,” the robot said in a cryptic manner. “Take
+this.” There was a brief clicking. A panel opened in the metallic chest.
+The robot extracted a small, flat case and handed it to Kelvin, who
+automatically closed his fingers on the cold metal.
+
+“Be careful. Don’t push that button until—”
+
+But Kelvin had pushed it....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was driving a figurative car that had got out of control. There was
+somebody else inside his head. There was a schizophrenic, double-tracked
+locomotive that was running wild and his hand on the throttle couldn’t
+slow it down an instant. His mental steering-wheel had snapped.
+
+Somebody else was thinking for him!
+
+Not quite a human being. Not quite sane, probably, from Kelvin’s
+standards. But awfully sane from his own. Sane enough to have mastered
+the most intricate principles of non-Euclidean geometry in the nursery.
+
+The senses get synthesized in the brain into a sort of common language,
+a master-tongue. Part of it was auditory, part pictorial, and there were
+smells and tastes and tactile sensations that were sometimes familiar
+and sometimes spiced with the absolutely alien. And it was chaotic.
+
+Something like this, perhaps....
+
+“—Big Lizards getting too numerous this season—tame threvvars have the
+same eyes not on Callisto though—vacation soon—preferably
+galactic—solar system claustrophobic—byanding tomorrow if square
+rootola and upsliding three—”
+
+But that was merely the word-symbolism. Subjectively, it was far more
+detailed and very frightening. Luckily, reflex had lifted Kelvin’s
+finger from the button almost instantly, and he stood there motionless,
+shivering slightly.
+
+He was afraid now.
+
+The robot said, “You should not have begun the rapport until I
+instructed you. Now there will be danger. Wait.” His eye changed color.
+“Yes ... there is ... Tharn, yes. Beware of Tharn.”
+
+“I don’t want any part of it,” Kelvin said quickly. “Here, take this
+thing back.”
+
+“Then you will be unprotected against Tharn. Keep the device. It will,
+as I promised, ensure your health, fame and fortune, far more
+effectively than a—a horoscope.”
+
+“No, thanks. I don’t know how you managed that trick—sub-sonics, maybe,
+but I don’t—”
+
+“Wait,” the robot said. “When you pressed that button, you were in the
+mind of someone who exists very far in the future. It created a temporal
+rapport. You can bring about that rapport any time you press the
+button.”
+
+“Heaven forfend,” Kelvin said, still sweating a little.
+
+“Consider the opportunities. Suppose a troglodyte of the far past had
+access to your brain? He could achieve anything he wanted.”
+
+It had become important, somehow, to find a logical rebuttal to the
+robot’s arguments. “Like St. Anthony—or was it Luther?—arguing with
+the devil?” Kelvin thought dizzily. His headache was worse, and he
+suspected he had drunk more than was good for him. But he merely said:
+
+“How could a troglodyte understand what’s in my brain? He couldn’t apply
+the knowledge without the same conditioning I’ve had.”
+
+“Have you ever had sudden and apparently illogical ideas? Compulsions?
+So that you seem forced to think of certain things, count up to certain
+numbers, work out particular problems? Well, the man in the future on
+whom my device is focused doesn’t know he’s en rapport with you, Kelvin.
+But he’s vulnerable to compulsions. All you have to do is concentrate on
+a problem and then press the button. Your rapport will be
+compelled—illogically, from his viewpoint—to solve that problem. And
+you’ll be reading his brain. You’ll find out how it works. There are
+limitations, you’ll learn those too. And the device will ensure health,
+wealth and fame for you.”
+
+“It would ensure anything, if it really worked that way. I could do
+anything. That’s why I’m not buying!”
+
+“I said there were limitations. As soon as you’ve successfully achieved
+health, fame, and fortune, the device will become useless. I’ve taken
+care of that. But meanwhile you can use it to solve all your problems by
+tapping the brain of the more intelligent specimen in the future. The
+important point is to concentrate on your problems _before_ you press
+the button. Otherwise you may get more than Tharn on your track.”
+
+“Tharn? What—”
+
+“I think an—an android,” the robot said, looking at nothing. “An
+artificial human ... However, let us consider my own problem. I need a
+small amount of gold.”
+
+“So that’s the kicker,” Kelvin said, feeling oddly relieved. He said, “I
+haven’t got any.”
+
+“Your watch.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kelvin jerked his arm so that his wrist-watch showed. “Oh, no. That
+watch cost plenty.”
+
+“All I need is the gold-plating,” the robot said, shooting out a reddish
+ray from its eye. “Thank you.” The watch was now dull gray metal.
+
+“Hey!” Kelvin cried.
+
+“If you use the rapport device, your health, fame and fortune will be
+assured,” the robot said rapidly. “You will be as happy as any man of
+this era can be. It will solve all your problems—including Tharn. Wait
+a minute.” The creature took a backward step and disappeared behind a
+hanging Oriental rug that had never been east of Peoria.
+
+There was silence.
+
+Kelvin looked from his altered watch to the flat, enigmatic object in
+his palm. It was about two inches by two inches, and no thicker than a
+woman’s vanity-case, and there was a sunken push-button on its side.
+
+He dropped it into his pocket and took a few steps forward. He looked
+behind the pseudo-Oriental rug, to find nothing except emptiness and a
+flapping slit cut in the canvas wall of the booth. The robot, it seemed,
+had taken a powder. Kelvin peered out through the slit. There was the
+light and sound of Ocean Park amusement pier, that was all. And the
+silvered, moving blackness of the Pacific Ocean, stretching to where
+small lights showed Malibu far up the invisible curve of the coastal
+cliffs.
+
+So he came back inside the booth and looked around. A fat man in a
+swami’s costume was unconscious behind the carved chest the robot had
+indicated. His breath, plus a process of deduction, told Kelvin that the
+man had been drinking.
+
+Not knowing what else to do, Kelvin called on the Deity again. He found
+suddenly that he was thinking about someone or something called Tharn,
+who was an android.
+
+Horomancy ... time ... rapport ... _no!_ Protective disbelief slid
+like plate armor around his mind. A practical robot couldn’t be made. He
+knew that. He’d have heard—he was a reporter, wasn’t he?
+
+Sure he was.
+
+Desiring noise and company, he went along to the shooting gallery and
+knocked down a few ducks. The flat case burned in his pocket. The dully
+burnished metal of his wrist-watch burned in his memory. The remembrance
+of that drainage from his brain, and the immediate replacement burned in
+his mind. Presently bar whiskey burned in his stomach.
+
+He’d left Chicago because of sinusitis, recurrent and annoying. Ordinary
+sinusitis. Not schizophrenia or hallucinations or accusing voices coming
+from the walls. Not because he had been seeing bats or robots. That
+thing hadn’t really been a robot. It all had a perfectly natural
+explanation. Oh, sure.
+
+Health, fame and fortune. And if—
+
+_THARN!_
+
+The thought crashed with thunderbolt impact into his head.
+
+And then another thought: I _am_ going nuts!
+
+A silent voice began to mutter insistently, over and over.
+“Tharn—Tharn—Tharn—Tharn—”
+
+And another voice, the voice of sanity and safety, answered it and
+drowned it out. Half aloud, Kelvin muttered:
+
+“I’m James Noel Kelvin. I’m a reporter—special features, leg work,
+rewrite. I’m thirty years old, unmarried, and I came to Los Angeles
+today and lost my baggage checks and—and I’m going to have another
+drink and find a hotel. Anyhow, the climate seems to be curing my
+sinusitis.”
+
+_Tharn_, the muffled drum-beat said almost below the threshold of
+realization. _Tharn, Tharn._
+
+_Tharn._
+
+He ordered another drink and reached in his pocket for a coin. His hand
+touched the metal case. And simultaneously he felt a light pressure on
+his shoulder.
+
+Instinctively he glanced around. It was a seven-fingered, spidery hand
+tightening—hairless, without nails—and white as smooth ivory.
+
+The one, overwhelming necessity that sprang into Kelvin’s mind was a
+simple longing to place as much space as possible between himself and
+the owner of that disgusting hand. It was a vital requirement, but one
+difficult of fulfilment, a problem that excluded everything else from
+Kelvin’s thoughts. He knew, vaguely, that he was gripping the flat case
+in his pocket as though that could save him, but all he was thinking
+was:
+
+I’ve got to get away from here.
+
+The monstrous, alien thoughts of someone in the future spun him insanely
+along their current. It could not have taken a moment while that
+skilled, competent, trained mind, wise in the lore of an unthinkable
+future, solved the random problem that had come so suddenly, with such
+curious compulsion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three methods of transportation were simultaneously clear to Kelvin. Two
+he discarded; motorplats were obviously inventions yet to come, and
+quirling—involving, as it did, a sensory coil-helmet—was beyond him.
+But the third method—
+
+Already the memory was fading. And that hand was still tightening on his
+shoulder. He clutched at the vanishing ideas and desperately made his
+brain and his muscles move along the unlikely direction the future-man
+had visualized.
