The Project Gutenberg EBook of With No Strings Attached, by
Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)

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Title: With No Strings Attached

Author: Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)

Illustrator: Schelling

Release Date: October 26, 2007 [EBook #23198]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's Note:
This story was published in _Analog_, February 1963. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.]

With No Strings Attached

A man will always be willing to buy something he wants,
and believes in, even if it is impossible,
rather than something he believes is impossible. So ...
sell him what he thinks he wants!

David Gordon

Illustrated by Schelling

[Illustration]

The United States Submarine _Ambitious Brill_ slid smoothly into her
berth in the Brooklyn Navy Yard after far too many weeks at sea, as
far as her crew were concerned. After all the necessary preliminaries
had been waded through, the majority of that happy crew went ashore to
enjoy a well-earned and long-anticipated leave in the depths of the
brick-and-glass canyons of Gomorrah-on-the-Hudson.

The trip had been uneventful, in so far as nothing really dangerous
or exciting had happened. Nothing, indeed, that could even be called
out-of-the-way--except that there was more brass aboard than usual,
and that the entire trip had been made underwater with the exception
of one surfacing for a careful position check, in order to make sure
that the ship's instruments gave the same position as the stars gave.
They had. All was well.

That is not to say that the crew of the _Ambitious Brill_ were
entirely satisfied in their own minds about certain questions that had
been puzzling them. They weren't. But they knew better than to ask
questions, even among themselves. And they said nothing whatever when
they got ashore. But even the novices among submarine crews know that
while the nuclear-power