The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cue for Quiet, by Thomas L. Sherred

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Title: Cue for Quiet

Author: Thomas L. Sherred

Illustrator: Orban

Release Date: June 19, 2010 [EBook #32889]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CUE FOR QUIET ***

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May and July 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration]

CUE FOR QUIET

BY T. L. SHERRED

ILLUSTRATED BY ORBAN

After too many years, T. L. Sherred returns with a story
that gets our SPACE SPECIAL rating. It's the story of a man
with a headache--who found a cure for it! And the cure gave
him more power than any man could dream of.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

So I had a headache. The grandfather of all headaches. You try working
on the roof line sometime, with the presses grinding and the overhead
cranes wailing and the mechanical arms clacking and grabbing at your
inner skull while you snap a shiny sheet of steel like an armored
pillowcase and shove it into the maw of a hungry greasy ogre. Noise.
Hammering, pounding, shrieking, gobbling, yammering, incessant noise.
And I had a headache.

This headache had all the signs of permanency. It stayed with me when
I slid my timecard into an empty slot that clanged back at me, when I
skittered across a jammed street of blowing horns and impatient buses
with brakedrums worn to the rivets, when I got off at my corner and
stood in the precarious safety of a painted island in a whirring storm
of hurtling hornets. It got even worse when I ate dinner and tried to
read my paper through the shrill juvenile squeals of the housing
project where I live surrounded by muddy moppets and, apparently,
faithless wives and quarrelsome spouses. The