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besides himself. He should have checked the flashlight batteriesbefore he swiped them. He knew well
enough that halfthe stock in Olmstead's general store had been gathering dust for years, that Ed Olmstead
would rather die thanthrow away anything that some unwary customer mightbuy. But he'd been so busy
rigging up his ship that hejust hadn't thought.
In a way, though, his having to ask Marianne's help inthe repairing of his improvised motor had lent his
storya conviction it might otherwise have lacked. If he'd saidright out of a clear blue sky that his "fleet"
was going
FLYING PAN 283
to bomb the cities and spare the villages, it wouldn't havesounded right. Her giving him the batteries had
suppliedhim with a motivation. And his impromptu explanationabout converting their energy into a
controlled chainreaction had been a perfect cover-up. Marianne, he wassure, didn't know any more
about atomic drives than hedid.
Prince Moy Trehano shifted to a more comfortableposition on his matchbox pilot's seat. He took off his
tinfoil helmet and let his beard fall free. He switchedoff the Christmas-tree lights beneath the Saran Wrap
viewports and looked out at the village-bejeweledcountryside.
By morning he'd be home, snug and secure in his min-iature mansion in the willows. First, though, he'd
hidethe frying pan in the same rabbit hole where he'd hiddenthe handle, so no one would ever find it.
Then he couldsit back and take it easy, comforted by the knowledge ofa good deed well done and by
the happy prospect ofhis household chores being cut in half.
A witch went by on a broom. Prince Moy Trehanoshook his head in disgust. Such an outmoded means
oflocomotion! It was no wonder humans didn't believe inwitches any more. You had to keep up with the
times ifyou expected to stay in the race. Why, if he were as old-fashioned and as antiquated as his
contemporaries he might have been stuck with a bachelor for the rest of hislife, and a shiftless
bachelor when it came to house- work, anyway at that. Not that Howard King wasn't a fine human
being; he was as fine as they came. But younever got your dusting and your sweeping done mooningon
the front steps like a sick calf, talking to yourself andwaiting for your girl to come home from the city.
When you came right down to it, youhad to be mod-ern. Why, Marianne wouldn't even haveseen him,
to saynothing of hearing what he'd had to say, if he'd worn histraditional clothing, used his own name and
employed hisnormal means of locomotion. Twentieth-century humanswere just as imaginative as
eighteenth-century and nine-teenth-century humans: they believed in creatures fromblack lagoons and
monsters from 20,000 fathoms and fly-ing saucers and beings from outer space
But they didn't believe in brownies. . . .
MY FATHER, THE CAT
Henry Slesar
My mother was a lovely, delicate woman from the coastof Brittany, who was miserable sleeping on less
than three mattresses, and who, it is said, was once injuredby a falling leaf in her garden. My grandfather,
a descen-dant of the French nobility whose family had ridden thetumbrils of the Revolution, tended her
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fragile body and spirit with the same loving care given rare, brief-bloom-ing flowers. You may imagine
from this his attitude con-cerning marriage. He lived in terror of the vulgar, heavy-handed man who
would one day win my mother's heart, and at last, this persistent dread killed him. His concernwas
unnecessary, however, for my mother chose a suitor who was as free of mundane brutality as a husband
couldbe. Her choice was Dauphin, a remarkable white catwhich strayed onto the estate shortly after his
death.
Dauphin was an unusually large Angora, and his abil-ity to speak in cultured French, English, and Italian
wassufficient to cause my mother to adopt him as a house-hold pet. It did not take long for her to realize
thatDauphin deserved a higher status, and he became herfriend, protector, and confidante. He never
spoke of hisorigin, nor where he had acquired the classical educationwhich made him such an entertaining
companion. Aftertwo years, it was easy for my mother, an unworldlywoman at best, to forget the
dissimilarity in their species.In fact, she was convinced that Dauphin was anenchanted prince, and
Dauphin, in consideration of herillusions, never dissuaded her. At last, they were marriedby an
understanding clergyman of the locale, who sol-
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