1. The Idea
The idea first came up at a beer and bull session at Jesse Weston's place. She and her husband, Ardee, had been down at the beach that afternoon, and Ardee had stuck his foot on a discarded pop top. He was sounding off at his usual length about where and when it had happened, how much it had hurt, how crowded the beach was, and wasn't it awful how much garbage was strewn about. That's the way he actually talked: 'strewn about'. He's an English lit. major. Jesse had been sitting there, her gray eyes wide, nodding occasionally, when she interupted him:
"You know what would be funny?" She addressed us in general. Nobody responded. What Jesse had thought funny in the past had ranged from a five hundred pound granite facing block left in the kneehole of Thorsen's desk ("That way his feet'll reach the floor.") to arranging for every phone in the lab to ring with a loud, juicy raspberry. That is to say, a very narrow and very practical range. Seeing she wasn't going to proceed without a little prodding, I ventured:
"Not another quarter-ton tombstone, I hope. My hernias still twinge when I think about it."
She looked contemptuous. "That was trivial, and lacking in social significance. . . No, picture this: It's a chilly day this December. All the world, or at least the hardened space-freaks, are huddled around their TV sets. We see through the eyes of Marsman I, who just fifteen minutes before has first set tread upon the ocher sands of Barsoom." (She pronounced it to rhyme with 'Bar Room'.) "Our eyes sweep the horizons of the Red Planet, then fix on a distant hill. Treads churn the crimson grit, propel us toward the summit. We reach the crest, and what confronts us on the other side?"
"Beer cans!"
"Miles of beer cans,"
"Acres of pop top plants."
It was practically chorused. She'd telegraphed the punch line. She looked pleased. "That's right. Wouldn't it be perfect?" She hugged her knees and grinned hugely at its absolute perfection.
Kim Sohn spoke up: "Better yet, if the whole place were paved over with black asphalt."
My turn: "Or even better, Marsman comes over the brow of the hill, and there's a little white cardboard sign, on a wooden stake. He rolls over to it, and it says: 'No Tresspassing, by order of the owner, A.M. Thorsen."
"In that icky orange ink of his." That was Stephie, my wife.
"No, no, not a sign, a stone tablet." Kim's wife, Lee.
"Not a tablet, an engraved facing block." That was mine and brought the house down. Perhaps I should explain that Professor Albert Michaelson Thorsen is "boss" to Jesse, Kim and me, and that his vanity is exceeded only by his shortness. There's a sign on his door that says: "'A. M. Thorsen'. Someone years ago penciled in 'A.lM.ighty' Thorsen. He never erased it.
Kim spoke thoughtfully: "You know, it might not be impossible."
Me: "Kim, do you know what the freight charges on five hundred pounds over 60 million miles would be?"
"Probably enough to recarpet the stadium. Twice. But you know that, besides monitoring Thorsen's life-detection experiment with it, they're using that gizmo of the Computer Science department's to process Marsman's return signal into, among other things, real-time TV pictures' That 'gizmo' was the third largest computer in existance, and the biggest one that wouldn't have found capitalism terribly confusing. "It might be possible to alter the output slightly. I know a guy over there who'd love to help out on this, if it's possible." Kim 'knew a guy' just about every useful place there was.
"Call him, Kim, call him!" That Jesse, looking about ten years old and as if she were having a tough time keeping from jumping up and down and clapping.
We were all just mellow enough for it not to seem unreasonable. Kim balanced his beer on top of a Vietnamese brass elephant, and went to use the phone.
While he was gone, I began to have second thoughts.
"You know, having his name come up like that on national TV would be pretty embarassing for him." In spite of everything, all of us respected, and some of us even liked the little expletive.
Jesse snorted. "The little bantam will bask in it."
Lee came to my aid. "I think Hank's right, Jesse. Five minutes after Thorsen's name appeared there'd be a couple of dozen reporters badgering him. And they'd keep it up for weeks - you know how desperate for scandal they are."
Jesse wasn't that easily defeated. "Nuts, he'll love it."
"And it probably wouldn't do his academic reputation any good. You know how those things are, everybody'd think he'd done it himself for the publicity." I was back on the attack again.
"He probably would if he were to think of it."
My bright and beautiful bride had a suggestion. "Listen, how about if instead of something with Thorsen's name on it, Thorsen himself is there, maybe standing shaking his head at your pitiful notions like Hank says he does. That way it'd be harder to trace who it was and thered be no question of hurting his academic standing. "
"Well, that misses the beautiful symbolism, but you might be right about his academic reputation. Thorsen would sacrifice his first-born daughter before that."
Ardee stuck in his oar. "You're all aware that it would be purest vandalism if this scheme destroyed valuable data."
That sobered us a bit. No one had even considered that aspect of it. And it suggested something else to me.
"And has anyone thought about what happens if we get caught? Tampering with a project as expensive as this one is likely to rate more than a visit to the principal."
"But you're not really going to do it are you, Hank," Stephie wanted to know. "I mean, its fun to think about, but God!"
"I don't know if I am or not, but I'm betting that if it's possible Kim and Jesse are going to give it their damndest."
"You betcha," Jesse confirmed.
"I think Kim is looking on it as an interesting technical exercise." Lee turned to face me. "He probably hasn't considered Thorsen or what happens if we get caught."
"I notice you said we'. You want in on this?"
"Sure, if there's anything three-quarters of an attorney can do. I think it would be funnier than Hell/' She swore badly, capitalizing the word.
Kim returned from the phone in the kitchenette, recovered his beer from the elephant, thanked the beast, and sprawled out on the rug.