"Zebra empoeirada" por Clifford D. Simak Publicado pela primeira vez em Galaxy Science Fiction , setembro de 1954 , que está disponível no Internet Archive ; reimpresso várias vezes. Qualquer essas capas parecem familiares?
é uma história sobre um dispositivo encontrado por alguém que remove poeira e sujeira de onde quer que seja colocado.
Ele conseguiu trocando coisas com alguém em outra dimensão. Ele testa:
The living room was spotless from Bill just having walked through it, carrying the gadget, and the garage, where he had taken it momentarily, was spic and span. While we didn't check it, I imagine that an area paralleling the path he had taken from the front door to the garage was the only place outdoors that didn't have a speck of dust upon it.
O cara que acha que compartilha o segredo com um amigo e eles o desmembram ou de alguma forma descobrem como replicá-lo com a intenção de vender os objetos.
Não, eles abrem um, mas não podem replicá-lo:
He had taken one of the dust collectors apart and the only thing he could find out about it was that there was some feeble force-field operating inside of it—feeble yet strong enough to play hell with the electrical circuits and fancy metering machinery he has at the lab. As soon as he found out what was happening, he slapped the cover back on as quick as he could and then everything was all right. The cover was a shield against the force-field.
Em vez disso, eles recebem um suprimento dos coletores de pó do Trader interdimensional, em troca de "zebras":
It took ten days to get that shipment of fifty thousand zebras and I sweated out every minute of it. Then there was the job of getting them under cover when it came and, in case you don't know, fifty thousand zebras, even when they're only bracelet charms, take up room.
But first I took out twenty-five hundred and sent them through the desk.
Um dos caras pergunta onde está a poeira e a sujeira, e o outro diz para não se preocupar com isso.
"You know, Joe, I've been doing a lot of worrying."
"We haven't a thing to worry about now," I said, "except getting these things sold."
"But the dust must go somewhere," he fretted.
"The dust?"
"Sure, the dust these things collect. Remember we picked up an entire pile of cement dust? What I want to know is where it all went. The gadget itself isn't big enough to hold it. It isn't big enough to hold even a week's collection of dust from the average house. That's what worries me—where does it go?"
"I don't care where. It goes, doesn't it?"
Eles fazem uma matança no mercado e os limpadores vendem como pão quente ...
But in a couple of months' time, things were running pretty smoothly. We had the state well covered and were branching out into others. I had ordered another fifty thousand zebras and told them to expect re-orders—and the desk top was a busy place. It got to a point, finally, where I had to hire three men full time, paying them plenty not to talk, to man that desk top twenty-four hours a day. We'd send through zebras for eight hours, then take away dust collectors for eight hours, then feed through zebras for another eight.
até que um dia os telefones começarem a tocar na parede. Parece que os desenhistas originais (desconhecidos) não gostaram de toda essa poeira e sujeira que flui para o mundo deles, então encontraram uma maneira de reverter o fluxo.
"It's the creatures from the third dimension," he said anxiously. "The place where we were sending all the dust. They got sick and tired of having it pour in on them and they got it figured out and now they're firing the dust right back at us."