Cleaning Up

The first Gift fell onto a pig farm in New England. It popped into existence five metres above a ramshackle outhouse, dropped through the roof, bounced off a cistern and demolished a wheel-less tractor driving a band saw.

Bruce Losey came running out of the house clutching his sporting carbine and ready to blast any interloper to Kingdom Come. All he found was what looked like a gigantic bundle of Peacock feathers on top of his tractor, which was lying on its side leaking fuel and looking like it would never work again. Bruce looked up through the hole in the roof and spat into a pile of cut logs, 'Goddamned S.S.T.s.'

He tried to shift the object that had bust up his tractor, smashed his roof and dented his cistern, but leapt away when it burned his hands. He went back to the house watching the sky warily, and called the police.

Cesare Borges, head of the mighty Industrial Military Combines Corporation, sat in his office reading a fascinating article called Prayer: A Guide to Investment? The office intercom buzzed.

'What?'

'Professor Feldman to see you, sir.'

'Who?'

'A Professor Feldman, sir.'

'Oh yeah?'

'Yes, sir. He says he has the results of the preliminary development work on ... ', there was some talking Cesare didn't catch, ' ... on the Alternative Resources Project.'

'The what?'

'The Alternative Resources Project, sir. It was set up last year, it seems. The professor has been waiting for some time, sir.'

'I'll see him later,' Cesare said, clicking the intercom off and going back to the Reader's Digest

'Hell, I don't know what it is.'

'I think it fell off an S.S.T.'

The patrolman rubbed his chin. The other cop was poking a stick at the bundle lying across the old tractor. The thing was about three metres long and one in diameter, and whatever it was its colours kept shifting and changing, and whenever anything touched it, it got hot. The tip of the stick smoked.

'Who should we tell about this anyway?' said the cop with the stick. He wanted to have this cleared up as quickly as possible and get away from the smell of pigs coming from the barn across the yard.

'I guess ... the F.A.A.,' said the other, 'or maybe the Air Force. I dunno.' He took off his cap and fiddled with the badge, breathing on it and polishing it on his sleeve.

'Well I'm claiming compensation, whoever it belongs to,' Bruce said as they went back to the house. 'That's a lot of damage that thing's done. That'll cost a few bucks to set right. That tractor was nearly new, you know. I'm telling you; nowhere's safe now with those S.S.T.s.'

'Hmm.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Hey,' Bruce said, stopping and looking at the two cops with a worried expression on his face, 'do you know if Liberia registers S.S.T.s?'

Professor Feldman sat in the outer-outer office in Cesare's suite at the top of the I.M.C.C. building in Manhattan and looked through the abstract of his report for about the eightieth time.

The secretary, a clean-cut young man with an IBM 9000 desk terminal and a M.23 submachine gun, had shrugged his shoulders sympathetically after he had at last been persuaded to call through to Cesare's office. The professor said he would just have to wait, and went back to his seat. There were seven other people waiting to see Cesare apart from himself. Two of them were Air Force generals and one was the foreign minister of an important developing country. They all looked nervous without their aides, who were kept in the outer-outer-outer office to avoid crowding. According to the others, they had been waiting there, seven or eight hours each day, five days a week, for at least the last three weeks.

This was the professor's first day.

The factory ship moved through space in one of the dust-rich arms of the main galaxy, its net-fields like great, invisible limbs stretched before it, gathering its harvest like a trawl and funnelling the ensnared material into the first-stage Transmuters.

In the mess of the Third Clean-Up Squad, things were going badly for Matriapoll Trasnegatherstoleken-iffre-gienthickissle, jnr. He had almost completed a full circuit of the room without touching the floor when a collapsible chair collapsed beneath him, and now he had to go back to the start and begin all over again with one paw tied behind his back. The other members of the Squad were making bets on where he would fall and screaming insults.

'7833 Matriapoll and Mates to briefing room fourteen!' blared the mess-room speaker.