+
+And he was out in the open, a cold night wind blowing on him, still in a
+sitting position, but with nothing but empty air between his spine and
+the sidewalk.
+
+He sat down suddenly.
+
+Passersby on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga were not
+much surprised at the sight of a dark, lanky man sitting by the curb.
+Only one woman had noticed Kelvin’s actual arrival, and she knew when
+she was well off. She went right on home.
+
+Kelvin got up laughing with soft hysteria. “Teleportation,” he said.
+“How did I work it? It’s gone ... Hard to remember afterward, eh? I’ll
+have to start carrying a notebook again.”
+
+And then—“But what about Tharn?”
+
+He looked around, frightened. Reassurance came only after half an hour
+had passed without additional miracles. Kelvin walked along the
+Boulevard, keeping a sharp lookout. No Tharn, though.
+
+Occasionally he slid a hand into his pocket and touched the cold metal
+of the case. Health, wealth and fortune. Why, he could—
+
+But he did not press the button. Too vivid was the memory of that
+shocking, alien disorientation he had felt. The mind, the experiences,
+the habit-patterns of the far future were uncomfortably strong.
+
+He would use the little case again—oh, yes. But there was no hurry.
+First, he’d have to work out a few angles.
+
+His disbelief was completely gone....
+
+Tharn showed up the next night and scared the daylights out of Kelvin
+again. Prior to that, the reporter had failed to find his baggage
+tickets, and was only consoled by the two hundred bucks in his wallet.
+He took a room—paying in advance—at a medium-good hotel, and began
+wondering how he might apply his pipe-line to the future. Very sensibly,
+he decided to continue a normal life until something developed. At any
+rate, he’d have to make a few connections. He tried the _Times_, the
+_Examiner_, the _News_, and some others. But these things develop
+slowly, except in the movies. That night Kelvin was in his hotel room
+when his unwelcome guest appeared.
+
+It was, of course, Tharn.
+
+He wore a very large white turban, approximately twice the size of his
+head. He had a dapper black mustache, waxed downward at the tips like
+the mustache of a mandarin, or a catfish. He stared urgently at Kelvin
+out of the bathroom mirror.
+
+Kelvin had been wondering whether or not he needed a shave before going
+out to dinner. He was rubbing his chin thoughtfully at the moment Tharn
+put in an appearance, and there was a perceptible mental lag between
+occurrence and perception, so that to Kelvin it seemed that he himself
+had mysteriously sprouted a long moustache. He reached for his upper
+lip. It was smooth. But in the glass the black waxed hairs quivered as
+Tharn pushed his face up against the surface of the mirror.
+
+It was so shockingly disorienting, somehow, that Kelvin was quite unable
+to think at all. He took a quick step backward. The edge of the bathtub
+caught him behind the knees and distracted him momentarily, fortunately
+for his sanity. When he looked again there was only his own appalled
+face reflected above the wash-bowl. But after a second or two the face
+seemed to develop a cloud of white turban, and mandarin-like whiskers
+began to form sketchily.
+
+Kelvin clapped a hand to his eyes and spun away. In about fifteen
+seconds he spread his fingers enough to peep through them at the glass.
+He kept his palm pressed desperately to his upper lip, in some wild hope
+of inhibiting the sudden sprouting of a moustache. What peeped back at
+him from the mirror looked like himself. At least, it had no turban, and
+it did not wear horn-rimmed glasses. He risked snatching his hand away
+for a quick look, and clapped it in place again just in time to prevent
+Tharn from taking shape in the glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still shielding his face, he went unsteadily into the bedroom and took
+the flat case out of his coat pocket. But he didn’t press the button
+that would close a mental synapse between two incongruous eras. He
+didn’t want to do that again, he realized. More horrible, somehow, than
+what was happening now was the thought of reentering that _alien_ brain.
+
+He was standing before the bureau, and in the mirror one eye looked out
+at him between reflected fingers. It was a wild eye behind the gleaming
+spectacle-lens, but it seemed to be his own. Tentatively he took his
+hand away....
+
+This mirror showed more of Tharn. Kelvin wished it hadn’t. Tharn was
+wearing white knee-boots of some glittering plastic. Between them and
+the turban he wore nothing whatever except a minimum of loin-cloth, also
+glittering plastic. Tharn was very thin, but he looked active. He looked
+quite active enough to spring right into the hotel room. His skin was
+whiter than his turban, and his hands had seven fingers each, all right.
+
+Kelvin abruptly turned away, but Tharn was resourceful. The dark window
+made enough of a reflecting surface to show a lean, loin-clothed figure.
+The feet showed bare, and they were less normal than Tharn’s hands. And
+the polished brass of a lamp-base gave back the picture of a small,
+distorted face not Kelvin’s own.
+
+Kelvin found a corner without reflecting surfaces and pushed into it,
+his hands shielding his face. He was still holding the flat case.
+
+Oh, fine, he thought bitterly. Everything’s got a string on it. What
+good will this rapport gadget do me if Tharn’s going to show up every
+day? Maybe I’m only crazy. I hope so.
+
+Something would have to be done unless Kelvin was prepared to go through
+life with his face buried in his hands. The worst of it was that Tharn
+had a haunting look of familiarity. Kelvin discarded a dozen
+possibilities, from reincarnation to the _déjà vu_ phenomenon, but—
+
+He peeped through his hands, in time to see Tharn raising a cylindrical
+gadget of some sort and leveling it like a gun. That gesture formed
+Kelvin’s decision. He’d _have_ to do something, and fast. So,
+concentrating on the problem—_I want out!_—he pressed the button in
+the surface of the flat case.
+
+And instantly the teleportation method he had forgotten was perfectly
+clear to him. Other matters, however, were obscure. The smells—someone
+was thinking—were adding up to a—there was no word for that, only a
+shocking visio-auditory ideation that was simply dizzying. Someone named
+Three Million and Ninety Pink had written a new flatch. And there was
+the physical sensation of licking a twenty-four-dollar stamp and
+sticking it on a postcard.
+
+But, most important, the man in the future had had—or would have—a
+compulsion to think about the teleportation method, and as Kelvin
+snapped back into his own mind and time, he instantly used that
+method....
+
+He was falling.
+
+Icy water smacked him hard. Miraculously he kept his grip on the flat
+case. He had a whirling vision of stars in a night sky, and the
+phosphorescent sheen of silvery light on a dark sea. Then brine stung
+his nostrils.
+
+Kelvin had never learned how to swim.
+
+As he went down for the last time, bubbling a scream, he literally
+clutched at the proverbial straw he was holding. His finger pushed the
+button down again. There was no need to concentrate on the problem; he
+couldn’t think of anything else.
+
+Mental chaos, fantastic images—and the answer.
+
+It took concentration, and there wasn’t much time left. Bubbles streamed
+up past his face. He felt them, but he couldn’t see them. All around,
+pressing in avidly, was the horrible coldness of the salt water....
+
+But he did know the method now, and he knew how it worked. He thought
+along the lines the future mind had indicated. Something happened.
+Radiation—that was the nearest familiar term—poured out of his brain
+and did peculiar things to his lung-tissue. His blood cells adapted
+themselves....
+
+He was breathing water, and it was no longer strangling him.
+
+But Kelvin had also learned that this emergency adaptation could not be
+maintained for very long. Teleportation was the answer to that. And
+surely he could remember the method now. He had actually used it to
+escape from Tharn only a few minutes ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet he could not remember. The memory was expunged cleanly from his
+mind. So there was nothing else to do but press the button again, and
+Kelvin did that, most reluctantly.
+
+Dripping wet, he was standing on an unfamiliar street. It was no street
+he knew, but apparently it was in his own time and on his own planet.
+Luckily, teleportation seemed to have limitations. The wind was cold.
+Kelvin stood in a puddle that grew rapidly around his feet. He stared
+around.
+
+He picked out a sign up the street that offered Turkish Baths, and
+headed moistly in that direction. His thoughts were mostly
+profane....
+
+He was in New Orleans, of all places. Presently he was drunk in New
+Orleans. His thoughts kept going around in circles, and Scotch was a
+fine palliative, an excellent brake. He needed to get control again. He
+had an almost miraculous power, and he wanted to be able to use it
+effectively before the unexpected happened again. Tharn....
+
+He sat in a hotel room and swigged Scotch. Gotta be logical!
+
+He sneezed.
+
+The trouble was, of course, that there were so few points of contact
+between his own mind and that of the future-man. Moreover, he’d got the
+rapport only in times of crisis. Like having access to the Alexandrian
+Library, five seconds a day. In five seconds you couldn’t even start
+translating....
+
+Health, fame and fortune. He sneezed again. The robot had been a liar.
+His health seemed to be going fast. What about that robot? How had he
+got involved, anyway? He said he’d fallen into this era from the future,
+but robots are notorious liars. Gotta be logical....
