Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

~ PARADOX LOST By FREDRIC BROWN Well—the suggestion may be slightly cockeyed, and the story thoroughly wacky—but something did destroy the dinosaurs— A BLUEBOTILE fly had got in. through the screen, somehow, and it droned in mo- notonous circles-around the ceiling of the classroom. Even as Professor Dolohan droned in monotonous circles of logic up at the front of the class. Shorty McCabe, seated in the back row, glanced from one to another of them and finally settled on the bluebottle fly as the more interesting of the two. “The negative absolute,” said the pro- fessor, “is, in a manner of speaking, not absolutely negative. This is only seemingly contradictory. Reversed in order, the two words acquire new connotations. There- fore—” 3 : Shorty McCabe sighed inaudibly and watched the bluebottle fly, and wished that he could fly around in circles like that, and with such a soul-satisfying buzz. In com- parative sizes and decibels, a fly made more noise than an airplane. More noise, in comparison to size, than a buzz saw. Would a buzz saw saw metal? Say, a saw. Then one could say he saw a buzz saw saw a saw. Or leave out the buzz and that would be better: I saw a saw saw a saw. Or, better yet: Sue saw a saw saw a saw. “One may think,” said the professor, “of an absolute as a. mode of being—” “Yeah,” thought Shorty McCabe, “one may think of anything as anything else, and what does it get you but a headache?” Any-— way, the bluebottle fly was becoming more interesting. It was flying down now, toward the front of the classroom, and maybe it would light on Professor Dolohan’s head. And buzz. No, but it lighted somewhere out of sight behind the professor’s desk. Without the fly to solace, Shorty looked around the class-. room for something else to look at or think about. Only the backs of heads; he was alone in ‘the back row, and—well, he could concentrate on how the hair grew on the backs of people’s necks, but it seemed a sub- ject of limited fascination. He wondered how many of the students ahead of him were asleep, and decided that - about half of them were; and he wished he could go to sleep himself, but he couldn’t. He’d made the silly mistake of going to bed‘early the night before and as a result he was now wide awake and miserable. “But,” said Professor Dolohan, “if we dis- regard the contravention of probability aris- ing in the statement that the positive abso- lute is less than absolutely positive, we are led to—” : Hooray! The bluebottle fly was back again, arising from its temporary conceal- ment back of the desk. It droned upward to the ceiling, paused there a moment to preen its wings, and then flew down again, this time toward the back of the room. And if it kept that spiral course, it would go past within an inch of Shorty’s nose. It did. He went cross-eyed watching it and turned his head to keep it in sight. It flew past and— It just wasn’t there any more. At a point about twelve inches: to the left of Shorty McCabe, it had suddenly quit flying and suddenly quit buzzing, and it wasn’t there. It hadn’t died and hadn’t fallen into the aisle. It had just— - - Disappeared. In midair, four feet above the aisle, it had simply ceased to be there. The sound it had made seemed to have stopped in midbuzz, and in the sudden sil- CcomiclboooksS.c©