Stepping Stones by Steve Gannon

phase-conjugated into three-dimensional standing waves, thus creating full-color visual images.  Understand?  No?  Well, go ask your mother.
    Anyway, they told me.  It was too much for me to grasp then, but it came in handy later, not to mention extremely profitable.  As I said, I have a good memory , and Axel can make just about anything work.  But that’s another story .
    “I want another test,” I said , fighting a splitting headache that had resulted from the aliens’ data-dump into my cranium .
    A long pause.
    WHY?
    “Why?  You want to know why?” I shot back.  “I’ll tell you why.  None of your damn business, that’s why.  Just give me another test!”
    To be truthful, I didn’t know why myself.  I just wanted to do it again.  As I said earlier, I’m as stubborn as they come, but anger was a big factor as well.  They had kidnapped me, subjected me to degrading tests, even killed me inside their slimy slug thing, whatever they called it .  But there was more to it than that.  I didn’t want to quit, not with the way things were.  It had nothing to do with saving humanity.  For all I knew, I was making things worse. I didn’t care.  I was mad.  I couldn’t give up.  I wouldn’t.
    At last they answered.
    Your request is granted .
    Along with their response, I detected something else.  Anger?  Disappointment?  I couldn’t tell.  Whatever their reasons , they gave me another test.  And another.
    And another.
    I died many deaths.  I was eaten by Thallasian spiders, flayed by Dogral whip-beetles, suffocated in Polaran quicksand.  I lost a game of R ussian roulette with an android. I even stopped a fusion meltdown on a jump-freighter, but got fried anyway when the radiation shields malfunctioned.  I always lost, but every time I came out demanding the same thing.  “I want another test!”
    Eventually they refused.
    “No way,” I insisted.  “Give me another test!”
    Further testing will serve no purpose.  You have failed .
    “What?”
    The purpose of the (unintelligible) is to determine whether a species can grasp the futility of resistance.    From your testing, we conclude that humans lack the intelligence necessary to accept domination.
    “Is that so?  Well, let me tell you something, assho—”
    This exchange is terminated.
     
    “. . . running through all our files , and I can’t do anything about it.”  Axle peered at me expectantly.  “What now?”
    At first I was too shocked to speak.  I glanced around the bridge.  Everything looked the same.  I mean exactly the same.  According the ship’s chronometer, absolutely no time h ad passed while I’d been gone.  “Have I been missing for several watch cycles?” I asked shakily.
    “Several watches?  Quit kidding around, Cap.  This is serious.  What do you want to do?”
    I shrugged.  “Keep recording, I guess.”
    “Right.  Hey, they’re leaving!”
    We stared in silence as the alien ship abruptly flickered to an orbit just above the accretion disc.  Then it squeezed back into the black hole, apparently reversing the process by which it had come out.
    “I don’t believe it,” said Axle, scratching his head in amazement as the glittering vessel disappeared.
    “Yeah,” I said.  “And yo u don’t know the half of it yet. ”
     
     

 
    What Goes Up . . .
     
    S uccess at last!
    Flushed with excitement , George Simpson leaned over his workbench, eager to repeat the experiment.  Nervously, he inserted another roller skate into copper coils, fighting to calm himself.  The first time couldn’t have been a fluke.  He had seen it with his own two eyes!
    Quickly, George readied his invention for another attempt.  He worked meticulously, his eyes on the task before him, his mind on the money.  What difference does it make if I don’t understand how it works? he told himself .  The important thing is that it will make money.  A lot of money . . . assuming he could do it