+
+Apparently the future was peopled by creatures not unlike the cast of a
+Frankenstein picture. Androids, robots, so-called men whose minds were
+shockingly different.... _Sneeze._ Another drink.
+
+The robot had said that the case would lose its power after Kelvin had
+achieved health, fame and fortune. Which was a distressing thought.
+Suppose he attained those enviable goals, found the little push-button
+useless, and _then_ Tharn showed up? Oh, no. That called for another
+shot.
+
+Sobriety was the wrong condition in which to approach a matter that in
+itself was as wild as delirium tremens, even though, Kelvin knew, the
+science he had stumbled on was all theoretically quite possible. But not
+in this day and age. Sneeze.
+
+The trick would be to pose the right problem and use the case at some
+time when you weren’t drowning or being menaced by that bewhiskered
+android with his seven-fingered hands and his ominous rod-like weapon.
+Find the problem.
+
+But that future-mind was hideous.
+
+And suddenly, with drunken clarity, Kelvin realized that he was
+profoundly drawn to that dim, shadowy world of the future.
+
+He could not see its complete pattern, but he sensed it somehow. He knew
+that it was _right_, a far better world and time than this. If he could
+be that unknown man who dwelt there, all would go well.
+
+Man must needs love the highest, he thought wryly. Oh, well. He shook
+the bottle. How much had he absorbed? He felt fine.
+
+Gotta be logical.
+
+Outside the window street-lights blinked off and on. Neons traced goblin
+languages against the night. It seemed rather alien, too, but so did
+Kelvin’s own body. He started to laugh, but a sneeze choked that off.
+
+All I want, he thought, is health, fame and fortune. Then I’ll settle
+down and live happily ever after, without a care or worry. I won’t need
+this enchanted case after that. Happy ending.
+
+On impulse he took out the box and examined it. He tried to pry it open
+and failed. His finger hovered over the button.
+
+“How can I—” he thought, and his finger moved half an inch....
+
+It wasn’t so alien now that he was drunk. The future man’s name was
+Quarra Vee. Odd he had never realized that before, but how often does a
+man think of his own name? Quarra Vee was playing some sort of game
+vaguely reminiscent of chess, but his opponent was on a planet of
+Sirius, some distance away. The chessmen were all unfamiliar.
+Complicated, dizzying space-time gambits flashed through Quarra Vee’s
+mind as Kelvin listened in. Then Kelvin’s problem thrust through, the
+compulsion hit Quarra Vee, and—
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was all mixed up. There were two problems, really. How to cure a
+cold—coryza. And how to become healthy, rich and famous in a
+practically prehistoric era—for Quarra Vee.
+
+A small problem, however, to Quarra Vee. He solved it and went back to
+his game with the Sirian.
+
+Kelvin was back in the hotel room in New Orleans.
+
+He was very drunk or he wouldn’t have risked it. The method involved
+using his brain to tune in on another brain in this present twentieth
+century that had exactly the wave-length he required. All sorts of
+factors would build up to the sum total of that wave-length—experience,
+opportunity, position, knowledge, imagination, honesty—but he found it
+at last, after hesitating among three totals that were all nearly right.
+Still, one was righter, to three decimal points. Still drunk as a lord,
+Kelvin clamped on a mental tight beam, turned on the teleportation, and
+rode the beam across America to a well-equipped laboratory where a man
+sat reading.
+
+The man was bald and had a bristling red moustache. He looked up sharply
+at some sound Kelvin made.
+
+“Hey!” he said. “How did you get in here?”
+
+“Ask Quarra Vee,” Kelvin said.
+
+“Who? _What?_” The man put down his book.
+
+Kelvin called on his memory. It seemed to be slipping. He used the
+rapport case for an instant, and refreshed his mind. Not so unpleasant
+this time, either. He was beginning to understand Quarra Vee’s world a
+little. He liked it. However, he supposed he’d forget that too.
+
+“An improvement on Woodward’s protein analogues,” he told the
+red-moustached man. “Simple synthesis will do it.”
+
+“Who the devil are you?”
+
+“Call me Jim,” Kelvin said simply. “And shut up and listen.” He began to
+explain, as to a small, stupid child. (The man before him was one of
+America’s foremost chemists.) “Proteins are made of amino acids. There
+are about thirty-three amino acids—”
+
+“There aren’t.”
+
+“There are. Shut up. Their molecules can be arranged in lots of ways. So
+we get an almost infinite variety of proteins. And all living things are
+forms of protein. The absolute synthesis involves a chain of amino acids
+long enough to recognize clearly as a protein molecule. That’s been the
+trouble.”
+
+The man with the red moustache seemed quite interested. “Fischer
+assembled a chain of eighteen,” he said, blinking. “Abderhalden got up
+to nineteen, and Woodward, of course, has made chains ten thousand units
+long. But as for testing—”
+
+“The complete protein molecule consists of complete sets of sequences.
+But if you can test only one or two sections of an analogue you can’t be
+sure of the others. Wait a minute.” Kelvin used the rapport case again.
+“Now I know. Well, you can make almost anything out of synthesized
+protein. Silk, wool, hair—but the main thing, of course,” he said,
+sneezing, “is a cure for coryza.”
+
+“Now look—” said the red-moustached man.
+
+“Some of the viruses are chains of amino acids, aren’t they? Well,
+modify their structure. Make ’em harmless. Bacteria too. And synthesize
+antibiotics.”
+
+“I wish I could. However, Mr.—”
+
+“Just call me Jim.”
+
+“Yes. However, all this is old stuff.”
+
+“Grab your pencil,” Kelvin said. “From now on it’ll be solid, with
+riffs. The method of synthesizing and testing is as follows—”
+
+He explained, very thoroughly and clearly. He had to use the rapport
+case only twice. And when he had finished, the man with the red
+moustache laid down his pencil and stared.
+
+“This is incredible,” he said. “If it works—”
+
+“I want health, fame and fortune,” Kelvin said stubbornly. “It’ll work.”
+
+“Yes, but—my good man—”
+
+However, Kelvin insisted. Luckily for himself, the mental testing of the
+red-moustached man had included briefing for honesty and opportunity,
+and it ended with the chemist agreeing to sign partnership papers with
+Kelvin. The commercial possibilities of the process were unbounded.
+Dupont or GM would be glad to buy it.
+
+“I want lots of money. A fortune.”
+
+“You’ll make a million dollars,” the red-moustached man said patiently.
+
+“Then I want a receipt. Have to have this in black and white. Unless you
+want to give me my million now.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Frowning, the chemist shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’ll have to run
+tests, open negotiations—but don’t worry about that. Your discovery is
+certainly worth a million. You’ll be famous, too.”
+
+“And healthy?”
+
+“There won’t be any more disease, after a while,” the chemist said
+quietly. “That’s the real miracle.”
+
+“Write it down,” Kelvin clamored.
+
+“All right. We can have partnership papers drawn up tomorrow. This will
+do temporarily. Understand, the actual credit belongs to you.”
+
+“It’s got to be in ink. A pencil won’t do.”
+
+“Just a minute, then,” the red-moustached man said, and went away in
+search of ink. Kelvin looked around the laboratory, beaming happily.
+
+Tharn materialized three feet away. Tharn was holding the rod-weapon. He
+lifted it.
+
+Kelvin instantly used the rapport case. Then he thumbed his nose at
+Tharn and teleported himself far away.
+
+He was immediately in a cornfield, somewhere, but undistilled corn was
+not what Kelvin wanted. He tried again. This time he reached Seattle.
+
+That was the beginning of Kelvin’s monumental two-week combination binge
+and chase.
+
+His thoughts weren’t pleasant.
+
+He had a frightful hangover, ten cents in his pocket, and an overdue
+hotel bill. A fortnight of keeping one jump ahead of Tharn, via
+teleportation, had frazzled his nerves so unendurably that only liquor
+had kept him going. Now even that stimulus was failing. The drink died
+in him and left what felt like a corpse.
+
+Kelvin groaned and blinked miserably. He took off his glasses and
+cleaned them, but that didn’t help.
+
+What a fool.
+
+He didn’t even know the name of that chemist!
+
+There was health, wealth and fame waiting for him just around the
+corner, but what corner? Some day he’d find out, probably, when the news
+of the new protein synthesis was publicized, but when would that be? In
+the meantime, what about Tharn?
+
+Moreover, the chemist couldn’t locate him, either. The man knew Kelvin
+only as Jim. Which had somehow seemed a good idea at the time, but not
+now.
+
+Kelvin took out the rapport case and stared at it with red eyes. Quarra
+Vee, eh? He rather liked Quarra Vee now. Trouble was, a half hour after
+his rapport, at most, he would forget all the details.
+
+This time he used the push-button almost as Tharn snapped into bodily
+existence a few feet away.
+
+The teleportation angle again. He was sitting in the middle of a desert.
+Cactus and Joshua trees were all the scenery. There was a purple range
+of mountains far away.
+
+No Tharn, though.
