Read Ebook: The Mobius trail by Smith George O George Oliver Finlay Virgil Illustrator

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Ebook has 509 lines and 20526 words, and 11 pages

Kingsley's spirits lifted again. He dropped two lumps of sugar in Sally's coffee and settled back in his chair. Sally tasted the coffee.

"I think I'll need another lump," she said apologetically.

Joe laughed and dropped another lump in her cup. "Come from a long line of chemists?"

"Why?" she asked, stirring vigorously.

"All chemists seem to take about nine spoons of sugar per cup," he told her.

"Why?"

"No one knows, not even chemists. But it's apparently a habit."

Sally tasted and then shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Just call me chemist," she said. She held up the cup for another lump.

"This is ridiculous," she said. "I'd normally say that four lumps would make this taste like syrup."

"It should," he told her. "Mind?"

"Not at all."

He tasted gingerly. He shook his head.

"What kind of sugar is that?" she asked.

"Standard dextrose."

"I didn't ask the chemical name for it. Who made it?"

"Same people who have been making it for years. Standard brand."

"It's been cut," she said.

"Well, use more and we'll discount it."

Sally dropped in more lumps and stirred again.

"Dextrose," she said glumly. "As puny a grade as any. What we need is saccharin, I guess."

He laughed.

"Well, all I know about it is that some people use saccharin. What else is there?"

Kingsley smiled, happy to show off his knowledge. "There are about nine different kinds--perhaps more. There's dextrose, fructose, levulose.... Levulose!"

"What is levulose? Sounds like a bad name."

"Maybe they got some levulose mixed in with the batch," he said musingly.

"What is levulose?"

"Levulose is similar to dextrose except that it is about one-tenth as sweet as sugar."

"How do you tell 'em apart? Taste?"

"That's one way. Dextrose is a flanged-up nomenclature for 'right-hand sugar' because dextrose polarizes light to the right. Levulose means 'left-hand sugar' because it polarizes light to the left. Yet their molecules are built the same except that one is a left-hand image of the other."

"Joe--get me the package!"

He nodded, went to the machine and returned with the sugar carton. He shook his head glumly. The box was lettered in reverse.

"And, Joe--did you get any cigarettes through this thing?"

He nodded, slowly. He was stupefied with the enormity of it all. He returned to the machine and cranked the distance back so that the plane of view looked in on the same room. He picked up a screw and inspected it.

"Left-hand thread," he said. He shoved his hand through, and Sally caught it between her own.

"Is that your right hand?" she asked.

"It is."

"It came out left."

Sally handed him the sugar package after taking out one cube. It came through the machine re-reversed so that it could be read normally.

He tasted the reversed cube and one that had come through the second time. The re-reversed sugar was normal, the other weak.

"Well," he said, "that's it!"

Sally left the laboratory at midnight, and by the time she left there was no doubt. Screws, shoes, printed matter; all of them went through reversed. Her parting word was humorous:

"You could sell this to a shoe factory," she told him. "Then they could make only right shoes and send half of their production through the machine. Save manufacturing costs."

He nodded glumly, and wondered where he had heard the same words before. He pondered this for some time after she had gone, and he went to bed on the couch in a spare room below. He went to sleep thinking about it, and dreamed about it after slumber claimed him....

Norman Blair felt the feather-light touch on his lips and came awake quietly. This business of awakening quietly was a matter of practise in an institution where any nighttime commotion was cause for instant investigation by the guards. It was sensible to come awake quietly because friends bring news that could not be passed along with an angry guard ordering you to separate. And because it might be an enemy, Norman Blair came awake with one hand inside a slit in his mattress; his hand clenched around a sliver of steel that had been whetted to a razor edge.

"Norm!"

"Sally!"

"Shut up," came her fierce whisper.

"But how in the--"

"Shut up and ask later. Get up and come here."

In the dim light Blair could see a large circle of somewhat lighter texture. Framed in this circle was Sally. She seemed to be standing waist-high in the circle, and it put her feet a good four inches below the level of the floor. The bottom rim of the circle was a few inches above the floor. Blair shrugged.

"Is it safe?"

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