Star-crossed? Worse than that! Even Earth itself was hopelessly out of reach for these landlocked space-travelers who lived in a—

World in a Bottle

By ALLEN KIM LANG

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Magazine October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Pouring sweat and breathing shallow, I burned east on U.S. Twenty at ninety miles an hour, wishing I could suck into my lungs some of the wind that howled across the windshield.

I heard the siren in my phones. I glanced out the left side of my helmet to find a blue-clad figure on a motorcycle looming up beside me, waving me toward the shoulder. A law-abider to the last gasp of asphyxia, I braked my little green beast over to the berm. The state cop angled his bike across my left headlamp and stalked back to where I sat, tugging a fat book of traffic-tickets out of his hip pocket.

"Unscrew that space-helmet, Sonny," he said. "You've just been grounded."

"Grounded, I'll grant," I said, my voice wheezing from the speaker on the chest of my suit; "but I can't take off the fishbowl, officer."

"Then maybe you'd better climb out of your flying saucer," the policeman suggested. "And if you're toting pearl-handled ray-guns, just leave 'em hang."

I got out of the car, keeping my hands in view, feeling like the fugitive from a space-opera this cop evidently took me for. He examined me the way a zoologist might examine the first live specimen of a new species of carnivore; very interested, very cautious. After observing the cut of my wash-and-wear plastic sterility-suit—known to us who wear them as a chastity-suit—the policeman walked around me to examine my reserve-air tank, which is cunningly curved and cushioned against my spine so that I can lean back without courting lordosis. He inspected the bubble of plastic that fit over my head like the belljar over a museum specimen, and stared at the little valve on the left shoulder of my suit, where used air was wheezing out asthmatically. "I guess fallout has got you bugged," he said.

"Not fallout, bacteria," I explained. "I'm one of the Lapins from Central University."

"That's nice," the policeman said. "And I'm one of the Bjornsons, from Indiana State Police Post 1-A. What were you trying to do just now, break Mach One on wheels? Or do you maybe come from one of these foreign planets that don't know the American rules of the road?"

I breathed deep, trying to find myself some oxygen. "I was born right here in Indiana," I said. "The reason I'm wearing this suit and helmet is that I'm bacteriologically sterile."

"So maybe you could adopt a kid," Officer Bjornson suggested.

"Sterile like germ-free," I said. "Gnotobiotic. I grew up in the Big Tank at Central University."

"You'll spend the night in the big tank at South Bend if you're snowing me, Sonny," he said. "Let's see your driver's license." I got my billfold out of the glove-compartment—a chastity-suit doesn't have any pockets—and handed my license to Bjornson. "John Bogardus, M.D.," he read. "You're a doctor, eh? This says you live at BICUSPID, Central University, South Bend. What's that BICUSPID, Doc? Means your practice is limited to certain teeth?"

"I'm a resident in pathology, and I'm damned near out of air," I said, annoyed at the prospect of suffocating while acting straight-man to a state cop. "BICUSPID is the acronym for Bacteriological Institute, Central University Special Projects in Infectious Disease. I'm a Lapin, which is a human guinea-pig. I'm sorry, officer, that I broke the Indiana speed-limit but my air-filter is clogged with condensation. If I don't get back to the Big Tank at the University within the next few minutes, I'll run out of air. And you'll have to spend the rest of the evening testifying before St. Joseph's County Coroner."

"So what happens if you crack open your space-helmet and breathe the air us peons use?" he asked.

"Pretty quick, I'd die," I said. "I've got no antibodies, no physiological mechanism to combat inspired or ingested bacteria."

"That's the sort of answer that makes my job the joy it is," Bjornson said. "Next thing you know, I'll be chasing drunken drivers from Mars."

"There's no intelligent native life on Mars," I said.

"You think maybe there are intelligent natives on U.S. Twenty?" he asked, returning my license. "Okay, Doctor Bogardus, I've bought your story. You leadfoot your bomb along after me, and we'll hit the Central campus like we're crossing the payoff line at the Mille Miglia." Bjornson cowboyed into the saddle of his bike, spurred it off and cut siren-screaming down the concrete toward South Bend and Central U. I jumped back into my sports-car and tailed him, the wind soaring past my 'phones like rocket exhaust. We cut through the field of Sunday drivers in a horizontal power-dive. I was half-blinded by the sweat condensed on my air-cooled face-plate. Formaldehyde bath or no, I'd have to cut in my reserve-air pretty soon.

We made it while I was still breathing. I braked in front of the BICUSPID entrance and walked as fast as I dared, dizzy and panting with the concentration of CO2 bottled up with me in my chastity-suit. Outside the door to the contaminated labs, I shook Bjornson's hand and told him that I considered the expense of my Gross Income Tax justified by his employment. I went inside then, climbed the steel steps to the glass-walled shower. I cut in my suit-radio and announced my arrival. "Bogardus here. I'm nearly out of wind; my filter's soaked. I'm cutting in reserve-air. Anybody around to see that I scrub behind my ears?"

Dr. Roy McQueen, Director of BICUSPID, came out of his office, where he'd monitored my announcement from the loudspeaker set above his desk, and faced the glass door of the shower room. He waved to me and cut on his microphone. "Okay, Johnny," he said.

I sealed off my air-filter and cut in the reserve-air. That canned wind felt to my lungs like cold beer to the throat on a July day. I felt the oxygen percolating through me to my toes and finger-tips, tingling them back to life. Turning on the detergent shower, I sloshed around beneath it, washing the outside dust off my chastity-suit.

"You're dry by the tank," Dr. McQueen said into his hand microphone.

I picked up the long-handled shower brush and scrubbed back there. I showered the suit's armpits, the folds behind the knees, the soles of the suit's boots, scrubbing hard with the brush. "You're all wet, Johnny," the Chief said. "Got enough air for half an hour in the bathtub?"

"Yes, sir," I said, checking the gage of my reserve-air tank. Having scrubbed off most of the flora I'd picked up in the great wild world of Indiana, I climbed down through the manhole into the bathtub, a sump of formaldehyde solution eight feet deep. I sat on the iron bench at the bottom to soak. "How about switching on some music, Chief? I didn't think to bring anything waterproof to read."

"You'll hear music from me," Dr. McQueen said. "This is a big day for BICUSPID, Johnny. It's the first time one of you kids ever came home from a date with a police escort. What happened? Anne's old man decide he didn't want a plastic-wrapped son-in-law? He call the law to throw you off his front porch?"