+
+Kelvin began to be thirsty. Suppose the case stopped working now? Oh,
+this couldn’t go on. A decision hanging fire for a week finally
+crystallized into a conclusion so obvious he felt like kicking himself.
+Perfectly obvious!
+
+Why hadn’t he thought of it at the very beginning?
+
+He concentrated on the problem: How can I get rid of Tharn? He pushed
+the button....
+
+And, a moment later, he knew the answer. It would be simple, really.
+
+The pressing urgency was gone suddenly. That seemed to release a fresh
+flow of thought. Everything became quite clear.
+
+He waited for Tharn.
+
+He did not have to wait long. There was a tremor in the shimmering air,
+and the turbaned, pallid figure sprang into tangible reality.
+
+The rod-weapon was poised.
+
+Taking no chances, Kelvin posed his problem again, pressed the button,
+and instantly reassured himself as to the method. He simply thought in a
+very special and peculiar way—the way Quarra Vee had indicated.
+
+Tharn was flung back a few feet. The moustached mouth gaped open as he
+uttered a cry.
+
+“Don’t!” the android cried. “I’ve been trying to—”
+
+Kelvin focused harder on his thought. Mental energy, he felt, was
+pouring out toward the android.
+
+Tharn croaked, “Trying—you didn’t—give me—chance—”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And then Tharn was lying motionless on the hot sand, staring blindly up.
+The seven-fingered hands twitched once and were still. The artificial
+life that had animated the android was gone. It would not return.
+
+Kelvin turned his back and drew a long, shuddering breath. He was safe.
+He closed his mind to all thoughts but one, all problems but one.
+
+How can I find the red-moustached man?
+
+He pressed the button.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is the way the story starts:
+
+Quarra Vee sat in the temporal warp with his android Tharn, and made
+sure everything was under control.
+
+“How do I look?” he asked.
+
+“You’ll pass,” Tharn said. “Nobody will be suspicious in the era you’re
+going to. It didn’t take long to synthesize the equipment.”
+
+“Not long. Clothes—they look enough like real wool and linen, I
+suppose. Wrist watch, money—everything in order. Wrist watch—that’s
+odd, isn’t it? Imagine people who need machinery to tell time!”
+
+“Don’t forget the spectacles,” Tharn said.
+
+Quarra Vee put them on. “Ugh. But I suppose—”
+
+“It’ll be safer. The optical properties in the lenses are a guard you
+may need against dangerous mental radiations. Don’t take them off, or
+the robot may try some tricks.”
+
+“He’d better not,” Quarra Vee said. “That so-and-so runaway robot!
+What’s he up to, anyway, I wonder? He always was a malcontent, but at
+least he knew his place. I’m sorry I ever had him made. No telling what
+he’ll do, loose in a semi-prehistoric world, if we don’t catch him and
+bring him home.”
+
+“He’s in that horomancy booth,” Tharn said, leaning out of the
+time-warp. “Just arrived. You’ll have to catch him by surprise. And
+you’ll need your wits about you, too. Try not to go off into any more of
+those deep-thought compulsions you’ve been having. They could be
+dangerous. That robot will use some of his tricks if he gets the chance.
+I don’t know what powers he’s developed by himself, but I do know he’s
+an expert at hypnosis and memory erasure already. If you aren’t careful
+he’ll snap your memory-track and substitute a false brain-pattern. Keep
+those glasses on. If anything should go wrong, I’ll use the
+rehabilitation ray on you, eh?” And he held up a small rod-like
+projector.
+
+Quarra Vee nodded.
+
+“Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it. I have an appointment
+with that Sirian to finish our game this evening.”
+
+It was an appointment he never kept.
+
+Quarra Vee stepped out of the temporal warp and strolled along the
+boardwalk toward the booth. The clothing he wore felt tight,
+uncomfortable, rough. He wriggled a little in it. The booth stood before
+him now, with its painted sign.
+
+He pushed aside the canvas curtain and something—a carelessly hung
+rope—swung down at his face, knocking the horn-rimmed glasses askew.
+Simultaneously a vivid bluish light blazed into his unprotected eyes. He
+felt a curious, sharp sensation of disorientation, a shifting motion
+that almost instantly was gone.
+
+The robot said, “You are James Kelvin.”
+
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+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Happy ending, by Henry Kuttner</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Happy ending</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry Kuttner</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 5, 2022 [eBook #68250]<br />
+[Most recently updated: June 10, 2022]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Alex White &amp; the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net.</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY ENDING ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>HAPPY ENDING</h1>
+
+<h2>By HENRY KUTTNER</h2>
+
+<p>Out of the Future emerge the Robot and<br />
+Tharn&#8212;while James Kelvin fights them<br />
+blindly, knowing not friend from foe!</p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
+Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948.<br />
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" id="happy-ending" style="width: 1000px;">
+  <img src="images/happy-ending.jpg" width="1000" height="949" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption"><p class="center">The android uttered a protesting cry as Kelvin sent a
+wave of mental energy at him</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This is the way the story ended:</p>
+
+<p>James Kelvin concentrated very hard on the thought of the chemist with
+the red mustache who had promised him a million dollars. It was simply a
+matter of tuning in on the man&#8217;s brain, establishing a rapport. He had
+done it before. Now it was more important than ever that he do it this
+one last time. He pressed the button on the gadget the robot had given
+him, and thought hard.</p>
+
+<p>Far off, across limitless distances, he found the rapport.</p>
+
+<p>He clamped on the mental tight beam.</p>
+
+<p>He rode it....</p>
+
+<p>The red-mustached man looked up, gaped, and grinned delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So there you are!&#8221; he said. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t hear you come in. Good grief,
+I&#8217;ve been trying to find you for two weeks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me one thing quick,&#8221; Kelvin said. &#8220;What&#8217;s your name?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;George Bailey. Incidentally, what&#8217;s yours?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Kelvin didn&#8217;t answer. He had suddenly remembered the other thing the
+robot had told him about that gadget which established rapport when he
+pressed the button. He pressed it now&#8212;and nothing happened. The gadget
+had gone dead. Its task was finished, which obviously meant he had at
+last achieved health, fame and fortune. The robot had warned him, of
+course. The thing was set to do one specialized job. Once he got what he
+wanted, it would work no more.</p>
+
+<p>So Kelvin got the million dollars.</p>
+
+<p>And he lived happily ever after....</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>This is the middle of the story:</p>
+
+<p>As he pushed aside the canvas curtain something&#8212;a carelessly hung
+rope&#8212;swung down at his face, knocking the horn-rimmed glasses askew.
+Simultaneously a vivid bluish light blazed into his unprotected eyes. He
+felt a curious, sharp sense of disorientation, a shifting motion that
+was almost instantly gone.</p>
+
+<p>Things steadied before him. He let the curtain fall back into place,
+making legible again the painted inscription: horoscopes&#8212;learn
+your future&#8212;and he stood staring at the remarkable horomancer.</p>
+
+<p>It was a&#8212;oh, impossible!</p>
+
+<p>The robot said in a flat, precise voice, &#8220;You are James Kelvin. You are
+a reporter. You are thirty years old, unmarried, and you came to Los
+Angeles from Chicago today on the advice of your physician. Is that
+correct?&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In his astonishment Kelvin called on the Deity. Then he settled his
+glasses more firmly and tried to remember an exposé of charlatans he had
+once written. There was some obvious way they worked things like this,
+miraculous as it sounded.</p>
+
+<p>The robot looked at him impassively out of its faceted eye.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;On reading your mind,&#8221; it continued in the pedantic voice, &#8220;I find this
+is the year Nineteen Forty-nine. My plans will have to be revised. I had
+meant to arrive in the year Nineteen Seventy. I will ask you to assist
+me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin put his hands in his pockets and grinned.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;With money, naturally,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You had me going for a minute. How do
+you do it, anyhow? Mirrors? Or like Maelzel&#8217;s chess player?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am not a machine operated by a dwarf, nor am I an optical illusion,&#8221;
+the robot assured him. &#8220;I am an artificially created living organism,
+originating at a period far in your future.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;m not the sucker you take me for,&#8221; Kelvin remarked pleasantly. &#8220;I
+came in here to&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You lost your baggage checks,&#8221; the robot said. &#8220;While wondering what to
+do about it, you had a few drinks and took the Wilshire bus at
+exactly&#8212;exactly eight-thirty-five post meridian.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Lay off the mind-reading,&#8221; Kelvin said. &#8220;And don&#8217;t tell me you&#8217;ve been
+running this joint very long with a line like that. The cops would be
+after you. <i>If</i> you&#8217;re a real robot, ha, ha.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have been running this joint,&#8221; the robot said, &#8220;for approximately
+five minutes. My predecessor is unconscious behind that chest in the
+corner. Your arrival here was sheer coincidence.&#8221; It paused very
+briefly, and Kelvin had the curious impression that it was watching to
+see if the story so far had gone over well.</p>
+
+<p>The impression was curious because Kelvin had no feeling at all that
+there was a man in the large, jointed figure before him. If such a thing
+as a robot were possible, he would have believed implicitly that he
+confronted a genuine specimen. Such things being impossible, he waited
+to see what the gimmick would be.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My arrival here was also accidental,&#8221; the robot informed him. &#8220;This
+being the case, my equipment will have to be altered slightly. I will
+require certain substitute mechanisms. For that, I gather as I read your
+mind, I will have to engage in your peculiar barter system of economics.
