His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

"Watcha staring at me for?" she demanded. "You chemistry creeps been synthesizing cocaine again?"

"Studs," he said hoarsely, "darling Studs, did anybody ever tell you that you have the most beautiful case of acne in the world?"

"Insults from a monkey like you I don't have to take," she snorted, and stalked out of the co-op. Richard Claxton Hanbury III trailed after her like an arbutus plant.

Eventually he persuaded her of his sincerity and they were married.

Everybody cautiously said that they were well matched. Sometimes Richard would see a tanned, long-limbed blonde lounging in a yellow convertible and suffer an anachronistic pang, but it did not happen often. He was happy in the dear presence of his Studs, and at all times profoundly grateful that he had not tried out the pills on a hamster.

Some things are practically impossible to explain, and that would have been one of them.

THE SILLY SEASON

[F&SF, Fall 1950]

It was a hot summer afternoon in the Omaha bureau of the World Wireless Press Service, and the control bureau in New York kept nagging me for copy. But since it was a hot summer afternoon, there was no copy. A wrapup of local baseball had cleared about an hour ago, and that was that. Nothing but baseball happens in the summer. During the dog days, politicians are in the Maine woods fishing and boozing, burglars are too tired to burgle, and wives think it over and decide not to decapitate their husbands.

I pawed through some press releases. One sloppy stencil-duplicated sheet began: "Did you know that the lemonade way to summer comfort and health has been endorsed by leading physio-therapists from Maine to California? The Federated Lemon-Growers Association revealed today that a survey of 2,500 physiotherapists in 57 cities of more than 25,000 population disclosed that 87 per cent of them drink lemonade at least once a day between June and Sep-tember, and that another 72 per cent not only drink the cooling and healthful beverage but actually prescribe it—"

Another note tapped out on the news circuit printer from New York:

"960M-HW kicker? ND SNST-NY."

That was New York saying they needed a bright and sparkling lit-tle news item immediately—"soonest." I went to the eastbound printer and punched out: "96NY-UPCMNG FU MINS-OM."

The lemonade handout was hopeless; I dug into the stack again. The State University summer course was inviting the governor to at-tend its summer conference on aims and approaches hi adult second-ary education. The Agricultural College wanted me to warn farmers that white-skinned hogs should be kept from the direct rays of the summer sun. The manager of a fifth-rate local pug sent a writeup of his boy and a couple of working press passes to his next bout in the Omaha Arena.

The Schwartz and White Bandage Company contrib-uted a glossy eight-by-ten of a blonde in a bathing suit improvised from two S. & W. Redi-Dressings.

Accompanying text: "Pert starlet Miff McCoy is ready for any seaside emergency. That's not only a darling swim suit she has on— it's two standard all-purpose Redi-Dressing bandages made by the Schwartz and White Bandage Company of Omaha. If a broken rib results from too-strenuous beach athletics, Miff's dress can supply the dressing."

Yeah. The rest of the stack wasn't even that good. I dumped them all in the circular file, and began to wrack my brains in spite of the heat.

I'd have to fake one, I decided. Unfortunately, there had been no big running silly season story so far this summer—no flying saucers, or monsters in the Florida Everglades, or chloroform bandits terrify-ing the city. If there had, I could have hopped on and faked a "with." As it was, I'd have to fake a "lead," which is harder and riskier.

The flying saucers? I couldn't revive them; they'd been forgotten for years, except by newsmen. The giant turtle of Lake Huron had been quiet for years, too. If I started a chloroform bandit scare, every old maid in the state would back me up by swearing she heard the bandit trying to break in and smelled chloroform—but the cops wouldn't like it. Strange messages from space received at the State University's radar lab? That might do it. I put a sheet of copy paper hi the typewriter and sat, glaring at it and hating the silly season.

There was a slight reprieve—the Western Union tie-line printer by the desk dinged at me and its sickly-yellow bulb lit up. I tapped out:

"WW GA PLS," and the machine began to eject yellow, gummed tape which told me this:

"wu co62-dpr collect—ft hicks ark aug 22 105p— worldwireless omaha—town marshal pinkney crawles died mysterious circumstances fishtripping ozark hamlet rush city today. rushers phoned hicksers