Project Gutenberg's Null-ABC, by Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

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Title: Null-ABC

Author: Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

Illustrator: van Dongen

Release Date: May 8, 2006 [EBook #18346]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NULL-ABC ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction, February and
March, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
copyright on this publication was renewed.

NULL-ABC

BY H. BEAM PIPER AND JOHN J. McGUIRE

_There's some reaction these days that
holds scientists responsible for war. Take it one step further:
What happens if "book-learnin'" is held responsible ...?_

Illustrated by van Dongen

Chester Pelton retracted his paunch as far as the breakfast seat would
permit; the table, its advent preceded by a collection of
mouth-watering aromas, slid noiselessly out of the pantry and clicked
into place in front of him.

"Everything all right, Miss Claire?" a voice floated out after it from
beyond. "Anything else you want?"

"Everything's just fine, Mrs. Harris," Claire replied. "I suppose Mr.
Pelton'll want seconds, and Ray'll probably want thirds and fourths of
everything." She waved a hand over the photocell that closed the
pantry door, and slid into place across from her brother, who already
had a glass of fruit juice in one hand and was lifting platter covers
with the other.

"Real eggs!" the boy was announcing. "Bacon. Wheat-bread toast." He
looked again. "Hey, Sis, is this real cow-made butter?"

"Yes. Now go ahead and eat."

As though Ray needed encouragement, Chester Pelton thought, watching
his son use a spoon--the biggest one available--to dump gobs of honey
on his toast. While he was helping himself to bacon and eggs, he could
hear Ray's full-mouthed exclamation: "This is real bee-comb honey,
too!" That plea