+In a word, coinage or gold or silver certificates will be necessary.
+Thus I am&#8212;temporarily&#8212;a horomancer.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sure, sure,&#8221; Kelvin said. &#8220;Why not a simple mugging? If you&#8217;re a robot,
+you could do a super-mugging job with a quick twist of the gears.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It would attract attention. Above all, I require secrecy. As a matter
+of fact, I am&#8212;&#8221; The robot paused, searched Kelvin&#8217;s brain for the right
+phrase, and said, &#8220;&#8212;on the lam. In my era, time-traveling is strictly
+forbidden, even by accident, unless government-sponsored.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was a fallacy there somewhere, Kelvin thought, but he couldn&#8217;t
+quite spot it. He blinked at the robot intently. It looked pretty
+unconvincing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What proof do you need?&#8221; the creature asked. &#8220;I read your brain the
+minute you came in, didn&#8217;t I? You must have felt the temporary amnesia
+as I drew out the knowledge and then replaced it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s what happened,&#8221; Kelvin said. He took a cautious step
+backward. &#8220;Well, I think I&#8217;ll be getting along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait,&#8221; the robot commanded. &#8220;I see you have begun to distrust me.
+Apparently you now regret having suggested a mugging job. You fear I may
+act on the suggestion. Allow me to reassure you. It is true that I could
+take your money and assure secrecy by killing you, but I am not
+permitted to kill humans. The alternative is to engage in the barter
+system. I can offer you something valuable in return for a small amount
+of gold. Let me see.&#8221; The faceted gaze swept around the tent, dwelt
+piercingly for a moment on Kelvin. &#8220;A horoscope,&#8221; the robot said. &#8220;It is
+supposed to help you achieve health, fame and fortune. Astrology,
+however, is out of my line. I can merely offer a logical scientific
+method of attaining the same results.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Uh-huh,&#8221; Kelvin said skeptically. &#8220;How much? And why haven&#8217;t <i>you</i> used
+that method?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have other ambitions,&#8221; the robot said in a cryptic manner. &#8220;Take
+this.&#8221; There was a brief clicking. A panel opened in the metallic chest.
+The robot extracted a small, flat case and handed it to Kelvin, who
+automatically closed his fingers on the cold metal.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Be careful. Don&#8217;t push that button until&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But Kelvin had pushed it....</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>He was driving a figurative car that had got out of control. There was
+somebody else inside his head. There was a schizophrenic, double-tracked
+locomotive that was running wild and his hand on the throttle couldn&#8217;t
+slow it down an instant. His mental steering-wheel had snapped.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody else was thinking for him!</p>
+
+<p>Not quite a human being. Not quite sane, probably, from Kelvin&#8217;s
+standards. But awfully sane from his own. Sane enough to have mastered
+the most intricate principles of non-Euclidean geometry in the nursery.</p>
+
+<p>The senses get synthesized in the brain into a sort of common language,
+a master-tongue. Part of it was auditory, part pictorial, and there were
+smells and tastes and tactile sensations that were sometimes familiar
+and sometimes spiced with the absolutely alien. And it was chaotic.</p>
+
+<p>Something like this, perhaps....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8212;Big Lizards getting too numerous this season&#8212;tame threvvars have the
+same eyes not on Callisto though&#8212;vacation soon&#8212;preferably
+galactic&#8212;solar system claustrophobic&#8212;byanding tomorrow if square
+rootola and upsliding three&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But that was merely the word-symbolism. Subjectively, it was far more
+detailed and very frightening. Luckily, reflex had lifted Kelvin&#8217;s
+finger from the button almost instantly, and he stood there motionless,
+shivering slightly.</p>
+
+<p>He was afraid now.</p>
+
+<p>The robot said, &#8220;You should not have begun the rapport until I
+instructed you. Now there will be danger. Wait.&#8221; His eye changed color.
+&#8220;Yes ... there is ... Tharn, yes. Beware of Tharn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want any part of it,&#8221; Kelvin said quickly. &#8220;Here, take this
+thing back.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then you will be unprotected against Tharn. Keep the device. It will,
+as I promised, ensure your health, fame and fortune, far more
+effectively than a&#8212;a horoscope.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, thanks. I don&#8217;t know how you managed that trick&#8212;sub-sonics, maybe,
+but I don&#8217;t&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wait,&#8221; the robot said. &#8220;When you pressed that button, you were in the
+mind of someone who exists very far in the future. It created a temporal
+rapport. You can bring about that rapport any time you press the
+button.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Heaven forfend,&#8221; Kelvin said, still sweating a little.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Consider the opportunities. Suppose a troglodyte of the far past had
+access to your brain? He could achieve anything he wanted.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It had become important, somehow, to find a logical rebuttal to the
+robot&#8217;s arguments. &#8220;Like St. Anthony&#8212;or was it Luther?&#8212;arguing with
+the devil?&#8221; Kelvin thought dizzily. His headache was worse, and he
+suspected he had drunk more than was good for him. But he merely said:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How could a troglodyte understand what&#8217;s in my brain? He couldn&#8217;t apply
+the knowledge without the same conditioning I&#8217;ve had.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Have you ever had sudden and apparently illogical ideas? Compulsions?
+So that you seem forced to think of certain things, count up to certain
+numbers, work out particular problems? Well, the man in the future on
+whom my device is focused doesn&#8217;t know he&#8217;s en rapport with you, Kelvin.
+But he&#8217;s vulnerable to compulsions. All you have to do is concentrate on
+a problem and then press the button. Your rapport will be
+compelled&#8212;illogically, from his viewpoint&#8212;to solve that problem. And
+you&#8217;ll be reading his brain. You&#8217;ll find out how it works. There are
+limitations, you&#8217;ll learn those too. And the device will ensure health,
+wealth and fame for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It would ensure anything, if it really worked that way. I could do
+anything. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m not buying!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I said there were limitations. As soon as you&#8217;ve successfully achieved
+health, fame, and fortune, the device will become useless. I&#8217;ve taken
+care of that. But meanwhile you can use it to solve all your problems by
+tapping the brain of the more intelligent specimen in the future. The
+important point is to concentrate on your problems <i>before</i> you press
+the button. Otherwise you may get more than Tharn on your track.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tharn? What&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I think an&#8212;an android,&#8221; the robot said, looking at nothing. &#8220;An
+artificial human ... However, let us consider my own problem. I need a
+small amount of gold.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s the kicker,&#8221; Kelvin said, feeling oddly relieved. He said, &#8220;I
+haven&#8217;t got any.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your watch.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Kelvin jerked his arm so that his wrist-watch showed. &#8220;Oh, no. That
+watch cost plenty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All I need is the gold-plating,&#8221; the robot said, shooting out a reddish
+ray from its eye. &#8220;Thank you.&#8221; The watch was now dull gray metal.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hey!&#8221; Kelvin cried.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you use the rapport device, your health, fame and fortune will be
+assured,&#8221; the robot said rapidly. &#8220;You will be as happy as any man of
+this era can be. It will solve all your problems&#8212;including Tharn. Wait
+a minute.&#8221; The creature took a backward step and disappeared behind a
+hanging Oriental rug that had never been east of Peoria.</p>
+
+<p>There was silence.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin looked from his altered watch to the flat, enigmatic object in
+his palm. It was about two inches by two inches, and no thicker than a
+woman&#8217;s vanity-case, and there was a sunken push-button on its side.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped it into his pocket and took a few steps forward. He looked
+behind the pseudo-Oriental rug, to find nothing except emptiness and a
+flapping slit cut in the canvas wall of the booth. The robot, it seemed,
+had taken a powder. Kelvin peered out through the slit. There was the
+light and sound of Ocean Park amusement pier, that was all. And the
+silvered, moving blackness of the Pacific Ocean, stretching to where
+small lights showed Malibu far up the invisible curve of the coastal
+cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>So he came back inside the booth and looked around. A fat man in a
+swami&#8217;s costume was unconscious behind the carved chest the robot had
+indicated. His breath, plus a process of deduction, told Kelvin that the
+man had been drinking.</p>
+
+<p>Not knowing what else to do, Kelvin called on the Deity again. He found
+suddenly that he was thinking about someone or something called Tharn,
+who was an android.</p>
+
+<p>Horomancy ... time ... rapport ... <i>no!</i> Protective disbelief slid
+like plate armor around his mind. A practical robot couldn&#8217;t be made. He
+knew that. He&#8217;d have heard&#8212;he was a reporter, wasn&#8217;t he?</p>
+
+<p>Sure he was.</p>
+
+<p>Desiring noise and company, he went along to the shooting gallery and
+knocked down a few ducks. The flat case burned in his pocket. The dully
+burnished metal of his wrist-watch burned in his memory. The remembrance
+of that drainage from his brain, and the immediate replacement burned in
+his mind. Presently bar whiskey burned in his stomach.</p>
+
+<p>He&#8217;d left Chicago because of sinusitis, recurrent and annoying. Ordinary
+sinusitis. Not schizophrenia or hallucinations or accusing voices coming
+from the walls. Not because he had been seeing bats or robots. That
+thing hadn&#8217;t really been a robot. It all had a perfectly natural
+explanation. Oh, sure.</p>
+
+<p>Health, fame and fortune. And if&#8212;</p>
+
+<p><i>THARN!</i></p>
+
+<p>The thought crashed with thunderbolt impact into his head.</p>
+
+<p>And then another thought: I <i>am</i> going nuts!</p>
+
+<p>A silent voice began to mutter insistently, over and over.
