Toy Shop - Harry Harrison

Listen Ad Free https://www.solgoodmedia.com - Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and ambient sounds all ad free!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Toy shop by Harry Harrison. Because there were few adults
in the crowd and Colonel Biff Haughton stood over six
feet tall, he could see every detail of the demonstration.
The children and most of the parents gaped in wide
eyed wonder. Biff Houghton was too sophisticated to be awed.

(00:22):
He stayed on because he wanted to find out what
the trick was that made the gadget work. It's all
explained right here in your instruction book, the demonstrator said,
holding up a garishly printed booklet opened to a four
color diagram. You all know how magnets pick up things,
and I bet you even know that the Earth itself

(00:43):
is one great big magnet. That's why compasses always point north. Well,
the atomic Wonders space wave tapper hangs on to those
space waves invisibly all about us and even going right
through us, at the magnete waves of the Earth. The
atomic wonder rides these waves just the way a ship

(01:05):
rides the waves in the ocean. Now watch. Every eye
was on him as he put the gaudy model rocket
ship on top of the table and stepped back. It
was made of stamped metal and seemed as incapable of
flying as a can of ham, which it very much resembled.
Neither wings, propellers, nor jets broke through the painted surface.

(01:29):
It rested on three rubber wheels, and coming out through
the bottom was a double strand of thin insulated wire.
This white wire ran across the top of the black
table and terminated in a control box in the demonstrator's hand.
An indicator light, a switch, and a knob appeared to
be the only controls. I turn on the power switch,

(01:54):
sending a surge of current to the wave receptors, he said.
The switch clicked and al light blinked on and off
with the steady pulse. Then the man began to slowly
turn the knob. A careful touch on the wave generator
is necessary as we are dealing with the powers of
the whole world. Here, a concerted ah swept through the

(02:16):
crowd as the space wave tapper shivered a bit, then
rose slowly into the air. The demonstrator stepped back, and
the toy rose higher and higher, bobbing gently on the
invisible waves of magnetic force that supported it. Ever so slowly,
the power was reduced and it settled back to the

(02:36):
table only seventeen dollars ninety five, the young man said,
putting a large price sign on the table for the
complete set of the Atomic Wonder, the space tapper, control box, battery,
and instruction book. At the appearance of the price card,
the crowd broke up noisily, and the children rushed away

(02:57):
towards the operating model trains. The demonstrator's words were lost
in their noisy passage, and after a moment he sank
into a gloomy silence. He put the control box down, yawned,
and sat on the edge of the table. Colonel Houghton
was the only one left after the crowd had moved on.

(03:20):
Could you tell me how this thing works, the colonel asked,
coming forward. The demonstrator brightened up and picked up one
of the toys. Well, if you will look here, sir,
He opened the hinged top, you will see the space
wave coils at each end of the ship. With a pencil,
he pointed out the odd shaped plastic forms about an

(03:43):
inch in diameter that had been wound apparently at random,
with a few turns of copper wire. Except for these coils,
the interior of the model was empty. The coils were
wired together and other wires ran out through the hole
in the bottom of the control box. Biff turned a
very quizzical eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator,

(04:04):
who completely ignored this sign of disbelief. Inside the control
box is the battery, the young man said, snapping it
open and pointing to an ordinary flashlight battery. The current
goes through the power switch and power light to the
wave generator. What you mean to say, Biff broke in,
is that the juice from this fifteen cent battery goes

(04:26):
through this cheap rearstat to those meaningless coils in a model,
and absolutely nothing happens. Now, tell me what really flies
the thing. If I'm going to drop eighteen bucks for
six bits worth of tin, I want to know what
I'm getting. The demonstrator flushed. I'm sorry, sir, he stammered.
I wasn't trying to hide anything. Like any magic trick,

(04:49):
this one can't really be demonstrated until it's been purchased.
He leaned forward and whispered confidentially. I'll tell you what
I'll do, though this thing is way of pried and
hasn't been moving at all. The manager said, I could
let them go at three dollars if I could find
any takers. If you want to buy it for that price, sold,

(05:10):
my boy, the colonel said, slamming three bills down on
the table. I'll give that much for it. No matter
how it works, the boys in the shop will get
a kick out of it. He tapped the winged rocket
on his chest. Now, really, what holds it up? The
demonstrator looked round carefully, then pointed strings. He said, or

(05:34):
rather a black thread. It runs from the top of
the model, through a tiny loop in the ceiling and
back down to my hand, tied to this ring on
my finger. When I back up, the model rises. It's
as simple as that. All good illusions are simple, the
colonel grunted, tracing the black thread with his eye. As
long as there is plenty of flim flam to distract