Normally Matriapoll would have welcomed this interruption, but he was on top of the speaker trying to grab hold of a light fixture at the time, and the shock of the speaker suddenly bursting into life beneath him made him lose his grip, and he thumped down onto the floor to the accompaniment of hoots and laughter.

'Bastards,' he said.

'Come on, Matty,' chuckled his Mates, Oney and Twoey, their tiny, dextrous hands quickly untying his arm and dusting him down. They straightened his clothes and bustled out in front of him as Matriapoll paid what he owed to the others in the Squad and then left for the briefing room.

The Air Force didn't know what it was either, but it wasn't anything of theirs, they were sure of that. They certainly weren't going to be paying any compensation. But they decided to take the thing, just to see what it was.

The Air Force came in a big truck that didn't quite make the turn off the road onto the farm track, and knocked down a metre or two of fencing. Bruce said he'd sue.

They took the bundle away wrapped in asbestos.

At the Mercantsville Airbase they tried to find out what the object was, but apart from deducing that - from the way it felt - there was something inside the oddly-coloured outer covering, which now appeared like mother-of-pearl, they didn't make a great deal of progress.

Somebody in I.M.C.C. got to hear about the object and the Company offered to open it, or at least make a further attempt, if the Air Force would let them have it.

The Air Force thought about this. The mysterious bundle was resisting all attempts to open it or even see inside. They had tried metal tools, which melted; they tried oxy-acetylene torches, which disappeared into the mother-of-pearl covering without producing any noticeable effect; oxygen lances, which did no better; shaped-charge explosives, which shifted the whole thing across the floor of the hangar; and laser beams, which bounced off and frazzled the roof.

A few days later a truck left the Mercantsville base and made its way to the nearest I.M.C.C. laboratory.

Professor Feldman had started a series of chess games with the foreign minister. Two more people had arrived in the outer-outer office to wait. One of the generals had given up and left. Professor Feldman could see that he might have to wait quite a while before being granted an audience with Mr Borges. He had a sinking feeling that by the time he got in to see the chief, all the problems in the world that the A.R.P. was supposed to help alleviate would have disappeared, one way or another.

The foreign minister wasn't very good at chess.

The scoutship warped its way through space.

Matriapoll picked what passed with his people for a nose and watched the show on the control-cabin screen. The show was extremely boring; yet another quiz programme where people answered questions that were far too easy and got prizes that were far too expensive, but Matriapoll kept watching because the hostesses who showed the prizes to the audience were beautiful. The green one in particular had the most superb trio of phnysthens he could recall seeing.

The show cut out suddenly and was replaced by a picture of stars. One star was ringed in red by the ship's computer.

'Is that where we're going?' said a little voice behind him.

'Yes,' said Matriapoll to Twoey. The little animal curled its arm around his neck and peeped over his shoulder, rubbing its snout on his collar.

'That's where the Transporter's focused?'

'Right there, on the system's sun.' Matty frowned. 'Or at least that's where it's meant to be targeted.'

Another Gift turned up in Kansas, another in Texas. One was seen from a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, falling into the water. They still hadn't worked out how to open them. They tried bombarding them with light, radio, x and gamma rays and they tried ultrasonic equipment on it too. They did all the same things to the Kansas object and the Texas object, but none of them gave up any of their secrets.

Eventually they put the original bundle into a vacuum chamber. That didn't work either until they heated one side and froze the other. The thing peeled like a wrapper off candy, and for an instant the people outside the chamber were left gazing at something that looked like a cross between a suit of armour and a missile, before it blew up and caught fire.

They were left with a very odd pile of junk, but the next time ...

Cesare was on the phone.

'Okay, I'm a busy man; there are a lot of people waiting to see me. What is it?'

The phone made noises. Cesare watched the Manhattan skyline, then he said, 'Oh yeah?'

The phone made more noises. Cesare nodded. He inspected his fingernails and sighed.

While he was doing that, a general swinging on the end of a length of rope tied around his waist passed in front of Cesare's office window waving plans for a new high-altitude bomber. Cesare looked into the phone.

'What?'