+&#8220;Tharn&#8212;Tharn&#8212;Tharn&#8212;Tharn&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And another voice, the voice of sanity and safety, answered it and
+drowned it out. Half aloud, Kelvin muttered:</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m James Noel Kelvin. I&#8217;m a reporter&#8212;special features, leg work,
+rewrite. I&#8217;m thirty years old, unmarried, and I came to Los Angeles
+today and lost my baggage checks and&#8212;and I&#8217;m going to have another
+drink and find a hotel. Anyhow, the climate seems to be curing my
+sinusitis.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><i>Tharn</i>, the muffled drum-beat said almost below the threshold of
+realization. <i>Tharn, Tharn.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Tharn.</i></p>
+
+<p>He ordered another drink and reached in his pocket for a coin. His hand
+touched the metal case. And simultaneously he felt a light pressure on
+his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Instinctively he glanced around. It was a seven-fingered, spidery hand
+tightening&#8212;hairless, without nails&#8212;and white as smooth ivory.</p>
+
+<p>The one, overwhelming necessity that sprang into Kelvin&#8217;s mind was a
+simple longing to place as much space as possible between himself and
+the owner of that disgusting hand. It was a vital requirement, but one
+difficult of fulfilment, a problem that excluded everything else from
+Kelvin&#8217;s thoughts. He knew, vaguely, that he was gripping the flat case
+in his pocket as though that could save him, but all he was thinking
+was:</p>
+
+<p>I&#8217;ve got to get away from here.</p>
+
+<p>The monstrous, alien thoughts of someone in the future spun him insanely
+along their current. It could not have taken a moment while that
+skilled, competent, trained mind, wise in the lore of an unthinkable
+future, solved the random problem that had come so suddenly, with such
+curious compulsion.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Three methods of transportation were simultaneously clear to Kelvin. Two
+he discarded; motorplats were obviously inventions yet to come, and
+quirling&#8212;involving, as it did, a sensory coil-helmet&#8212;was beyond him.
+But the third method&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>Already the memory was fading. And that hand was still tightening on his
+shoulder. He clutched at the vanishing ideas and desperately made his
+brain and his muscles move along the unlikely direction the future-man
+had visualized.</p>
+
+<p>And he was out in the open, a cold night wind blowing on him, still in a
+sitting position, but with nothing but empty air between his spine and
+the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Passersby on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga were not
+much surprised at the sight of a dark, lanky man sitting by the curb.
+Only one woman had noticed Kelvin&#8217;s actual arrival, and she knew when
+she was well off. She went right on home.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin got up laughing with soft hysteria. &#8220;Teleportation,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;How did I work it? It&#8217;s gone ... Hard to remember afterward, eh? I&#8217;ll
+have to start carrying a notebook again.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And then&#8212;&#8220;But what about Tharn?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He looked around, frightened. Reassurance came only after half an hour
+had passed without additional miracles. Kelvin walked along the
+Boulevard, keeping a sharp lookout. No Tharn, though.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally he slid a hand into his pocket and touched the cold metal
+of the case. Health, wealth and fortune. Why, he could&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>But he did not press the button. Too vivid was the memory of that
+shocking, alien disorientation he had felt. The mind, the experiences,
+the habit-patterns of the far future were uncomfortably strong.</p>
+
+<p>He would use the little case again&#8212;oh, yes. But there was no hurry.
+First, he&#8217;d have to work out a few angles.</p>
+
+<p>His disbelief was completely gone....</p>
+
+<p>Tharn showed up the next night and scared the daylights out of Kelvin
+again. Prior to that, the reporter had failed to find his baggage
+tickets, and was only consoled by the two hundred bucks in his wallet.
+He took a room&#8212;paying in advance&#8212;at a medium-good hotel, and began
+wondering how he might apply his pipe-line to the future. Very sensibly,
+he decided to continue a normal life until something developed. At any
+rate, he&#8217;d have to make a few connections. He tried the <i>Times</i>, the
+<i>Examiner</i>, the <i>News</i>, and some others. But these things develop
+slowly, except in the movies. That night Kelvin was in his hotel room
+when his unwelcome guest appeared.</p>
+
+<p>It was, of course, Tharn.</p>
+
+<p>He wore a very large white turban, approximately twice the size of his
+head. He had a dapper black mustache, waxed downward at the tips like
+the mustache of a mandarin, or a catfish. He stared urgently at Kelvin
+out of the bathroom mirror.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin had been wondering whether or not he needed a shave before going
+out to dinner. He was rubbing his chin thoughtfully at the moment Tharn
+put in an appearance, and there was a perceptible mental lag between
+occurrence and perception, so that to Kelvin it seemed that he himself
+had mysteriously sprouted a long moustache. He reached for his upper
+lip. It was smooth. But in the glass the black waxed hairs quivered as
+Tharn pushed his face up against the surface of the mirror.</p>
+
+<p>It was so shockingly disorienting, somehow, that Kelvin was quite unable
+to think at all. He took a quick step backward. The edge of the bathtub
+caught him behind the knees and distracted him momentarily, fortunately
+for his sanity. When he looked again there was only his own appalled
+face reflected above the wash-bowl. But after a second or two the face
+seemed to develop a cloud of white turban, and mandarin-like whiskers
+began to form sketchily.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin clapped a hand to his eyes and spun away. In about fifteen
+seconds he spread his fingers enough to peep through them at the glass.
+He kept his palm pressed desperately to his upper lip, in some wild hope
+of inhibiting the sudden sprouting of a moustache. What peeped back at
+him from the mirror looked like himself. At least, it had no turban, and
+it did not wear horn-rimmed glasses. He risked snatching his hand away
+for a quick look, and clapped it in place again just in time to prevent
+Tharn from taking shape in the glass.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Still shielding his face, he went unsteadily into the bedroom and took
+the flat case out of his coat pocket. But he didn&#8217;t press the button
+that would close a mental synapse between two incongruous eras. He
+didn&#8217;t want to do that again, he realized. More horrible, somehow, than
+what was happening now was the thought of reentering that <i>alien</i> brain.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing before the bureau, and in the mirror one eye looked out
+at him between reflected fingers. It was a wild eye behind the gleaming
+spectacle-lens, but it seemed to be his own. Tentatively he took his
+hand away....</p>
+
+<p>This mirror showed more of Tharn. Kelvin wished it hadn&#8217;t. Tharn was
+wearing white knee-boots of some glittering plastic. Between them and
+the turban he wore nothing whatever except a minimum of loin-cloth, also
+glittering plastic. Tharn was very thin, but he looked active. He looked
+quite active enough to spring right into the hotel room. His skin was
+whiter than his turban, and his hands had seven fingers each, all right.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin abruptly turned away, but Tharn was resourceful. The dark window
+made enough of a reflecting surface to show a lean, loin-clothed figure.
