Asimov, Isaac Buy Jupiter and Other Stories

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back to the original starting point at any time.
Pointdexter's teeth chattered as the first motion made itself felt in his stomach, Like an elevator's motion
it was, but not quite, It was something more subtle, yet very real. He said, What if
Barron snapped out, Nothing can go wrong. Please! And at once there was a jar and Pointdexter fell
heavily against the wall.
Barron said, What the devil!
What happened? demanded Pointdexter breathlessly. I don't know, but it doesn't matter. We're only
twenty-two hours into the future. Let's step out and check.
The door of the machine slid into its recessed panel and the breath went out of Pointdexter's body in a
panting whoosh. He said, There's nothing there.
Nothing. No matter. No light. Blank!
Pointdexter screamed. The Earth moved. We forgot that. In twenty-two hours, it moved thousands of
miles through space, traveling around the sun.
No, said Barron faintly, I didn't forget that. The machine is designed to follow the time path of Earth
wherever that leads. Besides, even if Earth moved, where is the sun? Where are the stars?
Barron went back to the controls. Nothing budged. Nothing worked. The door would no longer slide
shut. Blank!
Pointdexter found it getting difficult to breathe, difficult to move. With effort he said, What's wrong,
then?
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Barron moved slowly toward the center of the machine. He said painfully, The particles of time. I think
we happened to stall...between two...particles.
Pointdexter tried to clench a fist but couldn't. Don't understand.
Like an elevator. Like an elevator. He could no longer sound the words, but only move his lips to
shape them. Like an elevator, after all...stuck between the floors.
Pointdexter could not even move his lips. He thought: Nothing can proceed in nontime. All motion is
suspended, all consciousness, all everything. There was an inertia about themselves that had carried them
along in time for a minute or so, like a body leaning forward when an automobile comes to a sudden
halt-but it was dying fast.
The light within the machine dimmed and went out. Sensation and awareness chilled into nothing.
One last thought, one final, feeble, mental sigh:Hubris, ate!
Then thought stopped, too.
Stasis! Nothing! For all eternity, where even eternity was meaningless, there would only be-blank!
=====
All threeBlanks were published in the June 1957 issue ofInfinity and the idea of the gimmick, I suppose,
was to let the reader compare them and note how three different imaginations took off from a single,
nondescript title.
Perhaps you wish you could have all three stories here, so that you could make the comparison yourself.
Well, you can't.
In the first place, I'd have to get permissions from Randall and from Harlan and I don't want to have to
go through that, In the second place, you underestimate my self-centered nature. I don't want their stories
included with mine!
Then, too, I must explain that I always dismantle magazines with my stories in them, because I just can't
manage to keep intact those magazines containing my stories. There are too many magazines and not
enough room. I take out my own particular stories and bind them into volumes for future reference (as in
the preparation of this book). Actually, I am running out of room for the volumes.
Anyway, when it came to dismantling the June 1957Infinity I abstracted only BLANK! and discarded
Blank? andBlank.
Or, perhaps, you don't underestimate my self-centered nature and expect me as a matter of course, to
do that sort of thing.
Back in the middle 1950s, when some of the less affluent science fiction magazines (not that any of them
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werereally affluent) asked me for a story, it was my practice to request the rates thatAstounding and
Galaxy paid if any magazine expected a story written especially for them. They would do so, quite
confident that if I said a story was written especially for them, it was, and that it had not been slipped out
of the bottom of the barrel. (There are times when having a reputation as being too dumb to be crooked
comes in handy.)
The corollary of that, of course, is that if a story of mine is ever rejected by Editor A, it is incumbent
upon me to tell this to Editor B when I offer it anew. In the first place, a rejection of a story with my name
on it must give rise to thoughts such as Wow! This storymust be a stinker! and it's only fair to give the
second editor a chance to agree. Secondly, even if the second editor accepts the story he need not feel
called upon to pay me more than his own standard fees. It meant an occasional loss of a few dollars but it
made me more comfortable inside my wizened little soul.
Anyway, DOES A BEE CARE? was written in October 1956, after I had discussed it with Robert P.
Mills, ofFantasy and Science Fiction, who had taken over the editorship of a new sister magazine ofF
&SF, which was to be calledVenture Science Fiction.
I guess the execution fell short of the promise, because Mills rejected it and it was deemed unworthy
both forVenture and forF &SF. So I passed it on toIf: Worlds of Science Fiction with the word of the
rejection and I got less than top rates for it. It appeared in the June 1957 issue.
Now the sad part is that I can never tell what there is about a story that makes the difference between [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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