The rope came back empty, and a sheaf of papers floated for a moment in front of the glass before the breeze caught them and took them away, drifting slowly down to the streets, eighty floors below.

'And it's just floating there? No engines? No noise? Nothing?'

The rope was hanging just outside the window, the remains of a poorly tied knot at the end.

'Anti-gravity? Sure.'

Cesare put the phone down without another word. I am surrounded by idiots, he thought.

Gifts started popping into existence all over the place. Some were found in Europe, one in Australia, two in Africa, three in South America.

I.M.C.C had thirteen, eleven of them found in the USA and one each from South America and Africa. They found out how to open them without damaging the contents, and what they found were some very odd things indeed.

One kept trying to walk away on its five legs. It looked a little like a spider. Another just floated in mid-air without any apparent means of support. It vaguely resembled a typewriter with headlamps. Another was the size of a sub-compact automobile and tried to talk to everybody with blond hair in a language which appeared to consist mostly of grunts and wind-breaking noises. Yet another seemed to be a different size and shape every time you looked at it. All were very difficult to take apart, and the analysis of any bits that they did eventually succeed in removing didn't make sense.

Professor Feldman sat beside the Police Chief who was waiting to see Cesare to ask whether he knew anything about the Air Force general who had, it seemed, jumped to his death from the roof of the building a few days ago. The professor had been talking about this with the policeman, and was shocked to discover that it was the same general he had been waiting with up to a week ago. The other general, who was still there waiting, said he couldn't help in the investigation.

'Checkmate,' Professor Feldman said, after eight moves.

'Are you sure?' said the foreign minister, leaning closer to inspect the board. Feldman was about to reply when the young secretary came over and tapped him on the shoulder.

'Professor Feldman?'

'Yes?'

'Would you like to go in? Mr Borges will see you now.'

The young secretary went back to his seat. The professor looked around at the others, aghast. They were glaring at him with that special contempt reserved by the envious for the undeserving. The remaining general sneered openly at him and glanced meaningfully down at the patchwork of ribbons that covered one side of his chest. The professor gathered up his papers in total silence and gave his lunchbox and magazines to the policeman. He pulled his tie straight and walked as steadily as he could to the door, still wondering why he had been summoned before people who had been waiting much longer than he had.

Cesare Borges straightened his tie, put the edition of National Geographic away, and emptied the small box containing the names of the rest of the people sitting in the outer-outer office into the waste-bin. Professor Feldman's slip of paper was marking Cesare's place in the magazine.

'Well?' he said when Professor Feldman walked into the room. Cesare motioned him to sit in a seat in front of the massive desk. Feldman sat down and cleared his throat. He took some papers and spread them deferentially on Cesare's desk.

'Well, sir, these are some of the projects we've been working on in this, the first phase of what I like to call -'

'What's this?' snorted Cesare, holding up a piece of paper with a drawing on it.

'That? That's ... ah ... that's a new design of mud-press for constructing bricks in a low-technology situation.'

Cesare looked at him. He picked up another bit of paper.

'And this?'

'That's a section through a new, low-cost, long-life toilet we've designed for when water is at a premium.'

'You've spent two million of the firm's money designing a john?' Cesare said huskily.

'Well, sir, it's very important. It's just one component in a whole system of low-cost, high-use interdependent facilities which have been designed to be of facility in the Third World. Of course, the development costs will probably be recouped in production, though it was agreed that it would be very good for the overall image of the company and the associated universities if there was no actual profit component included in the eventual selling price.'

'It was?' said Cesare.

The professor coughed nervously. 'So I believe, sir. That was at the last shareholders' meeting. The grant for the project as a whole dates from then, although the preliminary viability study was first -'

'Just a minute,' Cesare said, holding up one hand and putting the other to the buzzing intercom. 'Yes?'

'Call on line two, sir.'

Cesare picked up the phone. Feldman sat back and wondered what was going to happen. Cesare said, 'Are you sure? And this could definitely be used? This had better be right. OK. Hold everything; I'm coming out there.' He put down the phone and hit a button on the intercom set. 'Get the helicopter and have the jet ready.'

