RAT IN THE SKULL
BY ROG PHILLIPS
Some people will be shocked by this story.
Others will be deeply moved. Everyone who reads
it will be talking about it. Read the first
four pages: then put it down if you can.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Dr. Joseph MacNare was not the sort of person one would expect him tobe in the light of what happened. Indeed, it is safe to say that untilthe summer of 1955 he was more "normal", better adjusted, than theaverage college professor. And we have every reason to believe that heremained so, in spite of having stepped out of his chosen field.
At the age of thirty-four, he had to his credit a college textbook onadvanced calculus, an introductory physics, and seventy-two papers thathad appeared in various journals, copies of which were in neat orderin a special section of the bookcase in his office at the university,and duplicate copies of which were in equally neat order in his officeat home. None of these were in the field of psychology, the field inwhich he was shortly to become famous—or infamous. But anyone whostudies the published writings of Dr. MacNare must inevitably concludethat he was a competent, responsible scientist, and a firm believerin institutional research, research by teams, rather than in privateresearch and go-it-alone secrecy, the course he eventually followed.
In fact, there is every reason to believe he followed this course withthe greatest of reluctance, aware of its pitfalls, and that he tookevery precaution that was humanly possible.
Certainly, on that day in late August, 1955, at the little cabin onthe Russian River, a hundred miles upstate from the university, whenDr. MacNare completed his paper on An Experimental Approach to thePsychological Phenomena of Verification, he had no slightest thoughtof "going it alone."
It was mid-afternoon. His wife, Alice, was dozing on the small dockthat stretched out into the water, her slim figure tanned a smoothbrown that was just a shade lighter than her hair. Their eight-year-oldson, Paul, was fifty yards upstream playing with some other boys, theirshouts the only sound except for the whisper of rushing water and thesound of wind in the trees.
Dr. MacNare, in swim trunks, his lean muscular body hardly tanned atall, emerged from the cabin and came out on the dock.
"Wake up, Alice," he said, nudging her with his foot. "You have ahusband again."
"Well, it's about time," Alice said, turning over on her back andlooking up at him, smiling in answer to his happy grin.
He stepped over her and went out on the diving board, leaping up anddown on it, higher and higher each time, in smooth coördination, thenwent into a one and a half gainer, his body cutting into the water witha minimum of splash.
His head broke the surface. He looked up at his wife, and laughed inthe sheer pleasure of being alive. A few swift strokes brought him tothe foot of the ladder. He climbed, dripping water, to the dock, thensat down by his wife.
"Yep, it's done," he said. "How many days of our vacation left? Two?That's time enough for me to get a little tan. Might as well make themost of it. I'm going to be working harder this winter than I ever didin my life."
"But I thought you said your paper was done!"
"It is. But that's only the beginning. Instead of sending it in forpub