Passage to anywhere

Passage to anywhere by Jr. Sam Merwin is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. It explores the disruptive promise of instantaneous matter transmission and the political, economic, and ethical storms that swirl around a breakthrough that could upend global transport while opening a practical path to space.

The story follows Park Hamilton of Science Projects Research as he scrambles to contain fallout after inventor Sven Ryan, fresh from testing a working matter-transmitter, goes on a drunken spree in New York and talks too freely. With help from Hamilton’s capable assistant Nancy Alderman, they fend off a heavy-handed seizure attempt by U.S. power broker Charles Forsythe and bring UN liaison Ian Harris into a tense truce. In Antarctica, Ryan’s device proves it can send objects flawlessly—but only line-of-sight over short ranges, not through Earth’s curvature. While Forsythe and Harris fear global economic chaos, Hamilton reframes the invention as the missing logistics link for off-world bases: no curvature blocks a beam to the Moon. The crisis dissolves into a new vision—use the transmitter to supply a lunar station—and the tale closes on a hopeful pivot from terrestrial panic to interplanetary purpose, with a quiet nod to Hamilton’s partnership with Nancy. (This is an automatically generated summary.)