No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

much. It was a kind of hopper, and a bunch of things like coils ran around the throat where the hopper narrowed down, and that was all except for a crude control board that was nailed onto a post and hooked up to the hopper with a lot of wires.
    The hopper came up to my chest and I put my live-it down on the edge of it and craned my neck to look into the throat to see what I could see.
    At just that moment, Fancy Pants threw the switch that turned it on. I jerked away. For it was a scary business when you turned that hopper on.
    When I sneaked back to have another look, it looked for all the world as if it were a whirlpool of cream, sort of thick and rich and shiny—and it was alive. You could see the liveness in it. And there was a feeling in it that maybe you should just jump in head first and I had to grip the edges of the hopper hard not to.
    I might have dived in, if the cat at that very moment hadn’t somehow wiggled free from Fancy Pants.
    I don’t know how that cat did it. Fancy Pants had it all rolled into a ball and really buttoned up. Maybe Fancy Pants got careless or maybe the cat had finally figured out an angle. But, anyhow, Fancy Pants had the cat poised above the hopper and was about to let it fall. The cat didn’t get loose in part—it got loose entirely—and there it was, yowling and screaming, tail fluffed out, clawing at thin air to keep from falling down into the hopper. It managed to throw itself to one side as it fell and the claws of one paw hooked onto the hopper’s edge while the other hooked into my live-it set.
    I let out a yell and made a grab to try to save the live-it, but I was too late. The cat dragged it off balance and it slid down into that creamy whirlpool and was gone.
    The cat shimmied up a post and up into the rafters and hung there, screaming and wailing.
    Just then the door came open and there floated Fancy Pants’ Pa and we were caught red-handed.
    I figured Fancy Pants’ Pa would give me the works right then and there.
    But he didn’t do a thing. He just floated there for a moment looking at the two of us.
    Then he looked at me alone and said: “Steve, please leave.”
    I went out that door as fast as I could go, with just a fast glance back over my shoulder at Fancy Pants. He was pale and already beginning to appear a little shriveled. He knew what he had coming to him, and even while I realized that he deserved every bit of it, I still felt sorry for him.
    But staying wouldn’t help him and I was glad enough to get off scot-free.
    Except that it wasn’t scot-free.
    I don’t know what was the matter with me—just scared stiff, I guess. Anyhow, I went straight home and told Pa right out about it and he took down the strap from behind the door and let me have a few.
    But it seemed to me that he didn’t have his heart in it. He was getting a little uneasy about all these alien goings-on.
    For several days, I didn’t go off the place. To have gone anywhere, I would have had to walk past Fancy Pants’ house and I didn’t want to see him—not for a while, at least.
    Then one day Butch and his Pa showed up and they had the glasses.
    “I don’t know if they’ll fit,” said Butch’s Pa. “I had to guess the fitting.”
    They looked just like any other glasses except that the lenses had funny lines running every which way, as if someone had taken the glass and twisted it until it was all crinkled out of shape.
    I put them on and they were a bit loose and things looked different through them, but not a great deal different. I was looking at the barnyard when I put them on. The barnyard was still there, but it appeared strange and a little weird, although it was hard to put a finger on what was wrong with it. It was a bright, hot August day and the sun was shining hard, but when I put the glasses on, it seemed suddenly to get cloudy and a little cold. And that was some of the difference, but not all of it.
    There was a feeling of strangeness that sent a shiver through