Over a period of five years I had sold fourteen stories, every one of them to Campbell. This didn’t mean that he was the only editor in the field, at all. Almost all the magazines that had been published before the war still existed (although only Astounding was really doing well) and would have welcomed submissions from me. Had Campbell rejected any of the stories I had submitted to him, I would certainly have tried one of those other magazines.-but he didn’t, so I didn’t.
The magazine Startling Stories, in which I had published “Christmas on Ganymede” five and a half years before, published a forty thousand-word “short novel” in each issue. It wasn’t easy to get a publishable story of that length every month though, especially since Startling’s rate was only half that of Astounding.
Sometimes it was necessary, therefore, for the editor of the magazine, who at that time was Sam Merwin, Jr., to canvass those authors known to be capable of turning out such a story. About the time I was doing “Thiotimoline,” Merwin approached me with a suggestion that I write a lead short novel.
Startling, he explained, had always published stories with the accent on adventure, but, in imitation of Astounding’s success, he had persuaded the publisher to try the experiment of publishing stories with a heavier accent on science. Would I consider, then, doing a lead for Startling?
I was terribly flattered. Also, as I said earlier, I was nervous about having become a one-editor author and would have welcomed a chance to prove to myself that I could write beyond Campbell’s protective shadow. I agreed, therefore, and a good part of the summer of 1947 (when I wasn’t engaged in preparing my experimental data for the upcoming Ph.D. dissertation) was spent in preparing a story I called “Grow Old with Me.” [This was inspired by Robert Browning’s poem Rabbi Ben Ezra and was a misquotation-which shows you the level of my culture. The first line of the poem is “Grow old along with me.”]
By August 3 I had completed first draft. On August 26, I had the first part of it in final copy and submitted that to Merwin. He approved. On September 23 the entire story was submitted and I had no doubt, whatever, of its acceptance. On October 15, 1947, however, Merwin told me that, alas, Startling had decided not to go for heavy science, after all, but for adventure, and that “Grow Old with Me” would have to be completely rewritten with no guarantee of acceptance after that.
I suppose it is an indication of how things had advanced when I tell you it was the first time that I did not accept a request for revision philosophically. Quite otherwise! It had been five years and more since even Campbell had rejected one of my stories; how, then, dare a comparative nonentity like Merwin do so? Particularly since he had approached me for the story?
I made no effort to hide my annoyance. In fact, I seized the manuscript and stalked out of the office, and in an obvious rage. [Years afterward, as a result of the subsequent history of that story, Merwin took to apologizing for that rejection every time he met me-but he didn’t have to, and I kept telling him so. He was editor, and he was completely within his rights to reject the story, and I was being pettily temperamental to be angry about it. I have made every effort, since, to avoid evident anger at any rejection, however unjustified it might seem at the time, and I think I have succeeded.] I submitted the story to Campbell, giving him a full account of events. -I have always made it a practice to tell any editor to whom I submit a story of any rejection it has previously received. There is no necessity to do this; it is not, as far as I know, an ethical requirement for a writer. I just do it, and it has not, again as far as I know, ever cost me an acceptance.
As it happened, Campbell rejected the story, but not, I’m sure, because it had been somewhere else first. He told me enough things wrong with the story to make me feel that perhaps Merwin had not been so arbitrary in rejecting it. I thrust the story in the drawer in disgust and thought no more about it for nearly two years.
The rejection came at a bad time. More and more, I was wrapped up in trying to complete my research, in writing my dissertation, and, most of all, in anxiously looking for a job. There wasn’t much time to write, and the rejection had sufficiently disheartened and humiliated me so that I withdrew from writing for nearly a year. This was the third long withdrawal of my writing career, and, to this date, the last.
I did not find a job; my expected Ph.D. degree was no passport to affluence, after all. That was humiliating, too.
