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.