The Project Gutenberg EBook of Damned If You Don't, by Gordon Randall Garrett

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Damned If You Don't

Author: Gordon Randall Garrett

Release Date: December 28, 2007 [EBook #24064]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMNED IF YOU DON'T ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Mary Meehan and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

DAMNED IF YOU DON'T

By RANDALL GARRETT

Illustrated by van Dongen

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

_You can and you can't;
You will and you won't.
You'll be damn'd if you do;
You'll be damn'd if you don't._

--LORENZO DOW;
"Definition of Calvinism"

_We've all heard of the wonderful invention that the Big Corporation or
the Utilities suppressed...? Usually, that Wonderful Invention won't
work, actually. But there's another possibility, too...._

The workshop-laboratory was a mess.

Sam Bending looked it over silently; his jaw muscles were hard and
tense, and his eyes were the same.

To repeat what Sam Bending thought when he saw the junk that had been
made of thousands of dollars worth of equipment would not be
inadmissible in a family magazine, because Bending was not particularly
addicted to four-letter vulgarities. But he _was_ a religious man--in a
lax sort of way--so repeating what ran through his mind that gray Monday
in February of 1981 would be unfair to the memory of Samson Francis
Bending.

Sam Bending folded his hands over his chest. It was not an attitude of
prayer; it was an attempt to keep those big, gorillalike hands from
smashing something. The fingers intertwined, and the hands tried to
crush each other, which was a good way to keep them from actually
crushing anything else.

He stood there at the door for a full minute--just looking.

The lab--as has been said--was a mess. It would have looked better if
someone had simply t