'Ah ... Mr Borges -' Professor Feldman began as Cesare opened a drawer in his desk and took out a travelling bag. Cesare held up one hand.

'Not now, doc; I got to move. Just wait in the outer-outer office until I send for you. I won't be long. So long.'

With that he was gone, into his private elevator and on up to the roof to his private helicopter which would fly him to an I.M.C.C. airstrip where his private jet would be waiting. The young secretary came into the office and ushered Professor Feldman and his papers back out into the outer-outer office, where nobody talked to him and the foreign minister and the Police Chief were playing chequers on his chess board.

'Black Holes!' Matriapoll said loudly.

'What's wrong, Matty?' said Oney. The three of them were watching a complicated array of lights and screens in the control cabin. The system and surrounding space was shown diagrammatically, and a little red light had just appeared next to the third planet, counting out from the star.

'I'll tell you what's wrong,' said Matriapoll, clicking his brows with annoyance. 'That Transporter is out-of-order.'

'It's not working, Matty?'

'It's working, but it isn't working properly,' said Matriapoll. 'It's supposed to be depositing the stuff here,' he pointed to an orange area above the star's surface, 'but it isn't doing that. It's putting it down here.' He pointed to another area of the screen; the third planet.

'That's bad?'

Matriapoll turned to look at the two Mates. They sat on the back of his seat and looked back at him, tilting their heads to one side. Twoey licked his face.

'Don't you two phnysthens ever listen to the briefings?'

'Yes, of course we do.'

'Then you ought to know that world's inhabited.'

'Oh ... it's that one. We thought it was the one with the pretty rings.'

'Good grief,' breathed Matriapoll, and took the scout-ship towards the offending planet.

The fighter rose above the airfield without a sound. The generals looked pleased. Cesare pretended not to be impressed. The plane was moving horizontally now, high enough for the people in the revue stand to be able to see the flat disk attached to its underside. It was that disk which was providing all the power. The craft swept away over the Nevada desert.

Somebody handed Cesare a pair of binoculars and told him where to watch. All he could see was a white blockhouse in the bright sun, shimmering, miles away.

Then the plane appeared in one corner of his magnified vision. A bolt of blinding light leapt from it, crossed to the blockhouse in no appreciable time, and demolished it in a cloud of dust.

'Hmm,' Cesare said.

'What do you think, sir?' said the local I.M.C.C. head, a young man called Fosse.

'Depends. Can we produce those things?'

'We think we ought to be able to soon, sir. One of the last machines we recovered seems to like taking the others apart. We can start to find out exactly how they're put together. Once we find that out we're half-way there.'

'Okay, but where are these things coming from?'

'Frankly, sir, we don't know.' They turned and looked back at the desert as the sound of the exploding blockhouse rolled over the stand. The aircraft was returning too, slowing for a vertical landing.

'We're sure they aren't Commie?'

'Oh, quite sure, sir. If they could deliver things that size into our air-space without our radar spotting them they'd be sending H-bombs, not their latest technology.'

'Yes, that makes sense,' Cesare said. The generals were starting to file out of the stand. A fleet of helicopters waited for the various dignitaries, military and civilian. A handful of security men kept generals and other I.M.C.C. underlings from bothering Cesare as he chatted to Fosse.

'I understand the President has given us the full go-ahead for joint development with the armed forces, sir.'

'Who? Oh, yeah. The President. Good. Real good. Get onto it then. I'm interested in this, Fosse. Think I'll stay over in California for a while. Get some rest. Keep an eye on all this. Pressure of work back in the East, you know.'

'Of course, sir.'

'Oh, shucks,' Matriapoll said. 'They've found them. Look at that.' He showed them the writeout of all the objects the faulty Transporter had been beaming to Earth instead of the sun. The two little animals behind him went 'tut-tut' and shook their heads. 'Look at that!' Matriapoll went on, 'A translator for the Grenbrethg, an automatic sewer inspection kit, a kiddie's climber, a Bloorthana-ee brothel hover-bed, a low-grade Repairer, a one-person gas sub, a Striyian phallic symbol, a ... oh, no; a Schpleebop fly-swat!'

