“Well, I can try,” I said.
“The next pop is due in about a minute.”
I got an old, dry stick from the garden and held it next to the edge of the polished stone work, keeping my hand well away from it. The pop came on schedule and this time it was accompanied by a minor explosion coming from the bottom of the hole. Startled, I jumped back, but kept hold of the stick. Looking at it, I had a wafer of polished stone—the kind you see in lapidary shops—stuck through the end of my stick. I mean, the stick just went in one side and out the other, without the stone having a hole in it.
“I should have warned you about the explosion,” Hasenpfeffer said. “What have you got there?”
“Well, it looks like we’ve got a good stone-cutting technique,” I said.
“We might have a great deal more than that. Tell me, how far was it from the stone to where this wafer appeared?”
“Oh, about an inch and a quarter.”
“About three centimeters. Excellent. That confirms my theory,” Hasenpfeffer said.
“Enlighten me.”
“This wafer is just under a half centimeter thick. We have observed six pops since we arrived, and the debris at the bottom of the hole indicated that a pop occurred before we got here.”
“So?”
“So seven times less than a half equals about three.”
Maybe in psychology they use a different kind of arithmetic than we use in electronics, but I don’t think that I’d want Hasenpfeffer to design a circuit for me.
“Yeah?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Hasenpfeffer said. “The material that once occupied a spherical volume of space went someplace else and now it’s returning to its original position in small pieces.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “Where did it go when it wasn’t here?”
“How should I know? I would imagine that it went into some alternate spatial or temporal continuum.”
“Alternate. . . . ?”
“Don’t you read any science fiction? Come, there’s work to do. And get Ian,” Hasenpfeffer said.
Well, Ian was still there, and the bottle was still there, but the contents of the latter had been transferred to the former.
“Ian’s going to be out of it for a while.”
“Oh. I see. Well, we will simply have to do it ourselves.”
“Do what?”
“Rig some sort of net to recover as much as of the debris as possible.”
“What on earth for?”
Hasenpfeffer looked at me sadly. Then he started speaking slowly and with small words. “Something made a big ball of earth and air go away. Now it is coming back. Big balls of earth don’t usually go away, so something unusual must have made it go away. Maybe that something is in the middle of the big ball that went away. If we can get it, maybe we can find out how to make other big balls of dirt go away.”
“Go drag your knuckles in your shit.”
Obnoxious son of a bitch. I went and cut down two thin saplings for poles. The twit needed me because he was too clumsy to cut down a tree without chopping off both of his thumbs in the process. I heard another “pop while I rigged up a butterfly net of sorts out of the poles, my sleeping bag, and some bungee cords. Dumb bastard, anyway.
“You’ll notice that there was some sort of structure here,” Hasenpfeffer said. “The last few pops have contained bits of wood and shingles, located precisely where you would expect them to be if a thin spherical shell were to materialize in our space. While none of the debris so far has been very heavy, some of it looks quite sharp, so do be careful. Oh yes. The explosions are becoming less violent. I think that the additional material at the bottom has a muffling action.”
My “butterfly net” weighed about fifty pounds.
“Hey, I should be careful? Damn it, Jim, give me a hand with this thing!”
“Well, if you really feel that you require physical assistance . . .” But he didn’t come any closer to me.
Pop.
“What is that?” he said.
“That” was a bunch of hundred dollar bills that materialized right in front of me. I had them scooped out of the air before they fell into the hole.
I said, “Hey, good idea about the net!”
“Thank you. They’re coming in at six minute intervals now, so be ready. I’ll watch for anything else that might be useful.”
So I was left holding the stick, but it didn’t trouble me any more. In the next eight pops, with Hasenpfeffer warning me of each impending pop, I raked in an even two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back then. Some of the bills were cut up, but I got all the pieces. We could Scotch tape them back together later on.
Then there was nothing much except wood and plumbing fixtures for a few hours, so I took a lunch break. I was halfway through my fourth salami sandwich when Hasenpfeffer started yelling.
“His papers! There are papers coming in!”
“What? Whose papers?”
No answer. The pops were coming two minutes apart now, so I inhaled the sandwich and went back to work. Actually, my net was a little big for Hasenpfeffer to handle alone.
Paper came in, but it was more like confetti than anything else. You see, the money had been laid parallel to the surface of the sphere, whereas this stuff was perpendicular to it. It came as thin, curved walls of confetti that gently exploded on arrival. The first bits were followed by a deluge of paper.
“Jim, this is ridiculous. A whole library has been run through the grandmother of all paper schredders here. No way in hell will we ever get it together,” I said.
“But we must try! It’s critical!”
“Maybe, but it’s also impossible. I’m going back to lunch. Call me if anything useful turns up.”
Ian hadn’t moved, but he still had a pulse.
Towards four o’clock the gore started. I had been scooping up bits of electronic parts, circuit boards and workbench when I got a bit of meat on my sleeping bag. At first I thought that I was going through another refrigerator. At this point the sphere was about two yards in diameter. I was standing knee deep in sharp splinters of wood veneer, thankful for my leather pants and shit-kicker boots. The pops were coming every ten seconds and it was about five scoops before I realized what was happening. I was pitching people!
“Omigod,” I said.
“You noticed,” Hasenpfeffer said. “Don’t let it throw you. We’re almost to the end.”
“But . . .”
“Hang on just a little longer, Tom. We can’t save him, but maybe we can save his work.”
The last hundred or so shells came in a long BBRRIIIP!
And then it was over.
I was dead tired and went over to the lawn, by Ian, who had rolled over on his side, and had his pants unzipped. I lay down upwind of him, because he was doing the vomit and urine routine. Forty ounces of sour mash is quite a bit for a little fellow who’d never been drunk before.
I guess I sacked out.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Venture
It was dusk when Hasenpfeffer shook me awake.
“Hey, Tom. Are you all right?”
“Huh? Yeah. I guess so.”
“I just wanted to tell you that actually, we were able to salvage very little. Only the money, some wrecked circuits—that you may or may not be able to do something with—and this. It was the only piece of legible paper that I was able to save. Do you have any idea of what it is?”
I was feeling sort of woozy.
“Uh, sure. It’s a circuit schematic.”
“I deduced that. But does it mean anything to you?”
“Well, it’s strange. He’s got digital, analog and R-F components in the same circuit. Maybe I can figure it out. Later. Look, I don’t feel so good.”
“You don’t look so good, either. I have already sent Ian for an ambulance. He said to tell you that alcohol is not a pain killer. It’s a pain delayer and relocator.”
“Uh, if Ian was all hung over, why didn’t you go yourself?”
“Because I don’t feel so good either.”
Then for a while there my memory gets sort of spotty. It was a lot like when you’re on a good drunk only without any of the fun involved.
Medical types were always waking me up to do something to me. Hauling me into an ambulance, out of an ambulance, into bed, out of bed. Asking weird questions I couldn’t quite follow. Waking me up to get some more shots. Waking me up again to take my sleeping pills. I tell you that medics have less respect for your personal individuality than the average Air Force sergeant.