Free No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) by Clifford D. Simak

agreement with him that I thought they’d snap their necks.
    Pa was the first one to get his feet back under him.
    “Go ahead,” he said to the halfling. “We all are listening.”
    “We’ll make a deal with you,” said the halfling, using ornery words but speaking most respectful, “but you’ll have to level with us, see? We’ll work hard for you and guard against mishap, but we got to have the live-its and no mistake about it. One for each of us—and if I was you, mister, I wouldn’t try to chisel.”
    “Well, now,” said Pa, “that sounds fair enough. But you mean all of us?”
    “All of you,” the live-it halfling said.
    “You mean you will split up?” asked Pa. “Each of us will have at least one of you? You won’t all live together any more?”
    “I think, sir,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “that we can depend on that. I believe I understand what this gentleman is thinking. It is something that happened with the human race on Earth.”
    “What happened here on Earth?” asked Pa, sort of flabbergasted.
    “Why,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa, “the elimination of the need for social clustering. There was a time when the human race found it necessary to congregate in families and tribes for companionship and entertainment. Then the race got the record player and the radio and TV and there was less need for get-togethers. A man had entertainment of his own in his home. He need not move beyond his living room to be entertained. So the spectator and group sports simply petered out.”
    “And you think,” asked Pa, “that the same thing will happen with the halflings if we gave them live-its?”
    “Certainly,” said Fancy Pants’ Pa. “We supply them, as it were, entertainment for the home, personal entertainment. There will be no further need for tribal living.”
    “You said it, pal!” the halfling said enthusiastically.
    All the rest of them were nodding in agreement.
    “But it’s still no good,” yelped Butch’s Pa, getting real riled. “They’re in this world now, and how do you get them back? And while they’re here, can they do anything for us?”
    “You can stop shooting off your mouth right now,” the halfling said to Butch’s Pa with utmost respect. “We can’t do anything here for you, that’s sure. In this world of yours, we can’t see ahead. And to do you any good, we have to see ahead.”
    “You mean that if we give you live-its, you’ll go back home again?” asked Pa.
    “Sure,” said the halfling. “Back there is our home. Just try to keep us from it.”
    “We won’t even try,” Pa said. “We might even push you back. We’ll give you the live-its and you get back there and start to work for us.”
    “We’ll work for you hard,” said the halfling, “but not all the time. We take out some time for looking at the live-it. That all right with you?”
    “Sure,” Pa agreed. “Sure, that’s O.K. with us.”
    “All right,” said the halfling, “get us back where we belong.”
    I turned around and walked out of the crowd, out to the edge of it. For it was all settled now and I had a belly full of it. It would be all right with me if we never had any more excitement in the neighborhood.
    Up by the barn I saw Fancy Pants limping along on the ground. He was having a tough time walking. But I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. He had it coming.
    I figured in just a little while I’d go up around the barn and clobber him for that time he mopped up the road with me.
    It should be an easy job, I told myself, with him grounded by his Pa for thirty days.

Spaceship in a Flask
    “Spaceship in a Flask” was purchased by Astounding Science Fiction early in 1941; they paid Cliff seventy-five dollars and published the story in July 1941. It is one of the many Simak stories that features a newspaperman protagonist, and it displays a bit of the culture of the era, which often included, among other things, crusty, streetwise reporters who lived in uneasy truces