'Not so good, eh?' said Oney.

Matriapoll patted the hairy head of the little beast. 'Correct, little one. Not good at all. A positive disaster; we could have a cargo-cult or anything down there by now. Warm up the ethergraph, I've got to get this back to the ship.'

' ... and however outlandish it may sound, it is my opinion that just as our great country has, in the past at least, seen fit to provide covert support for democracies under internal foreign subversion situations, so we ourselves are now being provided with aid by an alien super-power. And why is this? I'll tell you why. Because they recognize that the West, these United States of America, are the real representatives of humanity and decency on this planet. They want to help us to fend off the Communist threat. Now, whether we really need their help or not is a debatable moot point, it could be arguable ... but if they want to give us this aid then I for one am not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. I say we take this by the horns, and go for it.'

Cesare sat down to restrained applause.

I.M.C.C.'s West Coast Headquarters Conference Room was packed with military and civilian personnel. They had all listened intently to what the scientists and generals had to say, and for many of them a lot of what they heard was new. The Company and the U.S.A.F., along with the Army and the Navy too, were launching a joint R&D programme on the New Technology (as they were calling it) and had every hope that they would soon have an unbeatable lead over the Soviets.

Personally, Cesare thought the Gifts were from God, but he'd been dissuaded from saying so, and the speech writers seemed to think Helpful Aliens was the most likely explanation. Cesare didn't think it mattered as long as they got the drop on the Commies.

'Great speech, sir,' Fosse said afterwards.

'Thanks,' Cesare said. 'You're right. I think they all know what's going on now. But we have to watch the security angle on this real carefully now. Any leaks and the Ruskies might get windy and launch a pre-emptive.'

'Well, I guess they'll find out eventually no matter how good our security is, sir. You know what some of the scientists are like.'

'Hmm. And then they'll start a Third World War, the mad dogs.'

'Yes. We'll just have to hope that we can develop the New Technology quickly enough so that -'

'Hmm.'

Stardate: 0475 39709 G.M.T. (Galactic Mean Time).

Ref: 283746352 = 728495 / dheyjquidhajvncjflzmxj / 27846539836574 / qwertyuiop + drmfsltd / MMM.

Message begins: YOU STUPID HALF_ASSED INCOMPETENT MORONS YOU HAVE BEEN PUMPING THE GOODS SLAP-BANG ONTO ONE OF THE MOST RABIDLY SENSITIVE ROCK-BALLS IT HAS EVER BEEN MY MISFORTUNE TO BE WITHIN A LIGHT-YEAR OF. IF YOU COULD SEE THE MESS DOWN HERE YOU WOULD VOMIT. I HAVE SEEN THE MESS DOWN HERE AND I VOMITED ALL OVER MY MATES AND THEY DID NOT LIKE IT. CLOSE THAT (Expletive deleted by on-board ethergraph unit) TRANSPORTER DOWN BEFORE THIS LOT BLOW HALF THE PLANET AWAY. DISMANTLE THE THING OR HACK IT TO BITS WITH AN AXE IF YOU HAVE TO BUT STOP IT!

Yours sincerely,

7833 Matriapoll, C-U.S.3

Cesare was sitting in his Manhattan office with Fosse, who he had liked enough to bring through to the East Coast so that the younger man could see how things were run at the top.

'You finished with that yet?' Cesare said.

Fosse looked up from It Pays to Increase Your Prayer Power. 'Yes, sir.'

'Hmm.' Cesare took the small magazine and slid a copy of a pamphlet called God is a Businessman across the desk to Fosse in exchange.

There was a knocking sound at the window.

The two men looked over in stunned surprise at a weird figure sitting on something that looked like a coffee table, floating in the air just outside the window. Whoever or whatever it was, it was holding on to the coffee table with one hand, or paw, tapping the glass with another and with a third was playing absent-mindedly with the end of a bit of rope that was hanging in front of the window.

