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Quicker than the Eye
Ray Douglas Bradbury
One of Ray Bradbury’s classic short story collections, available in ebook for the first time.The internationally acclaimed author of The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury is a magician at the height of his powers, displaying his sorcerer's skill with twenty-one remarkable stories that run the gamut from total reality to light fantastic, from high noon to long after midnight. A true master tells all, revealing the strange secret of growing young and mad; opening a Witch Door that links two intolerant centuries; joining an ancient couple in their wild assassination games; celebrating life and dreams in the unique voice that has favoured him across six decades and has enchanted millions of readers the world over.
Quicker Than the Eye
Ray Bradbury
Copyright (#ulink_bf0c2710-482f-5a42-9e9c-6d36e040b62e)
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
“Unterderseaboat Doktor” copyright © 1994 by Ray Brad bury: first appeared in the January 1994 issue of Playboy.
“Another Fine Mess” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury: first appeared in the April issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
“The Finnegan” copyright © 1996 by Ray Bradbury: first ap peared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. 1996.
“That Woman on the Lawn” copyright © 1996 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the August 1996 issue of The Mag azine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
“Quicker Than the Eye” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury: first appeared in the HarperPrism anthology Tales of the Impossible published in Fall 1995.
“Dorian in Excelsus” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury: first appeared in the September 1995 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy S Science Fiction.
“No News, or What Killed the Dog?” copyright © 1994 by Ray Bradbury: first appeared in the October 1994 issue of American Way.
“The Witch Door” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury: first appeared In the December 1995 Issue of Playboy.
“At the End of the Ninth Year” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury: first appeared in the lanuary 1995 Issue of American Way.
“Once More, Legato” copyright © 1995 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in the Fall 1995 issue of Omni.
“Free Dirt” copyright © 1996 by Ray Bradbury; first appeared in American Way. 1996.
“Last Rites” copyright © 1994 by Ray Bradbury; first ap peared in the December 1994 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy S Science Fiction.
All other stories are original to this collection.
Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1996
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007541690
Version: 2014-07-21
Dedication (#ulink_099b7721-b285-54cc-b470-522edf3dd571)
To Donn Albright, my Golden Retriever, with love
Contents
Cover (#ufae2b29c-15f0-5148-8c35-0e54432a95d3)
Title Page (#uef32d2bb-d92f-5548-be95-15e54aa8ecfc)
Copyright (#ulink_b6cb9a71-a107-5b29-8c08-24cbb2643334)
Dedication (#ulink_eb1eae86-0cc3-5355-bfb1-7bb147843245)
Unterderseaboat Doktor (#ulink_2bafe6be-8efa-52d5-9a10-157c61474c1d)
Zaharoff/Richter Mark V (#ulink_1b5b32a7-b82c-55bf-914d-a2f26e75aee7)
Remember Sascha? (#ulink_d35ddb96-3b22-5b03-a323-f7e264e97819)
Another Fine Mess (#ulink_c5812aef-d900-5ba5-856d-5b59d59c54f3)
The Electrocution (#ulink_8d619dfa-30cf-54d1-b62c-f2eb7d9bb677)
Hopscotch (#ulink_f3f3d6fc-f6ca-5e98-b949-61e0c528d9b0)
The Finnegan (#litres_trial_promo)
That Woman On the Lawn (#litres_trial_promo)
The Very Gentle Murders (#litres_trial_promo)
Quicker Than the Eye (#litres_trial_promo)
Dorian in Excelsus (#litres_trial_promo)
No News, or What Killed the Dog? (#litres_trial_promo)
The Witch Door (#litres_trial_promo)
The Ghost in the Machine (#litres_trial_promo)
At the End of the Ninth Year (#litres_trial_promo)
Bug (#litres_trial_promo)
Once More, Legato (#litres_trial_promo)
Exchange (#litres_trial_promo)
Free Dirt (#litres_trial_promo)
Last Rites (#litres_trial_promo)
The Other Highway (#litres_trial_promo)
Make Haste to Live: An Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher
Unterderseaboat Doktor (#ulink_c0664cae-ba41-5940-9cff-7ff460563842)
The incredible event occurred during my third visit to Gustav Von Seyfertitz, my foreign psychoanalyst.
