Trouble
By GEORGE O. SMITH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1946.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Tom Lionel, Consulting Engineer, awoke with a shake of his head. Atonce, he was out of bed. He consulted first the calendar and then theclock. The thought struck him funny. He hadn't been drinking, but theidea of looking at a calendar upon awakening might be construed as anadmission that he didn't know what time of what day it was.
Or mayhap what month.
"Ding it," he grunted. "I've been away again."
He dressed by stages. At the trousers department, Tom wandered out intothe living room and stood over a chessboard, studying the set-up. Theopponent had moved the queen to the rook's fourth, menacing his bishop.Tom smiled and moved his knight to his knight's sixth and checked theopponent's king on the rook's first, and the queen simultaneously. Heslid the drawer below the table open and removed a little standingsign that said, in red, block letters:
CHECK!
"Let him try that one, will he?" laughed Tom. The move was basic; inchecking the king and menacing the queen simultaneously, Tom had—orwould upon the next move—collect himself his opponent's queen with nogreat loss.
At the shirt and necktie stage, Tom Lionel stood teetering on his heelsbefore the bookcase on the right of the fireplace. He took from thecase a slim volume and read the title with considerable distaste:
"Theory of Monomolecular Filmsin Fission-Reaction"
By A. G. Rodan, Ph.D., M.M., LL.D.
"Yipe!" exploded Tom as he opened the book and glanced at the price:$9.50. With ease he prorated the price against the thickness of thevolume and came to the estimate that the book had cost approximatelynineteen dollars per inch excluding covers. He riffled through thepages and paused here and there to read, but the pages themselves werea good average of four lines of text to the rest of the page full ofnuclear equations.
Tom Lionel snorted. He ran down through one of the arguments andfollowed it to conclusion.
"Why can't he get something worth reading?" he yawned, putting the bookback in its place. "Darned impractical stuff." As usual with a manwho spends much time in his own company, Tom Lionel talked aloud tohimself—and occasionally was known to answer himself back. "The wholetrouble with the entire tribe of physicists per se is the fact thatonce, someone told one of them that he was a theorist, an idealist,and a dealer in the abstract. Now the bunch of them are afraid to doanything practical because they're afraid if they do, people won't knowthey're physicists. Physicists are a sort of necessary, end-productevil."
During the breakfast section of Tom's morning duties, Tom read thelatest copy of the "Proceedings of the I.R.E." with some relish. Apaper on the "Crystallographic Generation of Microwaves" complete withplainly manipulated differential calculus and engineering data occupiedmost of his time. The rest of the time through coffee he was makingmarks on the tablecloth with the egg-laden end of his fork and tryingto fit the crystallographic generation of microwaves into a problemthat made the article most timely; the solution for which he had beenseeking for a week.
The mail arrived. Three household bills were filed in the desk toawait the first of the month. Two advertisements were filed into thewasteba