*How Einstein Saved the Outpost*

* * * *

I don't know exactly when the ship touched down (I said). I just know that one minute the four of us were alone in the Outpost, and the next minute we had company.

There were maybe thirty or forty of them, and our side was only a bartender, an historian, a blind-deaf-mute genius, and me -- so I figured it was pretty much up to me to save the day.

I didn't think matching laser blasts or energy pulses with the aliens was the most sensible way to defend the Outpost, so I picked up the molecular imploder that I keep hidden behind the bar. I'd never had occasion to use it before, but I keep it in good working order. Besides, it was the only formidable weapon I owned. It's the kind of thing that can turn a thousand aliens and their ship into jelly in a nanosecond.

Anyway, I aimed it at the approaching soldiers, flipped off the safety, and fired -- and nothing happened. All the readouts told me it was charged and working, but it sure as hell wasn't doing what it was supposed to do.

I tried again, and again there was no hum of power, no destruction of the aliens, no nothing. So I asked Einstein what was wrong, and after giving the matter some thought he figured out that the aliens had some kind of atomic neutralizer, some device that could stop any atomic-powered weapon from working.

The problem is, he told me that when they were maybe a hundred yards away. They'd seen me try to fire the imploder and knew their neutralizer was working, so they didn't spread out in any kind of attack formation. They just laughed at me and kept right on walking toward the front door.

I told Einstein that if he was going to save the day, he had less than a minute to do it, and he promised to get working on it right away.

Well, they got to within eighty yards, then sixty, then forty. I kept trying to fire the imploder, and I kept getting no result.

"Einstein!" I yelled. "Either think of a solution in ten seconds, or your thinking days are through!"

Eight seconds later he tapped out his instructions on his computer, and the Bard relayed them to me.

"'Move twenty feet to your left and fire again,'" read the Bard.

It sounded like the stupidest idea I'd ever heard, but I didn't have time to argue, so I ran twenty feet away and fired again -- through the window right behind Sinderella's head -- and this time, the imploder worked and the whole alien squadron melted right into the ground.

I took the computer back from the Bard and told Einstein that his idea had worked. "How the hell did you figure it out?" I asked. "And more to the point, _what_ did you figure out?"

"Your weapon uses atomic energy, does it not?" replied Einstein.

"Yes," I answered.

"And the basic principle of atomic energy is E=MC2, correct?"

"To the best of my knowledge, yes."

"Now, the aliens had an atomic neutralizer which prevented your weapon from functioning."

"That's what you told me."

"Well, as you can plainly see, that was the answer."

"_What_ was the answer?" I asked. "How did you know the imploder would work if I moved twenty feet to my left?"

"You could have moved twenty feet to your right, I suppose," answered Einstein. "But there's one more letter in 'right' than in 'left', and I was given to understand that time was of the essence when I wrote my instructions to you."

"You're not answering me," I said. "How did you know the weapon would work if I moved in _either_ direction?"

"As my great-great-great-et-cetera Uncle Albert pointed out, relativity may merely be a local phenomenon. You circumvented the neutralizer by becoming twenty feet less local."

* * * *

"In a long lifetime of listening to stupid stories, that's the stupidest I've ever heard!" said Max.

"You think so?" asked Nicodemus Mayflower thoughtfully. "I've heard lots that were dumber. Some of 'em right here in the Outpost."

"Uh ... I don't want to be the one to criticize," said Willie the Bard, "but that's not quite the way it happened."

"It is now," I replied.

"But -- "

"Einstein didn't see what happened and Reggie's not a talker," I said. "I figure that makes me the only eyewitness to history."

"Just a minute," said the Bard. "I was here too!"

"You're just the historian," I said. "Without me telling the story, nothing happened."

"The man's got a point," said Catastrophe Baker. "After all, they're _your_ rules."

"You'd rather have me write _his_ version than the real one?" demanded the Bard.

"His version _is_ the real one," said Baker. "Or at least it will be once you write it down."

Einstein tapped out a message on the computer, which Big Red promptly read aloud to us. "He says he finds Tomahawk's version rather charming, and he hopes no nuclear physicist ever reads it."

The Bard stood up and walked over to the bar. "I appeal to you, Reggie -- tell them Tomahawk's lying."

Reggie didn't say a word. He just kept washing dirty glasses, and when he was done with that, he began wiping the bar.

"I guess you don't appeal to him after all," said Max, and everyone guffawed.

"All right, you win," said the Bard, returning to his table and his notebook. "That's how Einstein saved the Outpost."

"By God, if I'd known history was this much fun, I might have stayed in school!" boomed Catastrophe Baker.

"When did you quit?" asked Big Red.

"When I was about eight or nine," answered Baker.

"They didn't try to stop you?"

"Of course they tried," said Baker. He shook his head sadly. "Poor bastards. Still, I suppose most of 'em are out of the hospital by now."

"You knew even then that you were going to be a hero?" asked the Earth Mother.

"I don't know about that," he admitted. "But I sure as hell knew I wasn't going to be a scholar."

"He had his whole future mapped before he was ten," said Big Red ruefully. "And here it took me almost half my life to decide to be a professional rassler."

"What's the difference between being a wrestler and a rassler?" asked Silicon Carny.

"Wrestlers get hurt. Rasslers get rich. Or at least that's the way I've got it doped out."

"I can teach you all about rasslin'," said the Reverend Billy Karma to Silicon Carny. "Just step out back with me and I'll show you some nifty holds."

"And I'll show you some kicks, scratches, and knife thrusts," said Silicon Carny.

"I admire your sense of humor," said Billy Karma.

"Do you see me smiling?" she asked grimly.

"Leave her alone, Reverend," said Baker. "Or ain't you had enough body parts cut off lately?"

"You mean these?" said Billy Karma, holding up his gold and silver hands. "It was a minor inconvenience, all done for the greater glory of God."

"Yeah?"

"Right." He turned to the Bard. "Get your pen out, Willie. This story'll uplift the hell out of you. You wouldn't want to miss writing it down."