I should have guessed at the strange explosion before it came.
After all, my alienist, truly alien, had the coincidental name, Von Seyfertitz, of the tall, lean, aquiline, menacing, and therefore beautiful actor who played the high priest in the 1935 film She.
In She, the wondrous villain waved his skeleton fingers, hurled insults, summoned sulfured flames, destroyed slaves, and knocked the world into earthquakes.
After that, “At Liberty,” he could be seen riding the Hollywood Boulevard trolley cars as calm as a mummy, as quiet as an unwired telephone pole.
Where was I? Ah. yes!
It was my third visit to my psychiatrist. He had called that day and cried, “Douglas, you stupid goddamn son of a bitch, it’s time for beddy-bye!”
Beddy-bye was, of course, his couch of pain and humiliation where I lay writhing in agonies of assumed Jewish guilt and Northern Baptist stress as he from time to time muttered, “A fruitcake remark!” or “Dumb!” or “If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you!”
As you can see, Gustav Von Seyfertitz was a most unusual mine specialist. Mine? Yes. Our problems are land mines in our heads. Step on them! Shock-troop therapy, he once called it, searching for words. “Blitzkrieg?” I offered.
“Ja!” He grinned his shark grin. “That’s it!”
Again, this was my third visit to his strange, metallic-looking room with a most odd series of locks on a roundish door. Suddenly, as I was maundering and treading dark waters, I heard his spine stiffen behind me. He gasped a great death rattle, sucked air, and blew it out in a yell that curled and bleached my hair:
“Dive! Dive!”
I dove.
Thinking that the room might be struck by a titanic iceberg, I fell, to scuttle beneath the lion-claw-footed couch.
“Dive!” cried the old man.
“Dive?” I whispered, and looked up.
To see a submarine periscope, all polished brass, slide up to vanish in the ceiling.
Gustav Von Seyfertitz stood pretending not to notice me, the sweat-oiled leather couch, or the vanished brass machine. Very calmly, in the fashion of Conrad Veidt in Casablanca, or Erich Von Stroheim, the manservant in Sunset Boulevard … he …
… lit a cigarette and let two calligraphic dragon plumes of smoke write themselves (his initials?) on the air.
“You were saying?” he said.
“No.” I stayed on the floor. “You were saying. Dive?”
“I did not say that,” he purred.
“Beg pardon, you said, very clearly—Dive!”
“Not possible.” He exhaled two more scrolled dragon plumes. “You hallucinate. Why do you stare at the ceiling?”
“Because,” I said, “unless I am further hallucinating, buried in that valve lock up there is a nine-foot length of German Leica brass periscope!”
“This boy is incredible, listen to him,” muttered Von Seyfertitz to his alter ego, which was always a third person in the room when he analyzed. When he was not busy exhaling his disgust with me, he tossed asides at himself. “How many martinis did you have at lunch?”
“Don’t hand me that. Von Seyfertitz. I know the difference between a sex symbol and a periscope. That ceiling, one minute ago. swallowed a long brass pipe, yes!?”
Von Seyfertitz glanced at his large, one-pound-size Christmas watch, saw that I still had thirty minutes to go, sighed, threw his cigarette down, squashed it with a polished boot, then clicked his heels.
Have you ever heard the whack when a real pro like Jack Nicklaus hits a ball? Bamm. A hand grenade!
That was the sound my Germanic friend’s boots made as he knocked them together in a salute.
Crrrack!
“Gustav Mannerheim Auschlitz Von Seyfertitz, Baron Woldstein, at your service!” He lowered his voice. “Unterderseaboat—”
I thought he might say “Doktor.” But:
“Unterderseaboat Captain!”
I scrambled off the floor.
