"Dusty Zebra" av Clifford D. Simak . Först publicerad i Galaxy Science Fiction , september 1954 , som finns på Internetarkiv ; reprinted ett antal gånger. Några av dessa omslag ser bekanta ut?
t är en historia om en enhet som någon hittade som tar bort damm och smuts från var den är placerad.
Han fick det genom att handla saker med någon i en annan dimension. Han testar det:
The living room was spotless from Bill just having walked through it, carrying the gadget, and the garage, where he had taken it momentarily, was spic and span. While we didn't check it, I imagine that an area paralleling the path he had taken from the front door to the garage was the only place outdoors that didn't have a speck of dust upon it.
Den kille som finner det delar hemligheten med en vän och de tar det ifrån varandra eller på något sätt räknar ut hur man kopierar det med avsikt att sälja objekten.
Nej, de öppnar en, men de kan inte replikera det:
He had taken one of the dust collectors apart and the only thing he could find out about it was that there was some feeble force-field operating inside of it—feeble yet strong enough to play hell with the electrical circuits and fancy metering machinery he has at the lab. As soon as he found out what was happening, he slapped the cover back on as quick as he could and then everything was all right. The cover was a shield against the force-field.
I stället får de en tillförsel av dammsamlarna från den interdimensionala Trader, i utbyte mot "zebror":
It took ten days to get that shipment of fifty thousand zebras and I sweated out every minute of it. Then there was the job of getting them under cover when it came and, in case you don't know, fifty thousand zebras, even when they're only bracelet charms, take up room.
But first I took out twenty-five hundred and sent them through the desk.
En av killarna undrar var damm och smuts går och den andra säger att inte oroa sig för det.
"You know, Joe, I've been doing a lot of worrying."
"We haven't a thing to worry about now," I said, "except getting these things sold."
"But the dust must go somewhere," he fretted.
"The dust?"
"Sure, the dust these things collect. Remember we picked up an entire pile of cement dust? What I want to know is where it all went. The gadget itself isn't big enough to hold it. It isn't big enough to hold even a week's collection of dust from the average house. That's what worries me—where does it go?"
"I don't care where. It goes, doesn't it?"
De dödar på marknaden och städarna säljer som varmkakor ...
But in a couple of months' time, things were running pretty smoothly. We had the state well covered and were branching out into others. I had ordered another fifty thousand zebras and told them to expect re-orders—and the desk top was a busy place. It got to a point, finally, where I had to hire three men full time, paying them plenty not to talk, to man that desk top twenty-four hours a day. We'd send through zebras for eight hours, then take away dust collectors for eight hours, then feed through zebras for another eight.
Till en dag börjar telefonerna ringa av väggen. Verkar att de ursprungliga (okända) konstruktörerna inte tyckte om allt som damm och smuts flyter till sin värld, så de hittade ett sätt att vända flödet.
"It's the creatures from the third dimension," he said anxiously. "The place where we were sending all the dust. They got sick and tired of having it pour in on them and they got it figured out and now they're firing the dust right back at us."