'Jeeeeeesus.' Cesare gasped, reaching slowly for the drawer with the alarm on the outside and the Armalite on the inside.

The creature on the coffee table pushed lightly at the window. It collapsed, and the being came inside, rubbing bits of glass off its furry spacesuit. Its face was a horrible bright red.

'First person singular obtaining colloquial orgasm within a Caledonian sandwich,' it said, then looked annoyed, and spoke incoherently into a grille set in its belly, which replied. It looked up and said, 'Sorry. As I was saying: I come in peace.'

Cesare whipped out the Armalite and fired.

The bullets bounced off an invisible force-field, and one ricochetted back to Cesare's desk, totally destroying a very expensive executive toy. The creature on the coffee table looked upset.

'You bastard!' it yelled, and took a large pistol of its own from a holster and fired it at Cesare. A cloud of green glowing gas enveloped Cesare's face, which dropped. He let the gun drop too.

'My God,' he breathed, 'I've crapped my pants.' He stumbled waddling away from the desk and into his private toilet, doubled up and holding the seat of his trousers.

The creature was looking into the muzzle of his pistol and scratching its head with one foot. 'That's funny,' it said, 'it's meant to make your eyes explode.'

It floated over to Fosse, stopping at the desk to lick appreciatively at the blue glop that had flowed, slowly, from the smashed executive toy.

Fosse, sweating, smiled ingratiatingly and said, 'I think we're going to get along just fine ... '

The MPs came for the other Air Force general. He'd been away so long it had been assumed he'd deserted. They dragged him out kicking and screaming.

The professor watched phlegmatically. Ever since the foreign minister had been informed that there'd been a coup back home and he would be placed under house arrest at the embassy if he left, the professor had resigned himself to whatever happened here. He'd even let the general who had just been arrested make models of the planned bomber from the papers of the Alternative Resources Project.

He didn't know why he bothered staying, but what the hell ...

' ... so you see when you're producing so much material from a factory ship that size you have to maximize the optimum output both in terms of real numbers and as a viable proportion of total units produced. With the high rates of production attainable using light atoms and dust to build up or break down to basic molecules which then go to construct artefacts, naturally you have a certain proportion that fail to meet the quite perfect standards we set.

'All such material is dumped onto the surface of a nearby star or, in the case of high heat-resistance articles, dumped somewhere inside it. The material cannot be recycled economically because as a rule even the shoddy goods that we produce are very difficult to break up, and the Transmuters are tuned only to accept matter in comparatively small quanta. In this case there seems to have been rather a serious leak. The new machinery we've just installed has made a mistake in the relevant coordinates, and ... well, you know the rest.'

'You mean all this stuff is RUBBISH?' said Cesare from the bathroom.

'Yes, I'm afraid so. There shouldn't be any more after a little while. I've already contacted the factory ship. Please accept our sincere apologies.'

'Wait a minute,' Fosse said as the alien turned to go. 'Have these things been arriving just anywhere? I mean is it a random thing?'

'Yes. The Transporter got that right, at least. They've been distributed fairly evenly over the globe. Most of them have sunk in the oceans of course, and quite a few are still undiscovered in rain forests and deserts and in the Antarctic and so on, but we'll locate those through their coverings and get rid of them once we get another new machine on-line.' It held up three paws as Fosse started to speak again. 'I know,' it said, 'you'd like to keep the things, but I'm afraid that isn't possible. We do have a responsibility, after all. Now you must excuse me. Goodbye.'

The alien disappeared out of the window and went straight up into the sky, narrowly missing a passing S.S.T.

Suddenly the alarm started sounding. Five armed guards rushed into the room and began restraining Fosse. Cesare succeeded in stopping them before Fosse had anything worse than severe bruising and a broken jaw. He shooed the guards out and closed the door.

'You realize what this means?' he said to Fosse. 'I'll tell you what it means; we're using junk; that's what it means!'

'It'sh worsh than that, shir,' Fosse said. 'That shing shaid the Gi - rubbish wash appearing all over the surfashe of the Earth; that meansh the bigg - ow! - the bi'er the country the more of thoshe thingsh they're going to get; and rubbish or not they can probably all be ushed.'