I accepted an offer from Professor Robert C. Elderfield to do a year’s postdoctoral research for him for $4,500, working on anti-malarial drugs. I accepted, though not with great enthusiasm, and started work for him on June 2, 1948, the day after I had officially gained my Ph.D.-At least it would give me another year to find a job.
By the next month, I had settled down sufficiently to consider writing a science fiction story, “The Red Queen’s Race.” On July 12 it was finished and I submitted it to Campbell. It was accepted on the sixteenth and once again I was back in business.
The Red Queen’s Race
Here’s a puzzle for you, if you like. Is it a crime to translate a chemistry textbook into Greek?
Or let’s put it another way. If one of the country’s largest atomic power plants is completely ruined in an unauthorized experiment, is an admitted accessory to that act a criminal?
These problems only developed with time, of course. We started with the atomic power plant-drained. I really mean drained. I don’t know exactly how large the fissionable power source was-but in two Hashing microseconds, it had all fissioned.
No explosion. No undue gamma ray density. It was merely that every moving part in the entire structure was fused. The entire main building was mildly hot. The atmosphere for two miles in every direction was gently warm. Just a dead, useless building which later on took a hundred million dollars to replace.
It happened about three in the morning, and they found Elmer Tywood alone in the central source chamber. The findings of twenty-four close-packed hours can be summarized quickly.
1. Elmer Tywood-Ph.D., Sc.D., Fellow of This and Honorary That, one-time youthful participant of the original Manhattan Project, and now full Professor of Nuclear Physics-was no interloper. He had a Class-a Pass-Unlimited. But no record could be found as to his purpose in being there just then. A table on casters contained equipment which had not been made on any recorded requisition. It, too, was a single fused mass-not quite too hot to touch.
2. Elmer Tywood was dead. He lay next to the table; his face congested, nearly black. No radiation effect. No external force of any sort. The doctor said apoplexy.
3. In Elmer Tywood’s office safe were found two puzzling items: i.e. twenty foolscap sheets of apparent mathematics, and a bound folio in a foreign language which turned out to be Greek, the subject matter, on translation, turning out to be chemistry.
The secrecy which poured over the whole mess was something so terrific as to make everything that touched it, dead. It’s the only word that can describe it. Twenty-seven men and women, all told, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Science, and two or three others so top-notch that they were completely unknown to the public, entered the power plant during the period of investigation. All who had been in the plant that night, the physicist who had identified Tywood, the doctor who had examined him, were retired into virtual home arrest.
No newspaper ever got the story. No inside dopester got it. A few members of Congress got part of it.
And naturally sol Anyone or any group or any country that could suck all the available energy out of the equivalent of perhaps fifty to a hundred pounds of plutonium without exploding it, had America’s industry and America’s defense so snugly in the palm of the hand that the light and life of one hundred sixty million people could be turned off between yawns.
Was it Tywood? Or Tywood and others? Or just others, through Tywood?
And my job? I was decoy; or front man, if you like. Someone has to hang around the university and ask questions about Tywood. After all, he was missing. It could be amnesia, a hold-up, a kidnapping, a killing, a runaway, insanity, accident-I could busy myself with that for five years and collect black looks, and maybe divert attention. To be sure, it didn’t work out that way.
But don’t think I was in on the whole case at the start. I wasn’t one of the twenty-seven men I mentioned a while back, though my boss was. But I knew a little-enough to get started.
Professor John Keyser was also in Physics. I didn’t get to him right away. There was a good deal of routine to cover first in as conscientious a way as I could. Quite meaningless. Quite necessary. But I was in Keyser’s office now.
Professors’ offices are distinctive. Nobody dusts them except some tired cleaning woman who hobbles in and out at eight in the morning, and the professor never notices the dust anyway. Lots of books without much arrangement. The ones close to the desk are used a lot-lectures are copied out of them. The ones out of reach are wherever a student put them back after borrowing them. Then there are professional journals that look cheap and are darned expensive, which are waiting about and which may some day be read. And plenty of paper on the desk; some of it scribbled on.