(05:56):
the viewer. If you don't have a black table, a
black cloth will do, the young man said. And the
arch of a doorway is a good sight. Just see
that the room in back is dark. Wrap it up,
my boy. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm an old hand
at this kind of thing. Biff Haughton sprang it. At

(06:17):
the next Thursday Night Poker party. The gang were all
missile men, and they cheered and jeered as he hammed
up the introduction. Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I
could do some of those magnetic waves in the new bird.
Those flashlight batteries are cheaper than locks. This is a
thing of the future. Only Teddy Kane caught wise as
the flight began. He was an amateur magician and spotted

(06:40):
the gimmick at once. He kept silent with professional courtesy
and smiled ironically as the rest of the bunch grew
silent one by one. The colonel was a good showman,
and he had set the scene well. He almost had
them believing in the space waved tapper before he was through.
When the model had landed and he had switched it off,

(07:01):
he couldn't stop them from crowding around the table a thread.
One of the engineers shouted, almost with relief, and they
all laughed along with him. Too bad, the head project
physicist said, I was hoping that a little space waved
tapping could help us out. Let me try a flight
with it, Teddy Caina. First, Biff announced he spotted it

(07:24):
while you were all watching the flashing lights. Only he
didn't say anything. Caina slipped the ring with the black
thread over his finger and started to step back. You
have to turn the switch on first, Biff said, I know.
Caina smiled, but that's part of illusion, the spiel and
the misdirection. I'm going to try this cold first so

(07:46):
I can get it moving up and down smoothly, then
go through it with the whole works. He moved his
hand back smoothly, in a professional manner that drew no
attention to it. The model lifted from the table, then
back down. The thread broke. Kana said, you jerked it
instead of pulling smoothly. Biff said, and knotted the broken

(08:09):
thread here, let me show you how to do it.
The thread broke again when Biff tried it, which got
a good laugh that made his collar a little warm.
Someone mentioned the poker game. This was the only time
that poker was mentioned or even remembered that night, because
very soon after this they found that the thread would

(08:31):
lift the model only when the switch was on, and
two and a half vaults flowing through the joke coils
with the current turned off, the model was too heavy
to lift. The thread broke every time. I still think
it's a screwy idea, the young man said, one week
getting fallen arches, demonstrating those toy ships for every brat

(08:54):
within a thousand miles, then selling the things for three
bucks when they must have cost at least one hundred
dollars apiece to may. But you did sell the ten
of them to people who would be interested, the older
man asked, I think so. I caught a few Air
Force officers and a colonel in missiles one day. Then
there was one official I remembered from the Bureau of Standards.

(09:15):
Luckily he didn't recognize me. Then those two professors you
spotted from the university. Then the problem is out of
our hands and into theirs. All we have to do
now is sit back and wait for results. What results
these people went interested when we were hammering on their
doors with the proof We've patented the coils and can

(09:38):
proved anyone that there is a reduction in weight around
them when they are operating, But a small reduction, and
we don't know what is causing it. No one can
be interested in a thing like that. A fractional weight
decrease in a clumsy model certainly not enough to lift
the weight of the generator. No one wrapped up in
massive fuel consumption, tons of li and such is going

(10:01):
to have time to worry about a crackpot who thinks
he has found a minor slip in Newton's laws. You
think they will, now, the young man asked, cracking his
knuckles impatiently. I know they will. The tensile strength of
that thread is correctly adjusted to the weight of the model,
the thread will break if you try to lift the

(10:22):
model with it. Yet you can lift the model after
a small increment of its weight has been removed by
the coils. This is going to bug these men. Nobody
is going to ask them to solve the problem or
concern themselves with it, but it will nag at them
because they know this effect can't possibly exist. They'll see

(10:42):
at once that the magnetic wave theory is nonsense or
perhaps true, we don't know, but they will all be
thinking about it and worrying about it. Someone is going
to experiment in his basement, just as a hobby, of course,
to find the cause of the error, and he or
some one else is going to find out what makes

(11:03):
those coils work, or may be a way to improve them.
And we have the patents correct, They will be doing
the research that will take them out of the massive
lived propulsion business and into the field of pure space flight,
and in doing so they will be making us rich.
Whenever the time comes to manufacture, the young man said, cynically,

(11:28):
will all be rich son, The older man said, patting
him on the shoulder. Believe me, you are not going
to recognize this old world ten years from now. End
of Toy Shop by Harry Harrison