The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Case of Fire, by Gordon Randall Garrett

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Title: In Case of Fire

Author: Gordon Randall Garrett

Illustrator: Martinez

Release Date: February 5, 2008 [EBook #24521]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

IN CASE OF FIRE

_There are times when a broken tool is better
than a sound one, or a twisted personality
more useful than a whole one. For instance, a
whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that
half a beer bottle is ..._

By RANDALL GARRETT

Illustrated by Martinez

In his office apartment, on the top floor of the Terran Embassy Building
in Occeq City, Bertrand Malloy leafed casually through the dossiers of
the four new men who had been assigned to him. They were typical of the
kind of men who were sent to him, he thought. Which meant, as usual,
that they were atypical. Every man in the Diplomatic Corps who developed
a twitch or a quirk was shipped to Saarkkad IV to work under Bertrand
Malloy, Permanent Terran Ambassador to His Utter Munificence, the Occeq
of Saarkkad.

Take this first one, for instance. Malloy ran his finger down the
columns of complex symbolism that showed the complete psychological
analysis of the man. Psychopathic paranoia. The man wasn't technically
insane; he could be as lucid as the next man most of the time. But he
was morbidly suspicious that every man's hand was turned against him. He
trusted no one, and was perpetually on his guard against imaginary plots
and persecutions.

Number two suffered from some sort of emotional block that left him
continually on the horns of one dilemma or another. He was
psychologically incapable of making a decision if he were faced with two
or more possible alternatives of any major importance.

Number three ...

Malloy sighed and pushed the dossiers away from him. No two men were
alike, and yet there sometimes seemed to be an eternal sameness about
all men. He considered himself an individual, for instanc