+The feet showed bare, and they were less normal than Tharn&#8217;s hands. And
+the polished brass of a lamp-base gave back the picture of a small,
+distorted face not Kelvin&#8217;s own.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin found a corner without reflecting surfaces and pushed into it,
+his hands shielding his face. He was still holding the flat case.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, fine, he thought bitterly. Everything&#8217;s got a string on it. What
+good will this rapport gadget do me if Tharn&#8217;s going to show up every
+day? Maybe I&#8217;m only crazy. I hope so.</p>
+
+<p>Something would have to be done unless Kelvin was prepared to go through
+life with his face buried in his hands. The worst of it was that Tharn
+had a haunting look of familiarity. Kelvin discarded a dozen
+possibilities, from reincarnation to the <i>déjà vu</i> phenomenon, but&#8212;</p>
+
+<p>He peeped through his hands, in time to see Tharn raising a cylindrical
+gadget of some sort and leveling it like a gun. That gesture formed
+Kelvin&#8217;s decision. He&#8217;d <i>have</i> to do something, and fast. So,
+concentrating on the problem&#8212;<i>I want out!</i>&#8212;he pressed the button in
+the surface of the flat case.</p>
+
+<p>And instantly the teleportation method he had forgotten was perfectly
+clear to him. Other matters, however, were obscure. The smells&#8212;someone
+was thinking&#8212;were adding up to a&#8212;there was no word for that, only a
+shocking visio-auditory ideation that was simply dizzying. Someone named
+Three Million and Ninety Pink had written a new flatch. And there was
+the physical sensation of licking a twenty-four-dollar stamp and
+sticking it on a postcard.</p>
+
+<p>But, most important, the man in the future had had&#8212;or would have&#8212;a
+compulsion to think about the teleportation method, and as Kelvin
+snapped back into his own mind and time, he instantly used that
+method....</p>
+
+<p>He was falling.</p>
+
+<p>Icy water smacked him hard. Miraculously he kept his grip on the flat
+case. He had a whirling vision of stars in a night sky, and the
+phosphorescent sheen of silvery light on a dark sea. Then brine stung
+his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin had never learned how to swim.</p>
+
+<p>As he went down for the last time, bubbling a scream, he literally
+clutched at the proverbial straw he was holding. His finger pushed the
+button down again. There was no need to concentrate on the problem; he
+couldn&#8217;t think of anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Mental chaos, fantastic images&#8212;and the answer.</p>
+
+<p>It took concentration, and there wasn&#8217;t much time left. Bubbles streamed
+up past his face. He felt them, but he couldn&#8217;t see them. All around,
+pressing in avidly, was the horrible coldness of the salt water....</p>
+
+<p>But he did know the method now, and he knew how it worked. He thought
+along the lines the future mind had indicated. Something happened.
+Radiation&#8212;that was the nearest familiar term&#8212;poured out of his brain
+and did peculiar things to his lung-tissue. His blood cells adapted
+themselves....</p>
+
+<p>He was breathing water, and it was no longer strangling him.</p>
+
+<p>But Kelvin had also learned that this emergency adaptation could not be
+maintained for very long. Teleportation was the answer to that. And
+surely he could remember the method now. He had actually used it to
+escape from Tharn only a few minutes ago.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Yet he could not remember. The memory was expunged cleanly from his
+mind. So there was nothing else to do but press the button again, and
+Kelvin did that, most reluctantly.</p>
+
+<p>Dripping wet, he was standing on an unfamiliar street. It was no street
+he knew, but apparently it was in his own time and on his own planet.
+Luckily, teleportation seemed to have limitations. The wind was cold.
+Kelvin stood in a puddle that grew rapidly around his feet. He stared
+around.</p>
+
+<p>He picked out a sign up the street that offered Turkish Baths, and
+headed moistly in that direction. His thoughts were mostly
+profane....</p>
+
+<p>He was in New Orleans, of all places. Presently he was drunk in New
+Orleans. His thoughts kept going around in circles, and Scotch was a
+fine palliative, an excellent brake. He needed to get control again. He
+had an almost miraculous power, and he wanted to be able to use it
+effectively before the unexpected happened again. Tharn....</p>
+
+<p>He sat in a hotel room and swigged Scotch. Gotta be logical!</p>
+
+<p>He sneezed.</p>
+
+<p>The trouble was, of course, that there were so few points of contact
+between his own mind and that of the future-man. Moreover, he&#8217;d got the
+rapport only in times of crisis. Like having access to the Alexandrian
+Library, five seconds a day. In five seconds you couldn&#8217;t even start
+translating....</p>
+
+<p>Health, fame and fortune. He sneezed again. The robot had been a liar.
+His health seemed to be going fast. What about that robot? How had he
+got involved, anyway? He said he&#8217;d fallen into this era from the future,
+but robots are notorious liars. Gotta be logical....</p>
+
+<p>Apparently the future was peopled by creatures not unlike the cast of a
+Frankenstein picture. Androids, robots, so-called men whose minds were
+shockingly different.... <i>Sneeze.</i> Another drink.</p>
+
+<p>The robot had said that the case would lose its power after Kelvin had
+achieved health, fame and fortune. Which was a distressing thought.
+Suppose he attained those enviable goals, found the little push-button
+useless, and <i>then</i> Tharn showed up? Oh, no. That called for another
+shot.</p>
+
+<p>Sobriety was the wrong condition in which to approach a matter that in
+itself was as wild as delirium tremens, even though, Kelvin knew, the
+science he had stumbled on was all theoretically quite possible. But not
+in this day and age. Sneeze.</p>
+
+<p>The trick would be to pose the right problem and use the case at some
+time when you weren&#8217;t drowning or being menaced by that bewhiskered
+android with his seven-fingered hands and his ominous rod-like weapon.
+Find the problem.</p>
+
+<p>But that future-mind was hideous.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly, with drunken clarity, Kelvin realized that he was
+profoundly drawn to that dim, shadowy world of the future.</p>
+
+<p>He could not see its complete pattern, but he sensed it somehow. He knew
+that it was <i>right</i>, a far better world and time than this. If he could
+be that unknown man who dwelt there, all would go well.</p>
+
+<p>Man must needs love the highest, he thought wryly. Oh, well. He shook
+the bottle. How much had he absorbed? He felt fine.</p>
+
+<p>Gotta be logical.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the window street-lights blinked off and on. Neons traced goblin
+languages against the night. It seemed rather alien, too, but so did
+Kelvin&#8217;s own body. He started to laugh, but a sneeze choked that off.</p>
+
+<p>All I want, he thought, is health, fame and fortune. Then I&#8217;ll settle
+down and live happily ever after, without a care or worry. I won&#8217;t need
+this enchanted case after that. Happy ending.</p>
+
+<p>On impulse he took out the box and examined it. He tried to pry it open
+and failed. His finger hovered over the button.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How can I&#8212;&#8221; he thought, and his finger moved half an inch....</p>
+
+<p>It wasn&#8217;t so alien now that he was drunk. The future man&#8217;s name was
+Quarra Vee. Odd he had never realized that before, but how often does a
+man think of his own name? Quarra Vee was playing some sort of game
+vaguely reminiscent of chess, but his opponent was on a planet of
+Sirius, some distance away. The chessmen were all unfamiliar.
+Complicated, dizzying space-time gambits flashed through Quarra Vee&#8217;s
+mind as Kelvin listened in. Then Kelvin&#8217;s problem thrust through, the
+compulsion hit Quarra Vee, and&#8212;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>It was all mixed up. There were two problems, really. How to cure a
+cold&#8212;coryza. And how to become healthy, rich and famous in a
+practically prehistoric era&#8212;for Quarra Vee.</p>
+
+<p>A small problem, however, to Quarra Vee. He solved it and went back to
+his game with the Sirian.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin was back in the hotel room in New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>He was very drunk or he wouldn&#8217;t have risked it. The method involved
+using his brain to tune in on another brain in this present twentieth
+century that had exactly the wave-length he required. All sorts of
+factors would build up to the sum total of that wave-length&#8212;experience,
+opportunity, position, knowledge, imagination, honesty&#8212;but he found it
+at last, after hesitating among three totals that were all nearly right.
+Still, one was righter, to three decimal points. Still drunk as a lord,
+Kelvin clamped on a mental tight beam, turned on the teleportation, and
+rode the beam across America to a well-equipped laboratory where a man
+sat reading.</p>
+
+<p>The man was bald and had a bristling red moustache. He looked up sharply
+at some sound Kelvin made.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hey!&#8221; he said. &#8220;How did you get in here?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ask Quarra Vee,&#8221; Kelvin said.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who? <i>What?</i>&#8221; The man put down his book.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin called on his memory. It seemed to be slipping. He used the
+rapport case for an instant, and refreshed his mind. Not so unpleasant
+this time, either. He was beginning to understand Quarra Vee&#8217;s world a
+little. He liked it. However, he supposed he&#8217;d forget that too.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;An improvement on Woodward&#8217;s protein analogues,&#8221; he told the
+red-moustached man. &#8220;Simple synthesis will do it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who the devil are you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Call me Jim,&#8221; Kelvin said simply. &#8220;And shut up and listen.&#8221; He began to
+explain, as to a small, stupid child. (The man before him was one of
+America&#8217;s foremost chemists.) &#8220;Proteins are made of amino acids. There
+are about thirty-three amino acids&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There aren&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There are. Shut up. Their molecules can be arranged in lots of ways. So
+we get an almost infinite variety of proteins. And all living things are
+forms of protein. The absolute synthesis involves a chain of amino acids
+long enough to recognize clearly as a protein molecule. That&#8217;s been the
+trouble.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The man with the red moustache seemed quite interested. &#8220;Fischer
+assembled a chain of eighteen,&#8221; he said, blinking. &#8220;Abderhalden got up
+to nineteen, and Woodward, of course, has made chains ten thousand units
+long. But as for testing&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The complete protein molecule consists of complete sets of sequences.