'So?'

'Do you know what country hash the greatesht land-area in the whole world, shir?'

Cesare nodded confidently. 'The good old U.S. of A.'

'No, shir,' Fosse said shaking his head slowly.

Cesare looked into Fosse's eyes. His own eyes gradually widened and his upper lip trembled. 'Not ... '

'Yesh!'

'Hot-damn!'

The Gifts kept appearing for two more weeks, which they guessed was the time it took for the Alien's message to get to the factory ship, and/or the time it took for the rubbish to get from the ship to Earth.

They kept testing the equipment but if there was anything wrong with it they couldn't find out what it was. The aliens must be really fussy.

The very last Gift to arrive, as far as they knew, was the most interesting of all. The New Technology Project was racing ahead, budget vastly increased now that it was known the Communists probably had the same stuff. The spy satellites hadn't spotted anything, but then they'd managed to keep pretty tight security themselves, so that didn't prove anything.

They were near Alamogordo, where the last, very large Gift had appeared. They had had to construct a special building around it to do the business with the covering. Cesare looked up at it.

'OK. But what does it do?'

'It's a matter transmission machine,' said one scientist.

'No, it isn't,' said another. 'Whatever it is it isn't that; it doesn't leave an original behind. I think it uses continua to-'

'Rubbish. It's a true matter transmission machine, Mr Borges. We can't hope to recreate this with our own technology, but we can certainly use it; shifting commodities, urgently needed drugs, disaster aid ... '

'There's nothing wrong with it?'

'Wrong with it? Why, this is the most perfect piece of machinery in existence on the planet. We've already shifted two hundred brand-new Cadillacs from here to Tampa and back again just as a trial. It did it without a murmur and right on target.'

'Good.'

'Now, as I was saying ... we could use this thing to vastly step up the productive capacity of certain key industries, and make possible the rapid deployment of emergency supplies in a disaster/crisis situation -'

Good, thought Cesare. We can use it to bomb the Ruskies.

'What?' roared Matriapoll when he got back and they told him. 'You told it to junk itself and it disappeared up its own asshole!'

'It was an honest mistake,' said Matriapoll's foreman.

'They'll use it! They'll infest every nearby planet and system they can lay their coordinates on!'

'It'll probably malfunction totally sooner or later; don't worry about it. By the way, where's your other Mate? I only see one.'

'Don't talk to me about it,' Matriapoll said huffily. 'The idiot took a Flyer for a joy-ride and collided with an S.S.T.'

'You're sure this is going to work sir?'

'Sure it'll work,' Cesare said. They were sitting with a whole load of I.M.C.C. people and military and political types in the underground command-post under the matter transmitter. 'We tested it by sending the same number of dummy warheads right round the world and back here. They were all bang-on. It'll be a clean sweep. Nothing can go wrong.'

The Transporter, unduly sensitive to, amongst other things, radiation, became somewhat mixed up however, and, to cut a short story shorter, it blitzed the Eastern seaboard of the United States of America, messed the Atlantic up a bit, and bombed Mauritania, Portugal and Ireland. After that it jammed and never worked again.

Fosse thought that Mr Borges was taking it very well, considering (there was talk of a law suit). Cesare was on the phone, trying to trace somebody.

'Anybody I know, sir?'

Cesare looked up from the telephone, his eyes reflecting the embarrassing red splotches spread over the giant world map on the far side of the room. 'You remember Feldman? Professor Feldman?'

'No, sir; I don't think I've ever met the person.'

'Doesn't matter; he's dead. But I'm getting hold of his number two in Chicago; he's all right. I've heard what it's like in the East. It sounds terrible: famine, plague, cannibalism, anarchy, flooding, drought; the works. There's fantastic scope for a pet project of mine I've been nursing along for a few years now. Called the Alternative Resources Project. It's perfect for this situation. We're ideally placed to take advantage of this. It's a peach, believe me. We could clean up.'