is a little different from travel by the rocket you fiction writers make so much of. With a rocket vehicle you pick your destination, make your calculations, and off you go. The warp is blind flying, strictly blind. We send an unmanned scanner ahead. It probes around more or less hit-or-miss until it locates something, somewhere, that looks habitable. When it spots a likely looking place, we keep a tight beam on it and send through a manned scout.” He grinned sourly. “Like me. If it looks good to the scout, he signals back, and they leave the warp anchored for a sort of permanent gateway until we can get a transport beam built. But we can’t control the directional and dimensional scope of the warp. There are an infinity of ways it can go, until we have a guide beam transmitting from the other side. Then we can just scan a segment of space with the warp, and the scanner picks up the beam.”
He shook his head wearily. “We’re new at it, Morgan. We’ve only tried a few dozen runs. We’re not too far ahead of you in technology. We’ve been using rocket vehicles just like yours for over a century. That’s fine for a solar system, but it’s not much good for the stars. When the warp principle was discovered, it looked like the answer. But something went wrong, the scanner picked up this planet, and I was coming through, and then something blew. Next thing I knew I was falling. When I tried to make contact again, the scanner was gone!”
“And you found things here the same as back home,” said Morgan.
“The same! Your planet and mine are practically twins. Similar cities, similar technology, everything. The people are the same, with precisely the same anatomy and physiology, the same sort of laws, the same institutions, even compatible languages. Can’t you see the importance of it? This planet is on the other side of the universe from mine, with the first intelligent life we’ve yet encountered anywhere. But when I try to tell your people that I’m a native of another star system, they won’t believe me!”
“Why should they?” asked Morgan. “You look like a human being. You talk like one. You eat like one. You act like one. What you’re asking them to believe is utterly incredible.”
“But it’s true.”
Morgan shrugged. “So it’s true. I won’t argue with you. But as I asked before, even if I did believe you, what do you expect me to do about it? Why pick me, of all the people you’ve seen?”
There was a desperate light in Parks’ eyes. “I was tired, tired of being laughed at, tired of having people looking at me as though I’d lost my wits when I tried to tell them the truth. You were here, you were alone, so I started talking. And then I found out you wrote stories.” He looked up eagerly. “I’ve got to get back, Morgan, somehow. My life is there, my family. And think what it would mean to both of our worlds—contact with another intelligent race! Combine our knowledges, our technologies, and we could explore the galaxy!”
He leaned forward, his thin face intense. “I need money and I need help. I know some of the mathematics of the warp principle, know some of the design, some of the power and wiring principles. You have engineers here, technologists, physicists. They could fill in what I don’t know and build a guide beam. But they won’t do it if they don’t believe me. Your government won’t listen to me, they won’t appropriate any money.”
“Of course they won’t. They’ve got a war or two on their hands, they have public welfare, and atomic bombs, and rockets to the moon to sink their money into.” Morgan stared at the man. “But what can I do?”
“You can write! That’s what you can do. You can tell the world about me, you can tell exactly what has happened. I know how public interest can be aroused in my world. It must be the same in yours.”
Morgan didn’t move. He just stared. “How many people have you talked to?” he asked.
“A dozen, a hundred, maybe a thousand.”
“And how many believed you?”
“None.”
“You mean nobody would believe you?”
“Not one soul. Until I talked to you.”
And then Morgan was laughing, laughing bitterly, tears rolling down his cheeks. “And I’m the one man who couldn’t help you if my life depended on it,” he gasped.
“You believe me?”
Morgan nodded sadly. “I believe you. Yes. I think your warp brought you through to a parallel universe of your own planet, not to another star, but I think you’re telling the truth.”
“Then you can help me.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d be worse than no help at all.”
Jefferson Parks gripped the table, his knuckles white. “Why?” he cried hoarsely. “If you believe me, why can’t you help me?”
Morgan pointed to the magazine lying on the table. “I write, yes,” he said sadly. “Ever read stories like this before?”
Parks picked up the magazine, glanced at the bright cover. “I barely looked at it.”
“You should look more closely. I have a story in this issue. The readers thought it was very interesting,” Morgan grinned. “Go ahead, look at it.”
The stranger from the stars leafed through the magazine, stopped at a page that carried Roger Morgan’s name. His eyes caught the first paragraph and he turned white. He set the magazine down with a trembling hand. “I see,” he said, and the life was gone out of his voice. He spread the pages viciously, read the lines again.
The paragraph said:
“Just suppose,” said Martin, “that I did believe you.
Just for argument.” He glanced up at the man across the table.
“Where do we go from here?”
My Friend Bobby
My name is Jimmy and I am five years old, and my friend Bobby is five years old too but he says he thinks he’s really more than five years old because he’s already grown up and I’m just a little boy. We live out in the country because that’s where mommy and daddy live, and every morning daddy takes the car out of the barn and rides into the city to work, and every night he comes back to eat supper and to see mommy and Bobby and me. One time I asked daddy why we don’t live in the city like some people do and he laughed and said you wouldn’t really want to live in the city would you? After all he said you couldn’t have Bobby in the city, so I guess it’s better to live in the country after all.
Anyway daddy says that the city is no place to raise kids these days. I asked Bobby if I am a kid and he said he guessed so but I don’t think he really knows because Bobby isn’t very smart. But Bobby is my friend even if he doesn’t know much and I like him more than anybody else.
Mommy doesn’t like Bobby very much and when I am bad she makes Bobby go outdoors even when it’s cold outside. Mommy says I shouldn’t play with Bobby so much because after all Bobby is only a dog but I like Bobby. Everyone else is so big, and when mommy and daddy are home all I can see is their legs unless I look way up high, and