+But if you can test only one or two sections of an analogue you can&#8217;t be
+sure of the others. Wait a minute.&#8221; Kelvin used the rapport case again.
+&#8220;Now I know. Well, you can make almost anything out of synthesized
+protein. Silk, wool, hair&#8212;but the main thing, of course,&#8221; he said,
+sneezing, &#8220;is a cure for coryza.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now look&#8212;&#8221; said the red-moustached man.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some of the viruses are chains of amino acids, aren&#8217;t they? Well,
+modify their structure. Make &#8217;em harmless. Bacteria too. And synthesize
+antibiotics.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I wish I could. However, Mr.&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just call me Jim.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes. However, all this is old stuff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Grab your pencil,&#8221; Kelvin said. &#8220;From now on it&#8217;ll be solid, with
+riffs. The method of synthesizing and testing is as follows&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He explained, very thoroughly and clearly. He had to use the rapport
+case only twice. And when he had finished, the man with the red
+moustache laid down his pencil and stared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;This is incredible,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If it works&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want health, fame and fortune,&#8221; Kelvin said stubbornly. &#8220;It&#8217;ll work.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but&#8212;my good man&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>However, Kelvin insisted. Luckily for himself, the mental testing of the
+red-moustached man had included briefing for honesty and opportunity,
+and it ended with the chemist agreeing to sign partnership papers with
+Kelvin. The commercial possibilities of the process were unbounded.
+Dupont or GM would be glad to buy it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I want lots of money. A fortune.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll make a million dollars,&#8221; the red-moustached man said patiently.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then I want a receipt. Have to have this in black and white. Unless you
+want to give me my million now.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Frowning, the chemist shook his head. &#8220;I can&#8217;t do that. I&#8217;ll have to run
+tests, open negotiations&#8212;but don&#8217;t worry about that. Your discovery is
+certainly worth a million. You&#8217;ll be famous, too.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And healthy?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There won&#8217;t be any more disease, after a while,&#8221; the chemist said
+quietly. &#8220;That&#8217;s the real miracle.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Write it down,&#8221; Kelvin clamored.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All right. We can have partnership papers drawn up tomorrow. This will
+do temporarily. Understand, the actual credit belongs to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s got to be in ink. A pencil won&#8217;t do.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Just a minute, then,&#8221; the red-moustached man said, and went away in
+search of ink. Kelvin looked around the laboratory, beaming happily.</p>
+
+<p>Tharn materialized three feet away. Tharn was holding the rod-weapon. He
+lifted it.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin instantly used the rapport case. Then he thumbed his nose at
+Tharn and teleported himself far away.</p>
+
+<p>He was immediately in a cornfield, somewhere, but undistilled corn was
+not what Kelvin wanted. He tried again. This time he reached Seattle.</p>
+
+<p>That was the beginning of Kelvin&#8217;s monumental two-week combination binge
+and chase.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts weren&#8217;t pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>He had a frightful hangover, ten cents in his pocket, and an overdue
+hotel bill. A fortnight of keeping one jump ahead of Tharn, via
+teleportation, had frazzled his nerves so unendurably that only liquor
+had kept him going. Now even that stimulus was failing. The drink died
+in him and left what felt like a corpse.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin groaned and blinked miserably. He took off his glasses and
+cleaned them, but that didn&#8217;t help.</p>
+
+<p>What a fool.</p>
+
+<p>He didn&#8217;t even know the name of that chemist!</p>
+
+<p>There was health, wealth and fame waiting for him just around the
+corner, but what corner? Some day he&#8217;d find out, probably, when the news
+of the new protein synthesis was publicized, but when would that be? In
+the meantime, what about Tharn?</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the chemist couldn&#8217;t locate him, either. The man knew Kelvin
+only as Jim. Which had somehow seemed a good idea at the time, but not
+now.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin took out the rapport case and stared at it with red eyes. Quarra
+Vee, eh? He rather liked Quarra Vee now. Trouble was, a half hour after
+his rapport, at most, he would forget all the details.</p>
+
+<p>This time he used the push-button almost as Tharn snapped into bodily
+existence a few feet away.</p>
+
+<p>The teleportation angle again. He was sitting in the middle of a desert.
+Cactus and Joshua trees were all the scenery. There was a purple range
+of mountains far away.</p>
+
+<p>No Tharn, though.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin began to be thirsty. Suppose the case stopped working now? Oh,
+this couldn&#8217;t go on. A decision hanging fire for a week finally
+crystallized into a conclusion so obvious he felt like kicking himself.
+Perfectly obvious!</p>
+
+<p>Why hadn&#8217;t he thought of it at the very beginning?</p>
+
+<p>He concentrated on the problem: How can I get rid of Tharn? He pushed
+the button....</p>
+
+<p>And, a moment later, he knew the answer. It would be simple, really.</p>
+
+<p>The pressing urgency was gone suddenly. That seemed to release a fresh
+flow of thought. Everything became quite clear.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for Tharn.</p>
+
+<p>He did not have to wait long. There was a tremor in the shimmering air,
+and the turbaned, pallid figure sprang into tangible reality.</p>
+
+<p>The rod-weapon was poised.</p>
+
+<p>Taking no chances, Kelvin posed his problem again, pressed the button,
+and instantly reassured himself as to the method. He simply thought in a
+very special and peculiar way&#8212;the way Quarra Vee had indicated.</p>
+
+<p>Tharn was flung back a few feet. The moustached mouth gaped open as he
+uttered a cry.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t!&#8221; the android cried. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been trying to&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin focused harder on his thought. Mental energy, he felt, was
+pouring out toward the android.</p>
+
+<p>Tharn croaked, &#8220;Trying&#8212;you didn&#8217;t&#8212;give me&#8212;chance&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>And then Tharn was lying motionless on the hot sand, staring blindly up.
+The seven-fingered hands twitched once and were still. The artificial
+life that had animated the android was gone. It would not return.</p>
+
+<p>Kelvin turned his back and drew a long, shuddering breath. He was safe.
+He closed his mind to all thoughts but one, all problems but one.</p>
+
+<p>How can I find the red-moustached man?</p>
+
+<p>He pressed the button.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>This is the way the story starts:</p>
+
+<p>Quarra Vee sat in the temporal warp with his android Tharn, and made
+sure everything was under control.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How do I look?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll pass,&#8221; Tharn said. &#8220;Nobody will be suspicious in the era you&#8217;re
+going to. It didn&#8217;t take long to synthesize the equipment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Not long. Clothes&#8212;they look enough like real wool and linen, I
+suppose. Wrist watch, money&#8212;everything in order. Wrist watch&#8212;that&#8217;s
+odd, isn&#8217;t it? Imagine people who need machinery to tell time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t forget the spectacles,&#8221; Tharn said.</p>
+
+<p>Quarra Vee put them on. &#8220;Ugh. But I suppose&#8212;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be safer. The optical properties in the lenses are a guard you
+may need against dangerous mental radiations. Don&#8217;t take them off, or
+the robot may try some tricks.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;d better not,&#8221; Quarra Vee said. &#8220;That so-and-so runaway robot!
+What&#8217;s he up to, anyway, I wonder? He always was a malcontent, but at
+least he knew his place. I&#8217;m sorry I ever had him made. No telling what
+he&#8217;ll do, loose in a semi-prehistoric world, if we don&#8217;t catch him and
+bring him home.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s in that horomancy booth,&#8221; Tharn said, leaning out of the
+time-warp. &#8220;Just arrived. You&#8217;ll have to catch him by surprise. And
+you&#8217;ll need your wits about you, too. Try not to go off into any more of
+those deep-thought compulsions you&#8217;ve been having. They could be
+dangerous. That robot will use some of his tricks if he gets the chance.
+I don&#8217;t know what powers he&#8217;s developed by himself, but I do know he&#8217;s
+an expert at hypnosis and memory erasure already. If you aren&#8217;t careful
+he&#8217;ll snap your memory-track and substitute a false brain-pattern. Keep
+those glasses on. If anything should go wrong, I&#8217;ll use the
+rehabilitation ray on you, eh?&#8221; And he held up a small rod-like
+projector.</p>
+
+<p>Quarra Vee nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t worry. I&#8217;ll be back before you know it. I have an appointment
+with that Sirian to finish our game this evening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was an appointment he never kept.</p>
+
+<p>Quarra Vee stepped out of the temporal warp and strolled along the
+boardwalk toward the booth. The clothing he wore felt tight,
+uncomfortable, rough. He wriggled a little in it. The booth stood before
+him now, with its painted sign.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed aside the canvas curtain and something&#8212;a carelessly hung
+rope&#8212;swung down at his face, knocking the horn-rimmed glasses askew.
+Simultaneously a vivid bluish light blazed into his unprotected eyes. He
+felt a curious, sharp sensation of disorientation, a shifting motion
+that almost instantly was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The robot said, &#8220;You are James Kelvin.&#8221;</p>
+
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