The Boomerang Circuit

By Murray Leinster and John Betancourt

Nobody paid any attention to matter-transmitters ordinarily. They had been in use for ten thousand years. All the commerce of the First Galaxy now moved through them. But what happens a planet's matter transmitter to goes awry—in an age when spaceships are obsolete?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Oct 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667660035

Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American science fiction and alternate history writer. He was a prolific author with a career spanning several decades, during which he made significant contributions to the science fiction genre.

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Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION, by John Betancourt

THE BOOMERANG CIRCUIT, by Murray Leinster

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2022 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1947.

Published by Wildside Press, LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION, by John Betancourt

William F. Jenkins (1896–1975)—who wrote science fiction under several names, but primarily Murray Leinster—was one of the few early writers of speculative fiction to publish strong, relevant fiction over the course of 7 decades (Jack Williamson was another). Jenkins began publishing science fiction for pulp magazines before the term science fiction was even coined.

His success may have been due to his work in multiple genres. I have assembled his novels and stories into a series of collections for Wildside Press’s MEGAPACK® anthology line, and in researching his work, I discovered that he wrote pretty much everything imaginable, from romance to mystery to westerns, as well as science fiction and fantasy. Indeed, his published works number well into in the thousands—Wikipedia has an estimate of at least 1500—and I can easily believe it.

His first science fiction story, The Runaway Skyscraper, appeared in the February 22, 1919 issue of one of the leading general-fiction magazines, Argosy, and was reprinted in the June 1926 issue of Hugo Gernsback’s first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. In the 1930s, he published science fiction stories and serials in Amazing and Astounding Stories (the first issue of Astounding included his story Tanks). He continued to appear frequently in other genre pulps such as Detective Fiction Weekly and Smashing Western, as well as Collier’s Weekly beginning in 1936 and Esquire starting in 1939.

Jenkins was a pioneer in many now-archetypical science fiction themes. He explored parallel universe stories four years before Jack Williamson’s classic The Legion of Time came out, with Sidewise in Time (after which the Sidewise Award is named) in the June 1934 issue of Astounding. He also invented the universal translator popularized by Star Trek. And his 1946 short story A Logic Named Joe contains one of the first descriptions of a computer (called a logic) in fiction. He envisioned logics in every home, linked through a distributed system of servers (called tanks), to provide communications, entertainment, data access, and commerce; one character says that logics are civilization. Not so far off from our Internet today!

Truly, he was one of the great visionary writers the field has ever produced.

THE BOOMERANG CIRCUIT,

by Murray Leinster

CHAPTER 1

Damaged Transmitter

Kim Rendell had almost forgotten that he was ever a matter-transmitter technician. But then the matter-transmitter on Terranova ceased to operate and they called on him.

It happened just like that. One instant the wavering, silvery film seemed to stretch across the arch in the public square of the principal but still small settlement on the first planet to be colonized in the Second Galaxy. The film bulged, and momentarily seemed to form the outline of a human figure as a totally-reflecting, pulsating cocoon about a moving object. Then it broke like a bubble-film and a walking figure stepped unconcernedly out. Instantly the silvery film was formed again behind it and another shape developed on the film’s surface.

Only seconds before, these people and these objects had been on another planet in another island universe, across unthinkable parsecs of space. Now they were here. Bales and bundles and parcels of merchandise. Huge containers of foodstuffs—the colony on Terranova was still not completely self-sustaining—and drums of fuel for the space-ships busy mapping the new galaxy for the use of men, and more people, and a huge tank of viscous, opalescent plastic.

Then came a pretty girl, smiling brightly on her first appearance on a new planet in a new universe, and crates of castings for more spaceships, and a family group with a pet zorag on a leash behind them, and a batch of cryptic pieces of machinery, and a man.

Then nothing. Without fuss, the silvery film ceased to be. One could look completely through the archway which was the matter-transmitter. One could see what was on the other side instead of a wavering, pulsating reflection of objects nearby. The last man to come through spoke unconcernedly over his shoulder, to someone he evidently believed just behind, but who was actually now separated from him by the abyss between island universes and some thousands of parsecs beyond.

Nobody paid any attention to matter-transmitters ordinarily. They had been in use for ten thousand years. All the commerce of the First Galaxy now moved through them. Spaceships had become obsolete, and the little Starshine—which was the first handiwork of man to cross the gulf to the Second Galaxy—had been a museum exhibit for nearly two hundred years before Kim Rendell smashed out of the museum in it, with Dona, and the two of them went roaming hopelessly among the ancient, decaying civilizations of man’s first home in quest of a world in which they could live in freedom.

* * * *

It seemed a hopeless quest, at first. Every government was absolute, and hence every ruler had become tyrannical. And the very limitations of spaceships, which had caused their supplantation by matter-transmitters, had seemed to doom their quest to futility.

But Kim had adapted the principle of the