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The Project Gutenberg EBook of In Case of Fire, by Gordon Randall Garrett This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: In Case of Fire
Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
Illustrator: Martinez
Release Date: February 5, 2008 [EBook #24521]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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[Illustration]
IN CASE OF FIRE
There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one. For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is ...
By RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by Martinez
In his office apartment, on the top floor of the Terran Embassy Building in Occeq City, Bertrand Malloy leafed casually through the dossiers of the four new men who had been assigned to him. They were typical of the kind of men who were sent to him, he thought. Which meant, as usual, that they were atypical. Every man in the Diplomatic Corps who developed a twitch or a quirk was shipped to Saarkkad IV to work under Bertrand Malloy, Permanent Terran Ambassador to His Utter Munificence, the Occeq of Saarkkad.
Take this first one, for instance. Malloy ran his finger down the columns of complex symbolism t