Shock by Henry Kuttner & C L Moore

Author:Henry Kuttner & C L Moore [Kuttner, Henry & Moore, C L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi Short Story
Publisher: Astounding Science Fiction
Published: 1943-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Later, dressing, Gregg phoned Haverhill Research to say he would not be in that day. In case Halison showed up, he wanted to be on hand. But Halison did not arrive. Gregg spent the morning crushing out cigarettes and thumbing through the book. In the afternoon he sent it by messenger to Courtney, at the university, with a brief note asking for information. Courtney, whose forte was languages, telephoned to say he was baffled.

Naturally he was curious. Gregg spent an awkward five minutes putting him off, and decided to be more wary next time. He was not anxious to release his secret to the world. Even MacPherson—well, that couldn’t be helped now. But this was Manning Gregg’s discovery, and it was only fair that he should have first rights.

Gregg’s selfishness was completely unmercenary. Had he analyzed his motives, he would have realized that he was greedy for intellectual intoxication—that was the only suitable term. Gregg did have a really fine, keen-edged brain, and took an intense delight in using it. He could get positively drunk on the working out of technical problems, the same pleasure an engineer feels at sight of a beautifully executed blueprint, or a pianist confronted by an intricate composition. He was a perfectionist. And to be given a key to the perfect world of the future—

He was not certain of its perfection, of course, but later he felt more certain. Especially after the valve slowly began opening at 6:80 p. m. that evening.

This time Gregg went through as soon as the hole was large enough to admit him. He had plenty of time. His search for a door proved fruitless, but he did make another discovery—the blue walls were in reality the doors of immense cupboards, full of extraordinary objects. Books, of course—though he could read none of them. Some of the charts were tantalizingly on the edge of translation into his own focus of understanding, but not quite. Pictures, three-dimensional and tinted, proved fascinating in their dim glimpses of the life of the future. It was, he suspected, a happy sort of life.

The cupboards—

They held the damnedest things. No doubt they were all perfectly familiar to Halison, but what, for example, could Gregg make of a two-foot doll, modeled after a future human, that recited what seemed to be poetry in an unknown tongue? The rhyme scheme was remarkable, from what Gregg could understand of it—an intricate, bizarre counterpoint that had a definite emotional effect, even in the alien language.

And then there were more of the rubbery, glassy blocks, with moving lights inside; and metallic frameworks—one of which Gregg recognized as a model of the solar system; and a hydroponic garden with chameleon qualities; and plastics of possibly mythical animals that could be merged to produce other animals that were crosses or sports—an incredible demonstration of pure genetics, this; and more, and more, and morel Gregg got dizzy. He had to go to the windows to recuperate.

The rainbow lights still flashed through the dark. Far below he could make out intermittent blazes of radiance, as though star shells were bursting.

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